NYT: The Picture Worth a Thousand Words

from Silicon Alley Insider by Henry Blodget

Performance of New York Times Company (NYT) stock during the 5-year bull market:

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Cellphones: Samsung WEP500 Quarter-Sized Bluetooth Headset Available Now

from Gizmodo by Jason Chen

Samsung's just announced the availability of their tiny quarter-sized WEP500 Bluetooth headset for the US. It's definitely small—weighs less than 9 grams and is the size of about a quarter—but suffers in low battery life because of it. 3.5 hours talk time and 80 hours standby time isn't fantastic, but it does have 2 microphones and noise reduction, which still isn't standard in Bluetooth headsets for some reason. All this can be yours for $119, and an extra $119 when you lose the first one because it's so miniscule. [Samsung]

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Water: IBM to Monitor the Hudson River with Solar-Powered Underwater Vehicles

from Gizmodo by Ben Longo

IBM is gathering some goodwill points by partnering up with a nonprofit to help monitor a 315-mile stretch of the Hudson River. They're going to be using a combination of sensor-laden buoys and solar-powered robotic underwater vehicles numbering in the hundreds. The vehicle, which sort of looks like a yellow sting ray covered in solar panels, will monitor things like the rivers temperature, pressure and pH levels. With this info they hope to be able to analyze the amount of pollutants in the river and better asses the risk to marine life. First things first, change the solar vehicles' color from yellow to murky brown. That way it will blend in with the Hudson a little better. [TreeHugger]

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AT&T Brings Back Cingular Orange to "Mobilize" Brand

Augustine:  TRULY, TRULY unbelievable waste of money. Do they (or their agency) really think orange will help drive sales, get new customers, increase customer satisfaction? Why not simply bring call centers back from India, better train support staff, end anti-customer policies like "you lose all your roll-over minutes when you make any change to your plan, including adding a line" and let your customers tell others how super-great you are.

from Gizmodo by Matt Buchanan

After spending an ungodly amount of money to kill Jack and mutate the Cingular brand into the "new AT&T," they've decided that Cingular's orange palette offered a "younger, edgier and more contemporary style—all attributes closely associated with wireless." But clearly not AT&T. So, they're rebranding. Again. Look for Death Stars set against the new "primary corporate color," orange, and a series of commercials directed by Wes Anderson coming your way as of—yesterday. Wow, I feel AT&T tickling my cutting edge sensibilities already. [AT&T via Broadband Reports]

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NYT: August Ads Drop -3.2%

from Silicon Alley Insider by Henry Blodget

The New York Times (NYT) ad business is still dwindling away, but the rate of decline actually moderated slightly in August. And thanks to a circulation price hike, overall revenue increased 0.6%.

Overall, the story remains the same. The Times' impressive web business is partially offsetting continued declines in the print business, but only partially (because it's only about 10% of the company). Revenue per web user is still far below revenue per print reader--so, over the long term, unless revenue per web reader increases significantly, the company is screwed. On the positive side, the New York Times itself is hanging in there, and the web business showed a nice acceleration. Our detailed monthly trending spreadsheet here. Release here. Details after jump.

NYT: August Key Points

• Revenue at the online newspaper properties rose 28%, a nice acceleration from July's 19%
• Offline ad revenue decline accelerated to -10% from -8% in July
• About.com rev increased slowed to 27%, but newspaper online revs accelerated significantly.
• National advertising rose again, up a strong 9%!
• So did circulation revenue! Up 4%!
• New England (read: Boston Globe) ad revenue dropped 9%, vs. 5% in July
• Regional ads dropped 12% (vs. 11% in July)
• Classified ads dropped a dismal 20%, a major deterioration
• TimesSelect paying subs who don't get the print paper crawled up to 226,800 from 225,000.
• Web uniques to all the company's properties hit a nice 44.2 million, up 11% from 39 million last year (a slower y/y gain).
• Revenue per web user appears to have increased modestly to about $0.60 a month ($8 a year).

Don't Miss: Running the Numbers: Why Newspapers are Screwed NYT Debt Outlook Cut to "Negative" By Moody's Death By Month: Tracking the Newspaper Industry's Decline Great Ad Share Shift: Google Sucks Life out of Old Media

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