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Wastes such as old monitors are labelled as hazardous wastes because of some toxic chemicals that they contain. Some state landfills in the United States ban these e-wastes because of their harmful properties. Some are even found out to be carcinogens, with chemicals like mercury and lead. Because of this, many people are having some problem son where to dump their old computer especially monitors after buying a new one. Here are some tips on how to dispose old monitors in an environment-friendly way.

Make sure that the club par excellance company you contacted for recycling your old monitor abide with safety and environmental regulations on dumping e-wastes. You have to do your research and check if your recycler will dispose your old monitor properly and make good use out of it, instead of just selling it and not caring if it will be disposed of or recycled correctly. (more…)

Surfing on the official forum of Vbulletin , i found this interesting article about the new version of VB . Vbulletin 4

Preface

Evening everyone. Here we are on the eve of vb 3.7 which promises to be the last member of the vbulletin 3.x branch (security patches not-withstanding). The software has come along way to become one of the strongest PHP software packages of all, and it is backed by one of the best communities online, both user and programmer side. Jelsoft should be justly proud of their accomplishment.Before I begin I’d like to introduce who I am and a bit of my background. vBulletin brought me back to programming after I’d given it up in college, and for that I am thankful. For all intents the programming staff of vbulletin were my teacher and much of my coding style is owed to them. I would not be doing the job I do today where it not for them, and for that I’m grateful. I mention this because in this post I’m going to take a hard look at the 3.x codebase, particularly 3.7beta6 and while much of this look will be with a critical eye I want to establish now that I have nothing but the highest level of respect for the minds behind this code - where it not for their efforts I would not be in a position to do this analysis and make these suggestions. (more…)

Microsoft Corp. made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo on Friday, a deal that could shake up the competitive and lucrative market for online advertising.The deal would pay Yahoo shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday.

Shares of Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) were up 47% with less than an hour of trading left, while shares of Dow component Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) had tumbled more than 6%.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, called the move the “next major milestone” for the software giant.

“We are very, very confident this is the right path for Microsoft and for Yahoo,” he said.

Microsoft hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. Ballmer said that Microsoft has been in “off and on” talks with Yahoo for 18 months and said he called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Thursday night to tell him the bid was coming.

A Microsoft-Yahoo combination would create a powerful number two player in the online search business, which Google commands. It would also be one of the biggest tech deals ever, on par with Hewlett-Packard’s $25 billion acquisition of Compaq in 2002.

Microsoft announced the bid early Friday. In a statement, the company said the offer allows Yahoo shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the software giant’s offer consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock.

In a statement, Yahoo acknowledged receipt of the offer and said its board would evaluate the proposal “carefully and promptly.”

Searching for solutions

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have fallen far behind rival Google  in the lucrative field of Internet search. Yahoo’s earnings and share of the online search market have badly trailed Google.

Google reigns over 58.4% of the U.S. market, while Yahoo has 22.9% and Microsoft’s share is just 9.8%, according to comScore, a research firm that tracks Internet traffic.

The combined forces of Microsoft and Yahoo would also make a stronger force in online display advertising - the type of targeted banner ads Yahoo is known for.

In a letter it sent to Yahoo’s board of directors, Microsoft disclosed it had explored a Microsoft-Yahoo deal a year earlier, only to be rebuffed by Yahoo, which said at that time it was confident of the “potential upside” for Yahoo from operational changes it planned.

“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” said Ballmer.

On Thursday, former Yahoo CEO and current Chairman Terry Semel, who opposed an earlier approach Microsoft made last year, resigned from the Yahoo board.

Yahoo announced Tuesday it would lay off 1,000 employees by mid-February, citing what CEO Yang described as “headwinds” facing the company. It also reported lower fourth-quarter earnings that still beat Wall Street’s now modest expectations for the firm, but it gave a 2008 revenue forecast that disappointed analysts.

“Last year, Yahoo told investors it needed more time to get on the right track,” says UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter. “But you only get a certain amount of time to turn things around.”

Gunning for Google

But even Google has run into recent problems. After the bell Thursday it reported earnings that fell a penny a share short of forecasts. The company reported a slowdown in its fourth-quarter revenue growth, attributed partly to difficulty selling ads on social networking sites.

A Google spokesman, Matt Furman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s move on Yahoo. “It would be premature to comment at this point,” he said.

Google shares have fallen 24% since hitting a record high $747.24 in early November. But Yahoo shares have lost more than a third of their value over the same period.

Still, online advertising, particularly ads tied to Internet search, is by far the fastest growing part of ad spending. That’s caused problems for traditional media, which have seen ad spending fall.

Microsoft said it projects the online advertising market to grow from over $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010.

In the letter to Yahoo’s board, Microsoft said a tie-up would achieve economics of scale while allowing combined research and development efforts to achieve breakthrough products, particularly in the growing areas of online video and mobile Internet connections.

Microsoft said it intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees across the firm. It said it believes the proposed combination would receive all necessary regulatory approvals.

Shortly after the announcement, a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson said that its “antitrust division is interested in looking at the competitive effects of the [Microsoft and Yahoo] transaction.” But with Google’s strong lead in the search industry, analysts said it is highly unlikely Microsoft’s proposed deal would violate antitrust laws.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst George Askew gives the deal an 80% change of being completed.

“This acquisition offer is a bear hug - and the two companies may well come to terms on a deal at a modestly higher price than the $31 offer,” Askew said in a written note.

But some analysts say the integration of the two companies could be tricky to pull off. For one, Microsoft and Yahoo use different platforms to run their search engines, and they would have to decide which one to use.

 Source : CNN.com

 NEW YORK (AP)–The online advertising leader Google Inc. (GOOG) said Friday it would help make it less lucrative for users to tie up millions of Internet addresses through a loophole, as the compnay wants to keep those domain names available for legitimate individuals and businesses.

Over the next few weeks, Google will start looking for names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within a five-day grace period for full refunds.

Google’s AdSense program would exclude those names so no one can generate advertising revenue from claiming them temporarily, a practice known as domain name tasting: the online equivalent of buying expensive clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a party.

“We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web,” Google spokesman Brandon McCormick said.

The company said it notified participants via email Thursday.

Name tasting exploits a grace period originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. But with automation and a burgeoning online advertising market, entrepreneurs have generated big bucks exploiting the policy to test hoards of names, keeping just the ones that turn out to generate the most revenue.

The practice ties up millions of domain names at any given time, making it more difficult for legitimate individuals and businesses to get a desirable name.

Jay Westerdal, who earlier wrote about Google’s change on his DomainTools blog, said in an interview that the ban should make domain name tasting far less lucrative. He noted that Google’s chief rival, Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), already tries to ban tasted addresses that infringe on trademarks and account for much of the problem.

“If Google and Yahoo are not monetizing these types of sites, I think domain tasting as we know it will come to a screeching halt,” Westerdal said. “The alternative advertising is just not as effective.”

In October, Yahoo sued several domain name registration companies over tasting, accusing them of targeting trademarks owned by Yahoo and other leading brands. The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Dell Inc. (DELL) and BMW (BMW.XE) have filed similar federal lawsuits in Florida.

The Internet’s key oversight agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, already is looking into name tasting and will soon ask a committee to review the issue and craft recommendations. A public comment period on draft procedures closes Monday.

The operators of the “.org” suffix already won approval to charge companies that make too many returns. The number of deletions dropped to 152,700 in June, compared with 2.4 million in May, after the new fee took effect.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

At the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates and Microsoft President of the Entertainment & Devices Division Robbie Bach today unveiled several new entertainment services and partnerships, including new deals with Disney-ABC Television Group, NBC Universal and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), that demonstrate how software is improving people’s ability to connect with their favorite content and communities through new and expanded forms of entertainment experiences.

During the keynote, Gates talked about the ongoing transformation of the personal computer and he shared sales figures for Windows Vista that indicate that the PC and the Windows platform remains a central catalyst for the advances of the Digital Decade. According to Gates, the company has sold more than 100 million Windows Vista licenses to date.
“For more than 25 years, Windows has unlocked the power of personal computing,” Gates said. “Now we are expanding Windows to go where you want to go and do what you want to do on PCs, the Web and mobile devices. The result is connected experiences that extend across people’s lives, interests and communities, at home and at work.”
Source: Microsoft PressPass.

PRWEB) November 24, 2007 — 3FN Marketing, advertising company powered by 3FN Marketing Bidding run by well-known hosting brand 3FN.NET, announces a releases of the new modernized set of profitable affiliate features providing publishers with beneficial toolkit including seo and analytics tools along with 24/7 online support and consultancy services.

3FN Marketing offers one of the best affiliate programs on the Internet. An affiliate can earn up to 80% of bid share and this is among the highest payouts in the affiliate and pay-per-click advertising industries. Together with its previously released webmaster tools, 3FN Marketing’s new modernized publisher set of seo and analytics tools offers a variety of solutions for webmasters of all skill levels to benefit from well thought-out strategies and publisher tools and services extremely needed in nowadays dynamically developing market of online pay-per-click advertising.

“As increasing number of webmasters turn to our affiliate marketing program to generate top results in their revenue and campaign efficiency, the capabilities for our partner companies and website publishers to increase revenues by participating as affiliates are continually growing. The program benefits our affiliates by providing them with 3FN Marketing branded services and a generous revenue opportunity by using presented tools and services in such essential fields of webmaster craft as keyword analytics, search engine optimization and increasing incoming traffic tools and services that have an extremely solid structure, and are sure to be one of the best in the industry,” announced Dean McToner, the 3FN Marketing spokesperson. “Affiliates want a solution that will allow them to monitor, optimize and monetize whilst automatically maximizing their profits. If they currently do it manually in any way …, then we believe 3FN Marketing offers them something extremely useful and highly beneficial. The new and modernized set of webmaster tools and services and affiliate program itself allow our valuable affiliates and new potential partners and publishers to promote their strategies, increase their efficiency and ROI and provide innovate ready-to-use techniques and tools without maintenance or technical responsibilities.”

Modernized and well-run webmaster tools and services providing not only tools and services to manage publisher campaigns but also automates essential and needed by everyone optimizations and improvements and presents 24/7 online support and consultancy, which is a practical, hassle-free and innovative solution for affiliates. A great number of the last modernizations and latest improvements were based on the new data from real-life campaigns conducted by more then 4000 of marketers and search marketing agencies who contributed budgeting and results statistics.

3FN Marketing is a dynamically developing pay per click system providing various advertising and marketing services and solutions powered by the advanced pay per click advertising technologies. 3FN.Marketing is an affiliate program that provides affiliates with the ability to benefit from bid shares, offering bid shares up to 80%, a subdivision of 3FN, a popular hosting brand since 1999 providing dedicated server, shared, collocation and hosting services and offering the highest quality server administration and maintenance. 3FN Marketing publisher and advertiser services include a wide variety of powerful technologies and beneficial strategies allowing highly efficient monetizing of the internet traffic. 3FN Marketing Bidding, advertiser program, allows intensifying the internet traffic increasing the profits and returning on investment. 3FN Marketing’s Head Office is in San Jose, California, the company also operates offices in UK, India, and EU. For more information, please visit http://marketing.3fn.net and http://www.3fn.net.

Google Inc. wants to become as influential in the mobile market as it is on the Internet _ and the online search leader thinks it can do that without sticking its prized brand on a cell phone. The Mountain View-based company provided the first glimpse at its mobile ambitions Monday with the announcement of a free software package scheduled to hit the market during the second half of next year.
The system, which will control an untold number of cell phones, is designed to unify the developers of mobile applications around a common platform that makes it easier and more enticing to surf the Web on cell phones. The new package is called “Android” in tribute to a Silicon Valley startup that Google acquired two years ago to steer its secretive project.
Google is hoping Android opens another lucrative channel for peddling ads and services to people when they’re away from their personal computers, supplementing the revenue already pouring into the company from Internet advertising.
Contrary to reports that surfaced during months of breathless speculation, Google isn’t making cell phones, nor does it plan to put its name on the devices equipped with its software. Instead, it will work with four manufacturers and 29 other companies that have formed the Open Handset Alliance to help launch Google’s mobile software.
But Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt hinted the company might eventually make its own phone powered by the new software.
“We don’t want to foreclose any options in the future,” Schmidt told reporters during a Monday conference call.

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