Finance Matters

Archive for February 10th, 2010

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will announce Microsoft’s new, top-secret mobile phone plans next Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

You can catch a live Webcast here on Microsoft’s site at 9 a.m. ET on Monday. We’ll be providing live coverage and analysis.

Don’t Miss: 10 iPhone Apps Microsoft Must Make

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See Also:

• CHART OF THE DAY: In Case You Had Any Doubts About Where Microsoft’s Profit Comes From
• Microsoft Hires Victoria’s Secret Models To Shill For Bing
• Apple: It’s The New Microsoft

Apple will experiment with selling some TV shows for $1 through iTunes starting in April, reports Ken Li at the FT.

Ken doesn’t name which shows will be available, but says “some television networks agreed to the lower prices after months of negotiations.”

Apple has been trying to get networks to lower the prices of their shows for a while. Executives told Bill Shope at Credit Suisse that it was hard to sell a TV show for $1.99 when Redbox offers whole movies for $1.

Television executives are hoping the lower price will lead to a higher volume of sales.

Ken says Apple is still trying to get television executives to agree to a $30 per month bundle of shows.

The discounted shows will only be standard definition, and are supposed to be available at the same time the iPad hits the market.

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See Also:

• Apple Pushing TV Networks To Slash Prices On iTunes
• Apple Working On $30-Per-Month iTunes TV Service
• Apple Already Talking About Cutting Prices On The iPad

From journalist Gerald Posner, whose work on Tiger Woods we very much enjoyed, on his departure from the Daily Beast:

My Resignation from The Daily Beast

Last Friday, Jack Shafer in Slate ran an article pinpointing five sentences from one of my stories in The Daily Beast, which I admitted met the definition of plagiarism and I accepted full responsibility for that error, an incident I called “accidental plagiarism.” On Monday, he had found other examples, and although I disagreed with some of his characterizations, I again accepted full accountability.

When The Daily Beast had asked me last Friday if there were any more problems than the five original sentences highlighted by Shafer, I had confidently told them, “No.” It was not because I had subjected my own articles to so-called plagiarism software, or because I was in denial about any deliberate plagiarism. It was, as it is now, my own belief that all the reporting I had done for the Beast since last June had been original and had broken news on a number of substantive issues.

This afternoon I received a call from Edward Felsenthal, the excellent managing editor of The Daily Beast. He informed me that as part of the Beast’s internal investigation, they had uncovered more instances in earlier articles of mine in which there the same problems of apparent plagiarism as the ones originally brought to life last Friday by Shafer. I instantly offered my resignation and Edward accepted…

I realize how it is that I have inadvertently, but repeatedly, violated my own high standards. The core of my problem was in shifting from that of a book writer – with two years or more on a project – to what I describe as the “warp speed of the net.” For the Beast articles, I created master electronic files, which contained all the information I developed about a topic – that included interviews, scanned documents, published articles, and public information. I often had master files that were 15,000 words, that needed to be cut into a story of 1,000 to 1500 words.

In the compressed deadlines of the Beast, it now seems certain that those master file were a recipe for disaster for me. It allowed already published sources to get through to a number of my final and in the quick turnaround I then obviously lost sight of the fact that it belonged to a published source instead of being something I wrote.

Read the whole thing at Gerald Posner’s blog >

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See Also:

• Finally, The Full Story Of What Happened To Tiger Woods That Night

Another day and still no bailout for Greece.

The bottom line is that there are no good options.

Let’s review:

• Greece citizens take to the streets in protest.
• Why Greece knows is has the EU over a barrel.
• The nine ways a Greek bailout could work.
• Greece: No good options.

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See Also:

• The Greece Powder Keg Explodes
• Why Hasn’t There Been A Greek Bailout Yet? Because Every Option Is Horrible
• Bone Up On The 9 Possible Scenarios For A Greek Bailout

Microsoft is the largest, most profitable software company in the world.

And its profits are still being generated by the same engines that have driven Microsoft for years: Office, Windows, and its server division. (Meanwhile, its entertainment and devices division is only recently profitable again, and its online division is a money pit.)

This is why Google is increasingly focusing on disrupting Microsoft’s core businesses, including its Google Docs rival to Office; its Chrome OS rival to Windows; and now Google Buzz, an add-on to Gmail that some have compared most closely to Sharepoint, one of Microsoft’s enterprise tools.

Don’t Miss: 10 Ways Google Is Trying To Kill Microsoft

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See Also:

• CHART OF THE DAY: Now That They’ve Seen Apple’s iPad, Most People Don’t Want One
• CHART OF THE DAY: Nobody Wants To Buy Magazines Anymore
• CHART OF THE DAY: Facebook Catching Up To Google And Yahoo As Your Home On The Web