Google now supports the open OAuth standard for sharing data through its Google Data interface, a move that could make it easier to tap into information stored at Google property.
Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)The Google Data API (application programming interface)--GData for short--provides a conduit whereby other Web sites can slurp out data stored at Google. For personal information, such as photos at Picasa or contacts at Gmail, access to that information requires authentication. OAuth provides a standard way to perform that authentication, which means programmers at least theoretically should have an easier time writing code.
Google announced the OAuth support Thursday on its Data API blog.
Also Thursday, Google announced that Google Finance is now supported in the Google Data API. That means data could be retrieved to build, for example, a gadget with a live chart showing changing portfolio value.
And since the API permits two-way communications, it also means an outside service could update a user's information at Google Finance, for example with recent stock trades.
If you've had bold ambitions of becoming a day trader, Google Finance is now one step closer to getting you there.
Tuesday morning the New York Stock Exchange partnered with Google and CNBC to provide real-time stock quotes that will show up on Google's finance site.
This means that whatever symbols you're looking at on Google Finance will be updated without delay, and the changes can be seen both on the page and at the top of the tab it's open in on your browser. You can also get it in widget form, either in iGoogle or on your phone with Google's mobile-alerts service.
Earlier this month, Google, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC partnered with Nasdaq to get real-time quotes from that composite index. Like NYSE, quotes from that index were delayed up to 15 minutes, rendering the service less of an asset to time-sensitive trades.
It should be noted that most serious day traders use proprietary subscription-based brokerage and charting tools that integrate with buying and selling services. Many would likely consider Google's current offerings not quite up to snuff in comparison, although the addition of real-time quotes may make it easier for consumers to view rapid fluctuations on potentially volatile stocks that the slower systems would not have illustrated.
Now you can view NYSE stocks in real time through Google Finance and other partnered sites.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Update 1:15 p.m. PT: I added information about the addition of real-time quotes on Yahoo Finance.
Real-time stock trading data aren't easy to come by on the Internet, but Google, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal now can show real-time Nasdaq stock prices on their Web sites, the companies announced Monday.
Previously, the Nasdaq data had been available only with a 15-minute lag on the sites.
"With universal access to the Internet and the real-time nature of the Web, investors need real-time data, and now they don't have to pay for it," said Adena Friedman, executive vice president of the Nasdaq OMX group.
Google was equally exuberant. "It's important to have up-to-date market data," said group product manager Katie Jacobs Stanton on a Google Finance blog posting on Monday. "Prices will update automatically, once per second, to reflect current market conditions."
Yahoo, whose Yahoo Finance site long predates Google's rival, announced a partnership last week with BATS Trading to offer free real-time quotes on its quote summary page. The quotes, which Yahoo said cover the full market, will be expanded to portfolio and other finance pages in coming weeks, Yahoo said.
Google doesn't show New York Stock Exchange quotes in real time, however. "Currently, we are only able to provide real-time data that represents trades executed on the Nasdaq exchange," spokeswoman Anne Espiritu said in a statement.
AOL announced on Friday that it posted double-digit growth in March, posting new traffic records for the former high-flying Internet darling.
Page views on AOL's programming sites jumped 35 percent in March, compared to a year ago, while unique visitors rose 11 percent, to 56.5 million users, in the same comparison period, according to ComScore Media Metrix.
"Our strong growth is a direct result of rebuilding each and every one of our vertical Web sites over the past 12 months, with the goal of providing consumers highly relevant and rich experiences that focus on key passion points," Bill Wilson, AOL Vertical Programming executive vice president, said in a statement.
Some of AOL's core sites that received a makeover included
During the past year, AOL has launched a number of new sites, ranging from
And in March, AOL acquired social-networking site Bebo for $850 million. Bebo, which has a strong following in the U.K., Ireland, and New Zealand, said that acquisition was made as part of AOL's efforts to grab more eyes internationally. Over the past year, AOL has launched 17 international sites.
All these efforts are designed to also drive revenue for AOL, which has struggled over the years to reposition itself, after its saw its core dial-up subscription business fall dramatically as broadband competitors came on strong. In 2006,
Last September, AOL launched its Platform-A, an advertising network designed to sell ad inventory on its own Web sites, as well as third-party sites. But in earlier this month, AOL's ad unit began to cut 100 positions from its operations.
Blockbuster sure sounds like it wants to buy Circuit City, but is it able to?
The financial advisers to Circuit City told company officials Wednesday that they think Blockbuster, which has offered $1 billion for the consumer electronics retailer, doesn't have the proper financing to make good on its bid, according to a Reuters report.
In a statement, the company said, "Circuit City awaits a viable financing structure that is predictably executable by Blockbuster given its current constraints of size and capital structure before it would be appropriate to allow further due diligence."
Blockbuster's CEO said earlier this week that his company would proceed with its takeover effort only if conditions are right and that it is loath to go through with a hostile bid. Circuit City has essentially stonewalled Blockbuster since the initial bid was made in February, not allowing easy access to its books.
Also Wednesday, a Circuit City investor who owns 6.5 percent of the company's stock sent a letter to Circuit City urging the company to open its books to its suitor and begin negotiations. The retailer responded quickly to Wattles Capital Management, issuing a statement reiterating its position that Blockbuster hasn't answered its questions regarding how it plans to finance a deal.
The Federal Election Commission's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)A few years ago, the Federal Election Commission ruled that bloggers are eligible for the same exemptions from campaign-finance law as mainstream media outlets have enjoyed for decades.
But the FEC's membership will change over time, meaning that the beliefs of the commissioners are likely to change as well. So a future FEC could rule differently. That's what concerns Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), a longtime proponent of extending campaign-finance laws to the Internet.
His answer: On Thursday, Hensarling introduced a four-page bill he's calling the Blogger Protection Act of 2008.
Hensarling intends to enshrine into U.S. law two components of what the Federal Election Commission decided in March 2006: namely, that when political bloggers and other Internet users write about candidates' positions, link to candidate Web sites, send or forward campaign-related messages, and create or host campaign-related Web sites, they generally need not report their activities to the government as "contributions" or "expenditures" on behalf of a candidate. A second section dictates that "any Internet or electronic publication (including a blog)" will be considered exempt from campaign-finance rules.
"Regulations can be changed without congressional action, and there's no telling what a future FEC might decide to do," the Texas congressman wrote in a recent letter to his House colleagues seeking co-sponsors for the measure. "Furthermore, the FEC is currently defunct because of vacancies and a lack of quorum."
Previous FEC rules have run into court trouble. In 2004, a federal judge threw out the regulators' attempts to exempt Internet political ads from campaign finance law, forcing new, narrower rules to be crafted.
The FEC, for its part, has already applied its rules to at least two specific cases involving allegations that political blogs ran afoul of campaign-finance laws. In both situations, which involved the liberal blog DailyKos and a blog that advocated the defeat of California Republican Rep. Mary Bono, the FEC ruled in a way that suggested political blogging was exempt from normal campaign-finance obligations.
Hensarling's bill doesn't appear to affect other portions of the existing FEC regulations, though. They require, among other things, that candidates, political parties, and other campaign organizations report any paid political advertising that appears on someone else's Web site and report any payments to bloggers or online commentators.
This post was last updated at 7:37 AM PT.
Claiming that it is both undervalued and underappreciated, Yahoo has fired some key financial forecasts over the bow of an acquisitive Microsoft.
On Tuesday, Yahoo reported the contents of a presentation to investors detailing the company's strategy for the next three years, as seen in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The presentation was first shown to investors in December 2007, prior to Microsoft's announcement that it planned to acquire Yahoo. But on Tuesday, Yahoo underscored the contents of the presentation as evidence that Microsoft's unsolicited takeover bid, issued January 31, "substantially undervalues" the company.
In its new broadside, Yahoo said it hopes to double its operating cash flow from $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion over the next three years, and in 2010 aims to pull in $8.8 billion in revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs. The company is also sticking to the first-quarter outlook that it issued in January.
One presentation slide sums it up bluntly: "We believe our growth and profitability prospects are not fully appreciated by the public market." A ballsy assertion for a company that laid off 1,100 less than two months ago.
Anticipating that its growth will outpace the rest of the market, Yahoo projected $1.9 billion in added revenue (excluding traffic acquisition costs) from display and video advertising over the three-year period. In the search advertising sector, Yahoo expected that its growth would parallel the market and result in $1.4 billion in added revenue.
It's an optimistic outlook, and Yahoo is clearly banking on strong conditions in 2009 and 2010, something that recent economic news may render less likely. And Yahoo's presentation does cite global home-page figures for January, an area where Yahoo has been lagging significantly behind Google, with 425 million unique users versus 305 million for Yahoo. Yahoo search, too, has long operated in Google's shadow, with global query figures for the last quarter of 2007 showing Yahoo search with a 27 percent share, Google with 53 percent.
Perhaps with the gloomy U.S. economic forecast in mind, Yahoo's presentation highlighted the company's strategic position in Asian markets, citing the dominance of Yahoo Japan, in which it holds a 33 percent stake; and the success of business-to-business site Alibaba, in which it holds a 28 percent stake. According to the details of the presentation, these heavy investments in Asian dot-coms typically are not taken into account nearly enough in assessments of Yahoo's value.
Heavy emphasis is also placed on Yahoo's freshest social-media projects, like social news site Yahoo Buzz and the yet-to-launch mobile service, Yahoo OneConnect. They're both innovative projects and initial analysis of Buzz seems to indicate early success, but Yahoo's track record in the social media space has been spotty. Yahoo Groups are a longtime staple, but the Yahoo Mash social network, launched in September, failed to get much traction.
Somewhat ironically, the presentation also details a strategic initiative on Yahoo's part called Must Buy. It's referring to ad inventory and making it easier for advertisers and publishers to work with Yahoo, but given Microsoft's bid, "Must Buy" has some snicker-inducing connotations that Yahoo might not want.
Mint, a personal finance site akin to Quicken, said Wednesday that it raised $12 million in a series "B" round of financing led by Benchmark Capital, the venerable VC behind eBay and Amazon.com.
Other participating investors include Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital and Felicis Ventures--which were all original backers of Mint.
Benchmark's endorsement is sizeable given that Mint launched less than six months ago. In that time, Mint has signed up more than 160,000 customers for its free personal finance services, according to the company. Mountain View, Calif.-based Mint helps people manage their credit and spending, points out potential savings on monthly bills, and offers people support for investment accounts.
Benchmark general partner Bob Kagle will join Mint's board. "We are excited about the company's ability to help people make better financial decisions and improve their lives."
Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer said he plans to use the funds to expand Mint's product offerings, but did not specify how. "We're ready to further accelerate our growth and product development," Patzer said in a statement.
Microsoft has more money in the bank than most software companies will make in their entire corporate existences.
Microsoft has more money than many countries.
Microsoft has enough money to buy every open-source software company with cash...several times over. (OK, that last one might not have been saying much.)
And yet Microsoft expects to borrow money for the first time in its history to fund its deal for Yahoo.
This is a testament to just how big this deal is for Microsoft, which has roughly $19 billion on the bank and no debt--both of which are hugely impressive numbers.
... Read moreGreatPoint Energy, a company with technology that converts coal to natural gas, has secured $100 million to finance construction of commercial plants.
The third round of funding, first reported by CNET News.com, was led by new investors Dow Chemical, Suncor Energy, AES, and Citi division Sustainable Development Investments, Daniel Goldman, the executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Cambridge, Mass.-based company, said on Friday.
The natural gas will be transported through existing natural gas pipelines.
The company now has a test facility using coal in Des Plaines, Ill., and intends to use petroleum coke from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada as a feedstock to make methane.
With the financing, the company plans to build a large demonstration plant and begin construction of a large-scale manufacturing facility over the next few years.
"There are some natural synergies between all the (investor) companies either for power generation or for treating waste products from the tar sands in Canada," Goldman said.
The company's initial investors, which participated in the financing round, were venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In its first two rounds of funding, it raised $37 million.
GreatPoint Energy intends to construct methane plants near coal-mining areas and to take the carbon dioxide--a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming--created through its gasification process and sequester it underground. Or, the carbon dioxide can be used to aid oil and natural gas exploration.
