Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk Inc. has accepted an offer to become CEO of Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO).  Sixty year old Bartz will be taking the position that was formerly held by Jerry Yang.  Yang was looking for a CEO to replace him for the last two months.

Some of the issues that Bartz will have to deal with as CEO is market share loss from Google Inc., multiple deals landing on the table that includes the breaking up of Yahoo!, a potential merger with AOL, and a declining stock price.

Bartz is known to be a very tough CEO.  She pushed for professional management practices at Autodesk and tame the culture set by John Walker, founder of the company.  When Bartz stepped up as CEO of Autodesk in the 1990s, the company was bringing in $350 million.  In 2006 when Bartz stepped down, Autodesk was bringing in about $1.6 billion.

Although Bartz has very little experience on the Internet, “Maybe that would be a good thing for Yahoo! right now,” stated Seth O. Harris Jr., an EVP and high tech recruiter at Cook Associates.  Employees may be looking for someone with strong operational experience.  Yang was a bit of an emotional CEO, thus the reason for turning down the Microsoft offer.  And Terry Semel, the CEO before Yang, was too much of a glamorous deal maker.  It’s about time Yahoo! becomes more operational efficient.

So I was surfing on the mobile Internets earlier today.   I opened up my Favorites on my Motorola Q and clicked on GMail.com.

The Google then told me:

“We can’t provide service under the GMail name in Germany; we’re called Google Mail here instead.

If you’re traveling in Germany, you can access your mail at http://mail.google.com.

Oh, and we’d like to link the URL above, but we’re not allowed to do that either.  Bummer.”

News about the Germans not allowing Google to use GMail.com is old news from June.  But here’s the thing:  When I got the message, I was in the U.S. of A and not in the DEUSTCHLAND!   Michigan to be specific.  Sprint and Google’s lack of intercommunication = Wireless Telecomm Double Fail!  Bummer.

Judson (Jud) Laipply is a YouTube celebrity, comedian, and motivational speaker from Bucyrus, Ohio.  Laipply’s is best known for his dance moves on Evolution of Dance.  In that video clip, he played a medley of about 32 songs and danced to the moves associated with each song.  The video clip was an instant hit and remained one of the most popular YouTube video clips of all time with over 109 million views to date.  And now Jud is back!

Personally I believe Evolution of Dance 2 is good, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the original. But I’ll let you be the judge. Leave a comment. what do you think of the new Evolution of Dance? It already has close to 1 million views and it was added 4 days ago. Evolution of Dance 2 has already been favorited by over 15,000 YouTube members

Below is the video clip of Evolution of Dance 2, courtesy of PeopleJam:

Last week, the hackers got Twitter and this week it looks like ParisHilton.com got nailed.  Security company ScanSafe reports that anyone that visits Paris Hilton’s website is prone to malware infection.

“Hilton’s popular website, ParisHilton.com, has been outfitted with malware prompting site visitors to ‘update’ their system in order to continue navigating the site,” stated ScanSafe. “When the bogus pop-up box appears, users have the option to click ‘Cancel’ or ‘OK.’ Regardless of which option they choose, destructive malware will be downloaded to the user’s computer.”

An iFrame was embedded into Paris Hilton’s website.  The iFrame calls malware from from a website called you69tube.com.  Then a PDF with a virus in it is called.  While it is not known how the iFrame got onto the website, there is speculation that there is a vulnerability in Joomla’s CMS.

This is not the first time that technology utilized by Paris Hilton was hacked.  Hilton’s T-Mobile Sidekick phone was hacked and her photos were exploited.  The hacker of Hilton’s phone got 11 months in juve for it.

[via PC World]

NewsGator is a social computing, enterprise RSS and social widgets company.  NewsGator had the strongest quarter in its history.  NewsGator’s list of customers has grown substantially too.  Given this growth, investors were confident enough to provide them with $10 million in their sixth round of funding.  The investors involved include Masthead Venture Partners, Mobius Venture Capital and Vista Ventures.

Some of NewsGator’s clients include 2 out of 3 of the top world banks, the world’s largest private public relations firm, the second largest U.S. advertising agency, the second largest law firm, four out of the top pharmaceutical companies, the fourth largest U.S. electrical company, and one of the top five investment banking companies in Canada.

“We’re very proud to continue to extend and expand our Global 2000 customer relationships,” stated NewsGator CEO and President JB Holston. “Demand is accelerating for our on-premise and SaaS-based social computing offerings as top quality companies turn to immediate, high-ROI solutions for content and collaboration.”

NewsGator is also well known for NetNewsWire, an RSS reader.  NetNewsWire was named one of the Top 10 iPhone Apps for 2008 in TIME magazine.

“The social computing models that have rocked the consumer world have equally important roles to play in the enterprise – and now more than ever in the current business environment,” stated NewsGator Director and Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital and Foundry Group Brad Feld. “It’s inspiring to see NewsGator tapping this rich vein of need and achieving remarkable results to document the value of its approach.”

SocialVibe announced earlier yesterday that they have raised $8 milion Series B in funding from JAFCO Ventures and Redpoint Ventures.  SocialVibe is a social media company that has social network users create advertising badges on social networks.  Advertisers using the badges include Sprint, Adobe, and Coca-Cola.

“SocialVibe has brought soul to the intersection of social media and online advertising with a solution that resonates with advertisers, publishers and members,” stated Greg Martin, Partner of Redpoint Ventures. “SocialVibe is more than a great business, they are a force for good.”

Through this round of funding, Managing General Partner of JAFCO Ventures Joe Horowitz will be joining SocialVibe’s board of directors.  SocialVibe has grown to about 500,000 members.  These members are sharing brand badges with about 10 million of their friends on social networks.  In turn this creates 100 million endorsed impressions.

“Today’s funding round represents a tremendous vote of confidence in our team, vision and business model,” stated SocialVibe CEO Kurt Johnson. “JAFCO and Redpoint Ventures are quality venture firms that understand our business and have the experience to help us grow into a leading advertising and monetization solution for social media.”

It sounds like Alex Wissner-Gross, Jonathan Leake, and Richard Woods of the Times Online U.K. should have done more research when writing a paper about the energy that Google consumes.  Leake and Woods are writers for The Times Online U.K. and Wissner-Gross is a physicist that gave predictions about the energy consumption.

Leake and Woods started their article by stating “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.”  That’s a pretty bold statement to make about a search engine company. Below is an additional excerpt from The Times Online article:

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Wissner-Gross submitted his paper for publication to the U.S. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and created a website regarding his research called CO2stats.com.  Since Google is making a tremendous effort towards becoming a greener company and built their whole company based on a “Don’t be evil” philosophy, they simply can’t take the bad reputation.  Especially if they believe the facts are wrong.  Urs Hölzle, SVP of Google Operations responded to the accusations on the Google Blog.

Hölzle’s started by emphasizing that Google has built some of the most energy efficient data centers in the world.  Below are some of the stats that Hölzle brokedown in the article response:

- The Times wrote that a typical Google search uses “half the energy as boiling a kettle of water” or 7 grams of CO2
- Google returns each search within 0.2 seconds which amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search or 1 kJ.  The average human needs 8000 kJ of energy per day from food.  One Google search uses about the same amount of energy that the human body uses in 10 seconds.
- One Google search amounts to 0.2 grams of CO2, not the 7 grams that the Times mentioned.
- The EU standard for tailpipe emissions is 140 grams of CO2 per km driven.  For every 0.6 miles that a car drives, it produces the same amount of CO2 as one thousand Google searches.

Between the two articles, I’d believe Google as being the most accurate.  There is only so much information about the company that the Harvard physicist had, but good try though.

[Reference: Times Online UK]

Yodle is a startup that provides local online advertising across search engines and other web real estate.  Yodle is based in New York and has raised $10 million Series C from JAFCO Ventures, the DFJ Growth fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Yodle started in 2005 and reports that they have increased 700% in annual revenue compared to 2007.  The run rate for their fourth quarter in 2008 was about $30 million.  Yodle has about 9 people in staff in 2006 and now they have 250 people.  The company has over 5,000 customers.  They had 125 in 2006.  The company expects to make a profit in about six months.

Yodle helps small businesses advertise their products on search engines and Yodle will track and optimize the ads.  This includes the clickthrough rates, phone calls, and click per action rates.  Yodle has their customers grouped into different sectors such as Beauty & Personal Care, Business & Professional, Health & Medical, Home & Garden, and Travel & Lifestyle.

Yodle was founded by Nathaniel Stevens.  He currently serves as the VP of Media Operations.  Stevens started the company while he was attending Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.  Stevens was accepted into the Venture Initiation Program, UPenn’s incubation initiative.  Yodle’s first round of funding was $3 million by Bessemer Venture Partners.  Yodle’s second round of funding was $12 million and provided by Bessemer Venture Partners and DFJ.  This gives Yodle a total of $15 million.

[via TechCrunch]