Monster.com purchased hotjobs

A few days ago, monster.com announced that it would purchase hotjobs.com from Yahoo! - http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100203006871

This is an interesting move considering Yahoo's recent difficulties. Yahoo has been hit pretty hard in the recent economic downturn, since it rejected Microsoft's 45 billion dollar bid just before the global financial crisis - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWNAS894220080201. Now it's worth about 22 billion. Its sale of hotjobs.com seems more related to financial reasons than strategic reasons (consider this: monster.com wanted to purchase hotjobs.com a few years ago but Yahoo won that with about 400M dollars; now monster.com only paid about 200m dollars).

Now people view Yahoo more like a media and service company, instead of a technology company. Google and other new Web 2.0 companies has taken away a lot of businesses from Yahoo. Will Yahoo survive? Which Yahoo service (Finance, Auto, Flikr, Movies, Search, Delicious, etc.) do you like and use most? Which of these services do you think Yahoo has an advantage over its competitors? What's the right direction for Yahoo?

More about job websites

• http://seekingalpha.com/article/37720-an-overview-of-the-online-job-market
• http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/job-websites
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_website

More about Yahoo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo

Internet Speed Rising

Akamai just released a "State of the Internet" report - http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet. You can view a live monitor on the website there. For a brief on the report, visit http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10434930-94.html. The interesting thing to note is that USA failed to make the top-10 Internet speed list, again, although USA is still the dominant force in the information communication and technology world.

Check the report to find out which country is the #1. To test your connection's speed, visit http://speedtest.net/.

To understand network speed unit, visit:

• http://www.homenethelp.com/web/explain/about-network-speeds.asp
• http://compnetworking.about.com/od/basicnetworkingfaqs/f/bandwidthunits.htm

Slate PC and iPad

We just talked about the Slate PC (http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/186247/hp_slate_lowers_the_bar_for_apples_tablet_pc.html) on Tuesday, and one day later Apple announced its iPad (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10443138-260.html). And guess what: it's only $499. Do you want to get one?

From Hardware to Software and to Hardware

There are two interesting trends for the past 10 years for some big IT companies. On one side, led by IBM, many traditional hardware companies have been transforming themselves from hardware companies to software or service companies. Take the example of IBM. IBM was once one of the largest maker for PC hardware, laptop, monitor, hard drive, etc. Now it has sold almost all of its PC business and becomes one of the largest software and service providers. On the other side, traditional pure software companies like Microsoft and Google are moving into the lower margin hardware area. Isn't it interesting?

Microsoft has already had Zune, XBOX, Surface, Keyboard/Mouse, Webcam, etc. And Google just pushed its Nexus One (http://www.google.com/phone). People are talking when Google is going to have its own Netbook or Smartbook (we will talk about them this week) based on Chrome OS or Android OS (http://infoworld.com/d/mobilize/building-google-smartbook-dream-machine-877). It seems Google is trying to build a platform and challenge Microsoft's Windows. What do you think about Google's move?

More about Chrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_OS

Google Earth on Android

http://news.zdnet.com/2422-19178_22-378605.html

Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) is an application to view anywhere on the earth virtually. It's really nice. BTW, in the process of searching for more information, I came cross the new Bing Map; it is really is cool! http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/ ; get more about Bing maps here: http://www.microsoft.com/maps/

Do you like Google Earth? What do you think about the new Bing Maps? How will you as an individual, or as a business, use these map service?

More about Android Mobile OS:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)
• http://www.android.com/