Stock Options under the Microscope
More than 30 CEOs have fully vested stock options worth $100 million or more. The main reason: Until 2004, companies didn't have to treat options as an expense, so they could lavish them on executives without hurting earnings per share. Some companies didn't even realize how big the honey pot would grow if they kept doling out options. But some boards knew exactly what they were doing: Making their executives rich. In the late 1990s, when technology companies were short on profits but drunk with soaring stock prices, boards handed out options like candy. But many firms, particularly during the dot-com boom, consistently granted options when the stock hit a monthly or yearly low, suggesting they chose the grant date with the benefit of hindsight. Backdating itself isn't illegal, but failing companies that don't disclose it properly risk the wrath of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. Keep and eye on a few CEO's and they Companies.

Number one on the list is William W. McGuire, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, who has $1.6 billion in stock options. The SEC is investigating the company's option-granting practices, and the company has said that it may have to restate earnings. Earlier this year, UnitedHealth also changed its stock-grant policy in response to investor furor over McGuire's pay; he and other senior executives will no longer receive equity-based awards. The SEC is also investigating Caremark Rx, Electronic Arts and KB Home.


Mark Cuban Slams YouTube
Mark Cuban had harsh words for YouTube, saying only a "moron" would purchase the wildly popular start-up. Cuban also told advertisers the reach of YouTube is limited, particularly when it comes to user-generated videos. He said: "User-generated content is not going away. But do you want your advertising dollars spent on a video of aunt Jenny watching her niece tap dance? "Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers? "YouTube now offers advertising through banner ads, promotions and sponsorships. It has said it plans to roll out a range of different advertising options over the coming year. Cuban cautioned advertisers against investing heavily in so-called viral campaigns that are spread by users beyond their initial point of distribution on YouTube or other video-sharing sites. But he touted opportunities to run commercials on high-definition television such as his HDNet network. He said: "What makes viral so special is it's so hard to do. It's so hard to plan. It's hard to stand out," describing 99 per cent of money advertisers spend on viral campaigns as "wasted". He added: "You guys love to be the trailing edge."

YouTube Statistics
* YouTube hosts over six million videos, growing at about 20 percent every month.
* The videos take up 45 terabytes of storage — about 5,000 home computers’ worth.
* The total time spent watching YouTube videos since it started last year is 9,305 years!
* The content requires several million dollars’ worth of bandwidth a month to transmit.
* The most popular items get an especially large percentage of the traffic.
* The words “dance,” “love,” “music” and “girl” are all exceedingly popular in video titles.

Outsourcing Homework
The outsourcing trend that fueled a boom in Asian call centers staffed by educated, low-paid workers manning phones around the clock for U.S. banks and other industries is moving fast into an area at the heart of U.S. culture: education. It comes at a difficult time for the U.S. education system: only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50% for black Americans and Hispanics, according to government statistics. China and India, meanwhile, are producing the world's largest number of science and engineering graduates -- at least five times as many as in the United States, where the number has fallen since the early 1980s. 1,100 Americans enrolled in Bangalore-based TutorVista, which launched U.S. services last November with a staff of 150 "e-tutors" mostly in India with a fee of $100 a month for unlimited hours. On average, they have taught for 10 years. Each undergoes 60 hours of training, including lessons on how to speak in a U.S. accent and how to decipher American slang. They are schooled on U.S. history and state curricula, and work in mini-call centers or from their homes across India. One operates out of Singapore, teaching the Chinese language. As with other Indian e-tutoring firms such as Growing Stars, students log on to TutorVista's Web site and are assigned lessons by tutors who communicate using voice-over-Internet technology and an instant messaging window. They share a simulated whiteboard on their computers.


San Fransico Doing it's own Wifi?
The fate of San Francisco's municipal wireless network, arguably the most vaunted citywide WiFi project in the country, rose higher in the air this week as the city agreed to examine the possibility of building a publicly owned network. Pursuing that model would mean tearing up the preliminary agreement the city reached last March to have EarthLink and Google build a privately owned network that would theoretically offer a tiered service to all residents, including a free 300Kbit/s service plus higher speed offerings for yet-to-be-determined fees. Chris Sacca, the Google executive heading the search giant's part of the San Francisco project, derided the effort in interviews last week, saying the process is not moving forward as planned. Negotiations between the two companies and the city for a final contract are ongoing.

Forbes has put together a list of most wired cities in the US, which JiWire found that San Francisco is the most “unwired” city and has 805 hotspots, including 375 free ones. New York is #2 with 669 hotspots, followed by Chicago with 551. Atlanta ranked at #8 with 372 hotspots, 94 of them free.

The Amsterdam Internet Exchange
Amsterdam has the world's busiest Internet exchange, thanks to nuclear physicists and mathematicians who in the 1980s connected their network needs with the academic belief that knowledge needs to be free. At a time when the neutrality of the Internet is at stake, and Internet service providers (ISPs) are moving to prioritize their premium traffic, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange is a reminder that the Internet was built on the principle of the unrestricted exchange of ideas and information. The popularity of the AMS-IX. the official name of the exchange, is the result of a liberal foundation which has created a place where ISPs can do business any way they like.



Monstrous Monitor
Zenview, the company who started the big-screen monitors trend with its elite six-screen monitor is now back with bang with its new Zenview Powerscape Series. The new series emphasizes on keeping single panels featuring five displays with wide central screen. The monstrous of them all is Zenview Powerscape Ultra HD that features five-screen display with 30″ central screen with a total resolution of 7360 by 1600px. The five-screen panorama offers 178º viewing angle (all screens) and is offered at a special web price of $5,999.

Today's Site To Peek At:
Microsoft's Photosynth browser can draw from personal snaps or photo-sharing sites to create a 3D space users can 'walk around' in. Based on technology developed at the University ofWashington, Microsoft's Photosynth browser can draw from personal photos or shots culled from photo-sharing sites to create a 3D space users can "walk around" in. Photosynth lets people import photos, either from their own collection or via a search of a photo-sharing site like Yahoo's Flickr. Drawing from the imported shots, Photosynth organizes the photos into a virtual 3D collage, using an algorithm that measures location information, identifiable features and subsequent 3D points for similarities, differences and viewpoints. Viewers can choose tosee a detail of the constructed photo scene by clicking on an object or dragging a box around a group of objects. The highest-scoring photo for that particular object or view is blown up on the screen. Photos are scored based on the best resolution, lighting and view. Head-on views score higher, as do daytime shots. Once in detail, viewers can move around and "step back," and they have the option of seeing other images of the same view within the collection. Thumbnails of these alternates run along the bottom of the screen. The program also renders transitional views from one photo to the next within the 3D space, giving the illusion that viewers are panning the scene with a video camera. Users can also annotate a particular photo, or portion of the scene. Annotations are shared among images based on the level of detail the image covers. For example, a tag describing the Rome's statue of Neptune at the Trevi Fountain would carry over to other views of Neptune but not necessarily panoramic views of the entire Trevi Fountain.

Average user rating

   (0 vote)