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URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: CHILDREN (90%); POP & ROCK (72%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (72%); VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS (65%); ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHAEOLOGY (50%); ARCHAEOLOGY (50%) COMPANY: WASHINGTON MUTUAL INC (50%) TICKER: WM (NYSE) (50%) INDUSTRY: NAICS522120 SAVINGS INSTITUTIONS (50%); SIC6036 SAVINGS INSTITUTIONS, NOT FEDERALLY CHARTERED (50%) PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (56%) LOAD-DATE: February 16, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH DOCUMENT-TYPE: Schedule PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1074 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Dog Running: Easier Does It BYLINE: By SARAH TUFF SECTION: Section G; Column 0; Style Desk; PHYSICAL CULTURE GEAR TEST, HANDSFREE LEASHES; Pg. 6 LENGTH: 569 words FOR those who run with their dogs, trying to stay fleet of foot with a dog on a leash can be an exercise in futility. While the two-legged jogger aims for an even pace, the four-legged set sniffs, pulls, doubles back and dashes forward, yanking the shoulder socket. Regular leashes can also cause gait problems for serious runners, said Kelly Liljeblad, a dog owner and marathoner from Boulder, Colo. ''If you run with the leash in the left hand, you'll naturally bend to the left,'' she explained. In the last few years, some entrepreneurs and pet-gear companies have introduced hands-free systems, which loop a belt, attached to leash, around the runner's waist. Recent innovations include swiveling mechanisms for tangle-free runs, quick-release buckles, fixtures for multiple dogs, reflective trim and pouches for personal items. While recovering from a 2:47:13 finish (the women's winning time) at the Miami Marathon last month, Ms. Liljeblad tested five sets of hands-free leashes on 20- to 30-minute runs around the Boulder Reservoir. Her co-testers were her yellow Labradors, Aggie and Pre. LARZ PET GEAR Z-HANDS FREE LEASH $56 ($85 and up for multiple dogs), www.larzpetgear.com. At first, Ms. Liljeblad said, she found the modular attachments ''overwhelming'' but added that ''it is nice to have options.'' She rated this system her second favorite. She said, ''This swivel mechanism was the best out of all the leashes'' and ''the padding is great on the belt if your dog pulls a little.'' Because of the variety of attachments, ''you can basically design your own belt.'' THE BUDDY SYSTEM $26, ($20 for smaller dogs); Lunge Buster, $12.50, www.buddysys.com. A ''lightweight, easy-to-use and nonbulky'' design earned this ''simple'' leash best-in-show for Ms. Liljeblad. She liked how it slid around the belt as she ran with Aggie. Also ''nice'' was the ''bungee like'' Lunge Buster (the Buddy System has a regular leash). ''It was a perfect stiffness and length because it didn't jerk me around,'' Ms. Liljeblad said. CARDIO CANINE $55, www.cardiocanine.com. Ms. Liljeblad appreciated the water-bottle holder and pocket on the back of this system, modeled after a rock-climbing belt. ''This would be great for a long run or even a hike,'' said Ms. Liljeblad, who also used the leash's shortened loop to help steer Aggie. But the ''metal latches were bulky and heavy'' and she missed the bungee leash and swivel action of some other systems. Pre and Aggie, top, fight over the Cardio Canine. RUNNING DAWG $21.95, www.runningdawg.com. ''This is a nice, simple leash,'' said Ms. Liljeblad, who thought the nylon belt pack was very useful. But the bungee-type leash was ''a little too soft and flexible'' for Ms. Liljeblad and Pre, who ''kept forgetting he was on the leash.'' She also wished it had a swivel system, and she had concerns about chafing. ''The belt strap wasn't that comfortable,'' Ms. Liljeblad said. ''But I like the simplicity.'' DOGMATIC FREELEASH PRO $24.99, www.dogmaticproducts.com. New this month, the updated Freeleash Pro has a buckle system designed to withstand 500 pounds of force, but after using it on Pre, Ms. Liljeblad said she ''wasn't crazy about the heavy metal latches.'' She did like the quick-release system and the anti-tangle swivel, though it got caught on her jacket a few times. She gave a thumbs-up to the simple design and lightweight, reflective strap. URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: DOGS (93%); MARATHONS (78%); PETS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (70%) GEOGRAPHIC: COLORADO, USA (72%) UNITED STATES (72%) LOAD-DATE: February 14, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: RUNNING DAWG: $21.95, www.runningdawg.com. ''This is a nice, simple leash,'' said Ms. Liljeblad, who thought the nylon belt pack was very useful. But the bungee-type leash was ''a little too soft and flexible'' for Ms. Liljeblad and Pre, who ''kept forgetting he was on the leash.'' She also wished it had a swivel system, and she had concerns about chafing. ''The belt strap wasn't that comfortable,'' Ms. Liljeblad said. ''But I like the simplicity.'' DOGMATIC FREELEASH PRO: $24.99, www.dogmaticproducts.com. New this month, the updated Freeleash Pro has a buckle system designed to withstand 500 pounds of force, but after using it on Pre, Ms. Liljeblad said she ''wasn't crazy about the heavy metal latches.'' She did like the quick-release system and the anti-tangle swivel, though it got caught on her jacket a few times. She gave a thumbs-up to the simple design and lightweight, reflective strap. LARZ PET GEAR Z-HANDS FREE LEASH: $56 ($85 and up for multiple dogs), www.larzpetgear.com. At first, Ms. Liljeblad said, she found the modular attachments ''overwhelming'' but added that ''it is nice to have options.'' She rated this system her second favorite. She said, ''This swivel mechanism was the best out of all the leashes'' and ''the padding is great on the belt if your dog pulls a little.'' Because of the variety of attachments, ''you can basically design your own belt.'' THE BUDDY SYSTEM $26, ($20 for smaller dogs) Lunge Buster, $12.50, www.buddysys.com. A ''lightweight, easy-to-use and nonbulky'' design earned this ''simple'' leash best-in-show for Ms. Liljeblad. She liked how it slid around the belt as she ran with Aggie. Also ''nice'' was the ''bungee like'' Lunge Buster (the Buddy System has a regular leash). ''It was a perfect stiffness and length because it didn't jerk me around,'' Ms. Liljeblad said. CARDIO CANINE: $55, www.cardiocanine.com. Ms. Liljeblad appreciated the water-bottle holder and pocket on the back of this system, modeled after a rock-climbing belt. ''This would be great for a long run or even a hike,'' said Ms. Liljeblad, who also used the leash's shortened loop to help steer Aggie. But the ''metal latches were bulky and heavy'' and she missed the bungee leash and swivel action of some other systems. Pre and Aggie, top, fight over the Cardio Canine. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN COLLECTOR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1075 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final As Mores Evolve, India's Divorced Seek Second Chance BYLINE: By SAHER MAHMOOD and SOMINI SENGUPTA SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; NEW DELHI JOURNAL; Pg. 4 LENGTH: 1020 words DATELINE: NEW DELHI Above a working man's diner in the middle of a hurly-burly city market, Yuvraj Raina abets what until recently would have been seen as a radical challenge to the social order. He picks up a folder on his desk and reads aloud. ''Divorcee, '68 born, she is a financier, 40,000 income per month. She has a daughter, 8 years old.'' Another folder: ''Brahmin, '59 born, 5'3'', she is an accountant, no issue. She is a divorcee. Reason for divorce she has written boy was mentally disturbed.'' And a third, an unusual candidate who had never before been married but was considered too old to find a husband the conventional way: ''She has opted for a divorce. She is '68 born. Hardly get any unmarried boy.'' Mr. Raina, divorced himself, is an entrepreneur courting a small but promising market: He runs a matrimonial agency for men and women seeking to marry again. Once, such a notion would have been anathema in middle-class India. Marriage was socially compulsory, divorce was frowned upon and widows, at least in some Hindu communities, were subject to a life of austerity and in some cases, exile. Marriage is still, by and large, socially compulsory. But in a measure of the slow churning of Indian social mores, divorce and remarriage are slowly gaining acceptability. ''In general, it's no taboo these days,'' Mr. Raina said gamely, and went on to praise the anonymity that big cities in particular offered to those who wanted a fresh start. To get away from clucking tongues and wagging fingers, a divorced man, as Mr. Raina put it, ''just has to change his house. From East Delhi to South Delhi, he is a new person.'' The work of Mr. Raina's agency, called the Aastha Center for Remarriage, is not all that countercultural anymore. The matrimonial sections of Sunday papers carry advertisements from other marriage bureaus specializing in second-timers. An Internet portal was created six months ago, called secondshaadi.com -- shaadi being the Hindi word for marriage -- and already has a database of 25,000 clients. Even conventional marriage portals, like shaadi.com, are beginning to see listings from people who want to tie the knot a second time. Sunil Gangwani, who runs a shaadi.com branch in Nagpur, a small provincial city in central India, said about 5 percent of his clients were divorced. Divorce rates are difficult to quantify because cases are filed in local courts across the country, but there is anecdotal evidence of a rise. The Delhi Commission for Women, which runs a telephone help line, estimated that the number of calls from women asking about divorce proceedings had grown at least 20 percent since 2000. Mr. Raina's agency alone has 5,000 prospective brides and grooms on file. For the most part, relatives come to sign up their kin, as older brothers and fathers and aunts would in the case of a traditional first marriage. Their files contain old-fashioned details: caste, income, whether vegetarian -- and the exact time of birth, for astrological purposes. But they also identify whether the clients are divorced or widowed, and describe briefly why, if divorced, the marriage collapsed. Mr. Raina says he is not interested in details. ''If I hear their stories it will take two days,'' he said. ''I write 'incompatibility.' '' He sifts through them carefully and sends clients the files of prospective matches. He found a match for himself this way -- a woman whose first husband had died, leaving her a business to run. They have been married a little more than a year. The Aastha office is a narrow room on top of a two-story walk-up. Its walls are plastered with larger than life posters of smiling couples in wedding garb. A variety of desires brings people here. Manju Singh, 56, came looking not so much for a husband but for a companion her age. ''I need someone to talk to,'' she said. ''The evenings are lonely.'' Anubha Suri, 29, was encouraged by her parents to start anew, even as she waited for her divorce to be finalized. ''People might be saying, 'See how fast this girl is,' '' she said. ''I don't care. I'll show the world a woman can live without marriage or with marriage.'' Savi Nagpal, 39, came because she grew weary of having to organize her daughter's birthday parties by herself. ''As you know, in India everybody asks the father's name -- the first thing,'' she said. To have a father figure, she said, would be good for her daughter, who is 8 years old. And yet, Ms. Nagpal remains wary of remarrying. It took her more than three years even to approach Mr. Raina's agency. She is still a bit frightened of a new relationship. ''Looking for a second husband for me now is not a matter of love but a purely practical consideration,'' Ms. Nagpal said. This is a society in transition, gingerly embracing new habits, but still deeply traditional in matters of marriage. No one knows this better than someone who is divorced and looking for a fresh start. Inderbir Singh, 35, stopped being invited to outings with friends after his divorce 15 months ago. If a business associate asks about his family and he confesses to being divorced, the conversation enters an awkward silence. His friends have urged him to find a new partner, but no one has set him up on a date. ''Suddenly I'm an outcast from my society,'' he said, only half joking. He sees his society in conflict with itself. ''People are O.K. with divorce. Nobody forces you to stay in a marriage and torture yourself for the rest of your life,'' he said. ''But the attitude towards a divorce is still the same. They're outcasts. They think divorce won't happen if the person is a good person.'' Mr. Singh has not been shy about going out on the marriage market again. He listed himself on conventional marriage portals but scored what he called ''a 100 percent failure rate.'' He put out a newspaper ad, soliciting proposals without luck. Then, he tried secondshaadi.com. So far, he has met seven women, and liked one of them enough to ask her out on two dates. He described her as ''a very promising contact.'' ''Let's see how it goes,'' he said. URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: MARRIAGE (90%); DIVORCE & DISSOLUTION (89%); WOMEN (78%); FAMILY LAW (75%); WEB SITES & PORTALS (60%); SEARCH ENGINES (60%); WEDDINGS & ENGAGEMENTS (90%) GEOGRAPHIC: NEW DELHI, INDIA (90%); DELHI, INDIA (70%) INDIA (96%) LOAD-DATE: February 14, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: At the Aastha Center for Re-Marriage in New Delhi, above, employees work on matching couples for potential remarriage. The shop has 5,000 prospective brides and grooms on file. Inderbir Singh, 35, left, eating at a McDonald's in New Delhi, calls himself an ''outcast from my society'' because of his divorce. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1076 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Mom and Pop Get a Partner: Microsoft BYLINE: By DAVID POGUE SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; STATE OF THE ART; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 1334 words So Microsoft is making a hostile bid for Yahoo. Has it come to this? Is Microsoft's innovation engine so dead that the only way it can grow is to buy other companies? It's sad, in a way, because under the right circumstances, Microsoft, or pieces of it anyway, are still capable of fresh ideas and polished work. The company itself may be a massive fallen redwood tree, slowly rotting in an old-growth forest. But sprouting from that decaying Windows/Office log are little green start-up shoots. They prove that even if the bureaucracy has made Microsoft top-heavy and leaden, innovation still thrives in pockets. Nowhere is this old Microsoft/new Microsoft dichotomy more apparent than in the company's suite of online tools for small businesses, which reopened Monday in an improved 2.0 version (www.smallbusiness.officelive.com). What makes Office Live Small Business so compelling is its sharp focus on a single problem: that half the small businesses in America, and 70 percent of one-person businesses, don't even have Web sites. Obviously, the percentage that exploits Internet marketing tools like e-mail newsletters, search engine ads and online stores is even lower. Suppose you're among them. Suppose you train dogs, or translate documents, or retouch photos, or sell knickknacks on eBay, or make seashell jewelry. And right now, your idea of a marketing plan is taping up fliers in the grocery store. How are you supposed to get a Web site? Who will design it, and who will host it? Who do you pay to place search engine ads for you, and how will you know if they're working? How do you send out e-mail newsletters without being blocked as a spammer? And how will you know if that effort is paying off? And above all: how much is all this going to cost you? Office Live Small Business (O.L.S.B.) is a centralized Web site where you can set up all of those small-businessy things -- a Web site, an online ad campaign, e-mail promotions, in-company communications -- all by yourself, even if you're not very technical. For the first time, these big-league tools are within your reach, partly because you don't have to hire somebody to set them up and partly because many of them are free. The changes from the original 2006 version are apparent immediately. Internet Explorer used to be the required Web browser to set up your online presence, but now Firefox is O.K., too. And that means you can take advantage of Office Live even if you use (gasp) a Macintosh. That's the New Microsoft, baby. A credit card is no longer required to get started, either. You can start playing with the service by supplying nothing more than a name, e-mail address and ZIP code. There are no longer three different tiers of Office Live service, with different fees and different features; that's the Old Microsoft way (see also: Windows Vista). Instead, there's just one free service that includes a wide assortment of useful tools, plus a handful of a la carte extras. The freebies begin with a Web site for your business, complete with 500 megabytes of storage. Simple tools let you design clean-looking pages, with your choice of color and design themes, logo and photos, links, and so on, even if you have absolutely no experience doing this sort of thing. (You can see the results at, for example, whineranddiner.net, murphyoutdoors.com and ameliascakes.com -- real sites created by actual Office Live users.) Microsoft hosts your site free, and also offers free analysis tools. With one click, you can see a graph of your site's traffic over time; where the visitors are coming from (for example, search engines or links from other sites); and even which Web browsers they're using. A number of useful Office Live features that used to cost you money are now free. For example, only paid subscribers enjoyed the ability to synchronize their Office Live address books and calendars with Outlook, so they could work on them when not connected to the Internet. That's now free to everyone. Similarly, if you wanted to design your own Web pages (or hire someone to do it) instead of using Microsoft's canned page designs, you used to have to pay; now that's free, too. As a bonus, you can now remove the small Office Live logo from your site -- a welcome change. The old fee-based tiers also included a long list of features for the technically inclined: list managers that help you track employees, resources, reservations, and so on; project and time trackers; a document-sharing module; and collaboration tools for internal company discussion. Those are all free now. Unfortunately, Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away. The most famous feature of the original Office Live was the free domain-name registration. That is, your free Web site could have any dot-com name you liked -- BobsFleabag.com, for example -- and you also got 25 e-mail addresses to match (sales@bobsfleabag.com, info@bobsfleabag.com and so on). Those unheard-of perks are gone; after the first year, Microsoft now charges $15 a year for those custom domain names and e-mail addresses (at least for new members). If you decline, your free Web site will be stuck with a clunky name like bobsfleabag.accommodations.officelive.com. Nor is that the only way Microsoft intends to make money from this service. For example, there are small ads on the Office Live Web site (the one with the tools -- not the site you create). Because these ads are aimed at you, the small-business owner, they're not especially bothersome, for the same reason that people don't mind, say, ads for cameras in a photography magazine. Meanwhile, Microsoft can charge advertisers more for these ads because they are, again, so targeted. Office Live offers an easy-to-use e-mail marketing system that includes newsletter design and address database. You can also track the results of your e-mail initiatives: how many people opened your mail, as well as how many clicked a link in it. Microsoft even does the e-mail sending for you, so your e-mail won't get blocked by your own Internet provider as spam. That's all free during the current testing phase, but Microsoft will charge a monthly fee after that. Ditto for the terrific build-your-own-online-store feature. You get a traditional online shopping cart, integration with eBay, and auto-calculations of shipping and even taxes (according to the buyer's state). But you'll pay $40 a month for this high-end luxury, plus a $30 monthly PayPal fee if you want to accept payment by credit card right on your Web site. (Otherwise, your customers will be shunted off to PayPal.com to complete the transaction.) PayPal charges about 3 percent of each sale either way. Finally, of course, you have to pay to place ads in the results of Web search sites; here again, Office Live tracks the results, making it crystal clear which of your ads are producing the best results. This, though, may be the goofiest part of Office Live. You can place ads only on Microsoft's search sites and Ask.com, which together represent less than 8 percent of search engine popularity. If you're going to advertise, you'd almost certainly prefer the exposure of the Big Two -- Yahoo and Google -- but they're not available through Office Live. Now, plenty of companies sell similar services individually: Web hosting, for example, or online marketing. But Microsoft claims to have no competition for Office Live's concept. Nobody else offers a complete one-stop self-contained unified Internet toolkit for small businesses -- especially not at these prices. The result is exciting for two reasons. First, Office Live Small Business gives the nation's 25 million small businesses a chance to use the same online tools as the big boys. Second, Office Live Small Business has all the hallmarks of a start-up: innovative, focused, fast-moving, game-changing, quick to respond to customer feedback and nimble in recovering from mistakes. When was the last time anyone described Microsoft that way?
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1077 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times Directory: ~hesterj -> Entrepreneur Entrepreneur -> Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 Length Download 3.51 Mb. Share with your friends:
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