Noteworthy list #3

Notable excerpts and links to articles and reports we’ve found worthwhile reading. Some links may be intercepted by ads or may require free log-ins. Please don’t blame us for this. Publications have to make a living some way.

Apple’s iPhone

Steve Jobs announced iPhone. Photo: Engadget

We don’t usually focus on a single product, but we’re making an exception for Apple’s iPhone, introduced today by CEO Steve Jobs. Analysts are calling it “game changing.” Apple stock has soared over 8% on the news. Shares of mobile phone makers and Blackberry owner RIM have tanked.

New York Times’ David Pogue: “There’s just an unbelievable amount of technology in this thing”

Photo Feature from Engadget

And just for fun, some historical video perspective of Steve Jobs from another great moment for Apple, the 1984 unveiling of the Macintosh.

Executive compensation

SEC to Enforce Executive Pay Disclosures
Shareholder advocates say the tallies, likely to be the most scrutinized parts of the reports, are missing some important components of pay, such as the amount of dividends paid on restricted stock that has not yet vested.

Private Firms Lure Chief Executives With Top Pay
Flush with hundreds of billions of dollars, private equity firms are beginning to offer compensation on a previously unimaginable scale to the chief executives who run the once-public companies that the firms have bought out. At the privately held firms, the executives still get salaries and bonuses, but a crucial difference lies in the ownership positions they can secure, which can turn into particularly bountiful riches when these businesses are sold or go public again.

Investors Decry Rule Reversal
A late December move by the Securities and Exchange Commission, altering the way in which U.S. companies must report the value of executive stock-option grants, is being criticized by investors and a key lawmaker as ill-conceived and poorly timed.

Regulation

Lax British Markets Attract Frauds Along With U.S. Biz
London is paying a steep price for poaching a slew of new stock listings from Wall Street last year -financial fraud in the United Kingdom rose 40 percent.

Responsibility

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices.

Top Five Socially Responsible Investing News Stories of 2006
Green investing booms, microfinance pioneer wins Nobel Peace Prize, shareowner democracy increases, resolutions receive record votes, and UN launches Principles of Responsible Investment.

Gadflies champion corporate governance
Last month, Ken Bertsch, who was a managing director of corporate governance analysis at Moody’s and formerly the director of corporate governance at the money-management firm TIAA-CREF, was named an executive director and head of corporate governance at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, which has $448 billion in assets under management. His move may signal the mutual funds managed by the investment firm are planning a more aggressive stance on governance issues – a big change given that mutual funds almost always passively allow management to govern the way they want.

Technology

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization
There are three important steps to rank your site well with search engines. First, you got to create good content. Second, you ought to make your content accessible. And third, you should tell others about your content.

Attack of the Zombie Computers Is Growing Threat
Computer security experts warn that botnet programs are evolving faster than security firms can respond and have now come to represent a fundamental threat to the viability of the commercial Internet. The problem is being compounded, they say, because many Internet service providers are either ignoring or minimizing the problem.

IM Invasion
In a survey of 81 securities industry employees, TowerGroup found that two out of three buy-side respondents use IM. And among those using the technology, 44 percent estimate that within their firms, 76 percent to 100 percent of their colleagues are using it as well.

Even Better Than the Real Thing
Step into a telepresence studio and you may conclude that there is indeed hope for videoconferencing. A typical telepresence conference room contains a long table and several very large, high-definition flat-screen displays. Those wide screens add peripheral vision to the experience — important in creating a sense that distant colleagues are actually sitting across the table. “Your brain sees them as being in the same room,” explains Weinstein. “All of this is a way of tricking your mind into thinking you’re actually at an in-person meeting.”

Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview
A social networking site is an online place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other users. In the past five years, such sites have rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon that engages tens of millions of Internet users. More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Please Support Our Work
Email your friends about us. Subscribe to our paid publication Online IR Trends Quarterly. Get us to recommend improvements to your IR website (we're really good at it).