| McDonald’s Offers Free Wifi Starting Today |
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Just thought you’d like to know. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (0)January 11, 2010
| The “Dumbest Idea”, 10 Years Later |
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The NY Times has a retrospective on the tenth anniversary of the failed AOL-Time Warner merger. According to the Times: “The trail of despair in subsequent years included countless job losses, the decimation of retirement accounts, investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, and countless executive upheavals. Today, the combined values of the companies, which have been separated, is about one-seventh of their worth on the day of the merger.” A note about that last sentence. In the last 6 months, Aol’s valuation has dropped from $5 billion (July 2009) to $3.5 billion (November) to under $3 billion (December). Anyway, the article’s worth reading; here are my favorite quotes:
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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December 29, 2009
| City Decides to Buy the Working Bits of Wireless Philadelphia |
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Here’s something I missed 2 weeks ago: the city has agreed to purchase the hardware from the failed Wireless Philadelphia project for $2 million. That’s not a bad price, even considering that EarthLink, the service provider, couldn’t even give it all away. Philly’s not going back into the ISP business, however: “‘Acquiring these assets is a major step forward for the city,’ said Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank. ‘With this investment we will have the capability to build a robust public safety and municipal network, enhancing public safety and government operations, at the same time as achieving long-term savings for the taxpayer. This is a win-win for Philadelphia.’” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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December 10, 2009
| Aol’s First Day |
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The NY Times reports on Aol’s first day as a separate, public company. (Apparently the Times missed the press release that said AOL was rebranding itself as Aol. Sigh … One more reminder of the decline of professional journalism.) At the end of the day (literally), Aol was trading at 23.67 and valued at $2.55 billion. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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December 3, 2009
| It’s a Deal: Green Will Sell Navy to Crimson [UPDATED] |
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Today GE will announce that it has sold a 51% stake in NBC Universal to Comcast. According to the NY Times, the courtship was a secret for about 6 months, until details began leaking out in late September: “The deal was a long time in the making and was filled with meetings at the Four Seasons hotel in Philadelphia, in New York City apartments and on helicopter rides. It also featured code names: G.E. was Green, NBC was Navy, Vivendi was Violet and Comcast was Crimson (because of the Harvard link).” [Note: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Comcast COO Steve Burke were classmates at Harvard Business School.] UPDATE, 12:30 pm – There are “no plans to alter Hulu’s free model“. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 23, 2009
| AOL is now Aol. That’ll Help a Lot. |
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Their press release claims: “The new AOL brand identity is a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever changing images. It’s one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal.” I’m sure that’ll be a comfort to the 2,500 sacrificial lambs. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 19, 2009
| Heads Will Roll at AOL. Voluntarily, That Is (For Now). |
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AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wants 2,500 staffers to quit voluntarily between December 4 and December 9 as part of a cost-cutting move prior to the company’s IPO. That’s one-third of the company, btw. If Armstrong doesn’t see enough empty cubes, he’s gonna have to do the volunteering for some people. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 17, 2009
| AOL Spinoff Set for December 9 |
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Time Warner will say “So long and thanks for all the fish” to AOL on December 9. Shareholders will get 1 AOL share for every 11 TW share they own. AOL is now valued at around $3.5 billion, down from the $5 billion I reported 4 months ago. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 11, 2009
| Small Numbers Loosely Joined |
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Item 1: Verizon sold 100,000 Droids last weekend. Not bad for an Android phone launch, but small potatoes when you consider Apple sells a million iPhones each time it debuts a new model. But Android is a long-haul project, for sure. Item 2: Only 2 weeks after its release, Windows 7 has the same market share (4%) that Vista had after 7 months. These numbers are based upon Web usage statistics, but they seem to confirm what everyone already knows: after a dog like Vista, anything else will look good by comparison. Item 3: Google has expanded its free holiday wifi offer to 47 airports. And, of course, Philly International isn’t. On. The. List. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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October 14, 2009
| Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, and a Really Fast Internet Connection |
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Next year all Finnish citizens will have the right to high-speed Internet access. According to YLE, Finland’s national public service broadcasting company,”Starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection.” By the end of 2015, that’ll be bumped up to 100 Mb. Before you bitterly lament the sad state of broadband access in the U.S., let’s put this in perspective. There are about 5 million Finnish citizens, 68% of whom use the Internet, and they account for about 4 tenths of 1 percent of all Internet users worldwide. From the U.S. perspective, this is like providing free municipal Internet access. And how hard can that be? Oh, wait … |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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