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I'm a social capitalist in Central Europe looking for good ideas and great teams. This page is what I read and find interesting online. I blog at nowEurope

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Aug
23rd
Mon
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Now, with municipal elections due in October, Hungary is facing its third election campaign in 18 months. Disgusted, the Two-Tailed Dog Party decided to run for office in Budapest and the southern Hungarian town of Szeged with the slogan: “Eternal life! Free beer! Tax cuts!” “Money without work!” is another popular cry as are: “We will promise anything,” “There’s a 93 percent chance we won’t steal” and “You will be happy!
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A Facebook fan, whatever the count, isn’t the same thing as a website visitor, said Hemen Patel, president of CRM Metrix, which handles web analytics for such marketers as Procter & Gamble Co. and Coca-Cola. Nor is a Facebook fan page really free, he said. “Even though the platform may be free, the agency is charging $250,000 to $300,000 to maintain it,” he said. “Then we see figures like 300,000 fans, but only 300 do anything actively. … The question becomes am I really going to sell $1,000 worth of Tide to this one person over a lifetime?
Aug
22nd
Sun
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No matter what your company did in the past two years, Apple did it better. It reminds me of Sony in the 80s and Microsoft in the 90s. Companies were afraid of Microsoft in the 90s. All Microsoft had to do is decide to enter your space and you’d be out of business, if you weren’t lucky enough to be bought by the company. That’s not the case anymore. In this sense, Apple is the Microsoft of this decade.
Aug
3rd
Tue
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Today, UBS Investment Research analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald released a report which puts revenue numbers against Amazon’s web services. The duo estimate that in 2010, AWS will generated about $500 million in revenues and will grow this to $750 million by 2011. By 2014, it would bring in close to $2.54 billion in revenues. (via How Big is Amazon’s Cloud Computing Business? Find Out
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Today, UBS Investment Research analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald released a report which puts revenue numbers against Amazon’s web services. The duo estimate that in 2010, AWS will generated about $500 million in revenues and will grow this to $750 million by 2011. By 2014, it would bring in close to $2.54 billion in revenues. (via How Big is Amazon’s Cloud Computing Business? Find Out

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The news of Apple’s slow-moving cloud comes as Google’s competing service appears to be zooming along. The search engine has recently hired Elizabeth Moody, an attorney with deep experience negotiating digital-music deals. Record executives expect Moody will help cut the first cloud-music licensing agreement. Google has told music executives that it wants to launch a music service this year.
If Apple doesn’t appear to have the same urgency about racing Google into the cloud, it may be that Apple knows Google has a long way to go before it can seriously mount a challenge in music. Apple’s iTunes is the country’s largest music retailer, online or off.
Aug
2nd
Mon
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Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. (via What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity | Nielsen Wire
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Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. (via What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity | Nielsen Wire

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AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile carriers, are planning a venture to displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, posing a new threat to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., three people with direct knowledge of the plan said. The partnership, which also includes Deutsche Telekom AG unit T-Mobile USA, may work with Discover Financial Services and Barclays Plc to test a system at stores in Atlanta and three other U.S. cities that would let a consumer pay with the contactless wave of a smartphone, the people said. (via AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MasterCard With Smartphones - Bloomberg
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AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile carriers, are planning a venture to displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, posing a new threat to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., three people with direct knowledge of the plan said. The partnership, which also includes Deutsche Telekom AG unit T-Mobile USA, may work with Discover Financial Services and Barclays Plc to test a system at stores in Atlanta and three other U.S. cities that would let a consumer pay with the contactless wave of a smartphone, the people said. (via AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MasterCard With Smartphones - Bloomberg

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Jul
30th
Fri
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Facebook Inc. will probably put off its initial public offering until 2012, giving Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg more time to gain users and boost sales, three people familiar with the matter said. Facebook would benefit from another year of growth absent the added scrutiny that comes with a public listing, instead of holding an IPO in 2011 as investors speculated, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Facebook doesn’t discuss share-sale plans. Still, Zuckerberg, who holds board control, could push for a stock sale at any time, they said.
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Following on the heels of Playdom’s acquisition by Disney for $563.2 million, we’ve learned that the social game publisher has sealed a five-year contract stipulating exclusive use of Credits, Facebook’s in-house virtual currency, across all Playdom games. (via Playdom Signs Five-Year Contract With Facebook, Will Exclusively Use Credits
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Following on the heels of Playdom’s acquisition by Disney for $563.2 million, we’ve learned that the social game publisher has sealed a five-year contract stipulating exclusive use of Credits, Facebook’s in-house virtual currency, across all Playdom games. (via Playdom Signs Five-Year Contract With Facebook, Will Exclusively Use Credits

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Jul
27th
Tue
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In its reasoning in favor of EFF’s jailbreaking exemption, the Copyright Office rejected Apple’s claim that copyright law prevents people from installing unapproved programs on iPhones: “When one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses.