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All posts tagged ‘econalypse’

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Early Holiday Spending Suggests Strong Season for TVs, Videogames

Vanessa O'Connell and Miguel Bustill

Consumers are generally cautious heading into the critical holiday shopping season, with preseason trends suggesting that electronics sales may be solid while sales of apparel, particularly women’s styles, could get pummeled.

Spurred by the release of a hot videogame and earlier-than-usual promotions on televisions, U.S. shoppers spent 6.1 percent more on electronics in the first half of November the month, through Nov. 14, than a year ago.

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Vogue Sees Web Lessons in Obama’s Campaign

Russell Adams

The Web consulting firm Blue State Digital helped the Obama campaign raise some $500 million online, catapulting a relative political novice into the Oval Office.

Its next challenge: Help fashion bible Vogue magazine cash in on its far-reaching influence at a time when advertising dollars are bleeding out of print.

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Norwest Venture Partners Goes Big

Pui-Wing Tam

Norwest Venture Partners on Wednesday announced that it had closed a new venture-capital fund sized at $1.2 billion. That’s nearly double the size of the Silicon Valley venture firm’s last fund in 2006, which closed at $650 million.

The new fund is unusual in this day and age amid a tough fundraising environment brought on by the recession.

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Friday, November 13, 2009

IT Spending’s Role in the Economy

Lauren Goode

Efforts to reform the U.S. health-care and bank lending systems are likely to lead to an increase in information-technology spending, said one potential beneficiary, Sudhakar Ram, chairman of IT firm Mastek.

Overhauling the country’s IT systems could cost as much as $250 billion to $300 billion over five to seven years, he said in an interview.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Applied Materials: The Next Tech Layoffs?

Eric Savitz

In a development that only Scrooge and the Grinch would find amusing, the tech industry has entered into a fevered period of pre-holiday job cuts.

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Friday, November 6, 2009

Using Online Tools to Save Time During the Search

Jon Gray

My productivity lapses don’t come from Facebook. My problem is a combination of world news sites and Twitter. Using RescueTime, an online time management tool, I’ve named two productivity goals for myself. One goal sets my unproductive time at less than 90 minutes per day. The other sets my highly productive time at greater than five hours per day.

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E-Commerce Health Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Geoffrey A. Fowler

Depending on whom you ask, U.S. online shopping is either in unprecedented decline–or one of the only bright spots in American retail.

On Thursday, comScore reported that U.S. online spending in the third quarter slipped two percent to $29.6 billion versus last year.

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

PayPal Woos Developers in Bid to Protect Its Turf

Geoffrey A. Fowler and Jessica E. Vascellaro

EBay Inc.’s PayPal plans to unveil a new system that makes it easier for software developers to integrate the online payments system right into their programs–as the company takes new steps to protect its turf.

With the new open software, called Paypal X, users won’t have to type their username and password into a separate PayPal Web site in order to complete a payment.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Slump Sinks Visa Program

Miriam Jordan

A coveted visa program that feeds skilled workers to top-tier U.S. technology companies and universities is on track to leave thousands of spots unfilled for the first time since 2003, a sign of how the weak economy has eroded employment even among highly trained professionals.

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Private-Sale Sites Grow in a Struggling Economy

Marisa Taylor

The success of private-sale sites like Gilt Groupe, which holds daily members-only sales of off-season luxury items, have led to imitators hoping to emulate the success of a business model that’s catching on with recession-strapped consumers.

Private-sale sites let shoppers experience the cachet of owning luxury items without paying full price.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

But in PCs, Windows 7 Is the Spoiler

Justin Scheck and Nick Wingfield

Cash-strapped consumers have been slow to buy personal computers in the recession. But with the launch of Microsoft Corp.’s new Windows 7 operating system Thursday, PC makers are aiming to reverse that trend–and then some.

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California: Too Big Not to Fail?

Jeffrey M. O'Brien

If the world’s eighth-largest economy were a member of the proper religious order, it’d be time to call in a priest to administer last rites.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Consumer Rebound? Not Yet. (At Least, Not In Texas.)

Eric Savitz

There was a telling bit of news on the continued travails of the U.S. consumer today from a small Texas retail chain called Conn’s. (In general, I would say calling a retailer “Conn’s” is not something I would recommend. But I digress.)

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Friday, October 16, 2009

Did PC Makers Overbuild in Anticipation of Windows 7?

Eric Savitz

Comments by Advanced Micro Devices yesterday apparently have triggered worries on the Street that the PC manufacturers, in their zealous optimism about the prospects for Microsoft Windows 7, may have built too many PCs.

As I noted last night, AMD said on its post-earnings conference call with the Street that it expects a less-than-seasonal sequential increase in Q4 revenues, due in part to the “the big build we’ve seen of PCs in anticipation of the Win 7 launch.”

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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Lawyer’s Unemployment Benefits Yanked Over $1 A Day From Blog

David K. Randall

Does writing a blog constitute work?

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