According to the Guardian, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling told MPs today that “[a]round 80,000 [UK] business owners and investors will benefit from a new capital gains tax ‘entrepreneurs' relief.’  They will pay just 10% on capital gains up to the first £1m, instead of the 18% originally proposed when Darling first announced CGT reforms last autumn.  Darling said the concession, which will be available to owners or investors with a minimum 5% stake in a business, would [...]

In USA Today, Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal points out that “[i]n [their] milestone agreement with MySpace, the nation's attorneys general have marked a profoundly significant step toward social networking safety.  The agreement includes more than 70 detailed specific changes to help purge predators, expunge inappropriate content such as pornography and protect children from contact by adults. Even more important long term, MySpace has acknowledged that age and identity authentication are important to safeguarding children. It has commendably agreed to [...]

The New York Times this week has an interesting article on entrepreneurship in Ireland.  According to the NYT, entrepreneurs in Ireland – such as our friend Brian Dean from Ceatec – “rank just below rock stars in popularity.” It is very encouraging to see that European countries are starting to give entrepreneurs the recognition they deserve.  After all, company founders take big risks, investing significant amounts of time and money (often their own savings) into creating new, innovative products. But [...]

CNetNews.com points out that “Microsoft has made changes designed to make it easier to access the technical documentation for its older Office binary document formats and will sponsor an open-source project to map those binary formats to Open XML.  […]  In a blog on Wednesday, Office program manager Brian Jones said that the documentation for the binary document formats will be available for download under the terms of its Open Specification Promise (OSP), which is designed to let third parties [...]

The Associated Press writes that “[w]e think a lot about getting new gadgets, but not so much about getting rid of old ones. The result: old cell phones, defunct laser printers and Pentium III computers gathering dust.  A couple companies want to help us clear out those old gadgets, while feeding our upgrade habit, helping the environment and making a buck for themselves.  Instead of being hit up for an extended warranty next time you buy a gadget, you may [...]

The Washington Post reports that “[m]ore than 200 companies qualified to bid in the upcoming auction of public airwaves that could raise as much as $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury. But it's not clear whether any of those companies will fulfill one of the key goals of the auction -- to attract a bidder that would build a wireless network that could also be used by public-safety agencies.  Among those that had initially applied to bid but did not [...]