Yahoo beats expectations ahead of MS threat

Yahoo on Tuesday afternoon set the groundwork for its resistance to Microsoft's proposed takeover by posting its fiscal results for the first quarter of 2008. The search engine firm says it that its revenues for the period ended March were just over $1.8 billion, a nine percent increase over the same period a year ago; the company also claimed just over $1 billion in profit, an 11 percent jump versus the same period in 2007.

The results are described as proof that Yahoo should return to its former success and that the company's staff can work in "unusually challenging circumstances," according to Yahoo chief Jerry Yang, who alludes to doubts generated by Microsoft's attempted bid.

Yahoo's results may prove crucial to the company, which has been determined to prove to shareholders that it doesn't require Microsoft help to regain a strong position in web ads and searches. The former's earnings of 11 cents per share exceeds analyst expectations of 9 cents and is widely anticipated to foster additional support for its refusal to accept Microsoft's existing bid of $31 per share.

The company cautioned that its operating income was down 28 percent to $121 million but faults Microsoft for some of the drop, noting that $14 million was spent on advisors to determine Yahoo's reaction to the unsolicited bid.

Yahoo hasn't commented on the success of its Google AdSense deal in its quarterly report but is expected in an ongoing conference call to use early successes with the trial to justify opposition to Microsoft's takeover attempt, which the latter has claimed won't be affected by strong results at Yahoo. Microsoft has said it will bypass Yahoo's board and petition shareholders directly if its offer isn't accepted by this Saturday.

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Tracks discussion of clients companies across blogs and social-media sites

BuzzLogic, which tracks discussion of clients' companies across blogs and social-media sites and then pinpoints the most influential commenters, has announced plans to acquire software start-up Activeweave for the technology behind a browser plug-in it developed.

That chunk of code is BlogRovr, which produces content from pre-selected "favorite blogs" as Web sites are displayed; if the user loads eBay, for example, a BlogRovr tray within the window might display what tech blogs have been writing about the auction giant recently.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but BuzzLogic's motives were: It wants to apply the BlogRovr technology, which currently monitors about 200,000 blogs, to the services it offers clients in its Conversational Targeting ad program. This BuzzLogic service identifies the most influential bloggers talking about a certain topic to help advertisers figure out where to put their name out. After the acquisition, Activeweave CEO Marc Meyer and Chief Technology Officer Jean Sini will stay on board.

"Activeweave lets (Web users) see the tracks of the people around them, and lets them knowingly lay tracks for others," tech veteran Esther Dyson, an Activeweave investor, explained in a statement from the two companies. "The online world around each user suddenly becomes more relevant and more personal. This acquisition helps BuzzLogic make this dimension available to advertisers."

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Volvo working on 'the uncrashable car'

When we first spotted ScienceDaily's report on a research project to invent the uncrashable car, our imagination went wild: Reactive armor?
A high-density chassis more durable than an aircraft's black box? Laser beams to disable oncoming vehicles?
The reality, unfortunately, isn't nearly as exciting. Instead of making cool gadgets to save lives, the PReVENT project is more software than hardware.
It uses existing technology that, in event of a possible collusion, allows the car's intelligent system to take over and execute evasive maneuvers.
Despite using currently available equipment, it will be some time before we see this system implemented in the real world. For now you'll just have to keep relying on airbags, seatbelts, and luck.

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Your Phone will operate through your hand Signals: Samsung

Samsung files touch-free patent to control phones.

It appears Samsung is trying to leapfrog the iPhone's touch display and go straight to a touch-free interface in its future mobile phones. The company has reportedly filed a patent for an interface based on hand signals. The phone's integrated camera will recognize users' hand gestures as commands and execute them.

Skeptics cite concerns regarding such a system's speed, convenience, accuracy and misinterpretation as possible hurdles to mainstream adoption.

Samsung previuosly filed a similar patent for a Virtual Display data entry interface back in 2006, which also involved the built-in camera.

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Decrease your cost of Electric energy...

Sungevity, Kennedy's company, has come up with a Web-based system for evaluating the solar potential for a given home through satellite data. Customers log onto Sungevity's site and provide an address and some information about their monthly electrical bill.

Within 24 hours, the company sends customers a quote for installing a solar system, an estimate of how much the system will save them over 25 years, the prospective increase in the value of their home, and simulated imagery of what their home might look like after solar panels are installed. Traditionally, the process that provides all that information takes days and a physical examination of the roof.

ppointment and put a deposit down on a solar system.

I did an estimate on my grandmother's home. The system would provide 25 percent of the home's power and cost $7,511 after rebates. It would save $27,360 in electrical cost over time, according to the quote. They gave the option of paying upfront or through installments. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express are accepted for the deposit. The quote came back two hours after I handed over the address.

Reducing a complex sale into a quick online exchange--the same trick that propelled Dell to the front of the PC world--helps reduce one of the nagging costs of the solar world: the install expenses. Installation costs come to around roughly half of the cost of a solar system. Sharp, Akeena, and other companies have tried to reduce installation costs through prefabricated frames for solar panels. Others have developed roof tiles with solar cells built in. SolarCity, meanwhile, has aggressively used software to coordinate solar panel deliveries and installations to cut down on the number of trips electricians and contractors have to make. SolarCity also leases solar panels.

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Widget that Web site owners can use to make logging in via OpenID easier

OpenID Selector, a widget that Web site owners can use to make logging in via OpenID easier.

It's a simple thing: It shows a list of OpenID providers and lets users click on the one they know they have an ID with. Then the user logs into their provider, and the site using the widget authenticates against it.

Users who don't have an OpenID can set one up from the widget. The default provider is JanRain's own MyOpenID, which I use and find pretty straightforward.

Major sites, like portals, could still do a much better job pushing the OpenID concept. That would be good for them, not just because it'd make OpenID more accessible to users, but because there's a lot of brand affinity that sites can win by having users authenticate against their sites even when they're using some other company's service. Think of OpenID branding as the affinity credit card of the Web: Every time a user logs on to a service they'd get the authenticator's brand popped up in front of them -- just like Harley-Davidson does when its Visa affinity card users make purchases.

JanRain, not surprisingly, gets this, and will provide a complete white-label OpenID technology infrastructure for companies or brands that want to become authenticators. So if you want to log on to Web sites with an ID from your alma mater or local Rotary club, JanRain will make that possible.

It remains to be seen when, or if, the banks will get this idea, and start leveraging their your-money-is-safe-with-us message into digital safe-keeping as well.

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Skype to offer unlimited overseas calls

Skype is set to begin offering unlimited calls from the U.S. to phones in a wide range of international locations, according to the Associated Press.

For $9.95 per month, callers will be able to ring folks abroad in 34 countries, including many in Europe, along with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia, the AP reported Sunday evening. There is one limit--in most of those countries, the calls must be to a landline.

Calls to cell phones abroad are allowed under the $9.95 price only to Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The plan also allows unlimited domestic calls, via Skype's Internet-based phone service, to both landline phones and mobile phones.

In December 2006, Skype began offering unlimited calls to cell phones and landlines in the U.S. and Canada at $29.95 per year.

Skype, a unit of e-commerce giant eBay, expects to hit $500 million in revenue this year, and profits have been strong. Still, eBay is giving the service a hard look and may consider selling it, if the "synergies" don't work out favorably.

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Google Turns to Mobile Phones in China

Google Turns to Mobile Phones in China After Trailing Baidu.

Google Inc., trailing in China's online search market, expects to process more Web queries from mobile subscribers than computer users locally by 2011, aided by an alliance with the nation's largest wireless carrier.

``In some quarters, our mobile traffic will double, whereas it will take perhaps a year to double on the PC side,'' Google China President Lee Kai-Fu said in an interview broadcast on Bloomberg Television today. The volume of mobile search may exceed that from computers ``in three years,'' he said.

The U.S. company, which is also developing an operating system for mobile phones, leads Baidu.com Inc. in Chinese wireless searches after gaining exclusive rights to process queries from China Mobile Ltd.'s customers. Mountain View, California-based Google earns less than half its local rival's online advertising sales from Chinese computers.

``Google has looked for newer avenues due to the strength of Baidu's position on the Internet side,'' said Jim W. Oberweis, president of Oberweis Asset Management Inc. in Lisle, Illinois, which looks after $1.5 billion, including Baidu shares. ``Both Internet-based search as well as mobile search are large potential markets,'' said Oberweis. He added he expects Baidu to follow Google in stepping up efforts in the mobile search market.

Baidu accounted for 60 percent of China's market for search- based online advertising sales in the fourth quarter, compared with 58 percent a year earlier, according to Analysys International. Google's market share rose to 26 percent from 17 percent, the Beijing-based researcher said.

``We believe the opportunities in the wireless market will increase'' after the government issues licenses for so-called third-generation phone services, Baidu spokeswoman Helen Zhang said. The Beijing-based company said this month it would offer search services for China Netcom Group Corp., the country's second-biggest fixed-line operator.

`Affordable 3G'

China hasn't set a timetable for issuing licenses for 3G services, which allow Internet browsing on mobile phones. Fixed- line operators China Telecom Corp. and China Netcom both said they have applied for 3G permits to enter the faster-growing wireless market.

At the end of February, China had 565.2 million mobile-phone users, more than the combined populations of the U.S. and Japan, according to data from the Ministry of Information Industry. China's Internet users totaled 210 million at the end of December, after increasing 73 million in 2007, the government-backed China Network Information Center said.

``Looking over a 3-year horizon, I know that affordable 3G will happen,'' Google's Lee said in the interview in Hainan, southern China, where he attended the Boao Forum For Asia conference. ``We find that Chinese mobile users are very cost- sensitive.''

In January 2007, Google agreed to be the exclusive provider of search services for China Mobile's Moternet wireless portal. The Chinese company, the world's biggest phone company by users, was among carriers including NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. that agreed to develop services based on Google's Android operating system for mobile-phones.

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BMW's hydrogen car cleans the air

BMW showed off a hydrogen-powered 7-series sedan at the 2008 SAE World Congress in Detroit that actually emits less carbon monoxide than are found in the air around it. This means the engine breaks down or converts the carbon monoxide it takes in. The emissions tests, run by Argonne Laboratories, also show a similar reduction in nonmethane organic gases. The vehicle's other emissions are all so low that standard automobile emissions testing wouldn't have detected them.

This particular demonstration vehicle uses a 6-liter combustion engine that uses hydrogen as fuel, burning it in the cylinders and, according to BMW, delivering performance on par with a standard gas-powered 7-series. Most hydrogen cars from other automakers use fuel cells to generate electricity. Currently, BMW has been handing its Hydrogen 7 sedan, a car with a dual-fuel hydrogen and gas system, over to various celebrities and decision influencers, such as J.D. Power III. But the new demonstration vehicle only uses hydrogen for fuel. BMW doesn't consider the car a prototype, and won't be building more on the same scale as the Hydrogen 7.

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Gadgets comes to Google Docs

Gadgets for Spreadsheets in Google Docs, allowing people to create graphical representations of data in spreadsheets and publish them on Web sites.

or consumers, this means they have a dozen or so new ways to look at data in their spreadsheets. Google has put up a gallery of specialty gadgets to choose from. They include gadgets to display data on a pie chart, map, time chart, funnel chart, Gantt chart, pivot table, and on a heat map if it's geographical data. You can even create interactive charts like those used by Google Finance and for motion charts.

These visuals can also be pushed out to appear on an iGoogle home page or any other site and they will be dynamically updated as changes are made to the spreadsheet.

Gadgets will soon be coming to other apps in Google Docs and eventually search, to help people find relevant content and links, says Jonathan Rochelle, senior product manager for Google Docs.

Google has also added new features that make using Spreadsheets easier. For one, there is a notification system that will e-mail you when somebody has made a change to a spreadsheet that is being collaborated on. You can set it to alert you once a day or after each new change is made. The changes are highlighted so you can easily detect what is new.

There is also a column-based auto-complete function that looks for cues from adjacent cells to try to guess what you are typing, an updated color palette and function editing capability that uses the arrow keys, as well as an auto-complete function for typing long formulas.

In addition, spreadsheet creators now have access to historical stock market data through a Google Finance function and new functions to automatically sort and filter data.

Google is doing something interesting with its Gadgets platform, making gadgets a data source for spreadsheets as well as a data distribution method for developers.

"If I'm collecting census data and putting it into a spreadsheet, I can also make that data available to statisticians," through the Visualization API, says Rochelle. "It doesn't have to be in a spreadsheet form" to distribute.

Spreadsheets is just the first data source that can be handled this way.

"We're making the spreadsheet almost a platform for simple development and delivery," he says.

With the enhancements, Google is ratcheting up the competition its free Web-hosted apps are giving Microsoft's desktop productivity suite, which companies pay for.

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