Archive for 'General'
As By reuters : Universal and YouTube to launch Vevo in months
Posted on 10. Apr, 2009 by admin.
NEW YORK, April 9 (Reuters) – Google Inc’s (GOOG.O) YouTube and Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, said on Thursday they will launch a premium music video website as they bid to increase revenue from YouTube’s huge usage.
The new advertiser-supported site, featuring professional videos, will be called Vevo and is expected to launch in coming months, the companies said.
The deal is a boost for YouTube, which has been under increasing pressure from music labels and publishers who are frustrated that the popular site has been unable to pay higher fees for rights to use their music and videos.
Talks broke down late last year between YouTube and the No.3 music company Warner Music Group (WMG.N). Last month YouTube was forced to block all music videos in the UK and last week it had to do the same in Germany in a similar dispute with song publishers over money.
Vevo is an attempt to address this disparity between YouTube’s popularity, it has 100 million users in the U.S. alone according to comScore, and its relatively low advertising rate or CPMs (cost per thousand page views) as it is called.
The new site will be a music video hub wholly owned by Universal, a unit of French media group Vivendi (VIV.PA).
It will feature higher-quality videos, as opposed to the typical grainy and often user-generated videos on YouTube.
The idea is for Vevo to attract big-name advertisers and other content-owner partners.
“The rationale is to help make Vevo a place that brands feel more comfortable,” said Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal’s eLabs.
“Ultimately we think it will increase in effect the CPMs and drive more revenue to YouTube and more revenue to the music business than they can have today,” said Caraeff.
YouTube and Universal Music will share advertising revenue generated by the site. Both sides are betting that building a premium site will help increase advertising rates. Many big brand owners have avoided advertising alongside YouTube’s ad hoc mix of user-generated videos.
David Eun, Google’s vice president of strategic partnerships, said the higher quality professional content would appeal to advertisers
“As we continue to work more closely with advertisers and potential sponsors we have a good sense of the type of content that they’re attracted to,” said Eun.
Industry watchers will likely compare Vevo with Hulu, a high quality online video service jointly owned by NBC Universal and News Corp (NWSA.O) with about a third of the number of users of YouTube.
Hulu which features popular TV shows and some movies, has been more successful at selling advertising inventory to big brand owners than YouTube.
Vevo will also serve as a syndication platform called the Vevo Music Network which will power music videos on partner sites.
Universal Chief Executive Doug Morris is said to be in talks on bringing other music companies on board to give fans a comprehensive music site. Talks with EMI Group [LNDONE.UL] and Sony Music (6758.T), which renewed its YouTube deal in February, will likely be more straightforward than talks with Warner Music. But Universal is hoping to have all four majors and others on board before launch.
“The feedback from the fan and advertiser is that ultimately they want all of the premium music content and not just Universal Music Group,” said Caraeff.
Caraeff declined to comment on whether the other music companies could negotiate for a stake in Vevo. The music companies jointly own stakes in other ventures including MySpace Music.
Plans for Vevo come in addition to the renewal and extension of YouTube’s existing recordings and publishing rights deal to feature video content from Universal artists such as U2, 50 Cent and Kanye West. (Reporting by Yinka Adegoke, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Tim Dobbyn)
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Facebook CFO Resigned
Posted on 10. Apr, 2009 by admin.
Facebook confirmed on tuesday , Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu is leaving. Mr yu was working just less than two years. The former YouTube exec, who bypassed a job with VC firm to join Facebook, gave no reason for his departure.
Microsoft bought a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook for US$240 million (S$365 million) in 2007, but yet facebook is privately held firm still growing at rapid phase even in resession, when other IT giants are lagging behind.
Facebook chief operating officer Mark Zuckerberg has said in recent interviews that the company is focused on growth, not revenue. ‘We are grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish, Despite the poor economic climate, we are pleased that our financial performance is strong and we are well positioned for the next stage of our growth.’
Facebook says it’s looking for a CFO with “public company experience.” He is the latest Facebook executive to leave, following co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Chief Technology Officer Adam D’Angelo.
Last year, Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, an engineering manager at Facebook, left to form a startup to build software they hope will be “to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life,” according to a note on Rosenstein’s Facebook profile.
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In recession Professionals Find New Livelihood Selling Frankfurter In america
Posted on 10. Apr, 2009 by admin.
As per by wall-street Journals
BANDERA, Texas — In hard times, some small-town Americans are turning to a new livelihood with relish.
Among them are Andrea and Ben Guajardo. They began selling hot dogs from a pushcart on Main Street in November.
Ms. Guajardo is a grant administrator for a health-care system. Her husband, Ben, is a pipeline operator. Theirs is the first hot-dog stand in Bandera, pop. 957, that anybody here can remember.
“It’s a backup plan,” says Ms. Guajardo, a mother of four. “No one knows what’s going to happen with the economy, and I don’t want to have to scrounge for a minimum-wage job.”
Facing pay cuts and weakened job security, more Americans are turning to this century-old, big-city trade in outposts like Bandera, where cowboys on horseback share the road with motorcyclists. Many of these vendors are working professionals with day jobs, ranging from real-estate agents to train operators.
Sales of carts, which start at about $2,000 new, have heated up in the past year. “Every model is…taking off,” says Joel Goetz, owner of American Dream Hot Dog Carts Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla. Since January, he has sold about 25 carts a week, 15 more than usual.
“Business is really off the charts,” says Dan Jackson, a division manager at Nation’s Leasing Services in Newbury Park, Calif. Leases for hot-dog carts account for about three-quarters of sales, and revenue is triple what it was this time a year ago, he says.
Hot dog vendors are a familiar sight in big cities around the country. For one Texas family, their weekend business is bringing in extra cash amid a slumping economy. Sarah Needleman reports from Bandera, Texas.
Today’s cart buyers are generally older and have more white-collar work experience than was traditionally the case, says Will Hodgskiss, president and “top dog” at Willy Dog Ltd., a New York cart manufacturer. “People are either buying these carts in anticipation of a layoff or to supplement their incomes,” he says. Willy Dog’s sales are up 30% from March 2007.
Street Food of Choice
Hot dogs are the street food of choice for vendors because frankfurters are sold precooked and therefore tend to undergo less scrutiny from state and city health departments. They’re also popular. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans typically consume seven billion hot dogs, according to the American Meat Institute’s National Hot Dog & Sausage Council.
“It’s a very recession-proof business,” says Kurt Horlacher, a former sheet-metal worker who co-owns four hot-dog stands in Sarasota, Fla., with his wife, Renee, a former registered nurse.
The two say their sales have increased 20% annually since they started two years ago, and they plan to open three more stands later this year. Their eight employees, who are paid $8 an hour, include laid-off professionals and part-time workers looking to augment their earnings. “I get three to five people applying for jobs each week,” says Mr. Horlacher.
A 25% increase in year-over-year cart sales has prompted one manufacturer, All American Hot Dog Carts Inc., to offer classes in how to succeed in wiener work. Later this month, Hot Dog University will cover everything from the right way to squirt mustard (in a swirling motion with a quick flick of the wrist) to how to heat up buns (steam them over the dogs for two minutes before serving).
[hot dog]
Then there’s the art of the sell. “You got to schmooze people,” says Louie Di Raimondo, the Miami company’s founder and self-appointed hot-dog king.
A skilled cart dealer in a pedestrian-heavy area can net up to $400 a day, say many vendors and cart-company officials. Newer dealers and those in less-ideal locations make one-third to half that amount. Weekend and event-only vendors, like the Guajardos, say that when the weather is good, they too can turn a hefty profit.
The Guajardos manage their two-wheeled stainless-steel hot-dog cart just on weekends, from about 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., in this Texas Hill Country downtown dotted with hitching posts, heavy-duty pickup trucks and cowboys leading cattle. They set up again on Saturday nights outside local honky-tonks like the Longhorn Saloon. They average $1,150 in take-home earnings each weekend selling roughly 400 dogs, plus drinks, chips and pickles. The couple’s four children often help out during the day.
“I tell them, ‘Your mom’s going to pay for your college education with hot dogs,” says Ms. Guajardo, while directing her oldest son, 13-year-old Ben, to put some more cans of soda and bottled water on ice. The business is named after another son, 6-year-old “Big Lou.”
Before they started, “you could find a flying frog easier than a hot-dog stand,” said 75-year-old William Ellis recently as he waited for a Chicago-style frankfurter, including neon green relish and sport peppers atop a poppy-seed bun.
From the Independent Street Blog
* How to Start Your Own Hot-Dog-Cart Business
For others, hot-dogging is a stopgap. Real-estate investor Marty Katzenberger turned to it after the housing market tanked and he couldn’t sell any of his properties. “I found that I’m a little clumsy with my hot dogs,” says the 72-year-old, who withdrew $4,200 from his retirement savings to get started at a Sarasota, Fla., beach resort. Mr. Katzenberger, who generates an average of $150 in profits a day and works five days a week, says he’s considering moving to a new location to boost his earnings further.
The work — which requires hours of standing — can be quite an adjustment for people accustomed to sitting behind desks at 9-to-5 jobs. There’s also a lot of preparation and cleaning involved.
Then there’s the growing competition. Many small cities and towns have never had to worry much about enforcing laws that limit the number of pushcarts — until now.
Connie Means, a former college math professor who owns four wiener stands in Gadsden, Ala., recently encountered her first competition since starting her business in 2003. It came from a husband and wife who had previously sought her advice on becoming hot-dog vendors. “I tried to help them,” says Ms. Means, who makes about $42,000 annually working six days a week. “I didn’t realize they were going to set up two or three blocks from me.”
Growing Competition
Gadsden officials say there are more competitors on the way. The municipality of about 37,000 is now considering changes to a vending ordinance that would require new carts to be farther apart from one another. “They all want to be in a four-block radius,” says Shane Ellison, a city planner.
After Jerry and Sandra Mottola ordered a $3,000 hot-dog cart online recently, they discovered that there were only two available locations zoned for the purpose in their hometown of Haverhill, Mass. A local hardware store rejected the couple’s request to set up on its property. Ultimately, they scored an open spot near a courthouse, library and shopping plaza.
Mr. Mottola hopes his new business, Family Hot Dog, will supplement his sagging income as a home contractor. “I’m creating my own stimulus plan,” he says. “I’m not waiting for the president.”
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Macromedia has publicly accessible XML feeds
Posted on 01. Apr, 2009 by admin.
<!– @page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } H3 { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>
Macromedia has publicly accessible XML feeds available from the Developer Center. The XML feed contains information about all the latest articles and resources. The Developer Center team updates the feed whenever new content is added to Developer Center.
Why are doing this? The idea came from our developers who wanted to be able to display links to the latest Macromedia news and resources on their websites. We’re making this feed available so that developers can use this information in their Macromedia Flash applications and other parts of their websites.
The XML feed is an RSS 1.0 feed. This feed follows the RSS 1.0 standard.
Note: There was a previous version of the Developer Center XML feed. The first feed was the original Macromedia Resource Feed and has been discontinued. This feed had a custom DTD defined by Macromedia and was designed specifically for the Macromedia Developer center. Use the new RSS 1.0 feed instead.
Macromedia Developer Center RSS 1.0 Feed
The Macromedia Developer Center Center RSS feed is an RSS 1.0 feed which contains links to all articles, tutorials and other resources published on the Macromedia Developer Center. The feed uses the Dublin Core Module to provide additional information fields to the feed.
Macromedia Product RSS Feeds
The Macromedia Product RSS Feeds broadcast product-specific technical information. This includes product updates, security bulletins, and TechNotes, as well as the Developer Center articles included in the Developer Center RSS Feed. Each feed contains information from various sources pertaining to a single product—perfect for developers who specialize in one or two and need to have all the latest product news.
Using the XML feeds
So how are these feeds used? It depends on what application you want to use them in. Here’s a brief overview of two ways to use the XML feeds.
ColdFusion MX
ColdFusion MX has native support for parsing XML. You can use the XML feed as a data source within ColdFusion to create dynamic content for an HTML page or Macromedia Flash application.
Macromedia Flash MX 2004
Macromedia provides the RSS 1.0 feed in an environment where Flash developers can consume it from any domain. The server hosting the RSS feed has a crossdomain.xml policy file that lets all public users consume the feed. For more information on cross-domain security and the crossdomain.xml file.
Macromedia Flash Player has XML parsing capabilities built-in XML parsing capabilities. This means that you can load the XML into the player, parse it, and pull out the information you need. In Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004, you can use the XMLConnector component to connect to the feed. (To make it even simpler, use the Data Connection wizard to connect to the feed. This is the most direct way to consume the feed.
You could also have the Flash movie load the XML through a middleware page (such as ColdFusion) which resides on the same server as the Flash movie. The middleware page retrieves the XML data, and returns it to Flash. For instructions and downloadable example files
Basically, the Flash movie would use the XML.load action with the CFM file instead of trying to load the XML directly. The ColdFusion page would then load the XML from the actual XML document, and then send it back to Flash.
Reference Adobe