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Content Tagged with steve + Technology-News
Faster Web Pages Makes Users Happy
I can’t believe that in this age of Twitter, 24-hour news cycles and always-on access, anyone needs to point out that slow web sites alienate customers, but just in case, there’s an interview at Royal Pingdom with Steve Souders, who works at Google on web site performance and is the creator of YSlow software, which measures web site performance. It’s a nice reminder that there are many links in the chain that create a user’s web experience, and it focuses on what developers and site designers can do to make pages load faster.
MediaMax, a.k.a. TheLinkUp, Is Dead
MediaMax, a San Diego-based startup that allowed you to upload and share big files and create a social network around it, is dead. “We regret to inform you that we will be closing The Linkup service on Friday, August 8 at 5:00 pm PDT,” the company wrote on its web site this morning. Good riddance, because it was a brain-dead idea to begin with. More importantly, the company constantly lost users’ data — not a good survival strategy considering data is your business.
The company was first known as Streamload, then MediaMax, then quickly changed its name to TheLinkUp, promising people that their files would automatically move over from MediaMax to TheLinkUp. Changing monikers didn’t quite reverse their fortunes, however, and they remained as clueless as ever. “It was not possible to satisfactorily complete the move of files from MediaMax to The Linkup as we had expected, and as a result cannot offer a service.” No kidding. The users are mad - no surprise there.
Anyway, I expect that dozens of these upload-store-share-backup-type services are going to take a nap in the dirt soon — and if you are using one of them, think twice before trusting them with your information. I would recommend Box.net, Apple’s dot.mac (Mobile Me) and AOL XDrive. I personally use Joyent’s BingoDisk, a for-pay service that meets all of my needs for now.
Chad Hurley Tells All: How They Built YouTube
Liz Gannes who edits our NewTeeVee site skipped the company dinner to attend an event where Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube was going to reveal the entire story of YouTube. She caught the entire event on tape, and has the full report, a must see NTV for anyone who loves start-ups.
* If you can show growth such as a traffic hockey stick, your don’t need a PowerPoint to raise VC money.
* However hard you may try, it is hard to predict the future and your future infrastructure needs.
* Know who to sell and most importantly when to fold your hand.
If you wanted to read the story of less known YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, click here. Watch Liz’s video.
Steve Jobs, saved by the rising stock
Thursday will mark a red-letter day for Apple: For the first time its stock will rise above $100 a share, a tenfold increase in a little more than three years. Think about that: If Google had risen that much since its IPO, it would be trading at $850.
Apple’s stock was trading at $102 in aftermarket trading Wednesday, a 7% surge above its formal closing price of $95.35. Unless something big happens overnight, Apple’s stock is likely to see a similar jump Thursday.
And why not? The company posted a net profit of 87 cents a share. That’s 85% above the 47 cents a share in the year-ago quarter and 36% above the consensus forecasts among analysts. This is a textbook case in a blowout earnings report and reason to wonder why analysts bother with Apple estimates.
Unfortunately, the success will also probably keep CEO Steve Jobs from facing deeper scrutiny for the company’s backdating scandal, an omission of clarity that could cause harm far beyond Cupertino.
The future looks just as bright. Sales for Mac products were up 36% year over year, substantially faster growth than in iPods and iTunes, which were up 25%. Apple is successfully broadening away from dependence on music products, a trend likely to strengthen later this quarter with the introduction of the iPhone.
The report caps a week that will probably be remembered as a milestone in the apotheosis of Steve Jobs. Looking past Apple’s earnings and its stock price, it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that Jobs didn’t violate securities law in the options-backdating scandal facing the company.
The SEC filed civil charges this week against Apple’s former CFO Fred Anderson, who has settled with regulators, and its former general counsel Nancy Heinen. Then Anderson, who might just as soon put the episode behind him, took the extraordinary step of issuing a public statement saying Jobs misled him on board decisions on options and that Jobs knew about the risk of a backdating charge.
Mark McQueen, CEO of Wellington Financial, a firm that manages $400 million, summed it up well on his blog
“When was the last time in recent memory that a corporate scandal led to very serious charges being brought against the CFO and General Counsel, but not against the CEO? … It’s curious that a former Apple CFO pointing fingers isn’t sufficient for the Securities Exchange Commission to proceed against Steve Jobs.”
Anderson’s version of events actually makes sense, given Jobs’ reputation as a control freak and his instrumental role in using options to lure in talent after he returned to Apple. But Jobs is unlikely to face any action from the SEC, even though Anderson’s statement is begging for a deeper probe.
Why? Ask any attorney who has left the SEC’s enforcement division in the past few years. They’ll tell you the department is well-intentioned and talented, but criminally understaffed and toothless. They took on Anderson and Heinen to set a high-profile example in the options scandal, which involves more than 100 companies.
But they didn’t take on Jobs. And the Justice Department, which may be looking into the Apple as well, is unlikely to either. He has become, more than any American businessman, an icon of success. It’s like throwing the golden goose under the train. There would be a massive revolt among Apple shareholders.
It was a similar case with Mark Hurd, who accomplished the near impossible by turning around H-P. When it became clear he was involved in the pretexting scandal, ethicists suggested he should step down. Shareholders said he shouldn’t, and they won.
I like Steve Jobs. As a consumer, I’m grateful for his achievements at both Pixar and Apple. But I’m troubled by the very real possibility he participated in options fraud and is being treated as above the law. Otherwise, regulators are sending a disturbing message to tech executives: As long as your stock is soaring higher, you can dabble in whatever scandals. If we ever get back in a bubble - when all stocks are surging, not just the deserving ones like Apple - that thinking will cause a lot of accounting messes.
An open, clean investigation would prevent this: If Jobs is innocent, the debate is over. If not, he makes amends while shareholder support will keep him as CEO. Either way, this image of Steve Jobs as above the law, a toxic one for the stock market, would go away.
