Alla inlägg den 17 mars 2011
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank doesn't normally face a raucous crowd.
But in Queens, New York, on Friday, William Dudley was bombarded with questions about food inflation, and his attempt to put rising commodity prices into a broader economic context only made things worse.
"When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?" one audience member asked.
Dudley tried to explain how the Fed sees things: Yes, food prices may be rising, but at the same time, other prices are declining. The Fed looks at core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, to get a better sense of where inflation may actually be heading.
So, Dudley sought an everyday example of a price that is falling.
"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," he said referring to Apple Inc's latest handheld tablet computer hitting stories on Friday.
"You have to look at the prices of all things," he said.
This prompted guffaws and widespread murmuring from the audience, with one audience member calling the comment "tone deaf."
"I can't eat an iPad," another quipped.
(Reporting by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Jan Paschal)
Think you can improve upon the notoriously low response rate to banner ads? Then Saab has a challenge for you.
The automaker Thursday launched a promotion on its Facebook Page where fans can write and star in their own Saab banners that are designed to look like the company’s actual U.S ad campaign, “The Story of Saab.” Saab will choose the best consumer-generated banners, which will run on the homepages of The New York Times, Wired and AOL, among others.
Saab’s not the first marketer to tap consumer-generated content. Most notably, PepsiCo has relied on consumers for five years to create its Super Bowl ads, a program that has netted the company a lot of pre-game buzz and even some USA Today AdMeter wins. Other car companies have also tapped consumer-generated promotions before, most notably Volkswagen, which asked consumers to choose the name of its next SUV in 2006. (VW chose the name Tiguan.)
For Saab, the move comes as the brand recently re-emerged as an independent company after being spun off from General Motors. The banner program is designed to tap into the enthusiasm of core Saab fans who, the carmaker hopes, will then spread the word via social media.
Todd Turner, principal of Car Concepts, says that strategy makes sense since Saab has a visibility problem these days. “Saab’s problem isn’t their customers or people who know them,” Turner says. “Saab’s problem is people who don’t know them.”
Images courtesy of Flickr, MSVG
The Nokia X1-00 is designed to allow users in emerging markets to listen to music on their phone, Nokia said in a blog post on Tuesday.
The X1-00 will cost about €34 (US$50) before operator subsidies and taxes. It has an MP3 player, a 3.5 millimeter audio jack and an integrated loudspeaker. The music is stored on a microSD memory card, and the largest card capacity the phone can handle is 16GB. There is also an FM radio.
Downloading music to the phone directly from the Internet is not an option. The X1-00 is based on the Series 30 operating system, which doesn't include a web browser or any other form of Internet connectivity.
The phone is primarily aimed at emerging markets, where PCs aren't as common as in more mature markets. Without a PC of their own, X1 owners might find it difficult to side-load music onto phone's memory card. One solution would be to go to an Internet cafe to add music to the phone, a Nokia spokesman said.
Phone owners should choose legal options to obtain their music, Nokia said. "There are ample opportunities for people to download music in the proper, legal way -- from our own music service as well as those services offered by others, including operators where DRM-free is available -- before side-loading on to the X1," a spokesman said.
Other features of the phone include a built-in flashlight and up to five separate phone books, which will allow a family or neighbors to share a phone, Nokia said.
The standby battery life is rated at up to 61 days, and the phone can play music for a maximum of 38 hours, according to a Nokia data sheet.
The Nokia X1-00 is scheduled to be available in some markets beginning in April.
Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Discovery is on track for a Wednesday landing — its very last one.
Commander Steven Lindsey and his crew will test the shuttle's systems Tuesday morning. Then the six astronauts will hold a ceremony to mark Discovery's final flight.
Discovery, the world's most flown spaceship, departed from the International Space Station on Monday. It will wrap up its 13-day mission with a Florida touchdown, weather permitting.
Discovery now faces life as a museum display. It's the first of NASA's three space shuttles to be retired. NASA managers contend the fleet still has lots of flying lifetime left. But the agency is under presidential direction to aim for true outer space, which means giving up the shuttles, which are confined to orbit.
The storage software market recorded its fifth successive quarter of year-on-year growth at the end of 2010 with all five of the top-ranked players increasing sales during the quarter, according to estimates published on Monday.
The storage software market was worth US$3.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, a jump of 10.6 percent from the same period in 2009, IDC said.
The largest single vendor was EMC, which notched up storage software revenue of $866 million, up 18 percent from a year earlier. Symantec ranked second but achieved just 0.1 percent growth, at $543 million.
Symantec's inability to increase its sales enabled IBM to close the gap on its rival, but the two companies remain separated by a wide margin. IBM came in third at $443 million. NetApp followed in fourth place at $312 million and Hitachi was ranked fifth at $148 million. Hitachi achieved the strongest growth of the top five companies, managing to increase sales 47 percent in the quarter, said IDC.
The storage software market has been growing since late 2009. For the full year of 2010, the market expanded by 10.3 percent to $12.7 billion and reversed a 3.2 percent contraction in 2009, said IDC.
"The storage software market is in the midst of a sustained recovery, which is partly driven by new product innovations, and partly by a strong desire to address inefficiencies related to storing, protecting, and managing corporate data," said Eric Sheppard, research director with IDC's Storage Software program, in a statement.
Within the segment, storage infrastructure software recorded the strongest growth at 23.6 percent last year. The data protection and recovery market remains the largest single sector. It was worth $4.4 billion last year, accounting for more than a third of the entire software storage industry, said IDC.
"A considerable increase in storage software designed to enable automated storage tiering, coupled with a continued market trend of addressing aging, inefficient storage deployments were two important drivers of market growth during the quarter," said Sheppard.
(IDC is a subsidiary of International Data Group, the parent company of IDG News Service.)
Martyn Williams covers Japan and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com
DETROIT (Reuters) – General Motors Co (GM.N) said on Thursday that Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell will leave a little more than a year after joining the U.S automaker from software giant Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O).
Liddell, 52, will leave GM on April 1. He joined the company in January 2010 and saw it through its record initial public stock offering last November.
"I came to General Motors to be part of something great," Liddell said in a statement. "My objective was to help rebuild this iconic company."
Liddell left Microsoft, where he was CFO, in November 2009 to look for a bigger job. When he joined GM he was seen as a well-regarded outsider who could possibly succeed then-Chief Executive Ed Whitacre when he stepped aside.
Microsoft said when Liddell left that he was looking at opportunities to "expand his career beyond being a CFO."
However, last August Dan Akerson, 62, was named CEO, immediately leading to industry speculation Liddell would eventually leave.
"The decision to leave was Chris'," GM spokeswoman Lori Arpin said. "He came here to be CFO and with the company on proper footing, he decided that it was the right time personally and professionally to pursue other opportunities. He has not announced his future plans yet."
Dan Ammann will succeed Liddell as CFO. The 38-year-old executive, who joined GM in March 2010, is currently vice president, finance and treasurer. A successor for Ammann in the treasurer's office will be announced at a later date.
GM said Ammann has played a major role in key financial decisions at the company, including setting financial strategy and reducing debt, and working toward the IPO.
Those eight days in the womb really made a difference.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz beat out Mark Zuckerberg as the youngest person on Forbes's billionaires list published Thursday. Moskovitz was born eight days after Zuckerberg, his Harvard roommate. (See how Facebook is redefining privacy.)
The 26-year-old is worth $2.7 billion, most of which he made through his share in Facebook. Born in Washington, D.C., Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard after two years like the Facebook CEO. Moskovitz served as Facebook's first chief technology officer. Although he no longer works for the company he helped found, he still owns a 6% share in the company. Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, a former engineering manager at Facebook, launched their own networking firm Asana last month.
This year, there are 20 billionaires under age 40, up from just eight last year. Zuckerberg comes in as the second-youngest billionaire, worth $13.5 billion, nearly five times as much as Moskovitz. If any of these young moneybags are looking for a place to drop some dough, we can think of one writer who would be happy for a handout.
See Mark Zuckerberg, TIME's Person of the Year.
View this article on Time.com
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