Nearly a year after sending the stock of a technology firm plummeting by issuing a phony press release via the Internet, 23-year-old Mark Jakob was sentenced to 44 months in prison.
Jakob admitted in December that he issued a fake press release in August 2000 that sent the stock of the tech firm Emulex (EMLX) tumbling, costing investors nearly $110 million.
Jakob told U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian he had read letters from investors who lost millions because of his actions. "It was not until I saw what some of these investors went through that I realized what I really did cause."
"I'll try to do everything possible in the future to pay back these investors I made lose money," he added.
Jakob was ordered to surrender to start his sentence on Sept. 5.
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Rich content: Netscape veterans Marc Andreessen and James Barksdale are lending their clout and cash to a new company with the goal of streamlining the delivery of video and audio files over the Internet.
Kontiki will start a business it says will enable owners of rich media content, such as audio and video, to lower the cost of distributing their wares, while maintaining reliable connections to servers and adding security.
Kontiki's software will take advantage of slow periods of Internet traffic to download audio and video to end-users, who would then be able to schedule times to view or hear files using a desktop application provided by the company.
"The whole experience around rich media on the Internet right now suffers from a bunch of different problems," said Tony Espinoza, the company's vice president of products and services. "The quality is really low and the experience isn't great."
With Kontiki's software network, content owners will be able to better oversee the distribution of their materials and charge for it as necessary.
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New look: CNN Headline News introduced a jam-packed screen, filled with factoids, stock prices, weather maps and headlines. News anchors now occupy only a quarter of the frame.
The cable channel, which started nearly two decades ago as a stepchild of CNN, will continue to offer news, weather, business and sports, all in a half-hour package.
The new look is designed to give more news at a glance to busy viewers, said Headline News chief Teya Ryan, who took over as part of a reorganization of the CNN networks in January.
Ryan said the new screen was inspired by the year she spent running CNNfn. Business news networks, with their signature tickers and colorful arrows, have long known that viewers can handle large amounts of information at one time, she said.
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Unsolicited advances: EchoStar Communications made an unsolicited $32 billion bid to buy Hughes Electronics, kicking off a potential bidding war with News Corp. for the DirectTV owner.
The stock-for-stock swap offer comes only weeks after General Motors (GM), Hughes' (GMH) largest shareholder and corporate parent, nixed a previous offer from EchoStar.
EchoStar (DISH) said it offered .75 of its shares for each Hughes share, valuing Hughes at $23, an 18 percent premium over its closing price Friday of $19.36 on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of EchoStar closed at $30.44 in trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday.
Steve Harris, vice president of communications for GM, said the automaker hasn't had a chance to review the offer, but said GM's board would "give it a thorough review and consideration" as it would with other offers.
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New kid on the block: Google named Eric Schmidt as the chief executive officer, replacing co-founder Larry Page at the helm of the company.
Page will take over as president of the company's products division. Sergey Brin, the company's founding president, was named president for technology.
Prior to joining Google, he served as chairman and CEO of software maker Novell, where he remains chairman of the board of directors. He has also served as chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems.
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Military merger: General Dynamics has agreed to buy Motorola's Integrated Information Systems Group for $825 million in a deal that will boost the defense contractor's product offerings for its military and government customers.
General Dynamics (GD) also would assume certain liabilities and ongoing obligations resulting from everyday operations.
The transaction was approved by both companies and must get regulatory approval. The acquisition is expected to close within two months, company officials said. The business will become a part of General Dynamics Information Systems and Technology group.
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Shared stories: The digital operations of the New York Times and the Financial Times, announced an arrangement to share news stories on their respective Web sites.
The arrangement allows each site, NYTimes.com and FT.com, to use up to 10 stories from the other newspaper's site each day. The stories will be clearly marked as originating from the other site, and will be drawn from the business, international and technology sections.
Reuters and AP contributed to this report.
