Archive for January, 2010
Verizon to cut 13,000 jobs
January 26th, 2010 | 
Author: NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — After posting a fourth-quarter loss, Verizon Communications, Inc. said Tuesday it plans to cut about 13,000 jobs this year.
Verizon recorded a net loss of $653 million, or 23 cents per share, compared with a profit of $1.24 billion, or 43 cents a share, a year earlier.
The loss came after the company took a charge of $3 billion for cutting a total of 17,000 jobs last year in both its landline and wireless divisions. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of 54 cents per share.
Total sales rose to $27.1 billion, up from $24.6 billion in the same quarter last year, but below analyst estimates of $27.3 billion. The company’s fixed-line revenue plunged 3.9% to $11.5 billion from $11.9 billion last year.
Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) CEO Ivan Seidenberg said on the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday that it will slash about 13,000 positions in 2010. The telecom giant previously cut 13,000 jobs from its landline business in 2008 and another 13,000 again in 2009.
Verizon’s total headcount at the end of 2010 was nearly 223,000, with 117,000 employees in the fixed-line business.
The layoffs will not be specific to any geographic area, said Bob Varettoni, a Verizon spokesman.
“We have reduced headcount in many ways: by reducing the number of contractors we use, by offering enhanced incentive separation packages, attrition, and other means,” said Varettoni. “Any layoffs were kept to a minimum because of these measures.”
Separately, Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500) also announced Tuesday that it plans to cut jobs. CEO Frank Blake said in a memo to Home Depot employees the company will eliminate 1,000 jobs nationwide.
“We are a strong company, and we are taking the necessary actions to make us even stronger as our business builds momentum,” said Blake.
Source :
http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/26/news/companies/verizon_layoffs/index.htm
Google Voice finally on iPhone–in the browser
Google’s end run around Apple’s App Store is complete: Google Voice is ready as a Web application.
iPhone owners can now get in on Google Voice with the release of a Web application.
(Credit: Google)
Owners of the iPhone and Palm’s WebOS devices can now get in on the mobile Google Voice experience with the Web app, which will run in the browsers of iPhones with the 3.0 software installed and all Palm WebOS devices, said Vincent Paquet, senior product manager at Google. The application should be available for current users of Google Voice–which is still an invitation-only service–as of Tuesday at m.google.com/voice.
Google Voice allows incoming calls to ring mobile phones, office phones, or desk phones depending on how the user sets their Google Voice profile. It also treats voice mail like e-mail, transcribing voice messages into an in-box where they can be read and deleted.
Last year Google submitted a native version of Google Voice to Apple in hopes of getting the software onto the iPhone. As most will recall, Apple and Google then entered into a semantic war of words over whether Apple rejected the application (Google’s version) or merely continues to study it (Apple’s version). Either way, the FCC got involved and Google Voice remains in App Store limbo, Paquet said.
“We haven’t had any updates regarding our native app for the iPhone, unfortunately,” Paquet said. However, now that the Web app is ready iPhone users will be able to get essentially the same experience that the native app would have delivered, although the user interface will be slightly different because the application will be running in the browser. Paquet declined to comment on whether Google plans to continue the App Store approval process with the native version.
The Web application is another sign of Google’s strong desire to encourage people to think of Web-based applications as a ready alternative to native applications. The company has spoken about its plans for Web development at length, and even plans to develop a lightweight operating system based on its Chrome browser as a sort of proof-of-concept for the Web development mindset.
My colleague Rafe Needleman did a test-drive of the new application, which you can read here.
Posted in cell phone, Google, Google Voice, Internet, iPhone | 
Tags: Google, Google Voice, iPhone | 
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Google Reader Lets You Subscribe to Any Page on the Web
RSS technology makes it possible for anyone to keep up with fresh content without having to visit the site in question. Now the same holds for webpages without RSS thanks to a new Google Reader feature.
Today Google has rolled out a subtle change to Google ReaderGoogle Reader that lets you create custom feeds to track pages that don’t already have them. So you can subscribe to updates for any webpage simply by typing the URL into the “Add a subscription” text box.
Should you put the new feature to work, you’ll start to receive short snippets for any updates made to the pages, and GoogleGoogle asserts that it’s committed to improving the quality of these tiny blurbs over time. On the flip side, webpage owners can choose to opt out by adjusting a few lines of code.
So when might this come in handy? While most companies have their own blogs, receiving automatic notifications any time there’s an update to the homepage or product pages of a business of interest could prove to be vital. For example, with Apple releasing a “new product” and potentially news about the iPhoneiPhone on Wednesday, you bet that I’m going to create some custom feeds.
Source :
Posted in Entertainment, Google, Google Reader, Internet |
Tags: Google, Google Reader, RSS Feed |
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Tesla Motors finalizes DOE loan for Model S
Tesla Motors will receive a long-sought $465 million loan to build a factory to build its planned Model S electric sedan, the U.S. Department of Energy said on Thursday.
With the loan, Tesla will be able to start making the Model S in volume during 2012 and ramp up to 20,000 units by the end of 2013. The location of the facility is expected to be in Southern California.
The Model S is one of a few highly anticipated electric cars coming out in the next few years. It’s designed to go over 300 miles on batteries, be large enough to carry five adults and two children, and still have lots of cargo space. The base price for the car will be almost $49,900.
For Tesla, the loan allows it to move ahead with its production plans in a difficult environment for raising the large amounts of capital needed to build a factory.
A number of other automakers invested in electrification will also receive Energy Department loans to encourage domestic auto manufacturing. Ford Motor received a $5.9 billion loan and the Energy Department has made conditional commitments to Tesla competitor Fisker Automotive and Nissan North America, which plans to introduce the all-electric Leaf later this year.
In a statement, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the loan program is an effort to “lay the foundation” for the electric-vehicle industry.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10439050-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in cars, evironment, Green |
Tags: electric car, environment, Green, Tesla, Tesla Motors |
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Space shuttles (slightly used) — now on sale!
WASHINGTON — With more than 100 million miles apiece on the odometer, NASA’s Endeavour and Atlantis space shuttles are well-used — but lovingly cared for.
And now they’re on sale.
NASA announced Friday that it was slashing the price for the orbiters to $28.8 million apiece to help encourage buyers from schools and museums to snap them up once the agency retires the shuttle fleet at the end of the year. In December 2008, NASA put the per-shuttle price at $42 million.
“Our intent is to have them displayed in the United States and have them shown to as many citizens as possible,” said NASA spokesman Michael Curie, who said it was unlikely that oil tycoons or dot-com billionaires would win the bid for that reason.
‘The intent is not for NASA to make money,” Curie said.
He said the original price tag was higher because NASA wanted prospective buyers — rather than the agency itself — to pay to make the orbiters safe for display. NASA now plans to do that work and cut the price as a result.
Willing buyers, however, still are responsible for shipping and handling.
About 20 prospective buyers have expressed interest so far, Curie said, and customers have until Feb. 19 to submit their bids. If everything goes smoothly, NASA expects the two orbiters could be in place by July 2011.
The National Air and Space Museum already has laid claim to Discovery, the third and final orbiter in the shuttle fleet. It already has the test shuttle Enterprise — which never flew into space — on display, and Curie said NASA could help the museum unload Enterprise to another prospective buyer if officials wanted to and if there was interest.
“But that’s a lot of ifs,” Curie said.
Kennedy Space Center has said it wants one of the orbiters for display at its visitor’s center.
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