text:
What an embarrassing way for Donovan McNabb to end his a career; traded in division—for a second and third round draft pick—only to be benched for Rex Grossman, of all people. He was benched again by the Vikings, for Christian Ponder the following season. And now he feels the need to come out and talk badly about a highly respected coach, while he entertains no known job offers.
Is that how he expects to find work in the NFL?
Yahoo's Shutdown Corner said it best;
"Consider this: Over the past two days, McNabb has blamed his failures on coaching, brought down a player who hasn't been drafted yet and whined about how the media didn't treat him right. He's shown that he can be self-serving and phony. Yet he made it through 13 NFL seasons without the press calling him on it."
Thirteen seasons…that's what it takes to make the truth known? Most were under the impression that McNabb was mistakenly under-valued by the Eagles and treated poorly by their fans. It's now easier to understand where those hard stances were coming from; especially considering his time here in Washington.
When asked if he had an ax to grind he said, "I do but I don't." So that mean's he does, right? He wouldn't say that Robert Griffin III would be a bad fit unless that was the case. Griffin is an incoming rookie, who the Redskins gave up a whole lot to acquire, yet McNabb believes that RG3 would be misused, as he was.
Regardless of whether the Redskins would or wouldn't change their offense—and of course they will—that statment becomes just as much shot at Griffin. Does McNabb believe that because HE couldn't effectively run the offense (and stay in shape), that Robert Griffin III won't be able to either?
The Redskins will actually play next year…Donovan McNabb probably won't. Ant that idea is only strengthened if he continues to play the victim card—gig's up.
Let us know what you think…
Were on Twitter @Redskins_101 and on Facebook: Redskins101. You can also leave your comments below and we'll get back to you ASAP.Tags: Donovan McNabb, Football, NFL, Robert Griffin III, Washington, Washington Redskins


text: Daniel Radcliffe: Harry Potter Oscars snub was "snobbery" Actor admits "it's kind of disheartening" that the franchise has been overlooked by the Academy Comments Written By 11:40 AM, 07 February 2012 Through eight films and ten years, Harry Potter was a cinema sensation in every possible way - except one. None of the films have received Oscar glory, and star Daniel Radcliffe tells Radio Times this week that it's down to snobbery. "I don't think the Oscars like commercial films, or kids' films, unless they're directed by Martin Scorsese. I was watching Hugo the other day and going, 'Why is this nominated and we're not?' I was slightly miffed. There's a certain amount of snobbery." Five of the Harry Potter films have been nominated for Oscars in technical categories but none for acting, directing or writing - let alone for best picture. "It's kind of disheartening. I never thought I'd care." But he does add: "How much of a pat on the back do we really need? We get paid stupid amounts of money." It's too early to know whether Radcliffe's new film, The Woman in Black, will do any better at awards ceremonies, but it did make £13.3m in its opening weekend in America. Radcliffe says he's been anxious about it: "I've never experienced this before. With Potter you basically knew that people were going to like it." Read more about life after Harry Potter in the new issue of Radio Times magazine, on sale now. Like this? Share it. Facebook Twitter Google Tumblr Pinterest Blogger Reddit VKontakt Print Email

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Outsourcing, grid computing, and hacker professionalism are trends that cannot be stopped, and the sum total of those factors will have a dramatic effect on the way businesses attempt to protect their IT system in the future, researchers and analysts agree.
The intersection of groundbreaking new IT architecture and previously unparalleled levels of professionalism among writers of malware attacks will result in an increasingly challenging electronic business environment, according to speakers at the ongoing Source Boston 2008 conference.
And while such estimations are sometimes characterized as fearmongering set in motion by an IT security industry dependent on the presence of new attacks to keep its coffers full, the assembled experts appeared to suggest as many answers as they proposed potential problems that need to be solved.
Each technological step forward should present its own array of security challenges and create new opportunities that force companies to continue to reassess their defenses, the presenters said.
Even mature IT trends such as outsourcing are having a significant impact on the changing manner in which businesses address security today.
"The reality is that we will be outsourcing some security functions," said Rich Mogull, an industry analyst with Securosis. "Organizations need to both take advantage [of outsourcing] where it makes sense and integrate outsourced security opportunities. At the same time, companies can't transfer all of their risk by handing off responsibilities to someone else; just because someone is handling your credit card information, customers won't let you off the hook if something goes wrong."
Companies will increasingly apply a mix of on-premise IT defenses and "in the cloud" security services to maximize their ability to thwart attacks and to adjust their protection to account for other outsourced operations, the analyst said.
"Companies will have a mix of outsourcing and in-sourcing," said Mogull. "For security, especially for things like firewall management, outsourcing absolutely makes sense. You'll also have companies outsourcing workstation systems management, and eventually they will outsource anti-virus management as well."
And just as attackers have leveraged the potential of grid computing via botnet systems that some experts estimate to be as powerful as the world's largest supercomputers, the IT security industry must likewise tap into distributed processing power to better protect customers, the presenters said.
With the bad guys already getting deep into grid computing, it will be crucial to fight firepower with firepower, they said.
"Companies will be distributing security [capabilities] to help figure out ahead of time where anomalous things are occurring; technologies will take advantage of distributed [sensors], virtualization, and grid computing to garner data using the herd mentality," said Chris Hoff, chief architect of security innovation at Unisys. "When you think about infrastructure in 10 years, instead of thinking about where virtualization gets us in terms of consolidation, [think] about distributing [security] processes to pools of memory and computing power."
Based on those major trends and other new paradigms, including virtualization, SaaS (software as a service), and SOA, companies will also have to consider new ways to address the issue of maintaining less concrete perimeters for their networks and IT systems.
As evidence that major security vendors already understand this emerging shift, the experts highlighted the fact that more than 20 such companies immediately signed on to help support new systems-defense tools from virtualization market leader VMWare, even though the technology being pitched is still under development.
"The concept of re-perimeterization will involve taking the [existing] perimeter and making it stronger, condensing it in places, and adding all sorts of little internal perimeters," said Mogull. "It's not that the perimeter will disappear soon, but it will consolidate. Companies don't have a choice about this; with remote workers and virtualization, this is already happening today."
However, perhaps the biggest shift in IT security is one that is already transpiring around information protection, as companies shift their primary focus away from systems defense to safeguarding their valuable data.
Both experts are endorsing an approach they have labeled as the "info-centric lifecycle," through which companies will create mechanisms to secure data from the time it is created until the time it is destroyed, with different tools and policies involved for protecting information in every phase of its existence.
In another Source conference session, Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith set forth the strategy he feels that anti-virus vendors must adopt to make their products more effective at stopping today's increasingly complex and customized malware attacks.
With malware authors already creating so many variants of their attacks, the result has been the equivalent of a denial-of-service assault leveled at anti-virus research labs, which can't possibly hope to write signatures fast enough to keep up with all the new threats, the expert said.
To help address the problem, the analyst contends that anti-virus providers need to move beyond the current defense model that emphasizes attack prevention and push their products and services further into attack detection and response.
So many threats are evading the traditional preventative approach used today that the transition must be made rapidly, with vendors moving to adopt their own in-the-cloud hosted anti-malware capabilities for identifying and reacting to attacks more quickly. More emphasis should also be placed on sharing information between anti-virus providers, the analyst said.
The continued adoption of a "herd" model among anti-virus systems that employs threat profiling on widely distributed end-point devices to gather information on new attacks, and central repositories of such data maintained by the vendors, will be another crucial element of future defense mechanisms, said Jaquith.
"Where we need to go from an industry perspective is to de-emphasize prevention, versus some of these other elements; vendors need to discover telemetry and [examine] applications running our machines and use that information to build better software, compared to the top-down, no-feedback model we have today," Jaquith said. "The current situation isn't working; malware defenses are not keeping pace and threat profiles are a lot different; the top-down model is a weak link."


text:
Let us know when your receive great advice so we can thank our lawyers and point others with similar questions in the right direction.Got it!
I was driving down the freeway when I drove over a a sign post that was left out from the night shift.that resulted in damage to the car and gas tank.
I am licensed in Nevada, but this answer should apply in Oregon as well.
From your facts, it appear that there was only property damage as a result of the accident. if so, that's a good thing since no one was injured as a result of the accident. In Nevada, as in most states, you cannot recover emotional distress damages as a result of property damage. However, if you were physically injured, you may be able to recover for the emotional distress caused by the injuries to your body. If that is the case, I recommend seeking appropriate medical care and the assistance of an experienced personal injury attorney.
Hope this helps.
/s Donald Kudler
Suing for medically documented bodily injuries when the defendant is the state is challenging enough, making a claim for emotional injuries will be an 11 on the 1 to 10 scale of difficulty. I know that this was a traumatic event for you. However, in the legal sense, "emotional distress" requires a showing of severe emotional distress which was accompanied by documented physical manifestations, OR something the law calls "outrage", which is enhanced intentional conduct. A sign post in the highway is negligence, not "outrage".
I wish you the best.
This answer is provided for informational purposes. True legal advice can only be given in an office consultation from an attorney in your jurisdiction who is experienced in the area of the law in which your concern lies.Ask a similar question
From your facts I see nothing supporting a claim for emotional distress. While the situation may have been traumatic, to support any claim for emotion al distress you need documentation from a mental health professional to support your claim. That said, you may not be able to make any emotional distress recovery without suffering any physical injuries.
To make matters worse, you would probably have to make a claim against a governmental agency, which has strict notice timelines that must be followed. By failing to timely submit a claim you lose your ability to sue in most states.
From what you have stated it seems like you do not have a case.Ask a similar question
Yes, only if you have medical records and reports supporting your claim of emotional distress. Otherwise, no.
I hope this helps and If you do find the answer helpful, please click on the "thumbs up" button below! Thanks!!
Nima Taradji
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer licensed in the State of Illinois only, and I am not your lawyer (unless you have been in my office and signed a contract). This communication is not intended as legal advice, and no attorney client relationship results. Please consult your own attorney for legal advice. This is for informational purposes only.
Sign up to receive a 3-part series of useful information and advice about personal injury law.
Post a free question on our public forum.Ask a Question
- or -
Search for lawyers by reviews and ratings.Find a Lawyer


text:
Penn State notebook: School not counting on Corbett's lawsuit to change sanctions
UNIVERSITY PARK — Penn State is proceeding as if it will serve the entire sentence that the NCAA imposed on the school last July when it sanctioned the football program.
Coach Bill O'Brien and acting athletic director Dave Joyner declined comment on the lawsuit Gov. Tom Corbett has filed in trying to overturn punishment that includes a four-year ban on postseason play and a significant loss of scholarships.
Asked if there is a chance of the sanctions getting reduced or eliminated, Joyner said: "Who knows? The NCAA has said this is the way it is, and we're going to live under that box. We're not going to plan our lives over anything changing."
A Penn State watchdog group that has been critical of the Board of Trustees and president Rodney Erickson called for new leadership of the school's athletic department while also lauding O'Brien.
"(O'Brien) has, in 12 months, exhibited far more leadership than the supposed leaders of our University," Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship said Monday in a statement. "And as for the direction of the University's athletic programs as we enter 2013, we eagerly await the hiring of a qualified, permanent athletic director."
Still mending
Tight end Kyle Carter, Penn State's second-leading receiver last season and a first-team all-Big Ten pick, may not be healthy enough to take part in spring practice, O'Brien said. Carter, who injured his right wrist in a Nov. 10 game at Nebraska, is still wearing a cast.
O'Brien said he is pleased with the progress Carter has made, but Penn State will be cautious with the rising redshirt sophomore.
Belton to stay at RB
Bill Belton's future apparently is still at running back despite losing his starting job last season to Zach Zwinak.
O'Brien said there are no plans to move the rising junior to another position even though Zwinak emerged as the No. 1 back after rushing for 1,000 yards. O'Brien said he and his staff will look at ways to better take advantage of the versatile Belton's skills.
"You can tell that (Belton) went home over Christmas, and he really worked," said O'Brien, who met with the players Monday at 7 a.m.
O'Brien said reserve running back Curtis Dukes has left the team.
Scott Brown is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at email@example.com or via Twitter at @ScottBrown_Trib.


text:
Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE)
Q2 2006 Earnings Conference Call
August 10, 2006 12:00 pm ET
Barry Diller – Chairman
Dara Khosrowshahi - President, CEO
Mike Adler - CFO
Stu Haas - VP, IR
Imran Khan - JP Morgan
Chris Gutek - Morgan Stanley
Paul Keung - CIBC World Markets
Aaron Kessler - Piper Jaffray
Marianne Wolk - Susquehanna
Robert Peck - Bear Stearns
Mark Mahaney - Citigroup
Doug Anmuth - Lehman Brothers
Justin Post - Merrill Lynch
Heath Terry - Credit Suisse
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Expedia, Inc., second quarter 2006 conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Stu Hass, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Stu Haas
Good morning, and welcome to Expedia, Inc.'s financial results conference call for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006. Joining me on today's call are Barry Diller, Expedia's Chairman and Senior Executive; Dara Khosrowshahi, our CEO; and, Michael Adler, our CFO.
The following discussion and responses to your questions reflects management views as of today, August 10, 2006 only. As always, some of the statements made on today's call are forward-looking, including our comments on financial expectations, our operational performance and margins, planned investments and spending, platform improvements, systems upgrades, growth of business lines, financial performance and dilution. Actual results may differ materially.
We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information to reflect future events or circumstances. Please refer to today's press release and the Company's filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005, for additional information about factors that could potentially affect our financial and operational results.
During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including OIBA, free cash flow, adjusted net income and adjusted EPS. In our press release, which is posted on the company's IR website at expediainc.com/ir, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures with the most comparable GAAP measures.
We encourage you to review the section entitled "Basis of Presentation" in today's earnings release for more details on how we are presenting results for some periods.
Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our result for the comparable period of 2005. With that, let me turn the call over to Dara.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Thanks, Stu, and thank you to everyone for making time to join us on the call today. I am going to spend my time with some high level comments on the quarter, update you on some longer-term strategic developments and close with some recent innovation wins across our brand portfolio. Then, I will turn the call over to Mike Adler for a deeper discussion on our financials.
Mike joined Expedia as CFO in May after many successful years at IAC as SVP on my finance team, and I am very happy to have him on board making an immediate contribution.
We are certainly pleased with the progress we made this quarter as we delivered solid financial results. Our gross bookings of $4.6 billion were up 10% against last year, revenue of $598 million was up 8% and operating income before amortization grew 6% to $184 million. A real bright spot was our merchant hotel revenue growth of 17%, the highest growth rate we have seen since Q4 of 2004.
We are especially pleased that we could deliver this OIBA growth in light of the significant investments we are making in our technology infrastructure and the costs of being a newly independent public company.
Profit across our points of sale improved with great performance from Hotels.com which continued its acceleration, with worldwide gross bookings growth of 25% and much better bottom-line growth. Our European operations continue to execute and grow profitably and we are very pleased with the development of ECT which had a second $250 million plus gross bookings quarter at near breakeven and in our Asia Pacific operations with eLong closing its first profitable quarter.
Our Q2 bookings growth, which was down against Q1, was affected by lower merchant air gross bookings particularly at Hotwire and some impact from the World Cup in Europe amongst other factors. We were also relatively conservative in our domestic Expedia.com marketing spend which have an effect of higher marketing efficiencies and lower gross bookings growth in Q2. Keep in mind that this will have some effect on Q3 revenue.
While our mid-term goal is to increase transactions and bookings growth, we will be disciplined in that regard and we will spend incremental marketing dollars if we are confident that we will get an adequate return on out spend.
Finally, while we have been allocating capital to what we believe are sensible long-term investments in our operations from new geographies to data warehouse to our technology platform, to building our corporate business, we have also made an investment in our own Company, buying back 20 million shares or over 5% of our equity base over the past few months. Following on that, our Board has authorized up to another 20 million share repurchase as we continue to view our equity as an attractive investment opportunity.
Now, let me talk a bit about airline economics. Clearly, Expedia like all travel agents continues to face a difficult operating environment in air and the trends haven't changed here, higher ticket prices, lower availability of merchant air inventory and continued declines in revenue per air ticket. We don't see these factors changing any time soon and we feel that we will face incremental headwinds in the back half of 2006 and beyond as GDS has reduced their incentive payments to agents in light of reduced fees from carriers.
Since we last spoke, we gained greater clarity into our overall economics on air distribution and we are cautiously optimistic that the reductions that we will experience beginning in the second half of 2006 are fairly close to what we had anticipated when we discussed their financial expectations in May.
That said, these discussions are very fluid and active at this point in time. And, while we are optimistic, we will not sacrifice long-term shareholder value in exchange for achieving quicker clarity for better short-term results. We hope to have more to report to you on our next quarter's call.
The good news on air is that we are now successfully flowing air segments to three GDS partners, Worldspan, Amadeus and Sabre. This provides us with greater global access to content and pricing and reduces our reliance on one content supplier. Just today, we announced a long-term strategic agreement with US Airways similar to long-term agreements that we put in place recently with other carriers providing for a degree of variable compensation tied to the value that we deliver. This helps establish a win/win economic incentive structure that we feel is good business for Expedia and good business for our supply partners.
As it relates to our platform redesign, we are on track with our work and we will move our first point of sale on to the new platform early next year. While being on the new platform in and of itself won't change anything that our travelers will notice, it will enabled our point of sale, among other things, to quickly adjust site merchandizing, speed up innovation and improve both search engine optimization and site stability.
After we get that first point of sale successfully ported over, we will then transition other worldwide sites in 2007 and 2008. We are also on track in executing against our enterprise data warehouse initiative, which will be initially focused on Sarbanes Oxley compliance efforts and then traveler facing improvements in terms of personalization, improved merchandizing and more segmented marketing beginning in 2007.
We are also making progress on our Apollo initiative as we looked to leverage our core assets, increase operational efficiencies arising within our brands and realize more value from our large global presence. We frankly haven't moved as quickly as I would have liked in 2006 to realize these benefits, but the good news is that we've done a ton of spade work here and we are more confident then ever that there is at least $50 million worth of annual OIBA improvements to be had and we will think we will hit that run rate some time in late 2007.
We have been pushing forward on the innovation front and we had a significant number of wins across the brand portfolio since our last call. For price sensitive shoppers looking to stay on top of great deals we now offer Expedia.com fare alerts and Hotwire's Travel Ticker. With fare alerts, we continually search for great deals for you on your choice of air fare and packages and automatically alert when your price trigger is reached. We believe Expedia is the only online travel site to offer this functionality for packages.
Combined with Expedia.com's industry-leading best price guarantee, travelers have increased peace of mind that when they shop with Expedia they are getting great results.
TripAdvisor not only pushed its reviews and opinions tally past the 5 million mark this quarter, they also introduced go-lists allowing travelers to publish list of their favorite destinations, attractions, activities, hotels, and restaurants.
We're also very proud to see TripAdvisor awarded two Webby's for the best site in the travel and community categories recognizing the Company's continuous innovation and content growth.
And just this week, we introduced a revised and expanded Expedia travel protection plan enabling travelers to cancel or change their trips for any reason; as well as offering reimbursements for baggage and flight delays, travel accident insurance, lost baggage, and travel document insurance, and much, much more. This great coverage begins for just $39 per person for travel to Las Vegas and $49 per person for other travel within the Continental U.S.
We certainly don't think that we're anywhere near done answering the question of why Expedia or why Hotels.com or why Hotwire, why TripAdvisor when it comes to researching and booking your travel. But we do think that the recent innovations such as the best price guarantee, package protection, Travel Ticker, coupled with great content like hotel reviews, trip guides, and guide books offer compelling reasons for doing so.
The good news for travelers and investors alike is that there's so much more innovation and value ahead for Expedia than there is behind us and we look forward to telling that evolving story in the quarters and years to come. Mike?
Mike Adler
Thanks. I'd like to review the results for the quarter, provide color on what we think is the story behind the numbers and then I will close with an update on our financial expectations for the year. Let me begin with gross bookings.
Overall, gross bookings were up 10% for the quarter, split between domestic growth of 7% and international at 22%. International growth was down versus prior quarters, but about where we thought it would come in based on an expected slowing due to the World Cup and our accompanying decision to weight marketing more heavily in
Q3. On the domestic front, we continue to face difficulty in sourcing merchant air inventory to create compelling package offers and we have seen significant price competition in packages from other OTAs. In turn, we're taking more aggressive action to ensure better values for travelers and packages.
Adding to our Q2 top line challenges were continued significant year-over-year declines in traffic and transactions from our MSN and affiliate channels at our flagship Expedia.com. The good news is we're seeing nice pickups in our keyword marketing and e-mail channels, but not enough to offset the declines we have seen.
We also proactively cut our national TV ad spend for Expedia.com in the quarter, which certainly impacted transactions, but allowed us to drive some modest marketing leverage.
Revenue margin for the quarter at 13.1% was down 32 basis points from Q2 '05. The biggest driver was the decrease in our domestic air revenue margin due to higher airfares and lower revenue per ticket, although the 32 basis point drop compares favorably to the 125 basis points in Q1 '06. Revenue margin would have declined more absent lower gross bookings in Europe due to the World Cup and increased revenue from the benefit of Easter travel in Q2 this year.
As I mentioned, revenue margin continues to be impacted by deteriorating air economics as airlines continue to pressure their payments to agencies. Air revenue per ticket was down 10% during Q2 and as Dara mentioned, GDS incentive fee reductions will be an incremental headwind to our air business going forward.
In our planning, we are assuming that air fares and load factors will remain high and that we continue to have challenges accessing merchant air inventory, which will also impact our packages business.
On the hotel front, we saw approximately 120 basis points of raw margin degradation compared with 190 basis points in Q1. As a reminder, we expect to see favorable comps in the back half of 2006 as we anniversary the striking of lower margin deals, easing our year-over-year raw margin declines. We continue to believe we'll see improved raw margin decline in 2006 versus 2005's 125 basis points. That said, the actions we're taking on packaged pricing will take a bite out of this improvement.
I would like to emphasize that while hotel margins are a key indicator for our business, it's also important to point out that as merchant hotel becomes a bigger portion of our overall revenue mix, the impact on overall revenue margin can be positive even when raw margins decline in the hotel product category. Our worldwide raw margin decline this quarter was actually a relatively small factor in overall revenue margin decline due to an increase of merchant hotel revenue in our mix.
Despite less revenue margin degradation in Q2 versus Q1, we expect revenue margin to decline more significantly in the second half of the year versus Q2's 32 basis points due to continued challenges in air economics, including reduced merchant air availability and our desire to deliver great package savings for travelers in a competitive environment.
Putting this all together, we think revenue margin in the second half of the year will decline similarly to the year-on-year decline we saw in the first half.
Turning back to the P&L, gross margin for the quarter excluding stock-based compensation improved 118 basis points to 78.8%. Many of the Apollo efforts Dara mentioned in his comments are aimed at cost of revenue improvements, so we would hope to have an improved picture there over the longer term, although it's worth keeping in mind some of these savings may be offset in the near term with investments in our call and data center efforts.
As to operating expenses, sales and marketing grew 5% this quarter, below the 8% growth in revenue, largely due to a decision not to advertise Expedia.com on television during the quarter, but rather to focus our efforts on more targeted local ads as well as our decision to move some marketing spend in Europe into Q3.
General and administrative expense was down slightly on a sequential basis, as most of our public company hiring is behind us, but was up significantly year on year reflecting increased legal costs and our addition of staff to become a public company. As we've said previously, we do expect G&A to flatten in the back half of the year with favorable comps versus the second half 2005 than during the first half.
Technology and content grew 14% year-over-year as we've added additional technology staff and we expect this line item to continue growing faster than revenue during the remainder of 2006. We expect even higher year-over-year growth in 2007 as we put software under development into service and start amortizing its costs.
You'll note CapEx was up substantially year-over-year from $13 million to $21 million. We anticipate full-year 2006 CapEx will come in between $70 million and $85 million, which would represent annual growth of at least 35%. We expect that these expenses will start to hit the P&L in 2007 as the software is placed in service, likely causing further deleverage from technology and content in 2007 in addition to what we are experiencing in 2006.
Our goal in Q2 was to improve the bottom line and we accomplished that with 6% OIBA growth compared with the first quarter's decline. But what we absolutely must improve upon is our top line performance at the transaction and gross bookings level to better exploit our business model's operating leverage.
While I'm confident we're making the right long-term investments to fundamentally transform our traveler's experience and drive the top line more strongly, the bulk of the payoff there is in 2007 and 2008. So in the second half of this year, we will have to depend more on the effectiveness of our marketing initiatives and package pricing to drive top line. To the extent we're successful in these efforts, we would hopefully see improvement in top line metrics.
I want to close my comments with an update on our expectations for full year 2006. We continue to believe OIBA for the full year 2006 will decline between 15% and 5%. We certainly had a solid second quarter compared to our first, but given the uncertainty of the effectiveness of our stepped up marketing in an extremely competitive environment, continued challenges around air economics, and our aggressive package pricing, as well as the uncertainty of the terror disruption of last night, we feel it is appropriate at this time to maintain our full-year expectations at prior levels.
While we don't provide quarterly expectations, we do want to remind investors that Q3 will not benefit from the Easter revenue which hit Q2 this year and that lighter gross bookings in Q2, due to reduced Expedia.com marketing and the World Cup are likely to reduce revenue in Q3. We also plan to increase our marketing spend in Europe and elsewhere for Q3, for which much of the revenue payoff will likely fall in Q4.
To be crystal clear, the OIBA decline for the full year is certainly not performance that anyone on this management team is pleased with and we do expect to do better going forward, but it does reflect the reality of the challenges we face in the near term while we make significant investments for the Company's long-term future.
We think the investments we are making will pay off and we'll continue to work on striking a responsible balance between near-term growth and long-term shareholder value.
Lastly, in addition to our focus on maximizing shareholder value by growing OIBA and ultimately free cash flow, we are also mindful of other inputs to shareholder returns, such as an efficient capital structure. Hence, we are very pleased today to announce the completion of our 20 million share repurchase authorization for $288 million, as well as an authorization of an additional 20 million share repurchase. We look forward to reporting our future results to you and updating you on our progress in improving our operations in capital structure.
I want to thank everyone for your time today and for your continued interest in Expedia. I'll now turn the call over to Barry for some closing thoughts ahead of Q&A.
Barry Diller
Good morning. You heard from Dara and Mike about the details of the quarter, much better than the disappointments, but nevertheless, projecting negative growth for the year isn't anything to celebrate. Since you've also heard about the investments and progress we've been making, all geared toward reversing this year's tough results, I'd like to talk to you about the state of Expedia. What kind of company have we become? More pointedly, are we now a growth company or a value company?
We've got lots of competitors, Expedia is a big enterprise, nearly twice the level of gross bookings a our nearest online competitor. And while our somber expectations for 2006 overall don't scream growth, there are significant parts of our business in high growth mode: our Hotels.com business continues its rebirth. Everyone thought had lost purpose along with the cheap hotel rooms of a few years ago. This includes the blossoming international business with an extremely modest cost base. Gross bookings growth in excess of 70%. Our corporate business, ECT given up for dead by some, but not by us, posted another near 50% growth rate quarter and our fledgling Asia Pacific business, the initial outpost in China and Australia also enjoyed healthy growth with a new sibling to come in short order in Japan.
What do these seemingly disparate growth businesses have in common? They're all leveraging the technology and a brand base that has them at or close to breakeven. The giant machine no one else even comes close to being able to leverage as we are beginning to do. So growth ought to be in our stars.
The truth is, I believe, we can be both a growth and a value company. That's what all this churn inside this Company and what all this investment is about. We've certainly not stirred up all this trouble just to squeeze the value out of the enterprise for as long as it lasts. But while going through this hard slog, we continue to clock extremely strong free cash flow, more than $700 million over the past 12 months and there's plenty of skate left. We get less than 5% of all travel spend, but we have a great brand recognition, we're just getting into position to exploit our size and our looming differentiation into that spend.
As to our current opinion on value, clearly this Board of Directors made that known through action via our stock repurchase and our authorization today of an additional repurchase. Having gone on a bit about this, the stark truth is it really matters very little what I or anyone else within these walls says about the color of our spots. The Street and the buy side are going to crunch their numbers, perform their channel checks, study all the leads, and form their own opinion.
Yet I think the ultimate arbiter is going should be the cash flows we deliver not just today but in the years ahead. Past that, everything is really just noise, but all the noise and pro forma talk aside, this Board and our senior leadership team are not focused on noise. We're instead making disciplined investment and operating decisions in a very tough competitive environment for the benefit of our long-term holders. We are believers. Those that bet with us or against us will be making their decisions along the way and only time will tell. So thank you.
Stu, let's get to the question part of the session today.
Stu Haas
Okay, thanks Barry. Let's move on to the Q&A portion of the call with Barry, Dara, and Mike. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one or two questions so we can fit more questioners into the call today. Operator, will you please remind our listeners how to ask a question?
Question-and-Answer Session
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Imran Khan - JP Morgan.
Imran Khan - JP Morgan
Congratulations, good quarter. A couple of questions. Number one, last quarter you talked about the conversion rate decline and I was wondering if you can give us more color how the conversion rate was this quarter overall and maybe through different channels?
Secondly, corporate travel had a very strong quarter, continued to have a strong quarter and I think you opened up a new office in Germany as well. I was try to get a sense, if I look at the customer base in the corporate travel and the revenue base, what percentage is coming from international versus U.S.? That's it, thanks.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Sure, Imran. On the conversion rate, in general, this quarter, the year-over-year conversion rate for Expedia and Hotels.com was flat. So it didn't go up or down significantly, Hotels.com was able to drive unique users and audience growth pretty effectively and with flat conversions, that translated into the good transaction growth, translated into good gross bookings growth and very, very good performance this quarter.
Hotwire conversion I think was down a bit in air and I think they did a good job of conversion on the hotel side. But as Hotwire gets less availability to great air inventory, that becomes a less attractive product for consumers and they've been doing a great job changing their mix over from air to hotel products.
I think on the corporate travel business, the international side of the business is performing very well. It is less than 50% of our gross bookings, but tends to have a higher percentage of revenue as a percentage of gross bookings. The international business and the domestic business at this point are slightly profitable or close to breakeven and we think Germany is obviously a big, attractive market. We've had some success there with Expedia.com and Hotels.com. Although it's certainly not an easy market to get into, but we think it's a very important market to have a presence in and we're committed to investing in that market.
Imran Khan - JP Morgan
Thank you, Dara.
Your next question comes from Chris Gutek - Morgan Stanley.
Chris Gutek - Morgan Stanley
Thanks. A couple quick questions. First, big picture question on the economic model. Assuming the economy stays reasonably healthy and load factors and occupancy rates stay reasonably high, I'm curious if you guys have considered any meaningful change on the economic model, either to take on more risk with inventory and/or accepting lower margins or less attractive cash flow characteristics to free up some inventory and improve the growth rate?
Dara Khosrowshahi
As far as the economic model goes, I think that if we just execute better as far as our relationships with our supply partners, I think that we can just get better access to inventory.
One of the particular changes in our economic model that we have made is that whereas we used to essentially have a flat rate at all times, we have signed, call it more sophisticated deals with certain suppliers where our take changes based on the needs of those specific suppliers. Is it a weekend day when you are getting a booking, a hotel booking, or is it a weekday, when do you need the traffic? or are you flying, call it from a home airport or are we giving you a connecting flight? So based on the kind of value that we are delivering to our supply partners, our economics may change.
We found that kind of an economic change is something that our supply partners like and it will allow us then to turn around and eventually take more attractive travelers and deliver them to the supply partners who most want those travelers at that time. It lets us yield our demand coming in. That's been our first step, and we think it's a good step and we're certainly going to continue with that.
As far as risk goes, we have not taken any significant amount of risk. It is something that we will probably test. To the extent that we test it, it will probably be in Europe having to do with the summer sun destinations at peak times there. We're going to be very, very careful in anything that we do and the benefit of this business is that you can test in limited markets, see what works, and then try to scale it.
We do have some folks on the European team now who have had a significant amount of experience with this kind of activity and the most important part of taking on a new activity is to get great, smart people who have prior experience and then start working on them in a small way and then hopefully scale it.
I will probably have more to tell you about this next year. As is, we're going to be careful and not take too much risk in that effort.
Chris Gutek - Morgan Stanley
As a quick follow-up on the theme of economic model shifting here with the GDS opt-in programs, including Sabre's efficient access solution, you guys have said that you're supportive of this efficient access solution. Could you elaborate, certainly for mom and pop travel agencies, they would need to opt into these programs. But for a big agency like Expedia, it's not clear that you would need to do that. When you say supportive, what exactly does that mean and could you talk a little bit about the economics?
Dara Khosrowshahi
Well, we don't want to talk about specific economics that we have with supply partners or our GDSs, so I'm not going to talk about the particular economics.
Our strategy in general as it relates to connectivity is one of flexibility. So we've made real technology investments and our tech teams have done a great job of getting us connectivity to three GDS providers; frankly, all of whom are offering different kinds of solutions to us. Both economic solutions and content solutions that we can either elect into or not.
At the same time, we are also talking with our airline partners and in some cases, we're doing deals directly with them. We've always had economic relationships with our airline partners, but we are being much more flexible as to how we do business with them as well.
So you put that all together and I would say two, three years from now, each and every deal that we have with our supply partners is going to be unique and different based on their needs, based on our needs and in particular as far as Sabre's EAS solution goes, we looked at it, we think it's a good approach for the industry as a whole, both for large and small travel agencies. We are sending segments over to Sabre as we speak and we expect to do business with them because we think they've taken a pretty good approach.
Chris Gutek - Morgan Stanley
Thanks, Dara. You bet.
Our next question comes from Paul Keung - CIBC World Markets.
Paul Keung - CIBC World Markets
Good morning. You mentioned earlier in the call that you are shifting some marketing spend from the second or third quarter in Europe. I guess in spite of today's news, as things in Europe start to slow a bit, do you still have the ability to slow that marketing spend in Europe, or have you committed a lot of money already?
Dara Khosrowshahi
Paul, we're pretty careful about our marketing spend and in Europe, we have a very, very disciplined team there. A fair amount of the marketing spend is online partner-type marketing spend, which is variable in nature. So to the extent that we spend it and the returns are not there, we can act very, very quickly and I'd say that's the majority of the day-to-day spend that we spend in Europe.
We do have some offline spend, TV spend, radio spend, and outdoor spend in various points of sales in Europe. So far -- again, taking the travel disturbances of last night --so far, we've been pleased with the results, but that doesn't speak to how the results are going to be going forward.
So while we're being careful not to commit huge loads of marketing spend, but obviously if there's some kind of a disruption, we may suffer one way or the other. Right now, it's too soon to tell and we'll have more obviously as the weeks and the months go on. But we're pretty confident in our overall approach there.
Paul Keung - CIBC World Markets
The second question had to do with you mentioned senior notes offering today and a larger buyback. Do you think the covenants of the new -- I noticed a lot of buybacks with those proceeds, and I guess from a strategic level or a financial level, how do you feel about buying back stock with debt?
Dara Khosrowshahi
Sorry, but due to SEC regulations, we can't comment on that right now, but we can refer you to the 8-K that we filed this morning.
Mike Adler
We're not trying to be cute, Paul, we just can't talk about it.
Paul Keung - CIBC World Markets
I understand, I should have thought about that it. I'll throw another question here then. Priceline reported earlier this week, I think you can see they've continued to put some good numbers in that second, third tier non-air market, and doing it essentially with partners. When I look at your European operations from your content, it is probably one area you are relatively underinvested in. Do you have any plans to address this hole in your distribution of content today?
Dara Khosrowshahi
I think the way that we're approaching those markets is with Hotels.com first. So our having multiple brands in Europe is a real advantage for us. So Expedia tends to be a brand that is more associated with major airline/airlift so to speak and going into primary and secondary markets. But we can kind of get to those secondary and tertiary markets very quickly with Hotels.com, we're more focused on those markets I'd say now, than we have been in the past. I think you'll see increasing focus on those markets going forward with Hotels.com.
We then come in with Expedia sometimes to the extent that we can get airlift, and Expedia is also working pretty well in gaining airlift to second tier carriers in Europe as well. So we'll come in with Hotels and we'll follow-up with Expedia and we'll make the adequate investments there.
Paul Keung - CIBC World Markets
Great, thanks a lot.
Next question comes from Aaron Kessler - Piper Jaffray.
Aaron Kessler - Piper Jaffray
Great, thank you. A couple of questions. First, the international growth, it did slow and I think partly because of the reduced marketing, but also it looks like it's slower than the competitors.
One of them said they benefited from the World Cup. I want to see why you didn't benefit. Maybe it was the airlines bookings that were reduced.
Secondly, can you give us an update maybe where you're at in terms of the Japan expansion? Thanks.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Sure. As far as the international markets in Europe in particular, we were affected by World Cup. As to the specific effect, part of it depends on, I'd say the concentration in various marketplaces that we have versus one of our competitors.
So, for example, in the German marketplaces, Germans weren't traveling a whole lot with World Cup, but bookings going into Germany and certainly hotel bookings going into Germany benefited. It's hard to tell because different competitor have different mixes and that certainly affected the growth rates.
Also, if you take a look at the dollar growth, we're obviously growing off of a much larger base and would say that probably in Europe if you compare us for example, to Priceline, we have a much larger air segment in our business and the air segment in our business is not growing nearly as quickly as the hotel segment, so there's an additional kind of mix issue there.
Aaron Kessler - Piper Jaffray
The increase in the raw margins, was that due to the change in the mix from airlines to hotels as well?
Dara Khosrowshahi
That was largely responsible for it. That's exactly right.
As far as Japan goes, we are working hard and our target launch date is towards the end of this year. So we've got a team in place, the management team is in place in Japan. We have a great APAC operation that has really executed very well in Australia and we're confident that we'll have a hotel-only site up in Japan later this year and we're confident that we'll grow it maybe slowly at first off of a small base, but certainly surely because we've done a pretty good job of being able to organically grow in these kinds of markets.
Aaron Kessler - Piper Jaffray
What is the competitive market like today in Japan?
Dara Khosrowshahi
Japan is a very different marketplace. It is dominated by very large package operators, the Japanese Tourist Board being the largest out there. Online penetration, it's actually very difficult to get data about the Japanese marketplace. Rakitan obviously is a big player in the online travel space there and it's a very different market than the markets that we see in the U.S., but our approach works pretty well in that the technology is essentially already paid for.
The Asia Pacific marketing team can work on variable marketing, online marketing so that we don't have to put out a bunch of brand marketing out there. The number of people that we actually have to have on the ground is pretty modest. So if we pay for translation, work on the site itself, we've got the supply, so we're able to get in with pretty modest costs and then we'll start spending variable marketing, we'll see what the returns are and we'll go from there.
Aaron Kessler - Piper Jaffray
Great, thank you.
Dara Khosrowshahi
You bet.
Our next question comes form Marianne Wolk - Susquehanna.
Marianne Wolk - Susquehanna
Thanks. I had a couple of quick questions. First of all, can you give us a sense of the percentage of your mix now overseas coming from merchant bookings and to what extent it lags U.S. rates?
The second question I have was whether or not you could provide some more clarity on the deals you struck with US Airways and the other airlines, how many deals have you struck? How do those economics work relative to the existing plans that you have?
Dara Khosrowshahi
Now, what do you mean by merchant bookings in Europe, can you elaborate on what you're looking for?
Marianne Wolk - Susquehanna
Yes. Internationally, Merchant bookings are 40% worldwide, what does that rate look like overseas?
Dara Khosrowshahi
I see. Do we have that number, guys?
Mike Adler
We haven't discussed that publicly, Marianne, at this time.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Okay, so, Marianne, that's a no. Sorry.
Marianne Wolk - Susquehanna
How about the other question about the clarity on the US Airways deal and just in general, the kinds of deals you're striking with the airlines directly?
Dara Khosrowshahi
Again, I'm very hesitant to discuss specific deals with airlines. What we love about the U.S. Air deal is that it's a five-year deal, it's a long-term deal similar to the deal, for example, that we struck with Continental and it has certain variable characteristics in it. So that to the extent that we are helping out U.S. Air, what they pay us perhaps goes up and to the extent that we're getting them traffic where they don't need a lot of help, payments perhaps go down. That's the general idea of the variable structures that we have in place.
But again, I don't want to get specific into US Air or Continental or some of the others that we have struck.
Marianne Wolk - Susquehanna
A final question then. Does the aggressive buyback say anything about your ability to find attractive M&A targets?
Dara Khosrowshahi
When we look at an M&A target, we take a look at that target and we say, well, how does that compare to our being able to allocate capital internally? Now, the benefit of an M&A target is that you're typically able to get some cost synergies out of it. The detriment of an M&A target is that it comes with real risks and it comes with real integration pain that I think you've seen in some of our competition as well.
So I think that right now based on all of the activity that we have internal to the Company and we are undertaking a number of initiatives out there, and based on the relative value of our own equity, which we consider pretty attractive, we've decided to allocate capital internally.
You can tell that we are being prudent, we are not spending all of our money, so to speak, and I think that the plan going forward is one of prudence and I would say opportunism based on what we see out there. Barry, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.
Barry Diller
Well, I would just add that, you never know what opportunities are around the corner. Having the amount of cash that we have and resources to cash is a good, solid thing for us, particularly long-term. Certainly we're always in one or two acquisition, I wouldn't call them formal discussions or anything like that, but we always have something on the horizon. We'll only act if we think that again there is opportunity there and not only worth it, but one that we can handle.
Stu Haas
Thanks. Marianne, this is Stu. While we're not going to break out those specific numbers, I can tell you that the percentage mix for merchant hotel domestic/international is not greatly a different. Operator, can we take the next question.
Next question comes from Robert Peck - Bear Stearns.
Robert Peck - Bear Stearns
Hey, guys, just two quick questions. One, Dara, could you update us on the rewards program, what the status of that is, maybe try to give us a little bit of color exactly how that will look?
Two, on the ETC side, can you talk about the number of clients you have right now and what percent are in the Fortune 1000? Thanks.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Sure. On the loyalty program, we are hard at work developing the technology and are on track to launch it later this year, although I think that it is going to be a soft launch. Again, we are going to be in test and learn mode. We'll do a soft launch. Obviously you launch a loyalty program in order to effect traveler behavior and part of it is to increase the loyalty of our travelers as far as having them come back. Part of that may be to get them to transact more frequently with us, and part of it may be to shift the kind of transactions that they transact with us from, call it lower-margin product to higher-margin product.
That's the goal of the loyalty program and we believe that during the soft launch, testing and learning will then enable us to go wide, much, much more effectively and get the kind of return that we want out of this kind of loyalty program. The ECT, I don't have the ECT numbers, guys, do you--.
Stu Haas
For ECT, the clients are approximately 3,000 and Fortune 1000 is less than 20%, 10% to 20%.
Dara Khosrowshahi
I think historically, the sweet spot for ECT has been, call it the mid-sized corporation. But as we have built up the tool base at ECT and increased the feature sets that we have and also now introduced a real business intelligence function, which is automated great, great reporting capabilities that are totally automated; and a business intelligence function we will be adding to, we think that we become a whole lot more attractive to larger clients.
So I think on a go-forward basis, I'm hoping that you'll see more of a mix of larger travel clients as well although we will always get our share of small, medium enterprises because of the combination of great technology and costs that we have out there.
What I'm really happy to report on ECT is that the metrics as far as our customer service metrics are radically improved, they are excellent. We are holding ourselves to a bar that I think is above the bar than a lot of other corporate travel providers and we are hitting those bars and I'm just ecstatic about the service levels. It can always get better, but we've done a lot better.
Robert Peck - Bear Stearns
A quick follow-up if I might, On the loyalty program, it seems like there's several different aspects to it. Is one aspect of it anything like an Expedia points, where it would be transferable against various suppliers?
Dara Khosrowshahi
I don't want to go into detail there, I'm sorry.
Stu Haas
Also, I'd like to clarify my response to the question on the ETC clients and the Fortune 1000 the number is 20 in the Fortune 500.
Our next question comes from Mark Mahaney - Citigroup.
Mark Mahaney - Citigroup
Two questions. First, Michael, just to get very specific about your September quarter revenue guidance, are you saying that we should expect revenue to decline sequentially given the Easter bump in June 2, and given the cutback in marketing spend in the June quarter?
Mike Adler
No, I didn't. First of all, we don't give quarterly revenue expectations, but typically we do expect Q3 revenue to exceed Q2 revenue and I don't think there's anything different.
Mark Mahaney - Citigroup
Great. Then just to follow-up on one of the earlier questions about the loyalty program, a soft launch: does that mean just in the U.S. and the idea would be to roll that out internationally in '07? Or would it be a soft launch worldwide and whatever that would mean? Thank you.
Mike Adler
It will be a U.S. launch. We don't have plans yet as far as what we do worldwide. So right now it's a U.S. initiative.
Mark Mahaney - Citigroup
One final question. Is there a way that you would quantify the GDS impact or how much revenue OIBA could be at risk with the GDS negotiations going on, or maybe answer the question by talking about the extent of the contribution to OIBA you've had in the past from GDS incentive fees?
Dara Khosrowshahi
We don't want to talk about the specifics regarding GDS incentives. I think that Travelocity in their call said that the Q2 revenues were $28 million or so from GDS incentives. Is that right, Stu?
Stu Haas
I think it's 16% in North American revenues.
Dara Khosrowshahi
So you can assume that the dollar amount that we make is higher, so the 16% is $28 million, the dollar amount that we have at Expedia is higher than the $28 million, but the percentage of our total revenue is lower than Travelocity's because obviously we do a whole lot more hotel business than they do. Is that clear, Mark? So the dollar number is bigger than Travelocity's, the percentage would be lower. So that's all we'll say.
Mark Mahaney - Citigroup
That's clear, thank you very much.
Dara Khosrowshahi
You bet.
Your next question comes from Doug Anmuth - Lehman Brothers.
Doug Anmuth - Lehman Brothers
I wanted to ask about your packaging business. It looks like it's held actually over the last few years in the low 20s as a percentage of revenue. Looks like it's a pretty important piece of the story in the back half of this year. I'm just curious what initiatives you're taking, what else you can do to improve the packaging business or if it's strictly just pretty much based on price right now in the market. Thanks.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Well, Doug, I think one of the issues on packaging is that the relative attractiveness of packaged products increases to the extent that we're able to secure bulk fares from our airline partners. As load factors have increased in the industry, especially as you get into summer travel, the percentage of bulk fares that we get from our airline partners decreases, which then make the discounts that we can offer for our packaged products relative to let's say if you bought the components separately, it reduces those discounts.
So packages as an overall choice for consumers, becomes relatively less attractive. That's just a fact of life, I think you heard it with some of our competitors as well. Which is, if there are less bulk fares packages again become a bit less attractive.
That said, we are very actively look at how we can push package revenue growth and I do think that we are going to be more aggressive going forward on promoting our packages and also pricing our packages as well, because we think it's a terrific product and we think it's a good traveler kind of experience and it's something that we do want to get in front of our travelers.
Doug Anmuth - Lehman Brothers
Great, thank you.
Your next question comes from Justin Post - Merrill Lynch.
Justin Post - Merrill Lynch
Thank you. Dara, it looks like 2Q may have beat your expectations coming out of 1Q, but your year is unchanged. Were you able to step up your investments in the second half on the back of some pretty good 2Q results?
Dara Khosrowshahi
Justin, we try not to run the business on a quarterly basis. So we're happy with Q2 results. They certainly beat Street expectations. Q2 came in stronger than we expected as well. We're certainly happy with those results.
As far as, has it changed the way that we invest? I don't think so. We knew that going into this year was going to be a heavy investment year and the investments that we are making tend to be multi-quarter investments and in some cases, even multi-year investments. One good quarter isn't really going to help you speed one up or slow one down.
Justin Post - Merrill Lynch
On the gross margin, the results look pretty good to us. Was that due to the mix, or were you seeing real cost improvements already in that line?
Dara Khosrowshahi
I would say primarily, it is mix at this time. We do expect to see improvements start to filter into the business by Q4 and then more impactfully next year.
Justin Post - Merrill Lynch
Last question, on the advertising revenues, I believe Dara at a conference you might have said that advertising was up to 5% of revenues. If you want to just update us on that, I know some of that is inter-company, but with the TripAdvisor traffic looking really good, could you talk about what the contribution is and how that's affecting net revenue rates?
Dara Khosrowshahi
TripAdvisor revenue growth continues to grow with the traffic growth as well so we're very, very happy about that. But to some extent the growth that you see in that revenue is also eliminated inside our numbers as well. So if you look at advertising as a percentage of our overall revenue, I do think that going forward it will be a higher percentage of our revenue over some long-term period. And obviously that will be a help as far as our raw margins go. I think that was the question you were asking, Justin, is that right?
Justin Post - Merrill Lynch
Yes. Did it have a material affect net of elimination on raw margins? Or was it still pretty small at this point?
Dara Khosrowshahi
It did not have a material impact on our revenue margins.
Justin Post - Merrill Lynch
Great, thank you. That answers the question.
We have time for one final question and our final question comes from Heath Terry - Credit Suisse.
Heath Terry - Credit Suisse
Great, thank you. When you look at your international revenue growth that you saw this quarter, is there a way that you can give us an idea of whether there was any significant change in the breakdown? What percentage of that originated or was purchased in the U.S. versus Europe to help give us an idea of the impact of World Cup?
Dara Khosrowshahi
When we give you international revenue, that's revenue that's originating from Europe.
Mike Adler
Point of sale.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Yes. So it's based on the point of sale. It's not based on what we call point of supply. So it would be affected by the World Cup. It is very, very difficult to truly identify the World Cup event, but we would guess that it's under $20 million in gross bookings.
Heath Terry - Credit Suisse
Great. Thank you, that's very helpful.
Thank you. At this time, I'll turn it back to Stu Haas for closing comments.
Stu Haas
Thank you for joining us on the call today and for your questions. A replay will be available on the Investor Relations website shortly after the completion of this call. We appreciate your interest in Expedia Inc. and look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thanks for your time.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes the Expedia second quarter 2006 conference call. We thank you again and at this time you may disconnect.
Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of Seeking Alpha. However, we view them as an important resource for bloggers and journalists, and are excited to contribute to the democratization of financial information on the Internet. (Until now investors have had to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for transcripts.) So our reproduction policy is as follows: You may quote up to 400 words of any transcript on the condition that you attribute the transcript to Seeking Alpha and either link to the original transcript or to www.SeekingAlpha.com. All other use is prohibited.
If you have any additional questions about our online transcripts, please contact us at: email@example.com. Thank you!


text:
Vogar ferðaþjónusta Vogahraun Daddis Pizza - TAXI
Website: www.vogahraun.is. Email: email@example.com. Vogar travel service offers various possibilites in accommodation, from camping and sleeping bag accommodation to rooms with fully made up beds, with or without a private bathroom. Access to kitchen facilities and sitting room is always included in the price. Laundry service is also available. Breakfast is included for rooms with a private bathroom but is available for other accommodation possiblitiles as well. Next to the guesthouse is a small pizzeria, Daddis Pizza, which serves delicious pizza and beverages. Daddis Pizza is on Facebook - www.facebook.com/myvatn. From June 1st to September 1st , Taxi service is available, for up to 8 persons (+ 354 893 4389).Read more
Bjarg campsite
Situated in a beautiful peaceful surrounding right on the North-East shore of Lake Mývatn, just across the Tourist Info & Supermarket. Service provided: camping, accommodation, hot showers, cooking facilities, laundry service, bike rental and souvenir shop. You can get a DISCOUNT up to 1000 ISK for camping or accommodation here, if you buy excursions (Askja, Ice Cave, Whale Watching, Horse riding etc.) and scheduled bus tickets (Dettifoss, Landmannalaugar, Höfn etc.) in Bjarg Reception.Read more
Hlíð camping & cottages
The site is on the northern shore of lake Mývatn, right beneath the airport. We are situated about 1 km away from the lakeside, in the middle of a 300 years old lava field and with a fantastic view over the lake. On the campground we offer good facilities for tents and trailers. Hotel-accommodation in 9 small double rooms, 2 cottages, the guesthouse has 13 rooms, huts/cottages are 9 m², each with two beds. Additional services are available.Read more
Fjalladýrð - Möðrudalur Farm - accommodation, camping, traditional food, recreation, super jeeps to nature pearls of the northern highlands: ASKJA or KVERKFJÖLL tours every day.Read more


text:
Firefighters lead Fill-the-Boot drive
throughout May
The St. Petersburg Area Chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Association is about to embark on its Fill-the-Boot campaign. The event is conducted by the St. Petersburg Association of Fire Fighters, Local 747.
The 2008 Fill-the-Boot kicks off citywide May 2-3, 10, 17, 23 and 24 at several major intersections across St. Petersburg.
In honor of this, Mayor Rick Baker has proclaimed May as Firefighter Appreciation Month.
Fill Gibbs stadium
in a Prayer for Peace
On Thursday, the Seven x 7 movement of 49-plus churches is calling thousands of people to fill up Gibbs High football stadium in a Prayer for Peace in south St. Petersburg. Hear the plan for street-level outreach all summer. Doors open at 6 p.m. for live praise directed by music minister Ricky Welch and at 7 p.m. for prayer. Gibbs is at 850 34th St. S. For information or to see the list of churches, visit www.
sevenx7.com or call 866-0873.
Lights out on beach while turtles nesting
With the official start of turtle nesting season Thursday, residents and property owners of beachfront properties are reminded it's time for "Lights Out" along the beachfront.
Most of Pinellas' beach communities have ordinances prohibiting lighting that casts glare onto the beach during turtle nesting season May 1 to Nov. 1. Clearwater is the only city with no beach lighting ban, but all county residents are encouraged to turn the lights out after 9 p.m. To report sea turtle activity, call the Clearwater Marina Aquarium at 441-1790, ext. 22.


text:
No, it wasn't a dream after all.
It seems McDreamy, aka Patrick Dempsey, came to the rescue Tuesday afternoon of a teenage boy whose car had flipped several times into, TMZ reports, the Grey's Anatomy star's Malibu front yard. Apparently, the Mustang was totaled, but a crowbar-wielding Dempsey -- a passionate car-racing fan, by the way -- was able to pry the driver free. The boy got just a concussion, but also, clearly, a great story.
Hollywood is heaping huzzahs on its latest hero. "True Story: Grey's Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey pulled my friend's son out of overturned car after bad accident on Tuesday. #GoodDude" tweeted Shawn Ryan, The Shield's creator, on Friday.
Sign up for Lifeline Live e-mail alerts


text:
Dismiss Notice
Welcome To CK5!
Registering is free and easy! Hope to see you on the forums soon.
Score a FREE Membership sticker when you sign up for a Premium Membership and choose the recurring plan.
8-lug 10-bolt outers
Discussion in 'Parts & Trucks Wanted' started by firefighter184, May 15, 2006.


text:
Tommy Chandra
Tommy Chandra is a talented illustrator based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Tommy creates simple yet colorful illustrations filled with cute and lively characters. Do visit his Behance and Dribbble profiles to view his work.
Visit Tommy's website
View Tommy's work at Behance
Like Tommy's work at Dribbble
Follow him on Twitter
4 Comments to Tommy Chandra
September 18, 2014
You can then add it to a web design company that you should expect
to get involved in website design! It is an important point that a search engine optimisation. Outsourcing Web Design Agency Web Designing?
Web Design and even browsers that offer cheap web design phase and development company
in order for your web site, not with lead generation the guys intending to spend any time.
These set of blueprints and therefore leaving out new visitors via highly targeted traffic.
September 19, 2014
So, the web design and development services.
For that, search engine marketing it needs to maintain and upgrade the entire
website. Dallas SEO search engine, directory traffic and search engine marketing
have been refined to a specific niche market.
Superseding efforts of one of the user's vision impairment and web development has been noticed
that the technical aspects with huge information. Examples of common sense.
3 Vibrancy – this is an affordable price.
September 25, 2014
The good newstoday there are advertisements.
What is the most important to contract construction-related work.
Roof Replacement Denton is available in your contractor's certification if your painting firm will further help you can call
to set up limited companies and contractors must pass a criminal
background check of previous work. Contractors working in a statement:
'I can confirm to have a good painting contractor. You say" I remember when trying to school bus find good ones. If you are dealing with a budget, school bus but try tofigure it out.
September 27, 2014
The way of doing it web design themselves it will become prominent and
important attribute of the visitors too. Such persons would not recommend you seek employment you will
find most affordable web design company that can arise in someone
s mind.


text:
I have decided that besides being more consistent blogging here, I am going to start sharing more posts on my creative side. So, that means I will be sharing my hopes, dreams, goals, business plans, business lessons, and business growth. As well as my crafting, sewing, and decorating projects. Plus, factor in inspiration and motivation posts. This all means (in a nutshell), I will be sharing a whole lotta bunch of awesome stuff.
And what better way to kickoff my "once again I am going to be consistent and blog three days a week" pledge than to share photos on my new home office/sewing room/crafting space.
, by Sharon Rainey


text:
Shanghai to Jiangsu subway link is a mainland first
New inter-provincial link opens amid nationwide subway construction boom
The mainland's first inter-provincial subway link started running yesterday morning, connecting downtown Shanghai with neighbouring Kunshan in Jiangsu province.
The extension of subway Line 11 in Shanghai to subway lines in Kunshan means travel time from Huaqiao station in Kunshan to Shanghai's downtown Xujiahui station is only 70 minutes.
A one-way ticket costs seven yuan (HK$8.85).
The mainland is in the midst of a subway construction spree. The National Development and Reform Commission last year approved 23 subway lines and three railway lines in numerous cities with investment totalling 700 billion yuan. Suzhou and Wuxi , two other cities in Jiangsu, will be connected to Shanghai by subway by 2015.
Curious crowds gathered at platforms of Line 11 to see and experience the new link. More than 90 per cent of passengers were travelling to Kunshan and most were elderly, the Shanghai Evening Post reported.
"The subway used to go to Anting station and we had to change to a bus to go to Huaqiao. Now it's much easier," an elderly man told the newspaper.
Another man said he bought an apartment in Kunshan two years ago and had been looking forward to the link.
"The ride was one hour and a half. My bottom hurt even though I had a seat. I have never taken such a long subway ride," he told the newspaper.
With the six-kilometre extension, Line 11 now boasts the longest subway line in the city at 72 kilometres. The new link will mainly benefit the increasing number of commuters who live in Kunshan and work in Shanghai, and elderly Shanghai people who bought retirement homes in Kunshan.
"It saves me more than 20 yuan every day," Ma Xiaoya, a resident of Kunshan who works in Shanghai told Xinhua.
Most Popular
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5


text:
ISSN (e) 1555-7561
(print) 1933-6837
Theoretical Economics
An open-access journal in economic theory
A journal of the
Econometric Society
|Main page
|Submit a paper
|Join the Econometric Society
Editorial Board
Format instructions for users of Scientific WordUsers of Scientific Word can produce a file complying with our format guidelines as follows.
Setting up Scientific Word to handle the space bar, tab key, and Enter keyTo set up Scientific Word to respond to the space bar, tab key, and Enter key so that space is not inserted "manually": Click on Tools -> User Setup and choose the Edit tab; click on Spaces, make sure that Ignore is selected, and then click OK. Then click on Tabs and again make sure that Ignore is selected and click OK, and click on Enter and do the same. (TeX controls spacing appropriately; if you enter additional space manually, it has to be removed before your file can be used.)
Advanced search


text:
Rent The Age of Miracles 1st edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by Karen Thompson Walker. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Random House.
Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our Literature tutors now.


text:
Fortuna pays $12.75M for site
Fortuna Realty Hotel SoHo LLC plans to build a 124-key, 20-plus story hotel at 523 Greenwich St., between Spring and Vandam, in New York's SoHo. The hotel developer acquired a 50,000-sq.-ft. site for that building from Patriot 523 Greenwich St. LLC for $12.75 million.
"Zoned for manufacturing and commercial uses, the highest and best use for this land is to develop a hospitality project," says Alan Miller, principal and senior director for Eastern Consolidated Inc., the firm that coordinated the sale.
Details about the timing of the planned hotel's construction and opening were not disclosed.
Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to the magazine.


text:
I had a mini Tummy Tuck 2 years ago, and now I'm unhappy with my upper abdomen area (above the belly button). I want a more smoother, tighter look. To correct this, my surgeon has recommended a reverse Tummy Tuck. I'm scared to death of how the scar is going to look since my breasts are set far apart (I had breast implants in 2000 as well). That's my main concern.
He also said he would recut from my mini Tummy Tuck and perform a full Tummy Tuck, but the results wouldn't be as accomplished this way as it would be from a reverse tuck. I'm really torn here and need some advice. I fully trust my surgeon, I'm just wanting to make sure that I make the right choice in which direction to pull my skin. I'm leaning towards the recut.


text:
But if Craft had any trouble with the restrictions that were placed on defenders using their hands, it was tough to tell.
The Big Ten's leader in steals with 2.6 per game, Craft was named the conference's Defensive Player of the Year on Monday, marking the second time that he's won such award in his career. The Findlay, Ohio native was also named the league's top defender in 2012 after breaking Ohio State's single-season steal record with 98 thefts to his credit.
Now a four-time selection to the Big Ten's all-defensive team, Craft's latest honor comes just one day after he set the conference's career record for steals with a four-theft effort in a 69-67 win over Michigan State. Heading into the final postseason of his career, the Buckeyes point guard lays claim to 328 steals, which moved him past former Illinois guard Bruce Douglas' mark of 324.
In addition to again being named the Big Ten's Defensive Player of the Year, Craft was also a selected to the conference's second-team by the media and third-team by the coaches. Through the first 31 games of his senior season, Craft has averaged 9.5 points, 4.6 assists and 3.5 rebounds per game.
Also Ohio State's all-time leader in assists, Craft is a three-time Academic All-American and one of three players to ever repeat as college basketball's Academic All-American of the Year. The Liberty-Benton product is also a finalist for the Lowe's Senior CLASS Award, which is presented each year to the outstanding senior NCAA Division I Student-Athlete of the Year across nine different sports.
Ranked 24th in the nation with a 23-8 record to their credit, Craft's Buckeyes will return to action on Thursday when No. 5 Ohio State faces 12th-seeded Purdue in the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis.


text:
Not rated. Runtime: 45 min. Watch the trailer below.
|"D-Day 3D: Normandy 1944': a riveting, inventive retelling." - Seattle Times
"D-Day: Normandy 1944" is a concise and at times visually compelling overview of the planning, context and execution of the 1944 Allied military operation code-named "Overlord." - Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post
"D-Day: Normandy 1944" are tributes that inspire and, in an unstuffy way, also instruct." - New York Times
"the material is presented in a clear and accessible way and the director, Pascal Vuong, makes excellent use of the different media, such as archival photos that are manipulated to take full advantage of the 3D format, and beautifully rendered maps". - John Kubalak, Parentmap.com
AutoNation ® IMAX ® 3D Theater
Located at the MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY AND SCIENCE
401 Southwest Second Street, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33312
Museum information: 954-467-MODS • IMAX ® showtimes: 954-463-IMAX
Open 365 days a year including Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Convenient parking is always available at the Arts & Entertainment garage located across the street from the museum. Metered street parking is also available along S.W. Second Street and there are several parking lots located one block east of the museum.


text:
Ray Rawson hardly seems like the type to get caught up in the dotcom revolution. He's a plain-talking, blue-jeans-clad farmer, fitter than one might expect for his 56 years, busy working a 10,000-acre spread that spans two rural counties in Michigan. Yet early in the morning, before his crews show up, Rawson's farm business meets e-business at a website called DirectAg.com.
At the site, Rawson reads agricultural news that helps him pick the best time to sell the options on his soybean, corn and wheat harvests. He figures that in one month last fall, he made an extra $100,000 or so in profits thanks to information that he would have had to otherwise chase down by phone or would not have seen at all. Information such as news on what the ag markets did overnight in Europe gives him an edge in figuring out what they might do in the United States that day. He's also saved money on purchases. DirectAg.com's prices on farm supplies often beat those of local distributors, since he can get a larger volume discount by concentrating his buying in one place. He's saving around $70 a ton on fertilizer alone -- a big chunk of change for someone who buys several hundred tons at a time. "In one year, it's enough to go out to dinner a couple of times," Rawson deadpans, "maybe in the Cayman Islands."
Rawson is just one of a growing number of business folks flocking to websites that bring together buyers and sellers within a particular industry, or across a particular business activity, for one purpose: wringing inefficiencies out of the supply chain. These sites go by many names -- e-hubs, e-marketplaces, e-market makers, vertical portals, business-to-business trade communities, intermediaries and even metamediaries. They are cropping up in industries from petrochemicals to produce, steel to semiconductors. In 1998, such marketplaces handled around $12 billion in business, not including marketplaces that trade financial instruments, according to Dataquest, a GartnerGroup company. And by the year 2003, Dataquest expects $1.25 trillion in nonfinancial goods and services to be traded through them. "Buyers and sellers who aren't participating...will certainly be at a disadvantage," says Leah Knight, analyst at Dataquest in San Jose, Calif.
For buyers, a marketplace can make it easy to find and compare products and prices -- easier than paging through dozens of manufacturers' catalogs or calling scads of distributors to find the best quote, Knight says. For sellers, marketplaces offer a chance to reach new buyers, such as small accounts that wouldn't have been cost-effective for a sales rep to handle or that are located elsewhere in the world, or to unload surplus inventory. And those efficiencies add up: Bear, Stearns and Co., an investment banking and securities trading and brokerage company in New York City, estimates that by 2003 marketplaces will yield their participants nearly $60 billion in savings, with reduced supply chain costs accounting for $13 billion of that amount.
Some industries have already spawned multiple marketplaces. Agriculture has DirectAg.com and Farms.com, the chemicals industry has Chemdex, CheMatch.com, ChemConnect and Fobchemicals.com, and the metals industry has MetalSite and e-Steel. Some industries will see more business flow through such marketplaces than others. Some marketplaces aim to take the place of traditional middlemen; others try to work with existing distributors. But smart CIOs and e-business strategists must understand how these markeetplaces work -- and how they could redefine their supply chains -- because if none has cropped up in their industry sector yet, it's only a matter of time.
Breaking Down the Business Models
Marketplaces fall into two broad categories: vertical and horizontal. Vertical marketplaces operate in specific industries -- agriculture, energy, petrochemicals and so on; DirectAg.com is one such marketplace. Horizontal marketplaces, on the other hand, focus on a specific job function or need applicable to many different industries, such as purchasing used office equipment or maintenance, repair and operating (MRO) supplies. Trade Out.com, a site that auctions surplus equipment, falls into the horizontal marketplace category.
Whether vertical or horizontal, a marketplace won't thrive without a critical mass of buyers and sellers. Buyers won't visit a site if it doesn't have the"" suppliers they want to buy from; suppliers won't want to participate in a marketplace that doesn't get enough buyer traffic. Content is also key to a marketplace's success: Buyers need enough pricing and product information to be able to make a buying decision. Value-added content such as industry news, expert advice or detailed product spec sheets can make a marketplace that much more compelling.
What industries are fertile territory for marketplaces to develop? In their September 1999 "Internet Business to Business Report," Bear, Stearns analysts Scott Ehrens and Peter Zapf spell out some of the characteristics. One is size; "intermediaries," the authors' term for an online business that aggregates data and facilitates transactions via a marketplace, are most likely to target industries that do at least $10 billion in business. Another indicator that an industry is ready for marketplace development is a fragmented supply chain, that is, a market in which it's hard for buyers and sellers to find one another. An intermediary can bring them together to help buyers compare offerings. And when products, inventory levels and prices change quickly, or product descriptions are complex -- when it's hard for buyers to compare product information -- an intermediary can aggregate such information and make it easier to search.
Though they both target the business-to-business e-commerce space, these marketplaces differ from extranets. Extranets just web-enable relationships"" between existing partners; they tend to be run by a single company seeking to lower the cost of doing business with its current suppliers or customers. Marketplaces, on the other hand, bring together multiple vendors and multiple buyers; they tend to be run by independent third parties who have deep experience in the industry they aim to serve. Forrester Research senior analyst Varda Lief, in her "Anatomy of New Market Models" report, groups these marketplaces into three categories based on the market model they adopt: aggregators, auctions and exchanges. Some web businesses have already begun to combine these models, but the distinctions offer a useful taxonomy.
Aggregators aim to be "one-stop shopping" locales, gathering the catalogs of many suppliers and presenting them to targeted groups of buyers, as DirectAg.com does for farmers like Rawson. Aggregators can give small sellers access to a broad range of buyers; they can also group small buyers to increase their buying power and consequently offer them volume discounts. They keep buyers from having to call distributors or scan catalogs, and they can make it easier for sellers to set up an online presence.
Auctions offer venues for suppliers to unload excess inventory; buyers bid against each other to set the price. The advantage for buyers is that they can get lower prices on surplus goods; sellers can shorten the amount of time they hold inventory and can get access to new markets. MetalSite, for example, is a marketplace that facilitates the buying and selling of steel and other mmetal products. The site's first investors included three of the biggest names in the industry-Weirton Steel, LTV Steel Co. and Steel Dynamics -- and sellers offer $45 million to $50 million in inventory on the site every month. The site initially sponsored only sealed-bid auctions of non-prime and surplus products. Last fall it began offering participants the chance to buy both prime and non-prime metals online through a product guide on the site that specifies list prices but also offers contract and volume-discount pricing, as well as the opportunity for online negotiations. The site offers steelmakers several advantages. "It opens up another channel of distribution for them," says Maggie Bray, MetalSite's manager of communications. "It's a more efficient, more streamlined way of doing business. You can deal with thousands of buyers at a time instantly, rather than one phone call at a time."
Exchanges, akin to the Chicago Board of Trade or Nasdaq, are anonymous marketplaces that let industry players trade commodities -- such as excess chemicals or energy capacity -- in a spot, or last-minute, market. By bringing buyers and sellers together on neutral trading turf, the market determines the price dynamically, with both buyer and seller able to go back and forth on a price. CheMatch, an online spot market for petrochemicals, plastics and fuel additives, counts industry giants like ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical among its participants, all of which are pre-screened. Trading is anonymous, but traders can spell out with whom they want -- and don't want -- to do business. Jorge Werlang, vice president of global commodities trading at Voest-Alpine Intertrading, an international commodities trading company in Houston, says using the exchange saves him the trouble of calling individual traders or brokers. In a fast-paced market, where Werlang is sometimes so busy that lunch consists of a cappuccino Slim-Fast slurped down at his three-screen trading desk, time is of the essence. He believes human brokers feel threatened by the fact that CheMatch lets him watch the market -- and its fluctuating prices and product availability -- play out in front of him. "You see what's happening," Werlang says, as he watches the CheMatch screen change color, letting him know that a seller has decided to make a lower counter offer on his $2.5 million bid to buy 60,000 barrels of benzene. "Brokers know that it's hard to represent the market differently than it is."
Business-to-business marketplaces earn money in a variety of ways. Some sell advertising, although for many that is becoming a less important piece of the revenue stream. Matchmaking sites -- those that gather requests for proposals or requests for quotes -- may charge sellers a finder's fee for every buyer lead they pass on. Sites with a catalog component take a markup on the items they sell, just as distributors do. For DirectAg. com, that markup ranges from 10 percent to 30 percent -- similar to the markup a traditional ag distributor would charge. The difference is that a traditional distributor might carry products from just a few manufacturers, while DirectAg.com carries a broader selection. Farmers who concentrate their buying at DirectAg.com receive greater volume discounts than they would at a traditional distributor. The typical range for markups in multivendor catalog sites is 5 percent to 15 percent, according to Bear, Stearns. Auction and exchange sites typically charge buyers, sellers or both a transaction fee; on CheMatch, for example, buyers and sellers currently pay one-tenth of a cent per gallon on each trade. Some marketplaces charge membership fees, although Bear, Stearns notes that those fees can keep people from signing up to a marketplace, and they are frequently waived. Expect to see a lot of tinkering with these formulas over the coming months: Marketplaces that now charge buyers to participate may decide that it is more advantageous to charge sellers,, and vice versa. "These business models are all still very young, and they're not worked out," says Erica Rugullies, director at Giga Information Group. "We'll see a lot of changes over the next 18 months."
See How They Grow
As an industry's buyers and sellers have more marketplaces to choose from, marketplaces will need to broaden their sources of revenue and the services they provide to stay competitive. Offering services such as financing,"" logistics, back-end system integration and procurement management will help them tighten ties with participants. DirectAg.com, for example, has come up with a variety of financial tools, including the ability to sign up online for a house credit account of $17,500, apply for loans of up to $1 million and set up an account with an online bank. "We sell big-ticket items," says Kip Pendleton, president and CEO of DirectAg.com, hence the need for the financing. "We expect the average [farmer] will use our site to buy $230,000 of [products] a year."
While some marketplaces seek to grow by going deep within one industry, others are trying to go wide. That's been VerticalNet's strategy from day one, says founder Michael Hagan. The Horsham, Pa.-based company owns and runs 53 vertical business trading communities in areas such as wastewater treatment and paper manufacturing; it started out largely as a content and community provider, but is now aggressively moving to offer commerce. Its core advantage, Hagan says, is the ability to leverage new technologies across 53 balance sheets. For example, it acquired Isadra (last spring for $47 million in stock), which makes technology for aggregating supplier catalog data, and that technology can be used across its entire network. "We were able to amortize that across the whole network," Hagan says. "Other companies would have had to absorb it in one market."


text:
Information about the torrent Hanna Super Squirt. Seeders, leechers and torrent status is updated several times per day.
If you want to download the squirting torrent Hanna Super Squirt you will need a torrent client.
Torrent verified by kat.ph.
Sample info: Duration: 00:19:02.84, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1344 kb/s Stream #0.0: Video: h264, yuv420p, 960x540 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 29.97 tbn, 59.94 tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 128 kb/s


text:
To catch the bunny!
Also time to start thinking about 2010 events. :-) What are you 2010 plans/goals?
Live the Adventure. Enjoy the Journey. Be Kind. Have Faith!
This is the time of year that I start dreaming of next year too. I'm looking at a bunch of possibilities; hopefully I'll get to do at least a few of these. If so, I really need to start running more!
Watchung Winter Ultras 50K
Yours Truly 50K, January
Yours Truly 50K, February
Paulinskill Sussex 100
Scranton St. Patrick's Day 2-mile
Trail Dawg Triple Crown
Massanutten Mountain Trails 100
South Mountain 100K
Laurel Highlands 70.5
Mason-Dixon 100K
Burning River 100
Delaware 100
Oil Creek 100
My 2010 goals are to be the best papa I can, to live more consciously and appreciate all that life offers, and to ramp up my long night runs so that I'm able to break 25 hours in a hundred.
Speed my steps along your path, according to your will.
There is no way I'm going to make the 1367 miles for this year because of the time off I had to take for my injury. I have been building my mileage though and have been averaging over 30 per week for the last 4 weeks, and plan on doing above the 26.2 each week til the end of the year. Hopefully I can keep it up.
2010 Goals:
- 1000 miles by the end of August
- 1367 miles by the end of the year
- a minimum of 100 miles every month
- 1/2 marathon in under 1:57 (PR is 1:57:16)
- 10k in under 55 - (I have never ran a 10k race yet, not an actual 10k anyway)
- Run my first marathon - (not sure about this one yet, still deciding whether I'll be ready or not. If I do it will probably be in August)
2010 Planned Events:
- Hypothermic 1/2 marathon in Feb (Edmonton)
- Red Deer 1/2 marathon in May
- Trail run 1/2 in July (Edmonton)
- 1/2 or full in August (Edmonton)
- 22k in September (Banff - If I manage to get registered as it sells out in a couple hours)
At least a couple 5 and 10k's but haven't decided yet, and maybe a 10 mile road race in April.
Running - cheaper than therapy


text:
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 20:18 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > > It could read all the SET variables in at startup? > > Right, but do we want to do that even if they never ask for a tab > completion? I think the easiest might be to just save the list on first > tab call. As mentioned earlier the problem exists for all tab completion in aborted transactions. Perhaps a second database connection could be established during situations when running tab completion and other psql commands is impossible on the main one? --
Next: From: Bruce Momjian Date: 2006-02-01 01:53:39 Subject: Re: Tab completion of SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION Previous: From: Bruce Momjian Date: 2006-02-01 01:18:33 Subject: Re: Tab completion of SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION