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Level 3 Communications this morning reported a narrower-than-expected third-quarter net loss and revenue that — at $1.07 billion — was in line with analysts’ expectations. But even that wasn’t enough to satisfy investors, who have now pushed the share price below $1 to as low as 60 cents. You can now have a double shot of espresso from Starbucks or buy three shares of Level 3.
Jokes aside, Level 3 was indeed very cautious in outlining the future of its business, noting that the broader slowdown in the economy was resulting in longer sales cycles. This lukewarm outlook is terrifying for investors already concerned with company’s high level of debt and its ability to navigate the current credit crunch.
The concerns about Level 3 stem from the fact that the company pays close to $130 million in interest every quarter — that works out to roughly 13% of total revenue. They have about $587 million in cash, and they are still not cash flow positive. They burn cash at about $57 million a quarter. By that metric, company would have $363 million due in the Q3 2009.
“The company remains confident that it has sufficient cash on hand to repay the remaining $305 million of September 2009 maturities,” the company noted in its news release. With debt hovering around $6.6 billion, the company would need to find a tight fiscal rope to make things work. When I spoke to the company recently, they said they weren’t worried about refinancing their debt. Level3 has been through tough times before, and if there is a silver lining on these dark clouds: company has the wherewithal to deal with any crisis.
Notalby, Level 3 made certain comments in its third-quarter results release that don’t bode too well for video and other online media-related startups:
The Content Markets Group has experienced a decrease in sales to certain media and entertainment companies who may be dependent on external financing sources.
On the flip side, the big companies seem to like Level3’s CDN model vs. those of its competitors. Since it owns its network infrastructure, it can play the low-price game better than its rivals.
At the same time, the company has seen increased sales activity among larger media, entertainment and sports enterprises who seek to make more content available online.
Image courtesy of BigCharts.com.
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16 to 17 Jun. Back in Singapore, I had a sudden thought that Singapore is very beautiful as the Merc cab sped its way through the highways. Trees lined all around; I had not seen so much greenery in the past 5 months! Nothing much had changed it seems. It didn’t feel like I been away from home for so many months.T3 Arrival Hall wasn’t as nice as I expected. Ion is still building. Orchard Scotts has finally been torn down. Pacific Apartments are open. Nothing much has changed in the area I live, except my room. I was in utter shock when I looked into my room. There are foreign objects on my table, my earrings hung on sushi rattan net are no longer there, all my clothes are gone from my closet, folded and kept in the lower compartment and another closet. Nobody touches my clothes, not even my mum. How audacious my cousin was to remove my clothes from the hangers!I had so many things to do upon reaching so it was really annoying to have to search the whole closet for the belongings I need to bring along to Hong Kong. Singapore was so hot and humid (I forgot how the weather in Singapore felt like), so when I was dying to take a shower, I couldn’t find my usual towels and underwear.My usual pillows and comforter are no longer on my bed, and my room just looks like a storeroom now. I mean usually I’m not such a petty person, so I told myself to get on with life and forgive her for taking the initiative to attempt to neaten up my room which kinda failed. But when I lay in bed in the guest room (since there were no pillows, bedsheets and comforters on my bed), tears rolled down my cheeks as I sniffed at the pillow. I knew it mattered no matter how I told myself to forget about it since it was only going to be 2 days at home, after a long time away from home, sleeping on a bed without comforters in Germany for 4 months and not having a home or own bed to sleep in and constantly on the move for 1.5 months, and after looking forward to having my old room and bed for just 2 nights before heading off solo for my internship.My mum appeared to have aged a lot since 5 months ago, and I don’t know if it’s my imagination or if it’s true.18 Jun. God is indeed trying to test my resilience as my search for a printer in my area was in vain. The printer was spoilt, of all days! So I was looking forward to the flight with SIA on a 747-400, but turned out there was a technical problem, nopes, technical problems. The first technical problem was that the PA system was not working on my side of the plane so we could not hear any announcements at all, not a big problem unless there was a delay in the flight of maybe 2 hours due to a second technical problem, which I wasn’t sure was what. This meant that instead of reaching at 9plus I reached at 11plus and reached my apartment at 12plus in the night. Honestly my experience with Qatar was much better, despite it being such an awfully long 15-hour flight. The flight attendants were much more sincere, gentler and sweeter. The flights were smooth, with little turbulence, though it was on a smaller plane - Airbus 320. Flights to Europe are well-known to cause bad jet lags or turbulence, due to the odd time difference and bad weather conditions in Europe, but all turned out well for me. Even with 3 hours of sleep on the flight, I managed to stay up to do some packing till late at night.But the departure hall was pretty awesome.Waited from 1750h…till 1950h…And so I reached HK in the middle of the night, with no idea how to get to the apartment and I had a 25kg load to lug with me. The problem was that the cab driver was not very nice to me as I couldn’t even speak Canto in complete sentences or pronounce correctly, and kept asking me where Wo On Lane was. I could only tell him roughly where but not how to get there. So in the end he passed by Wo On Lane and instead of getting to the right location, he dropped me off somewhere down the hill on Wellington St which meant I had to backtrack, uphill, to get back to Wo On Lane, lugging the load behind me, and walking antitraffic-direction in the middle of the road. My area turned out to be in Lan Kwai Fong, so there was a lot of nightlife in the area, and much noise heard from my room too. I knew my room would be small, but it was really small! The shower area is the size of a toilet cubicle so I had to shower in front of the toilet bowl and leave my clothes and towel outside. Anyway, it’s not like I’m going to spend much time in my room when I start work.Small table and a comfortable bed.I’m pretty good with the closet size. Kitchenette was almost complete, but toilet was pretty small for my expectations.Just when I thought I could enjoy my internet after a warm shower and enjoy the aircon, the internet failed me! It really irked me because I specially mentioned that I need the internet urgently to finish up my work (which is in fact like 32 modules more to complete) and hoped that it would work well!All these was just a bad start to my experience in Hong Kong, which made me feel pretty miserable for a first day in a foreign place, alone. But I refuse to give in to these; to me, these are merely tests of my resilience, which I would need a lot to cope with the supposed long hours at the bank.19 Jun. The next day turned out to be slightly better, with the helper fixing my internet and thus saving my life. Took a tour around my area and was pretty satisfied with what I found - 5 min walk to my workplace, 3 min walk to MTR station, 2 min walk to H&M, Esprit and supermarket, Ben&Jerry’s, Haagen Daz, Pret A Manger, Sasa, 7-11, Delifrance, Pacific Coffee, Starbuck, all at my doorstep. Please feel what I want you to feel - jealous.What I see on my way home. 20 to 21 Jun. I had like 39 online modules to finish up, clothes to iron and a presentation to prepare for my training, so most of the time I spent indoors completing the online tests, which was kinda boring. Now that I’ve settled in pretty well, familiarised with the area, and making myself comfortable in my own apartment, life is good when you get to socialise over dinner or drinks, which I did with Thor, Mich and her mum, as well as the ML interns on another night.Hong Kong is fantastic! Words simply can’t explain the excitement I am feeling right now. So far so good. I have a lot of backlog for my blog, so I’ll be back backdating my blog entries whenever I have the time!

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Topping off our fascination with Linux desktop monitor Conky this week, here’s a remarkable setup on Ubuntu that delivers Gmail counts, Yahoo weather with graphics and system stats, all with an eye…
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Sonic Vox, by Smule
New this very day, Smule releases their latest audio based iPhone application, Sonic Vox. With Sonic Vox, simply slide your finger across your iPhone and slip through a range of voices from Darth Vader to Gollum.
Perhaps it’s easiest to think of Sonic Vox as Voice Candy for your iPhone. So the most obvious question that came to mind for me was, “Can I talk to other people over my iPhone as Vader or Gollum?” Based on the current constraints of the iPhone SDK, this capability unfortunately is not allowed. But as I get into the finer points of Sonic Vox below, you’ll see that it is possible to talk in these modulated voices via iChat or Skype — using your iPhone!
The visual feedback to Sonic Vox is minimal, and reminds me of the pulsing strobe from the hood of KITT (if I must explain myself, that’s the car from Knight Rider). But the point isn’t the visual, as with all Smule apps to date (and in the future…), it’s all about the audio. When you speak into your phone with Sonic Vox running, the playback can be heard from the iPhone’s earpiece speaker. (Admittedly, this was only interesting to me for the initial testing of the application. However, if you’re my boys who are Star Wars junkies, the iPhone battery will die long before they get tired of listening to their own Darth Vader voices.) If you’re interested in greater fidelity, however — or to share with a friend — you can plug in your head phones and listen. Upping the ante a bit more, connect your iPhone to an external amplifier via the headphone jack to a line-in on say, your MacBook. (more…)

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It is indeed a wonderful little device, but you know all those little niggles we have about the iPhone? Like, the lack of landscape e-mailing, the omission of Flash-support and video-recording or hiding those pesky unused apps?
Now there’s a special place for all you disgruntled folk who want a little more from your iPhone, there’s even a chance that Jobs (or one of his minions) might be listening. The site is called Please Fix The iPhone, it’s open for business right now and optimized for iPhone too (naturally).
The idea is that you visit the site, look through a big list of iPhone problems and vote for whatever you want to be fixed. There’s no registration and voting up a problem takes a single click. Furthermore, you can add your own iPhone fix requests too. Top of the list at the moment seems to be, “Copy and paste,” closely followed by, “Ability to view Flash content in Safari.”

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I’m an olds chool guy, and I prefer old ASCII-style smilies. Hell, my regular smiley is facing left to avoid getting picked up by scripts and changed into a graphic smiley (:. However, I don’t think I’m in the majority here: most people like their emoticons shiny.
Gmail’s emoticons have so far been somewhat lacking; some might call them spartan, even. There weren’t that many of them and they weren’t really that nicely drawn. Now, Gmail has fixed this with an expanded choice of cute animated and static smilies available from the emoticon menu which appears on the toolbar when you start writing a new e-mail.
Gtalk also has some new smilies, but not nearly as many as Gmail; personally, I wish it were the other way around, because I feel smilies are much more appropriate in chat than in e-mails. Let’s hope Google will stop treating Gtalk like an unwanted child when it comes to emoticons; I totally plan to use that cute animated lobster whenever possible.
—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:
Gmail Chat Adds Groups and Smileys
AIM on Gmail Chat Now Live
GMail Phasing In IMAP
Gmail Mobile Gets an Update
Be Careful if You Access Gmail Through a Public Hotspot
New GMail Features Show Up In Some Accounts
Gmail Storage Is Now 6 Gigabytes

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The so-called “boss button” has long been a staple on websites that one shouldn’t be visiting from their workplace. The basic idea is that there is a fail-safe link that you can click on to make it look like you’re working, when in reality you’re catching up on sports scores or reading TMZ. The button usually triggers some sort of bogus financial projections or otherwise important looking document.
Rock band AC/DC is taking this concept to a whole new level though in a promotion for their new music video. The band’s label – Sony BMG – came up with a campaign that loads the video for “Black Ice” as ASCII art within a Microsoft Excel file. Simply download the file, open it up, and the ASCII art mimicks the motions of the real video while the song plays. You can see how it works and hear the new song in the video below:
Meanwhile, if you’d like to grab the file and check it out, it’s available on the AC/DC website. Since virtually no employer would block Excel files from being sent around the office, there is just about nothing that can be done to stop you from slacking off for a minute or two with this promotion. Clever.
—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:
Break.com Goes Mobile with Verizon VCast
MTV, RealNetworks & Verizon to Bring Triple Threat Against Apple & AT&T?
AC/DC Sells Music through Verizon–Not iTunes
Rumor: Pandora Adding Videos?
Last.fm Signs Video Deal With Universal
YouTube is the Ultimate Sharing Site and Google Needs to Capitalize on That
Last.fm + YouTube = Last.fm Video!

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They haven’t given much notice but since the T-Mobile G1 has just launched it is appropriate to point out that what is probably the first AndroidDevCamp will be happening in Dallas in just a couple of days. The press release details how budding Android developers can benefit from attending the camp:
The event will feature presentations on: — How to get started on Android;– Google’s Android Developers Challenge I and II;– Lessons learned in the development of ShopSavvy; and– Understanding Android fundamentals. The event will include breakout sessions where developers can share ideas and form working groups to begin building Android applications.
The event will be held at Architel located:
Infomart1950 Stemmons FwySuite 2022Dallas, TX 75207
You can find additional information and sign up for this and other camps at the website here.

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Of all the information I have stored on my Mac, email is by far the data I hold with highest regard. I choose not to use a web based email service such as GMail or MobileMe Mail – rather using the basic Mail application bundled with OSX. While my various accounts do utilize IMAP, all my archived mail messages are stored locally in various folders.
When recently moving to a new Apple machine, I needed to quickly and easily move all my email account data, messages and attachments, along with the data I’ve collected for my spam filtering application, SpamSieve. This process can be very straight forward when you know how. (more…)

This is short little article on how to save a few cents at the gas pump. The most important part of the article is near the end, where it talks about buyin gas from certain stations that dont import thier oil from middle eastern countries. Enjoy.I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but in California we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon..Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose, CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period through the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature controls.Compensation at the pumps.When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3)stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some other liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY. The reason for this is, the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up–most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom. Hope this will help you get the most value for your money.DO SHARE THESE TIPS WITH OTHERS!WHERE TO BUY USA GAS, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW. READ ONGas rationing in the 80’s worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us! The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor.An interesting thought is to boycott their GAS.Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don’t import their oil from the Saudis.Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends.I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil.These companies import Middle Eastern oil:Shell……………………… 205,742,000 barrelsChevron/Texaco……… 144,332,000 barrelsExxon /Mobil…………… 130,082,000 barrelsMarathon/Speedway… 117,740,000 barrelsAmoco……………………….62,231,000 barrelsCitgo gas is from South America, from a Dictator who hates Americans. If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION! (oil is now $90 - $100 a barrel)Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil:Sunoco……………….0 barrelsConoco……………….0 barrelsSinclair………………..0 barrelsBP/Phillips…………..0 barrelsHess…………………..0 barrelsARC0………………….0 barrelsIf you go to Sunoco.com, you will get a list of the station locations near you.All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing.But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gasbuyers. It’s really simple to do.