Yahoo! is being sued by shareholders for attempting to avoid Microsoft’s proposed $44.6 billion takeover.
Two Detroit pension funds have filed a lawsuit against the internet giant, saying it shouldn’t have been so dismissive towards Microsoft’s approaches.
According to reports, five other lawsuits have also been filed against Yahoo! saying the company didn’t have the best interests of shareholders and pension-holders at heart when failing to negotiate Microsoft’s offer.
The Detroit lawsuit reads: “Yahoo’s directors cannot ‘just say no’ indefinitely to legitimate acquisition offers. Likewise, Yahoo’s directors cannot pursue transactions that do not require shareholder approval for the primary purpose of making Yahoo unattractive to Microsoft.
“Regardless of their emotional ties to Yahoo and their desire to retain their positions as directors at the company, the Yahoo directors owe fiduciary duties to Yahoo and its shareholders,” it continued.
Yahoo! is understood to be willing to negotiate with Microsoft, however, and has been rumored to be in talks with other companies, including Google and News Corp, over alternative deals.
Yahoo! was unavailable for comment.
I though these were some pretty good tips for all the bloggers out there.
Why Trackbacks are Useful For Blogs
By Terry Detty
This week we’re going to look at trackbacks – what they are, how they work, why they’re important to blog traffic and how to get more. After you’ve read this article you’ll know just about everything you need to know about the subject.
What are trackbacks?
The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain so we’ll use an example. Let’s say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually putting a link on your site to that blog, but if you do that, the person whose blog post you’re linking to won’t know that unless you tell them.
This is where trackbacks come in. A trackback is a program which will notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.
How do they work?
A blog that has a trackback system set up will have a link at the bottom of every blog post. This link will say something like “Blog This!” Anyone who clicks the link can then put a link to that blog post on their site. The person who posted the original blog will then be notified via email that another site has linked to their blog posting. Additionally, the link that was clicked (“Blog This!”) will change to “Trackbacks.” From that point forward, the “Trackbacks” link will keep track of how many people have chosen to blog about that particular post. So after the first trackback, it will say “Trackbacks: 1.” The number of trackbacks recorded will be updated as they occur.
Why are trackbacks important to blog traffic?
The easy answer is that trackbacks are important because they increase awareness of your blog. Trackbacks also make a blog seem more credible.
Anytime a person makes a trackback on your blog, they make a post on their own blog about your blog. This, in turn, lets their readers know about your blog. Chances are, their readers will want to visit your blog. If they see something they like, they”ll keep coming back for more, which means you”ll have a whole new fan base of readers. That means more traffic for your blog.
Can you imagine what would happen if 5 different bloggers trackbacked a post on your blog? Depending on the popularity of their blog, that could genrate hundreds of new readers for your blog! Pretty incredible, right?
Also, every trackback made, assuming it’s a legitimate one (some trackbacks are spam), adds credibility to your blog. Blogs with high amounts of trackbacks look credible because lots of people like the posts enough to trackback them.
How can I increase my trackbacks?
The easiest and best way to increase trackbacks is to post frequently . If you post 2-3 times a week, people will have quite a few posts that they can trackback, but it’s imporant that these posts contain good content, which is easy to relate to and entertaining to read. If you post a long, boring rant, people probably won”t want to trackback that. In contrast, if your rant is entertaining (and one that people are likely to agree with), you”ll get trackbacked.
The number of trackbacks you get is totally dependent on the number of visitors your blog receives and how frequently you’re able to make quality posts. If you”ve got a good amount of visitors and write good blog posts, you”ll get trackbacks. It”s a win-win situation for you!
To see Part 2 of this video, click here: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1138353221/bclid1076788816/bctid1138096808
Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing Web development skills in HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, Flash and Flex in order to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.
A Primer on the Ajax Phenomenon This is best for use in web applicationWith all the hype about “Ajax web applications”, you could be forgiven for assuming Ajax is some radical new plugin, akin to Macromedia Flash. And you would therefore be under the impression that Ajax is out of bounds until you upgrade your “so last month” browser, or at least download the coveted “Ajax plugin”.
Good news: You can run Ajax right now. At least, assuming you have a web browser from the past few years – IE, Firefox, Safari, or Opera. Have you seen Google Maps or perhaps GMail? They’re both Ajax applications. So are Zuggest and the AjaxPatterns Wiki Demo .
What do they all have in common? All these applications take a great leap forth towards the richness of standard desktop applications. No longer are you forced to wait five seconds for the page to reload every time you click on something. Ajax applications change in real time. They can let you drag boxes around, they can refresh themselves with new information, they can completely re-arrange the page without clearing it. And there’s no special plugin required. Ajax is just a style of design, one that milks all the features of modern browsers to produce something that feels less web and more desktop.
Applications can act more like and be developed more like the days of Visual Basic, Delphi, PowerBuilder, C++ with GUI frameworks, etc. Thus, it is 90’s GUI features but with a web browser: it strives to meld the best of web and the best of desktop GUI’s. Web browser standards were originally designed for e-brochures only. Business forms and other needs were hacked into this e-brochure framework over time and it is clear that this after-thought retrofitting for different purposes has been ugly. Ajax attempts to remedy this.
Some of the characteristics of Ajax applications include:
- Continuous Feel: Traditional web applications force you to submit a form, wait a few seconds, watch the page redraw, and then add some more info. Forgot to enter the area code in a phone number? Start all over again. Sometimes, you feel like you’re in the middle of a traffic jam: go 20 metres, stop a minute, go 20 metres, stop a minute … How many E-Commerce sales have been lost because the user encountered one too many error message and gave up the battle? Ajax offers a smooth ride all the way. There’s no page reloads here – you’re just doing stuff and the browser is responding. The server is only telling the screen what changed rather than having it redraw the whole screen from scratch.
- Real-Time Updates: As part of the continous feel, Ajax applications can update the page in real-time. Currently, news services on the web redraw the entire page at intervals, e.g. once every 15 minutes. In contrast, it’s feasible for a browser running an Ajax application to poll the server every few seconds, so it’s capable of updating any information directly on the parts of the page that need changing. The rest of the page is unaffected.
- Graphical Interaction: Flashy backdrops are abundant on the web, but the basic mode of interaction has nevertheless mimicked the 1970s-style form-based data entry systems. Ajax represents a transition into the world of GUI controls visible on present-day desktops. Thus, you will encounter animations such as fading text to tell you something’s just been saved, you will be able to drag items around, you will see some static text suddenly turn into an edit field as you hover over it.
- Language Neutrality – Ajax strives to be equally usable with all the popular languages rather than be tied to one language. Past GUI attempts such as VB, Tk, and Swing tended to be married to one specific programming language. Ajax has learned from the past and rejects this notion. To help facilitate this, XML is often used as a declarative interface language.
To prevent any confusion, these things are not characteristic of Ajax:
- Proprietary: “Ajax” is perhaps one of the most common brand names in history, but in the present context, “Ajax” is neither the name of a company nor a product. It’s not even the name of a standard or committee. It’s a label for a design approach involving several related technologies and open standards such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Each of these is “open” in the sense that its based on a published standard governed by a standards body and able to be implemented in any browser, free of legal and information constraints.
- Plugin-Based: Ajax applications do not require users to install browser plugins, or desktop software for that matter.
- Browser Specific: As long as the user is working with a relatively recent, mainstream, browser (say 2001+), the application should work roughly the same way. Browser-specific applications somewhat defeat the purpose of Ajax.
- Limited Capabilities: Some Ajax applications are certainly doing things people never dreamed were possible on the web, but there are still substantial restrictions of the web platform. For example: multimedia capabilities, local data storage, real-time graphics, interaction with hardware such as printers and webcams. Support for some of these are improving in recent browsers, some can be achieved by delegating to Flash, but many are simply not possible, and if required, would rule out Ajax.
- Performance Concerns: Constant interaction between browser and server can make an application feel unresponsive. There are, however, quite a few well-known patterns for performance optimization such as browser-side caching. These usually suffice, even for fast-paced applications like stock trading, but Ajax still might not work for really time-critical applications such as machine control.
- Internet Access Required: The user can’t access an Ajax application in the absence of a network connection.
- Second Programming Language: Serious Ajax applications require some knowledge of Javascript. Many developers are discovering that Javascript is actually a more capable language than at first assumed, but there is nevertheless an imposition to use a language different to that on the server-side.
- Easily Abused: As with any powerful technology, Ajax concepts can be abused by careless programmers. The patterns on this site are intended to guide developers towards more usable solutions, but the fact remains that Ajax isn’t always used in a manner that supports usability.
This article can be found at: http://ajaxpatterns.org/Whats_Ajax
Google Slams Microsoft Bid For Yahoo!
Article from Forbes by:
Wendy Tanaka, 02.03.08, 9:52 PM ET
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BURLINGAME, CALIF. -
In an apparent effort to protect its hefty share of the online search-advertising market, Google on Sunday accused Microsoft of trying to unfairly dominate the Internet by bidding for Yahoo!
In a blog post, David Drummond, chief legal counsel for Google (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ), wrote: “Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies–and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”
By “new, adjacent markets,” Drummond clearly means the growing and lucrative search advertising market, in which Google is the undisputed leader with about 75% of search-ad revenues worldwide.
An article posted Sunday night on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal suggested that Google might take active steps to help Yahoo! stay independent, too. Google declined to confirm the report, which stated that Chief Executive Eric Schmidt had offered assistance to Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Although it’s unlikely Google would try to buy Yahoo! outright, it could assist others, or craft a package that guarantees Yahoo! more advertising revenue.
In his Sunday blog post, Drummond also pointed out that a union of Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people ) and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO – news – people ) would dominate the instant message and e-mail sectors and would combine the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. “Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ e-mail, IM and Web-based services?” he asked. “Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions–and consumers deserve satisfying answers. … This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.”
Google’s assertions, however, sounded a lot like the pot calling the kettle black. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant has been accused repeatedly of unfairly dominating online search and advertising.
The questions that Google raised about Microsoft are similar to those that European regulators are mulling in evaluating Google’s proposed acquisition of online display advertising specialist, DoubleClick. U.S. regulators approved the deal late last year, but the European Commission has yet to decide and has expressed concerns about possible anti-competitive aspects of the deal. The commission is expected to weigh in by early April.
Google needs DoubleClick to become a force in display advertising, an area that Yahoo! dominates. Unfortunately for Yahoo!, that dominion is less lucrative than the keyword advertising where Google reigns–one of the factors that led to the recent announcement by Yahoo! of disappointing earnings. Some news reports Sunday speculated that Google opposed Microsoft’s bid because it might be trying to wrangle a deal of its own with Yahoo! in display advertising.
Spectators throughout the industry have suggested that a Microsoft-Yahoo! alliance might actually provide a competitive boost to the industry (See: ” Microsoft Finally Gets The Competitive Spirit”)
Soon after Google lobbed its shot at Microsoft, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant issued a rebuttal. “The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising,” Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. “The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet. Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation and the protection of privacy on the Internet. We believe that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will advance these goals.”
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