Monday, December 3, 2007

Weird Shoes








































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AMD expects chip pricing to stay competitive

Advanced Micro Devices sees pricing in the market remaining competitive, and aims to return to profitability soon, Chief Executive Hector Ruiz said Thursday.

AMD, the No. 2 maker of chips, controls about a fifth of the market for the central processing units at the heart of the world's 1 billion personal computers and servers.

It has been locked in a price war with market leader Intel and has reported four straight quarters of net losses.

"The good news is that for consumers, prices keep going down," Ruiz told reporters after inaugurating a research and development facility in Bangalore, which is India's technology hub.

"The bad news is we always have to figure out how to still do that and hopefully make money. It's a very competitive industry and I don't see pricing being anything but competitive in any segment in this industry," he said.

Last month, AMD posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss of $396 million on higher sales of chips for notebooks and signaled the brutal price war with larger rival Intel had abated.

Ruiz said AMD aims to return to profitability soon.

"That is our No. 1 goal right now," he said.

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Spam's end? Maybe, if time allows

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Twenty-five years ago Steven T. Kirsch built a better mouse. Now he believes he has found a way to create a better trap--for spam, not mice--if he has enough time to finish his project.

An MIT-trained engineer, Kirsch was frustrated by the quality of the first computer mice in 1982, so he set out to improve them by incorporating an optical sensor.

Since then he has started four companies, all based on his frustrations with existing products or services. He has made forays into word processing document design, accelerating the Web, and in 1997 Infoseek, his search engine company, was the third ranking company in Web search. In many ways Kirsch, who is 50 years old, has come to exemplify what distinguishes Silicon Valley--a blend of engineering skills with persistent entrepreneurship.

Along the way he has amassed a personal fortune of about $230 million, a success that has permitted him and his wife to become significant philanthropists in Silicon Valley by contributing more than $75 million to the United Way campaign and other causes through his foundation.

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Ad targeting improves as Web sites track consumer habits

NEW YORK (AP) -- Based on the weather reports and restaurant listings you check out online, Yahoo Inc. has a good idea where you live. Based on searches you've done, the Web portal might also know where you want to go.

Don't be surprised then to suddenly see an advertisement on flight deals between those two places. It's what United Airlines did with an ad on Yahoo earlier this year as people browsed for something completely unrelated to travel.

Elsewhere, online hangout Facebook is mining friends' buying habits, and major Internet portals have bought companies to expand their reach and capabilities for "behavioral targeting" -- all so advertisers can try to hit you with what they believe you're most likely to buy, even as doing so means amassing more data on you.

"When you are online today, you've been labeled and tagged as this type of consumer in milliseconds," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "All of a sudden you are exposed to a vast number of invisible salespeople who are peering over your personal details to figure out the best way to sell to you."

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Sony BMG, Yahoo ink online video deal

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Sony BMG Music Entertainment has inked a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc. that clears the way for people to upload files with music or video content by the record company's artists to Yahoo, the companies said Tuesday.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Like similar deals, the agreement calls for Sony BMG to receive a cut of advertising revenue,Yahoo (Charts, Fortune 500) said.

The deal also covers the distribution of music videos via Yahoo player applications and widgets that computer users can place on other Web sites.

The agreement marks the first time Sunnyvale-based Yahoo has reached a deal with a major recording company over licensing content in user-created videos.

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