Sanjeev Naraine spent eight years at Bear Stearns, most recently as a global vice president of videoconferencing. After being laid off in October 2007, the 31-year-old decided to create a network for his colleagues on the social-networking-creation site Ning, “almost like a virtual elevator where you can meet and say hi,” he said. He launched Who Killed the Bear? in May 2008.

When Lehman went under, Mr. Naraine figured he might as well create something for its staffers too. “It was more of just a gut feeling that I should just reserve the [Forever Lehman] name, and if things get bad, I could just launch it,” he said. “It was a pretty good guess on my part, anyways. And it only cost me a couple of bucks to buy the Web site.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

BoomTown was abuzz with Pixis, Plums and power this week as Kara focused on tech that wasn’t Apple, and reminded us that lady geeks hold the power in Silicon Valley.

While Apple was gathering clouds for its Rock and Roll storm, Palm (PALM) released the teeny Pixi, designed, Palm hopes, to steal some of that Apple (AAPL) thunder. The Pixi smart phone, while smaller and thinner, reported Kara, has fewer features and less power than the already available Pre.

Small can be good in the world of tech, and BoomTown reported that a certain Nordic tech behemoth thinks so too. Nokia (NOK) announced that it had acquired “microsocial networking” start-up Plum, whose signature offering allows users to build smaller, more intimate electronic social networks.

Kara did it “like a boss” this week and highlighted the tech sector mavens from Fortune magazine’s annual list of most powerful women. Ursula Burns of Xerox (XRX), IBM-er (IBM) Ginni Rometty and Oracle (ORCL) President Safra Catz were among those at the top. BoomTown will be at the upcoming conference associated with the Fortune list, so look for Kara’s Flip video interviews with these Titanias of tech.

It was nice of Apple to release new iPods just in time for John’s birthday this week, and Digital Daily returned the favor with high-bandwidth, hard-rockin’ coverage of Apple’s music-themed event, complete with live photos and blogging. John liked the video feature of the new iPod nano, but focused on the biggest news of the week–Apple’s upgraded CEO.

Digital Daily’s Apple coverage didn’t stop at The Steve. Ever since announcement of the exclusive Apple-AT&T (T) partnership, current and would-be iPhone freaks have speculated as to what kind of deal will be struck when that contract expires. John reported that iSuppli prognosticators think the agreement may be extended when it runs out in 2010.

John closed out the week with Twitter leaks about the newest incarnation of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Google-toppler (GOOG), Bing. Microsoft showcased Bing 2.0 at the annual company meeting, which some employees took as a green light to tweet away about the unreleased product. Microsoft HQ was more tight-lipped, telling John only that the rollout would happen over the next few months.

MediaMemo followed the money this week–specifically advertising dollars. A year after the Lehman collapse, Peter cited a MediaPost survey that showed some growth in ad spending. In a down market, Peter reminded, sometimes the only place to go, is up. Let’s hope so.

Not to be left out of Apple’s party, MediaMemo covered the release of an iPhone app from RealNetworks (RNWK) that brings all-you-can-eat music for a monthly fee. Wall Street barely blinked at the deal, but changes may come if the service catches on as competitor Spotify has in Europe.

And while the NFL won’t let players tweet from the end zone, it is upping its tech quotient by bringing blacked-out games to your Internet browser. MediaMemo reported that the lower-attendance games would be available to tech-savvy sports nuts–after midnight on game day. Get out the Fritos and espresso, guys, its game time.

True to form as the Lincoln of our very own Mt. Techmore, Walt’s address this week was aimed at helping the wayward get back on track with a bevy of new iPhone navigation apps. This new breed of high dollar apps harnesses the power of the iPhone 3GS to replace those ever present dash top GPS navigation units.

Walt extended his techno-presidential benevolence with another installment of Mossberg’s Mailbox. Networked storage, Quicken for Mac and the ominously impending switch to Windows 7 were all up for discussion.

At the Mossberg Solution, Katie tested Postbox, software designed to bring novel management solutions to your inbox. Developed by some of the guys from Mozilla, Postbox does offer lots of great features, Katie said, even if the switch to the new tools might not be easy for all.

Lots more shiny new tech talk next week. Stay tuned.

Helpful, right? Check out this MediaPost piece if you want more on the survey, conducted by media-buying shop Round2 Communications.

The bigger picture: This week, as you’ll hear over and over again, is the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse. The BBC has both a radio drama and a made-for-TV movie commemorating/dramatizing the event.

Which means it’s the one-year anniversary of the economy’s collapse from recession to (short-lived) catastrophe. Which means this is the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the advertising business. Which means that any year-over-year results you see now had best show an increase because they’re going up against positively brutal comparisons from 12 months ago.

Remember: This ad drop was so bad that even Google (GOOG) flatlined for a bit.

So if and when you do see signs of a rebound, make sure you’re looking at them with some perspective: There’s just about nowhere to go but up. Right?

For instance, in 2002, Time Warner had to take a $54 billion write-down connected to its disastrous AOL deal. Today, the company has announced a $25 billion write-down, which is in part connected to… its disastrous AOL deal.

To be fair, most of that charge has nothing to do with AOL, but with problems in its cable business; spin-out company Time Warner Cable (TWC) announced a $15 billion write-down of its own. But while Time Warner doesn’t elaborate on the charges in its release–it just says they are “related to goodwill and identifiable intangible assets at the Cable, Publishing and AOL segments”–I’m told that some of the write-down does indeed relate to the original AOL deal from eight years ago.

Other problems at Time Warner aren’t of its own making: The company says it will also take a hit of $50 million to $60 million from a “restructuring of a lease for space in the Time & Life Building, held by a lessee who recently declared bankruptcy.” That tenant, I’m told, was Lehman Brothers.

In any case, as astonishing as these numbers look in print, they don’t have much to do with Time Warner’s performance as a company, in the present tense. But Time Warner had worrisome news on that front, too: “The economic environment has proved somewhat more challenging than the Company previously expected, particularly for the advertising businesses at the AOL and Publishing segments.” Sigh.

But wait. Wasn’t it Lehman that filed for bankruptcy just last week?

Yes, it was.

But as luck would have it, that sorry, sorry turn of events apparently had no effect on the $2.5 billion the bank set aside for staff bonuses. So, according to The Independent, Barclays, which is buying Lehman Brothers for $1.75 billion, plans to make good on those bonuses, though it has no obligation to do so.

Two-and-a-half billion. Plus whatever portion of that $39 billion they were given last year. And then there are the pay and severance packages. Lehman Brothers Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. made $34 million in 2007. He also banked $490 million from selling Lehman stock.

Such is the price of failure.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Here’s $39 Billion in Recognition for Your Hard Work on the Forthcoming Financial Crisis
• Weekend at Bernanke’s II
• Weekend at Bernankes

What’s larger than the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria and, when divided by 186,000, more than four times higher than the median U.S. household income in 2006?

The $39 billion in bonuses Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs (GS), Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley (MS) doled out in 2007.

Congratulations on a job well done, folks. You’ve really gone above and beyond the call of duty here.

“To many people, it will be shocking and questionable,” Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search, told Bloomberg last year. “People in New York in the world of investment banking will understand it. It’s critical that pay is still there or you’re going to lose really good people.”

Of course. God forbid Wall Street’s five largest banks lose any really good people. Who’d be left to manage the government’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets?

Something to think about during this period of “rapid and profound change” on Wall Street.

What’s larger than the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria and, when divided by 186,000, more than four times higher than the median U.S. household income in 2006?

The $39 billion in bonuses Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs (GS), Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley (MS) doled out in 2007.

Congratulations on a job well done, folks. You’ve really gone above and beyond the call of duty here.

“To many people, it will be shocking and questionable,” Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search, told Bloomberg last year. “People in New York in the world of investment banking will understand it. It’s critical that pay is still there or you’re going to lose really good people.”

Of course. God forbid Wall Street’s five largest banks lose any really good people. Who’d be left to manage the government’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets?

Something to think about during this period of “rapid and profound change” on Wall Street.

From the Fed’s announcement:

To provide increased liquidity support to these firms as they transition to managing their funding within a bank holding company structure, the Federal Reserve Board authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to extend credit to the U.S. broker-dealer subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley against all types of collateral that may be pledged at the Federal Reserve’s primary credit facility for depository institutions or at the existing Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF); the Federal Reserve has also made these collateral arrangements available to the broker-dealer subsidiary of Merrill Lynch.”

Extraordinary.

The transformation of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into traditional bank holding companies effectively marks the end of the investment banking industry as we’ve know it. It puts the two firms squarely under the oversight of national bank regulators. And while this will subject them to new capital requirements and additional supervision, it also will allow them to take commercial deposits. And, of course, it will grant them access to the Fed’s emergency lending facilities. Which must be a wonderful thing to have in this time of “rapid and profound change” on Wall Street, as Morgan Stanley likes to describe it.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Weekend at Bernankes

One of the more unusual situations in the current stand-off between Yahoo and Microsoft is the stress it has likely put on the longtime professional relationship and personal friendship between Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here) and Blackstone Group’s Jill Greenthal.

That’s because Greenthal (pictured here) is advising Microsoft on this deal, along with Chuck Cory and Paul Taubman of Morgan Stanley (who was actually Time Warner’s banker in its disastrous AOL deal).

Yahoo is being repped by Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Moelis & Company, an advisory boutique. All the firms on both sides stand to reap hundreds of millions in fees, if the deal is consummated.

Greenthal is a good pick for Microsoft to get the job done. She has a long-time knowledge of Yahoo, having worked with the company when she was at the Credit Suisse Group on the $1.45 billion purchase of Overture, one of Yahoo’s smarter purchases.

And her ties to Decker go back even further, when Greenthal was a banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. The pair worked together frequently at DLJ, where Decker was an analyst and research director before heading to Yahoo.

Back in 2003, in a BusinessWeek profile of Decker, Greenthal noted about Decker’s tenure at DLJ: “[Executives] didn’t always like her opinions of their company or industry, but they respected her.”

A source in Silicon Valley who knows both Decker and Greenthal said that the two have avoided speaking since the unsolicited Microsoft bid was launched by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in an evening phone call to Yahoo CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang two weeks ago.

But one might also imagine their bond could also become a critical bridge in bringing the companies to finally make a deal, as many big shareholders are urging and Yahoo has been resisting.

That debate has been all over the Web since News Corp. won its battle to buy Dow Jones (owner of this site) last week, including posts by Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson in favor of the move.

But former MarketWatch head Larry Kramer disagreed, noting that his old site should be the free product, while the Journal’s content should remain premium.

Sorry, Larry, but I vote–and I know Murdoch (pictured here from a magazine spread with an Apple computer at the ready, apparently) definitely does not preside over a democracy–yes, ma’am, um, sir, for a free WSJ.com.

(And just to show this is not a kiss-up to the new boss, but a cogent analysis of the landscape for the Journal moving forward under Murdoch, here is a video interview posted below that I did in Los Angeles with Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser back in May about the possible News Corp. takeover and how I felt about the situation. Not so happy and also really wrong about Rupe’s chances of winning Dow Jones, as you will see.)

Also, I have posted many times on this subject, such as this recent piece.

There are, of course, valid arguments to be made to keep the Journal’s much-admired online subscription model, combined with freeing up more content offerings over time.

Interestingly, in an interview with paidContent.org last week, WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz said: “So far, our analysis says the way to maximize revenues and earnings is to have a mixed model.”

While I hate to differ with Crovitz, who helped us immeasurably in getting this site up and running as a free one, I think an open and ad-supported model is the only way to go now, especially under a larger and more powerful (and, most important, global) company like News Corp. that can really vault the site to higher prominence and higher traffic.

And given that the Journal’s online site garners estimated revenues of about $65 million from its paid efforts, which is admirable, it is chump change for News Corp. to try turbocharging the site as a free one, an experiment that will surely pay back the short-term cost.

An interesting analysis released last week by Lehman Brothers’ Doug Anmuth looks at the trade-off–more page views are likely to be gained by going free, although with possibly lowered ad revenues in the short term and lower ad revenues per page in general.

That sounds about right, as it is likely in time and with the marketing muscle of News Corp. that WSJ.com could go from its current 2.6 million unique visitors globally a month to three times that or more.

More importantly, while it has almost hit an impressive 1 million paid subscribers, an audience that has been growing, the online paid site is only going to gain so many more subscribers before that paid-wall people hit finally takes a hit itself.

Most importantly, while a good product, the paid version simply creates a situation in which the Journal is not as relevant as it could and should be. I know Journal execs have heard this before and would argue the paper is influential with a much more elite audience willing to pay the annual fee for access.

But, to my mind, too much of that is a lot of expense-account money talking. That same audience would remain and expand in an unpaid scenario and also add many more who get less excellent, but still adequate, coverage from a plethora of finance sites now.

(By the way, the rumors that the New York Times will end its TimesSelect, which gates the best stuff behind a paid wall, are back again, courtesy of the Murdoch-owned New York Post. Who knows what the Times will do, but it should dump the dumb system, which only irks readers and, I assume, its imprisoned star writers.)

And for the hyper-elite crowd, there are still all kinds of premium content that can be charged for to accompany the free site. In addition, business networking tools and other features could be ladled on (why in the world is Facebook, and not The Wall Street Journal, the de facto social-networking site right now for Silicon Valley, for example) to create a very loyal and high-level audience.

I could go on, but why not let Murdoch, who floated one of the more intriguing ideas in a very interesting interview he did with Time in late June before he won his quest to nab Dow Jones:

“What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global–a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks,” he said. “How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you’d make … a little bit of money. Then again, the Journal and the Times make very little money now.”

Ouch. But what-if indeed, especially if Murdoch is footing the bill to find out?