Yesterday I saw (and twittered) a comScore report on online spending this holiday season. So far this holiday season (comScore calls Nov & Dec the holiday shopping season), $8.2bn has been spent online which is down 4% versus the same time period last year. The report goes on to say: comScore’s forecast is that holiday online retail spending for the November – December period will be flat versus year ago, significantly lower than last year’s growth rate of 19 percent and below the retail e-commerce growth rate of 9 percent that has been observed for 2008 year-to-date.That got me thinking....
By Taylor Pratt In what will most likely become a trend in the social networking realm, a British juror was removed from the jury for posting a “note” on Facebook. According to the The Sun, a U.K. tabloid who originally broke the story, she was asking for advice from her friends on what they thought the outcome of the trial should be. She was unable to make a decision herself. As social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to grow, will this become more of a problem? In addition to the increase in social networking sites, smart phones are...
Sorry I didn't start a pool on how long it would take the usually voluble Mark Cuban to move past that first relatively low-key—for him—response to the SEC's charges of insider trading yesterday. Well, technically, he isn't doing the talking. Instead, Tuesday's salvo posted on Cuban's Blog Maverick is from a second lawyer at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP "on behalf of Mark Cuban." This one denies the SEC's claim that Cuban broke an agreement of confidentiality when he sold his stake in Mamma.com in 2004 just before the company made an announcement that would dilute the value. The post includes...
November 18, 2008 On behalf of Mark Cuban RE: SEC Civil Action in the United States District for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division The SEC knows their case centers on one telephone conversation between two individuals- 4 years ago. The SEC claims there was an agreement between these parties to the conversation to keep certain information confidential. We interviewed Guy Faure, the former CEO of Mamma.com Inc., with whom the SEC claims Mr. Cuban made an agreement. We had a court reporter transcribe the interview. There was no agreement to keep information confidential. Here is a relevant excerpt from the interview with Mr. Faure: CHRISTOPHER CLARK...
With all of the layoffs hitting the tech industry, everyone’s in need of a diversion — you know, a news story that is sure to stretch out into months of messy public detail. That story may have arrived this morning: Mark Cuban, entrepreneur-hero and outspoken Dalls Mavericks owner, is being taken to court by the Securities and Exchange Commission for “insider trading.” The S.E.C. complaint alleges that search engine Mamma.com had given Cuban confidential information about a pending stock offering, in June of 2004, that he used to sell his stock early and avoid a loss of $750,000. The complaint...
Regardless of how the SEC's insider trading case against Mark Cuban plays out, one thing is fairly certain: It won't be settled quietly. "Historically, the SEC has liked to make examples of well-known individuals -- such as Martha Stewart -- because it attracts attention to the subject," says Alexander Bono, Chair of Securities Litigation in the Philadelphia office of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis. "If they get attention, they get the word out that they're vigorously protecting the market from insider trading," Bono said. "It's part education and part law enforcement." Cuban is already making noises about fighting the...
Update: Mark Cuban responds to the charge. Again I think this is BullShit with a capital BS. Federal regulators have charged Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban with insider trading for allegedly using confidential information on a stock sale to avoid more than $750,000 in losses. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Cuban on Monday in federal court in Dallas. The agency says that in June 2004, Cuban was invited to get in on the coming stock offering by Mamma.com Inc. after he agreed to keep the information private. The SEC says Cuban knew the shares would...
Today, I spoke with Larry Magid, who has been in the media for years and has published various books on internet safety. In this interview, we focus on the importance of protecting our online identities on social networks. I’m not much of a fan of MySpace, but if you’re on that social network, pay very close attention to this post. Larry, are social networks safe for anyone these days? I just read an article about how a woman was putting up bad Facebook status messages about her husband and he found out and murdered her? Will it ever be safe...
Sensitive and confidential information printed from our computers and stored on out portable hard drives and flash drives gets lots of attention. We shred paper, and can encrypt electronic data on portable storage. What many overlook though is security for data stored on CDs. When it comes time to toss that CD or DVD out that has your company’s financial info on it, you don’t want to simply throw it in the trash can where anyone who finds it can pop it into a computer can see the info. You need to destroy the CD and Aleratec has a new...
(ARA) - Recent news headlines are causing concern for many Americans as company data breaches are on the rise. From missing laptops containing employee and customer information to stolen passwords that lead to the loss of proprietary records, many are led to believe that a majority of data breaches occur electronically. According to a new study commissioned by the Alliance for Secure Business Information (ASBI), this isn’t the case. The Security of Paper Documents in the Workplace study found that 49 percent of respondents whose companies have been affected by a data breach stated one or more of the...
Former-Intel employee, current-AMD employee, and probable future-Federal prison resident Biswamohan Pani is the guy who stole a whole bunch of confidential information from Intel, according to the FBI. Now, Federal prosecutors have officially charged the 33-year-old engineer for stealing more than one billion dollars in trade secrets from Intel. One billion, with B of "Bloody Hell This Dude Is Nuts". Biswamohan spent the last two weeks at Intel copying files labeled as "Confidential," "Top secret," and "You are dumb and you are going to get so screwed, Biswamohan." That included documents of all kind, including secret plans for chips and...
I have already written here about the amazing service for connecting clinical researchers with patients interested in enrolling in clinical trials, Private Access. So far, I have simply praised the appearance of a service bound to prove a boon to the clinical trials community, to medical science and those afflicted with disease and disability. In this piece, I would like to engage in some theorizing about the many facets of Private Access that touch on everything from privacy on the Internet to Science 2.0 to social computing, the relationship of patients to the research community, and technological innovation in the...
