financing

Investment bank UBS has cut its estimates on digital-ad growth, in conjunction with gloominess about the overall advertising industry. The sector will continue to grow, a report said, but it will slow down significantly.

"UBS estimates that Internet will remain the only segment with positive growth until 2010," a release from the company read, "though the growth rate could drop as low as 10.4 percent in 2009." That's still optimistic compared with some folks in the industry, like Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, who released his own predictions this week that Internet advertising will … Read more

Dell employees received a memo from founder and CEO Michael Dell recently asking them to take some time off without pay.

It's not meant to be punitive, but rather a measure to help the Round Rock, Texas, company save some money as the economy continues on its uncertain path. The request made to employees is also an effort to avoid possible layoffs, according to a report in the Austin Business Journal.

A Dell spokesman confirmed the memo's existence and said that it was part of a wider program of cost saving that had been instituted. Besides offering one … Read more

Japanese electronics maker Pioneer is set to report wider financial losses, and has named Susumu Kotani as the company's new president.

Company board member Kotani will replace Tamihiko Sudo as president. On March 31, Pioneer will report a net loss of 78 billion yen, or $783 million, the company revealed. It will be the company's fifth straight quarter without a profit.

To cut costs, the company will lay off 2,000 workers, according to a Bloomberg report. Pioneer had already planned to stop making plasma panels for its flat-screen TVs by February 2009 (Panasonic will supply the panels instead). … Read more

Buddi is a finance managing program that's poised with potential. Open source and free, it offers an extensible experience for both Windows and Mac users that's wrapped up in a simple tabbed interface. As they say in the money biz, it looks great on paper.

The application can create new accounts from four credit types--cash, checking, investment, and savings--and five debit types--credit card, liability, line of credit, loan, and prepaid account. Users can create their own account types, too, and take brief notes on an account. Strangely, the notes don't seem to surface anywhere besides the window … Read more

So you have a great idea for a BlackBerry application, but like the rest of us in the poor old U. S. of A., you have no money to develop it.

Enter the Jump Start Financing Initiative, which provides entrepreneurs with capital infusions of up to $250,000. The initiative is designed to bring new and innovative ideas into the development process faster, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on building smartphone applications instead of raising capital.

Announced Monday, the initiative is funded by the BlackBerry Partners Fund, a $150 million venture capital fund formed to focus on applications and services for … Read more

Updated 10/20/08 with a product download link.

I just demoed the prerelease version of Pageonce for BlackBerry, an app that will help track your personal finance and other online accounts.

For those of you unfamiliar with the product of which I speak, Pageonce (covered here and here) is a one stop shop for accessing all your online accounts from your mobile phone (as of today that's just the iPhone).

You sign up for an account online and begin filing the details for any number of personal accounts. There are templates you can choose by category, such as … Read more

Could an initial public offering be on the way for the highly ambitious Glam Media? The Valley-based advertising and media company has hired a new chief financial officer, Stephen E. Recht, who was the CFO of photo-printing site Shutterfly when it went public in 2006.

Recht replaces Ernie Cicogna, a co-founder of Glam. Cicogna will remain with the company as executive vice president of Glam Partners and general manager of the Glam Publisher Network.

"(Glam) has perfected a unique media business model and established itself as the leader in vertical content networks online," Recht said in a release. &… Read more

Yahoo is falling victim to the current economic woes, with analysts lowering forecasts for the company's financial future and layoffs in the works. But one part of the company is all but chortling with glee: Yahoo Finance.

According to ComScore's latest statistics, Yahoo is king of the heap, with 19.9 million unique users in the month of September, an all-time high for the site, according to Yahoo. I'm guessing that's going to look small once we see the October statistics, too.

Nowhere in the top 10 is Google Finance. Disclosure: No. 8, though, is BNET, … Read more

NEW YORK--He made it past the Federal Communications Commission. But Sirius XM Radio CEO Mel Karmazin now has to deal with Wall Street.

In his keynote interview Tuesday at the Media & Money Conference, a joint production of Dow Jones and Nielsen, Karmazin wasn't in humility mode. "We're probably one of the top 25 media companies today," he said of the newly merged Sirius XM, which brought together the world's only two satellite radio companies. "I think it's very clear that we will be the most successful company in the audio entertainment industry. … Read more