BUSINESS BRIEFS
You can post videos on TV
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Oceanic Time Warner Cable yesterday said it is the first U.S. cable company to offer a new service that allows customers to post still and video images on local cable television. PhotoShow TV On Demand is on channel 917 and contains user-submitted material in a category format.
Road Runner Internet customers can download PhotoShow software free from www.rr.com. Once installed on a computer, the software can be used to create and send an up to 5-minute presentation to Oceanic. The content is screened before being posted to the TV channel.
UNITED POSTS 1ST PROFIT IN 6 YEARS
CHICAGO — United Airlines parent UAL Corp. confirmed yesterday it made its first profit in six years in the second quarter, an expected $119 million gain that beat Wall Street's expectations but fell short of other U.S. airline companies.
Higher fares and packed planes helped the company post double-digit operating revenue growth in its first full quarter out of bankruptcy, and cost controls improved the bottom line.
Based on the preliminary results announced by the company a week ahead of its earnings report, it will be UAL's first result in the black since a $408 million profit in the second quarter of 2000.
OUTAGES PLAGUE MYSPACE.COM
NEW YORK — The popular social-networking site MySpace.com suffered a pair of extended outages over the weekend because of power problems at a key data center in the Los Angeles area, the company said yesterday.
In a message to MySpace users, company co-founder and president Tom Anderson said MySpace "has been screwy" since Saturday because of failures in both the main power supply and the backup generators. The company blamed a heat wave that has gripped California, increasing electricity demand and leaving tens of thousands of customers in Southern California without power.
CHIP DEAL SEEN AS THREAT TO INTEL
SAN FRANCISCO — Advanced Micro Devices Inc. struck another blow at Intel Corp., its bigger rival in the market for personal-computer microprocessors, as it disclosed plans yesterday to buy one of the dominant makers of graphics chips in a $5.4 billion deal that analysts said could fundamentally alter competition in the semiconductor industry.
The acquisition of ATI Technologies Inc. will allow AMD to shed its role as a boutique player that sells only microprocessors, which act as the core calculating engines in PCs. Almost immediately, AMD will become a seller of chips in four new categories, eroding a key advantage of Intel, which has benefited from its broader product portfolio.
