volunteer

AOL Layoff Package: You Stay, You Pay

Kara Swisher in News on November 19, 2009 at 12:25 pm PT

BoomTown has learned that AOL is offering those who “volunteer” to leave the company now a departure package that ranges from three to nine months of pay, compared to one to four months for employees laid off in the first quarter of next year. It’s a depressing rock-and-a-hard-place choice. An AOL spokesperson confirmed the offer, which is part of a massive layoff of 2,500 of its 6,000-person workforce.

TEDTalks Go Global Online in 40 Languages (Including Urdu!)

Kara Swisher in News on May 13, 2009 at 2:55 am PT

Some of the best delivery of video on the Web right now is via the TED Web site–the Internet part of the well-known conferences where big thinkers express bigger thoughts, mostly focusing on technology, entertainment and design. The organizers have long put those analog talks, called TEDTalks, online. But they are now trying to make them even more accessible globally–with subtitles, an interactive, time-coded transcript, and the capacity to be translated by volunteers world-wide. It launches today with 300 translations in 40 languages, including Urdu. Yipes! We were planning to translate All Things Digital in Pig Latin–for example: Ittertway isway away ecretsay otplay otay estroyday ethay umanhay aceray iavay Ashtonway Utcherkay–but nixed the effort due to cost.