The Circle is a promising-sounding peer-to-peer decentralized content application. I haven’t been able to try it yet, so I’m not sure how far along it is. But, with file transfer, instant messaging and news, it sounds quite interesting. Possibly even the first implementation of a blognet that has been created.
Evan Williams of Pyra talks about his recent problems with PayPal. I haven’t yet used my PayPal account for anything, but what he’s describing can be a huge issue for any business trying to use PayPal as their payment system. This is foolish behavior that PP will have to correct quickly if they want to survive. (BTW, this was #3 on DayPop, so people have taken notice.)
Bush seemed to say a lot of silly things while he was compaigning, but it didn’t stop there… Speaking in Japan, Bush talked about “the devaluation issue”. Asian markets are very sensitive to the price of the yen, so talk of devaluation makes people nervous. What Bush had meant was “deflation”. Sure, anyone can make these mistakes… it’s just the frequency and severity that differs.
The NY Times is reporting on the miniscule size of artist payments on PressPlay and MusicNet. All along, the labels have been saying that Napster was bad because the artists don’t get compensated. This article quotes that an artist would get $0.0023 per song downloaded. That doesn’t sound like compensation to me.
The nine states suing Microsoft for anti-trust charges will have access to the Windows source (including the recent XP embedded), because the states claim that they need the source in order to prove that Microsoft could provide versions of Windows without Internet Explorer. That should be interesting… it doesn’t seem like an easy task to go through millions of lines of code (probably with no documentation, unless that was a specified requirement).
WorldCom has decided that geeting rid of the free coffee isn’t enough… No more $25 credit for employees’ long distance bills. Gack.
PayPal went public today, raising $70 million for themselves and watching their stock climb 54%. Their closing price of over $20 a share gives them a market cap of over $1 billion. This is a company with no profits and $100 million a year in sales. Let’s hear it for irrational exuberance! Just wait until PayPal starts getting regulated.
This shows how big a part /. is of Commander Taco (Rob Malda)’s life. He propoesd to his girlfriend online, on Valentine’s Day. Wow. I bet this will easily be number one on Blogdex…
Having worked at a small company that was acquired by WorldCom, I know a number of people who still work there. I had heard before about WorldCom cutting off the coffee supply to the employees, and I’m happy to see that the press has picked up on this, too. WCOM claims they will save $4-6 million a year by not supplying free coffee. How short-sighted are these people? $4M from a $30 BILLION a year company? Sheesh. Sounds like a good time to clean up the resume and find a company that appreciates its employees, rather than viewing them as a liability.
La. asks PayPal to halt service in state - Days after a lawsuit delays its IPO, the online payments company gets more bad news as Louisiana asks the company to cease service until the state licenses it. [CNet] It will be interesting to see how PayPal’s IPO does. This is the first “dotcomish” IPO I’ve seen in a long time.
