Filed under: Business, Features, E-mail, Office, How-Tos

For the sake of this article, we’re going to assume that you understand the benefits of being a filer rather than a piler. If you’d like to get to an empty inbox, but are facing what seems to be an insurmountable pile, take heart; we’ve all been there. Even for people that are meticulous filers, there are times, such as returning from a trip, where the amount of email facing you seems impossible.

Sometimes when we get overly focused on the end goal we make our task seem impossible, and it doesn’t need to be. There’s a simple formula you can follow that’ll help you meet your goal of an empty inbox. If you decide to follow it, your inbox won’t be empty this day, or even tomorrow, but in a matter of days, most likely less than a week, it will.

It’s called Inbox 0.5. The idea is to ensure that you get through at least half of the emails you’re facing. Here’s how it works:

It’s day one, and you’re looking at 700 emails staring you in the face first thing in the morning. It’s your task to get down to 350 by the end of the day. It sounds hard, but here’s the thing. Most of that email is bulk mail subscriptions and the like, or simply out of date. If you can group or sort based on email subject or thread, do so - it will help you dispose of a massive number of emails once you’ve caught up to date with the most recent one.

It seems like a lot (and it is), but you’ll probably find that getting through the first 350 messages is the easiest batch you’ll face.

Continue reading Inbox 0.5 - How to get to an empty inbox - Emailers Anonymous

Permalink

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Deals, Bank of America (BAC), Countrywide Financial (CFC)

SRM Capital Management head Jonathan Wood has been slamming Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)’s deal to acquire Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) for more than a month now, but with shares of the target company still trading at almost a $2 discount to the buyout price, investors appear too skeptical that Wood will make any progress. Analysts at Friedman Billings Ramsey and Stifel Nicolaus have recommended [subscription required] that if there’s any revision in the deal’s price, it would likely be a downward move.

The crux of Mr. Wood’s argument seems to be that Bank of America “should pay a price closer to Countrywide’s book value, currently $22 a share,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The problem is that Countrywide’s book value is overstated and will have to weather future writedowns. It isn’t like Countrywide is sitting on a huge cash pile. In addition, the company has tons of future liabilities: shareholder lawsuits, investigations, even exceptionally rare lawsuits filed by bankruptcy trustees accusing the company of “sustained bad faith.”

Countrywide’s struggles have been front-page news for over a year — Bank of America hardly snuck in and negotiated a back-room with an unknown entity. Wood can complain all he wants but I don’t see anyone stepping forward with a better offer.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Before the bell, Earnings reports, Analyst reports, Analyst upgrades and downgrades, Deals, Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Pfizer (PFE), Amazon.com (AMZN), Intel (INTC), General Motors (GM), BP p.l.c. ADS (BP)

Before the bell: Futures higher ahead of data (COST, CSCO)

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares are higher in premarket trading following several news items. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote a note to clients Wednesday, clearing the 10 million iPhones issue. The goal, he wrote, is to sell 10 million iPhone in fiscal ‘08 alone, adding that he anticipates Apple to exceed that number by 2.9 million, probably through expansion into China and India.
On the other hand, Tuesday, Caris & Co cut its 2008 earnings view on Apple to reflect lower iPhone and iPod estimates. Caris cut its price target on Apple to $155 from $165, lowering fiscal 2008 iPhone units estimates to 8.9 million from 11.7 million.
Meanwhile, Apple announced no plans to declare a dividend or purchase back its stock, sticking to estimate of 10 million iPhone to be sold in ‘08.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) has stepped up talks with Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX) to possibly create an substitute to the unsolicited bid Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) made for Yahoo!
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Yahoois looking at ways to hold off a proxy fight with Microsoft, including possibly delaying its annual meeting.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), whose blockbuster drug Lipitor is about to get competition from generic manufacturers states it plans to outsource more drug manufacturing and further reduce its global real estate holdings in a move to lower costs.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares finished up 4.66% Tuesday after its chief financial officer reiterated the online retailer’s 2008 revenue guidance and said the on the web retailer is scrambling to improve production of its new e-reader device, Kindle.

BP (NYSE: BP) and General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) executives outlined on Tuesday their visions for the future of renewable energy, saying Hydrogen will likely fuel the vehicles of the future, although it could take 50 years to get there.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner stated he has turned over responsibility for the automaker’s day-to-day operations to Fritz Henderson, the former chief financial officer. Wagoner stated he will concentrate on global growth, advanced technologies and environmental lobbying.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) said Wednesday it invested over $24 million in an electric-car maker Think Global and its battery supplier A123Systems as part of an effort to push the technology toward the mainstream.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is set to have an analyst day today.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Deals, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX)

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), still trying to prevent a deal in which it would be taken over by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has stepped up talks with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) about merging AOL into the massive portal company. According to The Wall Street Journal, “the Time Warner talks have stepped up as Yahoo tries to nail down its alternatives to Microsoft’s Feb. 1 offer, which Yahoo rejected as undervaluing it. The scenario under discussion would involve folding AOL into Yahoo with Time Warner taking a sizable minority stake in the combined entity.”

Even though the combination would create an world wide web company with an audience much more massive than Microsoft’s or Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG), it isn’t clear that Yahoo!’s shareholders would find it an acceptable alternative to the deal with Redmond. The offer of a fixed $31 is much high than the $19 where Yahoo! traded just a few weeks before the takeover was proposed.

The combination wouldn’t create a challenge to Google in the search business. AOL’s search market share is generally put at about 5% of the US world wide web population. Search revenue is viewed as a faster growing category than display advertising, where Yahoo! and AOL do well. Microsoft and Yahoo! together would have about 30% of the search market in America. Google has over 60%.

Even though combining AOL and Yahoo! would grant some redundant costs to be taken out, both companies are experiencing slow ad revenue growth. Putting the two companies together won’t solve that.

The deal won’t work for the Yahoo! board, already under pressure to take the $31 from Microsoft and run.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, World wide web, News, Productivity, Social Software, web 2.0

Officially it’s “five days of exciting panel content and extraordinary parties”, unofficially it’s the biggest event of the software geek calendar. SXSW Interactive starts Friday in Austin, Texas and we’ll be hitting the ground tomorrow like some sort of invading army.

We’ve already managed to book plenty of interviews with tech luminaries, and we’re sure to stumble across more. We’ll also be doing some live blogging, taking lots of pics and video, and posting to Twitter.

Keep checking Download Squad for all the SXSW happenings, or if you’re more of a river of news kind of person, we’ve got this SXSW 2008 RSS feed you can use to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

Read

Share This

Share This

Business - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington
Business South Sound enterprises The Olympian profiles a retailer or manufacturer based in Thurston County in an effort to help readers get to know more about their community

Business - LA Daily News
Business Ford has me a bit confused with its choice of names for the Edge crossover and Fusion sedan.

Business and Nonprofit Gateway: USA.gov
USA.gov for Businesses and Nonprofits — Simple access to U.S. government information and services for businesses and nonprofits.

Business Plan Archive
An archive of business plans from both successful and unsucessful businesses.

PlanMagic Business Plan Software
Offers business, finance, marketing, and web presence planning software. Includes product descriptions, ordering information, and demo downloads.

WSDOT - Business with WSDOT
Administrative and Information Technology Contracts. Aerial Photography. Consultant Services Advertisements and Statements of Interest. Contract Ad and Award

Business
This page offers the top suggested resources for beginning business research. See the Foster Business Library for more resources. For answers to common business research

Welcome to Business Networks
The ability to talk with other people that have the same problems and also have solutions

Business SIG - American Society of Indexers
Resources for indexing of business-related books, journals, documents and databases. American Society of Indexers (National) Contact Information Find an Indexer

Business
Official Web site of the City of Mesa, Arizona. Located in Maricopa County’s East Valley. Your digital resource for Mesa’s municipal government.

STLtoday - Business
You’re not seeing this feature because either your browser doesn’t support JavaScript or JavaScript has been disabled.

Share This

Share This