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Monthly Archives : March, 2010

Shya Spam offers to let people use their PC to att

March 11, 2010, 02:55:00 PM

It’s not clear whether the software does turn the computer into a DoS attacking zombie, or what it does, if anything. But it would be crazy to expose your computer like that, regardless of your political leanings.

The e-mail message says: “If You dont like Obama come here, you can help to ddos his site with your installs.” 

Spam offers to let people use their PC to attack Obama site

Spammers are hoping to rouse Obama critics to launch a cyber protest and to download malware onto their PCs in the process.

The e-mail then provides a link to a Web site where visitors are offered money for installing the supposed denial-of-service (DoS) software, according to a blog posting on the site of e-mail security provider Proofpoint.

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.




New spam is circulating that supposedly offers a way for people to use their computers to launch a denial-of-service attack on the Web site of President Obama, researchers said on Tuesday.

The spam site also tells visitors to come back and get updated versions of the purported denial of service software if their antivirus program is detecting it as malware and disabling it.

Nssw Sri Lanka on edge after vote_130

March 11, 2010, 02:54:00 PM




“Personally, the outcome is better than what I expected,” Yapa said.

The campaign’s vitriolic nature, the personal animosity between the two main candidates and tit-for-tat accusations of coup plots had all fuelled concerns that any result would be contested and foment new unrest.

The government had earlier accused Fonseka of employing a private militia consisting of army deserters, a charge denied by the opposition.

Rajapakse has ruled Sri Lanka since 2005. His three brothers and other family members are in key government positions including the ministries of defence and ports.

In a further twist, the government said it would challenge the legitimacy of Fonseka’s candidacy in court after it emerged that he was unable to cast a ballot on Tuesday because his name did not figure on the electoral roll.

There were a number of violent incidents during voting, including bomb attacks in the northern Tamil stronghold of Jaffna, which monitors said had deterred some people from voting.

Tensions were acute in the capital Colombo, where up to 80 soldiers with machine guns ringed the de-luxe hotel where Fonseka was staying with several other opposition leaders.

Rajapakse as commander-in-chief and Fonseka, his army chief, defeated the Tamil Tigers in May last year, ending a separatist conflict that left 80,000-100,000 dead, according to UN figures.

An opposition spokesman complained that the military presence was intended to “intimidate us or arrest our leaders”.

The winner of the island’s first election since last year’s defeat of a three-decade insurgency by ethnic Tamil rebels was set to be announced around midday (0630 GMT).

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said the troops had been deployed following information that army deserters were among some 400 people inside.

Tuesday’s election was the first since Rajapakse, 64, and Fonseka, 59, engineered the final defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who had been fighting for a Tamil homeland in the island’s northeast since the 1970s.

“What the election commissioner has expressed is merely an opinion, but the courts have the ultimate authority to interpret the law,” Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told reporters late Tuesday.

“We have sent a message asking them to surrender,” Nanayakkara said, insisting that Fonseka himself was not the target.

Election officials said Rajapakse, who is being challenged by his estranged former army chief Sarath Fonseka, had won 60 percent of the vote with about a fifth of the ballots counted.

“We know General Fonseka is inside, but our interest is in the deserters who could be armed,” he said.

Sri Lanka on edge after vote
AMAL JAYASINGHE January 27, 2010

Incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse took a strong lead in counting Wednesday from Sri Lanka’s bitterly fought presidential election, officials said, as armed troops surrounded the hotel of his main rival.

The military campaign made both men national heroes in the eyes of the Sinhalese-majority electorate but has since been mired in allegations of war crimes. Some 300,000 Tamils were herded into internment camps.

Partial official results showed Rajapakse with 1.31 million votes against 862,644 for Fonseka. An estimated 9.85 million people voted in all.

The government argued that Fonseka was therefore ineligible for the presidency, despite a strong statement to the contrary from the independent election commissioner.

Four people were killed and more than 1,000 election-related incidents were reported to police in the run-up to Tuesday’s contest.

Media Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa said Rajapakse, who like Fonseka is a member of Sri Lanka’s dominant Sinhalese community, was “heading for a historic victory”.

9lnw Sony’s PS3 losses may pay off_119

March 11, 2010, 02:53:00 PM

“If you’re just talking about the hardware alone, the quick answer is yes,” Hirai said in response to a question asking if Sony is losing money on each console sold. “That makes good headlines, but I don’t actually know that that’s the true nature of the business that we’re all in, whether it’s PlayStation, Xbox, or the Wii.”

With Sony’sPlayStation 3 trailing so far behind Microsoft’sXbox 360 andNintendo Wii, it was only a matter of time before the company that had offered the most expensive console on the market would reduce the price of its hardware.

The consumer wins, when we consider the PlayStation 3’s value proposition. Sony loses, from a per-unit profit perspective. But in the long run, the price reduction might help Sony.


But by doing so, Sony has ensured that going forward, it will take a loss on every console it sells. That was confirmed by Sony Computer Entertainment chief Kaz Hirai in a recent interview with the Times Online.

And yet the PlayStation 3 is a victim of its feature set. All those extras add to the cost of its console. It’s why at $400, the company couldn’t profit off a single console. It’s also why it’s still facing losses with each sale of its cheaper hardware.

Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

Regardless, Sony should enjoy better sales, now that it’s in that same pricing sweet spot. That will be especially true when consumers consider features the Xbox 360 doesn’t have, like a Blu-ray player, free online multiplayer gaming, and built-in Wi-Fi.

The store shelf battle
Having a higher console price than the competition hurt Sony at retail. When consumers went to the store with enough cash to buy just one console, they needed to choose among the $250 Wii, the $300 Xbox 360 Pro, or the $400 PlayStation 3. They chose the cheaper alternatives.

As bad as the losses may be, capturing more market share is Sony’s goal for the foreseeable future. That wouldn’t have been possible if the PS3 wasn’t so affordable.

As ideal as it might have been to turn a profit on every sold console, Sony’s decision to reduce the price of the PlayStation 3 and offer a new console version was smart. It makes the company’s consoles more affordable. It ensures that it provides the best value proposition in the space. And as more consumers opt for the PlayStation 3 over its competitors, it could put Sony in a position to capture a larger share of the market, considering what it makes on royalties and licensing fees from third-party developers and hardware makers.

There’s little debate that Sony’s decision to cut the price of the PlayStation 3 to $299 and offer the PS3 Slim at the same price is surprising. The price cut will undoubtedly hurt profit margins. But it was a smart move.

(Credit:Sony)



Sony’s console is no longer the most expensive console on the market; Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Elite now holds that crown, with a $400 price tag, though even that could be slipping, with very nearly confirmed price cuts coming next week that could drop the price of the Elite to $299 and the Pro to $249. 

Sony's PS3 losses may pay off

The PS3 Slim is part of the right strategy.

Microsoft and Nintendo force gamers to invest in accessories to achieve the same level of usability. Xbox 360 owners need to buy a $50-per-year subscription to Xbox Live just to play games online. Wii owners might be able to play online for free, but thanks to the uniqueness of its games, Nintendo has been able to sell a slew of add-ons, including a steering wheel for Mario Kart Wii, gun attachments for first-person shooters, and more. Neither console boasts a Blu-ray player.

Check out Don’s Facebook profile, Twitter stream, and FriendFeed.

unxi Space shuttle Discovery refueled for launch_2

March 11, 2010, 02:51:00 PM

“I was still honored to receive the traditional NASA consolation prize, a space treadmill,” Colbert said in a taped message to NASA. “I couldn’t be prouder that my treadmill will soon be installed on the International Space Station to help finally slim down all those chubby astronauts.”

Space shuttle Discovery refueled for launch

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.–Running four days late, the shuttle Discovery was refueled for launch late Friday for a 13-day mission to deliver more than 7.5 tons of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

Discovery had two launch opportunities Friday roughly 23 1/2 hours apart. NASA managers opted to pass up the first opportunity in favor of the second to give engineers more time to review the valve issue.

With forecasters predicting a 60 percent chance of good weather, Discovery was scheduled for liftoff at 11:59 p.m. EDT.

(Credit:NASA TV)

Discovery’s initial launch try early Tuesday was called off due to stormy weather near the launch pad. A second attempt was called off during fueling Tuesday night for a Wednesday morning launch when one of two hydrogen fill-and-drain valves in the shuttle’s engine compartment failed to indicate it was closed.

As it turned out, those plans were not needed. The valve and the position indicator both worked normally.

William Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 115 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.” You can follow his frequent status updates at the CBSNews.com Space Place, where this story was first published.


Discovery’s crew–commander Frederick Sturckow, pilot Kevin Ford, flight engineer Jose Hernandez, Patrick Forrester, John “Danny” Olivas, European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang, and space station flight engineer Nicole Stott–planned to begin strapping in for launch around 8:40 p.m. EDT.

An 8-inch liquid hydrogen valve blamed for back-to-back launch delays earlier this week worked normally during fueling Friday and engineers did not have to exercise a waiver that would have permitted additional troubleshooting.



(Credit:collectSPACE.com)

Along with replacing a 1,800-pound ammonia coolant tank in the station’s main power truss during their first two spacewalks, Discovery’s crew will deliver two sophisticated science racks, an experiment sample freezer, a new air revitalization rack, a crew sleep station, and a treadmill named after comedian Stephen Colbert.

The C.O.L.B.E.R.T. treadmill and mission patch. The patch sold out shortly after going on sale.

NASA flight rules prohibited engineers from cycling the valve under supercold cryogenic conditions out of a concern about a possibly unknown problem that could cause it to fail in the closed position. In that case, it would be difficult to drain the tank after a delay. As a result, launch was tentatively rescheduled for early Friday.

The “Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,” or COLBERT, received its name after the comedian launched a successful tongue-in-cheek write-in campaign to name a final station module in his honor. NASA managers declined, naming the new module Tranquility instead, but renamed the treadmill after Colbert.

During tests Wednesday night, after Discovery’s tank was drained, the valve and its position indicator both worked normally, cycling open and closed five times at ambient temperatures. A pressure decay test also indicated the valve closed normally.

During a Mission Management Team meeting Friday, a waiver was processed that would have allowed engineers to cycle the valve twice during fueling, if required, to confirm closing. In addition, engineers developed plans to use alternate cues to verify the valve’s position.

Along with delivering needed supplies and equipment, Stott will replace space station flight engineer Timothy Kopra, launched to the lab complex in July and returning to Earth in Stott’s place.

The shuttle Discovery, poised for launch Friday atop pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

mbkn SpiralFrog’s turmoil, in missives_553

March 11, 2010, 02:50:00 PM

Mel, could you please try to find out how many pages visitors average on facebook to potentially answer amirs friends concerns.

For a while, I guess we all were sold off on the “mometum theory”. The belief was that if we demonstrated solid user growth and increased # of uniques, it would open more doors for us at advertisers and music labels and amongst the press and music industry. The cost did not matter since the exposure would be temporary and we would switch from paid to organic growth in a matter of months if not weeks.

The NFL promo seems to have a set a new record for our user acquisition costs - $491 per registered user. Paid search looks rather attractive in that light….

I believe we have established that we end up losing money even if the users acquired through paid search keep returning to the site.

1.We are embarking on a massive capital raise. The investors we are and will be encountering for this round will be more sophisticated and we are having a hard time convincing people of the valuation of the company even after signing 2 majors and all the independents. If we are discussing raising money using the same instrument as our round last may, then clearly something is wrong.

There seems to have been universal agreement that our affiliate marketing program (Platform A) was not appropriate for our site given the high cost and the low conversion ratio - but I’d suggest the paid search is not much different. It will be difficult to defend this amount of sustained marketing spending to a new incoming investor who’s going to scrutinize our business model and numbers carefully before making an informed investment decision. There are other, more inexpensive methods to drive traffic that we should pursue - e.g. traffic sharing programs with other sites or lower-cost pad clicks with music discovery sites. Paid search has an obvious cost incompatibility with our pennies-per-visit banner-ad-based business model.

I have not seen this written down anywhere, so I thought I’d take the initiative so we can allagree on the numbers before making a decision whether it makes sense to continue spending money on paid search on Google, Yahoo and MSN adwords. Please feel free to correct if I got any of this wrong.

—– Original Message —–

Secondly, it is true that you need a certain amount of “uniques” to get the attention of customers and key industry players. If our uniques fall below a certain level, potential customers will not take our meetings, and partners will not take us seriously; even Viacom might walk away. You will not get into meetings. While most of what Mel did was insane, there is some truth to this point.

Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:53:05 -0700

To: Hughes, Al; Amir Khan; Gordon, Bob; Preston, Frances; Gold, Jerry; Joe Mohen; Levin, Jordan; Hutchens, Mark; Strama, Mark; Stagg, Scott; Norcia, Steve; Mackell, Thomas Mackell.

CC: Orville Hagler

Subject: Traffic Analysis

From: Amir Khan

Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 2:19 AM

To: Scott Stagg; Mel Schrieberg; Hughes, Al; Gordon, Bob; Preston, Frances; Gold, Jerry; Joe Mohen; Levin, Jordan; Hutchens, Mark; Strama, Mark; Norcia, Steve; Mackell, Thomas J.

Cc: Orville Hagler

Subject: RE: Traffic Analysis

From: Mel Schrieberg

—– Original Message —–

Amir, I would be happy to met with your friends again and clear up any miscommunications, I found them to be very bright and articulate and we might have not made ourselves clear on our business model; Your point is well taken on better site metrics, we are working on improving this area but as I stated at out committee meeting we can only determine the number of clicks for each of our programs (receive these from the vendors - Google, Yahoo, MSN, Advertising ,com etc.) but we cannot measure these as accurately as would like to with respect to the method Nielsen measure uniques - would take additional funding to outsource this capability

The other statistic that ought to dramatize the paid search cost number is this: 12 months after the launch of the site, where one would expect numbers to have stabilizedfrom the early peak in marketing spend and the initial delay in sales revenue, we’re still spending upwards of 300% of our revenue in marketing costs (I don’t have the latest sales figures so I could be off here a bit) - whereas e.g. Napster which was losing money every quarter due to their high marketing spending was using about 25% of their revenue to drive traffic.

We can therefore conclude that paid search and cost-per-click advertising is permanenty incompattible with our business model. Even with the generous assumptions made above, there’s no way to make the numbers work in our favor.

It would be helpful if someone could send a note indicating our ad sales per month and % of ad inventory sold each month. For too long, we’ve lived in an environment where some of this data was kept secret, disallowing us to make rational decisions elsewhere. I’ve heard that one of the main arguments in favor of continuing with paid search is our ability to earn ad impressions already sold - but if you believe in this logic, it’s akin to spening more money so we could keep losing even more.

From: Amir Khan

Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2008 4:20 PM

To: Mel Schrieberg

Cc: Orville Hagler

Subject: Re: Traffic Analysis

Mel

From: Scott Stagg

Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2008 11:54 PM

To: Mel Schrieberg; Amir Khan; Hughes, Al; Gordon, Bob; Preston, Frances; Gold, Jerry; Joe Mohen; Levin, Jordan; Hutchens, Mark; Strama, Mark; Scott Stagg; Norcia, Steve; Mackell, Thomas J.

Cc: Orville Hagler

Subject: Re: Traffic Analysis

Mel & Scott,

NOTE: The improvements are from finding alternative and less expensive banner programs that also deliver better metrics versus Platform A’s incentivized traffic. Also, I do not include the NFL costs in September - the $200,000 spend netted 8,175 clicks and 407 registrations.

Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 1:38 AM

To: Jesse Paynter; Matthew Stern

Cc: Joe Mohen; Amir Khan; Michael Puccini; James Campbell

Subject: business case for paid search?

From: Mel Schrieberg

Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:15:52 -0700

To: Amir Khan; Hughes, Al; Gordon, Bob; Preston, Frances; Gold, Jerry; Joe Mohen; Levin, Jordan; Hutchens, Mark; Strama, Mark; Stagg, Scott; Norcia, Steve; Mackell, Thomas J.

CC: Orville Hagler

Subject: Traffic Analysis

—– Original Message —–

2.Our entire financial model is based on a steady state mid teens pages turned per visit out in the future. While we are managing our uniques per month number pretty well, we are currently running at 2.6-2.9 pages per visit (public info as per alexa) instead of our presentation predicting 6-7 in July to Dec phase, with correspondingly low time spent on site. Therefore our available impressions are running at 40-50% of the model we are showing to investors. Just as we seem to be targeting uniques, we need to manage the pages per visit as well otherwise it will call into question the entire financial model. If we keep growing uniques per month but pages per visit lags, guess what - impressions served will be well below model projections. To put it bluntly, while we are 15x our Oct 07 uniques, we are just 2.5x Oct 07 impressions served. If I were looking at the company afresh, I would not buy the improvement in uniques quality assumption in our model without assuming a fall in uniques. Its just not possible!

The other obvious consideration is our present funding situation. When we’re having trouble paying emlployee salaries and basic expenses, it is the wrong priority to spend money on marketing programs that can at best be called loss-leaders. In my view, we should hunker down for a while and get our content catalog and site features enhanced, build no-cost traffic sharing partnerships, establish a strategic alliance or two, get more funding and then relaunch.

AK

My concerns stem from the following:

—– Original Message —–

We’ve been spending up to $600K on paid search per month over the last several months. For the most recent month that I have detailed numbers (June), we paid roughly $530,000 for 2.65 million.adword clicks, resulting in just over 140,000 user registrations. Each click cost us approximately 20 cents, and the regitration rate from paid search was roughly 5.4%.

9.Our first priority has to be content acquisition, at the expense of every single thing including sales, uniques, salaries etc. I also believe we should line up a buyer who would buy us provided we got Sony BMG and WMG. With capital markets being the way they are, we can not rely on the assumption that a 20mm round is definitely going to happen. In my mind, its very hard to justify new hires, more marketing spend as time goes by especially with the markets being the way they are.

Having said all that, its not too late to rectify our message to investors to reflect what we have been doing. Our model needs to be more believable and yet we need to show a better sales pipeline. A 2.4mm pipeline is just not acceptable after having hired so many people in sales lately. Its possible that a strategic out of the 20 possible strategics will value our uniques differently but we cant believe that. We must be able to convince more people - I hv heard too many comments about potential investors peeling back the layers and not being impressed with uniques quality.

Thank you

It should be noted that the e-mail exchanges were originally forwarded to multiple people, and copies were subsequently forwarded to CNET from multiple sources. E-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information were removed. Grammar was not corrected. The e-mails were placed in chronological order to make them easier to read.

7.If google adwords leads to more registrations, these people will probably come back and hence we should look at cost per pages visited by unique per program not just cost per unique. If we did that chances are the 28 cent to 8 cent comparison will look a lot closer. Furthermore don’t we think search engine optimization is a better tool to drive people who are actually looking for music than affiliate marketing? I also believe we must do away with the email requirement. We can let the user choose a user name/password and let him decide if he wants to give us his email/tel no for email/text updates etc. That will be a lot more acceptable in the age group we are trying to serve. I remember arguing about this back in Dec with Roger Munford and I still don’t think people like to give out email addresses for fear of phishing etc. If we are competing with pirate sites, we must understand the behaviour of our target audience.

Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET.


Editors’ note: In the first exchange, the recipients were members of SpiralFrog’s board. Orville Hagler, a SpiralFrog employee, was CC’d.

The first chain focuses on Amir Khan, one of SpiralFrog’s financial backers, and his skepticism about SpiralFrog’s marketing strategy in the summer of 2008. The second thread is a debate between Vesa Suomalainen, SpiralFrog’s former chief technology officer, and Joe Mohen, the company’s founder and chairman that occurred last fall.

4.The investor presentation calls for a 2008 marketing spend of 7.9mm. If last month our total spending was 1.1 or 1.2mm, and we add to that what we spent in the other months so far, we will probably have just 3-4mm left for the rest of the year or 500k-670k per month (and we must include all sorts of marketing in this calc). If we require 1.1-1.2mm to get us from 5mm to 6mm, how come we will require lesser to keep increasing uniques?

The only caveat I would throw in here is that paid search would make sense if the acquired users were to return to the site more often. Put another way, if our 2.4MM registered users came back twice a week, then we might view this differently.

From a tactical perspective, last Thursday, July 10th, the company achieved its highest daily uniques at 295,228, and we are pacing at 7,615,277. Our current spend is the same as last month, thus we are proportionately gaining traffic virally. I plan to decrease our spend towards the latter part of the month, which will result in approximately 7.1 million monthly uniques. Concurrent to this, I will start migrating to our Phase II quality traffic programs.

From: Joe Mohen

To: Vesa Suomalainen; Matthew Stern

Cc: Amir Khan; Peter Desloge; Michael Puccini; James Campbell; Jesse Paynter

Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 8:54 AM

Subject: RE: business case for paid search?

The board committee on traffic analysis that includes Scott Stagg, Amir Kahn, Jerry Gold, Steve Norcia and me, met on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 9th. It was a very productive meeting given the complexity of the topic. As a result of our discussion, the consensus was that we serve two constituencies, that being strategic alliances and the advertising community, and our hypothesis is that these two entities have different criteria on how they view the company. To gain further insight with respect to strategic alliances, we developed a series of questions that I will pose to Jimmy Barge to better clarify Viacom’s position. At this point, we believe that we need to grow our monthly uniques while migrating to quality visits.

It might also be useful to read the SpiralFrog blogposts, to see what real users are writing.

I am having 2nd thoughts. My friend came to visit the company on friday and he asked very pointed questions to which we had no answers about refresh rate and pages per visit compared to facebook etc., which we keep comparing ourselves to. If u look deeper our traffic numbers are a house of cards. I know him for 20+ years and there is no way he will invest in the company with such metrics. We need to discuss this again.

5.If we keep buying traffic and we do ramp uniques to 10mm, we will have an even harder time bring up pages per visit from under 3 to plan, as compared to doing it now. We must improve the quality now, and stabilize traffic rather than aim for 7mm+. We can not become uniques addicts at the expense of quality. We got it above 5mm, let’s just manage it within a range, all the while replacing affiliate programs for better programs.

3.The people we seem to be attracting to our site from the affiliate marketing programs are NOT interested in music. Hence the low registration rate, pages per visit, time on our site, high bounce rate. I refuse to believe that people in the advertising world and the potential acquirers will not see this as buying traffic. I remember Jerry on the conf call could not digest that either. When my friend, Jassi, who recently sold his company at a nice price, and understands this space stayed focused on the quality of the uniques and we did not answer his question directly, I got more concerned. If we are going to compare ourselves to facebook, youtube in terms of total traffic, we must expect questions regarding the quality of traffic as well. Anecdotally, Saurabh, our intern last year who was a big facebook user turned probably 25-30 if not more pages per visit. I doubt if facebook, myspace, youtube or any of the beacons of the new internet age have ever relied on affiliate marketing. Their VC sponsors would not have allowed it. Finally I believe its entirely possible that youtube/myspace went to acquirers and told them we don’t have a salesforce but you do and you can make this much money from us. By having a salesforce with 4-5 senior guys plus a bunch of juniors and not having a decent pipeline, are we telling the world that perhaps the model is faulty? Even if we assume we get a 15 CPM and myspace gets a 1.50 CPM, and if we have 2.6 pages per unique vs 25 per unique for them, we end up with the same gross revenue with the same uniques but we would have a bloated marketing cost, where they would have none. Add to that the fact that their inventory costs them zip, and we have large upfront acquisition costs and we end up keeping just 33% of our revenue (if we are lucky to use up the recoupable advance) hence on a net revenue basis we would be 1/3rd their net revenue with a bloated marketing expense. So before we start dreaming of youtube valuations, we have to get our perspective straightened out.

6.If spiralfrogclub generated just 10,000 emails, and the Alicia Keys program (from which we expected 4mm new uniques) generated just 3,000 new uniques, we should make sure we don’t commit the same mistake again. These viral programs accomplished just 1 thing - they made me sick. I am unwilling to see a single program we have in the works fail. And there have to be accountability and repercussions for any marketing failures going forward. I don’t know whether we pulled resources from other projects to work on these as well so besides money; opportunity cost, manpower redeployment etc also need to be accounted for. Did these happen at the expense of release 3.0 or other enhancements which would make new visitors stick to us? And with the affiliate programs, are we doing the same?

Next week, we hope to add the IODA catalog to our live site - this is 1,081,028 additional tracks, bringing us close to the 3M track marker. And this aggregator catalog is multiple times more relevant than the similar-sized Orchard label which is mostly unknown European music. Do we have a marketing program ready to go when this catalog goes live?

Thirdly, the key business variables are how often users come back to our site. We need more data points on this. I think it might make sense for you to go through all the FEEDBACK emails (starting with right after EMI was added), to see what people are telling us about our site, what they like about it, what they do not. You did a good job of this late last year, and it would be interesting to see what they are saying now.

Amir Khan

Portfolio Manager

3V Capital Management

Amir

To be fair, let’s adjust my calculation below to grant that registered users end up spending more amount of time on the site than the average - which is skewed downward by those paid search users that end up quickly leaving the site. From Google Analytics stats for October 2007 (when we had no paid search programs ongoing), the average pageviews per visit was 14 and # of visits per user per month was 2. These numbers are very close to our original business plan assumptions.

From: Matthew Stern

To: Vesa Suomalainen; Jesse Paynter

Cc: Joe Mohen; Amir Khan; Michael Puccini; James Campbell

Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 2:31 PM

Subject: RE: business case for paid search?

And amir, could you tell us exactly what you and your friends concerns are and what info you need from mel. Many people have put in an extraordinary effort to get where we are and this is far from a house of cards.Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

—– Original Message —–

It is therefore difficult to arguevia a business case to continue funding paid search. The per-click rate is simply too high for an ad-supported business. Paid search ads are primarily designed for businesses that sell goods for relatively high prices - using paid search as a method to drive traffic for an ad-supported site would be difficult to support even if the conversion rate (from click to registration) would be 100%.

From: Joe Mohen

To: Vesa Suomalainen; Matthew Stern

Cc: Amir Khan; Peter Desloge; Michael Puccini; James Campbell; Jesse Paynter

Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 6:32 PM

Subject: Re: business case for paid search?

September will see the highest ever monthly membership total (30% higher than June) yet September versus June member acquisition costs are 63% less expensiveSeptember will see the highest ever impressions served (16% higher than June) yet September versus June cost per impression are 58% less expensivePage/visit September versus June are 70% higher (7.45 vs. 4.39)Time on site September versus June are 140% higher (8 minutes vs. 3:20)

—– Original Message —–

To your point we do know what our page views and refresh rates are but you are right we do not know how they compare to Facebook etc, - we are not comparing ourselves to social network sites in that they are not the model we are following - our site does not have any objectable content and therefore we are able to attract the Tier I advertisers where your social network sites can only obtain a CPM of $1;50 and we have averaged $14-16 and recently have an ad campaign with AT&T - their “blue room promotion” where we obtained a $26.00 CPM.

8.Whatever happened to alliances with mp3 player manufacturers, cellphone companies, and generally anybody who would benefit by pushing us? Should we not have banners on their sites or make Samsung mention “compatible with spiralfrog.com”?

—– Original Message —–

Finally, to bring this full circle, there have been fruitful discussions with like-music sites to swap traffic and share revenue…stay tuned.



First, is our ad sales are in their infancy. It is too soon to judge marketing costs relative to them.

I think it is more complex. While I more or less agree with your points, there are more variables.

Editors’ note: The e-mail exchange below occurred last fall between Vesa Suomalainen, SpiralFrog’s chief technology officer, Joe Mohen, the company’s founder, and Matthew Stern, vice president of marketing. Others who received the e-mail were a combination of managers from SpiralFrog and 3V Capital Management, the start-up’s main financial backer.

I agree with mel and disagree with amir. We all are in agreement that our first objective was to grow uniques which we have done and there is clearly some disagreement about what our next step is, whether to continue growing uniques which the advitisers seem to want, or slow the unique growth and increase quality. To me, it is all about impressions and if the choice is to get there with more uniques and less pages turned vs less uniques and more pages turned, with both equaling the same amount of impressions, then I would choose the higher uniques.

From: Vesa Suomalainen

Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 11:48 AM

To: Joe Mohen; Matthew Stern

Cc: Amir Khan; Peter Desloge; Michael Puccini; James Campbell; Jesse Paynter

Subject: Re: business case for paid search?

According to a spreadsheet by our SEM vendor Bluemark, we’ve paid for 15.6M adword clicks across Google, Yahoo and MSN since February 2008 at an average price per click of just under 20 cents. This amounts to a total of $3.12M. This number is astounding - and does not include the other marketing programs (Platform A, Alicia Keys, NFL etc. etc.).

The obvious concern is what would happen to our traffic and ad sales if we stop paying for adwords? For one, our unique visitor numbers would drop by the corresponding number. However, since nearly 95% of paid search clicks end up in just one or two pageviews, our average pageview count would go up dramatically - and the # of total pageviews would drop but not by the same ratio as unique visitors. There’s clearly a cost to this, but it’s very difficult to argue that the downside is worth the guarantee of losing money on every dollar spent.

While u r correct with the NFL digitally there were also approx 6 TV spots that went with it, and that mitigates this, although we can’t say how much

The reason we have compared ourselves to Facebook is strictly one of gross traffic and I strongly believe if we were to make ourselves more of a social network site our traffic would be larger but it would defeat our economic model

And our main problem in getting these 1M tracks online quicker? Finding a soul in this company who’s able and willing to pay for the $2,000 that it cost us to buy the hard drives required to ship the content from Seattle to our production data center in Ashburn. I find it somewhat ironic to be discussing spending priorities of several millions and a few thousands in the same email, but here you go.

Thank you,

Mel

—– Original Message —–

Let’s even use an average of 15 cents per paid search click. And a generous conversion rate of 10% to become registered users. And blindly assume all registered users end up becoming permanent members. Each such user would cost us hence $1.50. At 14 pages/visit we’d earn 7 cents per visit in ad revenue (2 ads per page, $5 CPM average, 50% of ad inventory sold). Next, we’ll need to adjust this to subtract 66% royalties due to music owners - leaving us 2.38 cents per visit. It would therefore take 63 visits from each such user for us to break even. At an average 2 visits per month, we’d need each user to become an active SpiralFrog member for over 5 years to make this work financially. Our present stats show that a registered user stays active an average of less than 2 months.

—– Original Message —–

From: Vesa Suomalainen

This is our opportunity to start fresh and blame the months passed as a failed experiment. I’d argue that our main problems are lack of music content and lack of site features - fixing these two is key to our future success. If there’s one aspect I’d like to emphasize above all is that the unbalanced and incorrect focus on paid marketing is sapping our resources for money, development resources and management attention - besides being counter-productive to our overall goals.

From: Vesa Suomalainen

To: Joe Mohen; Matthew Stern

Cc: Amir Khan; Peter Desloge; Michael Puccini; James Campbell; Jesse Paynter

Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 10:02 AM

Subject: Re: business case for paid search?

—– Original Message —–

This means it is costing usabout $3.70 per registered user obtained through paid search. At an average 6.5 pageviews per visit (latest month stats from Google Analytics), we’re earning roughly 3.25 cents per user visit in ad revenue (assumptions: 2 ads per page, average $5 CPM, 50% of ad inventory sold each month). It would take 114 visits per user to earn back the money spent on paid search to break even. And that’s assuming we’d keep 100% of the revenue - not figuring the 66% royalty due to the music content owners.

I do not think our traffic is a house of cards - our phase one approach was to build traffic as quickly as we could, so that we could attract strategic partners and tier one advertisers and then migrate this traffic which we have stated to do, to enhanced quality programs. There are many sites Rhapsody being one that spends considerably more money on traffic enhanced programs and don’t come close to our results. To expand upon this I have spent a considerable amount of time with AOL and Advertising .com executives, (recently a two day meeting in Baltimore with 14 of their executives in attendance) many of which have spent ten years on growing website traffic and they have not seen a site grow so fast. - the key to this is we have been able to converge the discovery and acquisition of music on our site - our pre -qualitative market research determined that this would be critical to our success. Yes, I would like to see greater stickiness to the site but please remember that up until now we have had only one music major. We have conducted three post launch focus groups and the main reason they have not come back to our site was not having a greater selection of music - this is now changing with the ingestion of EMI.

From: Vesa Suomalainen

To: Matthew Stern

Cc: Amir Khan; Peter Desloge; Michael Puccini; James Campbell;

Joe Mohen; Jesse Paynter

Sent: Thu Sep 25 18:21:50 2008

Subject: Re: business case for paid search?

I’m afraid you’re missing my main point. We must adjust our user aquisition costs and methods to fit our own revenue model for it to make sense. We’ve now proven that any amount spent on paid search or other cost-per-click advertising is guaranteed to lose us money. The oher point is that the amount spent on marketing in a given month should be a sensible proportion of our own ad revenue - not a multiple of it.

SpiralFrog's turmoil, in missives

Below are several e-mail exchanges that were obtained by CNET News during a review of SpiralFrog’s rapid rise and fall. For the complete series about SpiralFrog’s collapse, please go here and here.

I agree with the sentiment (decrease dependence on paid methods while searching for alliances - barter or otherwise), however the metrics have been getting better since June. I will do a full reconciliation at the end of the month, but judging on pacing so far, this is what we see:

I started arguing in late spring that this is, if not outrigth cheating, at least self-deception. We were claiming super unique user growth while we knew we were just getting users to bounce off our site. Our approach was not far from hiring internet users in India to click on our home page to get the uniques # to continue growing. Anyone who’d ask us direct questions about average # of time spent on site or average # of pageviews, or retention of registered users would immediately find out our little secret. And these figures stay permanently in our books for incoming investors to look at and ask us after-the-fact. How do we explain spending $1.5M in marketing in the month of June when our resulting revenue was $69,711? An ooops?

cfsz SOUND OFF! ROOMS Rocks, RAINBOW is Resplenden

March 11, 2010, 01:45:44 AM

SCORE: 8/10

Things Are Great In Glocca Mora

While the Broadway revival of FINIAN’S RAINBOW may not have had the luck of a four-leaf clover, the masterfully produced and performed cast album is the true gold pot at the end of the titular rainbow. Forget Gene Kelly, Petula Clark, or any of their Broadway counterparts - this is the recording of FINIAN’S for the ages. It is rare that a show that produced quite so many standards as this one - I can count four off-hand - and it is to the credit of Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg that this score shines so brightly more than fifty years following its Broadway premiere. While it may not be the most complex or innovative score of that decade, or even that year, one would be hard pressed to find a more lovely way to spend an hour in Ireland without leaving the comforts of home. Even the album art and production photos, beautifully showcased in the elegant album design, makes my heart flutter a bit. This is classic Broadway at its best.

SOUND OFF! ROOMS Rocks, RAINBOW is Resplendent

This week we are taking a listen to the new Off-Broadway rock musical ROOMS: A Rock Romance and the revival cast recording of FINIAN’S RAINBOW. From Scotland to Ireland, and back to Broadway, we, quite joyfully, jaunt…

Sitting In My Room, Nothing Is Missing

“The Diabolical” represents the point at which the central relationship begins to show signs of dissolution and the depravedness and decadence of the rock stars starts to show its effects on their romance. “Little Bit of Love” is conversational, but pulsating and painfully punishing, and ultimately a pretty perfect performance of a dramatic moment that is, pardon the pun, pregnant with the dramatic and emotional themes that have amassed by this point in the drama. The counterpoint and hushed conversation that the song ends with is ravishing. “Fear of Flying”, which is reminiscent of “Odeon” in BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, is a propulsive patter song with particularly effective sound effects, though subtlety is certainly nowhere present here, whether in Kreeger‘s performance or the album’s production. Nor should it be. “Happiness” is heartbreaking and brings to mind the material meant for the mother character in BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, as well as that show’s “Kindness” so memorably recorded by Sherie Rene Scott on the Sh-K-Boom concept album. “When I’m not with him I’m drowning,” perfectly illustrates the female side of this relationship and exhibits Goodman’s deftness with a common phrase meaning so much more in the context of the drama, particularly since the lyrics are so often focused on alcoholism and liquid allusions - and for good reason. “Clean” is my favorite track on the album and the jaunty riff upon which the melody is based is winning - “The rhythm of the alcohol, keeps kickin’,” indeed. Few composers have musicalized the demons of addiction more expertly or evocatively than Goodman both here and in BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, which is largely concerned with cocaine addiction. The reprises of “Rooms” and “Steps” are very sad and somber, totally appropriate given the subject matter. “My Choice” could have been insufferably maudlin and sentimental, but due both to the performers and the production it is not, and, in the end, actually brings to mind the best of Sondheim in its style and tender yet tenacious turn-of-phrase. “My choice. Done./ We have a son.” is about as simply elegant as you can get in musical theatre. “Each minor chord, a major test” is another excellent lyric in this equally tear-filled and tender, and tough, song. “A New Song For Scotland” is as patriotic as we are led to expect given the title, and given what has just occurred in the drama leading up to it, is a breath of fresh, clean air. And so is this score, evident, of course, in the “Finale” - and everywhere else.

Time-Life also provide us with a fun, if frivolous, bonus track called “Click”, and it is quite clear why it was cut, but it is, indeed, just a little bit more of a very good thing. The recording is also so successful in large part due to the sterling work done by producer Rob Sher, whose contributions cannot be overestimated. Speaking of good, Goodman had the misfortune of premiering (and, at that point, performing in) BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY around the same time as Jonathan Larson’s RENT and was subsequently overshadowed by that work and its author. Similarly, ROOMS ended up off-Broadway in the same season as NEXT TO NORMAL. With the immeasurable loss of Larson, Goodman proves with BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY and, now, ROOMS, that he is the current master of the rock musical. Then again, I am one of those who feel BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY is just as good as RENT, and now if forced to compare would prefer ROOMS to NEXT TO NORMAL - BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY is certainly more inventive and more innovative in its style, structure and the substance of the characters than RENT, while comparisons between ROOMS and NEXT TO NORMAL are less useful. ROOMS rocks and Goodman is the rock n roll king of musical theatre - on Broadway or off as he proves with this score that certainly had me, to use a discarded phrase from NEXT TO NORMAL, feeling electric.

Starting with a sparkling “Overture,” and the hanky-panky of the harmonica beginning the first vocal track, this cast recording does just about everything just right. The syncopation and sibilance of every single syllable surround us as “This Time of the Year” gets going, and it is rare to hear a chorus this well-mixed and marvelous, whether on a cast album or in the theatre itself. Kate Baldwin is an instant-win with her establishing number, one of the most famous and well-worn songs in all of musical theatre, “How Are Things In Glocca Morra?” Following up that gem is the nearly equally famous and well-known “Look To The Rainbow” and the results are winsome and winning. We are treated to a complete recording of the dance break, as well, and the overall comprehensiveness of this recording is one of many myriad reasons why this album is so momentous and instantly memorable. Cheyenne Jackson, currently on NBC’S 30 ROCK but having established himself as one of the foremost male performers of the 21st century musical theatre, is immediately likeable with the most famous song in a score full of fabulous, famous standards, “Old Devil Moon”. The subtle phrasing and slight homage to a 1940s Broadway delivery were certainly not lost on this attentive listener. The chemistry between Jackson and Baldwin is tangible, even on record, and one hopes to see them pair-up again in the near future, hopefully on a duets album like Jackson’s current collaboration with standards master Michael Feinstein, THE POWER OF TWO. “Something Sort of Grandish” is one of the best examples of Harburg’s wicked and wonderful way with words, and the reprise is equally winning and even more riotously hilarious. In “If This Isn’t Love” Jackson pays homage to the vocal inflections of John Raitt and the results are resplendent, with the chorus members providing expert assistance, both comically and vocally. Even the kiss sound effect is perfect.

Paul Scott Goodman, along with bookwriter Miriam Gordon, has created another rock score worthy of respect and reverence with his work for the semi-autobiographical ROOMS: A Rock Romance, this coming more than ten years after his last effort, the arresting and alarmingly inventive BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY which was based on the classic 80s second-person stream-of-conciousness novel by Jay McInerney. While ROOMS lacks the dramatic weight and engaging, esoteric storytelling style of BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, it makes up for it in the enthusiasm and energy exhibited by the excellent leads, Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger. The Scottish brogue explicitly evocative of the composer/lyricist himself (and his then girlfriend, upon whom the Kritzer role is based) is brought off with adept aplomb by the leads. Kreeger and Kritzer are both positively wonderful. Track-by-track, and hit-by-hit, the score traverses musical styles as varied and various as one would come to expect from Goodman, who always keeps one foot firmly planted in world of rock. Where the other foot may fall is anyone’s guess.

The album begins with two themes that are reprised repeatedly, each time with more layers of lust, love and lyricism, both on the part of the characters and the actual composer himself. “Rooms” and “Steps” are arresting recurring themes that bring to mind the elusive elegance and eeriness of “Coma Baby” from BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, starting off the memory play in a memorable manner. As the reprises pile on, one is immediately struck by the subtle strength of Goodman in making the seemingly innocuous, such as a simple set of stairs, so interesting and involving. “Bring the Future Faster” rocks hard and Kritzer navigates the high-belting with assuredness and the result is really quite riveting. “Friday Night Dress”, with its Biblical allusions, showcases the strength of the simultaneous storytelling in an entertaining and inventive fashion. By its title alone, “Scottish Jewish Princess” purports to be funnier than it turns out to actually be, but the beginning Bossa Nova beat, which creeps into a few numbers, compounded by the intricate vocal line and patter song sibilance ultimately proves successful. The rhyme of “Uncle Georgy” and “orgy” is certainly an unexpected and funny rhyme and, in the end, the song serves a similar function to “I Hate The French” in BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY. “I Love You For All Time” at first brings to mind Sting & The Police and given the 80s time-setting of the piece, it is totally appropriate to the period. As the song builds, we become increasingly floored by the fierce and furious electricity ignited by Kritzer and Kreeger’s performances. It is at this point that I came to the conclusion that even if the material were weaker, the leads would raise it up a few levels through sheer will. “Let’s Go To London” contains some high-belting on the order of “A New Argentina” from EVITA and Kritzer’s favorable comparisons to Patti LuPone, having played LuPone herself in a tribute show off-Broadway a few seasons ago, are justly justified. “All I Want Is Everything” is Goodman’s expert musical evocation of everything 80s, and it is, in the words of Wayne & Garth from WAYNE’S WORLD, excellent, totally. “Let’s Leave London” left me a little bit cold and, given that it is the turning point of the story, one wishes for a bit more from the lyrics than “two punks in love”, but every song can’t be a knock-out, I suppose. “NYC Forever!” contains the weakest lyrics of all and it is at this point that the ground upon which this score stands starts getting shaky, but it soon gets back on track with the next half of the show. That being said, the theme for “Pour more booze” in “NYC Forever!” hasn’t left my head since I first heard the album, so, if nothing else, this track is catchy, though some re-writes are in definitely in order.



Character accents are one of the most treacherous treks actors must traverse, as previously alluded to above in the discussion of ROOMS, and it is to the credit of the cast of FINIAN’S RAINBOW that they pull off the Irish brogue so well, rarely over-doing it as is so commonplace in community theatre productions of the show. “Introduction To Necessity” is another fine example of the expert mixing and mastering of the choral work on this album, and though there is a slight echo here and elsewhere it seems as if that is entirely intentional and meant to bring to mind the classic Godard Lieberson-produced albums of the Golden Age. “Necessity” seems slightly old-fashioned and quaint when compared to blues songs and scatting in the scores of today, but given the time-frame in which the show was written it shows how boundary-pushing Lane was trying to be with this score. Lane, by way of this wonderful revival cast, ends the act on a rollicking and raucous note with “That Great ‘Come-and-Get-It’ Day”. But these marvelous moments are merely half the hues of this remarkable RAINBOW.

The “Entr’Acte”, much like the “Overture” before it, beginning with that spine-tingling and classic “Old Devil Moon” cue, makes excellent use of the full-bodied orchestra, the mere presence of the thirty plus musicians an anomaly due to the crippling economics on Broadway today which, more often than not, renders the classic scores of yore anemic and antiseptic sounding in the cripplingly reduced orchestrations that plague far too many productions these days. It is rare to hear so much care and attention paid to every single second of a cast recording and the work by Tommy Krasker and company at PS Classics cannot be applauded enough. “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich” starts Act Two off endearingly, and the delicate orchestrations of the dance sections are carried off with utmost care and precision, making it a truly multi-layered and mellifluous moment for both the superb cast and sumptuous orchestra. “Dance of the Golden Crock” is notable if only for the enticing harmonica playing and audible hoofing comically included on the track. On a less comprehensive and considered recording, dance tracks like this would undoubtedly be left by the wayside. “The Begat”, the second act answer to “Necessity”, is a fun, if innocuous, blues number, though the second act does seem to contain a bit of filler - but, in comparison to the irreproachable first act song stack, that was bound to be the case. The reprises of both “Old Devil Moon” and “Look To The Rainbow” are appropriate and accentuated with slight nuances by Jackson and Baldwin not evident in the full versions of the songs that came previously. Again, they are positively perfect in these roles, both separately and together, and more of their performances are always a welcome addition on this recording. “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love” is the last of the big, famous standards in this score and it is performed well by Broadway regular Christopher Fitzgerald. The “Finale Ultimo” is the perfect ending to a perfect recording of a nearly perfect score, and leaves the listener wanting to go right back to the base of the rainbow and replay the album again and again. The attention to detail - of each shade and hue of every single, solitary color, both dramatic and musical - is what makes this RAINBOW an absolute winner. A true pot o’ gold.

SCORE: 7.5/10


wcfs Obama ‘confident’ of repeat Fed term for Bern

March 08, 2010, 02:12:00 PM

The White House aide voiced praise of Bernanke’s stewardship of US monetary policy and said he needs another term as the country’s banker to ensure that a nascent economic recovery continues on track.

“There is a great deal of concern relative to the financial sector. And understand that we need his leadership,ugg store usa,” Axelrod said.

Ramped up Democratic opposition to a second term for Bernanke underscores a major populist shift in the political landscape since Republicans won a stunning upset last week in the Massachusetts election for a US Senate seat, ending the 60-seat Democratic supermajority in the chamber.

“The president is very confident that the chairman will be confirmed,” said adviser David Axelrod, who praised Bernanke’s handling of the global economic meltdown.

Two senior Senate Democrats, Barbara Boxer and Russell Feingold, announced Friday they would vote against Bernanke after his first term ends on January 31. All told, as many as 10 senators are thought to oppose Bernanke, criticizing him for being too closely allied with Wall Street.



“Chairman Bernanke was in charge when we hit the iceberg,uggs boots,” McCain told CBS program “Face the Nation.”

President Barack Obama’s administration has been scrambling to save his beleaguered Fed nominee — first installed by Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush in February 2006 — in the face of opposition from members his own Democratic party.

But analysts have warned that tossing out Bernanke could trigger renewed turmoil in financial markets.

“Chairman Bernanke offered very strong and steady leadership during this crisis, without which we… may have slipped into the abyss. And we are still in a fragile state,hair straighteners, although the economy is growing,” Axelrod told CNN’s “State of the Union” television program.

Time magazine named Bernanke its 2009 “Person of the Year” in December, crediting him with helping guide the United States through financial turmoil.

Senator John McCain, Obama’s Republican rival in the 2008 presidential race, said he was “leaning against” supporting Bernanke, claiming that “his policies were partially responsible for the meltdown that we experienced.”

 


Obama 'confident' of repeat Fed term for Bernanke
January 25, 2010

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will garner enough votes to win US Senate confirmation for a second term despite opposition from key Democrats, President Barack Obama’s top adviser said Sunday.

Iikb Obama comes out swinging for big reforms_8

March 08, 2010, 02:11:00 PM

“Joe and I are pretty smart politicians - we have been at this a while. The easiest way to keep your poll numbers high is to say nothing and to do nothing that offends anybody,” Obama said.

After spending a year trying unsuccessfully to pass health care reform, Obama said on Wednesday his top priority in 2010 was creating jobs, as Democrats head into what look a tough set of mid-term congressional polls in November.

Florida, like swing states Ohio, where Obama went last week, and New Hampshire, on his itinerary next week, has seen independent voters turn against the president after national unemployment hit 10 per cent.

Obama comes out swinging for big reforms
January 29, 2010 - 8:04AM

AFP

“Right now, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change - or at least that I can deliver it,” he said,ugg store usa, and bluntly stated “change has not come fast enough.”

The White House denies that Obama used his State of the Union speech to “reset” his administration, after his most humiliating political blow yet, the Democratic loss last week of the Senate seat of the late Edward Kennedy.

He signed off, before a question and answer session, with his trademark campaign slogan, which has been rarely heard during a grim year of governing and battling a string of economic and financial crises.

“I campaigned on the promise of change - change we can believe in, the slogan went,” Obama said on Wednesday, recalling the days before his barnstorming campaign promises hit a brick wall of Republican opposition in government.

“It’s about time we moved … . But most important, we’re creating jobs, good jobs, construction jobs, manufacturing jobs.”

President Barack Obama has rekindled the “Yes We Can” mood of his 2008 campaign, vowing not to shirk from the “tough stuff” after his reform plans ground to a near halt in Congress.

A day after his defiant State of the Union address, Obama insisted on a rare road trip with Vice President Joe Biden that he would not shelve hopes for reform even though testy Washington politics slowed his drive for change.



Despite hammering the jobs message, Obama could not resist turning back to his health care reform plan, and vowed to unpick the deadlock in Congress on an issue he termed a bone he could not stop “gnawing.”

The administration said the investment would create or save tens of thousands of jobs over time in areas like track-laying, manufacturing, planning and engineering, and rail maintenance and operations.

But on this trip, and in Ohio last week, and even in the House of Representatives on Wednesday night, Obama seemed a little liberated, striking more populist notes and slamming the moral bankruptcy of Washington.


“How can we, the leading nation in the world, be in the position where China, Spain, France, and name all the other countries who have rail systems that are far superior to ours?” Biden, a long-time rail commuter asked.

Obama and Biden formally rolled out an $US8 billion ($A8.95 billion) grant for high speed rail under the president’s $US787 billion ($A880.4 billion) economic stimulus plan, which had been previously announced.

Seeking a political rebound, Obama held a folksy town hall meeting in Florida, where his approval numbers have tumbled as the key swing state which helped send him to the White House battles the mortgage crisis and high unemployment.

“Yes we can,” Obama said, picking up a chant from an audience. “We don’t quit, we don’t back down, we are Americans.”

“We ran to get the tough stuff done. I make no apology for trying to fix stuff that is hard,” Obama roared,hair straightener, in an event highlighting an $US8 billion ($A8.95 billion) investment in job creating high-speed rail projects.

“The minute you actually start doing something,timberland on sale, somebody is going to disagree with you,” Obama said, who sprinkled his speech with quips and took a sarcastic swipe at the press.

A Quinnipiac University poll last month found 49 per cent of voters in Florida, hard hit by the mortgage foreclosure crisis, disapproved of Obama’s performance and only 45 per cent approved.

Obama appears determined not to scale back his reform hopes because of a suddenly inhospitable political environment. But it remains unclear just how much of his ambitious agenda will make it though Congress unscathed.

vxec Once again- Do cell phones cause brain tumors

March 08, 2010, 02:10:00 PM

Yesterday’s announcement also calls into question the wide use of wireless technologies beyond cell phones. If GSM cell phones are dangerous in the 1.8GHz band, does that render Wi-Fi, at 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands, even worse? These are questions that need to be addressed, preferably by researchers who do not receive their funding from the telecommunications industry.

The World Health Organization does not seem terribly worried about the effects of cell phone use on health: “None of the recent reviews have concluded that exposure to the RF fields from mobile phones or their base stations causes any adverse health consequence.” But this statement–last updated nine years ago–relies on precisely the kind of data these watchdogs suggest is flawed.

A collaborative of international electromagnetic radiation (EMR) watchdogs, including Powerwatch and the EMR Policy Institute, sent a paper to government leaders and media Tuesday detailing several design flaws in a major but oft-delayed telecom-funded Interphone study.

Several other studies, many of which are referenced in the book “Cancer Biology,” including one of 195,775 workers manufacturing and testing cell phones, indicate no association between EMR exposure and brain or other nervous system cancers. But again, this book was published in 1995; time for an update?

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. She has contributed to Wired magazine,timberland boots usa, The Christian Science Monitor, and public radio. Her semi-obscure hobbies include unicycling,timberland shoes, slacklining, hula-hooping, scuba diving, billiards, Sudoku, Magic the Gathering, and classical piano. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.


(Credit:L. Lloyd Morgan, et al)

Exposure to cell phone radiation is the largest human health experiment ever undertaken, without informed consent, and has some four billion participants enrolled. Science has shown increased risk of brain tumors from use of cell phones, as well as increased risk of eye cancer, salivary gland tumors, testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia. The public must be informed.

The paper’s primary author, L. Lloyd Morgan (a retired electronics engineer and member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society), is backed by endorsers (mostly scientists) from 14 countries when he cautions that cell phone use might lead to an increased risk of more than just brain tumors:

Now consumers get to wonder yet again whether the message behind the paper, “Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone,” is legitimate or the result of overzealous conspiracy theorists.



Once again: Do cell phones cause brain tumors?

A widely endorsed report calls into question the methodologies of studies that show no link between cell phone use and brain tumors.

The paper’s main conclusions are: There is a “significant” risk of brain tumors from cell phone use,Mens North Face Jacket; EMR exposure limits that have been used by governments and supported by industry are based on the false premise that EMR has no biological effects except for heating; and design flaws of the Interphone study include selection bias, insufficient latency time to expect a tumor diagnosis, unrealistic definition of what makes a “regular” cell phone user, exclusion of children and young adults from the study, exclusion of many types of brain tumors, and exclusion of people who had died or were too ill to be interviewed as the result of brain tumors.

Read the full report here (PDF), as well as CNET’s cell phone radiation level chart (a few Motorola models top the list, with several Samsungs coming in lowest).

hxve Obama seeks to get back on track in Florida_3

March 08, 2010, 02:06:00 PM

Obama was to make a rare joint campaign-style appearance with Vice President Joe Biden, to unveil eight billion US dollars in funding for high-speed rail projects, part of a jobs push which is now the White House’s top priority.

He also vowed he would not “walk away” from the stalled health care reform drive which dominated his first year in office.

He turned towards foreign policy only towards the end of an address dominated by economic challenges, almost as an afterthought, warning Iran would face “growing consequences” if it did not halt its nuclear program.

A Quinnipiac University poll last month found 49 percent of voters in Florida, hard hit by the mortgage foreclosure crisis, disapproved of Obama’s performance and only 45 percent approved.

“Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010,” Obama said, and promised to redirect 30 billion US dollars from a Wall Street bailout fund to help small businesses get credit and create new positions.

The administration had previously announced the eight billion dollar grant for high speed rail under the stimulus act, but will offer more details at a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida.


“I campaigned on the promise of change — change we can believe in, the slogan went,” Obama said, recalling the days before his barnstorming 2008 campaign promises hit a brick wall of Republican opposition in government.

“Through the Recovery Act, we are making the largest investment in infrastructure since the Interstate Highway System was created,” Obama said, in an advance copy of his remarks.

The administration says its 787 billion US dollars stimulus plan has saved or created up two million jobs, but with unemployment at 10 percent and set to stay high for months, a political rebound may be a long time coming for Obama.

“Right now,reviews mbt shoes, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change — or at least that I can deliver it,” he said, and bluntly stated “change has not come fast enough.”

Obama’s agenda took a huge hit when Republicans seized a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts last week, and the president is under intense pressure to show leadership and to restore his authority.



Obama seeks to get back on track in Florida
STEPHEN COLLINSON January 29,classic timberland boots, 2010 - 7:54AM

President Barack Obama headed to Florida Thursday, hoping to use his defiant State of the Union address as a springboard for political recovery in an economically scarred electoral battleground.

“That investment is how we can break ground across the country, putting people to work building high-speed rail lines, because there?s no reason why Europe or China should have the fastest trains when we can build them right here in America.”

The administration said the investment would create or save tens of thousands of jobs over time in areas like track-laying, manufacturing, planning and engineering, and rail maintenance and operations.

In the 2008 election, victory in the key electoral state helped pave the way to the White House for Obama, and as recently as a year ago his approval ratings in the state stood at 64 percent in the same poll.

The president, seeking to rescue his ambitious political program, vowed on Wednesday night in the key note address to Congress that he would not quit, and was determined to haul the American economy out of the mire.

Obama said the US government must double US exports in five years to support two million more jobs, and to boost commerce with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, but stopped short of urging Congress to pass trade pacts.

Florida, like swing states Ohio,ugg boots usa, where Obama went last week, and New Hampshire, on his itinerary next week, has seen independent voters turn against the president after national unemployment hit 10 percent.

He demanded Congress pass a jobs bill and send it to his desk “without delay,” and warned that if lawmakers did not maintain the strength of his bid to crack down on Wall Street he would veto their efforts.

In another bid to recapture the heady spirit of change which swept him to power, Obama said he would work with Congress to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law banning gays from serving openly in the US military.

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