economist

Are Web Ads Only for Oldsters? Yahoo’s Disturbing Study.

Peter Kafka in Media on January 12, 2010 at 12:06 pm PT

No surprise: A study financed by Yahoo says that Yahoo ads helped a customer sell more stuff. A big surprise: The same study says the ad only works on people born before Woodstock.

"Sun + Oracle is Fast"? Not So Fast…

John Paczkowski in News on September 30, 2009 at 5:30 am PT

If you’re going to claim in an advertisement that Transaction Processing Council benchmarks show that a hybrid Sun-Oracle server runs faster than a competing product from IBM, it’s probably wise to make sure you have the TPC benchmarks to back up your claim. Not if you’re Oracle, though.

“Sun + Oracle is Fast”? Not So Fast…

John Paczkowski in News on September 30, 2009 at 5:30 am PT

If you’re going to claim in an advertisement that Transaction Processing Council benchmarks show that a hybrid Sun-Oracle server runs faster than a competing product from IBM, it’s probably wise to make sure you have the TPC benchmarks to back up your claim. Not if you’re Oracle, though.

Welcome to 1945…

John Paczkowski in News on January 9, 2009 at 6:35 am PT

The market was expecting the worst in the government’s latest monthly employment report and it was not disappointed. “Job losses were large and widespread across most major industry sectors,” the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The U.S. economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, closing out the worst year for job attrition since World War II, according to the BLS. Total job losses for 2008: 2.6 million, the largest decline since 2.750 million jobs were lost in 1945. A 16-year high. Congratulations, folks….