Japan - Next To Fall?

Kan, the sixth prime minister in the last 4 years, had promised that the government together with the Japan’s national bank, will work together to prevent such crisis. Kan said that the government is aiming to focus on developing an extensive but stable financial policy . He also added that the government will consider tax raising, a step which according to him, previous governments were afraid of performing.

Ailon.

The CEO Game.

These celebrations for the 30th birthday of Pacman, which Google celebrated last week, had cost many US firms dearly.

Google published their own version of the original Pacman game, which was originally developed by the Japanese company Namco,  on their home page.  Google had reported that game was activated over a billion times in three days.

Eating your money.

According to research conducted by RescueTime, the average visitor had spent 36 extra seconds on the site to play the addicting game that Google had added for the special occasion. When summed up the time spent,  you get  a waste of 4.8 million work hours, which are worth around 120 million dollars.

Ailon.

The CEO Game.

The Berkeley hotel

The Berkeley, a classic- yet contemporary hotel, located in the heart of Knightsbridge, which comes with recommendations by past clients such as Madonna and Mischa Barton, is bragging that as “the official UK launch of the iPad (is) still not upon us, you can be sure that our guests will be amongst the first to experience the delights of this new innovation”. The last weekend marked the introduction of Apple’s latest must-have device in all the hotel’s suites: the Berkeley, Conservatory and Chelsea suites. The iPads are offered for reading the daily newspapers as well as visiting the surrounding attractions as chosen by Berkeley’s concierge. They will also be pre-loaded with a range of games and videos. Guests will be shown how to use the iPad at check-in. The hotel says it plans its own apps by the end of the year.

To be frank, it is actually not the first hotel to have iPads, but it is the first one to offer an in- room iPad service. This comes after another hotel chain, the InterContinental, started using iPads in the hotel lobbies all over the world (London, New York, Honk Kong and more) to give directions to nearby venues.

As desperate as some Apple groupies may be to start messing around with the iPad, we do hope they realize that buying one, when they would be available worldwide, would work out cheaper than staying even for just one night at the Berkeley hotel- no matter how soft their pillows may be or its proximity to Harvey Nichols. Anyways, it was just about time somebody pulled the pad.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

The Hollywood Sign is located in the Hollywood Hills are of Mount Lee in L.A, California. The sign spells out the name of the area in 50 feet tall white letters stretching over 200 feet across. Although the sign is well known and recognized all over the world and has attracted its share of tourists over the years, some claim that the sign is not- “all that” and it is just plain painted plywood that looks huge and majestic on the silver screen, but in reality is quite small and miserable according to them. That is the reason why the Danish architect Christian Bay-Jorgensen, wants to turn this sign into what he thinks that everyone really wants- an hotel.

Moreover, Bay-Jorgensen wants to transform the sign to a boutique hotel that will have the same shape. But he won’t stop there, his vision includes wrecking the entire sign and the surrounding area and building it from scratch only this time, double the size. He believes by doing this he will create a sizzling hot location which will bring in rich tourists and Hollywood celebs, located right at the heart of Tinsel town. Finally he thinks that his idea would make the sign better for everyone, since it will bring in more cash, create more workplaces, create the next best thing for L.A’s night scene, all while everyone else would be able to see it from a greater distance.

However, it seems many people are not in favor of the new idea. They claim that making the landmark bigger, will ruin the view for everyone: it will block the sight from on top of the hills as well as create an ugly real estate monster, disproportional to its surroundings. Another group of people, object the creation of an hotel because in their minds, creating an hotel over the ruins of the sign, is another sign for the city’s gloominess and carelessness- turning everything into a matter of cash. In addition, environmental issues are also taken into consideration since creating such an ambitious project requires infrastructures (and a whole lot of them) which will destroy the surroundings and natural habitats of wild animals.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

Second largest airline in the U.S?

According to a report in The New York Times the merger is an attempt to help the U.S. airline industry, which lost  60 billion dollars over the last decade. If the merger will take place, the new company will be the second largest airline in the U.S.

The report said  that the merger is designed to jump-start  if possible the U.S. airline industry, which lost  60 billion dollars over the last decade due to soaring fuel prices and a drop in passenger rates. Both companies expressed the willingness in recent years to strengthen public cooperation.

The problem is that mergers in the airline industry are a difficult task to perform, mainly due to the fact that the complex labor contracts of employees in each company can lower the value achieved in sweeping cost reduction. The merger between Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines took two years to achieve, but ultimately created the largest airline in the U.S.. Now in the company’s labor contracts U.S Airways focus of controversy, since US Airways still has not integrated pilot seniority since its merger with America West in 2005. The labor issue could turn out to be the biggest hurdle to overcome in any merger with United Airlines.

Lucy.

The CEO Game

Internet searching giants, Google have made another big acquisition and this time it is in the video arena. Episodic, a start up web video company based in San Francisco, will become a part of Google. Thus, Episodic surpassed its key competitor Brightcove, also an American company which offers services for adding video to your website. The deal was announced on last Friday (2nd April) on the Episodic blog. Although the financial terms are undisclosed and haven’t been revealed yet, both companies are said to be very pleased and satisfied with the results.

Episodic. The Newest Addition.

Episodic offers a platform for live and on demand web videos. Content sites, advertisers and practically any enterprise use the platform in order to broadcast streaming video, analyze it and offer video content to their audience via different platforms: computers, laptops as well as mobile phones and IPTV gadgets (televisions who are connected to the Internet). Basically, the platforms allows every type of enterprise to deliver innovative technology and also to make money from it through advertising and online sales. Many experts claim that Episodic resembles YouTube and since Episodic’s technology and team are being folded into YouTube, it’s possible that we could see new ways for video creators to profit from their YouTube videos. This looks like good news for mid-level YouTube dwellers who did not have the leverage to work out money-making on their own.

Episodic also provides a content management system and offers an advertisement server, which allow clients to place adds in the videos and pay for it in credit card. Currently, Episodic supports Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Blackberry and intends to support Symbian devices as well in the future. On their blog, Episodic explain how they and Google also share the same ideas and goals for the future: “Episodic and Google share a common vision for video on the Web. Online video will be ubiquitous, engaging, entertaining, informative and effective. Both teams place value on creating a great experience for viewers and on delivering a powerful and flexible platform for publishers, marketers and advertisers of all kinds.”

Google’s shopping spree, or blitzkrieg if you wish, comes as no surprise. Last year Google completed purchasing the online advertising company AdMob for 750$ million in shares and Teracent for targeted display ad technology. This year, Google already bought On2 for 106.5$ million and many other companies, amongst them you can find: Docverse (a file sharing site), Appjet (a collaborative real time editor), Aardvak (social search), Picnic (photo editing). Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt claimed on September 2009 that Google plans to return to making purchases, after a minor pause, or setback if you wish, due to the global financial crisis. At the time, he also said that Google wishes to “buy a company a month” (on average). It seems that Google is definitely keen on fulfilling its chairman’s announcement.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

Ailon.

The CEO Game.

YouTube only exists for 5 years, but it seems like it was part of our live since ever. It’s hard to recall what we did before YouTube , when we had the rush to hear some old song or entertain ourselves for few minutes.

Turned 5 years old

Not only , we the consumers, are having hard time to remember how was life before YouTube, the life of Cinema and Television corporations had also  changed. Only that they look back in sorrow. Since YouTube’s breakthrough they had lost most control on the habits of the consumers.

Since the site was first open for the public it had few ups and downs, the most important one was it being bought by Google in 2007 in a deal worth 1.65 milliard dollars. Although YouTube has a financial and marketing support of Google, It been marked as one of the worlds’ most popular sites, and the fact that every minute visitor are uploading 20 hours of video, YouTube is still hardly pays for itself. With costs of over 365 million dollars a year for bandwidth and advertising revenues hardly reaching the 500 million dollar mark. Google has beating itself for over two years about how to produce more revenues that will maximize YouTube’s potential.

YouTube’s main problem is the difficulty to  attach advertisements to 98% of videos it got. Google had made a major step in the last weeks when they added the automatic caption service which will aid in this subject.

Ailon.

The CEO Game.

Apple had launched the iTunes Music Store for the first time in the US in April of 2003. By the end of that year, Apple had sold more than 25 million songs. Three years later, on February 2006, business was still a booming and sales reached one billion. Now, seven years since iTunes’ debut, another achievement was reached: 10 billion songs sold. Amazingly and even more, if you recall that it was only a while ago Apple was celebrating crossing the five billion songs sold barrier. On February 24, 2010, just a couple of days ago, Apple’s song download counter hit the mark, something it has been counting down to for the last two weeks.

iTunes

The tenth billion song was sold on February 24, as aforementioned, which happens to be Steve Jobs, Apple’s well famous CEO’s birthday. The 10 billionth song, “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash, was downloaded by Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia. As the winner on Apple’s 10 Billion Songs Countdown contest, Louie will receive a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, which can buy some 7000 of the hottest songs, or 14,500-20,000 songs on sale. Simply, Plenty. The card can also be used to buy iPhone apps from the app store.

The iTunes online music store is considered one of the “saviors” of the music industry: it revolutionized the entire industry and the way we consume music. Moreover, it has been the first online store which reached such widespread sales and thus, made all label companies shift their activities to the Internet. The sales increased rapidly and constantly and on the last quarter, Apple made a hefty profit of 520$ million from songs sold.

“This has been the birth of legal downloading,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, when it was first launched in 2003. “We are going to fight illegal downloading by competing with it. We aren’t going to sue it. We’re not going to ignore it. We’re going to compete with it. With iTunes you are supporting artists. You’re not stealing. It’s good karma”. Clearly, it is good karma. Especially for Apple which has used the store to become America’s number one music vendor in a short time.

To celebrate the milestone, Apple published the all-time bestsellers in the store’s history. Leading in the top of the list, is the song, “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas, that also take the third place with “Boom Boom Pow”. Between them, in the second place you can find “Poker Face” by the provocative Lady Gaga. In the fourth place, “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz and in the fifth place “Viva la Vida” by the British band of Coldplay.

But, It isn’t Apple’s only milestone lately. Just a month ago, the app store (Apple’s online application store) passed three billion downloads, a huge feat, particularly when you consider that the app store is younger than iTunes.

In conclusion, that’s billions in revenue that iTunes has generated for the entire music industry, but also billions that Apple has done for itself and while competitors came up, none even reached Apple’s dominance. Well “Guess Things Happen That Way” indeed.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

Carson River Community Bank from Nevada held 51.5 million dollars in assets and 50 million dollars in deposits, while Rainier Pacific Bank from Washington held 717.8 million dollars in assets and 446.2 million dollars in deposits. The closing of River bank will cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund 7.9 million dollar, while closing Rainier bank will cost 95.2 million dollar to the fund.

Rainier Pacific Bank.

According to estimations  by fund officials, closing bank rate is expected to overcome in the coming months. The “problematic” banks list of the insurance fund in the fourth quarter climbed to 702 from 552 in the previous quarter, although the industry recorded a small profit.

The banks earned 914 million dollars in the fourth quarter, compared to the loss of 37.8 billion dollars during the same period last year, which is considered the climax of the crisis. Still, nearly one in three banks has reported a loss last quarter.

During the year of 2009- 140 banks were closed, the highest number since 1992. These closers have cost the Deposit Insurance Fund more than 30 billion dollars. In comparison, during 2008- 25 banks were closed, while during 2007 only 3 banks were closed. The Deposit Insurance Fund estimates that the cost of closing the banks will climb to 100 billion dollars during the next four years.

Lucy.

The CEO Game.