Certicom Corp. on Thursday stopped short of rejecting Research in Motion Ltd.'s $52.6 million takeover bid, but said it will invite offers from other buyers.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=MgWZO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=MgWZO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=TqvRo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=TqvRo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=2ykao"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=2ykao" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/474859133" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/business/" rel="tag"Business/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.mcvuk.com/news/32578/Square-makes-late-Eidos-bid-but-Warner-in-pole-position"img width="490" vspace="4" hspace="0" height="329" border="0" align="middle" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/12/square-enix-eidos-hearts.jpg" //abr //div Honestly, we're starting to lose track. In what we can only imagine is routine for its flagship heroine, Lady Croft, Eidos (a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/sci-just-call-me-eidos/"neacute;e SCi/a) is being courted by a gaggle of interested suitors, ranging from the a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/23/rumor-warner-bros-looking-to-acquire-sci-eidos/"longtime admirer Warner Bros. Interactive/a, to recent newcomers a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/01/rumor-sci-eyed-for-takeover-by-ea-and-ubisoft/"EA and Ubisoft/a, and now ... Square Enix?br /br /MCV reports the Japanese gaming giant is looking more to the West than ever, not only starting Square Enix LA - a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/17/square-enix-staffing-new-us-studio-for-original-action-game/"a new US-based studio/a - but also considering an acquisition of Eidos to rival current acquisition front-runner WBIE. While MCV's anonymous source thinks "Warner's [acquisition bid] will still win" MCV speculates that "Square Enix could opt to buy single assets - perhaps just IO and the emHitman/em brand," whom SE president Yoichi Wada "has already visited." Let's just hope that whoever acquires Eidos and all of her assets takes good care of them. It's not just Lara and Hitman ... we've got ema href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/Deus-Ex-3/"Deus Ex 3/a/em to consider, you know.p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/mcv-square-enix-considering-eidos-acquisition-warners-still-i/"MCV: Square Enix considering Eidos acquisition; Warner's still in it/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:26:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.mcvuk.com/news/32578/Square-makes-late-Eidos-bid-but-Warner-in-pole-positionRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/mcv-square-enix-considering-eidos-acquisition-warners-still-i/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1391153/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/mcv-square-enix-considering-eidos-acquisition-warners-still-i/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/i9-xL17zb6f3cPLmkjmixHuyNH8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/i9-xL17zb6f3cPLmkjmixHuyNH8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=byEFcPNP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=byEFcPNP" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=PFrOJGV4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=PFrOJGV4" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/MkoblReybmY" height="1" width="1"/

As the two-year anniversary of Fiji's military takeover approaches, another international governing body has called the Pacific island nation to hold elections in 2009 as once promised.

This time a European Union delegation, led by German legislator Gabrielle Zimmer, met with leaders in Fiji and urged, “that parliamentary elections take place before the end of 2009 based on a political dialogue process involving all stakeholders and conducted without delay.”

Problems between the island nation and regional partners began when self-appointed Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama promised in 2007 that elections would be held in March 2009, a pledge he later back away from. Government officials have long claimed the country isn't ready for elections until it undergoes major changes in its race-based electoral laws.

The EU statement follows the Pacific Forum indication in August it would suspend Fiji from the organization if the government failed to schedule elections and return the country to Parliamentary democracy. Yet Bainimarama has held firm. In its most recent budget, the government allocated no extra monies for organizing an election, although funds were set aside for buying electronic equipment for voter registration.

Unlike the Pacific Forum's threats, the EU's statement could be especially damning to Fiji’s economy because the organization may withhold sugar subsidies for another year. ($50 million in subsidies were suspended for 2008 due to overthrowing the government of Laisenia Qarase.)

A discussion has broken out in the blogosphere over how exactly to initiate political change in Fiji. A commenter named Peace Pipe to a post in the

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/95153?ns=guardianpageName=Environment%3A+G-Wiz+sales+slump+by+more+than+halfch=Environmentc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Travel+and+transport+environmental+impact%2CEnvironment%2CUK+news%2CBusiness%2CGreen+business+%28Business%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29c5=Business+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Livingc6=Alok+Jhac7=2008_12_04c8=1128246c9=articlec10=GUc11=Environmentc12=Travel+and+transportc13=c14=h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FTravel+and+transport" width="1" height="1" //divpJonathan Ross, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Jade Jagger all proudly own one. Even the Lloyds TSB chairman Victor Blank was snapped stepping out of one on his way to a meeting to discuss the takeover of HBOS. They may look like Noddy cars, but for the green-conscious urban motorist, the G-Wiz was the guilt-free answer to getting around town./ppBut all that star power hasn't insulated them from a drastic slump in sales: according to figures collated by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, a total of just 156 electric cars were sold in the UK from January to October 2008, compared with 374 for the same period last year. The vast majority of the sales (and the 58% slump) are G-Wiz cars, made by Indian car company Reva./ppExperts think the fall comes from a combination of factors, including the recent financial gloom, concerns about the safety of Reva's vehicle and the distant promise of electric cars from mainstream manufacturers./pp"The whole motor industry has seen a slump in sales like they've never seen before in the last 20 years," said Steve Hartridge, managing director of Goingreen, which distributes the G-Wiz in the UK. "That has to be borne in mind so I'm not going to make any grand plans for next year."/ppRichard Bremner, editor of cleangreencars.co.uk, who unearthed the electric car sales figures, said: "People have maybe woken up to the fact that the electric vehicles that have been offered to date, they're not hugely appealing other than for their green credentials and they're only suitable for short journeys around town."/ppHe added that the rising profile of proposed all-electric cars from Smart, Nissan and, more recently, an a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/03/bmw-electric-mini-e-launch"electric version of BMW's Mini/a, meant that potential customers may be delaying their purchases. /ppThere are more than 1,100 all-electric cars already on UK roads, with the majority in London. The sales slump comes as the only other player in London's electric car market, the Nice Car Company, went into administration. /ppSet up two years ago, the company had been selling an all-electric version of the French-made Aixam Mega. Nice had planned to bring out more models, including a two-seater and an MPV by the end of the year but, according to Bremner, sales had dropped lately to less than a single car per week./ppBremner added that consumers could also have been put off the G-Wiz after it failed a crash test last year. Because the vehicle is considered a quadricycle rather than a car, it does not need to pass the stringent crash tests of the other cars on the road./pp"Last year, they had some unfortunate publicity around the crash performance of that vehicle because Top Gear crash-tested one in the same way that you would a conventional car and it was found wanting," said Bremner./ppHartridge said the furore had no doubt had an impact on sales. "But we're through that period now. All the cars we sell now are crash-tested at 25mph."/ppVicky Wyatt, Greenpeace transport campaigner said the sales car sales slump was worrying. "Electric cars have a key role to play in tackling climate change as well as reducing our dependence on foreign oil supplies. /pp"Sales should be going through the roof, and the fact that they are declining points to a failure on the part of government and manufacturers to make them more attractive to motorists in the UK." /ppShe said the government should introduce lower road tax and excise duty, free parking, closed-loop battery recycling and urban plug in points./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/travelandtransport"Travel and transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/greenbusiness"Green business/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbonemissions"Carbon emissions/a/li/ul/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 pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BqstmJanWApB47d9Jt6c5vy2aCk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BqstmJanWApB47d9Jt6c5vy2aCk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

The board of financial software and services company MYOB is maintaining its opposition to the bid made by US-Australian takeover vehicle Manhattan Software. The offer is neither fair nor...

!-- pageType= magazinesmall slug= ff_blodget section= techbiz subsection= people headline= Financial Industry Scapegoat Reinvents Himself as Financial Reporter authorName= Daniel Roth creditType= photo credit= Mike McGregor caption= Henry Blodgetis back, and his straight-talking analysis of the Web world is earning him new fans. -- pstrongHenry Blodget/strong has never gotten used to the chorus of hate that follows his every move. He's merely learned to live with it. When he started his personal blog in 2005, the comments a href="http://www.internetoutsider.com/2005/10/welcomeand_than.html"dripped with disgust/a. "You are a boldface liar," a reader wrote. "Give me one reason why I should believe what you are writing," said another. And that was just in response to Blodget's innocuous first entry. /ppDuring his years as a star Wall Street analyst, his pronouncements were welcomed and celebrated; now he couldn't say hello without getting savaged. Just last August, TechCrunch mentioned that Blodget would be one of more than two dozen tech celebrities a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/15/4-new-experts-henry-blodget-josh-kopelman-tim-o%E2%80%99reilly-robert-scoble-join-techcrunch50/"judging a contest/a for startups. Blodget knew what was coming, even if his hosts didn't. "Blodget is scum.... He is no longer the arrogant prick we saw in the '90s, but he's still scum," someone wrote. "A lot of people lost money listening to this dirtbag." "Blodget is a Web 1.0, bubble-creating has-been." "He is unethical." "He's as crooked as they come."/p pI meet a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/henry_blodget.html"Blodget/a at the offices of his new business, a year-old site called a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/"Silicon Alley Insider/a, shortly after the TechCrunch beat-down. Alley Insider is one of many tech business blogs that feed news, earnings info, and rumors to investors and corporate insiders. But Alley Insider has one thing that others don't. Blodget. He's smart, he's skeptical, and he's got the kind of self-assured voice that sells well in the blogosphere. As the market sinks, his opinions are even more in demand, though he's still hated by a large portion of his prospective audience./p pThe site shares two floors of a Manhattan office building with programmers and business staff for some of Alley Insider's sister companies, all of which were started by former DoubleClick CEO a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/kevin_ryan"Kevin Ryan/a. Blodget works in a double-wide cubicle near a window, separated by a low wall from the site's two other editors. They spend their days crawling Twitter and RSS feeds, calling sources, and pumping out about a dozen daily takes on the business world, most with Digg-friendly headlines (no easy accomplishment with bone-dry business stories). "Is Facebook Distracting Us From Porn? No" is a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/is-facebook-distracting-us-from-porn-no"typical/a, or "a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/googles_ginormous_food_budget_7530_per_googler"Google's Ginormous Food Budget/a: $7,530 Per Googler, $72 Million a Year." Blodget tells his team to think of the site as talk radio: He wants readers to feel compelled to check in several times a day to get the Alley Insider view on everything going on in their world./p pFor privacy, we duck into a small conference room, and Blodget, tall and skinny, sinks into a ridiculously deep leather chair. His floppy dirty-blond hair gives him a youthful, almost carefree air, but the deep circles that ring his eyes tell a different story. He's managing a 24-hour news startup. It's midday and he's been posting since 5 am. And then there's the burden that comes with being Henry Blodget, digital punching bag./p p"There are obviously a lot of folks who say, 'Now wait a minute, isn't that the guy who....'" He lets the thought trail off. He's legally barred from talking about the incidents that led to his vilification. "To them, I'm emthat/em Henry Blodget. There's not much more I can say. I still can't address specific points. So it's like, 'OK, here's my face. Throw the fruit. When you want to stop throwing the fruit, if you want to listen, great. If you don't, fine.'"/p pIt's been almost a decade since the impulse to greet him with rotten mangos first struck. Back in 1998, as a 32-year-old analyst with investment bank CIBC, he a href="http://www.thestreet.com/markets/analystrankings/977502.html"declared/a that the stock price of Amazon.com would nearly double to $400. Three weeks later it did, and Blodget was a hero. Soon he packed up his spreadsheets mdash; he's never more comfortable than when he is lining up numbers in rows and columns and teasing out their secrets mdash; and moved to Merrill Lynch./p pInvestors followed the new oracle's every utterance, and bankers wanted Blodget to bless the stocks of companies they were hoping to do business with. The lines on his graphs always seemed to point one way mdash; steeply up and to the right. He wasn't just predicting profits, he was selling a revolution: The old metrics didn't apply. Blodget may have counseled people to own only a small percentage of Internet stocks mdash; 10 percent at the most mdash; but nobody listened./p !-- pagebreak -- div id="embed" style="width:370px;" div id="pic" style="width:350px;" img style="width:350px;" src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_blodget3_f.jpg" alt=""/ div id="caption" Launched in 2007, Silicon Alley Insider is gaining on some of its established rivals. br/ emSource: Compete/em /div /div /div pThen came the crash. Five trillion dollars in wealth vaporized in 24 months, leaving behind unquantifiable amounts of rage among the masses of day traders who had believed briefly that they, too, were market savants. When the bubble burst, so did Blodget's aura./p pStill, it wasn't the crash alone that crushed him. It took Eliot Spitzer to turn Henry Blodget into emthat/em Henry Blodget. Spitzer, then New York's crusading attorney general, investigated Merrill in 2001 for conflicts of interest. He discovered a clutch of emails from the young analyst showing that while talking up certain stocks to clients, he was trashing them internally. Companies like 24/7 Media, Excite@Home, and InfoSpace mdash; firms Merrill was publicly cheering mdash; in private were deemed by Blodget to be "shit," "crap," and "junk" (respectively). According to Spitzer's findings, Blodget would have pulled in $12 million in 2001 mdash; quadruple his earnings in 1999 mdash; if he hadn't accepted a buyout that year. In 2003, Merrill's boy genius agreed to pay a $4 million fine and accepted a lifetime ban from working in the securities industry./p pPublic disgrace usually drives a person into hiding, or at least into a different career. Jerry Levin, the brains behind the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger, today runs a href="http://moonviewsanctuary.com/staff"Moonview Sanctuary/a, his wife's spa; Spitzer, forced to resign as governor last summer, is currently discovering the a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2008/06/10/spitzers-next-act-distressed-real-estate/"joys of real estate management/a; Health South CEO Richard Scrushy, while on trial for accounting fraud, a href="http://www.richardmscrushy.com/biography.aspx"became a televangelist/a. Not Blodget./p pOne former colleague says Blodget spent the months when he was being investigated trying to grasp why he was singled out for something that was commonplace in the industry. He figured the controversy would blow over once the public realized his conduct was not unusual. "He was incredulous that the investigation got traction; he said it was silly," a friend says. But there was too much anger in the wake of the bubble, and Blodget's embarrassing emails made him an easy scapegoat. Later, when he was inclined to argue his case, the settlement terms prevented it./p pSo Blodget did what came naturally. He began writing about the companies he used to cover, a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2104656/"first for Slate/a, then on his own blog, a href="http://www.internetoutsider.com/"Internet Outsider/a. Was this journalism mdash; or was it therapy? Rather than hide, he started saying in public what he had once said only in private, using the same brutally frank voice that got him in trouble with Spitzer. He marketed his notoriety to a new Web readership hungry for smart, independent analysis./p pWhen Ryan, an Internet Outsider reader, approached him about starting an industry news site, Blodget jumped at the prospect of a bigger stage. Before working on Wall Street, he'd been a freelance writer; now he could combine the two vocations, borrowing freely from both journalism and equity research./p pThrough Alley Insider, Blodget is trying to erase, post by post, Spitzer's portrait of him as a duplicitous, money-grubbing shill for big business. Blodget has always believed that the Internet changed everything, so naturally he believes it has the power to change the world's perception of him. The venue offers all Henry, all the time (and even when his other writers are posting, it's clear they're channeling him). The result is a unique blend of x-ray analysis and tech evangelism./p pAs we talk, Blodget gets up from his chair, antsy to return to his laptop. I ask him if he understands what he's up against. If the hate has lasted this long, why expect it ever to fade away? "If all I knew about me was what I read during that period," he says, "I'd probably have the same reaction."/p pstrongOn a late summer morning/strong, Blodget waits in the lobby of the Nasdaq building in midtown Manhattan. He's all banker today: blue suit, red tie, black cap-toed Oxfords, his shirt so deeply pressed there are creases down the sleeves. It's 10 am and, ready for his second breakfast, he pries open the plastic case of a turkey and Swiss sandwich and starts wolfing it down. In a few minutes he is supposed to conduct a video interview for Yahoo's Tech Ticker finance site. As soon as Blodget started appearing as a regular host in February, the Furies a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/650/Jerry-Yang-Strikes-Back;-Here%27s-Microsoft%27s-Next-Move?tickers=yhoo,msft"reemerged/a. "Did you not find any other decent, credible guy than Henry Blodget?" one of the first comments read. "Why spoil this new feature with such a scum and spoil the Yahoo reputation?"/p pAs producers prepare to tape the show, Blodget wipes his crumbs off the table. He explains the guiding vision behind Alley Insider. "We don't want to do things we don't care about," he says. "It's nice to say theoretically we're the judge of what's important and what's not, but come on, give readers credit. They'll tell you immediately what they want, and that drives coverage. People are fanatically interested in Apple, Google, Microsoft. It wasn't a tough call to know what to write about."/p pBlodget's focus on content is matched by his apparent indifference to the look of the site. Alley Insider employs a cookie-cutter template of scrolling headlines and thumbnail photos dragged off the Web. But design limitations notwithstanding, by September the site was getting nearly 500,000 visitors a month, rivaling a href="http://allthingsd.com/"AllThingsDigital.com/a, the citeWall Street Journal/cite blog edited by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. Since the beginning of the year, traffic to the site has more than doubled, and Blodget's words now carry surprising weight. When a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/apple-s-steve-jobs-rushed-to-er-after-heart-attack-says-cnn-citizen-journalist"he reported/a early this fall that Steve Jobs may have been rushed to the hospital after a heart attack mdash; citing an anonymous (and, as it turns out, fraudulent) post on a minor user-generated news site run by CNN called iReport mdash; Apple's a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/03/technology/apple/"stock dropped/a nearly 10 percent. Critics blamed Alley Insider./p p"I read citeThe New York Times/cite, citeThe Economist/cite, and Alley Insider," says a href="http://www.firebrandpartners.com/principals/index.html"Scott Galloway/a, head of investment equity firm Firebrand Partners, who is best known for his successful public fight to get on the board of citeThe New York Times/cite. "Henry takes a no-mercy, no-malice approach to Web business and media." Valleywag recently called him "the disgraced stock analyst everyone now listens to."/p !-- pagebreak -- div class="wide_img" img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_blodget2_f.jpg" alt="" div class="wide_caption" div class="wide_caption_txt" The team at Silicon Alley Insider (left to right): senior editor Dan Frommer, COO Julie Hansen, cofounder Kevin Ryan, and editor in chief Blodget. br/ emPhoto: Mike McGregor/em /div /div /div br/ br/ pFor all the success today, it took Blodget amp; Co. some time to figure out a winning formula. When Ryan, a New Yorker, launched the site in 2007, he wanted to cover the local startup and media scene. Blodget signed on as CEO and editor in chief, bought a minority stake, and hired citeForbes/cite journalists a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/peter_kafka"Peter Kafka/a and a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/dan_frommer"Dan Frommer/a to help him develop content (Kafka was later hired away by AllThingsD). The first few weeks, the site read like a tourist's guide to spotting B-list Internet companies in the big city, with each firm's location prominently announced: "NoHo-based Meetup has quietly launched a Facebook application"; "Flatiron-based YellowJacket Software has raised $1.25 million." Blodget branched out, taking on the bigger names himself mdash; Apple, Dow Jones, NBC, JP Morgan. It quickly became clear to him that New York's tech industry was too small an arena to contain the ambition of the site. And nearly half the readers were in California anyway./p pAlley Insider soon dropped its Silicon Alley focus but stuck with the moniker. And Blodget began to draw more heavily on his research experience. He created financial models of the companies he was talking about and posted the spreadsheets as Google docs so anyone could download and toy with them. He analyzed the potential revenue YouTube could bring to Google, mapping out his assumptions about viewership and ads watched, and offering a clear bottom-line conclusion. Readers weighed in with their critiques, which Blodget used to sharpen the model. He figured he wouldn't just write about Wall Street, he would also usurp part of Wall Street's business by providing high-quality research, the kind brokerage customers used to prize./p pBut visitors to the site wanted more than analytics. They also craved the edgier Henry of the Spitzer emails. Blodget obliged. In one post, a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/1/ben_stein_is_an_idiot"Blodget declares/a citeNew York Times/cite economics columnist Ben Stein to be either "an idiot" or possibly just "delusional." He suggests that the anonymous sources cited by archrival TechCrunch in its reporting on Microsoft's attempt to purchase Yahoo "a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/yahoo_stock_fades_as_techcrunch_microsoft_takeover_sources_sober_up"must have been drunk/a." And in November 2007, when E-Trade lost $9 billion in value as its risky mortgage bets turned to dust, Blodget offered only one piece of advice to the company's shareholders: "a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/etrade_etfc_total_cost_of_screwup_9_billion"Cry/a."/p p"On Wall Street, I'd consistently submit a report that would say, 'This is going to be roadkill,' and it would come back rewritten as 'We see some weakness,'" Blodget says. "Now I can say, 'It's going to be roadkill.' That's very satisfying."/p pBut even as he delights in railing against corporate giants, he's still disciplined enough to run the underlying numbers mdash; Blodget loves the drama, but he loves the spreadsheets just as much. One post about craigslist should have been something only an accountant could love: a complex set of assumptions and analyses to determine what the company might be worth. Yet Blodget wrote the whole exercise as if it were a mystery plot, parceling out details and stringing the reader along until the very end./p pWhen Yahoo announced this summer that it had hired Bain amp; Co., a consulting firm usually brought in when a company is about to start swinging the ax, Blodget a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/yahoo-fat-farm-how-many-people-does-yahoo-need-to-fire-to-get-fit-"sharpened his own pencil/a. "We're mad as hell ... especially now that Yahoo's wasting millions on Bain." He offered his own, free advice (spreadsheet attached) cataloging how many people Yahoo should fire in each division mdash; 1,804 from its "positively obese" sales and marketing arm alone mdash; in order to goose operating margins to a "more respectable" 20 percent from its current 7 percent. "He pushed us early on to ask, 'What does this mean for profits? How does any news affect a company's numbers?'" Frommer says. "It's great if it makes a company look bad or look good, but is this really going to affect the numbers?"/p pBlodget is also trying things that no mainstream-journalism-trained blogger like Swisher or GigaOm's a href="http://gigaom.com/"Om Malik/a would ever dare. He makes serious-sounding offers to buy companies that he wants to demonstrate are significantly undervalued. It's pure showmanship, but with Blodget's background in finance and his ties to folks up and down Wall Street, no one knows just how far he will take the joke./p pHis first target was CNET. With the a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/12/announcing_our_friendly_takeover_offer_for_cnet"slightest of winks/a, he wrote a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/1/cnet_update_on_our_offer_and_restructuring_plan_part_1"post after post/a explaining how he'd a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/jana_here_s_our_plan_for_cnet"purchase the company/a. At first he proposed a sort of reverse merger, with CNET buying Alley Insider for $50 million in stock, at which point Blodget's team would take over every aspect of the company. Then he detailed the operational changes he would make./p !-- pagebreak -- pRyan got nervous about Blodget's new direction. Blodget's deal with the government forbade him from giving individual research advice, but it didn't say anything about jumping into the private-equity space. Still, there might be legal issues. "Look, why don't we run this by a lawyer just to make sure, because we're getting into securities stuff here," he said to Blodget. When the lawyer asked them "Is this a real offer?" there was a brief silence. For the first time the two really thought about it./p p"You know, yes," Ryan replied. "If they said yes, we would accept $50 million at that time to buy them. So it is a real offer. But we're actually asking them to buy us." The lawyer signed off on the convoluted reasoning./p pAfter Blodget's taunting posts went up, investment firm JANA Partners announced a hostile takeover attempt of CNET. It failed, but by spring 2008 CBS a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/cbs_buying_cnet_for_1_8_billion"stepped in to buy/a the company for $1.8 billion./p pFor one CNET executive, memories of Blodget's unwanted attentions still rankle. "The way you make a big name for yourself on the Web today is to make, for lack of a better word, ridiculous statements," says Zander Lurie, former senior VP of strategy and development at CNET and now CFO of CBS Interactive. Lurie found himself reassuring employees who sent him Blodget's postings and wondered whether their company was at risk. "Everyone knew there was nothing in the offering: He didn't have the capital, the expertise, or any specific insight into our business," Lurie says. "He makes the ridiculous statement and it gets sent all around, and then he claims credit when there's an event the following year, which obviously he had nothing to do with. Less than zero to do with. We all have reputations. And his track record is well known."/p pBlodget has been a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/how-the-new-york-times-nyt-can-save-itself"waging another/a half-serious acquisition fight, this time for the New York Times Company. All he wants is the Web site mdash; the print side is dead, he says. He thinks the paper needs to cut about 80 percent of its costs, at which point it would be the perfect size to be the digital paper of record for a long time to come. "It's a serious offer from our perspective, but it hasn't been taken seriously," Blodget says./p pstrongIn the wake of Wall Street's latest meltdown/strong, Blodget finds himself in even greater demand. He's doing regular TV appearances and is posting again on Slate. When NPR wanted someone to talk about the Wall Street culture of greed, they a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94667073"brought in Blodget/a. The reporter introduced him by pointing out that Merrill is now gone, "and Henry Blodget is gone, too; he's banned from Wall Street after being charged with fraud."/p p"Thanks," Blodget said, stuttering for a second, "especially for that horrific introduction." They both laughed. But by the end, the host was treating Blodget like an elder statesman./p pRecently Blodget has been expanding his franchise. He and Ryan have launched two sister sites: a href="http://www.clusterstock.com/"Clusterstock/a, which will compile and analyze Wall Street research on a much wider range of industries, and a href="http://www.businesssheet.com/"the Business Sheet/a, which will focus on corporate scandals. A third is in the works. For each new site, Blodget provides the bulk of the early posts, seeding the new enterprise with the Blodget touch./p pBlodget is broadening beyond tech to get ready for what he sees as a coming shakeout in the news-blog industry. He says he might even start making acquisitions if the price is right. Ryan's suite of companies has raised $50 million in the past few years, possibly enough to buy out some other interesting small blogs. The winning formula for this new kind of business remains elusive: It's a matter of finding the balance between gossip and analysis, between aggregating news from other sources and doing original reporting. Revenue models that go beyond basic advertising have also been slow in coming. "If you look at the development of every new medium, there's been a new form of journalism that has been made possible by it, and there has always been this period of transition," Blodget says. "There is collective experimentation as people figure out what works and what doesn't, and usually you have some very important publications that are built."/p pAnother way to expand is to sell to a larger media company. Blodget says he'd consider an offer, but Alley Insider is still defined almost entirely by one man. If he left, the value would plummet. Also, some media institutions mdash; the grayer, stodgier ones mdash; may find Blodget's unique baggage unacceptable. The endless barrage of comments, the angry mob that seems to follow him everywhere, may be too much for the sensitivities of some management teams, even in these freewheeling days of media transformation. When Blodget wrote a few small items for citeThe New York Times/cite, the newspaper's a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/opinion/11pubed.html"ombudsman went haywire/a. "The citeTimes/cite luster may help Blodget," he wrote last year, "but some of his taint rubs off on the citeTimes/cite."/p pIt's just the sort of comment Blodget has come to expect from, well, everyone. That may change, but only if this latest reinvention succeeds in burying his past forever. In which case, he will have been right: The Internet really does change everything./p pemSenior writer Daniel Roth /em(a href="mailto:daniel_roth@wired.com"daniel_roth@wired.com/a) emwrote about the a href="/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi"future of the electric car/a in issue 16.09./em/pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:e5509a1338aa2d046a0f36f53c86fd46:KTSfKmr30cBfHohgGm6zBCE5aLDI579Ry5%2FoG9QrW9e1KIT2xpDAJhCNE%2FP6%2BodTaIRTxDwhJCc5xg%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:85af8ef1f22075639f5e1be7151d039b:KjXRBL7FimCdPfkcPkDUOZbe%2BR8tiL4gaeJxl%2FnucFQ8UL28mzRmZSeHpMqoJwFUINppaALMULUa'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:db4d557cf92ff9467e13e01b1aee6530:PWDj6Lri2aPp2F0l1o37LwimABRJS%2Bw%2FOQMMPSWuRMZRLZhLRGI4Q9jz2JLAIoyYna2BguNYIBWs'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:064842e7a9d26f4e96559df7ad75369c:Ri7lRQ2YuIojw9J42qFhanIkt9g%2B2lNj7ky0mPfhji4DJCDrd66IrgRLO78oVkOke9RGBuQDA3ra'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c54405cdda6d6c80dfe38fdee8a0c2a5p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c54405cdda6d6c80dfe38fdee8a0c2a5p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c54405cdda6d6c80dfe38fdee8a0c2a5" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=V04TVZ"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=V04TVZ" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/474334201" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=47fa271214b9b9f4005a8e00maxX=225maxY=161" border="0" alt="carl-icahn.jpg" title="carl-icahn.jpg" width="225" height="161" /Corporate raider and Yahoo board member Carl Icahn just told CNBC he would vote against former AOL CEO Jon Miller's plan to buy Yahoo for $20-$22 a share with money from private equity and sovereign wealth./p p"Right now, I would be against that," Icahn said, indicating he objected not to Miller running Yahoo, but Miller's price. "The stock is undervalued right now," he said./p pIcahn's ideal candidate for the job? No surprises there: "A hard-nosed kind of guy," who would be willing to do a search deal./p pIchan, who told CNBC he talked Miller over the weekend, did not bring up Miller's noncompete clause with AOL as a potential barrier for him taking the Yahoo job./p pstrongSee Also:/stronga href="../../2008/12/yahoo-ceo-update----rosensweig-conspiracy-editionhell"br /Yahoo CEO Update: Rosensweig Conspiracy Edition (YHOO)/a/p p /p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/43e7drLbbkDWS_wAd22_rHC8UpQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/43e7drLbbkDWS_wAd22_rHC8UpQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Tc1hY2oZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=Tc1hY2oZ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=BpcuMJSJ"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=6vyrArUJ"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=6KJOzRa9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=6KJOzRa9" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=KDeT1ka2"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=RMLCR5g3"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=bh8rU8yk"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=f7pz2o6p"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/OaiTVPJ_Zoc" height="1" width="1"/

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. announced a hostile takeover bid for Certicom Corp. on Wednesday, offering 1.5 Canadian dollars ($1.20) per share, or about 66 million ($52.6 million) for the company.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=rBfAO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=rBfAO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=kDLWo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=kDLWo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=zYO0o"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=zYO0o" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/474004378" height="1" width="1"/

Yahoo is yet again the subject of takeover rumors, this time with a new twist: a former head of AOL is supposedly trying to line up backers for a bid to take the company private. Its scenario that makes sense, but will be tough to pull off given the state of the economy. pa href=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/VGz6dcTyO7UxVxhX0LR3HuV_-Pk/aimg src=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/VGz6dcTyO7UxVxhX0LR3HuV_-Pk/i border=0 ismap=true //a/pimg src=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digg/container/technology/popular/~4/56zTHMejY0c height=1 width=1 /br[a href=http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081202-report-white-knight-wants-to-take-yahoo-private.html title=linklink/a] [a href=http://feeds.digg.com/~r/digg/container/technology/popular/~3/56zTHMejY0c/Report_white_knight_wants_to_take_Yahoo_private title=moremore/a]

div style="float:right;"img border=0 title="RIM To Buyout Security Firm" alt="RIM To Buyout Security Firm" src="http://www.uberphones.com/photos/2008/12/rim-logo.jpg" hspace="5" vspace="5" //div pRIM’s BlackBerry devices are obviously geared towards corporate customers, so it’s understandable that they take security very seriously. In light of that, RIM has decided to initiate a takeover bid for Certicom, a security firm that has worked with RIM in the past which also happens to hold more than 350 security patents, some of which are even used by the American NSA. RIM is planning to pay $1.50 per share, which would amount to a $66 buyout, which isn’t that bad, considering the current economic climate. /p pPermalink: a href="http://www.uberphones.com/2008/12/blackberry/rim_to_buyout_security_firm/"RIM To Buyout Security Firm/a from a href="http://www.uberphones.com"Uberphones/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry Storm/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Umh9rH2iYJ-KqSDx-b59DTrBWQE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Umh9rH2iYJ-KqSDx-b59DTrBWQE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/business/" rel="tag"Business/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.edge-online.com/news/sci-changes-name-eidos"img vspace="4" hspace="0" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/12/eidos.logo.lara.490w.jpg" //a/div What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ... but what about a struggling video game publisher? SCi has officially taken the name of its subsidiary, Eidos, finalizing a change that was a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/15/sci-entertainment-loses-177-million-in-fiscal-08-changes-name/"announced/a in September. True to Juliet's musings, though, it isn't one name or the other that makes the UK publisher so attractive to a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/01/rumor-sci-eyed-for-takeover-by-ea-and-ubisoft/"potential buyers/a.br /br /A bargain is a bargain, after all. And with strikeSCi/strike Eidos stock down 92% over the past year and a couple notable franchises on the table (emHi a set="yes" linkindex="112" href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/tomb-raider"Tomb Raider/a! Yo a set="yes" linkindex="113" href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/hitman"Hitman/a!/em), the company could call itself "Donkeylips" and still be shareholders' must-have deal of the holiday season.p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/sci-just-call-me-eidos/"SCi: Just call me 'Eidos'/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:59:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.edge-online.com/news/sci-changes-name-eidosRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/sci-just-call-me-eidos/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1390107/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/sci-just-call-me-eidos/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4xAwL8jmKgjwobBp8QHZMJSRwbM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4xAwL8jmKgjwobBp8QHZMJSRwbM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=z7S2cx2p"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=z7S2cx2p" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=fh2rVtH7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=fh2rVtH7" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/UyvdiC90aLo" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=49368d6c796c7a9b00775e15maxX=240maxY=180" border="0" alt="evan_williams.jpg" title="evan_williams.jpg" width="240" height="180" /Twitter CEO Evan Williams made an appearance in San Francisco yesterday and dropped a few new hints about a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/twitter-we-ll-announce-our-secret-business-model-early-next-year"Twitter's secret business model/a . Evan still isn't saying just how his service can make money without doing things that Twitter's users will hate, but here's what we know./p pVia a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10112037-2.html"CNET/a:/p ul listrongRevenue is coming Q1, Evan promises/strong. "I don't want to raise money in 2009."/li liTwitter is in talks with "large consumer packaged good companies." But no word yet on just what that means. /li liIn the works: Grouping Twitter friends into cliques for easier following, a feature the microblogging service has been a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/let_it_be_true_twitter_planning_contact_groups_but_first_uptime_"promising since at least June/a./li liAlso being promised: Making Twitter easier to use for a general audience. Evan didn't mince words here -- "It's amazing anyone uses Twitter today," he said. "It's hard." /li /ul pIn other words, more of the same. But give Twitter credit for a real progress: Site outages (the dreaded fail whale) seem to occur far less frequently than they used to./p pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/twitter-we-ll-announce-our-secret-business-model-early-next-year"Twitter: We'll Announce Our Secret Business Model Early Next Year/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/twitter-the-next-google-no-the-next-netscape"Twitter The Next Google? No, The Next Netscape/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/twitter-rejects-500-million-takeover-offer-from-facebook"Twitter Rejects $500 Million Takeover Offer From Facebook*/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/let_it_be_true_twitter_planning_contact_groups_but_first_uptime_"Twitter To Get More Like High School, In A Good Way/a/p pemPhoto: a href="http://flickr.com/photos/joi/2118601809/"Joi Ito/a/em/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ryz5eNK9gAi-BsgVH8VgznuF8Lw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ryz5eNK9gAi-BsgVH8VgznuF8Lw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=1i60T1id"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=1i60T1id" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=h5OWNcYM"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=4oBourwk"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=kYyIbIt4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=kYyIbIt4" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=GklyIttW"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=fGyROBzF"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=FK0mCsW1"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=ecVTAMgU"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/bqonRP2pXfs" height="1" width="1"/

EDF, the state-controlled French energy giant, threw down the gauntlet to Warren Buffett today, with a $4.5 billion ($£3 billion) bid for part of Constellation Energy designed to frustrate the legendary US investor’s proposed takeover of the US wholesale power group.

Read full story for latest details.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/edition_sport/~4/rCSmVH347hM" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://www.edge-online.com/files/imagecache/article_homepage_large_144x108/eidos_logo_0.png" alt="SCi Changes Name to Eidos" title="SCi Changes Name to Eidos" class="imagecache imagecache-article_homepage_large_144x108" /br /!--paging_filter--strongSCi Entertainment has now officially changed its name to Eidos. The publisher had filed a request to change its name with the Registrar of Companies yesterday, and now the firm has assumed the name and logo of its Eidos subsidiary.br //strongbr /Since Monday the company has been the subject of takeover speculation, with both Ubisoft and EA suspected to be interested in acquiring the UK publisher. br /pa href="http://www.edge-online.com/news/sci-changes-name-eidos"read more/a/p

Bangkok’s airports are now open. The protesters have agreed to end their protests after the country’s top court ordered the dissolution of the ruling party which forced the Prime Minister to step down. Military troops are now guarding the airports. Tourists are advised to contact their airlines and tourism offices to check for flight schedules.

Last week protesters belonging to the People’s Alliance for Democracy have occupied Bangkok’s two airports demanding the removal of the corrupt government. The airport takeover has stranded more than 300,000 passengers in the country.

Because of the favorable court order, the protesters have declared victory. However, they vowed to launch similar protest actions in the future if reforms are not instituted. Excerpts from PAD’s statement:

“The PAD would like to call on whichever side that attains power to run the country to find a solution for the current problems and not to create conditions for another political turmoil in the country. Do not bring to power people from the Thaksin regime. Address the wrongdoings conducted by those in the Thaksin regime. Join with the people in making new politics a reality.”

The PAD would like to make the following pledges.

1. If a proxy government of the Thaksin regime is set up again or if there is an attempt to amend the Constitution or the law to whitewash the wrongdoings of those in the Thaksin regime, to benefit politicians, or to lessen the power of the King, the PAD will return.

2. From now on, if there is any government which comes into power but is insincere in its efforts to launch new politics with the people, the PAD will return.

Thaksin is former Prime Minister of Thailand who was ousted in a coup two years ago. PAD accused the last two Prime Ministers of being puppets of Thaksin.

Thai Politico interprets the PAD statement:

“The implication at the moment is that if the next PM is not to the PAD's liking they will occupy the airport again. Will the security forces now completely secure Thailand's airports so that nothing like this can take place again? Or will we see the army back off like scared rabbits into the corner?”

New Mandala believes PAD’s victory will be short-lived:

“The celebrations by the yellow shirts at Suvanabhumi will be short-lived. The parliament has not been dissolved and the government looks very likely to maintain its majority. The Democrat-except-when-you-can’t-win-an-election-and-then-a-judicial-coup-is-OK Party simply can’t muster the numbers. More blatant judicial or military intervention will be required to remove the government.”

Political cartoon by Sacravatoons

PAD is popular in Bangkok (but the airport takeover has made it less popular today). PAD is accused of having close ties with Bangkok’s elite. On the other hand, most of the rural voters are supportive of Thaksin’s party. Someone asked: What if the farmers staged their own protest against PAD and the urban elite by refusing to plant rice?

Stranded tourists are now recounting their experience in Thailand. Tuesdaynight narrates how he and his wife were able to leave the country by traveling to Malaysia and Singapore by land. He writes:

“Finally, I have to say, after all this, I consider us to be lucky. We found a way out of the country and it worked. I truly feel for the hundreds of thousands people whose travel was impacted because of this. More importantly, I feel for the Thai people who have yet to find some form of political stability.”

Despite the airport chaos, life in Bangkok seemed like normal the past week. Oneditorial writes:

“During the week, I called my family to get their views on this event. They did not seem to be thinking too much about what is going on. They still carry on their daily lives as usual. As a matter of fact, on the day I talked to my mother on the phone, the entire family was completely absorbed in watching a Thai soap on the telly, never mind the fact that the country is in a state of political turmoil. I just wish I could be as detached as them.”

Andrew Biggs asks if the airport crisis would produce positive results:

“Could it be that the pain, shame and anger we have all experienced with the PAD’s closure of the airport actually be heralding a new era of politics in Thailand? Could it possibly be that something good is going to come out of all this?”

An anonymous commenter criticizes the organizer of the protests:

“Im sure terrorist groups in South-East Asia have witnessed the complete lack of security at the airport and thus it would be a sitting duck for groups who plan terrorist attacks against planes and passengers. Bangkok as a major hub? I dont think so any more. What airline will want to fly in and out of Bangkok when the airports own security guards ran like scared children from their own people. Shame on Thailand for allowing this anti democratic group to act like terrorists and hold an entire country to ransom. Thailand is about to see the trickle down from this catastrophe and I pity the ordinary people who were not involved in this protest but could lose jobs.”

Gabriella