Siri - A semantic smart virtual personal assistant, chosen by Frederic Lardinois. "Siri is one of the most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years. Imagine if you could just talk to you phone and tell it to call you a /> [...]
Wed Feb 24, 2010 15:40 pm
Fallout From Financial Reform Bill May Hamper Angel Investing
Throughout the spring, we covered the financial reform legislation as it wound its way through committee and Congress. The final version - Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act - was signed into effect by President Obama on July 21. And while some of the provisions that were most troubling in earlier versions were axed before the final bill was passed, there is still a sense that the repercussions from the legislation might dampen investment, particularly at the early stage and particularly from angel investors.
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Liz Fries, a partner at Goodwin Proctor explained to ReadWriteWeb today what some of the implications of the financial reform bill might be.
Income Requirements for Accredited Investors
When the Senate Banking Committee approved an early version of the bill, it increased the income thresholds for "accredited investors" would have required the SEC to revisit these regularly "to reflect the percentage increase in the cost of living." These numbers - $1 million in net worth or an annual income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years - were adopted in the early Eighties, and adjusting these for inflation would have changed that dollar figure dramatically. Many experts estimated that these changes could have eliminated over half of current angel investors. The National Venture Capital Association, the Angel /> [...]
Thu Jul 29, 2010 18:00 pm
Google Offers On2 An Additional $26.5 Million
Squeaky wheels may get a little grease, but apparently, it's better still to be an angry and litigious shareholder. Following Google's acquisition offer to On2 in August, On2 shareholders complained, and now, they may receive an extra $26.5 million for their trouble.
As we reported earlier, Google offered to acquire On2 for 60 cents per share (or $106.5 million in all). Then On2 gave its best quarterly financial report in more than a year, and shareholders were unable to find any evidence that any company other than Google had been given a chance to bid on it.
Two lawsuits were filed in an attempt to block the acquisition as a result.
So - at least to some degree - Google's folded. A press release announced this morning that the search giant is willing to part with an additional 15 cents per share (which equals about $26.5 million and an overall increase of 25 percent).
Google, which has a market cap of almost $193 billion at the moment, won't miss the extra money. The more interesting matter is whether this incident will start any sort of trend, with other companies' investors also trying to bargain for better deals in the future.
Related Articles:
> Schmidt: Google Serious/> [...]
Thu Jan 07, 2010 07:30 am
Google's Search Indexing, Now Fully Caffeinated
Most of a year ago we asked "Will Google's Caffeine Update Really Change Search Results?" At that time, Google had announced a beta launch of a new indexing system for their search results. It took a while to roll that launch all the way out. It took until today.
"Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before."
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To refresh the old system Google re-analyzed the entirety of its cache. This created a lag in the results. With Caffeine, they say, they now analyze the web continuously in small portions, updating the search index as they go.
Whether the speed and relevancy claims that Google is making will be born out now that Caffeine is fully in effect remains, still, to be seen. Whether it is provable quantitatively or not, the Web remains for its users more of a process or relationship than a thing. So user taste with the new system will be the proof of the pudding.
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Tue Jun 08, 2010 19:45 pm
Apps on the iPhone, there are so very many of them - how's a person to find the best ones? We look at a whole lot of them here at ReadWriteWeb and we'd like to share with you some of our favorites we've discovered in the month of February.
