LinkedIn Files for an IPO

Hot on the heels of Demand Media's successful public offering, LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site, announced its intention to go public. The Mountain View, California, company reported revenue of $161.4 million in the first nine months of 2010, according to LinkedIn's S-1 filing. Of that revenue, the company posted $1.85 million in profit, the filing said.

The site has more than 90 million members (half of whom live outside the U.S.), though they tend not to be nearly as active as Facebook users. "[A] substantial majority of our page views are generated by a minority of our members," the company admits in its S-1.

Still, given the pleasant reception the market afforded Demand Media and the enthusiasm for possibly forthcoming IPOs from Facebook and Groupon, one can imagine a LinkedIn public offering faring quite well. The company is clearly banking on the idea that it can raise money and, in the meantime, figure out new ways to foster member engagement—though that goal has been front-and-center at the company for quite some time.

"[M]any professionals still don't understand how LinkedIn can be valuable on a daily or weekly basis," founder Reid Hoffman told Inc. contributor Mark Lacter in 2009. "In a boom, employers are really hunting for a good person, and they're using LinkedIn. And during a bust, people on the other side are looking for a good opportunity." His hope then was that LinkedIn groups and other features would provide valuable networking opportunities, as well as access to career development resources and a look at industry best practices.

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Strong Enough For Democracy?

by Patrick Appel Massie collects his thoughts: Pessimists, of whom there is no shortage, tell us that the [Egyptian] middle-class is neither ready nor strong enough to sustain anything that might even approach a western understanding of "democracy". Perhaps they...

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Foxconn-owned Cybermart to sell Apple gear in China

The only thing we really know about Chinese electronics retailer Cybermart in the Western hemisphere is that tourists often enjoy stopping by one of its locations and snapping pictures of fake iPhones ? which of course is ironic, considering the chain is owned by infamous iPhone builder Foxconn. All that may soon change, however, as DigiTimes reports that the Chinese gear vendor has scored distribution rights for authentic Apple products. The retailer supposedly has plans to open 500 Apple-licensed retail locations throughout China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the first of which will open its doors on April 1st. Cybermart also currently has 34 electronics outlets spread around China, and it plans to open seven or eight more this year. Read

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Obama Talks Business

President Obama's speech last night focused on job growth, innovation, corporate taxes, and the global economy. But what does it mean for your business? Here’s a recap of what people are saying about the president’s State of the Union speech.

Innovation isn’t cheap. In an editorial published this morning, The New York Times noted its concerns over the president’s apparent unwillingness to discuss how corporate taxes and personal taxes will improve the nation’s deficit. “Mr. Obama proposed to simplify both the corporate income tax and the personal income tax, but he did not call for raising other taxes,” the article said. “Americans may not want to hear that taxes have to go up, but until Mr. Obama and other political leaders are willing to say so, credible deficit reduction will remain out of reach.” Sebastian Mallaby, a senior fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), noted that Obama’s requests for “public investments” also run counter to the goal of helping the country’s deficit. “The public investments he touts sound pleasingly growth-enhancing: education, research, and state-of-the-art infrastructure are indeed the ingredients of future dynamism,” he told CFR in an interview this morning. “But these investments are obviously in tension with the goal of deficit reduction, and Obama appears far too hopeful that he can achieve both at the same time.”

It's a Darwinian world, so work harder! Obama's speech was a clarion call for a new focus on America's ability to compete around the world, contends William Astore in The Huffington Post. "Last night's State of the Union address boils down to one point: In a cutthroat world, America has lost its edge," he wrote. "His solution is not to rethink our belief in our greatness, but to rekindle our competitive fire: to rededicate ourselves to being Number One, irrespective of the cost to others." And when Obama talks about competitiveness, it resonates with business groups that had become suspicious of the president's sudden commitment to private industry after his efforts to reform Wall Street.

CEOs sound off on the speech. Business leaders remained skeptical of Obama's overtures to corporate America during his speech, telling The Wall Street Journal they wanted more details about his promise to lower the corporate tax rate and simplify the tax code. Among the critics: energy magnate T. Boone Pickens and Anthony Guzzi, CEO of the construction firm Emcor Group. They did note Obama's "change in tone" during the speech, which was punctuated by pro-business ideas.

The hot button issue: salmon? NPR’s quest to engage their audience in two-way communication resulted in an interesting tag cloud of the State of the Union address. NPR asked readers to submit a single word that summed up their thoughts on Obama’s latest speech. From the overall pool of participants came words such as “salmon,” “inspiring,” ”hopeful,” and “education.” Wait...salmon? Seems that the president made a crack about how salmon is regulated by two separate departments, as an example of how bureaucratic resources are often wasted. Republicans and Independents recalled this fishy comment the most, as displayed in two other tag clouds broken down by party affiliation.

The dumbing down of America. In addition to talk of innovation, jobs and unity, President Obama focused on education—or the lack thereof. Obama noted that in the next 10 years, most jobs will require candidates to have more than a high school degree. "And yet," he added " as many as a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school." The U.S. now ranks 9th in the world when looking at the number of young people in college. Jenna Johnson, reporting for the Washington Post, notes that “Obama asked Congress to support innovative research and called for an increase in the number of teachers who specialize in science, technology, engineering or math…but what does it all mean?”

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Becoming The Story

by Zoe Pollock Lydia Cacho considers the price of international investigative reporting: There are always those who demand drama: a few tears from the Mexican journalist who was tortured and imprisoned, then raped in order to ensure her silence, feeds...

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Booting Up Tanzania With Help From Google

An organization founded by a Stanford computer science student and former Peace Corps volunteer, Envaya aims to get East African grassroots organizations online. It recently snagged funding from Google.

When Joshua Stern, a graduate of Stanford with a degree in computer science, served in the Peace Corps in Tanzania from 2006 to 2007, one thing soon became clear.

"The major takeaway there," he tells Fast Company, "was that the best development work being done was being done by these local groups, community-based organizations."

The small groups were often the most effective--yet they had no web presence, no effective way to communicate with other small NGOs or to raise funds online. In 2008, Stern came back to California to work for a time at the startup Apture, but he'd left his heart in Tanzania. By early 2010, he and a few others had founded Envaya, whose mission was to boot up the small East African NGOs that had so impressed him. Now, a year later, 250 grassroots organizations in Tanzania use Envaya. The company has caught the attention of no less than Google, which gave Envaya a seed grant.

Envaya sites are simple but elegant. There are very few bells or whistles but they contain the basic information you'd want to know about a given organization. The simple design was crucial, since for many of these groups, the best way to access and update these sites is through cell phones with a simple mobile browser.

"The connection there is very slow, the organizations' leaders typically have minimal computer experience, and many don't speak English," says Stern. "Envaya works in a low-bandwidth environment, and works in Swahili," taking advantage of a drop-down menu that toggles any site between English and Swahili with the help of Google Translate and a volunteer who cleans up what's lost in translation.

Before Envaya, the alternatives for an organization wanting an online presence were not good. "It's really expensive over there," says Stern. "It will cost you $500 to $1,000 to get a custom website built there, and most of them look like something from Geocities circa 1996. Plus the organizations can't update them themselves." Not only can Envaya-assisted organizations update their own content via a web browser on a laptop or phone, but Envaya has plans to enable them to update content through SMS, meaning even cell phones lacking Internet access can be used to maintain a website.

Tanzania is increasingly wired, though--it has changed greatly even in the three years since Stern ended his Peace Corps stint. He'll often be in the sticks somewhere and stumble across a kid with a cheap laptop and a USB Internet connection. As for cell phone usage, it often seems to Stern that Tanzania is ahead of the U.S., in some ways. "Cell phone penetration in East Africa right now is huge," says Stern. "I'll often get a better cell phone connection out in the middle of nowhere there than in San Francisco."

[Images: Envaya]

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Review: TP-Link TD-W8961N 300Mbps Wireless N ADSL2+ Modem Router

TP-Link's TD-W8961ND is an unapologetic budget, no frills 300Mbps Wireless N ADSL2+ modem router.

This basic box seemingly provides everything a home or SOHO user might need to get ADSL broadband over a landline and share it around the home with Wireless N networking.

If you're looking to upgrade from an existing out-dated BT Home Hub 1.0 or other 802.11g wireless equipped ADSL modem router, then this could be an ideal low-cost solution.

The TD-W8961ND is squarely aimed at the entry-level market, yet still features a ADSL2+ modem router with 300Mbps Wireless N.

So coming in at under �40 it certainly succeeds on the value front.

It comes with a number of ease-of-use features that should help even the basic user through setting up their broadband connection, along with securely connecting wireless devices to the ADSL2+ modem router.

Alongside these are a host of far more complex features that add greater interest to this otherwise somewhat dull budget ADSL2+ modem router.

We tested the wireless and WAN performance to see how the TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N ADSL2+ modem router TD-W8961ND performed compared to a similar model, in this case a standard BT HomeHub 2.0.

Compared with the BT box the wireless transfer speeds were shockingly bad, but things did pick up.

The ADSL matched the downsteam and beat the upstream by a substantial amount, both in physical connection and tested transfer speeds. The TP-Link router happily performed at 100BaseT levels on the LAN connection

Wireless transfer speed

ADSL connection speed

ADSL transfer speeds

Primarily the TD-W8961ND has to be a good ADSL2+ modem router, and it at least manages that in two parts.

First is a set-up wizard that tries to help configure the modem router for a long list of UK ISPs. The second is good broadband performance and, after fighting with the configuration, it matched our standard ADSL connection downstream and offered an enhanced upstream speed.

Less impressive is the wireless performance.

It uses dual antennas for two spatial streams and claims to be 300Mbps, though performance is unlikely to go beyond 130/144Mbps. To do that the router would need to use 40MHz channels, which is unlikely except in Wi-Fi free areas.

Performance even in the same room was somewhat dismal and erratic, peaking around 1.9MB/s and averaging a very poor 391KB/s.

This doesn't get any better with distance and, as we'd imagine this is the primary way people will be connecting to the modem router, it's a huge turn off for the TD-W8961ND.

Equally unattractive is the web-based interface.

In its defence it covers a lot of complex options and features, but that can't excuse a sluggish response and a bizarre half-finished look to the page design.

This does cover one positive area of the ADSL2+ modem router in that there are a number of advanced feature hiding inside, such as port binding for specific services, wireless bridge options, Annex M to double upstream rates and full QOS abilities.

It feels like a rushed product and at the time of writing the latest firmware dated 17/6/2010 lists one of its key updates as "Fix the low rate of wireless connection."

Which doesn't fill us full of confidence.

We liked:

It has a no-nonsense design that even comes with a power button. It knows it's a budget modem router and tries to play to that strength offering some ease-of-use features for novice users, but still offers a raft of more advanced options.

We disliked:

Wireless performance was something of a disaster and taints the main way you'll be using this router. It's bad enough that it could be performing worse than your broadband connection.

It doesn't help that the web-based interface has an unfriendly look, is slow to use and despite its best effort to be easy to use still baffles with a range of technical features that most will not want.

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• TechRadar's Reviews Guarantee
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