In the Hunt: Entrepreneurs Press On, And Obstacles Fall

MOST entrepreneurs gauge success in numbers like dollars and market share. Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson measures it, in part, in the words her son speaks and writes.

Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson is the founder of two technology companies that she expects to have combined revenue this year of $50 million and, she says, have bright prospects for 2010. But for six years, she has also lavished her entrepreneurial skills on a different sort of venture — a nonprofit organization whose guiding purpose is to help her 9-year-old son, Cade, and other children deal with autism.

In my final three columns in this space — the last one is to appear in early December — I am revisiting some of the entrepreneurs I have profiled in the last two and a half years. In September 2007, Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson described her efforts to cope with her son’s autism by creating the nonprofit Holland Center in Excelsior, Minn., for young children with the disorder.

Like any business, the Holland Center thrives on innovation. Late last year, for example, Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson created the Minnesota Hyperbaric Treatment Center to administer oxygen therapy at Holland for Cade and, so far, four of his classmates. While medical specialists are skeptical about the procedure, the results, in her view, have been stunning,

After her son’s first 20 treatments in November 2008, Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson said, “he was doing things he had never done before.”

“One day, he picked up a black pencil and said ‘black,’ ” she said. Then, he wrote down the word. “Then he said ‘orange,’ ‘red,’ and all the main colors, and even ‘gray’ and ‘pink,’ ” writing the word each time, she said. “I started crying.”

Before he began his “dives” into a high-pressure chamber for doses of pure oxygen in a process known as hyperbaric therapy, she said, he had trouble stringing more than two words together, and he shunned other children. Now, after nearly 200 dives, he has taken up singing songs and fooling around with his cousins.

Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson’s ambition is to expand Holland into a sort of virtual autism campus. Next month, it will move into new quarters that will more than triple its space to 14,000 square feet, allowing her eventually to double the number of children it serves to 40 and increase her current staff of 30 doctors, therapists, behavioral analysts and other specialists. “I’m over there every day driving the contractors crazy,” she said.

In January, she plans to open the Holland Biomedical Treatment Clinic to offer homeopathic healing and craniosacral massages of the spine and skull to the children and nutrition counseling to their parents.

She says she also intends to open a few satellite treatment centers in Minnesota with a view to a creating a second center.

Separately, she has created a foundation called Children With Autism Deserve Education, or CADE, with the aim of providing temporary aid to children whose treatment for autism is interrupted by medical insurance snags.

What is next? Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson says she will start a program at Holland for training professionals on effective ways to handle children with autism. She is investigating a role for the center in two potential research projects. She is also thinking about adopting a child, perhaps one with special needs.

To be sure, Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson, who is 38, spends much her time at her profit-making companies, Vibrant Technologies, a buyer and seller of hardware that she founded in 1998, and St. Croix Solutions, a consulting firm and provider of software that she started in 2003 payday loan.

Both companies struggled in the recession but have rebounded in the fourth quarter, leading her to project revenue this year of about $30 million at Vibrant, down 25 percent from 2008, and $20 million at St. Croix, matching a year ago. Both are profitable.

Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson attributes the recent turnaround to a resumption of spending by corporations as the economy begins to pull out of the recession.

As for her entrepreneurial future, she says, “I have other ventures pending.”

I wrote about another entrepreneur, Talia Mashiach, more than two years ago as an illustration of the in-born advantages that women, especially mothers, enjoy over men in the business world. They are better listeners, motivators, networkers and multitaskers and are more focused and tenacious than their male counterparts, I argued.

Ms. Mashiach, then 30, filled the bill on all counts. She had started, in the previous 12 years, a band business, a music store, a barter firm and an events planning company called Eved, all the while bearing two sons and two daughters. She pushed herself so much that on the morning after giving birth to her fourth child, she made a call from her hospital bed to try to cut a business deal.

Today, Ms. Mashiach is still hard at work. Next month, she says, Eved, located in the Chicago area, will introduce a technology platform called Eved Online that will connect meeting planners at corporations and firms that specialize in organizing conferences with mom-and-pop service providers like caterers and florists in cities all across the world.

Eved today has 40 employees, up from 29 two years ago, though revenue this year will remain “in the low eight figures.” Even so, she believes that Eved Online will lead to substantial growth.

“For me, my dream from day one was to build a technology company on a national scale,” said Ms. Mashiach, who last month was named as one of Ernst & Young’s nine “Entrepreneurial Winning Women” for 2009. “Next year is the big year.”

As to her declaration two years ago that she wanted to have more children, she said she still does. “The fifth one is on the way.”

Success can come quickly to entrepreneurs of either sex, of course. Consider Craig Brandman, a 61-year-old cardiologist who in 2004 founded Medilinq, a provider of medical discounts for low-income people. This year, the company, based in Houston, has taken off.

In February, Dr. Brandman was upbeat. He predicted that the number of participants in the company’s network would increase to 200,000 this year from 30,000 at the end of 2008. Not only will he surpass that number, he now says, he expects an increase in revenue to $5 million this year, from $200,000 in 2008.

Dr. Brandman attributes the growth in part to a partnership that Medilinq formed this year with a company called Consult A Doctor, which gives its members round-the-clock phone access to physicians, and in part to an alliance with a debit card company whose holders gain automatic access to Medilinq’s benefits.

He is so confident about his niche in the health care industry, he said, that he plans to start his own insurance company next year, whatever the outcome of the overhaul bill before Congress.

“People are paying increasing attention to affordable health care,” he said. “The light has gone off.”

In the Hunt: Entrepreneurs Press On, And Obstacles Fall

Ambac shares sink as warns of possible bankruptcy

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Shares of bond insurer Ambac Financial Group Inc (ABK.N) sank 33 percent on Tuesday after the company warned it may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection if it cannot fix its liquidity problems.

"Ambac's available liquidity is currently insufficient to fund its needs beyond the near term and its failure to successfully execute on its current strategies could result in it running out of liquidity in the second quarter of 2011, or potentially sooner," the company said in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late Monday.

Ambac said it may pursue strategies including "a negotiated restructuring of its debt through a prepackaged bankruptcy proceeding" as it tries to deal with its issues.

Ambac, like its larger rival MBIA Inc (MBI.N), has struggled to write new business since losing its top-notch credit rating last year. The company is still battling losses on complex debt securities it insured.

"What's going to determine what happens with these companies is how quickly we're going to get an economic recovery," said Jim Ryan, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar in Chicago, who follows Ambac paydayloan.

"For bond insurers and mortgage insurers, it really revolves around mortgage delinquencies and mortgage delinquencies continue to rise," Ryan added. "Until we start to see a turnaround in unemployment we expect there will continue to be a rise in delinquencies."

Shares of MBIA also fell almost 27 percent on Tuesday.

In the filing, Ambac said its liquidity is largely dependent on its Ambac Assurance unit's ability to pay dividends, which is not currently able to do and not expected to do in 2010 either, Ambac said.

Ambac said that if it is unsuccessful in its negotiations with creditors, it may consider a filing for bankruptcy without any agreements in hand from its creditors.

Ambac shares hit a low of 75 cents a share earlier and closed down 33 percent, or 39 cents, at 79 cents on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of MBIA dropped $1.28 to $3.52 on the NYSE on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Emily Chasan; additional reporting by Dan Wilchins, editing Bernard Orr)

Ambac shares sink as warns of possible bankruptcy

Hot News: Wall Street surges to year highs

Dow Hits High for Year as Dollar Weakens

Wall Street raced out of the gate on Monday and ended the day at highs for the year.

But along the way, the dollar weakened, and as a result, prices for commodities like gold continued to rise.

Shares on all three continents rose after finance ministers said over the weekend that they would push ahead with efforts to revive economic growth through interest rates and increased government spending. The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day more than 200 points higher.

At the same time, the ministers offered no assurance that they would take steps to support the dollar. That weakened the currency, and the dollar fell to $1.50 against the euro, the first time it has reached that threshold since late October.

In turn, gold rose to record levels, hitting $1,105.20 an ounce. Last week, it climbed nearly 5 percent, buoyed by news that India had bought 200 tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund. Oil also rose, settling $2.02 higher at $79.45 a barrel.

“Economic and financial conditions have improved following our coordinated response to the crisis,” said a statement from the finance ministers of the Group of 20, comprising the world’s wealthiest nations, who met over the weekend in St. Andrews, Scotland. “However, the recovery is uneven and remains dependent on policy support.”

Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist for Forex.com, said the silence from the G-20 finance ministers on the dollar turned a grim prognosis even bleaker. Mr. Dolan said investors were abandoning the currency because of low interest rates in the United States and concern that its deficits would continue to swell.

“A lot of it is sentiment-driven and there the dollar is getting a vote of no confidence,” Mr. Dolan said. “The massive borrowing by the U.S. government is undermining confidence in the longer-term outlook for the dollar.”

Investors appeared to be directing their focus to riskier equities and turning away from the currency markets. The dollar is considered a low-yield investment, given the historically low interest rates in the United States. Last week, the Federal Reserve gave no indication that it planned to raise interest rates anytime soon, leaving investors to reroute their funds toward the stock market, oil and gold cash til payday.

While the faltering dollar will make imports more expensive for American consumers, it will also make American exports more competitive overseas.

The G-20 finance ministers said they were concerned by rising unemployment, even as the broader economy strengthens. In the United States, the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October, surprising economists and investors.

At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 203.52 points, or 2 percent — its highest level in a year, beating the previous record on Oct. 21. The Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index was up 23.78 points, or 2.2 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index was up 41.62 points or 1.97 percent.

The rally was broad-based, led by financial companies as well as industrial, chemical and mining stocks. Shares of the General Electric Company rose 3.5 percent after reports that G.E. and the Comcast Corporation had agreed to value NBC Universal at about $30 billion as the companies discuss a joint venture.

Shares of Citigroup were up 2.7 percent while Bank of America rose 4.7 percent and Wells Fargo rose 4.2 percent.

M. Jake Dollarhide, chief executive of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Okla., attributed the gains overall to a renewed appetite for risk.

“When you have zero percent inflation, zero percent interest rates, zero percent money markets rates, and when you have metals and gold that have skyrocketed to astronomical levels, stocks look pretty good in comparison,” he said.

Overseas markets were also up. The FTSE 100 in Britain closed 1.8 percent higher, the CAC 40 in France was up 2.1 percent, and the DAX in Germany was 2.4 percent higher.

Overnight, the Nikkei average in Japan closed 0.2 percent higher, and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong climbed 1.7 percent.

Dow Hits High for Year as Dollar Weakens

A Movie’s Budget Pops From the Screen

LOS ANGELES — Can a movie studio make money on a film based on an original and unfamiliar story, with no Hollywood superstars, a vanishing DVD market and a price tag approaching $500 million?

That question looms large for 20th Century Fox and its 3-D science-fiction film “Avatar,” among the most expensive movies ever. Despite many skeptics, the studio thinks it can turn a profit, in part because the film’s creator, James Cameron, was the driving force behind the studio’s immense hit “Titanic.”

But just in case box-office receipts for “Avatar” fall short, Fox has worked hard to hedge its large bet on the movie.

Despite the estimated half-billion dollars spent on its production and marketing, “Avatar” may carry surprisingly little financial risk for Fox’s parent company, the News Corporation, even if it disappoints. That is because of shifting industry economics, reliance on outside investors and help from a network of allied companies and in-house business units.

Fox’s efforts underscore how studios generally have been able to minimize their exposure at a time of blockbuster budgets — albeit at the cost of limiting their profit potential as well.

The final cost of the film has not been tallied, as Mr. Cameron, who has worked on the film for 15 years, and his collaborators, as far-flung as Weta Digital in New Zealand, continue to complete their work. Published reports have put the production budget at more than $230 million.

But the price tag would be higher if the financial contribution of Mr. Cameron and others were included. When global marketing expenses are added, “Avatar” may cost its various backers $500 million.

Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos, the co-chairmen of Fox Filmed Entertainment, declined through a spokesman to be interviewed. Jon Landau, Mr. Cameron’s partner in their Lightstorm Entertainment production company, also declined to be interviewed.

But “Avatar” did get a mention in a conference call on Wednesday during which Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation’s chairman, discussed a surprise 11 percent earnings jump in the company’s fiscal first quarter, which ended Sept. 30.

“I’m confident we will lead the Christmas season,” Mr. Murdoch said. He added that he was “excited and moved” by “Avatar.”

Michael Nathanson, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, wrote in an e-mail message before the earnings call that investors “tend to ignore” the impact of a single movie on a company as large as the News Corporation.

At what point the various partners in “Avatar” would see profit from the film depends on what share of revenue each receives as the movie reaches theaters, then home video and other media around the world. If domestic ticket sales reach $250 million — a level broken in the last year by five films, including “Star Trek” and “The Hangover” — Fox and its allies would appear to be headed into the black.

Mr. Cameron’s “Titanic,” which took in more than $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office after its release in 1997, was a major corporate event for the News Corporation, then about a third the size of the current conglomerate, which has roughly $30 billion in annual sales. Less than a year after the release, the News Corporation raised nearly $3 billion in a public offering of shares in its filmed entertainment group, partly on the strength of “Titanic.” (It bought those shares back four years ago.)

In 1980, the failure of “Heaven’s Gate” was enough to chase the Transamerica Corporation, which then owned United Artists, out of the movie business. But such company-wreckers belong more to history than to the contemporary film business.

With “Titanic,” the News Corporation was at risk for at least half of a production budget that would approach $300 million in today’s dollars, and was borne partly by Paramount Pictures.

The News Corporation is carrying a much smaller share of “Avatar’s” production cost, as a pair of private equity partners — Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media — pick up 60 percent of the budget, according to people who were briefed on the economics of the film but spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the studio or filmmakers fast cash loans.

Speaking by telephone on Thursday, James Clayton, the chief executive of Ingenious, confirmed his company’s backing for “Avatar,” but declined to discuss the size of its stake. Greg Coote, the chief executive of Dune, declined to be interviewed.

In a further hedge, Mr. Cameron would give up part of his own participation in the film’s returns if production costs exceed a specified level, according to those who were briefed on the film. If final production costs exceeded $300 million, for instance, Mr. Cameron would effectively defer much of his payout until the studio and others were compensated, despite his years of labor on the movie.

Mr. Cameron, along with Vince Pace, a Hollywood technology master, also developed much of the elaborate camera system and digital technology for the film themselves, at cost of about $14 million. According to Mr. Pace, the systems are owned by a company that expects to recoup the investment by selling to other filmmakers with help from the Creative Artists Agency.

“We’re turning it into a business, as opposed to a path where everybody’s supposed to service ‘Avatar,’ ” Mr. Pace said.

While the film was largely shot in a converted aircraft hangar in Los Angeles, much of the work qualified for tax rebates in New Zealand, where Weta Digital operates under the direction of the filmmaker Peter Jackson and others.

Fox’s biggest investment in “Avatar” may be on the marketing side, where the company is planning to spend about $150 million around the world — a number that is somewhat lower than might be expected, because of recession-induced concessions on advertising prices and reliance on in-house resources. The News Corporation recently showed a new trailer for the film on Fox’s “NFL Sunday” pregame show, and has been using MySpace to build awareness of the movie.

But here, too, the studio has looked for partners to bear some of the load. One ally, Imax, worked with theater owners to set up a special 15-minute preview last summer without significant cost to the studio. “A lot of people are lending this sort of in-kind support,” said Greg Foster, chairman and president of Imax Filmed Entertainment.

Panasonic, in return for using some of Mr. Cameron’s expertise for its own 3-D home video systems, contributed technological and marketing help, linking “Avatar” to its campaign for home theaters, for example.

“We’ve been supporting the effort,” said Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, Panasonic’s North America chief technology officer, who spoke on Friday. Mr. Tsuyuzaki declined to put a price tag on that help, but said estimates of about $25 million were “in the ballpark.”

In addition, rapidly changing dynamics in the theater business have made blockbuster openings much easier to achieve.

Privately, theater owners are now predicting that “Avatar” may play in as many as 2,500 3-D theaters, while occupying almost as many conventional theaters over the holiday season, heightening the likelihood of a big opening. Theaters using 3-D bolster the overall box-office by commanding ticket prices perhaps 30 percent higher than those of conventional theaters.

Still, the studio has experienced some problems. Initial reaction to a conventional trailer was flat, and response to the 3-D Imax preview provoked doubts about whether Mr. Cameron’s movie — which uses new technology to tell the story of a planet being assailed by humans — was really the cinematic game-changer that had been promised.

Taking no chances, Fox is backing up Mr. Cameron’s movie with what an executive recently called the studio’s “secret weapon.”

That would be “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel,” set to open just a week after studio marketers get “Avatar” into theaters. It is the relatively safe sequel to a chipper family comedy that cost about $60 million and took in $217 million at the domestic box office when it was released two years ago.

A Movie’s Budget Pops From the Screen

Taiwan Firm Positioned for E-Reader Takeoff

TAIPEI — With the market for electronic book readers set to take off, things are looking up for a little-known Taiwanese company that will probably supply most of the “e-paper” they use.

The company, Prime View International, said this summer that it would pay about $215 million to acquire E-Ink, which owns the technology for displaying text in the most popular readers, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.

Prime View, often referred to as P.V.I., recently sweetened its offer and says it hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. It already manufactures e-reader display modules for the Kindle and the Reader.

“E-Ink is by far the leader” in the field, said John Chen, director of the display technology center at ITRI, a government-financed technology incubator in Taiwan. “P.V.I. is going to strengthen its leadership in the next year or two, before anyone else can catch up.”

Demand for e-paper is expected to rise, with Amazon expanding the availability of the Kindle to Europe and the U.S. book retailer Barnes & Noble creating its own e-reader to compete with Amazon and Sony.

The availability of more content and the ability to download material wirelessly has fueled demand for the devices.

DisplaySearch, a market researcher based in Austin, Texas, forecasts the global market for e-paper, including e-paper used in e-books, to hit $5.9 billion by 2015, from $400 million this year.

This is not the first time Prime View has jumped into a growing market early. It became the first Taiwanese maker of flat-panel screens in 1994. Ten years later, in a crowded market dominated by the likes of Samsung and LG Display, it decided to focus on specialty products like custom displays for medical devices.

In 2005, it acquired Philips Electronics’ e-paper display unit, in an early bet on the industry.

“All the big companies like Samsung weren’t so interested in this market,” said David Hsieh, president of DisplaySearch’s Taiwan branch. “So Prime View found a good niche.”

It was also a good fit considering Prime View’s pedigree. The company is a subsidiary of Yuen Foong Yu Group, a Taiwanese paper and pulp company. The group started making toilet paper and paperboard as early as 1939 and began producing coated paper in the 1950s with Japanese technology, according to its Web site no faxing payday loan.

Now, one of Taiwan’s first mass producers of paper looks set, through a subsidiary, to become the world’s first mass producer of e-paper.

Analysts say Prime View’s production capacity, which includes factories in South Korea it acquired in 2007, make it the only e-paper company with the scale to meet booming global demand. And the ownership of E-Ink will mean they have no intellectual property issues to overcome and can make e-paper “from head to toe,” Mr. Hsieh said.

The company has its critics. Jeff Pu, an expert on the flat-panel industry in Taiwan, says Prime View has too much exposure in conventional liquid crystal displays. Prime View says that about half of its business concerns e-paper products.

A demand dip could be punishing, said Mr. Pu, who currently analyzes the mobile industry at Fubon Securities in Taipei. For example, he said, Prime View executives told analysts in April that its Korean factories were operating at 30 percent of capacity in the first quarter of this year, and that 65 percent was “break-even level.”

Mr. Pu also sees a price war coming, as AU Optronics, LG Display and others enter the e-paper market. AU Optronics has the most promising e-paper technology after E-Ink, the “microcups” technology owned by its subsidiary Sipix. Prime View will have to cut its prices after it loses its first-mover advantage, Mr. Pu said.

For now, Prime View is shrugging off such predictions. A company spokesman, Stephen Chen, conceded that capacity was low at the company’s Korean factories early this year but said that was because of the unusually bad economic downturn.

Mr. Chen said the company did not plan to license the E-ink technology to others and declined to comment on whether it might make its own e-reader.

“So far, for mass production and quality, E-Ink is the first priority for customers,” Mr. Chen said. “So I think we’ll keep the leading edge for some time — a few years is certain.”

Taiwan Firm Positioned for E-Reader Takeoff

AIG, Magna, Activision Blizzard are big movers

NEW YORK – The following stocks were among those that moved substantially or traded heavily Friday on the New York Stock Exchange:

NYSE:

American International Group Inc., down $3.80 at $35.48

The insurance company had a profitable quarter as the value of its investments rose, but the CEO warned that future results will be choppy.

International Game Technology, up $1.62 at $20.18

Despite a loss in the fourth quarter, CEO Patti Smith said there was an “incremental” improvement in casino operators’ demand for the company’s slot machines.

Magna International Inc., up $5.80 at $50

Two days after the collapse of the auto supplier’s deal to buy General Motors’ European division Opel, the Canadian company posted an unexpected profit.

Ormat Technologies Inc., down $2.29 at $36.21

An analyst downgraded the geothermal plant operator, saying 2010 product revenue is uncertain amid delays of several projects no fax payday loans.

K12 Inc., up $2.14 at $17.94

Expectations that enrollments will keep rising next year led the educational services provider to issue a higher-than-expected sales forecast.

NASDAQ:

Activision Blizzard Inc., up 38 cents at $11.25

The company’s CEO said its “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” which comes out next week, is on track to be the largest video game launch of all time.

American Science & Engineering Co., up $3.57 at $73.92

The X-ray detection system maker’s profit jumped 45 percent as security agencies increased their orders.

Nvidia Corp., up 89 cents at $13.16

Strong demand from customers bolstered results at the graphics chip maker, and its sales forecast topped Wall Street expectations.

AIG, Magna, Activision Blizzard are big movers

Commerce Search Aims To Help Retailers Boost Sales

As part of its quest to organize the world's information, Google is upping its commitment to organizing everything you can buy. On Thursday, the search giant announced Google Commerce Search, a new hosted enterprise search product that will help customers find products at online retail stores and e-commerce sites.

Google noted that, while the last 15 years have seen advances in e-commerce, the search methods used for e-commerce have been a barrier to growth. "The average online retailer conversion rate is just three percent," the company said, "but could potentially be five to 10 times higher" by improving the shopping experience for consumers and the conversion rate for retailers.

Real-Time Marketing

Commerce Search uses proprietary ranking technology to analyze products and provide "the most relevant match" in what the company said would be subsecond response times to customer searches. The idea is that faster and more accurate searches increase conversions, since customers are less inclined to leave the site or use complex navigation.

In addition to speed and accuracy, the new search product offers aids, such as sorting, spell checker, and synonym suggestions. Results can be filtered by category, price, brand or other parameters. In addition, administrators can update marketing approaches in real time to create product promotions that follow search trends. Retailers can also customize web-site searches through an API.

The product can be implemented and scaled up very quickly, since it is cloud-based. Scaling can be an issue for retailers, particularly with the huge bump of the Christmas holiday season, where spikes in traffic are hard to predict Same day payday loans. David Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, told news media that the company is "excited" to bring the product to market in time for the holidays.

As might be expected, Commerce Search also integrates with such Google tools as Google Analytics and Google Product Search, its consumer-facing product-search engine that is currently in beta.

'A New Level'

Laura DiDio, an analyst for industry research firm Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said Google is taking retail-site searches "to a new level." For instance, she said, by using Commerce Search, a retailer's product inventory gets submitted to Product Search — a big value-add to the enterprise search product.

DiDio also noted that, while increased speed and accuracy are big competitive advantages for a retailer, Google is also promoting the idea that it is a better search experience. She said that, among other things, the API for adapting the search experience to a site's overall user interface and interaction, the spell checker, and the synonym finder all help to "make things more elegant."

Looking at competitive strategy, DiDio pointed out that the new product offering is "Google's move against Microsoft's SharePoint," which the software giant offers with its Commerce Server.

Commerce Search Aims To Help Retailers Boost Sales

Revenue and Profit Declines at Time Warner

Time Warner, the media conglomerate that was once the world’s largest but has lately slimmed down by shedding some businesses, said both revenue and profits declined in the recent quarter.

The results were hurt by one business that the company has said it will spin-off — AOL — and another that has been battered by the advertising recession and is not viewed by executives as central to the company’s future, the Time Inc. magazine publishing empire.

The company’s biggest business, cable networks, which includes channels such as HBO, TNT, TBS and CNN, gained in revenue and profit. Revenue at the movie unit, the Warner Brothers studio, declined mainly because of lower DVD sales, a trend that has been felt across Hollywood, although its profitability improved.

Time Warner’s performance, like the results posted Monday by a rival, Viacom, is emblematic of a mainstream media industry that is largely contracting as consumers change how they view television and movies. The trend is compounded by the recession.

So media executives are left to cut costs to maintain profitability, rather than increase the revenue pie.

“We are executing well, despite the tough environment,” said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive officer, in a conference call with Wall Street analysts.

Over all in the third quarter, revenue declined 6 percent, to $7.1 billion. Net income was $661 million, down from $1.1 billion in the last year’s third quarter. Operating income decreased 10 percent, to $1.4 billion.

The results, though, were better than Wall Street forecast, and the company raised its financial outlook for the remainder of the year. Excluding certain items, the company reported earnings-per-share of 61 cents, better than the 55 cents expected by Wall Street, according to Thomson Reuters.

AOL posted a 23 percent drop in revenue, to $777 million. But the company plans to complete its spin-off of the unit by the end of the year. At Warner Brothers, revenue fell 4 percent, while operating income increased 6 percent to $291 million .

Warner Brothers, like other studios, is facing a decline in DVD sales, which once drove growth in Hollywood. But the performance of the unit, particularly the increase in profits, surpassed what many on Wall Street expected. The studio’s major release in the quarter was “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” “I think the most noteworthy thing in the quarter is film,” said Anthony DiClemente, an analyst at Barclays Capital. “They’ve grown operating profits at film for each of the past six quarters. “A lot of it is streamlining and cost cutting,” he said.

The only division of Time Warner to post revenue growth was its cable networks. Revenue there rose to $2.87 billion, from $2.73 billion in the quarter a year ago. Operating income rose to $938 million from $909 million.

Time Warner confirmed that it would take a $100 million restructuring charge to lay off hundreds of workers at Time Inc., which publishes titles like Time, Sports Illustrated, People and Fortune. Also Tuesday, the company said it would close Fortune Small Business, which is produced by Time Inc. but owned by American Express. In the quarter, Time Inc.’s revenue declined 18 percent to $914 million, while its operating income declined 40 percent, to $97 million, from last year’s third quarter.

Advertising revenue declined by $129 million, or 22 percent, while subscriptions declined 13 percent, to $49 million.

Mr. Bewkes said he believed much of the downturn in magazine advertising a result of the recession rather than permanent shifts of readers turning away from print and toward the Internet. This view runs counter to that of many others who believe that print is on a steady decline and will never return to the growth it once enjoyed.

Revenue and Profit Declines at Time Warner

Wall Street rises on upbeat economic data, Ford earnings

NEW YORK, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) — Wall Street rebounded Monday, as Ford Motor Co. posted rosy earnings and manufacturing sector expanded in October at the fastest pace in more than three years.

A surprise profit from Ford helped support the early gains. Ford said it earned nearly one billion U.S. dollars in the third quarter due to deep cost cuts and the government’s Cash for Clunkers rebates.

Moreover, an index on manufacturing activity from the Institute for Supply Management rose to 55.7 in October, the highest level since April 2006, from 52.6 in September. It was the third straight month of growth after 18 months of contraction.

Commercial lender CIT Group Inc business card design. filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday after a debt-exchange offer to bondholders failed. The market seemed unfazed about the bankruptcy, one of the biggest in U.S. corporate history, as the lender has been struggling for months to restructure its debt, which has been priced in.

The Dow Jones rose 114.35 to 9,827.08. Broader indexes also went higher. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 11.98 to 1,048.17 and the Nasdaq climbed 14.60 to 2,059.71. Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

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Mother of Singer Killed by Coyotes Asks That the Animals Be Spared

Even in a country with a lot of wilderness, it was a shocking death. Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow, a promising 19-year-old folk singer from Toronto who performed under the name Taylor Mitchell, was attacked by two coyotes as she set out for a hike in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, one of Eastern Canada’s leading tourist destinations. She died late Tuesday night in Halifax, where she had been airlifted for treatment.

The reaction of Ms. Mitchell’s grief-stricken mother was perhaps more unusual: Emily Mitchell issued a statement to news organizations in which she asked authorities to spare any coyotes involved in the attack.

“We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature’s fold — it’s the wildlife’s terrain,” she wrote. “When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor’s voice say, ‘Please don’t, this is their space.’ She wouldn’t have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own.”

Even before the statement appeared, a Parks Canada conservation officer had already killed one coyote that was behaving aggressively no fax pay day loan. And a police officer who came to Ms. Mitchell’s aid thought he had shot and injured a second coyote.

Attacks by coyotes, even minor ones, on people are very unusual. Chip Bird, the Cape Breton field superintendent for Parks Canada, said that over his 30-year career, he had never seen a serious attack until last week, although six years ago a coyote “nipped someone’s arm” in the park.

The trail where the attack occurred was still closed on Sunday afternoon, and a team from Parks Canada was continuing to study the coyotes in the area, which number about five. Mr. Bird would not rule out further killings if there were other dangerously aggressive animals, but he added that Ms. Mitchell’s wish might be honored.

“We really have a lot of sympathy for her perspective,” he said. “We’re not out here conducting a general cull.” IAN AUSTEN

Mother of Singer Killed by Coyotes Asks That the Animals Be Spared