Roundup: Ma.gnolia, Red Herring, Microsoft spy and Japan have a bad week, and more

January 31, 2009 | Camille Ricketts | Comments | |

Here’s the latest action:

Google Toolbar gives Firefox a taste of Chrome — Toolbar now offers personalized “new tab” pages with linked thumbnails of favorite and bookmarked sites (just like Google’s Chrome browser, only in Firefox).

Bill Gates, Debbie Downer of Davos — The Microsoft founder predicts the economic downturn will last four years and says the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has lost a fifth of its value.

Ma.gnolia crashes and burns (and not even because of the economy) – The bookmark sharing web site lost its primary bank of user data and its backup in what Wired’s blog has called a “catastrophic” failure. Ouch.

Hitachi caps off lousy week for Japan – The company forecasts a $7.8 billion loss, the biggest ever for a Japanese manufacturing company.

Even more bad news for newspapers — Printing the New York Times (in mass every year) costs twice as much as it would to send every subscriber a free Amazon Kindle, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

Get your virtual shopping done early on Facebook – The social network now lets you schedule virtual gift giving up to a week before your friends’ birthdays. You’ll never have to send an embarrassingly belated fake cupcake again.

Outsourcing not so hot right now — The financial crisis and terror attacks in Mumbai have cooled Silicon Valley’s enthusiasm for outsourcing operations to countries like India (expected to drop three percent for the tech industry in 2009).

Microsoft cracks down on alleged corporate spy — The company is suing former employee Miki Mullor, chief executive of software maker Ancora Technologies, for downloading confidential documents related to a disputed patent.

Red Herring goes belly up (maybe) – The online tech magazine’s site has been down for a few days, with unconfirmed reports circulating that the company has shuttered. Granted, they were set off by one Tweet, and no employees have been informed of the closure.

Bright Automotive shines with $11M — Specializing in plug-in electric vehicle manufacturing, the company just raised $11 million in first-round funding from White Pines Partners and Duke Investments, reports VentureWire.

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About the Author, Camille Ricketts

Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

With GreenBeat 2009, VentureBeat's all-star conference on all things Smart Grid, coming up in November, Camille will be expanding coverage of this exciting space. Stay up to date by following @greenbeat2009 on Twitter or by becoming a fan of the event on Facebook here.

  • For surety there were much more Very Bad News : Toshiba Corp. and NEC Electronics both would prefer to anticipate reporting losses for the fiscal year ending March 31,2009...

    As well as ..."Restructuring alone won't help companies in today's economic conditions," said Masaru Hamasaki, a senior strategist at Toyota Asset Management. "If companies cut jobs or shrink capital spending based on their current earnings level, they risk narrowing their business capacity...."

    NEC, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Panasonic and Mitsubishi should better "destruct" or "report" their so called 'hidden network' in Singapore - Finland [Kouvola warehouses] - Russian Retail chains (especially may be mentioned two international retailer's chains: MediaMarkt Saturn and Auchan).

    It is not a big dark secret for the progressive mankind that Toshiba's Headquarters are receiving revenge strikes from Russian Electronics Mafia...:

    If you open Moscow Yellow Pages, you would be surprised how many foreign companies have their offices in Moscow...

    Although the international financial crisis has caused the collapse which has never occurred since the Great Depression, the Russian Federation is still considered as a quiet harbor.

    Amongst the transcontinental companies there are a considerable number of Japanese corporations such as Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, NEC, Sanyo, etc.

    Though the latter are thought to be well-known for their successful in retailing of high-quality products worldwide, there have been cases which must be interesting to investigating institutions.

    We are going to take Mr. Vadim Danilov’s employee fraud case including asset misappropriation, money laundering, and kickback scheme.

    The story goes Mr. Vadim Danilov was hired by Mr. Harry Fujimaki to work for Toshiba Corporation (Kabushiki-gaisha Toshiba) as a general logistics manager in Russia.

    The event occurred in 2004.

    In the course of two years Mr. Danilov had been “employed” in other areas such as, a certification specialist, customs broker, trader, promoter, etc. Mr. Danilov worked effectively and honestly thinking that he was a team player contributing to Toshiba’s profits.

    Moreover, Mr. Koichiro Natsume, an executive manager of Toshiba Corporation in the CIS, declared him a Toshiba Official Trader at the Conference at the Imperial Park Hotel, Moscow, 2006.

    In addition, Mr. Natsume declared that Mr. Vadim Danilov was officially registered by Toshiba Corporation as Toshiba's Official Trader named “the Ninth Wave” in the UK.

    To conclude the announced procedures, Mr. Natsume issued to Danilov’s Ninth Wave an invoice which was paid to a TCMS official account at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Singapore Branch.

    Furthermore, there were other financial transactions during 2006-2007-2008 years, executed by Mr. Vadim Danilov between clients and Toshiba Consumer Marketing Singapore, SMBC Singapore branch account.

    After all the payments were completed, Mr. Natsume vanished somewhere in Japan. Toshiba Corporation managers in Russia, Japan and Singapore refused to explain to Mr. Vadim Danilov how those payments had been used.

    Toshiba Corporation & TCMS, Mitsubishi and MCLogi, insist nowadays that Mr. Vadim Danilov has no evidences and the corporations declare now that Mr. Vadim Danilov had never had any relations with Toshiba Group Companies or Mitsubishi's MCLogi stuff.

    Moreover: the Toshiba and Mitsubishi MCLogi staff has been running away from Mr. Danilov for 35 months 9!).
    The Metropolitan Police Department of Tokyo also refused to investigate the accident and explained to Mr. Danilov that he had no right to bring in an action against a Japanese citizen.
    It would be better for the Metropolitan Police Department of Tokyo to check diligently some backgrounds of Toshiba's and Mitsubishi's Conformity Certification procedures in Russian Federation. As well as Customs Clearance documents with false Japanese stamps and signatures of false "Japanese Customs" or "Thailand Customs"...

    It seems to be a confrontation between David and Goliath but David had had no backup…

    It seems The Heaven's Referee is judging nowadays all the involved sides by crisis processings ...