business

Manage personal and business information with SEO Note

Personal Information Managers, or PIMs, are among the most useful freeware a busy person could wish for. SEO Note is a free PIM that uses a simple tree view for maximum flexibility. It saves your personal and business notes and contacts as articles in plain text, rich text, or HTML files. You can quickly access your important data via searching, bookmarks, and the tree view. With Tool Tips, Quick Start Guides, FAQs, Forums, and more on the Help menu, it offers plenty of assistance, but it's also fairly intuitive. The developer compares SEO Note's functionality to a simpler … Read more

U.K. retailer Game ain't got game--or games

U.K. video-game retailer Game is in deep trouble, and so far the company hasn't found a way to fix its issues.

The retailer's parent company, The Game Group, announced today that it's currently "in discussions with its suppliers and lenders" to determine if there's a way out of its current financial mess, which has left the firm unable to sell some of today's top titles.

"The Board of GAME is working actively to resolve these issues as quickly as possible," the company wrote to shareholders today--without, that is, noting specifically … Read more

Apple expanding in Texas with $304 million investment

Apple is planning a major investment in Texas, the governor's office has announced.

According to Gov. Rick Perry, Apple plans to drop $304 million into a new campus in Austin. The new facility, the governor's office said Friday, will create over 3,600 jobs in the state over the next decade and double the size of Apple's workforce across Texas. The state didn't divulge too many details but did say the facility will be used to expand "customer support, sales, and accounting functions."

Apple's major investment might lend a bit more credence to … Read more

Yelp for restaurant listings

Yelp is the premier online city guide that helps you find restaurants and other businesses in your area. It not only provides vital information like hours, addresses, and phone numbers, it also offers a treasure trove of user-submitted reviews, ratings, and photos.

Since Yelp taps into your mobile device's GPS powers, it can easily help you find businesses nearby. Alternatively, you can indicate a city of your choice to search elsewhere. You can conduct your search based on keyword, or browse through listings by category. And the Yelp app offers a few filters to further narrow your search, including … Read more

Square launches iPad app; adios, cash register

Square is well-known in the payments business. Now it wants to replace a retailer's register.

The payments company has launched a new iPad application, called Square Register. Available for free in the App Store, the app is designed to replace a brick-and-mortar retailer's register, and can accept everything from credit card to cash payments.

According to Square, the application lets users input the many products they sell in their stores and assign prices to them. Those items can also be placed into a "favorites" list for easy access when customers buy a product. As with any … Read more

Yelp for restaurant listings

Yowza! Yelp surges to 64 percent gain in first day of trading

If there was any doubt about Yelp's IPO pricing, it should be laid to rest right now.

The local-reviews site kicked off its IPO at $15 a share today on the Nasdaq, but soon after trading began, the stock jumped 73 percent to $26. After hitting the high mark, the shares cooled off a bit, eventually ending the day up 64 percent to land at $24.58.

Yelp in November announced its plans to go public. The company yesterday priced its shares at $15, raising $107.25 million on the 7.15 million shares it made available.

From a … Read more

AOL: It's not dead yet!

AOL just can't seem to catch a break this week, but a few pieces of bad news doesn't presage the demise of the Internet media giant.

First it lost CTO Alex Gounares, who wanted to move back to Seattle. Then it lost tech head Tim Dierks and sales exec Tim Castelli. And to top it all off, news leaked out that the struggling media giant is about to hand out pink slips in its West Coast office.

About the only piece of good news was the departure of TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld. The loss of the leader of … Read more

Windows 8 on ARM will lack certain manageability features

Businesses looking to support Windows 8 ARM tablets may find a few features missing in action.

Ahead of today's launch of the beta dubbed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft has revealed that certain features used to manage Windows-based devices won't be available for the ARM platform.

"ARM-based tablets running Windows 8 are ideal for workers who are constantly on the go and need a long-lasting battery, Microsoft said in its Windows 8 Consumer Preview Product Guide for Business document released today.

"ARM-based tablets use less power than 32-bit and 64-bit devices and workers can rely … Read more

Here we go again: AOL investor might start proxy war

If you ever run a declining Web company, be sure to keep one thing in mind: activist investors are waiting to pounce.

Just days after Yahoo activist shareholder Daniel Loeb proposed plans to take over four seats on that company's board, a new report from All Things Digital claims that a fund called Starboard Value is planning to launch its own proxy war with AOL.

According to All Things Digital's sources, Starboard Value, which owns about 5 percent of AOL, could propose an entirely new group of directors as early as today. And tomorrow is the last day … Read more