pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/BlackBerry_Storm_VZW_Line.jpg" width="450" height="290" style="display:block;" /In spite of its a href="http://gizmodo.com/5094371/10-takes-on-the-blackberry-storm"mixed reviews concerning software bugs and the controversial click-screen/a, the BlackBerry Storm drew a heckuva lot of Crack(Berry)heads to Verizon Wireless stores today demanding to get a piece of that action, including some who got uppity when things didn't work out like Christmas morning./p pReuters is saying that "more than 200 people" were hanging out in front of a mid-town Manhattan Verizon store this morning, some who ended up throwing fits when the shop ran out of the RIM goodness just an hour into its morning sales./p pIf you yourself are concerned about a Storm shortage, Reuters says that Verizon stores that may have run dry are promising a unit within 7 days, as long as you pre-order at the store or online. Given the high profile of this product launch, I figure this isn't a supply problem so much as it is an allocation problem, and that every store will soon have enough to meet demand. Have you had any issues scoring a unit? If so, do share them so your fellow Giz readers don't waste their Saturdays. [a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE4AK5KA20081121?feedType=RSSfeedName=technologyNews"Reuters/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=fed61c057f352dda23f381426e8e6114p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=fed61c057f352dda23f381426e8e6114p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=fed61c057f352dda23f381426e8e6114" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=3SbzFXqy"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=nOoARnrD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=oJC7WajP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=oJC7WajP" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=8r9avP1Q"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=8r9avP1Q" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/pRNpgGsum4c" height="1" width="1"/

via MacNN:

Lineups for this morning's launch of the BlackBerry Storm have cracked the triple-digit mark and prompted sellouts, early reports note. One of the company's flagship stores in midtown Manhattan noted over 200 people in line for the touchscreen phone's morning debut and is said to have prompted a minor police response after a phone sellout angered those at the back of the queue. Sellouts have als...


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Lineups for this morning's launch of the BlackBerry Storm have cracked the triple-digit mark and prompted sellouts, early reports note. One of the company's flagship stores in midtown Manhattan noted over 200 people in line for the touchscreen phone's morning debut and is said to have prompted a minor police response after a phone sellout angered those at the back of the queue. Sellouts have als...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227282078058_iphonepublictransport_01.jpg" width="804" height="402" style="display:block;float:none;" /The new iPhone 2.2 is here and we've been playing with it all night and morning. Like Apple says in their documentation, the stability and performance seems to have improved, but the spotlight falls on the new and improved Maps application, which has been polished up thanks to its public transportation and walking directions, as well as the smooth, fast Street View, and many other interface details. There are a lot of unexpected new features—no, no cut and paste—and fixes as well, and we've tried them all here:/p pbEnhancements to Maps/b/p p· Public transport and walking mode: The most impressive part, at least for a public transport user like me, is the new public transport and walking directions mode. They work as you can expect, without many glitches. This mode has all the information you need, at least here in New York, and it showed me the fastest way to get from my house to Gawker offices (cleverly avoiding the damn 6, which is always arriving late for me)./p pNot only it showed the route clearly, with nice new icons, but it also gave something unexpected: subway timetables. As you can see in the gallery, it tells you what's the departure time for the next Manhattan-bound L train, telling you how many minutes you have to get there on time. It can also calculate the total time of your trip, which is always useful./p p· Street view: It works great. You can't access street view by clicking on any place in the map, but the way Apple has implemented it kinda makes sense. When you do a search (or drop a pin) an new little guy icon will appear in the address pop-up. You just have to click on it and the map will zoom and smoothly change into Street View mode, rotating the display to the left automatically. From there you can navigate easily, using one finger to look around the panorama and clicking on the overlaid arrows to navigate. It works hot-butter-over-pancakes smooth. We'd like to be able to access the mode by just finding our current location and switching it on though./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/teddy.jpg" width="480" height="320" style="display:block;" //p p· Other new features: When you drop a pin, it displays the exact address of the location. You can also share any location via email very easily, just by clicking on the location itself and hitting a Share this location button. It's a quick cut and paste substitute (of course, no cut and paste yet)./p pbiTunes and App Store/b/p p· Podcasts over the air: As far as we can tell, they work flawlessly for both audio and video. I accessed the new feature and I was downloading podcasts in no time. Unfortunately, the artificially-imposed 3G network 10MB limit is easy to reach for video content, such as the TED Talks that download fine over Wi-Fi. One good thing: It leaves the podcasts in a queue so the next time you get into a Wi-Fi hot spot, they will download automagically./p pscript type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" galleryPost('iphonepodcasts', 3, ''); /script/p p· App store reorganization: The UI has been sightly reorganized and polished. The categories, for example, now display bigger and with icons. As I speculated in our iPhone 2.2 rumor round-up, the icons shown seem to show the top free application./p pbFixes/b/p p· Improved stability and performance in Safari: In my informal testing, it feels a bit faster to me, especially on Javascript heavy web sites./p p· Resolved isolated issues with scheduled email: Wasn't able to test this one, as I don't use scheduled checking to save on battery life./p p· Improving wide HTML email display: If you have ever ran into this problem, you know it's extremely annoying. When somebody sends you an HTML styled email, sometimes it displays very long lines and tiny text. I received a mail like that the other day from my sister and went immediately to try it. Unfortunately, the fix hasn't worked for me on that one, but it did work in another email I got from a company. Weird./p p· Decreased in call set-up an call drops: Too soon to tell./p p· Improved sound quality on Voicemail messages: I saw this yesterday so I went and tried them in 2.1. Indeed, there were pops and hisses. After the update I tried under 2.2 and yes, they ido/i have better sound quality./p pbOther little additions/b/p p· Clicking the home button while you are in the home screen takes you to the first page of the home, which is ivery/i welcome, as that's where I store my main applications and I have several pages of additional apps and page links./p p· Safari: They have streamlined the interface for address and search, like we already saw in previous leaks./p p· Preference to turn auto-correction on and off: This is a welcome addition for me, because quite frankly, no matter what Jason says, my iPhone corrects fuck with duck every single time. So duck auto-correction for a little while. I'm going to ducking see if it affects my ducking speed or not./p pbVerdict/b: It works fairly well, feels smooth, and the new features are a must havemdash;especially the new Maps application. Ducking good. Go get it now./p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2fdc5bb09cb1fd9fce1f895dbc3fb33ap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2fdc5bb09cb1fd9fce1f895dbc3fb33ap=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2fdc5bb09cb1fd9fce1f895dbc3fb33a" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=lRHn3fVh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=XvyBZqAR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=PgZZNszD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=PgZZNszD" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=4rmHFDYL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=4rmHFDYL" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/QnJQD9IC25E" height="1" width="1"/

Hey, the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier and museum, is back in her old spot on the west side of Manhattan. The Intrepid somewhat famously didn't want to leave her berth in 2006 for refurbishment in New Jersey.

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pimg src="http://img.vayatele.com/2008/11/pushing-daisies.jpg" class="centro" alt="pushing-daisies.jpg"/p pNi una, ni dos, sino tres son las series que no continuarán en la parrilla de la span class="caps"ABC/span a partir de Enero tras el anuncio de la strongcancelación de Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies y Dirty Sexy Money/strong. Las tres series, todas ellas en plena segunda temporada, no han recibido encargo de episodios adicionales y terminarán su temporada con los strongtrece episodios/strong planeados originalmente. Aunque la cadena aún no ha confirmado nada, se espera que sí se lleguen a emitir todos los capítulos que restan por emitir./p pNo es una noticia que nos tome por sorpresa. Hace un par de días a href="http://www.vayatele.com/2008/11/19-dirty-sexy-money-y-pushing-daisies-en-peligro"ya hablábamos/a de las dificultades que estaban teniendo Pushing Daisies y Dirty Sexy Money para conseguir audiencia en sus franjas horarias, así que era cuestión de tiempo el que se hiciera público el anuncio. En el caso de strongPushing Daisies/strong ha sido el propio showrunner, Bryan Fuller, el que ha confirmado la noticia. Pero también ha comentado que no se va a dar por vencido y de momento ya está negociando la strongposibilidad de realizar un cómic/strong con una conclusión a las tramas abiertas que se dejan pendientes en el último episodio, que al parecer no serán pocas. Tampoco descarta la posibilidad de realizar stronguna película/strong, pero todos sabemos en qué acaban al final este tipo deem “futuros proyectos”/em.!--more--/p pPor desgracia, y según las palabras del propio equipo de la serie, parece una decisión bastante definitiva en la que poco tienen que decir lasa href="http://www.vayatele.com/2008/10/28-tartas-flores-cartas-y-semillas-para-salvar-pushing-daisies" campañas ya iniciadas por los fans/a. Como dato curioso también a destacar, es que hoy por hoy y a la vista de la cancelación, es muy probable que strongBryan Fuller vuelva a Heroes/strong, donde ya ejerció como co-productor ejecutivo y guionista en su primera temporada./p pEn el caso de strongEli Stone/strong y strongDirty Sexy Money/strong, no tenemos mucha información salvo que el equipo y los responsables de la serie ya han sido avisados de que sus series no continuarán. Aún así, strongacabarán de rodar/strong los uno o dos episodios que les faltan para llegar a los trece que habían sido encargados y strongde momento siguen en parrilla/strong, así que crucemos los dedos para que no las retiren prematuramente y podamos ver así el final de las mismas./p pHay que reconocer que, si bien es verdad que las audiencias de estas tres series eran bastante flojas, también fueron de las que más sufrieron el año pasado la huelga de guionistas. Sus primeras temporadas tuvieron strongmuy pocos episodios/strong como para llegar a enganchar al público en general, y para colmo sufrieron un strongparón de demasiados meses/strong. Curiosamente, no hace mucho también se anunció la a href="http://www.vayatele.com/2008/11/13-my-own-worst-enemy-y-mujeres-de-manhattan-canceladas"cancelación de Mujeres de Manhattan/a de la span class="caps"NBC/span, que al igual que éstas estaba en su segundo año. ¿Casualidad? No lo creo, y es que en mi opinión, y sin entrar en la calidad o la falta de la misma, estas series tuvieron la strongmala suerte de estrenarse en un año marcado por una huelga/strong demasiado prolongada./p pVía | a href="http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2008/11/breaking-abc-pa.html"Ausiello Files/a, a href="http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b69940_sources_daisies_eli_stone_dirty_sexy.html?sid=rss_kristinamp;utm_source=eonlineamp;utm_medium=rssfeedsamp;utm_campaign=rss_kristin"EOnline/abr En ¡Vaya Tele! | a href="http://www.vayatele.com/2008/11/19-dirty-sexy-money-y-pushing-daisies-en-peligro"Dirty Sexy Money y Pushing Daisies, en peligro/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/4rKTuvXgHuFdCGjpncHYSG7kKjQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/4rKTuvXgHuFdCGjpncHYSG7kKjQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.weblogssl.com/~f/vayatele2?a=JV8Sy52w"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/vayatele2?d=43" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.weblogssl.com/~f/vayatele2?a=KmWT1AoN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/vayatele2?d=151" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.weblogssl.com/~f/vayatele2?a=tI4dTJdP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/vayatele2?d=181" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.weblogssl.com/~f/vayatele2?a=DfnQQ9eQ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/vayatele2?d=596" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.weblogssl.com/~f/vayatele2?a=TeaiAT2u"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/vayatele2?d=153" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vayatele2/~4/iTaFWYOPTjw" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/76892?ns=guardianpageName=Comment+is+free%3A+Don%27t+fear+for+the+poundch=Comment+is+freec3=The+Guardianc4=Recession+%28UK%29%2CEconomics+%28Business%29%2CCurrencies+%28dollar%2C+pound+etc%29%2CBusiness%2CEconomic+policy%2CPolitics%2CMoneyc5=Personal+Finance%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Marketsc6=Larry+Elliottc7=2008_11_21c8=1121547c9=articlec10=GUc11=Comment+is+freec12=blogc13=c14=Comment+is+freeh2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" //divpThis is the crisis with just about everything. Failing banks, the drying up of credit, crashing house prices, rising unemployment, weakening growth and - as the official figures showed yesterday - a ballooning budget deficit. Students of economic crises will detect only one thing is missing from this litany of woe - a sterling crisis of the sort that Britain went through in 1967, 1976 and 1992./ppThe expectation is that a run on the pound will not be long in coming; one of the playground spats between the government and opposition this week was over whether the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, was being unpatriotic by predicting sterling would hit the skids as a result of plans to cut taxes in Monday's pre-budget report./ppThere are many reasons to be afraid - very afraid - about the state of the world, but a sterling crisis is not one of them. Unless there is a catastrophic loss of confidence in the government's economic and financial management, the pound is likely to stabilise close to current levels; the risk of it falling should certainly not deter the Bank of England from cutting interest rates aggressively./ppWhy? Because there has already been a marked depreciation over the past year. Sterling is at a record low against the euro, has dropped by 40% against the yen, and has fallen by 20% against the dollar since the summer - a more rapid descent than in the aftermath of Black Wednesday. Anybody who decided this summer to take advantage of the $2 pound with a winter shopping spree in Manhattan is in for a shock./ppThat decline was justified given the UK's unique exposure to turmoil in the financial markets and its absurdly overblown property market. But after such a precipitous fall, the downside potential is limited - especially since the outlook in the US, eurozone and Japan looks just as bleak. News from across the Atlantic has been dire, with Ford and General Motors on the point of collapse and the stockmarket down 45% this year. Germany is suffering from weaker demand for exports, Italy is suffering from a chronic lack of competitiveness, and Spain, like the UK, is grappling with a housing boom-bust. Japan also relies heavily on exports, but reported its third successive seasonally adjusted monthly trade deficit yesterday./ppIt is important to identify why the pound has been under pressure in recent months. Investors were concerned that not enough was being done to prevent a painful recession; the currency was falling, in other words, because interest rates were too high, not too low. The dollar has been rising on foreign exchanges this year because of anticipation that aggressive and early cuts in borrowing costs from the Federal Reserve would mean it would beat the rest of the developed world out of recession. That optimism looks misplaced, but it is indicative of a climate where investors are more concerned about growth potential than interest rates./ppThat's not to say the pound won't fall further, since currencies tend to overshoot. But sterling looks undervalued against the dollar and cheap against the euro. That may depress UK tourists looking to clean up on 5th Avenue but it is good news for the economy./ppSince 1997, an overvalued currency has made imports cheaper and exports dearer; there has been a silent sterling crisis that encouraged speculation while making manufacturing less profitable. The economy needs a competitive level for the pound that helps cut the trade growth and so create the conditions for more balanced growth. Its depreciation, coupled with the likely prolonged squeeze on consumers when they have to start paying back Monday's tax cuts, means there is a better chance of tackling the structural imbalances in the economy than there has been for years./ppa href="mailto:larry.elliott@guardian.co.uk"larry.elliott@guardian.co.uk/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession"Recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics"Economics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/currencies"Currencies/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Commentisfreecountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727885112100421654622"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Commentisfreecountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727885112100421654622" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

The NY Times has photographer David Dunlap running around NYC taking updated versions of the photos he took of the city for Paul Goldberger's 1978 guidebook to Manhattan, The City Observed: New York. Recent Now/Then comparisons include Grand Central Terminal, the corner of 59th St and 5th Ave (where the Apple Store is), and, perhaps the most striking pair of photos, the Hudson River shoreline.

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divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/79755?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Obama+presidency+faces+unstable+world%2C+says+US+intelligencech=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=US+news%2CWorld+news%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CObama+White+House+%28News%29%2CGlobalisation+%28News%29c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CUS+Electionsc6=Julian+Borgerc7=2008_11_20c8=1121493c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=United+Statesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FUnited+States" width="1" height="1" //divpThe United States' leading intelligence organisation has warned that the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal networks"./ppThe a href="http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_home.html"global trends review/a, produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) every four years, represents sobering reading in Barack Obama's intray as he prepares to take office in January. The country he inherits, the report warns, will no longer be able to "call the shots" alone, as its power over an increasingly multipolar world begins to wane./ppLooking ahead to 2025, the NIC (which coordinates analysis from all the US intelligence agencies), foresees a fragmented world, where conflict over scarce resources is on the rise, poorly contained by "ramshackle" international institutions, while nuclear proliferation, particularly in the Middle East, and even nuclear conflict grow more likely./pp"Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed" warns that the spread of western democratic capitalism cannot be taken for granted, as it was by George Bush and America's neoconservatives./pp"No single outcome seems preordained: the Western model of economic liberalism, democracy and secularism, for example, which many assumed to be inevitable, may lose its lustre – at least in the medium term," the report warns./ppIt adds: "Today wealth is moving not just from West to East but is concentrating more under state control," giving the examples of China and Russia./pp"In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the state's role in the economy may be gaining more appeal throughout the world."/ppAt the same time, the US will become "less dominant" in the world – no longer the unrivalled superpower it has been since the end of the Cold War, but a "first among equals" in a more fluid and evenly balanced world, making the unilateralism of the Bush era no longer tenable./ppThe report predicts that over the next two decades "the multiplicity of influential actors and distrust of vast power means less room for the US to call the shots without the support of strong partnerships." /ppIt is a conclusion that meshes with president elect Obama's stated preference for multilateralism, but the NIC findings suggest that as the years go by it could be harder for Washington to put together "coalitions of the willing" to pursue its agenda./ppInternational organisations, like the UN, seem ill-prepared to fill the vacuum left by receding American power, at a time of multiple potential crises driven by climate change the increasing scarcity of resources like oil, food and water. Those institutions "appear incapable of rising to the challenges without concerted efforts from their leaders" it says./ppIn an unusually graphic illustration of a possible future, the report presents an imaginary "presidential diary entry" from October 1, 2020, that recounts a devastating hurricane, fuelled by global warming, hitting New York in the middle of the UN's annual general assembly./pp"I guess we had it coming, but it was a rude shock," the unnamed president writes. "Some of the scenes were like the stuff from the World War II newsreels, only this time it was not Europe but Manhattan. Those images of the US aircraft carriers and transport ships evacuating thousands in the wake of the flooding still stick in my mind."/ppAs he flies off for an improvised UN reception on board an aircraft carrier, the imaginary future president admits: "The cumulation of disasters, permafrost melting, lower agricultural yields, growing health problems, and the like are taking a terrible toll, much greater than we anticipated 20 years ago."/ppThe last time the NIC published its quadrennial glimpse into the future was December 2004. President Bush had just been re-elected and was preparing his triumphal second inauguration that was to mark the high-water mark for neoconservatism. That report matched the mood of the times. /ppIt was called Mapping the Global Future, and looked forward as far as 2020 when it projected "continued US dominance, positing that most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US". /ppThat confidence is entirely lacking from this far more sober assessment. Also gone is the belief that oil and gas supplies "in the ground" were "sufficient to meet global demand". The new report views a transition to cleaner fuels as inevitable. It is just the speed that is in question./ppThe NIC believes it is most likely that technology will lag behind the depletion of oil and gas reserves. A sudden transition, however, will bring problems of its own, creating instability in the Gulf and Russia./ppWhile emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow in influence at America's expense, the same cannot be said of the European Union. The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be "losing clout" by 2025. Internal bickering and a "democracy gap" separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU "a hobbled giant", unable to translate its economic clout into global influence./pp· Read the full a href="http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2008/11/20/GlobalTrends2025_FINAL.pdf"National Intelligence Council global trends review (pdf)/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barackobama"Barack Obama/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/obama-white-house"Obama White House/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/globalisation"Globalisation/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227209466170112019321752401"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227209466170112019321752401" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=488a1d84796c7a5300f14aafmaxX=444maxY=192" border="0" alt="janetandarthurNYT.jpg" title="janetandarthurNYT.jpg" width="444" height="192" /As you recall, back in July, we happily made an offer for the digital operations of the New York Times Company (NYT)./p pWe offered a massive price--$1 billion--and proposed an innovative deal structure that would avoid the need for annoying shareholder approvals, jillion-dollar legal fees, egregious tax hits, etc. (In short, the NYT would acquire us, and then spin us and NYT Digital out--see details below). We explained how we would run the standalone NYT Digital and how the proposed transaction would benefit New York Times shareholders, who have since been obliterated. /p pWell, we are pleased to say that, despite the global market carnage, our offer remains in effect! Alas, in light of the impending depression and recent developments at the New York Times Company, we must mark our offer to market./p pIn July, when we made our offer, NYT's stock was at $12. Now it's $6. Also, the New York Times Company is now running on fumes. So now we're probably looking at a number in the $400 million range./p pWe're still stoked about this opportunity, though./p p(One thing we do need to discuss is your a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/cash-crunch-at-new-york-times-nyt-400-million-due-in-may"cash crisis/a. Back in July, you seemed to be awash in the stuff, and we were counting on this to take care of our post-merger working capital needs. Now, we may have to ask you to draw downa href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/cash-crunch-at-new-york-times-nyt-400-million-due-in-may" your remaining $400 million credit line/a before the banks wake up and cut it off. We would advise you to do this anyway, by the way. The Red Sox stake would probably work, too, as long as we could liquidate it in a timely fashion.)/p hr / pstrongOur Original Offer For The New York Times Company (July 25, 2008):/strong/p pAt its charming new stock price of $12, the New York Times Company (NYT) has an enterprise value of about $2.85 billion. As a href="http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/jul2008/pi20080725_458084.htm"BusinessWeek's Jay Yarow notes/a, after you back out all the non-core stuff, that means that the New York Times itself--the paper and the digital assets--are valued at about $750 million. That's less than half of what CBS just paid for CNET./p pSo we have an offer for the New York Times Company: We'd like to buy New York Times Digital from you.* Not the venerable paper or printing plants. Not the gorgeous building you own in midtown Manhattan. Not your share of the Red Sox. Not the regional papers. Not the Boston Globe. Just New York Times Digital--the Martin Nisenholtz division that gets zillions of unique visitors a month./p pHow much are we willing to pay? $1 Billion./p pThat's right: A 33% premium over what the entire emNew York Times/em division is valued at right now--just for the web site! Not a bad price, given our collapsing economy. And especially not bad considering that we think the newspaper industry is hosed./p pWhy do we just want the web site?/p pWell, in truth, we'd like the whole thing, but the New York Times won't survive in its current form, and we're not thrilled about the idea of losing our shirts. We're also not eager to be vilified by the labor unions, newsroom, and Columbia Journalism Review for doing what needs to be done to save the business. So here's what we're going to do instead./p ol listrongSign a contract with you that allows us to reprint all New York Times content for three years./strong This will give us some time to build our own news organization, one unencumbered by the various cultural, economic, and contractual baggage that is currently preventing you (and other papers) from saving yourselves.br //li listrongImmediately make offers to the 20% of your journalists and editors that we think can make the transition to digital (24/7 real-time blogging)./strong These folks won't be hard to find, given that some of them are writing excellent blogs already. (Andrew Ross Sorkin, Floyd Norris, David Carr, Joe Nocera, Gretchen Morgenson, Brian Stelter, Saul Hansell, Paul Krugman, Landon Thomas, and a few dozen other folks jump to mind.) By the way, we don't mind if these folks continue to distribute their stuff in the paper, too, so don't worry about losing them. In fact, that would be great exposure for us.br //li /ol pWhy will we only be making offers to 20% of your staff? Because the economics of the online business won't support any more than that. And because 20% of your folks are probably accounting for at least 80% of your pageviews and readership anyway./p pSo how about it, Janet and Arthur? strongspan style="text-decoration: underline;"$1 Billion./span /strongMore than a third of the current enterprise value of your entire company--just for the web site! You get to keep the paper, the building, the Red Sox, the Boston Globe. It's the deal of a lifetime!/p hr / p*N.B.: We're actually much more excited about this offer than we were abouta href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/12/announcing_our_friendly_takeover_offer_for_cnet" the one we made for CNET a few months back/a. Truth be told, we just couldn't get that excited about CNET. But The New York Times? We f***ing LOVE the New York Times!/p pHere's how we propose structuring the deal:/p pWe just raised $1 million, so that means we only need another $999 million to close. Raising the money shouldn't be a problem, but who needs that hassle. So here's what we'd like to do instead:/p pWe'll agree to let you acquire us for, say, $100 million of New York Times stock. Then, in a simultaneous closing, you can spin us and New York Times Digital out as a separate public company--via a special dividend to shareholders. (You can load us up with enough debt to make the numbers work, and then we'll convert it to equity)./p pSound good? We think so. We look forward to hearing from you./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5WAOlOrg9qvXEQJQUE7uHa7yq_E/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5WAOlOrg9qvXEQJQUE7uHa7yq_E/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=EMz0hqca"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=EMz0hqca" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=52Q1K403"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=ufgNpauW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=BxfkMmxw"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=BxfkMmxw" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=oztpKBzC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=ItlRzLeh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=sK8qsOqV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=7BOvGSuo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/rqZ8azVWLKw" height="1" width="1"/