We suggest US-based visitors to contact your Representative or Senator, and its International customers to donate to organizations like EFF, to ensure that broad opposition to this proposed legislation rings loud and clear. Many prominent Internet companies participating in the protest are listed here: SOPAstrike.comMore information about SOPA/PIPA

• S.968 – PROTECT IP Act at OpenCongress.org
• H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act at OpenCongress.org
• Take Action Checklist
• VoteForTheNet
• Fight for the Future
• A video explaining PIPA
• A technical examination of SOPA/PIPA

Blackout in the news

• CNN
• National Post
• Al Jazeera

Blog and other media:

• Copyblogger
• Consumerist explains that these bills are far from dead.
• Mashable: SOPA Will Take Us Back to the Dark Ages and Why SOPA is Dangerous

It is estimated that Frank Quattrone now advises about 20 companies through his company Qatalyst Group, from giant Google to National Semiconductor, and smaller start ups. He was involved in the  deals, including EMC’s purchase of Data Domain. The Qatalyst Group is beleievd to be at no. 3, behind Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, on technology deals above $1 billion so far this year. That’s very going indeed by someone who was almost written off a few years ago.

Google Voice is an interesting service, very much in the territory of Telecom domain, so we will have to see how it impacts/ complements/ competes with the Telecoms of today.

Just FYI, Telecoms like AT&T, Verizon, Orange, etc are among the largest online advertisers, because they have a lot of money at stake in the face of VOIP, etc, and they are taking anything lightly today, though in the long-run, solutions with better economics will prevail, like we have seen with other technologies in the previous decades.

How does Google Voice work? You get a new Google assigned phone number. Then, you route all of your other phone numbers through that number. So, your office phone, your work phone, your home phone – whatever. Google voice will allow your calls to selectively ring to any of the destination phones you choose. It is a practical and useful concept, which is will be liked by many.

In addition, Google Voice offers bonus features like:
- You can selectively ring calls to multiple destinations.
- You can selectively block and screen calls
- You can send, receive forward and store SMS text messages
- Check your voicemail online, read it via email or text (you can even forward it)
- You can create personalized voicemail messages per contact
- You can group your contacts and manage their preferences on a group level
- Conference calling, call recording, call switching, 411 info

It reported a loss of $303 million compared to a profit of $205 million last year.

The results come as Carol Bartz takes over from Jerry Yang as the firm’s new chief executive.

Some analysts feel Yahoo has weathered the downturn better than expected, with the loss mainly due to one-off costs.

We don’t think so. The downturn is far from over, and Yahoo will see a very aggressive Google in the coming months, because Google is also facing pressure on their revenues.

Yahoo has a similar global people reach as Google, of about 450 million people, or 30% of global Internet user base, but the lack of revenue producing assets makes the difference. Yahoo has no strong answer to Google Adwords even today after 3 years.

Yahoo does have a few strong assets:

1. Yahoo Answers has been growing in popularity at an amazing rate, and how they monetize that traffic and user loyalty is to be seen. This is a big winner from Yahoo, where they have beaten Google.
2. Yahoo Personals also has potential because online dating is a high growth business. Their pricing model needs tweaking because there are free sites like Plenty of Fish, that are equally good in quality of members.
3. Yahoo Egroups and Flickr are also very popular destinations, and even if they can increase revenue by 1 dollar per user, it could a 100-200 million in new revenues.

But on the advertising side, Yahoo has difficult times ahead as Google continues to eat into its user base worldwide — both English and non-English. Their ad network doesn’t work anywhere near Google’s quality, and that explains the lower revenues.

Yahoo has to make some hard decisions on revenue generation and partnerships.

Related Articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7854887.stm

Many of us have already been using Gmail’s voicemail feature to send them to email ids (very useful), and this voice and video chat will make it even better.

Checkout these Google blog posts for more details:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/say-hello-to-gmail-voice-and-video-chat.html

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/talk-face-to-face-right-from-within.html

However, a small number of print newspapers like the Wall Street Journal have not only survived the online storm; they have done extraordinarily well despite the competition. The newspaper still boasts two million readers a day. Even more impressive, however, is the fact that the paper has transitioned quite well into the online medium. Its online subscriber numbers are staggering as the paper has close to one million members. These are truly amazing numbers and it leads many people to wonder the secret of the Wall Street Journal’s success.

Part of the reason is that although the newspaper is named after a particular street in New York City, the subject matter of the paper is international in scope. There are financial markets all over the world. People involved in these markets require an influx of news on the subject of banking, finance, and the economy.

Whether it is the financial district of modern London or the black Wall Street of 1920′s Oklahoma, people all over the world have required financial news. The Wall Street Journal provided for that need. As a result, it has been reaping the rewards since its inception in an earlier century.

Of course, the ability for the Journal to stay relevant ties in with the foresight to create an online presence. This is no minor feat. Had it not effectively developed a credible online subscription service it would have lost ground to more visionary start ups. Yes, the Journal could have gotten into the game at a later date but this would have been seen as a “follow the leader” tactic and not one of innovation. The New York Times learned this lesson when its late start into online news subscription services never caught on.

How ahead of the game was the newspaper in this regard? Well, the website debuted in 1996. (URL: WallStreetJoural.com) The internet was making its first expansion into people’s homes during this time period. They were well ahead of the curve since it immediately jumped into the fray. Yes, several newspapers had websites but they were sparse and did not truly embody the look and feel of a new media dynamo. The Wall Street Journal Online did and it set the foundation for the future growth that it would soon experience.

Part of the reason for this is that they understood the trends media communications were being directed. Since the Wall Street Journal lived in a realm of dollars and cents, it understood that the future of news would be found in online subscriptions. Traditional newspapers were simply too mired in tradition to grasp this concept. As such, they fell behind while the Wall Street Journal embraced change and rode it to significant new media success.

This is an article written by one of our Wall Street experts of the Wall Street Gemzies page. This Gemzies page is an Online Wall Street Community where fellow experts can share, rate and find websites, videos photos, books and the latest news. We have got some great content on the Wall Street Bull, Black Wall Street and the Wall Street Journal. We invite you to join our Wall Street Gemzies. Article by Marcel_Van_Brienen.

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A few thoughts by MyOrbit: 

The  Wall Street Journal has maintained a prime position in the free market economy, and whether you agree with their views or differ, it is a fact that their view reaches a few million business/financial professionals, and hence has the ability to make tremendous positive or negative influence on any topic they touch.

That said, the online medium, including blogs and websites like ours, are playing an increasingly important role in providing the raw material/ stories that ultimately appear on the pages of Wall Street Journal. The advances in online media have made it possible to get noticed rapidly. For example, Many reporters regularly pick stories from the top social bookmarking sites like Digg and Stumble-Upon.

These are interesting times, and Wall Street Journal surely has made itself comfortable in the online space, which in way, ensures its survival and leadership position in the coming years.

You will like how Viacom asked for the house-keys of Google Youtube with it’s list of demands, which includes:

• Youtube User Data and Logging Histories
• Copies of all current and deleted videos (including private videos!)
• Source Code of Google Advertising Schema
• Source Code for Google Search Engine (and Viacom will do what with that

If you keep Internet economy and content privacy aside for a minute, Viacom sure is showing Goolge how to make a living with just a legal team.

So there’s a method to it, perfected over decades: Invest one-time in producing some decent content, and then make a living with lawsuits.

Now the judge has agreed to some demands, and said no to others.

To learn more, here’s a detailed blog post by Larry Dignan of Zdnet.

3/11/2008 09:48:00 AM
Posted by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO

I’m pleased to share the news that we completed our acquisition of DoubleClick today. Although it’s been nearly a year since we announced our intention to acquire DoubleClick last April, we are no less excited today about the benefits that the combination of our two companies will bring to the online advertising market.

Because we have been waiting for regulatory approval for our acquisition, we’ve been limited by law in the extent to which we could conduct detailed integration planning to map our way forward. That work will begin in earnest now. Although we don’t have detailed plans to announce today, we will communicate regularly with you about our progress in integrating our two companies.

An immediate task we’ll undertake over the next few weeks is matching and aligning DoubleClick employees with our organizational plan for the business. This will involve determining the right staffing levels for all functions and will ensure that we have the right people assigned to the right responsibilities within Google. We plan to complete this process in the U.S. by early April.

Outside the U.S., the steps we will propose are subject to consultation with employee representatives where applicable, and of course any decisions will be made in accordance with local law. The exact timing of the process outside the U.S. will vary based on the needs and requirements of each region.

As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well. We know that DoubleClick is built on the strength of its people. For this reason we’ll strive to minimize the impact of this process on all of our clients and employees.

For more, read Google’s blog post here.

The site covers a variety of products, and their digital camera reviews looking to be most popular. We can see reviews of new Blackberrys, Software, EBooks, etc.

You can ask for reviews of products or services you want, and they could arrange them. Not sure if they sponsored reviews, but you can check with them.