Tag | morning
France Launches Multi-Lingual Tourist Website. It Goes Down And Stays Down.
Far be it from me to criticize the French . But yesterday France launched France.fr with a middling amount of press attention. But the site went down almost immediately after launching. This morning we gave it a pass, but tonight it’s still down. And we’re not sure anyone is working very hard to get it back up – it is just an information website, after all. From The Connexion on the launch: A NEW official website providing information about France in English has been launched by the French government. France.fr went live this morning to coincide with the fête nationale and is available in French, English, German, Italian and Spanish. The site aims to promote the country to tourists but also to provide residents with practical information about all elements of life in France – including studying, working, setting up a business and day-to-day living. The prime minister’s office, which is managing the new online project, said the site would grow in the coming months and it will contain some 12,000 links to other online resources including Météo France and tourist offices. And France’s senior government official overseeing the Internet, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet , even took the time to tweet “Lancement aujourd’hui du portail officiel de la France dans le monde” (“Today’s launch of official website of France in the world” ). A French friend says of the site (when it was live) “It just does not work, full of bugs, and the english translation is hilariously bad.” He won’t let me attribute his quote though, saying he’d like to remain in good standing with the French community. For now France.fr has a landing page saying the site is unavailable in a variety of languages. In French it goes into more detail, noting that the site is a victim of its own success. There’s the joke about how the only people France can beat at anything are the French themselves, usually noting the French Revolution. But I won’t repeat that here. Instead I’ll just say – Vive la France!
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France Launches Multi-Lingual Tourist Website. It Goes Down And Stays Down.
In The Wake Of ‘Antennagate’, Apple’s Stock Takes A Hit
As consumers and journalists begin to wonder if the iPhone 4 is a lemon due to the ongoing antenna issues with the phone, Apple’s stock has taken a hit this morning. The stock started trading this morning at $255.84 and dropped by nearly ten points to $246.55 in mid-morning trading, losing as much as $9 billion in market cap. Shares seem to be recovering now at $249 per share. Clearly, this issue is spiraling beyond just tech blogs into mainstream media. In fact, our own MG Siegler spoke to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann last night about the issue with the iPhone’s signal strength (see video below). And as the antenna issue gains momentum, the markets are reflecting the concerns over this flawed device. New iPhone 4 users have been complaining of problems with dropped calls and connectivity due to the Antenna issues. Apple tried to sweep this under the rug with a software update, but yesterday Consumer Reports slammed the new device. Consumer Reports concluded that the signal degradation from the antenna is real when you put your finger over the gap on the lower left-hand side of the phone, calling it a design flaw. And already there are lawsuits brewing. For a company that seems to be very meticulous about its marketing strategy, Apple’s brand may be suffering damage from ‘Antennagate.’ The iPhone 4, which was touted as the marquis of iPhones, will now be partly remembered for this flaw unless Apple takes serious action on fixing the problem. Could there be an iPhone 4 recall in the near future? CrunchBase Information Apple Information provided by CrunchBase
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In The Wake Of ‘Antennagate’, Apple’s Stock Takes A Hit
eBay Apps For Apple, Android Devices Now Available Internationally
Digital commerce giant eBay announced this morning the international releases of its eBay Selling application and its eBay for iPad application. The free Selling application is now available in Germany and the UK, and the eBay for iPad application is now translated into French, Italian, German and Spanish and currently available through Apple’s 77 iTunes App Stores. In a separate release , eBay also announced that its Android app is now available for free download in the Android Market in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
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eBay Apps For Apple, Android Devices Now Available Internationally
eBay: Weisel Chops Target On FX Trends, New Fee Structure – Tech …
Thomas Weisel partners analyst Jordan Rohan this morning repeated his Overweight rating on eBay (EBAY), but chopped his target to $27, from $34. The analyst has reduced estimates for the company to reflect the weakness of the Euro …
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eBay: Weisel Chops Target On FX Trends, New Fee Structure – Tech …
The IPO Survives! Second Quarter Sees $900 Million Worth Of Exits
The beloved, endangered IPO is showing signs of revival, or at least survival. In the second quarter of 2010, there were 15 venture-backed IPOs in the U.S., which raised a total of $899 million, according to data released today by Dow Jones VentureSource. The amount raised is nearly four times as much as the same, admittedly moribund, period a year ago, when there were only 3 IPOs and $232 million in exits. So far this year, the total number of IPOs (23) and exit dollars ($1.6 billion) already surpasses the totals for each of the last two years. Of course, the IPO markets are coming back from a near-death experience so the comparisons look great. The numbers got a big boost from the Tesla IPO on Tuesday, which raised $202 million. (The shares are trading at $24 this morning, 41 percent above the IPO price). But the IPO market still has along way to go. The total number of IPOs and money raised is still a fraction of what it was even in 2007, when there were nearly 80 IPOs and more than $7 billion raised. It’s also never taken longer for a company to go public (at least over the past 18 years since VentureSource has been keeping track). The median time between founding and IPO for the 15 exits last quarter was 9.4 years. Meanwhile, in M&A land the number of venture-backed deals in the quarter were down slightly to 79 from 82 a year ago. But the amount raised through acquisitions was up 48 percent to $4.3 billion. However, the number of acquisitions and amount raised was lower than in each of the two previous quarters. http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/01/venture-backed-exit-activity-is-picking-up-again/
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The IPO Survives! Second Quarter Sees $900 Million Worth Of Exits
European Commission Launches Consultation On Net Neutrality
And so it begins. The European Commission this morning launched a consultation on key questions regarding the contentious issues of net neutrality and the open Internet. The consultation covers such issues as whether ISPs should be allowed to adopt traffic management practices, prioritizing one kind of Internet traffic over another. This has become an issue with the onset of broadband and Internet services which require more bandwidth, such as VoIP or online TV. Essentially, the EC wants to find out whether these practices would create any problems (economical, technical or otherwise) and have ‘unfair effects’ for users.
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European Commission Launches Consultation On Net Neutrality
eBay Application For BlackBerry Leaves Beta, Heads To Australia And Europe
eBay and RIM this morning jointly announced that the free eBay Application for BlackBerry smartphones is now available through BlackBerry App World in six more countries: Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. The application is also now officially available to BlackBerry smartphone users in North-America after a beta preview period. The eBay application supports BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry OS version 4.5 or higher. With the app, users can search, bid, buy and check their eBay buying and selling activity on the go.
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eBay Application For BlackBerry Leaves Beta, Heads To Australia And Europe
iOS To Make Its Desktop Debut With Next iMac Revision?
IOS on the next iMac? That’s the rumor going around this morning. The deal is that Apple wants to bring touch controls to its desktop offerings, and will use the next iMac revision to test the waters a bit. So, you’ll have your standard Mac OS X installation, but then when you activate “touch screen mode,” you’ll switch over to iOS. Read more…
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iOS To Make Its Desktop Debut With Next iMac Revision?
Semantic Web Startup Inform Technologies Lands $4 Million, New CMO
Inform Technologies , a New York-based developer and provider of semantic web solutions, this morning announced it has secured $4 million in a Series A funding round led by previous backers Spark Capital , The Stephens Group , and The Oklahoma Publishing Company . In addition, the startup has announced that Tony Dunaif , former SVP at Internet Broadcasting, has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer. The news of the new hire comes about a month after the company announced that it had recruited Matt Zelesko , former CEO of Internet TV company Joost , as its new technology chief .
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Semantic Web Startup Inform Technologies Lands $4 Million, New CMO
Ok, Who Hacked Google Trends This Time?
If you were to mozy on over Google Trends this morning you may have noticed that something was amiss. Not only were the terms listed as hot trends and searches off from their normal pop-fluff fair, but there was a rather unkind term in …
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Ok, Who Hacked Google Trends This Time?
