EMC Rumored Buying eDiscovery Vendor Kazeon

On August 22, 2009

EMC Rumored Buying eDiscovery Vendor Kazeon

EMC looks set to expand its document management and storage business with the adjunction of ediscovery specialist Kazeon Systems. EMC and Kazeon are already partners, so EMC knows exactly what it's getting, and an acquisition would ensure that Kazeon doesn't get snapped up by rivals like Oracle, HP or Microsoft, which also provide application suites intended to help enterprise customers manage their vast stores of data. The deal also illustrates the success that vendors are having in convincing enterprise customers that ediscovery software can be a more strategic tool than simply a way to ensure compliance with government regulations and litigation rules. In fact, EMC also partners with two other ediscovery vendors, Clearwell and StoredIQ, but those vendors sell more...
On August 22, 2009

Geo-Coded Twitter + Hyper-Local Media = CoolBiz Model

The San Francisco Street Food Festival today brought together "micro-entrepreneurs, informal food vendors and renowned chefs" in a celebration of street food and the entrepreneurial spirit, both of which are alive and thriving in this town, even in the midst of (in fact, partly due to) a prolonged recession. Many of our most enterprising food-cart operators were in attendance. Curtis Kimball, AKA, the crème brûlée man, was one of them. (Note: His vanilla crème brûlée is a bargain at $4.) Kimball, like a lot of these folks, is building up his business over Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Biz Stone's announcement the other day that Twitter will soon launch "a new feature that makes Twitter truly location-aware" came to...
On August 22, 2009

Hacking Into the High Life

Nestled near a row of sultry, silvery-green palm trees and a 205-foot-long infinity pool, room 1508 at the National Hotel on South Beach in Miami is a portrait of Art Deco luxury. It is also where, on May 7, 2008, federal agents seized two computers, $22,000 in cash and a Glock 9 gun from a man known on the Internet as "soupnazi."
On August 21, 2009

Interview Stage Fright? Ask an Actor

To paraphrase Shakespeare, the job search is a stage, and candidates are players. Every interview is a command performance, and stage fright can strike just as hard in an employer's office as it does on stage. So what can theater pros teach job applicants about beating jitters and passing the audition? In "How to Beat Interview Fear," TheLadders' Karl Rozemeyer talked to Broadway actors and theatrical coaches to bring job seekers the specific techniques they use to beat stage fright and deliver a winning performance. For actor John Treacy Egan, star of such Broadway hits as “The Producers” and “The Little Mermaid,” the key to overcoming nerves and ensuring you ace the audition is simple: preparation. In an audition, Egan...
On August 21, 2009

The New Get Elastic

Dear Get Elastic readers, Just a couple quick announcements… First of all I want to thank you for reading and subscribing to Get Elastic. Thanks to you we recently passed 12,000 subscribers, close to 300% year-over-year growth. It’s been great to read your comments, receive your emails and even meet some of you in person. And we [...]
On August 21, 2009

Appalachian Winter: Death of a Community Bank

In May 2006, Appalachian Bancshares was ranked as one of the best performing public companies in Georgia, while trade magazine US Banker named it one of the top 200 community banks in the nation. Today, the company is heading for the hills. The $1.2 billion-asset banking company said in a regulatory filing this week that "there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern," citing rising losses and a shortage of capital. Appalachian's gradual disintegration is far more typical of the banking crisis than the kind of sudden cardiac arrest associated with, say, Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual. And its real estate-fueled rise and fall both reflects the previous era and prefigures what's to come. Formed...
On August 21, 2009

JetBlue Ends $599 All-You-Can-Jet

JetBlue announced it sold out of its $599 All-You-Can-Jet promotion, two days early, but declined to mention how many were actually sold. “That is a great question, and one we don’t want our competitors to know the answer to,” JetBlue’s Bryan Baldwin told the Los Angeles Times, adding that demand “exceeded our expectations.” While private companies don't necessarily have to publicize their policies, the coy dodging of the question fills me with trepidation. So, was JetBlue serious about the numbers, or did it offer only a hundred $599 monthly passes to gain publicity? Or did they have a more legitimate number in the thousands? Until they let us know, I guess the world can assume it was yet another marketing ploy to whet...


On August 21, 2009

As Health Costs Rise, Loss of Coverage Accelerates

Amid all the misleading talk about “death panels,” the “public option,” and the supposed “government takeover” of health care, it’s easy to miss how the lack of healthcare reform is affecting Americans. But Families USA, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, is doing its best to keep our eyes on the prize. Families USA’s most recent report shows the toll that rapidly rising healthcare costs are taking on the insured. From 2000 to 2009, the report said, the cost of employer-based insurance for a family increased by 95.2 percent, while median family income advanced only 17.5 percent. Families USA blamed the huge rate increase on “the rising cost and increased use of medical treatments, inadequate oversight of insurance companies, lack of...


On August 21, 2009

One-Third of Credit Card Holders’ Limits Cut

Don't miss this AP story about how credit card companies have reduced the limits for 58 million cardholders with little regard to their credit scores.

The conclusion is based on a study by FICO, the Here's the key point for small business owners:

[Consumers Union attorney Gail] Hillebrand said one group that was hurt by limit cuts but has gotten little attention was small business owners who used their personal cards to fund their companies. In some cases, the cuts created cash-flow problems, she said.

We know that credit cards have been replacing traditional business credit. And for nearly a year we've gotten reports about borrowers with good credit seeing lines cut.

Credit cards were a fallback for a lot of business owners ho couldn't get bank lines of credit. Now card companies have spent a year reducing credit limits, often with no relation to the risk the borrower actually poses. So if you're one of the 58 million people who has had credit reduced, has it affected your business? What have you done in response?

The full PDF of the analysis by FICO, which I'm still going through, is here. One important side note: Since your credit rating is calculated in part by the amount of available credit you utilize, when a card issuer cuts your limit it can also damage your credit score, through no action of your own. My colleague Prashant Gopal covered this back in June. Read his story here.

Update: The PDF actually doesn't have much about the number of credit lines cut, it's more focused on how FICO scores were affected. But FICO's release has a good summary of the numbers.

On August 21, 2009

AIG: The Optimistic View from Croatia

The newest CEO of American International Group, Robert Benmosche is vacationing in Croatia where he owns a "breathtaking" million-dollar villa. But that didn't stop him from hyping his new company and boosting its stock price, perhaps a bit more than he should have. Benmosche told Bloomberg News he thinks AIG will be able to repay the money it owes to the U.S. government and that it "will be able to do something for our shareholders as well." That tidbit sent the stock soaring again. It rose to $35 before retreating, capping a run that started with the rumor of Benmosche's appointment when the stock was only $13.52. Are the optimists who are betting on the direction of the shares right?...


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