corporate

It took 20 years, but here it is--again: the new and improved flash-bang grenade.

Sandia National Laboratories, which created the original Mk 141 flash-bang two decades ago, is having a second go at marketing a "fuel air" version of an old SWAT standby that it says is far safer for law enforcement and the military.

Traditional flash-bangs are basically big fire crackers--the "flash powder," a mixture of aluminum and potassium perchlorate dust, explodes quickly when ignited and produces an intensely bright light along with its huge bang. The body or canister is generally a steel tube … Read more

Following earlier news that Microsoft was recalculating its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, it has become clear what the company has decided to do. Microsoft has thrown down the gauntlet, as evidenced by a letter Saturday from CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo's board of directors. Here's the quote that sums up the entire letter:

"If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board.&… Read more

Why does AOL have a thing for acquiring companies with silly names? (Last month, it bought widget maker Goowy.

My colleague Dan Farber weighed in earlier Thursday on whether Bebo can "save" AOL, a question that remains impossible to answer in the near term.

Truth be told, I've compiled a stack of old magazine articles since the turn of the century (I love saying that phrase) detailing the "challenge at hand" for, first, the merged AOL Time Warner and then Time Warner, which dropped AOL from its moniker in 2003. At a certain point, however, … Read more

My in-laws were in town this past weekend, escaping the Wisconsin snowstorms for a few sunny days in Silicon Valley. Hanging out with them was a welcome break from all the usual nonsense we call day-to-day life.

It got me thinking about how infrequently we take a step back from our gadget-filled, workaholic lives to gain some perspective. How often do you ask yourself if you like what you're doing, if you're on the right track, or if you should be doing anything differently?

The same goes for companies. After all, companies are made up of people. Executives and directors are people. How often do they step back and assess the company's technology, products and services, and strategy with respect to the competition?… Read more

MySpaceTV, the video platform run by the popular social network, announced Tuesday the launch of Special Delivery, a new hidden-camera reality show.

The premise of Special Delivery's short videos is to catch delivery employees (pizza, packages, and the like) in awkward situations, roping them into stunts like "Would you do a birthday dance for my dog?" and "Will you help me propose to the love of my life?" Naturally, there's a camera hidden somewhere so it's all caught on film.

Special Delivery is the second project that MySpace.com has co-developed for its … Read more

Crises happen. They happen to all companies and to all people. They happen in our personal lives and in our professional lives. By definition, crises bring change, big change. They can change the entire trajectory of your life or your company's future. That's why how we behave in a crisis, how we manage a crisis, is such a big deal.

For example, Yahoo is going through a crisis right now. It's attempting to reinvent itself. Microsoft's bid to buy the company further complicates matters. The way Yahoo's board handles this crisis will determine the fate of the company and its thousands of employees and shareholders. That's a pretty big deal.

One company's crisis can have a ripple effect on others. You might say that Microsoft is attempting to capitalize on Yahoo's crisis. In so doing, the software giant has created its own. Negotiating tens of billions of dollars to acquire a large company and remake its Internet business is definitely crisis material.… Read more

Here's an innovative approach to facilitating social innovation: a "collaborative competition" leveraging sports.

Ashoka's Changemakers and Nike have partnered to open a worldwide search for projects that use the transformative power of sport to promote social change. Ashoka is a citizen-sector support system for social entrepreneurs. Changemakers is building the world's first global online "open source" community competing to surface the best social solutions, and then collaborating to refine, enrich, and implement those solutions.

Changemakers invited users worldwide to submit innovations to what it calls a "collaborative competition" -- an "… Read more

It's no secret that InterActiveCorp is facing a corporate hurricane. But CEO Barry Diller's plan to split the company in five parts might not calm the waters.

In the fall, the sprawling new media conglomerate announced a plan to spin off many of its brands into a total of five publicly traded companies, focusing its core business on ad-supported media, in order to revive investor confidence. It needs that revival: on Wednesday morning, the company posted its 2007 fourth-quarter earnings, reporting a net loss of $369.9 million as revenues rose eight percent to $1.86 billion.

IAC … Read more

Just about everyone else on the Internet has written on the potential acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft for $44.6 billion, but I thought that I would weigh in on what I think this might mean for search and Web services.

According to ComScore's search share numbers for December 2007, Google has 58.4 percent of the market share, with Yahoo and Microsoft trailing at 22.9 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively. If Microsoft and Yahoo combine forces and change nothing, that will put them at 32.7 percent to Google's 58.4 percent. While those numbers … Read more