noam's blog.a.lish

It's good to be on top. Google's top execs decline to get paid!?! Well that's nice of them isn't it? Compared to the assholes from Wall street Sergey, Larry, and Eric seem to be saints. I keep reading about how AIG, and other bailout-ee's spend my taxes and it pisses me off. If these companies ran at 50% the efficiency the Google runs maybe we didn't have to bail their stupid asses out???

Wall Street executives feeling harassed by taxpayers outraged at their pay might take note of how Google's ruling triumvirate fared in 2008: $1 in salary each, no bonus, no stock grants, and no stock options.

Google has offered co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt "market-competitive" salaries every year since 2005, but once again in 2008, the three turned it down, according to a company regulatory filing Tuesday. "Due to their own preferences not to receive salary compensation, Eric, Larry, and Sergey each rejected these offers and continue to receive base salaries of $1," the company said.

Also in 2008, the company decided that the stock-based compensation it had awarded to top executives in 2007 was "sufficient to help us meet our retention and business objectives through 2008," so no new stock compensation was awarded to them except in the case of new Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette, who was set to receive compensation worth more than $2 million along with thousands of shares and stock options in his first year.

Schmidt received perks totaling $508,764 in 2008, up from $480,561 the year before. That covered $402,562 in personal security costs and $106,201 Google paid to fly his family members and friends on paid chartered flights.

Of course, Page, Brin, and Schmidt are certainly not paupers. The 29,148,614 shares of Google's Class B common stock Page held at the end of 2008 are worth $10.1 billion at Tuesday's closing price of $347.17; Brin's 28,611,862 shares are worth $9.9 billion, and Schmidt's 9,372,740 shares are worth $3.3 billion.

p.s. I feel like that's what I make too, of course I wasn't given the option to decline my pay.

Google tries to deliver on Eric Shmidt's one acquisition per month promise. This "small" acquisition for mobile ad platform AdMob is reported to have cost the Goog $750 million dollars. Amazing.

Mountain View, Nov 9 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Search Engine major Google today announced that it has signed a substantial agreement to buy AdMob, which is a mobile display advertisement technology provider. The deal is set to be worth around $750 million in stock. This phenomenal acquisition will increase Google’s existing expertise by leaps and bounds. With this significant acquisition Google is set to set a trend in mobile advertising as well.

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” said Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google. “AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley startup – generating impressive year on year revenue growth – and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google.”

“I think people underestimate how important ads have been to funding the development of innovative content on the Internet. Our goal all along at AdMob has been to make it possible for developers and publishers to bring their products and ideas to mobile with the same business model,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob. “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made towards accomplishing this goal, and joining Google will only accelerate this process, ultimately leading to very real benefits for end users around the world. As publishers and developers generate more revenue from their mobile products, they will invest more, and their mobile offerings will become richer, more creative and more robust.”

p.s. Makes me want to build something just so I can sell it to Google for a shit load of money.

There are some rumors circulating the interwebs regarding Google's new music service.

I believe that Google offers a music service in China to compete with Baidu's MP3 service, of course it's a known fact that Baidu uses pirated data so it's kind of hard to fight that.

Google will partner with iLike and LaLa for their new music service, we’ve learned. And the announcement date is Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

Press, including us, received an invitation this morning (see ticket image above) inviting them to a Hollywood event next week hosted by music services LaLa and iLike. The invitation, titled “Discover Music!” says announcements will be followed by performances, and that LaLa, iLike “& Others” are hosting. The “& Others” includes Google, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and the new service will be unveiled. All four major music services are backing the service.

iLike was recently acquired by MySpace, so the new service may involve them as well.

From information we’ve gathered from sources, the new service will be integrated into Google search. Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well (presumably any relevant results from YouTube as well as information already available in Google’s existing music search – example). One source said that Google will organize music searches in a way very similar to the way they do public company stock searches today.

Users will also be offered the opportunity to purchase songs for download, we’ve confirmed.

p.s. News, Books, and now music... put them all on my Android device and I'll be one happy camper.

This is really really funny.

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

p.s. If only I could opt out of spam mail

OK so this isn't the video, but apparently there is a video out there that shows Bar completely nude... hmmm... this is close though, so enjoy

p.s. In other Bar Rafaeli news, she's now dating Teddy Sagi (38), some rich Israeli douche bag... haha

If you missed last nights David Letterman then you missed out on one crazy Joaquin Phoenix. It gets uncomfortable to watch and one point. Check it out... also Bar Refaeli goes on after and it seems like David wasn't in the mood after Joaquin's behavior.

p.s. "I'll come to your house and chew gum" was probably the funniest thing...

I'm a huge Jennifer Aniston fan and when I heard that she was taking some "tasty" pictures for GQ I had to find those images... well here you go...

p.s. You're welcome. Call me Jenny.

I've been looking for a little b'day gift for myself and I saw the Netflix Player by Roku and got kind of excited about it. For 99$ you get a nice little box that connects via HDMI to your LCD, with built in wireless internet connectivity I thought it was a done deal. So I asked around and got a really long thread going on about what to buy. Here is a summary of the main points in said thread:

• If you have an xbox you already have built in support for Netflix streaming so you don't need to buy anything.
• If you have a spare PC* you can just hook it up to your TV, if you're cheap and you don't mind having a PC* in your living room.
• If you have and xbox you can still get the Roku for a different room. Not a bad idea IMHO.
• Wait for Tivo, ps3, mac* support.
• You can use your PS3 plus networked PC for only $30 with playon.
• If you have PlayOn you can also watch Hulu shows.
• Get on of the new Bluray devices with build in Netflix streaming.
• Even if you have xbox you need Xbox Gold LIVE membership.
• Roku does not stream HD, this is a huge point, but is said to have an firmware upgrade sometime in the future for this.

A lot of good points to consider, and I will, but then I ran into this article which discuss exactly the same points!! Here are the key points from the article:

I've spent the past couple of weeks comparing the Netflix experience on Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, on LG Electronics' BD300 Blu-ray disc player and on a set-top box from Roku called the Netflix Player.

The devices suffer from a relatively skimpy selection of videos on the Netflix Internet service. Netflix has more than 100,000 titles for rent on disc, but about 12,000 titles for viewing through its Internet service at the moment, and there's often a months-long delay after a movie's release before it shows up online. Television shows generally turn up more quickly, with a handful, like NBC's "Heroes," watchable the day after they air.

Wi-Fi

with the Roku device, the only one of three products that comes with built-in Wi-Fi (it worked well in this mode). People who want to use the Xbox 360 with a wireless network will have to spend $70 or so on an external Wi-Fi adapter. LG recommends people use only a wired home network to connect to Netflix from its player, including adapter kits that cost about $100 for transmitting data over home power lines.

Interface

All the devices require you to create a list of movies you want to watch from a computer, just like Netflix subscribers set up "queues" of DVDs to be delivered by mail. The Xbox 360 offered by far the most elegant-looking interface for browsing through videos in my Netflix queue... In contrast, the Netflix menu on the LG Blu-ray player and Roku device were more static, making it more awkward to navigate the expanse of titles.

Quality

The quality of most of the videos on Netflix is, to my eyes, about DVD quality... HD titles were available for viewing only through the Xbox 360 when I was testing the service. Roku and LG say they will make software updates available online this month that add HD support to their devices.

LG Sucks

I experienced the most serious glitches with the LG Blu-ray player, which occasionally dropped the video signal to my television set as I was watching a movie. The LG Blu-ray player also took the longest of all the devices to install software upgrades from the Internet.

Conclusion

But if what you're after is primarily Netflix movies, and you've got room near your TV for another box, the $99.99 Roku product is the best value.

Interesting. So the * next to the PC and MAC are there because Netflix just released a beta version of it's streaming player for mac users... check it out here.

Ran into this funny little promo the other day, man Palin has a hot bod as a cartoon...

p.s. I guess comedians around the world are hoping Obama looses, that will just dry up the political scene for them won't it...

Since some people complained that I didn't post about sports (except for my Lakers...) here is a little hat tip for you baseball fanatics, especially you Philly Phans...

Philadelphia Phillies fans can still dream of their team winning its first World Series since 1980, but Los Angeles Dodgers fans can officially stop believing for 2008.

The Phillies are returning to the World Series for the first time since 1993 after riding ace Cole Hamels to a 5-1 win over L. A. to take the best-of-seven NLCS 4-1.

L. A.'s surprise playoff run, sparked by the late summer arrival of Manny Ramirez, crashed to a halt amidst the wreckage created by another poor NLCS start from Chad Billingsley and three fifth-inning errors by Dodgers shortstop Rafael Furcal.

Furcal had made only four errors in 36 games this year.

But with runners on first and second and his team behind 3-0, the 31-year-old could not handle Pat Burrell's ground ball.

Saw this live on TV the other night and got a good laugh too, it just amazes me how you can find pretty much anything on YouTube these days.

p.s. I'm guessing Ernie had something else on his mind...

I thought this was really funny, especially after watching the debate.

p.s. Comedians might have material post Bush after all.