King of Cheez: The Internet’s Meme Maestro Turns Junk Into Gold

What most people view as a workday time-suck, Ben Huh sees as a potential gold mine.
Photo: Misha Gravenor

Just how funny is a beer-drinking horse? Ben Huh is sitting in his downtown Seattle office asking himself this question. It’s an unseasonably warm afternoon in November, and Huh, the 32-year-old founder of the humor-blog startup Cheezburger Network, is deciding whether a picture of a boozy equine chugging a cold one should run on Daily Squee, a Web site devoted entirely to user-generated snapshots of twee creatures.

The problem with drunken farm animals, though, is that they’re never quite as cute as you’d hope. “This is kind of close to animal abuse,” Huh says, pivoting in his chair in mild disgust. He’s dressed in dark blue jeans, cream-colored Warhol-replica eyeglasses, and a red T-shirt featuring a freakishly long-torsoed kitty — a nod to lolcats, one of the many Web phenomena Huh has made mainstream.
He turns to Kiki Kane, who manages new site development at Cheezburger. “A horse drinking beer is not Daily Squee,” Huh determines.

He and Kane then half-jokingly brainstorm some possible new sites that might run this somewhat unsavory image: WTFnature.com? Naturedoingitsownthing.com? The conversation quickly moves on to the recent influx of user-generated dog-humping pictures. “People submit 500 pictures of dogs humping every day!” Kane says. “There’s got to be a place for those.”

“There is,” Huh replies. “But it’s not with us.” As he later explains: “We’ve done this enough times to know that’s just a one-note joke.”

Source: Nielsen

For almost three years now, this has been Huh’s life: to pore over millions of JPEGs and YouTube clips in search of Internet memes — those absurd running gags that hatch and proliferate on the Web seemingly overnight — and figure out which of these quick-hit laughs might yield long-term profits. Since it launched, the Cheezburger Network has successfully aggregated more than 30 sites. You’ve likely visited a few of them, perhaps at the behest of an easily distracted coworker or a walrus-loving aunt. There’s Huh’s flagship site, I Can Has Cheezburger?, a vast repository of lolcat images (for the uninitiated, these are cat pictures with absurd, syntactically challenged captions). There’s GraphJam, a data-visualization blog that renders witty pop-culture musings into pie charts, Venn diagrams, and illustrated maps. The aptly named FAIL Blog — the Cheezburger Network’s most popular site, with 1.1 million visitors per month in the US — runs a seemingly infinite number of skateboard spills, nut-smacks, and hilariously misspelled signs.

What most people view as a workday time-suck, Huh sees as a potential gold mine. And so far, he’s been right. Back in September 2007, when most tech players were pouring VC money into the next Facebook, Huh hooked up with a group of angel investors to buy his first fledgling phenomenon, the I Can Has Cheezburger? blog. Since then, he has built Cheezburger Network into the largest aggregator of Web memes, pulling in more than 200 million pageviews a month combined. Huh won’t divulge financial specifics, but investor documents show the Cheezburger Network approached $4 million in revenue last year. The money comes from display ads (companies like American Express and Burger King sponsor the sites) as well as books (the lolcat series has produced two New York Times best-sellers), T-shirts, and other merch. “In the past year and a half, a meme industry has come into place,” says Tim Hwang, organizer of ROFLcon, a biannual Web-celebrity gathering. “There are people who are interested in commercializing memes. Ben’s accelerating that development. Suddenly, everybody’s like, ‘Wow, you can actually pursue this for a living.’”

Of course, Huh can’t take all of the credit for Cheezburger’s success. In fact, he owes quite a bit to the millions of anonymous Web dwellers whose work he corrals, curates, and posts. The majority of Cheezburger’s sites are, after all, extensions of ideas born on ungoverned image-board sites like 4chan or Something Awful — inside jokes that bubble up, JPEG by JPEG, into the mainstream. Lolcats, for example, are an offshoot of Caturday, a 4chan chestnut that dates back to at least 2005. FAIL is a long-running Web gag traceable to Blazing Star, a 1998 Japanese videogame that taunts players with onscreen messages like “You fail it!” Other sites, like GraphJam or the subversive motivational posters of Very Demotivational, were rough concepts until Huh figured out how to develop and package them.

Huh’s setup encourages users to submit their own lolcats or FAIL entries, ensuring a continuous supply of content. “I used to want to create memes more,” he says. “But what’s more satisfying: playing on the playground or building a playground for a bunch of people to enjoy? I’m much more the person who’d rather build it. That brings me satisfaction.”


The playground metaphor is apt: The Internet is supposed to be a great place for sharing and disseminating, which is how a joke evolves into a meme in the first place. Huh has actually been accused of being a bit of a schoolyard mooch — sponging up clever ideas that don’t belong to him (or anyone, really) and dispatching them to mainstream (read: lame) audiences for his own personal gain.

Huh doesn’t take credit for inventing lolcats or any of the other trends he has adopted and adapted. Nonetheless, he has numerous online critics who have expressed their displeasure by subjecting Huh and his wife to flame wars, denial-of-service attacks, and death threats.

Scenes from the office, clockwise from top left: scheduling a post on thatwillbuffout.com; T-shirt designs for LOLmart Shirts; sticky note idea board; brainstorming whiteboard.
Photos: Misha Gravenor

Most of this has been organized, not surprisingly, by various so-called /b/tards on 4chan’s /b/ board, a sort of online Mos Eisley where members of the Anonymous griefer movement have previously planned raids against other ideological foes, like Scientology and YouTube. To many of them, Huh is a poseur who is exploiting and overexposing their underground culture. “When someone throws their name on something that’s been around for a while and that’s not really theirs, it pisses off the people who liked it when it was a more pure thing,” says a longtime 4chan participant who goes by the name Sethdood. “Anonymous doesn’t want to be associated with anything that cleans itself up for kids or that’s goofy and nice. They’ll disown it as soon as it doesn’t become theirs anymore.” Another veteran 4channer, who goes by the handle Kakama, compares Huh’s company to a teenybopper mall franchise: “Huh’s enterprise is the Hot Topic of the Internet. Every time we walk around and hear some random guy going ‘LOL! I can has cheezburger!’ it’s disgusting. It’s like a little bit of our culture has been taken out and defiled.”

Huh refuses to let the haters get to him. “This is all part of the game,” he says. “And if I were scared, what am I going to do? I mean, it’s the Internet. If somebody wants to come find me, somebody will.”

The Cheezburger Network headquarters is located on the second floor of a five-story office building. This afternoon the crew of 10 Cheezburger moderators — all in their early to mid-twenties — are clustered in one corner, headphones slung around their necks. The moderators spend hours drilling into the inner core of YouTube and wading through the thousands of user-uploaded photos and videos on Cheezburger’s various sites in search of one amazing thing to snap up. Every few minutes, someone cues up a warbled home-video musical performance or old videogame theme song. Huh also has 10 writers scattered around the country, some of whom are plucked directly from the meme world (Brad O’Farrell, originator of the “Keyboard Cat” meme, oversees Daily Squee).

“What are the rules for butts on This Is Photobomb?” asks a tall, bespectacled moderator named Steve Ibsen, referring to a site that collects crude and candid party pictures.

“If there’s a crack,” Kane replies, “you gotta cover it up.”

Huh is sitting just outside the windowless former server closet he now calls his office. It’s not the most august perch for a CEO, but years ago Huh learned the pitfalls of executive excess. In January 2000, after graduating from Northwestern University with a journalism degree, he founded his own analytics startup. When the Nasdaq crashed that spring, Huh was forced to close up shop. “It was an abysmal failure,” he says. “I hired too many people. I didn’t raise enough money. We didn’t actually have a product.”

Huh spent the next several years moving around the tech industry, from an Internet-radio startup to a software-installation firm. In early 2007, he and his wife started a modest pet-news blog called Itchmo. The site became a must-read for animal lovers, including Eric Nakagawa, one of the original cofounders of I Can Has Cheezburger?

Nakagawa and his partner, Kari Unebasami, had launched Cheezburger in 2007 after spotting a Something Awful image of a wide-eyed, overly excited kitty accompanied by the caption “I can has cheezburger?” They began collecting other lolcat pictures from sites like 4chan and Something Awful and installed their own lolcat builder for visitors to slap cat patois captions on their own photos.

When Nakagawa linked to an Itchmo post in May, Huh’s site was so flooded with traffic that it crashed. After corresponding with Nakagawa and Unebasami, Huh learned that Cheezburger’s traffic was exploding — and the owners were overwhelmed. “At that point, I was putting in 20 hours a day and not getting a lot of sleep,” Nakagawa says. “We were getting a few thousand pictures a day. We were a little burned out.”

Sensing that lolcats had crossed from radar-blip Web fad to full-on phenomenon, Huh decided to seize the opportunity. In August he made Nakagawa an offer over IM to buy I Can Has Cheezburger? (and its sister site called I Has a Hotdog!). He put down $10,000 of his own money, got some investors, and the deal was finalized a month later. The Cheezburger Network was born. Neither Nakagawa nor Huh would disclose the financial details, but published reports put the purchase price as high as $2 million.

By February 2008, the Cheezburger Network had launched GraphJam and Pundit Kitchen, where users could insert droll commentary onto snapshots of candidates Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Huh scoured the Internet for more material he could transform into memes. “I thought, ‘Dude, there’s so much more of this stuff — why aren’t we doing it?’” he says.

Cheezburger moderators Joe Olk and Lisa Kacerosky search YouTube and thousands of user-upload photos and videos for material.
Photos: Misha Gravenor

As Cheezburger expanded, Huh refined the company’s modus operandi: Rip off a concept from the Web and seed a site devoted to the idea with material that’s already floating around. Next, if needed, sharpen the content with snark produced by a stable of moderators and writers. Then turn it over to users to riff on the meme. Huh has attempted about 40 sites so far, not all of them successful: The Twitter-wiki parody 140pedia, for example, flopped. Huh says he’ll give a floundering site a month or two before shutting it down and repurposing the content.

Right now, the Cheezburger Network pretty much pwns the meme-aggregation marketplace, but it’s a wobbly dominion. Theoretically, anyone can set up a Tumblr account and, with an hour or so of Web surfing, create a clearinghouse for Hitler Downfall parodies. Memes can now spread more rapidly (and therefore risk flaming out just as quickly) thanks to real-time tracking sites like the Daily Meme and Know Your Meme. Which means that for Huh, the real challenge is not in figuring out what’s funny but sussing out the exact moment something will jump from image-board fringe to moms-forwarding-it ubiquity.

The tactics that Huh uses to beat out the other meme-jockeying Web sites can be a little obnoxious. Consider the case of Engrish.com. Last year, Huh tried to acquire the long-running botched-translation site, but when he and the owner couldn’t agree to terms, Huh simply set up his own site, Engrish Funny. “We’ll launch a Web site and people will be like, ‘You’re copying these guys!’” Huh says. “But they’re copying these guys, and the guys before that were copying these guys. Everything we do is some variation on the past.”

Huh has a point. The Cheezburger sites are recycling decades-old comedic constructs. The celebrity-doppelgänger site Totally Looks Like is a riff on Spy magazine’s Separated at Birth? franchise. FAIL Blog, meanwhile, has co-opted America’s Funniest Home Videos and National Lampoon’s True Facts section.

Huh has about 150 other ideas in development and about 1,000 registered domain names. He has also been talking with Hollywood producers about expanding his Cheezburger brands into television series. Nowadays, people don’t forward memes to Huh; they pitch them. Usually, he preempts them by saying that he’s probably already heard it before — and that he’s already working on it himself. “If you see a similar site in the future, it doesn’t mean we took your idea,” he says. “And if you’re OK with that, then you can tell me.” Just don’t try boinking-pooches.com. That’s a guaranteed FAIL.

Source: Contributing editor Brian Raftery (brian raftery@gmail.com) wrote about B-movie production house Asylum in issue 18.01.

EU's Financial Woes 

Sovereign debt crisis to derail world growth?

THE sovereign debt crisis contagion is spreading in Southern Europe (see charts), from Greece to Portugal, Spain and Italy, where government debts and budget deficits are high.

Investors have sold government bonds in those countries as perceived default risks have risen.

This has resulted in the rise in the yields of government bonds resulting in higher borrowing costs for the government and private sector as loans are often tied to the risk free rate of government bonds.

Countries that faced sovereign debt crisis earlier, like Iceland, Ireland, Hungary and Latvia, had to reduce their budget deficits by raising taxes and cutting government spending, resulting in economies going into recessions.
For example, austerity measures in Ireland have resulted in the economy shrinking by almost 12% in the last two years.

Unfortunately, those countries in the eurozone cannot print money like the US, UK and Japan to finance their deficits through the monetisation of debt as they have given up control of their monetary policies to the European Central Bank.

Leaving the eurozone and devaluing their currencies will likely lead to an Argentinian-style loss in confidence and massive fund outflows.

Large budget deficits were the cause of the problems faced by these European countries but still they are likely to resist ceding control over matters like government spending and taxation to the European Union authorities.

As the European monetary union is facing tremendous stress, can the currency union survive where there is no fiscal union or discipline?

Austerity measures are being forced on these Southern European countries at a time when economic conditions are terrible.

For example, following the collapse of the Spanish property bubble which decimated the construction and real estate industry, Spanish unemployment has exceeded four million, representing an unemployment rate of close to 20%.

Cutting Spanish government spending to reduce its 11.4% budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product can only worsen unemployment.

The downgrading of the sovereign debts of Southern European countries is also fuelling the contagion and capital flight.

The sovereign rating of Japan, with an extremely high debt to GDP of close to 200%, is at risk with S&P placing a negative outlook on Japan’s double A sovereign credit rating.

Strangely, these agencies have continued to maintain the triple A ratings of the US and UK, even though their budget deficits are very high, estimated at US$1.6 trillion of 10.6% of GDP for the US.

This is despite the fact that the US unlike Japan cannot rely on domestic savings to fund its borrowings. But then, these were the same agencies that maintained AIG’s triple A rating even when it was guaranteeing large amounts of risky subprime loans.

Even the US is facing constraints on the size of its budget deficits as a popular revolt against large deficits are being organised and the loss of the 60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate means that Republicans can now block spending bills.

The world is depending on fiscal stimulus to sustain growth as highly geared Western consumers are still deleveraging and are reluctant to borrow more despite low interest rates.

If enough countries withdraw fiscal stimulus because of the sovereign debt contagion, world growth will stall, plunging the world into a double dip recession.

This possibility cannot be fully discounted as the GDP of all the Southern and Eastern European countries combined is estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at US$9.1 trillion in 2008, more than twice the size of the Chinese economy.

Already, it would appear that government spending cuts and loss in confidence in the euro has permanently damaged European growth for the next two years.

The EU’s economy, with an estimated GDP of US$18.4 trillion in 2008 is larger than the US economy at US$14.4 trillion.

US and Chinese manufacturing will also be adversely impacted as demand from Europe will decline and a weaker Euro makes US and Chinese exports less competitive.

To prevent this contagion from spreading, the European central bank would have to guarantee the sovereign debt of these affected countries.

Excessive speculation should be curbed to prevent a downward spiral like what happened during the Asian crisis.

Speculative attacks during the Asian crisis ended when speculators who short sold were killed off by the superior buying power of the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities which also changed rules on short selling.

Presumably, Germany and France with the support of other major powers (US, China and the UK) could do the same. That of course would be premised on Greece cutting its budget deficit; probably a foregone conclusion as funding problems will curb spending.

Sounds familiar? The similarities to the Asian financial crisis are as follows: austerity measures were imposed when the economy was hurting and the flight of short-term funds resulted in higher interest rates.

Like Tun Mahathir Mohamad, the Greek prime minister is already blaming unscrupulous hedge funds and speculators for its predicament.

A withdrawal of fiscal stimulus would slow world growth and increase the chance of a double dip recession.

Corporate earnings and the stock market are likely to be adversely impacted. On the flipside, a weak economy will allow interest rates to remain low for a longer time.

The inability to fund fiscal stimulus through government debt may also increase the temptation to print money to finance the deficits, especially if deflationary pressures arise from a slower growth (exacerbated by lower commodity prices and excess capacity).

If such a downturn is moderate, it could lead to better fiscal discipline and a more rapid private sector adjustment; Asian countries hit by the Asian financial crisis (including Malaysia) have weathered the current downturn better as their financial systems are more stable now, budget deficits can be funded by domestic savings, asset bubbles have been better contained and borrowings are funded mainly by domestic sources.

In an environment of weak growth and low interest rates, stick to defensive sectors with steady demand like healthcare (rubber glove companies), utilities, tobacco and telecommunications.

A high dividend yield should also be welcomed as interest rates are likely to remain low due to slower growth and deflationary pressure.

Source: Starbiz ● Choong Khuat Hock, head of research at Kumpulan Sentiasa Cemerlang Sdn Bhd.

A new wire twist on silicon solar cells

CHICAGO--U.S. researchers have devised a way to make flexible solar cells with silicon wires that use just 1 percent of the material needed to make conventional solar cells.

The eventual hope is to make thin, light solar cells that could be incorporated into clothing, for instance but the immediate benefit is cheaper and easier-to-install solar panels, the researchers said.

The new material, reported on Sunday in Nature Materials, uses conventional silicon configured into micron-sized wires (a micron is one-millionth of a meter) instead of brittle wafers and encases them in a flexible polymer that can be rolled or bent.

"The idea is it would be lower-cost and easier to work with by being more flexible than conventional silicon solar cells," Michael Kelzenberg of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

Solar cells, which convert solar energy into electricity, are in high demand because of higher oil prices and concerns over climate change.

Many companies, including Japanese consumer electronics maker Sharp and Germany's Q-Cells SE, are making thin-film solar cells using organic materials such as polymers, but they typically are less efficient at converting solar energy into electricity than conventional cells using silicon.

The study is among the latest to combine the flexibility of the new organic or carbon-containing films with the high efficiency of silicon, which is heavy and stiff.

Kelzenberg said the material uses about 1/100th as much silicon per cell area as a silicon wafer.
"It is potentially a route to bypass many of the costs associated with producing solar cells," he said.

He said a big problem with working with silicon wafers is they are fragile.
More testing is needed but Kelzenberg said the material would be about 15 percent to 20 percent efficient, about the same level as solar cells used on roofs to heat homes.

A similar effort is under way in the lab of John Rogers, a professor of materials science at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Campaign, who is working on ways to make inorganic materials more flexible.

While many companies are investing in organic solar cells--basically materials like plastic that contain carbon--Rogers said these materials have relatively low performance, less long-term reliability and an unproven cost structure.

"We like the inorganics--trying to adapt them and use them in nonstandard ways," Rogers said in a telephone interview.

Last year, his team reported on a new manufacturing process that creates thin arrays of solar cells that are flexible enough to be rolled around a pencil and transparent enough to be used to tint windows on buildings or cars.

"We can make them stretch like a rubber band or bendable like a sheet of plastic," he said.
He is founder of a start-up semiconductor company called Semprius in Durham, N.C., that last month announced a joint effort with Siemens to develop large systems for utility-scale power generation.

"The same technology they are using to make these rigid utility-scale modules could be used for flexible devices as well," he said.

Rogers said that the company has funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA.
Story Copyright (c) 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Up close and personal with Amway chairman Steve Van Andel

The Amway Corp chairman talks passionately about the subject closest to his heart – Amway

Alticor Inc chairman Steve Van Andel cuts a tall, commanding but tired figure walking into the room for this interview.

He just got off a flight from the US after which he was whisked off almost immediately to attend a morning-full of celebrations to commemorate the opening of Amway Malaysia’s new RM100mil headquarters.

Alticor is the parent company of the Amway group of companies.

As children, all we had to do to see the business was to go down to the basements – STEVE VAN ANDEL

“I need a Coke, some sugar to get me going,” he says before settling into this conversation with StarBizWeek last month.

Call him a typical American in this regard but it appears he is soon recovered from his fatigue and starts talking passionately on the subject closest to his heart – Amway, the abbreviation for American Way – the direct selling company his father co-founded more than five decades ago.

The lanky, soft-spoken, 54 year-old Steve is the son of the late Jay Van Andel who passed away in 2004, the man who established Amway together with his childhood friend, Rich DeVos.

Van Andel and DeVos senior started their business venture in 1959, selling vitamins and biodegradable soaps to their community in the small western Michigan town of Ada from their home basements.

“As children, all we had to do to see the business was to go down to the basements,” Steve reveals.

Sales were so good that the pair eventually established plants to manufacture their own products.

Over the decades, both men worked hard to build their business – now still headquartered in Michigan – to become one of the most well-known brands in the US.

It wasn’t always a smooth path. And Steve, who joined Amway right after college knows this better than anyone else.

“We’ve had our difficult times but which business doesn’t?” he says.

Steve took over from Jay in 1995 as head of the group after the latter retired.

He now jointly heads the conglomerate together with Doug DeVos who is president of Alticor.

Since taking charge, the second generation bosses, both of whom are the eldest sons of the founders and extremely close pals just like their fathers, have taken the small town entrepreneurial legacy many steps further – expanding globally at a rapid pace and continuously introducing innovative products of a wide variety to the markets.

In 2008, Alticor’s businesses recorded global sales of US$8.2bil, making it the world’s second largest direct selling company after Avon Products, Inc.
Not surprisingly, China is its biggest market right now, owing to the huge population there, unlike in the earlier days when sales were largely domestic, Steve says.

“We are also seeing great growth in Russia and India, I think the fact that we are now so spread out really helps us sustain sales, even in difficult economic times.

“It’s an adventure every time you venture into a new country,” he says.

Amway makes money from selling its products to the growing number of its distributors globally who in turn sell them to customers.

From simple household and health food products, its product categories have grown to include beauty and wellness and skincare products over the years.

Raised in a strict Christian family, Steve is quite obviously the chip of the old block, where his personal character is concerned.

Dad, Jay who died a billionaire once wrote in his autobiography that “the greatest pleasure comes not from the endless acquisition of material things, but from creating wealth and giving it away; the task of every person on earth is to use everything he’s given to the ultimate glory of God.”

Steve likes to believe that he is very much in tune with his dad’s values.

“The idea of providing our distributors an opportunity to make their own money, build their lives and to achieve personal success is what keeps me motivated every single day,” he says.

Some have even become millionaires and I’d like to think that we had a role to play in that.

“It’s really about giving back,” he says.

“To me, our company has grown by leaps and bounds, and really, the most important thing to us right now is that we do our part in helping people change their lives for the better,“ Steve adds.

Amway now has more than 3 million distributors or sales reps around the world, he says and the business continues to grow as “it is an opportunity for individuals from any walk of life, to build the kind of life that they want and dream of.”

Because after all, my dad and Rich started the company with a very basic notion – that everyone, regardless of their monetary position or educational background – could strike it out on their own and be their own boss,” says Steve.

People in developing nations, such as Vietnam, China and India, have slowly been taking to Amway’s direct-sales concept as a way of earning an income and building their wealth, where in previous times, such a thought had never occurred to them, he adds.

Like his father in more ways than one, Steve is also past chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation representing millions of businesses in the US.

He still sits on the board.

In addition to the chamber board, Steve is also on the board of the Centre for International Private Enterprises, Michigan National Bank Corp, Grand Rapids John Ball Zoo Society and the American Management Association’s Operation Enterprise, amongst others.

Obviously, the business of Amway which is privately held, yes Amway in the US has never gone public – has made Steve a well-off man but not one to forget his roots, he says he continues his father’s community works up till today, dedicating time and effort to the renewal of his hometown, among which the products are the Van Andel Institute, a major health research centre and the Van Andel Museum Centre, both community projects that the people of the town enjoy.

“I’ve travelled the world over,” Steve says at the end of this interview but it is apparent where the heart of this true-boy of West Michigan lies.

“Both our families (Van Andels and DeVos’) are products of Western Michigan and we will never ever forget that,” he says.

Source: By YVONNE TAN
yvonne@thestar.com.my

Google Buzz Recast as Auto-suggest to Quell Privacy Fears

Google Feb. 13 replaced the auto-follow feature in Google Buzz with auto-suggest to assuage major privacy concerns about the social service. In effect, users will be able to choose whom they follow on Buzz, making the service opt-in.

Launched directly into Gmail Feb. 9, Google Buzz lets Gmail users post status updates, inline videos, photos and other content.

Shortly after launch, it quickly became clear the company didn't consider the ramifications of setting the service up to automatically follow users. Buzz upset users by automatically exposing their Gmail contacts through their Google profiles.

What Google believed would be a fresh breath of expediency turned into a public relations nightmare, with Google backpedaling Feb. 11 by adding a checkbox to warn users that Buzz will show the names of Gmail contacts they are following and people following them on their Google profile.

This didn't do it for most users, some of who called for an opt-in model to let people choose to use Buzz or not. Google Buzz Product Manager Todd Jackson acknowledged this in a contrite blog post Feb. 13:

    "On Thursday, after hearing that people thought the checkbox for choosing not to display this information publicly was too hard to find, we made this option more prominent. But that was clearly not enough. So starting this week, instead of an auto-follow model in which Buzz automatically sets you up to follow the people you e-mail and chat with most, we're moving to an auto-suggest model. You won't be set up to follow anyone until you have reviewed the suggestions and clicked "Follow selected people and start using Buzz."

Jackson said that the "tens of millions of you who have already started using Buzz," will be shown this new start-up experience in the next few weeks so that they may review the people they're following.

Those who want to review this list now may go to the Buzz tab, click "Following XX people" and unfollow folks. Users may also opt out of the service from the edit profile page.

Google made two more changes to Buzz.

Buzz will no longer connect users' public Picasa Web Albums and Google Reader shared items. This came after one woman who had been the victim of domestic abuse complained that her abusive ex-husband could see her content through Buzz' connection with Google Reader.

Google also said it added a Buzz tab to Gmail Settings to let users hide Buzz from Gmail or disable it. There will also be a link to these settings from the initial start-up page. This comes after many users complained that they couldn't easily see how to turn off Buzz; previously, users has to turn Buzz off from their Google account page.

With these changes Google made Buzz opt-in and made it much easier for users who complained that Buzz was too noisy or violated their privacy to opt out. Finally, Jackson offered the following apology to irate users:

"We quickly realized that we didn't get everything quite right. We're very sorry for the concern we've caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We'll continue to do so."

The question now is whether Google has alienated existing Buzz users enough to make them choose not to follow anyone on Buzz at all, or even to opt out of the service. Gmail has 176 million users and needs every one of them to use Buzz is Google is going to challenge Facebook in the social networking space.

Source: http://newscri.be/link/1018286

Quit your post, Zahrain told

GEORGE TOWN: Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has demanded that Independent Bayan Baru MP Datuk Seri Zahrain Mohd Hashim resign as the board chairman and director of Island Golf Properties Bhd (IGP).

IGP is a subsidiary of the Penang Development Corporation (PDC), the state economic arm.

Lim said Zahrain was appointed as IGP chairman and director based on his previous position as a state PKR leader.

‘‘As a matter of principle, he should quit. I am waiting for him to make the move although as the PDC chairman, I am empowered to remove him,’’ he told a press conference here yesterday.

Lim said that in Zahrain’s statement on Friday when he quit PKR, the first two paragraphs were devoted to the controversy in IGP.

“This shows he is interested in personal issues rather than his party’s struggle,’’ he said.

Lim said their relationship turned sour after he went against Zahrain’s recommendation that the operations of the Bukit Jambul Country Club, an 18-hole golf course under IGP, be outsourced and awarded to a RM2 company.

“The RM2 company has no track record of managing golf courses.

“Furthermore, it was only formed two months before the open-tender process was initiated in December, 2008,” Lim said.

Zahrain, when contacted, said he would quit the IGP post and was in the process of drafting his resignation letter.

He said that since his announcement, he had been deluged with SMSes, both in support of and against his decision.

Zahrain urged his ex-PKR colleagues to respect his decision and appreciate his contributions to the party.
At another function, Umno supreme council member Datuk Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi urged PKR members not to delay in leaving the party as they had “long been played out” by party leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

“I urge PKR MPs, there is no need to ponder any more. It’s time to leave and become independents,” Dr Mohd Puad said, adding that he was certain that there would be more resignations among PKR lawmakers.

Source:By IAN MCINTYRE and ANDREA FILMER
newsdesk@thestar.com.my

The New Generation Leaving Ireland, now rated to junk by Moody

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Some 170,000 jobs vanished last year, and the lack of employment is driving a generation away

"The lack of jobs is driving people away," says Trinity College senior Simon Phelan Jude Edginton

By Kerry Capell

Dublin - When Simon Phelan started a civil engineering degree at Dublin's Trinity College four years ago, he figured his biggest problem upon graduation would be deciding which job to choose. Ireland's economy was growing at 5.4%, unemployment was a mere 4.4%, and construction was booming.

Today, with graduation fast approaching, only two of Phelan's 100 classmates have even had interviews. Worse, in these recession-scarred times, just two people from the class ahead of him are employed. So Phelan and many contemporaries see emigration as the only option. "The lack of jobs is driving people away," the 20-year-old Dubliner says after trawling through the meager offerings at Trinity's career office, a small building tucked off the school's cobblestoned quadrangle. "Ireland will lose a whole generation of graduates."

It's a scenario most Irish thought had gone the way of the potato famine and two-shilling pints of Guinness. Two decades of prosperity had transformed the island nation of 4.5 million from a European laggard into the so-called Celtic Tiger. After a century and a half in which Ireland's young and energetic routinely fled to South Boston or London's Kilburn, today's twentysomethings grew up expecting to live and work at home. But with one in three males under age 25 out of work, their confidence seems to have been misplaced. "It used to be employers were fighting over graduates," says Shane King, a 22-year-old Trinity senior from County Mayo on Ireland's west coast. "Now graduates are fighting each other for jobs."

The country's budget swung from a surplus in 2007 to a deficit of nearly 12% of gross domestic product last year as the economy shrank by 7.5%. A decade-long property bubble, which saw real estate prices triple, led to a banking crisis that Standard & Poor's estimates could cost taxpayers as much as $34 billion. "Everything we have is being spent on the banks," says David Begg, head of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Drive the 10 miles from central Dublin to Citywest, an industrial park near the border of County Kildare, and you'll see ample evidence of overbuilding. On the banks of the Liffey River, there's the half-finished shell of Anglo Irish Bank's new headquarters. Farther on, "for sale" signs dot posh developments where new homes stand unoccupied.

AUSTRALIA BOUND?

Many would-be emigrants have made the same trip. On a chilly Sunday, hundreds of people gather in a conference room at the Citywest Hotel for a seminar on emigrating Down Under. Representatives of several Aussie states sit behind foldable tables stacked with pamphlets extolling Australia's low unemployment and "no worries" outlook. Carpenter Michael McGerr, 38, drove more than 100 miles with his wife and toddler to attend. "Our goal is to go away for good," he says.

Last year emigration exceeded immigration for the first time in 15 years as 65,100 people left, outpacing arrivals by nearly 8,000. Almost half of those who decamped were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. But with few opportunities at home, growing numbers of native Irish are also headed for the exit. "There was loads of work three years ago, then it just dried up," says Patrick Maye, an unemployed bricklayer who traveled to the Aussie seminar from Carlow, some 50 miles south of Dublin. The 22-year-old hopes to move to Australia once he finishes retraining as a fitness instructor.

With unemployment set to hit 13.8% this year, things are sure to get worse. The Economic & Social Research Institute (ESRI), an independent think tank in Dublin, predicts net outward migration of 40,000 for the year ending in April, the highest level in more than 20 years. "We are right back to the 1980s," says Piaras Mac Éinrí, a lecturer at University College Cork.

Back then, unemployment soared to 18% as the economy took a dive. Then in the 1990s, a wave of foreign investment swept Ireland, lured by low corporate taxes and inexpensive workers. Now the blue chips are scaling way back. In the past year, Intel (INTC), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and Waterford Wedgwood have downsized; Dell (DELL) moved PC production from Limerick to lower-wage Poland; and some 1,500 smaller companies have folded. Last year 170,000 Irish jobs vanished, and ESRI predicts 76,000 more will be lost in 2010.

One problem is that Ireland got too pricey. The American Chamber of Commerce Ireland estimates that from 2004 to 2008, Irish wages rose 50% faster than the average of advanced European economies. Former Intel Chairman Craig R. Barrett says that of the 14 reasons Intel came to Ireland two decades ago, only one remained: a low corporate tax rate of 12.5%. "Ireland needs a new game plan," he said at a Dublin conference in September.

In the past, the state has been a big creator of jobs by hiring civil servants and promoting investment. But to plug a yawning gap in public finances, Dublin in December announced spending cuts of $5.6 billion, including $1.4 billion from public sector pay and $1.1 billion from social welfare benefits. The tough measures have helped restore Ireland's standing among global investors, but the cuts make it difficult for the government to launch the policies that might enable people to ride out the recession, either in on-the-job training or higher education.

The biggest job casualties have been in construction. At its peak in 2007, the building trade employed 1 in 7 Irish workers. But over the past two years, the sector has shed 200,000 jobs, according to Ireland's Construction Industry Federation. "We went from being in high demand to no demand," says Gordon Cobbe, a construction manager from Cork. Out of work for a year, he plans on moving to Perth, Australia.

Many Irish aiming to get out face problems similar to workers in, say, Detroit or Toledo: They can't afford to leave their homes. John McKenna is eager to join more than a dozen friends who have moved to Australia. With business slow at the plumbing supply store where he works, "I don't know how much longer I'll have a job," the 39-year-old says. But the house he bought for $306,000 in 2006 has halved in value, so it'll be tough to depart anytime soon.

The emigration surge comes as Dublin tries to implement a program called "Smart Economy." The plan is to boost innovation through tax breaks for research, expedited visa processing for skilled workers, a $689 million fund to back promising tech startups, and other incentives. The glue holding it all together, the government says, is "the knowledge, skills, and creativity" of the Irish—a problem with so many people leaving. "There is a risk that many of the talented individuals envisioned as the foundation of the innovation economy will make their careers elsewhere," says John McHale, an economics professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Other economists are more optimistic. Alan Barrett, a research professor at ESRI, says the current exodus is likely to be benign. As part of the EU, Ireland will again lure immigrants from across Europe as growth picks up. And he points out that many who left in the '80s returned with better skills. "As soon as the economy recovered, people came back in droves," he says.

Kevin Carey, CEO of moving company Careline International, can attest to that. His firm helped relocate emigrants in the 1980s before bringing many back a decade later. Now most of his work is again outbound, and business was up 23% last year. His customers weren't so lucky. "They're all leaving; the cost of living here is too high," says Carey, who was manning a table at the Australian emigration event at the Citywest Hotel. For him, at least, business was good.

 

Source: Capell, Capell is a senior writer in BusinessWeek's London bureau .

Moody's cuts Ireland to junk, warns of second bailout

 

By Walter Brandimarte and Carmel Crimmins

NEW YORK/DUBLIN | Tue Jul 12, 2011 7:29pm EDT

Reuters) - Moody's cut Ireland's credit rating to junk on Tuesday, warning that the debt-laden country would likely need a second bailout -- just the latest move amid heightening concerns about Europe's ability to address its debt crisis and prevent it from spreading.

Moody's move comes a week after it slashed Portugal to junk status with a similar warning about the need for a second round of rescue funds. It reflects the credit rating agency's view that any further financial assistance from Brussels will require private investors to share part of the pain, possibly through a debt rollover or swap.

European finance ministers have acknowledged for the first time that some form of Greek default may be needed to cut Athens' debts, and if that materializes, Ireland's rating, never before in junk territory, could be set for a further round of cuts.

Investors fear a Greece default could ripple through Europe's banking system, putting pressure on stretched public finances in other euro zone countries. Italy, the euro zone's third largest economy, looks especially vulnerable with a debt-to-output ratio second only to Greece, and markets fear political bickering may derail a plan to slash spending and rein in the deficit.

Moody's one-notch downgrade on Ireland weighed on stocks and the euro, which hit its lowest level against the dollar in four months.

The Irish government, which wants to return to debt markets in 2013 when its current EU-IMF bailout runs out, offered a vexed response.

"This is a disappointing development and it is completely at odds with the recent views of other rating agencies," the finance ministry said in a statement. "We are doing all that we can to put our house in order and the progress that we are making is there for all to see."

Moody's now rates Ireland Ba1, one notch below former financial market pariah Colombia and two notches below Brazil, and has kept a negative outlook, meaning further downgrades are likely in the next 12 to 18 months.

Ireland's rating is still one notch above Portugal and six above Greece. Both Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings have Ireland at BBB-plus, three notches above junk status, with S&P's outlook stable and Fitch on outlook negative meaning it does not expect a downgrade in the short-term.

Moody's move, however, will likely put pressure on the other ratings as the downgrade forces some investors to dump Irish bonds because they no longer enjoy a clean investment-grade sweep of the three major ratings agencies.

"It's amazing to me that Ireland was still investment grade," said Suvrat Prakash, interest rate strategist at BNP Paribas in New York.

"A lot of people assume that these rating agencies tend to move with a lag so there could be more downgrades to come.

Ireland's borrowing costs are already at levels once thought unimaginable, with five-year paper yielding over 15 percent on the secondary market and 10-year paper close to euro-era highs of 13.86 percent.

When Ireland agreed an 85 billion euros ($119 billion) bailout package with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund last November -- a move designed to soothe market fears -- its 10-year paper was yielding around 9.5 percent, a level viewed as shocking at the time.

Economic growth in the European region as a whole has been sluggish, as a number of nations have struggled with mounting debt costs and have had to pass harsh austerity plans that have slowed economic growth further, creating a vicious cycle where tax revenues drop, reducing their chances of repaying the debt even more.

But the more investors fear that heavily indebted euro zone governments will be unable to repay their debts, the more the yields on their bonds rise, dragging down their value in banks' balance sheets, erasing their capital, and increasing the need for yet more bank bailout's by stronger euro zone governments.

A CORK BOBBING IN THE OCEAN

Unlike Greece, Ireland is meeting its bailout targets and Irish officials have felt frustrated at how their efforts have been swept aside by events in Athens.

An agreement by the euro zone finance ministers, known as the Eurogroup, late on Monday to cut the interest rate for countries borrowing from their rescue fund and an agreement to make the fund more flexible and extend its loan maturities was hailed by Dublin as helping it return to debt markets.

The finance ministry said Moody's move appeared not to reflect the Eurogroup developments, but Moody's analyst Dietmar Hornung said the risk of private sector participation in any future bailout meant investors would be put off lending fresh funds to Ireland.

Hornung, in an interview with Reuters, warned over the risks even though Moody's is confident the euro zone is "willing to continue to provide liquidity support for peripheral countries and give them time to achieve a sustainable financial position.

"But at the same time we see a growing possibility that, as a precondition of additional rounds of liquidity support here, private-sector creditors participation will be required," he said.

Ireland's debt management agency said on Tuesday the country was fully funded until the end of 2013. Ireland has a financing requirement of nearly 34 billion euros over 2014 and 2015, based on estimated deficits and maturing debts.

Even before Moody's downgrade, Finance Minister Michael Noonan admitted Dublin was at the mercy of the markets.

"Ireland is a cork bobbing on a very turbulent ocean at present," he told state broadcaster RTE on Tuesday.

Officials from the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank are expected to confirm Dublin is meeting all its bailout targets in their latest quarterly review, expected on Thursday.

But Ireland's weak domestic economy is hitting spending-related tax revenues, and Moody's warned that another downgrade would be considered if the government can't meet its fiscal consolidation goals.

(Reporting by Walter Brandimaret and Carmel Crimmins; Additional reporting by Daniel Bases; Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Leslie Adler)

OpenOffice 3.2 - now with less Microsoft envy

It's 2010. And 2007 is finally here
 

Review OpenOffice 3.2 - now now available for Windows, Mac and Linux - boasts faster start-up times than before. But the really big news is that now - finally - this open-source suite offers full compatibility with files created using Microsoft's Office 2007.

If you've ever tried opening or converting .docx and other Microsoft Office 2007 file formats outside of Office 2007 itself, you've likely pounded your head against more than a few walls - downloading plug-ins or struggling with online conversion services.

That should be a thing of the past with OpenOffice 3.2, which supports all the Office 2007 formats out of the box. That said, the conversion process still isn't completely perfect, especially if you're trying for pixel-perfect document formatting or, in my testing, spreadsheets with complicated equation cells.

Of course, it's hard to be too excited about the new conversion tools given that they arrive three years after Office 2007 hit the shelves. If your business had a mission-critical need to work with Microsoft's formats let's hope you weren't holding your breath for OpenOffice to come through for you.

Is it fair to give an open-source project a hard time for taking three years to reverse engineer a document format more or less invented to make OpenOffice's life more complicated?

Well, no, but in the real world Microsoft Office is - for better or worse - the moving target OpenOffice.org must aim for - and, in this case, taking quite a while to hit.

Also on the document support front, OpenOffice 3.2 boasts improved compliance with Open Document Format (ODF) 1.2 standards as well as the ability to open password-protected Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

Given that Microsoft's preview release of Office 2010 offers support for ODF files there's some small chance that OpenOffice might actually have an easier time integrating with Microsoft's Office in the future.

The latest version of OpenOffice isn't all about format wars, though, and version 3.2 makes a worthwhile update for the considerable speed boost - especially in start up times.

It's so fast, I no longer had time to grab a fresh cup of coffee while the suite came to life. No, I double clicked the icon and - just like - that OpenOffice was ready to go. Also, I found most of the applications were somewhat snappier in general usage. The one exception seemed to be the database application, which felt sluggish in comparison - particularly with large database files.

After the speed and file format improvements, the OpenOffice release notes get very technical, very quickly. The gory details can be found on the OpenOffice site, but suffice to say that the Calc tool spreadsheet application has received quite a few improvements - such as improved copy-and-paste features - while the rest of the applications also see minor updates and bug fixes.

Time for a fluffing

However, what's perhaps most significant about this release may have nothing to do with the improved applications at all. Rather, it's the fact this will be last release before OpenOffice moves to its new owner Oracle, which finally closed its purchase of Sun Microsystems last month.

Oracle has pledged to continue OpenOffice and plans to keep the entire Sun team on hand, running OpenOffice as an independent business unit. Of course, Oracle clearly sees the online office suite as the future and plans to launch Oracle Cloud Office at some point. Whether that means OpenOffice will suffer neglect remains to be seen.

It would be nice to see Oracle do for OpenOffice what Microsoft is trying to do for its Office - integrate an online component - but do it without creating a massive vendor lock-in scheme.

Some might argue the future of office suites is all online with things like Google Docs or Zoho one day becoming the norm, but while document storage in the cloud is all well and good, editing documents in a browser is still nowhere near as pleasant or powerful as with dedicated software.

If Oracle can provide a first-rate connect-anywhere, edit-anywhere online office suite, it might have finally found something that can break Microsoft's stronghold on business productivity tools.
That's what I'd be looking for in follow on versions to OpenOffice 3.2. ®

Source:

By Scott Gilbertson • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 13th February 2010 07:45 GMT