Value

I was pointed toward a new Twitter ranking tool by Louis Gray. The tool of the day is TweetValue.

Following the controversy surrounding Twitterank, TweetValue assigns a dollar value to your Twitter profile. While the site does not disclose how this value is calculated, it does give a message that reads, "The value is calculated with a Ph.D. algorithm that is based on the public information available on your Twitter profile."

Call me skeptical, but it isn't really apparent that the figures are based on any actual factual valuation of Twitter profiles. Rather, it appears to … Read more

The investment firm gobbling up shares of Sun Microsystems might look tough, but it usually avoids playing hardball with executives.

Sun got a wake-up call last week from its largest single investor, Southeastern Asset Management, which added the hardware maker to its list of companies for which it has switched from being a passive investor to an active one, with regard to corporate governance, operations management, and increasing shareholder value. But while the road ahead may be bumpy with this activist shareholder, which had $34 billion in assets under management as of the end of September, it will likely be … Read more

NetworkWorld nails it with an article describing how proprietary licensing encourages companies to spend time protecting their past investments, rather than focusing on the future. While the article deals with Microsoft's ongoing legal battles with Novell over WordPerfect (Remember that?), the principle is broadly applicable:

Software vendors and their customers are better served when vendors concentrate on the Next Big Thing rather than protecting their aging (or even dead) technological turf. Let's hope that open source software licensing makes that happen.

How does open source apply? Open source, after all, doesn't change a company's desires to protect its intellectual property. It does, however, significantly change what "protecting intellectual property" means, and it dramatically changes how open-source vendors get paid vis-a-vis their proprietary counterparts.

Consider what Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst told me in a recent interview:

People forget that software can be a multi-round game. Most software companies get customers locked in and they're stuck. Eighty percent of commercial software functionality is created to drive an upgrade cycle; in other words, to serve vendor needs, not customer needs.… Read more

A number of Internet titans received an across-the-board stock target haircut on Thursday from UBS Securities analyst Ben Schachter, who said a weakening economic outlook is expected to take a toll on display advertising and, to a lesser degree, search advertising.

The reduced 12-month stock price targets for Google, Yahoo, eBay, and ValueClick, as well as a cautious outlook for the Web sector, come as the companies prepare to report their third-quarter financial results in the coming days and weeks.

Google's price target was cut back to $525 a share from $700; Yahoo was bumped down to $20 a … Read more

Google's brand name value jumped from 20th place last year to 10th in 2008, according to the latest version of an annual study that ranks the best brands, with only four technology companies ahead of it on the list.

Microsoft slipped from second to third place, edged down a peg by IBM, according to the study by BusinessWeek and Interbrand, which base their results on the value of the brand as judged by how much revenue it will likely earn for the company.

Google showed the strongest gain, with a value that increased 43 percent to $25.6 billion, … Read more

Microsoft confirmed that it is planning a subscription service that combines the consumer version of Office with its OneCare security suite.

Code-named Albany, the product has a single installer that puts Office Home and Student, OneCare, as well as a host of Windows Live services, onto a user's PC. As long as users keep paying for the subscription, they are entitled to the latest versions of the products. Once they stop paying, they lose the right to use any version.

The product is aimed at consumers that want a simple way to have access to Microsoft's productivity suite … Read more

In a new round of public letters, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang tussled about whether the software power is offering too much or too little for the Internet company. So who's right?

There's no simple answer here. It's tricky math, especially given overall declines in Internet stocks and the fact that Yahoo's worth is different depending on whether you consider it a standalone company or a part of Microsoft, which said it expects "at least $1 billion in annual synergy" from an acquisition.

But we surveyed a number of analysts--call … Read more

Microsoft has been tight-lipped about the "Albany" product that it has just started testing, but ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley hears it might be a consumer bundle that includes Windows Live OneCare, Office Live Workspace, and Office Home and Student Edition.

The product, which apparently also goes by the name "ValueBox" may be an attempt to beef up the consumer version of Office amid stepped-up competition from Google Docs and other free and online competitors.

It strikes me, though, that Microsoft may be looking at ways to protect the Home and Student version of Office, a … Read more

New headphones are my No. 1 recommendation to anyone who wants to get the most out of their new MP3 player. (Except, of course, for those who decided to go with the Sony NWZ-A810 series or the Zune 80.) Straight up: Those janky, plastic buds that came with your player aren't doing you any favors. First off, they're not terribly comfortable, and they don't fit most users securely--for me, there are few things more annoying than having to constantly shove a hard piece of plastic into my ear. Then of course there's the sound-quality issue...hollow, … Read more