Crenk » worth

Skype Deal Finally Completed and Worth $2.75 Billion

Steven Finch — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:00:12 +0000

So much has happened in the last few months with regards to Skype. eBay which bought Skype for $2.6 million back in 2005 has finally settled its litigation with Skype’s founders, and now the sale and restructure has been finalised.

The result: Skype now owns all of its technology, the founders received 14% of Skype and two seats on the Board of Directors, eBay keeps 30% of Skype, and the rest is owned by outside investors.

1. eBay now owns 30% of Skype, outside investors (including Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) own 70%.

2. 14% or so is owned by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype who have been added to the investor pool.

3. The Skype deal values the company at $2.75 billion, which is a little higher than the price eBay paid for Skype in 2005.

4. Joltid Limited is an investor in Skype. Joltid is owned by the Skype founders and was a major part of the legal dispute between eBay and the founders. The company held a key P2P technology that Skype now owns as part of this deal.

Thats the full recap on the new situation for Skype. Hopefully now Skype can move forward and start more innovations with their product.

Top 10 Financial Apps That Are Actually Worth Using

Steven Finch — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:24:00 +0000

There are so many financial applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch already, but how do you know which ones are actually worth using? Mint has put together a great list of the top 10 Financial applications everyone should use, so I thought I would post our top 5 and then let you head over to Mint to see the rest.

Bloomberg Mobile (Free)

Bloomberg

Wall Street Traders swear by the Bloomberg Terminal to analyze real-time financial market data, place trades, and get news and price quotes. Bloomberg Mobile isn’t quite the same thing but it is a beautifully designed app that provides up-to-the-minute news, stock quotes, company descriptions, and price chart and market trend analysis. The My Stocks feature is a more detailed replacement for Apple’s stock Stocks app. And Bloomberg Mobile takes full advantage of the iPhone’s position sensor by providing larger charts when you rotate the phone to a horizontal position.

Mobile Banking (Free)

Bank of America

Bank of America’s iPhone app, Mobile Banking is little more than a wrapper around its existing mobile site (which isn’t optimized for the iPhone) but if this is your bank you’ll still find it useful. You can use it to check available balances, pay bills, and transfer funds on-the-go 24/7. Its best feature is its ability to find the nearest ATM and Banking Center locations using the GPS in the iPhone, something that isn’t possible with the mobile site. BofA’s Online Banking Guarantee is its assurance that you won’t be responsible for any unauthorized transactions and it uses advanced encryption technology to prevent unauthorized access to your accounts and to protect your online identity.

PayPal (Free)

PayPal

In Japan many have thrown away their wallets in favor of paying for everything from train tickets to beer from a vending machine with their mobile phones. We’re not quite there yet but the PayPal app provides a tantalizing glimpse at this future. It provides complete access to your PayPal account allowing you to check your balances and send money to your friends and family, all from your iPhone. It supports 16 currencies and is secured by your existing PIN or password. It’s a good start but I’d like to see it go further. Missing is any way of displaying your transaction history and I’d also like to see it use the notification indicator on the app icon to show when money has arrived in your account.

Loan Shark ($4.99)

FoggyNoggin Software

Designed to help you navigate the often treacherous waters of financial lending, Loan Shark provides a number of features that let you calculate and compare loans from different vendors. You can calculate any component of a loan, including payment, interest rate or loan amount, see the full Amortization Table for the loan’s lifespan and play with “what-if” scenarios that let you determine the effect of making extra, higher, or lower payments. Loan Shark can help you determine how long it will take to pay off that credit card, determine how close you are to paying off your mortgage, and compare the cost of different loans, among many other uses. Kudos to FoggyNoggin Software for an easy-to-use and good looking interface that works well on a mobile device.

Bonus feature: Lets you locate nearby banks using the iPhone’s location-awareness

Tipulator (99 cents)

Tap Tap Tap

Tipulator stands out in a crowded field of tip calculators (it’s often said that the true test of how successful a new platform will be is how quickly a tip calculator appears for it) by marrying cute graphics with easy-to-use number dials. You can probably split the check without it but you won’t have as much fun doing it. And for 1/3 the price of your last latte, you owe it to yourself to at least try it.

dnScoop: What Is Your Blog or Website Worth?

Steven Finch — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:36:50 +0000

dnScoop asks the question, how much is your site worth? The site aims to value domains by finding different variables and then estimate the actual worth. Some of the factors used include, incoming links, age of the domain, pagerank, traffic, popularity and more. Sites like dnScoop arent totally accurate, but they tend to be quite fun and a nice novalty factor, this being said dnScoop is currently ranked 16,000 according to Alexa, which is extremely high.

Anyways, Crenk is currently worth $9,328 according to dnScoop. Is your site worth more?