| Overall Holiday Season Retail Grows 3.6%, MasterCard SpendingPulse ...
Data Source: SpendingPulse, MasterCard Advisors. A macro-economic indicator, SpendingPulse reports on national retail sales and is based on aggregate sales activity in the MasterCard payments network, coupled with estimates for all other payment forms, including cash and check. MasterCard SpendingPulse does not represent MasterCard financial performance. SpendingPulse is provided by MasterCard Advisors, the professional services arm of MasterCard Worldwide. MasterCard Advisors� SpendingPulse, a macro-economic report tracking retail sales nationally, today provided summary results of the 2007 Holiday shopping season. This year, for the period between Black Friday and December 24, retail grew by a seasonally adjusted 3.6% over the same period in 2006. �Overall, sales came in just above the lower end of the range we were expecting, maintaining the slower, modest growth we�ve been seeing throughout the year,� noted Michael McNamara, vice president of research and analysis for MasterCard Advisors.
The Miracles of an Automatic Free Scripts Installer
Fantastico de Luxe is an add on for cPanel, that allows you to automatically install many open source scripts like blogs, content management systems, ecommerce applications, customer support scripts, image galleries and more. The advantage is that you will not upload your scripts on server and at the same time all other installation requirements, such as file permissions (chmod options), will be automatically set by the installer. It provides a very friendly web browser based interface, intuitive and easy to use even by beginners. As a consequence, anyone will be able to install applications like Mambo, PHP-Nuke, OS Commerce, WordPress and others, without having knowledge of FTP (file transfer protocol), CHMOD (file permissions settings), PHP or HTML. From the cPanel main page you must identify the Fantastico application and then, from the right menu you must select the desired application you want to install.
Bear Stearns' Wild-Card Shareholder
The latest hit: a nearly 7% plunge following the expected news on Jan. 8 that James Cayne would step down as chief executive of the beleaguered investment bank. In all, Lewis, the single largest shareholder in Bear, has watched the value of his 10% stake erode from $1.2 billion to $840 million. The 70-year-old Lewis has endured such losses before in his far-reaching and eclectic portfolio. The Tavistock Group, which he founded in 1978, has stakes in 170 companies that span the real estate, financial-services, manufacturing, entertainment, and restaurant industries. He uses at least five fast-moving investment funds—Aquarian Investments, Nivon, Mandarin, Darcin, and Cambria—to trade currencies and make more opportunistic moves like his Bear bet. And one of Lewis' hallmark strategies is to troll for cheap plays, then patiently wait years for the payoff.
Stores expand list of discounted generic drugs
The discounted drugs are part of a long list of more than 300 popular generic drugs Kroger began selling last week for $4 per 30-day prescription. "We wanted to offer it as an affordable alternative for customers for their health and medication needs," said Meghan Glynn, spokeswoman for the Cincinnati-based Kroger. It's also about competition in a tough marketplace, particularly in Ohio, Glynn added. "In our industry the landscape continues to change and we want to continue to be relevant to our customers," she said. Kroger joins Wal-Mart, Target Corp. and others with similar discount plans. Deisha Galberth, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said its addition of birth control pills Sept. 27 and other drugs shows the company is trying to drive down health care costs.
Superstore.com Introduces iPhone Classifieds on Steroids
COSTA MESA, Calif., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Apple iPhone users can now, for the first time, post classified ads for free on the Internet by uploading their own pictures and text directly from their iPhone to the Superstore.com website where they are immediately visible for sale. Although the Superstore.com website is visible to all browsers on all types of computers, it is specifically designed to work with the advanced features of the Apple iPhone. "When I bought my iPhone, the first thing I needed to use it for was to sell my old cell phone, iPod and digital camera on eBay, Craigslist, Amazon or Yahoo," says Murray Mead, President of Superstore.com, "I was surprised to discover that there was no way to upload pictures I had taken on my iPhone to any of these websites." Superstore.com enables the first image uploading from an iPhone to a website, proximity searching to find items for sale nearby, and direct dialing from the listings for ease of use.
EU launches new probes against Microsoft
It would also mean companies could use Linux computers that ran Office rivals, he added. ECIS also wants Microsoft to provide data so the e-mail program Outlook and the Exchange Server which works with it can run smoothly with rival products. For now, users must rely on Outlook and Exchange to collaborate on such things as organizing meetings. Finally, ECIS wants to ensure Internet applications from Google and other companies, so-called "cloud computing," will continue to work on any operating system. Opera <OPERA.OL> says Microsoft ensures rival Web browsers are not fully compatible with its Internet Explorer, and argues the U.S. firm should follow Internet standards which Microsoft itself helped develop. It also argues Microsoft has tied its Internet Explorer Web browser to Windows.
The lowdown on Office 2007
Don't confuse SharePoint with a wiki. While both are designed to share documents and (to some extent) manage workflows, and both can be viewed in a browser, SharePoint has tight integration with Office applications, can notify you when content changes, can integrate multiple calendars (and sync them with Outlook), and allows that content to be almost seamlessly incorporated into your own documents. Other components of Office we did not test include Groove 2007, which lets you review documents collaboratively in real-time, InfoPath as a collection tool for an Access database, the ability to update Microsoft Project files through SharePoint, and Excel's Data Connection Library (to connect spreadsheets to corporate data sources). We also did not test the ability of SharePoint to administer and deploy business forms using Office InfoPath 2007 templates as browser-based forms that don't need any additional software running on the user's machine.
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