Wired magazine, still at the vanguard in the waning days of the tech revolution, has named Chris Anderson, the U.S. business editor of The Economist, to be its new editor. Anderson replaces Katrina Heron, who resigned for personal reasons.
Like other magazines covering the Internet, Wired, a Conde Nast property, has seen a steep dropoff in advertising recently. But it has managed to escape the fates of purely business-focused competitors, such as The Industry Standard, which have laid off staff and scaled back their operations.
Anderson has been with The Economist since 1994, directing Asian business news out of Hong Kong before taking his current post a year ago. He also worked for several science magazines, including The Scientist, Science and Nature.
"Whatever mental voice you hear when you read The Economist, it's not mine," Anderson said. "My voice is actually much closer to Wired. By the time it got through the sausage machine, it may have sounded like it was written by a 50-year-old man, but it didn't start out that way."
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Do you, uh, Yahoo?: Yahoo has begun selling pornographic videos online, company officials have confirmed.
The company has opened an online store selling thousands of hard-core video tapes and DVDs. They earn a share of the sales.
Yahoo officials declined to talk to the Los Angeles Times about the pornography sales. In a written statement Tuesday, they said that "under stringent control, adult products have been available through Yahoo Shopping for more than two years."
Analysts told the Times that the sale of porn may alienate companies that advertise with the company. Other major companies like AOL have stayed away from pornography sales.
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Layoffs at Borders.com: Borders said on Wednesday it would cut all 70 jobs at its Borders.com operations as the result of an agreement to join forces with Amazon in the Internet bookselling business.
Borders' chief exec, Greg Josefowicz, told a news conference that the company would look for new positions within Borders Group for workers laid off as a result of the deal. Borders.com will be revamped and relaunched as a co-branded site.
Amazon and Borders did not address the prospect of customer overlap between them on the Internet.
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Deal du jour: Online auto retailer Autobytel.com said it plans to buy rival Autoweb.com for about $15.6 million in stock, a move it said would solidify its position as market leader and broaden its customer base.
Based on Autoweb's 29.5 million shares outstanding at the end of the fourth quarter, the transaction is worth $15.6 million.
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E-Trade in Target: E-Trade said it had agreed to put 20 E-Trade shops and more than 1,000 bank machines into Target stores nationwide.
E-Trade will be the exclusive automated teller machine network for all Target and Target Greatland stores in the United States. E-Trade currently has ATMs in 110 Target stores.
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Pink slips at Paradyne: Paradyne Networks, a provider of high-speed computer network equipment, said it will lay off between 10 and 15 percent of its work force because of the weak telecommunication equipment market.
In January, Paradyne said it planned to close one of its two remote development centers as part of a cost reduction strategy, leading to a work force reduction of about 13 percent, or 65 employees.
This time, the company gave no numbers for the staff reduction but said the bloodletting was expected to be completed within the next two weeks.
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Doing the management shuffle: Deutsche Telekom said it would reorganize its management board in a move to sharpen leadership of its four divisions, but the news did little to impress investors.
The company said it would draft Kai-Uwe Ricke, head of the group's T-Mobile cell-phone operation, on to the board to take responsibility for the mobile and online units. Josef Brauner will oversee the fixed-line and information technology systems services divisions.
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Extension granted: Palm said it has extended Handspring's license of the Palm OS operating system. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Handspring can now develop and market products based on the system through April 2009, Palm said. The announcement comes a day after Palm's chief executive said the business outlook was still unclear.
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Picture this: Patricia Russo, a former Lucent Technologies executive, has been named president and chief operating officer of Eastman Kodak as the photography company attempts to boost its digital business.
Russo takes over the presidency from Daniel Carp, who will remain chairman and chief executive.
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More pink slips: Pricewaterhouse Coopers said it plans to eliminate up to 1,000 jobs at its U.S. consulting business, or 8 percent of the unit's 12,000 employees.
Explaining the cuts, firm officials said major companies had reduced or were delaying spending.
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More bloodshed: Around 60 jobs will be lost at the Industry Standard Europe when the pan-European Internet industry weekly suspends publication next week, a source close to the company said.
A spokeswoman for the magazine said that the Industry Standard Europe would suspend publication with its April 16 issue. But she declined to discuss details of the London-based magazine's closure, including job cuts.
Reuters, AP contributed to this report.
