In a recent story on Bloomberg.com, it was reported that less than one out of every five users of Google Checkout is happy with the payment service. That sounds about right. PayPal has been dominating the online payment processing and transacting markets ever since it was first introduced to the internet in the late 90’s. Google may be Google, but, contrary to the popular belief not everything that Google makes is gold. Google Checkout is a perfect example of this. The service, while simple in many ways, is just too different from the payment giant PayPal for consumers to be able to make the jump effectively. It’s not like switching from Mastercard to Visa.

Another service that Google tried to start up was “Froogle”. Froogle was in a nutshell a Half.com clone. When it comes to the saying “If you can’t beat em, join em” Google has a different approach. “If you can’t beat em, pour money down the drain and refuse to admit that what you are doing is not working.” I can’t say that that theory is wrong all the time though. After all, Google did manage to turn YouTube into the 4th most popular website on the internet overall. When Google bought YouTube everybody was saying it was the worst thing they could do, due to all of the legal trouble YouTube was in. That’s not even taking into account the fact that YouTube was operating at a major loss at the time. Either way, as the #4 visited site on the internet, I doubt you will find many people with legitimate reasons to bash the YouTube business plan.

(more…)

Jelsoft, the company behind the hugely successful forum software vBulletin has just been acquired by Internet Brands Inc. Internet Brands is a leading provider of automotive, travel and home related sites and communities according to vBulletin’s press release. The fact that they have nothing to do with the software industry raises some red flags for me and most likely others. I’m not sure what to think of this right off the bat. Jelsoft claims that business will continue as usual and that the fact that they are now part of a bigger organization means that things will function more smoothly than before. Apparently things will be better than ever now.

I sure hope so. vBulletin is by far the very best forum software on the market. With hundreds of thousands of web based communities using vBulletin it seems odd that a company that essentially runs forums would buy them out. As long as vBulletin continues to be made available to webmasters then I don’t think I have a problem with the acquisition.

Looking at the bright side though, Jelsoft will not have a much higher budget, products and new versions should roll out much faster than before, and in the end even if the company doesn’t improve at all they are still the #1 forum software provider on the internet. I would like to think that the only place to go from here is up. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

Source: vbulletin.com

Trivia games worldwide will need to be reprinting one of their cards soon. “Who is the richest man in the world?” For 13 years the answer has always been “Bill Gates“. Well, 13 is definitely not Mr. Gates’ lucky number. Today that answer changes. Carlos Slim, owner of Mexico based America Movil has just knocked Gates to #2.

America Movil enjoyed a 27% increase in stock price during Q2 2007, which pushed Slim to the #1 richest man in the world with a net worth of approximately $67.8 billion dollars. Gates is now sitting (still quite comfortably) with $59.2 billion in worth. He has been giving a lot of money to charity over the past several years so it would be interesting to see how much money he would have if he would have kept it all. I’m sure we don’t have to say an extra prayer for Bill and Melinda Gates. It’s unlikely that any of us will be greeted by Bill Gates when we go shopping at Walmart next…

This also means that my frequently blogged about Warren Buffet is now sitting on the bronze podiu with a whopping $52 billion. Forbes predicted that Slim could possibly pass Gates earlier this year. It turns out they were right. Any way you slice it, none of these guys should worry about where there next meal is coming from.

Source: SeattlePI.com

The iPhone launch on Friday didn’t go quite as well as Apple had hoped. Several users had trouble activating their phones including a handful of users who were not able to transfer their phone numbers when activating their iPhone. It seems that the iPhone hype may have been short lived. The device costs just over $600 with tax (for the 8GB version). You would think that for $600 Apple could have worked out a few more of these bugs before taking the iPhone to consumers.

Regardless, the phone has been under a great deal of scrutiny for several months now. Many people doubt it’s additional functions will be worth the additional pricetag required. Launch errors aren’t anything new though. With a little work Apple should be able to sort out the inconsistancies and activation bugs. After that is taken care of, it will be easier to decide if the iPhone is really worth the praise it has been given by the press.

(more…)

Apple’s long overdue iPhone will hit retailers Friday. At first glance, it seems that the iPhone is appealing greatly to teens as well as people 20-30 years old. The all in one social networking market is hot right now. YouTube brought “Vloggers” (Video Bloggers) together. MySpace brought casual and social internet users together. It looks like the iPhone will continue where computers and PC based internet left off.

For years business magazines and columnists worldwide have been predicting the next big advertising breakthrough in the form of mobile internet and cell phones. Sure people have been able to browse their favorite websites and check email from cell phones for years, however, with new technology such as the iPhone bridging the gap between consumers and affordable mobile web technology companies are racing to take advantage of their new potential audience. With MySpace receiving roughy 50% the daily traffic of YouTube it only makes sense for Google to take this opportunity to to continue running circles around it’s competitor. Apple announced a deal last week with Google that will provide iPhone users exclusive access to an all new battery saving version of over 10,000 of the most popular YouTube videos. YouTube will release more and more videos in the low bandwidth iPhone ready format eash week as the iPhone rolls out into various markets worldwide.

(more…)

News Corp, the company that owns MySpace is rumored to be in talks with Yahoo regarding a very interesting deal indeed. Apparently the two companies are considering a trade. 100% of MySpace for approximately 25% of Yahoo. Considering that Microsoft was recently considering a $55 Billion dollar purchase of Yahoo, that would essentially value MySpace at just under $14 Billion dollars. Quite an improvement over its’ 900 million dollar sale a few years ago.

I think this would be a good deal for both parties. Yahoo is struggling as it is, so taking over 100% ownership of MySpace while maintaining 75% of itself might be a very good way to diversify a bit. Of course then if Yahoo sells out to Microsoft (which I believe is no longer being discussed) then maybe Microsoft will get ahold of MySpace. Who knows.

It’s very interesting to follow these large buyouts and mergers. I think if Yahoo took over MySpace it could be a good thing. I’m not a big fan of MySpace personally but I think Yahoo’s social networking could be a lot better if it combined with MySpace. Hey maybe Yahoo would change the name of MySpace to YSpace… Highly unlikely considering the name recognition that MySpace commands, but, even so, perhaps if Yahoo took over the social networking giant they would network the accounts with Yahoo accounts and make it easy for MySpace users to play games on the Yahoo Games website.

(more…)

If you follow the tech wars then perhaps you’ve heard of the big clash between Blu-Ray and High Definition DVD. Certain movie producers have refused to release their movies on one or the other, I’m sure due to excessive amounts of cash under the table. I’ve always been a fan of Blu-Ray so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am happy with the latest development in the race for the new format.

Blockbuster Inc has announced that they will exclusively rent Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. This means that in order to rent a high definition movie from Blockbuster, you will have to be a Blu-Ray user. HD-DVD users will be stuck buying the movies, or going to an alternate source for rentals. This shouldn’t be a big problem, however, because according to Blockbuster, over 70% of their customers have been choosing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD when they carried both formats.

(more…)

Staying on my Warren Buffet topic from yesterday I thought I’d post another interesting piece of Buffett news. This is a few months old, but, since nothing has come of it yet I figured it would make a nice update. A few months back Warren Buffett announced that he will be seeking to hire a “replacement” for himself. Obviously the new person will have to meet extremely high standards in order to actually replace what Buffet brings to the table.

Buffet stated that the ideal candidate should be somebody who can “avoid serious risks, including those never before encountered”. Somebody who is independent thinking, emotionally stable, as well as having a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior.

This got me thinking. If the world’s second richest man is looking for those traits in the next “Buffett”, these are traits that I want to work on for myself. Of course I don’t plan on applying for his “apprentice” position, but even so, if those are the traits he is looking for in his ideal replacement candidate, then obviously those are traits that he feels will be necessary in an individual in order to get the job done. As the world’s second richest man, any traits that he feels are needed are traits that I want to pay attention to.

(more…)

Everybody on the internet knows about MySpace. In fact, almost as well known as MySpace is the fact that MySpace profiles have always been a royal pain to edit, customize, or make even bad looking. Yes bad looking. They start out looking horrible and with some careful tweaking you can move from horrible to bad. Then if you have too much time on your hands you can go from bad to decent. That’s about it though. That site is just plain ugly and no amount of profile tweaking can change that.

Well MySpace has just announced the first ever official “MySpace Profile Editor“. At first glance the new editor seems to be a good choice for anybody looking to tweak their profile. The bad news is that MySpace profile editor scripts and sites have always been very popular to own. Now that MySpace is promoting their own internal editor, I expect traffic to third party editors to drop like a rock. I’m glad I’m not in that market.

(more…)

Yes, I am talking about Google, the search engine we all know and love.. well some of us at least. Internet watchdog “Privacy International” recently gave Google the lowest grade it gives out when it comes to how well companies deal with protecting the privacy of their users. Apparently Google is a little too caught up in the constant flow of internet information that they are having trouble remembering to block the flow of their member’s private information.

I find this surprising that Google would receive such a low rating, however, Google fans need not worry just yet. According to Google’s deputy general counsel Nicole Wong, Google claims that the report by Privacy International was based on “inaccuracies and misunderstandings” about Google’s services. She goes on to say “It’s a shame that Privacy International decided to publish its report before we had an opportunity to discuss our privacy practices with them.”

(more…)