Clipmarks | Taylor Buley's clips

Hubble, at Your Service

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:37:36 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Good pick by the people, I'd say. More on the 400th anniversary of the telescope TK.

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

The Arp 274 galaxy group won the competition with more than 67,000 votes. Hubble's image suggests the galaxies may not be close enough together to interact as they appear to be in the image taken by the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.

NASA held the contest as part of the International Year of Astronomy in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the telescope.

The galaxies to the right and left show blueish lights, evidence of rapid star formation. Older stars are more yellow. The group is located in the constellation Virgo, 400 million light years away from Earth. The two bright stars at the right of the image are actually located in our own galaxy.

Tags: stars, telescope, hubble

Facebook CFO Departs

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:41:45 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: More shakeouts to come?

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

Mr. Yu, who joined Facebook in 2007, was previously the chief financial officer of YouTube, now a Google Inc. unit. He couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Facebook Inc.'s chief financial officer, Gideon Yu, is leaving the Internet company, which has begun a search for his replacement, said a person familiar with the matter.

Facebook's Finance Chief Is Leaving

Virgin's New Pitch (You!)

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:50:13 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: The folks at Vator.TV may not be happy about this, but I bet it will make a select few other entrepreneurs grin.

Clip Source: entrepreneur.virgin.com

PitchTV

If you want the chance to pitch your business idea directly to people who could make your ambition a reality – then upload your video pitch here.

Once a month we’ll pick out a selection of the best video pitches and then let everyone vote for their favourite. Each month the five most popular video pitches will make it on to the PitchTV show which will premiere on Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight entertainment – to be seen by top business professionals from around the world.

Remember that your video will be seen by the general public and Virgin takes no responsibility for its protection. You should be willing to put your idea in to the public arena, but you may want to take steps to protect it beforehand.

Tags: venturecapital, vc, capital, venture, virgin

Software in Plain English

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:35:50 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Good primer for the uninitiated, and a good explanation for we geeks who might need to explain things a little bit better next time.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: software, technology, operating systes, os, apple, mac, linux

FTC Warns of Credit Report Scams

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:17:49 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: A modicum of humor from the FTC, too. Thanks for the clarification, guys!

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Google Ad Auctions, Explained

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:05:43 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Great job here by Hal Varian and the Google team.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: goog

New Zealand, You Just Got Served (Tks Mark Zuckerberg)

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:07:58 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Alternative headline: "Court Throws the Facebook at NZ Dad"

Clip Source: www.nzherald.co.nz

A High Court judge today approved the serving of court papers via Facebook, the popular social network website, in what is thought to be a New Zealand first.

The High Court in Wellington was told that Axe Market Garden is trying to sue Craig Axe who is alleged to have taken $241,000 from the firm account.

NZ court papers can be served via Facebook, judge rules

Counsel for the company Daniel Vincent said the plaintiff was effectively Axe's father John and there were difficulties in serving papers on his son.

CI Ut-oh: Obama Suspends Kundra

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:39:43 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Another one bites the dust

Clip Source: www.businessinsider.com

Vivek Kundra, the first person to hold the newly created position of "America's CIO," has been placed on indefinite leave by the President. Yesterday FBI agents raided Vivek's old offices in the DC municipal government and arrested two in an ongoing bribery investigation.

So far, there's no implication that Vivek was involved in any shenanigans. But given the warm welcome Vivek received when he has tapped for the job just last week, things couldn't have gotten off to a worse start.

Clip Source: www.businessinsider.com

WashPost: The White House said this morning that President Obama's chief information officer has been placed on leave out of "an abundance of caution," even though federal authorities say the staffer is not being investigated in connection with an alleged bribery scam at the D.C. government office he headed until early this month.

Social Search is the New Search

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:57:06 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Aardvark has a very interesting search model.

Clip Source: blog.vark.com

Just like Web Search provided a revolutionary way to find web pages that have the information you’re looking for, Social Search is a revolutionary way to find people that have the information you’re looking for. In both cases, intelligent search indexing is a vast improvement over the manual process of following links or browsing through directories.

Social Search lets you tap into the wisdom of your social network through real conversations — it’s an easy way to access the knowledge and experience of people you’re connected to.

We believe that Aardvark is the first product that fully realizes the potential of Social Search.

Social Search is finding information from real people.

Reluctantly Outsourcing

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:16:48 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Throw in a dash of Satyam scandal and there's some trouble brewing.

Clip Source: itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com

As a result of the current economy, there’s an uptick in U.S. companies sending work offshore to places like India. So you’d think Indian offshore companies would be happy about the potential new business opportunities and very aggressive about going after them. Think again.

Only a few Indian offshore companies are chasing these new deals, according to Partha Iyengar, vice president and regional research director at Gartner India. In a Reuters story published March 3, Iyengar went on to say that “Indian firms need to focus on revamping their sales models to help generate cost savings and add value to the client’s operations.” But not everyone agrees with this reason for not chasing potential new business.

SEC To Require Financial Meta Data Tagging

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:51:48 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: This is good news for everyone. OK, it's a little nerdy, but good news nonetheless.

Clip Source: www.cfo.com

The 500 largest public companies must start to file their financial results using the interactive data-tagging language known as XBRL this year. The effective date of the new rule is April 13, which means that most initial filings will involve quarterly results for fiscal periods ending on or after June 15. For example, for calendar-year companies, the rule will first apply to Form 10-Qs dated June 30, 2009.

Tags: data, sec, foia

AT&T "You Will" Ads From 1993

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:30:08 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Pretty much right on. Expect for "the company that will bring it to you" part.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Can Yahoo Connect with Developers?

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:37:16 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Good question: Will this work on top of Facebook's Connect service or in place of it? If it's the former, I imagine this new feature has a chance to compete for developer attention as the market for this services starts to figure out how to use it. If it's an either or situation, I'm not sure how easy it will be to unstick the traction Facebook Connect is already starting to see.

Clip Source: www.readwriteweb.com

By partnering with JS-Kit, a service that powers comments and ratings on sites big (like AOL and Sun Microsystems) and small (JS-Kit bought up old school market leader Haloscan in July), Yahoo! Updates is coming out of the gate in a big way. How does its technology compare to Facebook Connect?

Yahoo! Updates, the company's answer to Facebook Connect, became available on more than 600,000 websites today with the launch of a new partnership with commenting infrastructure company JS-Kit. Whereas Facebook's technology for tying profiles and activity updates between sites around the web has raised concerns about proprietary control over data, Yahoo! has implemented the open standard OAuth in its system.

Microscoffed

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:40:12 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: Either the EU's argument is extremely asinine, or I just don't get it. Browser market uncompetitive? Pa-lease! Boot Windows, hop on an Internet connection, open up IE and type "getfirefox.com."Download and new browser and voila. The barrier to entry is hardly knee-high.

Clip Source: www.bloomberg.com

Google is applying to intervene as a third party in the European Commission’s case involving Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser, the company said in a post on its Web site.

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet search engine, will seek permission from European Union regulators to submit arguments in an antitrust case against Microsoft Corp.

The Brussels-based commission sent official charges last month to Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, alleging that the company unlawfully tied Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system. Mountain View, California-based Google is stepping up competition with Microsoft in areas outside of Internet searches, where Google has more than 60 percent of the U.S. market.

Tags: msft, goog, aapl

Death of the Poison Pill?

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:22:02 GMT

clipped by: Taylor Buley
clipper's remarks: I'd be interested in exploring the FactSet MergerMetrics numbers around technology companies in particular. I'm not sure the Valley has done away with their poison pill contingency plans just yet.

Clip Source: blogs.wsj.com

These days, so-called poison-pill plans are about as popular as the cyanide that inspired the names. The prevalence of these M&A defenses has dropped off, though hostile deals are on the rise. There were only 1,206 such defenses in place at the end of 2008 at U.S. publicly traded companies that had been targeted for a takeover, down from 2,218 in effect at the end of 2001, according to FactSet MergerMetrics. Meantime, hostile deals have accounted for 47% of the number of M&A deals this year, compared with 24% in all of 2008 and 7% in 2004, according to FactSet. Directors of publicly traded companies have to think twice before thwarting takeovers that might promise shareholders a higher price.