Amazon
Ad help for bloggers
Amazon.com is making it easier for bloggers using Google’s Blogger site to put ads on their blogs. Bloggers who set up an account with Amazon Associates can quickly make links from their blog to relevant products on Amazon.com and earn referral fees for transactions. Bloggers just highlight text within their blogs while editing and can turn them into links with a few clicks. Google product manager Rick Klau said the company’s goal was to make Blogger the easiest platform for bloggers to make money on.
— Associated Press
Dell
700 to lose jobs
Computer maker Dell will lay off 700 workers in Malaysia in a bid to cut costs, a company official said Wednesday. The affected employees in Dell’s manufacturing plant in Malaysia’s northern Penang state will leave the company between January and June, said Dell Malaysia spokeswoman Jasmine Begum. She said the employees, about 15 percent of Dell’s work force in Malaysia, will receive compensation. The plant will stop making notebooks for the United States, Canada and Latin America, but it will continue to produce notebooks, desktops and servers for South Asia and Australia, Begum said. The company employs about 4,500 people in Malaysia. Dell last month reported a 54 percent drop in quarterly net profit and a 15 percent decline in revenue, suggesting the computer maker wasn’t fully benefiting from the industry’s fledgling recovery.
— Associated Press
First Solar
Revenue jump seen
First Solar, the world’s largest maker of thin-film solar-power modules, forecast revenue will climb to $2.7 billion to $2.9 billion next year on rising demand for renewable energy from Germany to China. The shares jumped in late New York trading. Net income will be in the range of $6.05 to $6.85 a share, the Tempe, Ariz.-based company said Wednesday in a statement. That compares to the $6.50 average estimate of 25 analysts compiled by Bloomberg. The global market for solar modules will climb to 7,500 megawatts next year from about 5,500 this year, Chief Executive Officer Robert Gillette said on a conference call. “2010 is going to be stronger than 2009,” Gillette said. “We’re going to grow with this market.”
— Bloomberg News
