Business, Financial & Legal - Page 165

Google have dropped $1.8 billion like it's hot (shout out to Snoop Dogg!) on a new office in the concrete city where dreams are made of (wink Jay-Z), New York City.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say restocking fees suck. We all know it doesn't really cost companies 10% or more of what the purchase price of a gadget is to restock them. Those fees are just a way for the company to help talk us into keeping the gadgets we really don't like and would return if we didn't have to pay a fee. Best Buy has announced it has finally stopped being such a douche and eliminated restocking fees.

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The fees were killed off on December 18 and the store will even refund you that restocking fee if you made a return in the 30 days or so prior to the 18th and were charged 10% or 15%. The old restocking fees were 10% of the price on an iPhone and 15% on other electronic devices like notebooks, TVs, GPS devices and more. Those high fees could add up to some really big losses for the consumer.

An email that Best Buy sent to stores across the country ended up in the hands of The Consumerist and it read:

" Effective Saturday, Dec. 18, the 15 percent restocking fee will no longer apply to computers (including notebooks, tablets and iPads), projectors, camcorders, digital cameras, radar detectors, GPS navigation, in-car video systems, DJ equipment and lighting, or Pro-Audio equipment. The 10 percent restocking fee will no longer apply to iPhones. Restocking fees shouldn't be charged for any returns of these products going forward.
This policy change is being made because we want to be the best destination for gifts and technology. To do that we need to make it easy for our customers to return product when they need to, which will give them one more reason to love Best Buy."

NVIDIA has lost their Quadro and Tesla manager to AMD. The story of Rob MacDonald begins with how he began with taking over NVIDIA's UK graphics sales operation in 2002 and shortly after was given control of graphic card sales into the Nordic region (Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway).

No, not Opera, the web browser - Oprah as in one of the most powerful women in the world, Oprah. Telstra today announced it has secured a deal with The Oprah Winfrey Show to supply network support for the live shows as well as ensuring network coverage for the show's 300 guests next month.

This is not something I thought an ISP in Australia would open, an R&D facility, but iiNet seem to be on a roll here, with acquisitions, customer satisfaction, products on offer and competitive pricing/allowance, they're really smashing down the walls of broadband hell that have kept this country in the dark ages of broadband for years.

Qantas has unveiled their next-gen check-in service which involves micro chipped smartcards replacing boarding passes and RFID to track your bags.

Apple's fiscal 2010 report is out (10-K form) - the document is filled with information and details on the state of Apple's business - one big flashing light is just how much Apple spend on advertising in 2010.

Qantas announced yesterday it's plans to go "Apple-only" on it's frequent flyer lounges around Australia - giving travellers access to the "latest generation Mac's" in a national roll out.

Mana Bar started off in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley - the first of it's kind to use a concept of video game consoles in a cocktail bar - it has been successful enough to venture into a second bar, now set to launch in Melbourne in December.

Intel has announced plans to invest between $6 and $8 billion to upgrade multiple manufacturing plants in the US and also to build a new facility in Oregon. This would create up to 1000 jobs at Intel.

Texas Instruments makes all sorts of chips for a vast range of devices running from mobile phones and set top boxes to other electronic devices that you probably don't even know they work with. TI runs its own fabs where it builds its chips itself rather than being a fabless semiconductor firm like some that farm out the actual construction of their chips to someone else.

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TI has announced today that it has acquired a new analog semiconductor fab in China. The fab is the first that TI has in China, is located in Chengdu, and will be known as TI Chengdu. The fab is a fully equipped 200mm fabrication facility and TI purchased the fab from Cension Semiconductor Manufacturing Company at an undisclosed price.

The fab facility is 120,000 square feet and TI claims it can support about $1 billion in annual revenue. The purchase also included an additional 134,000 square foot fab that is reserved for future production needs. "TI has been committed to serving the China market for 25 years," said Gregg Lowe, TI senior vice president for Analog. "Increasingly, customers there are using TI's analog chips for the real-world functions in their electronic applications. This fab in Chengdu will strengthen our ability to support customers' growing requirements and deliver analog products when and where customers need them."

The lads over at KitGuru have an interesting interview with Richard Huddy of AMD.

Telstra is really stretching out lately - another news bit, that they are upgrading their online bill payment facilities after research showed online payment as the preferred method of customers paying their phone bills.

Microsoft's search engine "Bing", will soon allow searchers to see results generated by their Facebook friends' use of the "like" button.

Telstra has named their new CIO today.

Meet, Patrick Eltridge:

Right now there's no confirmation, but the one thing that should interest you is the news caused Adobe Systems stock to rise 17% before falling slightly down to 11.5% higher than before the rumour. Microsoft shares rose by 0.4%.

AMD is stamping it's one year anniversary of the AMD Fusion Partner Program by introducing the AMD Fusion Partner Program distributor track. The expanded program will give distributors access to all of the benefits and goodies within the AMD Fusion Partner Program to help increases sales of AMD-based solutions. AMD is also introducing the AMD Rewards Program - which is being used to add sales-based incentives for partners to increase channel sales growth.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TMSC) might be showing off a glimpse of the future of chip manufacturing tech smaller than 20nm when it pulls back the curtain on it's latest research involving FinFET transistors at a chip industry event later this year.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has recommended to Telstra to lower their wholesale pricing to their copper network. iiNet's chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby doesn't seem to think it will get Telstra to play ball.

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The ACCC recommends a price reduction in wholesale line rental (WLR) (the price an ISP pays to provide a line when not connected to their own infrastructure) on top of a recommendation to drop the local carriage service (LCS) pricing.

While the price drops for WLR and LCS are recommended from the ACCC's report, they don't recommend a change in the line sharing service (LSS) which let's a company supply ADSL services using their own equipment in Telstra exchanges. Also left out, is ULLS which is the supply of a service from a whole copper line, from the exchange to the home.

Dalby had the following to say in regards to the ACCC's report, "Telstra has never taken any notice of the pricing principles when setting its wholesale prices, and is not likely to do so on this occasion."

It will be a while before we see the waves from these reports crash upon the shores of ISP's wholesale costing - but with the moves in the market of the terabyte (or more) plans - it's starting to not really matter to the consumer, but to the ISP's.

Intel and McAfee are two companies that most are familiar with. Intel is the largest maker of processors in the world and McAfee is one of the largest PC security companies around with antivirus software and more. Intel has announced that it plans to purchase McAfee at $48 per share in cash. The value of the deal is about $7.68 billion.