Gov't temporarily bans IBM from deals - Yahoo News
Topic: Miscellaneous
5:02 pm EDT, Mar 31, 2008
IBM Corp. has been temporarily banned from receiving future contracts with federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed on Monday.
The suspension went into effect last Thursday "while the agency reviews concerns raised about potential activities involving an EPA procurement," the agency said Monday in an e-mailed statement. Under a reciprocal agreement among federal agencies, when one issues a ban, the others follow it.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said a subsidiary of EarthLink Inc. has agreed to end what he called deceptive marketing practices that led to overcharges for customers using its dial-up Internet service.
PeoplePC — with about 1.6 million subscribers nationwide — agreed to detail more clearly the cost of its service and provide refunds to its 50,000 New York customers who were billed for what Cuomo says were undisclosed charges.
... and Earthlink keeps spinning down towards its death.
The funny thing about Starbucks is it's helped to create a coffee culture filled with a significant number of people who don't actually like Starbucks—which means that, despite conventional wisdom, it's actually a good thing to be a mom & pop coffee shop with a Starbucks nearby, writes Slate. Instead of stealing your business, you get the spillover from their store. "They'll do all of your marketing for you, and your sales will soar."
That's certainly how it worked out for Hyman. Soon after declining Starbucks's buyout offer, Hyman received the expected news that the company was opening up next to one of his stores. But instead of panicking, he decided to call his friend Jim Stewart, founder of the Seattle's Best Coffee chain, to find out what really happens when a Starbucks opens nearby. "You're going to love it," Stewart reported. "They'll do all of your marketing for you, and your sales will soar." The prediction came true: Each new Starbucks store created a local buzz, drawing new converts to the latte-drinking fold. When the lines at Starbucks grew beyond the point of reason, these converts started venturing out--and, Look! There was another coffeehouse right next-door! Hyman's new neighbor boosted his sales so much that he decided to turn the tactic around and start targeting Starbucks. "We bought a Chinese restaurant right next to one of their stores and converted it, and by God, it was doing $1 million a year right away," he said.
We've noticed that Starbucks has had another "positive" effect on the coffee house industry—it's trained consumers to willingly pay over $1.50 for a cuppa joe no matter where they're buying it. Maybe this is why "Just over the five-year period from 2000 to 2005... the number of mom and pops grew 40 percent, from 9,800 to nearly 14,000 coffeehouses," and "the failure rate for new coffeehouses is a mere 10 percent."
P.S. Starbucks is awesome. Playstation is awesome. Nintendo is awesome. Apple is awesome. Microsoft is awesome. Dunkin' Donuts is awesome. Just wanted to prime the comments a little before we head into the weekend.
ahem...gee...I wish a holiday was coming up in which people exchange gifts to show that they care. Because if there was, then I am positive that geeky chicks everywhere would want a set of these. Hint.
Adobe and Yahoo test running ads inside PDF documents - Yahoo! News
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:47 pm EST, Nov 28, 2007
Software maker Adobe Systems Inc and Internet company Yahoo Inc said on Wednesday they will offer a service to let publishers run advertisements in Adobe's popular document-reading format.
The new service, Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo, presents publishers with an alternative to conventional subscriptions, which, if widely adopted, could open up a new model based on free, ad-supported publishing, analysts said.
Advertisers gain a distribution channel that can reach highly specific audiences based on their reading interests while allowing them to track how specific ads perform. The approach is akin to how Web-based, pay-per-click ads now work.
The text-based ads are displayed in a panel adjacent to the content with no moving or flashing elements. Each time the PDF is viewed, ads are matched by Yahoo to the content.
In terms of relevance to advertisers, such ads could rank above Web-page banner ads in terms of targeting capacity, but below specific keyword-based Web ads, Teresi said.
