Posts Tagged ‘the-performance’
Barnes & Noble financials: e-book store blowing up like what
So Barnes & Noble just let loose its financial results for the last year (ending May 1), and things are looking pretty rosy, at least if you take their view of them. The main point is that the e-book store is gaining popularity and online sales are solid, while brick-and-mortar sales are, predictably, in decline. B&N’s CEO, William Lynch, chose to highlight this little statistic: In fact, in just a brief 12 months since we launched the Barnes and Noble ebookstore, our share of the digital market already exceeds our share of the retail book market.
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Barnes & Noble financials: e-book store blowing up like what
Venture Returns Rose 3 Percent Last Year, But Longer Term Returns Are Still Hurting
Venture capital returns improved in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the Cambridge Associates U.S. Venture Capital Index, the performance benchmark of the National Venture Capital Association. Fourth quarter returns saw a 3.3 percent rise, ending the year with a 3 percent return overall, on average.
The key words here are “short-term improvements,” however, because performance continued to decline in the 5- and 10-year periods ending in the quarter.
Annual returns rose from 2.3 percent in the third quarter of 2009, as venture-backed exits began to show signs of improvement at the end of last and the beginning of this year.
However, 3-, 5-and 10-year returns deteriorated, with the 10 year horizon even falling into negative territory. You have to go back 15 or 20 years to find decent returns of 37.8 percent and 23.4 percent, respectively, and Cambridge Associates is quick to point out that they also continued to outperform public market indices.
The trend, however, is clearly not upbeat news – will it reverse at some point?
The full report is available from the NVCA website.
Clickable Gets Social With Facebook Ads
It will soon be possible to compare the performance of search and social ad campaigns side by side. Clickable, the ad management platform that lets search marketers measure and track the performance of their online marketing campaigns across different search engines and advertising networks, will be adding Facebook Ads as an option on April 12.
What that means is that an advertiser buying pay-per-click ads on Google can test the performance of those search ads against pay-per-click ads on Facebook targeted to particular social demographics. Search ads versus social ads, all in one dashboard. According to this sign-up page on Clickable:
Clickable Pro now empowers you to create and upload pay-per-click Facebook ads in bulk. And with Clickable conversion tracking, you can track Facebook and search marketing revenues and conversions with a simple tag placed on your Web site. You can even produce customized, white-label reports with search and social performance displayed side by side.
Clickable is a Facebook partner which has integrated its service with the Facebook Ads API, which will allow Clickable customers to create, upload, and manage Facebook Ads directly from Clickable. The integration will work with pay-per-click text or image ads, but not yet with regular display ads.
Facebook ads are bringing in real revenues now for the social network. But how will they compare to search ads?
Don’t Call Tech Support. Try Orkin Instead!
Someone passed this post along to us, and since our Chinese is limited here in CrunchGear-land, I’m afraid we can’t vouch for it. The video contained may, in truth, provide the recipe for a lovely London broil for all we know, so take it with several healthy grains of salt. But at least the basic premise is amusing
Tilera Grabs $25 Million From Chip Investors
Tilera, a company that develops multicore processors, has raised $25 million in series C funding from Broadcom Corporation, Quanta Computers and NTT Financing. This brings Tilera’s total funding to $64 million
Tilera says the funding will be used to expand sales operations and for product development. Founded in 2004, Tilera designs multicore embedded processors for networking, digital multimedia, and wireless infrastructure markets. The company offers multicore processors for processing and power requirements, multicore software development tools, and boards. Its products include TILEPro, a multicore processor, which delivers the performance computing for embedded applications.
Tilera investor and semiconductor giant Broadcom just closed the acquisition of chip developer Teknovus for $123 million.
Oracle Buys AmberPoint To Boost Application Management And Performance Offerings
On the heels of the EU’s approval of Oracle’s $7.4 billion deal to acquire Sun Microsystems, the tech giant has opened up the purse strings to acquire application management software provider AmberPoint. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of this year.
AmberPoint’s software helps organizations diagnose and resolve issues in application performance and business transactions, such as insurance claims processing or account provisioning where multiple applications need to work together. AmberPoint’s software will be folded into Oracle’s Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) offerings.
Oracle says that the addition of AmberPoint’s software will help diagnose and manage the performance of business applications, provide monitoring for application performance and will enrich SOA design time with run-time metrics for SOA governance.
It’s Here! Pre-order Mac OS X Snow Leopard Right Now
The Apple store had been down for quite a while today, and lo and behold when it was reinstated Mac OS X Snow Leopard became available to mankind - that is to say you can now pre-order a copy. The major update to OS X, aka 10.6, will start shipping next Friday August 28, as had been rumored by websites like Macenstein and MacRumors since last Thursday.
As our MG Siegler wrote a while back:
OS X Snow Leopard is going to sell for only $29.99, as Apple is considering it mostly a performance upgrade over OS X Leopard. But the performance improvements are expected to be significant, and the footprint of the install has been significantly reduced (due mostly to the fact that it’s Intel-only).
The price is actually $29, but the real question is: are you buying?
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OS X Snow Leopard May Beat Apple’s Timetable. On The Prowl In Just Two Weeks?
There’s been talk the past couple of days that the latest developer build of OS X Snow Leopard, 10A432, has been designated the “Golden Master” version, meaning it’s ready for prime time. Multiple sources are now stating it is. So now the question is: When will it be released?
Amazon put Snow Leopard up for pre-order a few weeks ago with the following note: “Please note: Official release date has not been announced by Apple, though they have indicated this product will be released sometime in September.” September is also the timetable that Apple gave at its WWDC event in early June. But with the GM version already out there, there are whispers that Apple may have beaten that goal. Friday, August 28 is the day Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is hearing, and he has a very good track record of being right about such things.
As we noted last week, OS X 10.5.8 was likely to be the last update before OS X 10.6 dropped. But an August ship date would certainly be a welcomed surprise. That would also mean nearly a full 2 month head start over Windows 7, which is scheduled to ship October 22. August 28 is also just two weeks from this Friday, so if Apple is really going to launch it then, expect some kind of press release in the next few days.
Earlier today, AppleInsider gave some details about the Snow Leopard installation process, which apparently has quite a few differences from the OS X Leopard install.
OS X Snow Leopard is going to sell for only $29.99, as Apple is considering it mostly a performance upgrade over OS X Leopard. But the performance improvements are expected to be significant, and the footprint of the install has been significantly reduced (due mostly to the fact that it’s Intel-only).
[photo: flickr/wwarby]
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FanSnap Raises Another $5.2 Million For Its ‘Kayak For Event Tickets’
FanSnap, the startup that we’ve likened to a Kayak for event ticket searches, has closed a $5.2 million funding round led by Highland Capital Partners. As part of the deal, Richard de Silva of Highland will be joining the company’s board of directors. The new round brings FanSnap’s total funding to over $15.7 million, after a $10 million Series A round from General Catalyst Partners last year.
FanSnap allows users to search dozens of ticket providers at once, including sites like StubHub, eBay, and RazorGator. The site now claims an index of 13,169,532 available tickets to 33,653 different events. The site goes well beyond standard price listings too — instead of simply showing a Craigslist-style list of available tickets, FanSnap offers a visual map showing off exactly where in a stadium each ticket corresponds to. It also shows how valuable each ticket is using using a color key and alerts users to tickets it deems to be the best buys.
For more, check out our full review of the service here.
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