Recently in E-Business Category

A column by The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein discusses the increasingly popularity of the idea that the large IT infrastructures maintained by most large companies today will become unnecessary. Just as in the early days of electricity, when companies generated their own power until an advisor to Thomas Edison pointed out that better economies of scale could be achieved by centralizing electricity generation, allowing companies to share it off a centralized grid (and thus giving birth to the first public electric utility company), some IT industry visionaries are endorsing this method for the future of corporate information technology.

By sharing centralized IT resources, companies could pay for only what they use and radically lower their administration budgets.

Find the column here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112901096.html?nav=hcmodule

TES

Do you have all the URLs you need to properly conduct your business? Do you have your product names all covered? Do you have a better URL than your competitors?

Good.

Now, do you have a proper domain extension to cover your business on Saturn? No? If you sell office paper and have the URL www.officepaper.com, what are you going to do to attract customers on Saturn? How can you have slipped up by letting www.officepaper.saturn go?

An organization which calls itself "The Lunar Embassy"  (http://www.lunarembassy.com/lunar/domainsind_e.lasso) has begun taking orders for must-have top-level domain names, including .lunar, .mars, .uranus, .jupiter, etc. (you get the picture.)

And by the way, if you're looking for real estate on the moon, the Lunar Embassy can take care of that for you, too.

You can never plan too far in advance.

TES

For the moment, Sony has decided to temporarily suspend the use of its system designed to limit the number of copies of CDs consumers can make, after a deluge of criticism, most notably that the system is a sort of spyware and renders users' computers vulnerable to hackers. But the company admits no wrongdoing, and denies the spyware accusation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10005667/

I'm just glad that Sony doesn't publish books, or long ago I would have gone over my "limit" of re-reads on several hundred of my favorite books.

TES

A new survey has found that more than half of public companies have changed their "revenue recognition policies" in light of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. (Rather than, for example, go to jail.)

Sarbanes-Oxley was put in place to stop companies from cheating on their financial reporting to boost stock prices and personal perks (paging Enron, Adelphia, WorldCom and others).

Apparently, it's working.

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-survey-sarbanes-oxley-has-widespread-impact-revenue-recognition-/2005/oct/1196684.htm

TES

But wait! I'm still waiting for my $24.6 million in oil money, to which I'm entitled since I recently discovered I'm the long-lost relative of president's cousin's ex-girlfriend's dental hygienist.

Will this new crackdown affect my payout?

http://news.tmcnet.com/news/-nigeria-outlaw-e-mail-spamming-/2005/oct/1193202.htm

TES

I just got an e-mail from some guy in Nigeria, telling me that since I'm his next of kin, I get to inherit the $22.4 million oil fortune that he's trying to get out of the country.

Next of kin to a guy in Nigeria? I need to have a serious talk with my parents -- clearly, they're withholding information.

TES

Ever thought your broker was crazy, but kept him or her on because your portfolio is doing well? Science tells us this week that genuine, clinical psychotic attributes may be desirable in a broker.

I'm not making this up. Check here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1786949,00.html

TES

Before today's sentencing of up to 25 years in prison for Tyco execs Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, Dennis Kozlowski's's lawyer pleaded for leniency for his client by pointing out that even though Kozlowski and Swartz fleeced the company blind, it hadn't collapsed like Enron.

"Tyco is not Enron,” Thomas Curran, a former New York City prosecutor who is now a defense lawyer, said. “Tyco is a real company with a real business plan that still employs thousands of people. ... There are no retirees eating cat food because of Dennis Kozlowski.”

Maybe not, but hopefully Kozlowski will be dining on Fancy Feast "turkey giblet dinner" by the time he gets out of prison. Put a piece of parsley on it, Dennis, and pretend it's pâté.

TES

Interesting. Former HP head Carly Fiorina announced yesterday that she would join the board of Revolution Health, an investment vehicle that America Online Inc. founder Steve Case launched in April.

According to the Washington Post, this is notable because the board consists largely of executives who were prominently booted out of their former positions.

"Among [the board members] are Stephen F. Wiggins, once chief executive of Oxford Health Plans Inc., who was pushed out in 1998; and Franklin D. Raines, former chairman and chief executive of housing finance company Fannie Mae, who stepped down last December after the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered the company to restate about $10.8 billion in previously reported earnings. Then, of course, there is Case himself, who in 2003 was pushed out as chairman of what was then called AOL Time Warner."

Read the full Washington Post article here.

TES 

In the news today: "Price of Lap Top Computers Drops to $1,000." (See full story at http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-price-laptop-computer-drops-1000-/2005/sep/1178050.htm)

Great! Now, everyone will be able to afford a lap top computer, so we can all work from home. Soon we'll have to: between the laptop and a month's worth of gas, the lap top will be the cheaper option.

TES