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More layoffs are on the way at the online unit of AOL Time Warner this month. Up to several hundred employees will be let go to meet the financial targets of $40 billion in revenue and $11 billion in earnings. Observers see the move as an attempt by AOL to reassure Wall Street that everything is sound, after the company reported lower-than-expected revenues last quarter. This latest round of cutbacks has been preceded by several others. At the beginning of the year 725 employees were laid off after the merger of AOL and Time Warner. Additional cuts pushed the final figure for the entire company to 2,400 employees, or 3 percent of the total. The online division as well as CNN, Warner Music Group, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. and Time Inc. were included.
Coffee Cam finds a new home
The Coffee Cam, which is perhaps the web’s oldest exercise in voyeurism, has been sold. Computer science students at Cambridge University in England trained a webcam on their coffee pot more than 10 years ago. The reason: They were tired of trekking across campus only to find the pot empty, and the webcam would let them know how full it was without their having to leave their desks. German magazine Spiegel Online has purchased the coffee pot for $4,771 via online auctioneer eBay. The pot is sometimes referred to as the Trojan Room Coffee Pot after the room in which it sat. Spiegel plans to enshrine it at its offices in Hamburg, in addition to featuring it on its own web site. The coffee pot has attracted a cult following of visitors. Since 1993, more than two million people have visited the Coffee Cam site. The Oxford computer science department recently announced that it would retire the webcam because it is moving to new facilities.
Graphic designer may keep Armani.com
A Toronto-based graphic designer named Anand Ramnath Mani may keep the Armani.com domain name, the World Intellectual Property Organization has ruled. For the past six years, fashion house Giorgio Armani has been struggling to wrest the domain name from A.R. Mani. Mani has referred to himself professionally as A.R. Mani since 1981. When Armani discovered back in 1994 that Mani owned the domain name, it offered him $750 and a free Armani suit in exchange. Mani did not accept the offer and ultimately spent some $6,500 in the fight to keep Armani.com. At one point, Mani offered to switch to Amani.com, but Armani insisted that the address was too similar to Armani.com. Mani uses the domain as an email address and has no web site. The WIPO let Mani keep Armani.com because, first, it really is his name, and second, he’s not trying to capitalize on the Armani brand. For now, the fashion designer’s home on the web is GiorgioArmani.com.
Mexican political party runs dating site
Youth are fleeing Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the party has turned to the web to lure them back. The PRI, as it’s commonly known, has launched a matchmaking section on its home page. While it may be too early to tell if the gimmick is working, the matchmaking site has been widely promoted in TV ads. So far, more than 7,000 visitors have submitted their personal details to the site. The love-seeking web users will meet at a gala at PRI headquarters in Mexico City. The party’s hope is that it can win back the young voters who defected to the rival National Action Party and helped elect Vicente Fox president in July 2000—after the PRI had dominated politics and the Mexican presidency for 71 years. The support of young adults is key to victory for any political party in Mexico, given that 45 percent of Mexican voters are between the ages of 18 to 30.
DSL growth hits brick wall
High-speed internet access via direct subscriber line might be an idea that is too far ahead of its time. A recent study by telecommunications analysis company TeleChoice suggests that this is the case, in part because many small DSL companies, among them NorthPoint Communications and Covad Communications, have run out of money. Additionally, regional phone companies have hiked their fees, as well as being slow to offer DSL access. Because of this, consumers have been slow to adopt the technology. As of the quarter ending July 1, 3.3 million DSL lines had been installed in the U.S., reaching a small fraction of the estimated 58 percent of people in the U.S. who are online. Fewer than 10 percent of households in the U.S. have high-speed access, and among those households, just 2 percent use DSL. The 3.3 million figure represents a 14 percent increase over the previous quarter, a growth rate markedly down from that of the two previous quarters, when DSL access spread by 20 percent and 41 percent, respectively.
August 14, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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