Business News

Movies and television shows from Paramount Pictures will be available for sale through AOL’s new video portal under a deal announced Monday.

Classics such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Chinatown and newer releases like Mission: Impossible III will be sold for $9.99 to $19.99 each, comparable to fees at online services CinemaNow, MovieLink and Guba as well as sites operated by MySpace-owner News Corp.

Consumers will own the movies and can transfer them to as many as three other computers or portable devices that support Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Player technology.

As more Americans get high-speed broadband connections at home, studios and television networks have been experimenting with ways to distribute their programs over the Internet. Some show programs for free on their websites or at AOL with ads, while others sell them outright through Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store, Amazon.com’s Unbox and others.

The Paramount offerings, which include television specials, are for sale only.

The deal with Viacom’s Paramount follows similar agreements announced in August with News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox, Sony’s Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, NBC Universal’s Universal Pictures, and Time Warner’s Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. AOL LLC is a unit of Time Warner. NBC Universal is a joint venture of General Electric and Vivendi Universal.

Dulles, Va.-based AOL saw users defect to rivals’ free e-mail and other offerings as it kept trying to charge subscription fees of as much as $26 a month. Although AOL has recently made those services free as well to better compete for online advertising dollars, analysts believe the company may have a better chance in emerging fields like online video.

In early August, the company launched a video portal that tries to aggregate clips and full-length programs from around the Internet — some free, some for sale. The company wants to be a one-stop site for video, although it faces intense competition from veterans like Yahoo and start-ups like YouTube, which Google is buying for $1.65 billion.

“Expensive keyword” (high CPC) isn’t equal to “profitable keyword” (high earnings) due to the low volume of traffic expensive (niche) keywords produce. The best way to find really profitable keywords is to rank keywords by cost/day (cost per click X clicks/day) rather than cost per click.

Almost all AdSense publishers are looking for the most expensive keywords. Let’s have a look at the top 100 most expensive keywords. But first let’s add 2 extra columns to the list: clicks/day and cost/day by Google AdWords estimation:

Have you noticed that keyword price result in ZERO profit if there are no clicks? It’s cost/day (keyword price X clicks/day) that makes you rich, not keyword price itself.

Salesforce.com
(NYSE: CRM - News), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services,
today announced that chairman and CEO Marc Benioff was named a 2006 “Agenda
Setter” by silicon.com. As one of the Top 10 executives in the Business
Leaders category, Benioff joins the ranks of top industry executives including
Ray Ozzie from Microsoft, Eric Schmidt of Google, Steve Jobs of Apple, Meg
Whitman of eBay and John Chambers of Cisco. Winners were selected by a group
of respected industry experts. Full text of the article and list can be found
at http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/as2006/ .

Source: salesforce.com, Inc.
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The story states, “More than any individual since Bill Gates or Linus
Torvalds (Benioff) has become inextricably linked with the movement he
champions. Although he has made a major success of Salesforce.com and has
shaken up the CRM old-guard, it is Benioff’s role as service evangelist and
engine of change which will have the greatest impact on the industry. Web
services are shaking up the IT industry, the Agenda Setters panel believes,
and that’s due in no small part to the Salesforce.com CEO.”

“Just a few years ago companies had no CRM choice but to embark upon time-
consuming and costly software implementations,” said Benioff. “Now, with on-
demand business applications, a mere fraction of that time and budget can
literally transform a company’s operations and drive significant bottom line
improvements. This recognition by silicon.com is an honor and a validation
of the vision of every salesforce.com employee, partner and customer around
the world.”

Silicon.com, a CNET company, is the leading UK website for business
decision-makers seeking to assess and understand how technology can drive
their business forward. Delivering top stories, breaking news, and leading
commentary and analysis, silicon.com provides context and strategic insight
into the key issues influencing how businesses use technology today.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business
services. The company’s Salesforce suite of on-demand applications enables
customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and
partner information on-demand. AppExchange, salesforce.com’s on-demand
platform, allows customers and partners to build powerful new applications
quickly and easily, customize and integrate the Salesforce suite to meet their
unique business needs, and distribute and sell on-demand applications at
www.appexchange.com. Customers can also take advantage of Successforce,
salesforce.com’s world-class training, support, consulting and best practices
offerings.

As of July 31, 2006, salesforce.com manages customer information for
approximately 24,800 customers and approximately 501,000 paying subscribers
including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Avis/Budget Rent
A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and
SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or
other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may
not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com
applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are
currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with
offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under
the ticker symbol “CRM”. For more information please visit
http://www.salesforce.com , or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

NOTE: Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and The Business Web,
AppExchange and Successforce are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San
Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

It’s already a workplace maxim that employees should
be careful what they say in their emails from company computers. But
fewer office workers know to apply caution to their use of
instant-messaging services.

These immensely popular computer programs, which let
users exchange short text messages with online buddies in real time,
are no haven for private chatter. Companies and government agencies can
monitor and log IM conversations conducted on company-network
computers. And though it seems that IM conversations disappear into a
cyber-vacuum when a session is over, that isn’t always true.

Two scandals currently dominating the headlines
highlight the risks. In the past week, instant messaging came back to
haunt former Republican congressman Mark Foley of Florida. He resigned
abruptly when he was confronted with his emails to a young Capitol Hill
page, which showed a member of Congress taking an unusual — and
perhaps disturbingly close — interest in a subordinate. But the most
damning revelations came from his sexually explicit IM sessions with
several pages. (more…)