Is Myspace for Sale?

News Corp is open to a sale of beleaguered MySpace after a relaunch of the social network as an entertainment site, COO Chase Carey told Reuters.

A successful revamp of MySpace -- still visited by around 60 million people in October, according to comScore -- could possibly pave the way for a sale.

A sale or partnership are two of a number of options the company would consider for the once valuable social network site, which has suffered in the face of competition from Facebook, which is visited by about 151 million people monthly, and Twitter.

"There are opportunities here to do 20 things [with MySpace] but that doesn't mean you're going to do any of the 20. If there's something there that makes sense you ought to think about it," said Carey.

MySpace has been the subject of recent speculation that News Corp is seeking to sell the site or partner with other digital media companies such as Yahoo and AOL Inc.

Carey said that a potential merger "would have been largely a pretty tough sale process" before the revamp.

"I think those options would have been pretty limited and I think probably would have undervalued it against what we think it can be," Carey said on Monday (Nov. 29) during Reuters Global Media Summit.

But he refused to specify how long News Corp was willing to give MySpace to regain some of its former luster after previously stating he expects MySpace to become profitable within quarters rather than years.

"I'm not going to break down [the number of] quarters," he said. "It's not years ... We need to deal with this with urgency."

MySpace relaunched earlier this month as a social entertainment site rather than a direct social networking rival to market leader Facebook. It has even announced a new partnership with its one-time rival to allow users to merge their entertainment interests from MySpace on to Facebook.

"We have really overhauled the product and made it a very different experience and I think they did a very good job," Carey said.

News Corp acquired MySpace in 2005 for $580 million after Mews Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch famously swooped in to beat rivals like Viacom in the bidding. And initially the deal paid for itself after Google Inc inked a three-year $900 million search advertising deal in 2006. But since then, the website became increasingly irrelevant as a social network for many users as they migrated to Facebook.

There have also been several management team overhauls in the last couple of years since the original founding CEO, Chris De Wolfe, stepped down in April 2009.

Most analysts on Wall Street do not figure the loss-making MySpace into their key valuation metrics.

"It's not been integrated much with anything at News Corp, that's why it's a free asset to divest easily," said Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce. "It's irrelevant as a valuation metric."

The Most Expensive Cell Phone ever.

When it comes to cell phones in this day and age,it seems that the cell phones are doing everything from streaming music video's,streaming tv's shows to enabling its user to watch full feature films and moives,and lets not forget to acknowledge the texting craze that started from teenagers and has us adults focusing in on the trend.But now this is going alitte to far the most expensive phone ever. Introducing the $3.1-million (1.93-million UK pounds) iPhone 3G S Supreme Rose by Stuart Hughes. This phone features a platinum bezel studded with 130 individual .75 flawless diamonds, in addition to 18K gold casing. Believe it or not, this one-off piece was commissioned by the same Australian business man of iPhone 3G S Supremefame -- now worth $3.12-million (1.92-million UK pounds) due to exchange rate.This has to be the most E-G-O mindless thought ever process when you have homless people all over the world whom in their right godgiving mind would try to spend this kind of dough,money,sciller,paper,deniro's ect..on this type of cell phone,as rich as bill gates is he wouldn't even consider this.
A couple of years ago, luxury mobile phones were really the rage among the richest people around the world. And we're not talking here necessarily about the Vertu handsets or some of the other luxury smartphones available on the market, but about specially crafted versions of common devices (such as the iPhone, for example), featuring very expensive materials and precious stones.

The economic crisis has kind of slowed down this trend, but it's far from having disappeared completely, as the newly announced iPhone 3GS Supreme Rose proves only very well, since this thing might have a real shot at one of the top positions in a list of the most expensive handsets ever manufactured.

The handset is the work of a very well known jeweler from UK, Stuart Hughes, who, over time, has created quite a few super-expensive products of this type, whether we're talking about handsets or even gaming consoles (remember the Wii Supreme?).

In any case, the gadget at hand, which, as mentioned right from the start, has a retail price of 1.93.25 million pounds sterling – or roughly 3.147 million US dollars, features a bezel handmade from platinum with 130 individual 0.75 diamonds, which total 97.5ct. Also set are four pink baguette diamonds each weighing 2.5cts. The rear section is formed with circa 112 grams of 18ct rose gold along with its rose gold Apple logo and 53 diamonds. The main navigation, single cut 7.1ct diamond settles in its 18ct rose gold mount.

Naturally, we'd be quite curious to see just who will purchase such an ultra-expensive handset. I mean, even the uber-rich sheiks from the United Arab Emirates have had some serious financial troubles lately, while the Russian moguls have lost billions on account of the economic crisis. But, then again, this thing is just perfect for showing off one's prosperity, so we're pretty sure it will find an owner, eventually.

The Zeitgeist Movement(The Venus Project)

Help with this very powerful movement its our future!

"A very serious quote from "The Venus Project" is what we all that are likeminded needs to become a part of.



The most current understandings of who and what we truly are, coupled with how science, nature and technology (rather than religion, politics and money) hold the keys to our personal growth, not only as individual human beings, but as a civilization, both structurally and spiritually.(The most powerful new movement I have attracted into my positive thoughts of a better new world of our future which is now)

Once we understand that the integrity of our personal existences are directly related to the integrity of the earth, life and all other human beings, we then have our path predefined for us. In turn, once we realize that it is science, technology and hence human creativity which creates progress in our lives, we are then able to recognize what our true priorities are for social and personal growth and progress. These points denoted, we can then see that Religion, Politics and the Money/Competition based Labor system are outdated modes of social operation, which must now be addressed and outgrown. Our avocation is to achieve a social system which operates without money or politics, while allowing superstition to work itself out as education flourishes. It isn't the right of any person to tell another what to believe, for no human has a full understanding of anything. However, if we pay attention to the natural processes of life, we then see how we can align with nature and thus our path becomes more clear.

For example, many people are worried about population growth on the planet, while very spooky comments by despotic figures like Henry Kissinger claim that some kind of "reduction" is needed. This is, of course, very scary. However, the real question remains: Is population growth really that bad? The answer is that from a scientific perspective the earth can handle many, many times more people if need be, once high technology is harnessed. 70% of our planet is water and cities in the sea ( one of many projects by Jacque Fresco ) are the next step. In turn, education about life operations will inform people as to the ramifications of their reproductive interests and population growth will naturally slow as people begin to realize how they are related to the planet and its carrying capacity.

In fact, the only true "government" that can possibly exist is the earth and its resources. From there, all possibilities can be assessed. This is why an intellectual unification of all countries is needed, for the most important information we as a species can have is a full, highly detailed assessment of what we have on this planet. Just as you would examine the land and resources of an acre of land to see what you could do or grow on it, this is what needs to happen with the planet in order to optimize what we are capable of as a species, resource wise.

Of course, many who consider the ideas presented above will often ask: "How can we do this considering the distorted value systems which are currently in operation.? How do we make such a move or transition?" This is, of course, the most difficult question. The answer: We have to start somewhere. There are many things that can be done by a single person or community that can begin to shape this vision. The most important step is education

Retailers: Chris Brown Album 'Overstocked and Low Sales

Following in the footsteps of Miley Cyrus, the beleaguered R&B artist has shut down his Twitter account, a day after microblogging his butt off about Walmart and other big-box haters not stocking his new album.


Chris Brown's rant that U.S. music retailers are boycotting his new album "Grafitti," appears to be unfounded. Brown took to his Twitter account - which is now inactive - over the weekend to complain about the fulfillment and display of his album in a series of posts.

"im tired of this shit. major stores r blackballing my cd. not stockin the shelves and lying to costumers. what the fuck do i gotta do... ... yeah i said it and i aint retracting shit im not biting my tongue about shit else... the industry can kiss my ass," read messages posted.

He also noted specifically that he "JUST WAS AT WALMART IN Wallingford CT,844 north colony.. the didnt even have my album in the back... not on shelves, saw for myself."

A survey and store visits find that Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Trans World, Newbury Comics are all carrying the Brown record and sources say that his album received widespread distribution and promotion by his label, Jive Records, and his distributor, Sony Music Entertainment. Jive shipped over 400,000 units of "Graffiti," and also had it positioned in prime stores space at all key accounts, according to sources. In fact, sources suggest that Jive may have overshipped his record, as sales are slow.

'Overstocked'

"Not only am I carrying it, I am over carrying it, because it isn't selling," says the head of purchasing at one large chain. "I wish I could return it." He says the album's first week sales only reached 40% of expectations.

At 27-unit Newbury Comics, Carl Mello head of purchasing, echoes that sentiment. "We have it; it's not selling much."

He says the chain never even considered boycotting Brown - an accusation leveled by the artist on Twitter. Brown pleaded guilty to charges in connection with his attack of former girlfriend Rihanna in February, just before the Grammy Awards show. "We never considered not bringing it in," Mello says. "If we stopped bringing in records from every unsavory character that puts out an album, there would be tumbleweed floating around our stores."

When ordering the record, Mello says he took into account Brown's altercation with Rihanna from a sales perspective, only. After saying, "Let's see what has happened with his sales since the incident," Mello reports that "Exclusive," which was issued in November 2007, sold 11 copies chainwide in October 2008, 8 copies in November, 5 units un January, 4 in February, 2 in March, and 0 copies in April, May and June. "From July until now, we have sold 3 copies," Mello adds. "When you see an artist is going to release a new album and then you go back and see these kind of sales, alarm bells go off. You don't feel over confident about bringing in a lot of records."

Nevertheless, "we brought in the new album because you know you are going to sell some," Mello says. "We let the consumer vote on it."

And so far, consumers aren't flocking to stores to vote on behalf of Brown. Sources project that Brown sold about 100,000 units last week, well below the 150,000-175,000 units he was expected to sell. Mello says that the album is probably about the No. 40 best selling title at the chain.

Even Wal-Mart -- which was singled out by Brown on Twitter as one of the so-called merchants boycotting his record because the Wallingford, Conn., store didn't have it in stock -- says they are carrying the Brown album. "We are surprised at the comments on Twitter, since all Walmart stores carried the CD since its release, including the Wallingford store mentioned in the post. This store had in fact sold through their copies over the weekend. The majority of our stores are showing today they have copies on hand."

Likewise Billboard found plenty of Brown in stock at Best Buy in Union Square and on Broadway by Houston Street, in Manhattan, as well as at the J&R Music World superstore in downtown Manhattan.

Jive declined to comment.

Peep this one consumer comment:he embarrassed himself. His album sold less than Rihanna's first week. they both suck!

10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs

As an Etrepreneur myself,among others gifts and talents I have, we all can use advise and leads to where and how to find the right social media tools that only help build and market our brands to the worldwide web so I felt the need to help Barb Dybwad spread the word and insight on the top 10 tools and sites to use to cover all areas in the social media arena worldwide.

Whether your company is just starting out, just starting to turn a profit or already on the verge of an acquisition, as an entrepreneur you’ll be constantly evaluating the tools that will help get your business to the next stage.

Even if the ink on the business plan isn’t dry yet, you want to be armed with the social media tools that will play an important role in company communication, product and brand promotions, and business development for your startup. Some of the tools in this list will be familiar, but it’s worth taking a moment to reframe how they might become power tools in a business context.

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10. Monitter

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As an entrepreneur, you need to know what people are saying about your company as well as your competitors. Enter Monitter, a service that monitors Twitter mentions in real-time in a multi-column interface reminiscent of TweetDeck . Simply input a search term into a column, add or remove columns as desired, and get an automatically-refreshing picture of what people are saying about your brand or competing brands in your space.

Pro Tip: By default, the Monitter interface is gray on black, which can be hard on the eyes. You can switch to a more typical color scheme by selecting the “light” theme in the menu at the upper right.

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9. YouTube

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You already know about YouTube , but have you thought about how it could help your business? Could your product benefit from an awesome video walkthrough? Could your marketing strategy include a viral video strategy that gets you lots of exposure at relatively low cost?

And now with Promoted Videos getting placement in AdSense units around the web, there’s even more incentive to think about leveraging social video as a brand exposure tool. If you can create interesting content that’s relevant to your brand or products, a positive visual association with your company can attract new interest, build company culture, turn inquiries into sales, and give back significant brand dividends over time.

Pro Tip: The most obvious and frequent business use of YouTube is for marketing and advertising, but don’t overlook other ways in which your company can leverage YouTube. Visual walkthroughs and FAQs can be a great boon to customer service. Videos of you and your team giving public presentations, speaking at conferences or engaging with the media can establish and enhance your company’s reputation as a thought leader. And don’t forget the utility of private videos for use in executive and new employee trainings and recording company events; access can be shared with only the people who should be able to see each item.

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8. UserVoice

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As a small business, it’s hard to juggle building and improving your products with supporting what’s already out there. That’s where UserVoice can help.

From bug reports to feature requests, UserVoice can help track and manage the feedback of your users and customers. Not only does it assure your userbase that you care about what they have to say, but it can potentially leverage the best suggestions from the people who are actually using your tool or service. Since users can vote on the ideas of other users, you can start to get a picture of the most-requested features and fixes for your app or service to feed back into your products’ lifecycles.

Pro Tip: You can also use UserVoice to get feedback on a limited release or beta version of a product by setting up a private forum or forums. You can send invites to specific email addresses, or limit your feedback to company-wide participants by restricting access by email domain.

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7. MailChimp

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Most reports and punditry on the death of email are a bit premature. The good old fashioned mailing list is still a good way to maintain relationships with customers, especially when done well.

The web-based mailing list manager MailChimp offers list management, tracking and analysis, and custom HTML templates for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month for free. Paid plans kick in at larger subscriber numbers. Featuring integration with WordPress , Twitter, Salesforce and more, MailChimp is the list manager of choice for an impressive list of heavyweights including Mozilla, Intel, Canon, Fujitsu, Staples and more.

Pro Tip: MailChimp has a well-documented API that allows you to integrate the service with your own existing applications, tools, content management system or CRM solution. There’s a growing list of plug-ins already created for a number of platforms.

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6. Get Satisfaction

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Great customer support is important, but it can also be time-consuming and costly. Get Satisfaction aims to help by leveraging the strength of your user community and cutting down on repetitive support costs.

Get Satisfaction provides a forum where your customers can get answers to questions, solutions to problems, and submit feature and new product requests. Those answers and solutions are stored and searchable over time, cutting down on support costs and building trust with your userbase.

Used by small businesses and large popular brands alike, Get Satisfaction gets rave reviews for human customer service and helping to build communities around brands and products.

Pro Tip: Embeddable widgets allow you to bring the conversation back to your own company’s site or even within your products themselves. Drop a searchable FAQ or a feedback tab or page right into your website or service to integrate the customer service experience right where your users need it.

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5. Twitter

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What would this list be without our favorite microblogging service? From best practices for brands to tips for executives to using Twitter for customer service, there’s no shortage of creative ideas for leveraging Twitter for your business.

Even if you’re not in a technically-oriented industry, you’ll want to know which influencers in your domain are on Twitter and which of your potential clients and customers are there (hint: probably a bunch). You’ll want to wrap your head around hashtags for business, and more certainly check out Twitter’s own guidebook for businesses (as well as our own guidebook, of course!).

Pro Tip: Try not to use Twitter as a purely broadcast medium; whether one person or several posts to your official account, make sure your company is listening and interacting as well as simply posting. Strive for authenticity in your company’s tweets and try to think of it as taking part in a conversation, not just another soapbox platform.

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4. Facebook

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Facebook is the other social networking giant you’ll want to be sure your business has a presence on. It’s another powerful tool for building relationships, raising visibility for your brand, and targeting your customer niche.

With a robust and relatively low-cost advertising platform, you can connect directly to the potential customers or clients who might want to know about you. Optimization tools help you fine-tune and target your ads more intelligently, and get detailed insight into who is responding to your ads.

Pro Tip: Authenticity is key here too for maximum impact. With changes that made Facebook Pages more like personal pages, your brand’s home on Facebook is no longer relegated to fairly static profile information. Since the Wall Feed is usually the main point of entry for your fans and visitors, think of it as an opportunity to provide some sort of utility to your visitors, whether it be information, entertainment, or relevant expressions of your company’s culture and mission.

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3. Basecamp

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If you’re like most startups, you’ve got a heck of a lot going on. You need to keep on top of your projects and open loops, not just internally but with your clients, partners, and customers as well. That’s where a good project management tool comes in.

Basecamp from 37signals is a great and cost-effective web-based tool for project management and collaboration. Featuring to-do lists, milestones for important due-dates, file sharing, blog-style messaging, wiki-style writeboards, time tracking, and integration with the excellent group chat product Campfire, basic plans for small businesses start at $24 a month.

Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks.

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2. LinkedIn

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From hiring to networking with cohorts and potential clients to participating in groups and question threads, LinkedIn is a powerful social network for entrepreneurs and business professionals of all stripes. It’s a great place to both discover and research potential job candidates (with a reported 75% of hiring managers using it over Facebook and Twitter), as well as both keeping up with and extending your network.

Pro Tip: Although it’s not an overnight success solution, positioning yourself as an expert in the LinkedIn Answers domain(s) relevant to your business can be a great way to increase your authority and drive new interest to your business. Don’t underestimate the power of asking for advice here as well.

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1. Google Apps for Domains

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Startup costs for outfitting an office with networking and computing equipment are staggering enough as it is without even taking into account the software and maintenance components. One area for adventurous entrepreneurs to cut costs in the latter department lies in the realm of typical office staples: email, calendaring and the office suites businesses typically need to use to prepare documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Instead of paying an IT staff to set up, host and maintain your own mail servers, Google Apps for Domains can handle custom email addresses at your own company’s URL. As an alternative to Microsoft Outlook worth considering, Gmail also integrates nicely with Google Calendar for your group calendaring needs.

And whereas once Microsoft Office was one of your only choices in the office suites department, Google Documents now handles document, spreadsheet and presentation preparation with aplomb — all the while making it easy to share and collaborate with colleagues without having to email documents around or check items out of a central repository.

Pro Tip: For the truly frugal, you can even opt for the totally free Standard Edition which includes basic Gmail, calendaring, Google Docs and Google Sites. Premier Edition will run you $50 per user per year, but increases user email storage to 25GB, adds more security features and guarantees you uptime and support.

PMD"Parrish Smith" The founder of EPMD HIPHOPS SUPERSTAR

This is a very special blogspot issue thats dedicated to the my spiritual brother and one of the late 80's,and 90's leaders of hiphop whom of course Jay-Z,P-Diddy and a host of other MC's got their inspirations from PMD was the 1st rap artist to do his own label deals with DefJam with his own imprint the "HitSquad"which to this day are still selling our venues over seas and in america feel free to preveiw this new hot video featuring "PMD" and nigerian rap artist "Cashino" with the hit trax "All I Got" with a cameo appearance by "Nas"


PMD, Parrish Smith (aka the Mic Doctor of the classic hip-hop group EPMD), has been traveling on a long road of rocking mics, releasing records, and keeping his mind on business. From classic EPMD tracks like �It�s My Thing�, �Gold digger�, �Crossover�, to �You Gots To Chill�, PMD has dropped legendary verses and flows all throughout hip-hop history. PMD�s smooth, mellow voice along with his rugged style and b-boy attitude make him one of the most well respected old school hip-hop legends of today. The classic EPMD album �Strictly Business� had deep funky jams and a strong attitude. Other incredible EPMD albums like �Business Never Personal� and �Unfinished Business� were constant favorites of crowds, DJ�s, and fans. With his partner Erick Sermon (The Green Eyed Bandit), EPMD formed Hit Squad. One of the first hip-hop squads, The Hit Squad gave birth to now legendary emcees like Redman, Das Efx, and K-Solo. Due to many different problems, EPMD broke up in the mid-90�s and the future looked extremely bleak. PMD�s first solo album �Shade Business� was considered a luke-warm effort while his sophomore LP �Business Is Business� did better. Then, a miracle happened. EPMD reunited for the �How To Be A Player� soundtrack. They released 2 more albums (�Back In Business� and �Out Of Business�) that spawned hard-hitting hip-hop tracks like �Richter Scale�, �Never Seen Before�, and �Symphony 2000�. Since then, many well-respected hip-hop artists have made hits by jacking classic EPMD tracks. Jay-Z�s first big hit �Ain�t No�� used the beat from EPMD�s �It�s My Thing�. DMX�s bombastic debut �Get At Me Dog� used a straight-jacked loop of �Get The Bozac�. The list goes on an on. Everybody from Nas to Wu-Tang Clan to Foxxy Brown has used classic EPMD hits to make their own hits. Today, EPMD (Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith) have left Def Jam. Erick, the E Double E, has formed Def Squad with Redman and Keith Murray while PMD maintained Hit Squad. Erick Sermon signed to J Records while PMD made an alliance with the underground and indie label Solid Records to make his own Boon Dox Records. Also, his professional and friendship relationship with Japan�s own DJ Honda cemented many ill collaborations. With a brand new Hit Squad, a new label, and a brand new attitude, PMD just released his 3rd (and best) solo album �The Awakening�. While his other solo efforts were not as focused, �The Awakening� is overflowing with thick, funk beats, hardcore rhymes, steady production, and many well respected guests. It is his most focused and strongest solo LP to date. Kutmasta Kurt, DJ Muggs, Alchemist, Pete Rock, Ghetto Pros, and DJ Honda handle production on the LP. Guests include Fat Joe, Erick Sermon, K-Solo, Das Efx and more. PMD also has time to play the mentor role by signing prot�g�s like 275 and Don Fu-Quan. Still, Parrish Smith is not done. After he releases �The Awakening�, he plans to release a collaboration album with DJ Honda titled �Underground Connection�. While the future of EPMD may not be 100% certain, Parrish Smith�s future is. He will be rocking mics. PMD has redeemed himself. He has awoken from the coma of the industry and music business. Today, PMD�s business IS personal. Parrish Smith, the mic doctor, the PMD of EPMD, is back and better than ever. You better wake up.

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The best part is that it's Auto-Update supported, Fast, Security and Free!

Perfect Utilities combines the following modules:

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