AT&T has purchased Dallas-based WiFi hotspot operator Wayport for a stunning $275 million in cash. The privately held company administers over 10,000 WiFi hotspots for various hotel chains like Wyndham, Marriott Vacation Club and Four Seasons as well as McDonald’s restaurants nationwide.

I caught this bit of acquisition news a little late (it’s been on the PR wires for about fifteen hours now), but I got pinged by Austin Startup on the news early this morning, and it made me wonder if the same deal that’s been proffered to Starbucks customers will also be extended to McDonald’s patrons.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a coffee-addict, and I’ll use any excuse to hang out in a coffee bar for extended periods of time to suck down that sweet, sweet nectar of the gods.. but as a father who happens to be a web worker, I more often find myself setting up shop at a McDonald’s than the Starbucks across the street. To that end, I’d be far more likely to start up a tab there and set myself up with a McDonald’s Card if it came with two free daily hours of WiFi (and I imagine I’m not the only one in that boat).

Stacey Higgenbotham over at GigaOm sees it as more of a move by AT&T to aleviate the load off the mobile data network than as a value add for McDonald’s customers:

Buying Wayport and offering 20,000 hot spots (including in airports and McDonald’s restaurants) in the U.S. allows AT&T to provide its customers with more places to do their bandwidth-sucking applications. Already, AT&T is willing to let iPhone and BlackBerry users access its Wi-Fi hotspots free at Starbucks. It also means AT&T can hold out a bit longer before deploying its 4G LTE network, which is designed for data.

While that’s likely the rationale being used to justify the purchase, one hopes that they see the opportunity here to continue to expand their reach and build up business for their host partners.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:AT&T Giving Away Free Wi-Fi at StarbucksiTunes Wi-Fi Music Store Now LiveiPass Offers Wireless Net Access to Consumers with WiFi/3G NetworkAre Consumers Ready for WiFi on Airplanes?WeFi Finds Friends from Their WiFiMake Money with Your iPhone. Track Wifi Access Points.Loki - Location-based Search and Navigation

Source:Mashable!

The entire Microsoft-Yahoo saga is now starting to look really sad for Yahoo. After Jerry Yang’s statement yesterday that Yahoo is suddenly interested in being acquired by Microsoft, Steve Ballmer now responds with a firm no.

“We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly,” he said. “We tried at one point to do a partnership around search, not advertising. That didn’t work either, so we moved on, and they moved on.”

Although it’s still questionable that getting acquired by Microsoft is a good thing for Yahoo in the long run, now that it’s seemingly out of their grasp, any other deal (for example, the rumored AOL merger) will seem like a desperate move. Even if Ballmer is just trying to wreck Yahoo some more and get an even better deal, Yahoo is in an awful position to negotiate; they’ve tried several avenues, and all of them turned out to be dead ends.

Now, the best - and probably only - thing they can do is get new management, and start working hard at building value for their shareholders. The ship has been sinking for quite some time, and those who wanted to leave already left. Time to go back to the old drawing board and start from scratch.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Ballmer Comments on FacebookBallmer Keeps Bloviating, But Actually Makes Sense!Steve Ballmer Attacks Google’s Gmail AdsGreat, Now We’re Left with BallmerMicrosoft CEO and CFO Schedules Early Monday Morning Chat With Financial AnalystsThe Daily Poll: Should Yahoo Accept Microsoft’s Initial Offer?Microsoft Gives Yahoo 3 Weeks For ‘Definitive Agreement’ To Buyout

We hear that Yahoo TechTicker, the online-video show from Yahoo Finance featuring Valley fox Sarah Lacy and red-hot moneymen Henry Blodget and Paul Kedrosky, is delayed, and won’t be airing early episodes next week as rumored. Dammit! Scott Moore, we blame you for this, too.

Source:Valleywag

“The Wall St. buzz is that msft and yhoo are bidding for eBay. My source tells me that Yahoo! has bid 1.76 shares for eBay ($40-41) and is expected to win at that price.” So writes Scot Wingo, the plugged-in CEO of ChannelAdvisor, an auctions-software maker in which eBay owns a minority stake. Let’s dissect that rumor, shall we?

The deal does offer a generous 25 percent premium to eBay shareholders, pricing the company’s shares at the 52-week-high they briefly touched in October. But as proposed, it would be ruinously dilutive to Yahoo shareholders, leaving them with 36 percent of the combined company. Why a Yahoo shareholder would settle for this escapes me, however, unless they have completely written off Yahoo’s management, brand, and assets.

Which is not out of the question. At the levels Yahoo’s trading at, shareholders are essentially paying for its minority stakes in Yahoo Japan, Alibaba in China, and Gmarket in Korea. But if a shareholder would be disillusioned enough to accept this deal, one wonders why they wouldn’t simply sell their Yahoo shares and buy eBay shares on the open market, where they’re considerably cheaper.

I don’t know if this plan is being seriously considered within Yahoo. As many have written, Yahoo and eBay’s assets make a nice strategic fit, in theory; eBay’s PayPal already has a search-ads partnership with Yahoo, and the two companies have other advertising deals. Google is actively pursuing a profitable combination of search and e-commerce through its Checkout initiative, sharpening the threat to both Yahoo and eBay. Not to mention Skype, which eBay has written off but could find a better fit with Yahoo’s mail and IM products.

But in practice? The reality is that both companies are collections of underused assets, with management that has allowed vital talent to flee. Putting them together might provide a needed shakeout of eBay and Yahoo’s overstaffed executive suites, but the transition would be chaotic and painful.

A much simpler course would be selling out to Microsoft or News Corp., which surely remain interested in Yahoo’s online-advertising business, if they can stomach all the troubles that come with it.

That this rumor is circulating, that it’s even being whispered about, suggests that Jerry Yang may have given up on being rescued by a deep-pocketed buyer. Issuing so much undervalued paper for eBay smacks of desperation. It would keep Yahoo independent, but at a very steep price. So steep that, if it’s being seriously considered, can only mean no one wants to buy Yahoo.

Jerry Yang has made Yahoo Go 3.0, Yahoo’s mobile application platform, a key piece of the strategy to keep his business relevant. Rather than trying to run everything, like Google or Apple, Yahoo will focus on being a friend to all. MySpace, eBay, and MTV. But Yang is once again focused on the wrong partners.

Yang’s friends are in low places — positions of weakness relative to the wireless carriers who exercise control over the services used on their phones. While Yahoo has signed up some phone manufacturers to carry Go, the carriers who buy their phones have final say over what runs — and they have deleted Go before it gets into users’ hands. Consigned to obscurity as an add-on download, Yahoo Go is just another example of Yahoo’s strategic blundering.

Council member: I heard you need my John Doe on something.
Clerk: I need your signature on some documents.
Council member: Yeah, my John Doe.
Clerk, laughing: You mean your John Hancock — John Doe is an anonymous dead body. [Council member looks puzzled.] John Hancock has the biggest signature on the Declaration of Independence — that’s where the term comes from.
Council member: Oh.

City Hall
San Francisco, California

This exchange was posted today on Overheard in the Office, a once-clever repository of quips and comebacks which has transformed into a vault of urban legends forwarded by people still using AOL. Still, this “council member” piqued our curiosity. We suspect the submitter meant our city’s Board of Supervisors. So which San Francisco supervisor mixed up his or her Hancocks and Does? Well, in order to answer that, you’ll need to know who the hell these people are. Here’s a primer:

There are eleven members of the Board of Supervisors. It includes three women, three guys with unfortunate facial hair, one guy who looks like a network TV anchorman, and one bald fat fellow. No longer included is former supervisor Ed Jew (who, by the way, is Asian, and not, to my knowledge, Jewish), elected to represent the Sunset district while, a pending case alleges, he was secretly living in Burlingame, a suburb near the airport. None of these people, to my knowledge, had an affair with god-mayor Gavin Newsom while married to his campaign manager.

Other than that? Not much to write home about. They’re San Francisco supervisors. The only thing they’ve done that has influenced tech is kill the citywide Wi-Fi deal. For my money, any of these boneheads could be the culprit. Why does the smartest city on the planet have the dumbest people running it?

Source:Valleywag

Less than a week after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was bitchslapped on Capitol Hill, his company has settled with the families of Chinese writers who were jailed in China. Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning were imprisoned based partly on documents Yahoo says it was “legally required” to hand over. Settlement terms were not disclosed. Yahoo will start a fund to provide “humanitarian relief” to dissidents and their families. Reportedly, one part of the settlement stipulates that Yahoo must lobby the Chinese government to release the two journalists. Right. Like Yahoo’s boys in Beijing will have more success swaying Communist hardliners than Yahoo’s D.C. reps had in avoiding this embarrassing debacle in the first place.

As CNBC bureau chief Jim Goldmanchatted with me about the abrupt sacking of Stuart Scott as Microsoft’s CIO, I reminded him of another high-level firing. Remember Martin Taylor? A right-hand man to CEO Steve Ballmer and Microsoft’s point person on its anti-Linux campaign, Taylor and Microsoft “parted ways” — code words, insiders say, for a firing. A commenter on the Mini-Microsoft blog claims that Taylor was fired not just for pursuing an affair with a coworker, but expensing a hotel room for weekend getaways. “‘Internal affairs’ takes on a whole new meaning at Microsoft,” cracked Goldman. One hopes that Scott’s sins against the company had more to it than just an affair. Sacking an employee merely for office hanky-panky seems meddlesome and moralistic. But frittering away shareholders’ money on extracurriculars, as Taylor stands accused of? A firing offense, for sure.

Source:Valleywag

Google has launched YouTube.ca — the Canadian edition of YouTube. Google has signed content deals with the CBC network, the Canadian Baseball League, and Sony BMG Canada. According to YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley, the “goal is to satisfy the unique needs of the local users and to further strengthen Canada’s vibrant YouTube community.” Right. So where’s the hockey? [eCanadaNow]

Source:Valleywag

Bad enough that Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s top lawyer, and Jerry Yang, the company’s CEO and cofounder were raked over the coals today by a House committee for the company’s role in the imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. But Yang suffered the additional indignity of getting the Congressional tongue-lashing on his 39th birthday. Happy birthday, Jerry! Turning 40’s going to look easy by comparison.

Yang had to withstand more than an hour of condemnation from members of Congress, chiefly Tom Lantos of California who led the session, before even having a chance to speak. Yang was then forced to bow to Shi Tao’s mother who was in the front row and in Lantos’s words “beg forgiveness.” Committee members unleashed their rhetoric, calling Yahoo’s actions “spineless.” Congressman Lantos went so far as to personally indict the two executives:

Morally you are pygmies… An appallingly disappointing performance. I think we cannot begin to tell you how disappointing Mr. Yang’s and your performance was.

But I bet Yang got his wish — for this whole ordeal to be over.

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The ITunes Store is no longer charging a premium for its DRM-free songs, also known as iTunes Plus. Prices now match its current catalog of 99-cent singles, and users are no longer confronted by an annoying pop-up. The trivial observation to make is that Amazon.com forced Apple’s hand by charging 99 cents for DRM-free MP3 files. But far more likely? Consumers made their disinterest in overpriced, annoying-to-download files clear by simply avoiding them, and Apple realized it had to cut the price. This, of course, doesn’t bode well for record labels’ plans to charge higher prices for hit songs. [Ars Technica]

Source:Valleywag

Alain Levy, chief executive of EMI Music, still hasn’t gotten the memo about how to negotiate with Apple’s Steve Jobs. At a press conference in London, the executive spoke about variable pricing on iTunes, “We are having discussions which make us believe it will happen in the next 12 months.” Apparently, Levy didn’t notice Apple’s move to drop DRM-free tracks on iTunes to the standard 99-cents price. The bottom line: consumers like flat pricing, and Jobs is not oblivious to their preference. [WSJ]

Source:Valleywag

MarketWatch, ahead of Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings, said the company was looking to “start fresh.” In other words, kindly ignore the drop in net income, the rise in expenses, the continued problems in display ads the company just reported — that’s all in the past. How many fresh starts does a company need — or deserve — before current management is held responsible? One thing I notice in recent rah-rah stories planted by Yahoo PR: Everyone talks about how confident employees are in Jerry Yang. The unspoken message: No one trusts Yahoo president Sue Decker. And why should they, after she pushed out, in short succession, COO Dan Rosensweig, CEO Terry Semel, and popular U.S. display-sales chief Wenda Harris Millard?

Is Yahoo due for a breakup? Of course not. A recent report by Sanford Bernstein, a Wall Street research firm, has sent the stock sailing, but in practice, it’s a silly idea. How one would actually separate the display-advertising business (worth $25 billion!) from the search business ($15.6 billion) seems questionable, and selling off Yahoo’s stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba would mean shutting the company out of Asia’s largest markets. Besides, we think Bernstein’s analysis undervalues some of Yahoo’s assets.

Why, cuddly, adorable Flickr, Yahoo’s photo site, surely deserves a few billion dollars of its own. Likewise Web 2.0 properties Jumpcut and Upcoming, judging by the way South of Market hipsters won’t shut up about them. And if TechCrunch is worth $100 million, shouldn’t we assign the same valuation to Yahoo’s in-house blog, Yodel Anecdotal? Lastly, there’s CEO Jerry Yang’s awkward charm, and president Sue Decker’s Machiavellian, company-destroying will to power. Those? Those are priceless.

All the record-label kevetching that the Internet is killing their livelihood may actually be true. But it’s not college kids sharing files in broadband-equipped dorms that they need to worry about. Radiohead is releasing its new album sans label. Novel, but the interesting bit is that the band is giving a choice to consumers: Pay $82 for a super-fancy, boxed edition of In Rainbows, or download the album — for whatever you think it’s worth. This follows a similar campaign by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails who says once his band’s label obligations are completed, it will release digital albums for about $4. Of course it’s not just the music industry that should be concerned.

Amazon.com touted the fact that it had secured Radiohead for its new MP3 store, after the band had long refused to sell on Apple’s iTunes. But how valuable will this relationship be if fans can essentially obtain Radiohead’s music for free, with the band’s blessing?

Source:Valleywag

Starbucks has a rumor response website that it uses to dispel nasty gossip about the company. We wish all companies had this sort of thing so mock scandals can be quashed before they get out of control. [Barron’s]

Source:Valleywag

Yahoo has gotten itself into trouble with Sunnyvale and an artist whom the company hired to satisfy a public-art requirement of new corporate property in the Silicon Valley city. It turns out that the grass-cum-wire landscape became more overgrown than intended, so Yahoo took a weed whacker to the whole thing. The butchery “devastated” the artist. Maybe she can get a motivational speech from Jerry Yang as a pick-me-up? [WSJ]