Filed under: Deals, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) concurred to delay their advertising sales partnership while the Justice Department reviews the deal. The news might look like a retreat by Google, but it undermines one of the key reasons Yahoo! gave for staying independent from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). Google was going to improve Yahoo!’s revenue.

It looks like there is some chance the partnership will not happen at all. That would justify the fact that Yahoo!’s stock is down by more than half from its 52-week high. Yahoo! indicated that the wait might be short. “The companies have concurred to a brief delay in implementing this agreement to continue our ongoing discussions with the (U.S.) Department of Justice,” Yahoo! stated in a statement. “We have had discussions with regulators and look forward to responding to their questions about this agreement.”

The trouble is that Justice can take its own time. It’s under no pressure to give an answer in short order. The news also begs the question of whether the two companies will wait for antitrust reviews in the EU and Canada.

Each day that passes without Yahoo! having a sales relationship in place with Google is a day its earnings do not recover.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: E-mail, Productivity, Web services, Yahoo!, web 2.0

Yahoo! is rolling out the first major overhaul of its web-based calendar application in 10 years. But while there are 278-million Yahoo! Mail users, only about 8 million people use the calendar.

The new Yahoo! Calendar beta looks pretty nice. It has a slick interface that lets you zoom in on any particular date for a close-up even when you’re using the month view. The calendar also features Flickr integration, so that random Creative Commons-licensed images can be pulled in to make the calendar look pretty. Eventually users will be able to add images from their own Flickr accounts.

The updates aren’t just cosmetic. You can manage multiple calendars, share calendars with friends, and create to-do lists associated with your calendar. The new calendar also supports iCal and CalDAV protocols, which mean you can import calendars from AOL, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google. At least in theory. I tried importing my Google Calendar with no success. But I was able to import my Yahoo! Calendar into Google, so that’s something at least.

Keep in mind, the new Yahoo! Calendar is still in beta. And it shows in a couple of places. There are a bunch of features available in the old Yahoo! Calendar that are absent from the new beta, including the capability to search for events, show sports, ifnacnce, holiday, and weather information, or even add symbols for event types like birthdays and anniversaries. You should also note that if you switch to the beta version of the calendar and then decide to switch back, you’ll lose any changes made in the beta version.

Long story short, the new Yahoo! Calendar is worth checking out. But you might not want to make the switch just yet. The beta is only available to users in the US, UK, India, Taiwan, and Brazil and the moment, with a worldwide rollout expected within the next few months.

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By Nora Dunn

You’ve the power to create and mold your child’s financial imprint. It is through your own actions, discussions, and attitudes towards money that your children will develop habits – both good and bad – that’ll carry them through and last a lifetime. They won’t learn it from anybody else; finances are not taught (at least not thoroughly enough if at all) in schools, and nobody else is going to show them how to succeed in life and avoid the big financial pitfalls that lurk around each corner.

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Apple Inc (AAPL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Nokia Corp. (NOK), Research in Motion (RIMM)

The prevailing wisdom would have to be that there are too many smartphones on the market. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) just launched one to compete with RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is releasing the G1 later this month. Most of the other large handset companies are also in the business. But Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) now wants to jump in.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “The new phone will likely be released in Europe within the next two months.”

Given the amount of competition in the market, it is hard to see how HP will be able to pick up much market share. It is hard to envision that it can offer features beyond those the iPhone and BlackBerry already have.

The problem with the new device might be greater than that. HP has had the image of being a “winner” over the last two years as financial results have increased. Its Personal computers and printers are leaders in their fields.

Investors would think that HP would want to dodge a failure in a crowded market to avoid the market looking at the company as one that makes poor product decisions and tries to expand beyond its core franchises. To make matters worse, HP will probably never sell enough phones to meaningfully add to its revenue.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Features, Web services, web 2.0

As a music lover, one of my favorite innovations of the last five years or so has come in the form of music discovery services. Services like Last.fm, Pandora, Rhapsody and iTunes 8 have made it simple to find artists or songs that are similar to your musical tastes and preferences. The only problem with these services, is that they are based on limited databases (like the iTunes Music Store, for iTunes’s Genius Mode), reviews or ratings by other users and overall popularity. That means that the music discovered might indeed be similar, but it really limits results to mainsream songs and generic genre distinctions. This is great for an automatic playlist, but not so great for really finding new bands or artists.

This is why Mufin’s new music discovery engine is so unique; it analyzes the actual structure of the song, not just the genre meta-data. Mufin’s discovery engine just entered private beta, but Download Squad readers can get in on the action by using this invite link: http://beta.mufin.com/start?ic=e75eecf85a4a547ca9379d6f8b6c23bb.

Co-developed at the Fraunhofer Institute (the creators of the MP3 format), Mufin uses audio recognition technology to examine the actual musical characteristics of a song. Mufin creates a very special “fingerprint” for each song, using 40 characteristics like tempo, instruments, rhythm structure and sound density. Then, when you search for a song in Mufin’s database, an alogrithm compares the fingerprint of that song against the database and presents you with results of songs that are similar in structure.

Continue reading Mufin launches new music discovery engine beta, Download Squad readers are invited

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