Gates tells ad execs that Online services is his top priority
Bill Gates said that he intends to spend his remaining full-time employment with the company primarily focused on developing online and advertising services. Gates was addressing a crowd of ad executives at Microsoft's annual Strategic Account Summit, an event held in Seattle to showcase the company's online services and their potential appeal for advertisers. Gates, Microsoft's founder, has said that he will work with the company full-time until mid-2008. In his remaining months, he said that his efforts will be mainly directed toward "search, buyers and sellers. ... That will be my biggest thing." Microsoft has made a concerted effort in recent years to gain a larger share of the online-services and advertising market, while going head to head with companies including Google and Yahoo. That effort has included a roughly $2.7 billion increase in operating expenses for Microsoft in its current fiscal year. According to Nielsen NetRatings, in the month of March Microsoft held only a 10.1% share on the search market, while Google held 51.3% and Yahoo held 21.8%. Microsoft is hoping to gain ground by offering new types of search and services.

Microsoft Buys Stake in CareerBuilder.com Job Site
Microsoft, bought a minority equity stake in CareerBuilder.com and said it will keep using the company's job search engine on its MSN Web site. CareerBuilder will pay Microsoft as much as $443 million to be the exclusive provider of job searches on MSN Careers in the U.S. through 2013, the companies said today in a statement. They didn't say how much Microsoft paid for the CareerBuilder stake. Microsoft, is working to build advertising revenue at its MSN network of sites, which lags behind Google and Yahoo in visitors. CareerBuilder's other owners are newspaper companies Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy. The company's job search engine is also featured on newspaper Web sites.

Comcast shows off super-quick cable modem
Comcast has been showing off a new cable modem which can handle a data download speed of 150 megabits per second. Chief Executive Brian Roberts showed attendees at the Cable Show a modem which is 25 times faster than standard cable modems. He said the technology would be in the shops in a couple of years and will compete with FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon is flogging over its fibre-optic network. FiOS can managed 50 megabits per second, but the network is already capable of providing 100 Mbps. Comcast's technology has the catchy title DOCSIS 3.0 and was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It links four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity. Manufacturers are expected to start submitting modems for certification under the standard by the end of the year.

Old media prepares for war against New
Newspapers Barons claim that their rule is not over and that talk of the death of old media by the digital Johnny-come-latelies is overstated. Newspaper executives crawled out of their mahogany row offices to attend a panel discussion on the second day of the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference. One of the preoccupations that they had was countering the perception that traditional media businesses are dead. Time Warner Chief Executive Richard Parsons claimed that the Googles of the world are latter day Custers whereas the old fashioned newspapers are the Sioux nation. He seems to have forgotten Wounded Knee and that few people speak Sioux these days. Instead, the media barons have decided to use the same technique as the music and movie industry and attempt to crush new media using copyright laws. Parsons said that if New Media directly engages Old Media in a war on this ground it will lose. The implication is that Old Media will start going after New Media for nicking its content. One Old Media champion Viacom is seeking more than $1 billion from Google and its online video site YouTube, accusing them in a lawsuit of "massive intentional copyright infringement." Of course, Parsons might come to regret his fighting talk words. One of the biggest shareholders in his outfit is Google.

What is Reuters Future
Thomson, the Canadian electronic information company, has sketched out its $17.5 billion offer for Reuters Group, the financial and general news service. The merger would create a major rival to Bloomberg, the current leader in providing information, data and analytical software to the financial community. Combined, Thomson and Reuters would have 34% of the market for financial data, according to David Anderson, editor of Inside Market Data Reference, which tracks the business, with Bloomberg at 33%. Although the bid was expected, the announcement Tuesday contained one surprise: the current chief executive of Reuters. That is partly a result of the unusual corporate structure of Reuters, and perhaps an attempt to diminish concerns in Britain about a company with deep British roots falling under foreign control. Under the plan, both companies would maintain their stock listings but have identical boards. Thomson Financial, the unit that sells financial data and services, would be joined with the financial and general news business of Reuters. The resulting operation would be known as Reuters and would operate under a set of principles intended to protect the independence of its journalism. Thomson-Reuters, the broader company, would adopt a share structure currently used by Reuters that allows trustees to effectively block takeovers. The Thomson family, through its private holding company Woodbridge, would own 53% of the new company, down from its 70% control of Thomson.

HP prepares major notebook push
HP announced plans for a "major push" in the notebook space with the launch of 13 business and consumer laptops. Speaking at the company's annual Mobility Summit, held in Asia for the first time, executives gave details of the new products, which are all based on Intel's new Santa Rosa chipset. Laptop sales were up 40% last year and the ultimate sign of success is customers voting with their wallets. It is our intention to lead in every market we are in. The HP Pavilion HDX Entertainment Notebook PC for consumers and the Compaq 2710 ultraportable laptop - both of which are due to launch this summer. The HP Pavilion HDX Entertainment Notebook PC, codenamed Dragon, is a 20in desktop replacement machine which has HD output, four speakers and a remote control built into the casing. The company is aiming it at the Asian market and at those with desktop PCs who are considering switching to a laptop but do not want to lose performance. The Compaq 2710 is an ultraportable laptop/tablet convertible aimed at the business traveller. It is the first HP laptop to feature a light in the lid so that it can be used in dark conditions, and also has an integrated webcam which can be used to scan business cards placed on the housing and translate the text. HP has decided to build in SD card slots as standard across the range of new laptops, and is offering optional Blu-ray drives on some models. A new screen technology called Illumi-lite is used in the models to extend battery power by up to 10%. This, along with an optional battery extension which covers the whole base of the laptop, has driven the battery life of one model to over 15 hours, HP claims. The new models will also be protected by a technology HP has obtained from a third party called Durakeys. This is a coating that the company claims will extend the life of the keyboards by 50%. HP has arranged to have exclusive use of the product for one year. Despite predictions of a boom in consumer laptop sales, nine of the 13 new models are aimed at the business market.

Yahoo to shut down auction site
Yahoo has told users it will shut down its North American Web auction site, the second service the world's most visited Internet media company has set to retire in the past week. According to a message posted on the Yahoo Auctions site at http://auctions.yahoo.com/, the service will no longer accept new auction lists from June 3. The last day to bid or buy goods and services on the auction site is June 16. Yahoo officials said last week they planned to shut down Yahoo Photos, its first-generation photo storage site, in June. They asked users to move to Yahoo's Web 2.0 photo sharing site, Flickr. The latest closure applies to Yahoo's U.S. and Canadian auction sites. Still open for business are Yahoo auction sites in three Asian markets - Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Yahoo continues to offering a range of U.S. e-commerce sites, including ones for shopping, auto sales, classified advertising and small business. The closings have come to light in media reports rather than specific company announcements. According to audience measurement firm comScore, online auction leader eBay accounted for more than 94% of such activity among U.S. Web users last week. Online retail giant Amazon.com's U.S. auction site accounted for one-third of a%age point, while Yahoo's auctions held only a 0.2% share. "It comes with little surprise given Yahoo's advertising relationship with eBay, and eBay's massive dominance of the auction category,"

Yahoo revamps travel site
Yahoo is set to revamp its travel Web site early Wednesday to offer new mapping features and a chat-based collaboration tool, as well as personalized trip recommendations and travel deals. Yahoo Travel combines Yahoo FareChase, which finds low-priced air fares, with Yahoo Trip Planner, a social network for travelers and would-be travelers where they can plan trips, create interactive maps and keep online journals and photos. The site will allow people to insert tags, like "romantic" or "family-oriented," so others can find trips with similar themes. A new "Today's Picks" section will highlight 10 destinations, and a "Show Me" drop-down box will let people browse based on categories such as beach, art/architecture and nightlife. The site also will offer hotel and flight options based on the nearest airport to the traveler and the most popular prices chosen by Yahoo users. In addition, Yahoo is offering Yahoo Messenger Flight Planner, an instant messenger plug-in that people can use to plan trips together in real time. The site also features new mapping technology that allows other, more detailed maps to be layered over a Yahoo map.

Worst ratings since ‘87 for ‘CBS Evening News’
In the first week of May sweeps, Katie Couric and CBS Evening News recorded the lowest ratings for the newscast since 1987. Meanwhile, ABC’s World News outpaced NBC Nightly News. “(It) adds to the sense that Charles Gibson is eclipsing Brian Williams as the nation’s favorite network news anchor,” writes the AP’s David Bauder. For NBC, the week was its fourth lowest ratings since ‘87. “Those are worrisome numbers for networks heading forward,” Bauder writes.

What's Behind Cheaper Printer Cartridges
Printer makers such as Hewlett-Packard and Eastman Kodak have recently introduced cheaper printer-ink cartridges priced at around $15. But consumers may find that paying less at the cash register ends up costing them more in the long run. Lower-price cartridges from Eastman Kodak ($9.99) and Hewlett-Packard ($14.99). That's because there is less ink in some of the new cartridges, so the cost of each page printed is actually higher. Also, some of the printers that accept the new lower-priced cartridges cost more than other printers. Companies are rolling out lower-priced cartridges as they increasingly compete with the growing market of "remanufactured" or "refilled" ink cartridges. Printer makers such as H-P have long sold printers for little or no profit, making up the loss from ink sales. But that business model has recently come under pressure from discount players such as Cartridge World, a chain store that refills empty ink cartridges, and large office-supply stores, such as Staples Inc. and Office Depot Inc., that sell their own brands of remanufactured cartridges. Many refillers offer cartridges at prices up to 50% less than those of big printer makers.

Wall Street 2.0
Gordon Gekko is back. 20th Century Fox has announced that it will be filming a sequel to 1987 cult classic Wall Street. The movie spawned lines that even today are quoted by stockbrokers and Investment Firms: lunch is for wimps and or course “Greed is Good”. It’s sad they didn’t make the sequel in the late 90s. Gordon Gekko would have made a killing in Web 1.0 stocks. Fast forward a decade and the age of the IPO and inflated share price has passed, replaced in favor of the corporate buyout. Reports state that in the movie, Gekko, having been released from jail, is now working in the hedge fund business. Hedge funds do many things and not all of them are evil: hedge funds can be found in the background of funded companies throughout Web 2.0, but I couldn’t help but immediately think of Patent Trolling. Will Gordon Gekko buy a raft of patents, bringing his control over a range of Web 2.0 technologies to bare on a helpless Silicon Valley? If Gordon Gekko in the Wall Street sequel was to focus on tech stocks and Valley startups, what could you see him doing aside from the obvious: abolishing free lunches and Segways at Google?

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