The internet has been buzzing with speculation ever since Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) put forth its offer to buy out Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), which Yahoo interpreted as a hostile take over attempt. Last week however, Microsoft withdrew it's offer which has become quite possibly the biggest story on the network over the last couple of weeks.

According to TheBizofCoding, Yahoo is in a precarious position as a result of their refusal to deal with Microsoft especially considering the fact that Yahoo!'s stock rose as a result of the negotiations, but fell dramatically when the talks were called off. Author Ujwal Tickoo goes on to say that the beneficiary of the failed negotiation is Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).

BestBizWare was unsurprised by the nosedive of Yahoo stocks after Microsoft abandoned talks, noting that it's obvious Yahoo! is more interested in "being single." MarketingBlurb raised several salient questions but also acknowledge that it's hard to tell what direction the Microhoo drama will take next. According to TheAlphaMarketer, Yahoo stockholders are not too happy with CEO Jerry Yang for his handling of the Microsoft offer.

This past Valentine’s Day I found myself at the florist, buying flowers, as one is wont to do in a florist on Valentine’s Day, and I struck up a quick conversation with the owner. I asked if Valentine’s Day was her busiest day of the year. She immediately shook her head and said, “No. Mother’s Day is, by far.” Ah yes, of course. Mother’s Day.

In the United States, Mother’s Day always falls on the second Sunday in May, which is this Sunday, May 11. Some quick Mother’s Day history: the first Mother’s Day on record was celebrated 100 years ago as a memorial day for women in a church in Grafton, West Virginia on May 10, 1908. In fact, that church is now known as the Mother’s Day Shrine and is an official national historic site. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother’s Day.

And businesses have been stuffing their Mother’s Day faces ever since.

Florists, greeting card makers, gift shops, restaurants, spas, clothing retailers, are just a few of the businesses that eagerly anticipate the yearly Mother’s Day surge. This year I bought my mom a funny card and a gift card to Bath & Body Works. I hope she doesn’t read this before she gets it in the mail. If you are reading this, Mom—happy early Mother’s Day!

So by now you may have heard about Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR).

If not, you will when its $14.5 billion wireless broadband network starts spreading across the earth.

Who's funding it? Some folks you may have heard of before. Intel. Google. Comcast. Time Warner. Etc.

TechCrunch gets it right: "This is a disaster waiting to happen."

And I suspect that Google, with its mind-blogging wireless ambitions, will be that disaster's primary beneficiary.

If you're a little guy in the wireless broadband industry, you'd better get ready for the onslaught of the Clearwire era.

Adapt or jump into your coffin right now.

CNNMoney says: "WiMAX promises faster download speeds than the latest networks run by cell-phone operators, and it's even seen as a potential competitor to fixed-line broadband."

Clearwire uses WiMAX, which lets you connect wirelessly to the Web from much greater distances than you could previously.

Do you think Clearwire is going to dominate the broadband wireless industry 5 years from now?

Cinco de Mayo has long been a celebration of Mexican heritage in the US. Like many other cultural holidays observed such as Oktoberfest, St. Pratrick’s Day, and Chinese New Year, Cinco de Mayo is in part a celebration of the nation’s diversity. What exactly is Cinco de Mayo though?

The common misconception is that Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of Mexican Independence which is actually on September 16^th. Celebrated in the state of Puebla as well as across the US, this day is a celebration of the victory of poorly trained and equipped Mexican army over the powerful French army in the Battle of Puebla. This historic battle, marked the beginning of the end of French imperialistic rule in Mexico.

There have been some pretty interesting things happening in the news the last couple weeks. From Earth Day to reports of a global rice shortage, to "Mileygate," the Know More Media authors have had their fingers (and keyboards) on the pulse of the current events.

On Monday we were inundated with news of the (over)exposure of Miley Cyrus. According to Know More Media CEO Hal Halladay, the whole "scandal" is really just reinforcement of things we already know. TheAlphaMarketer examined some of the branding issues related to the Vanity Fair photo shoot; TheRunwayScoop expressed hopes that Miley Cyrus is not headed down the same path as Britney Spears; MarketingBlurb noted that despite Miley's backpedaling, the images are out there and questioned whether or not Cyrus' brand would bounce back from the media storm. 

More Miley Cyrus Controversy:

• Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair Photo Shoot... (view article) - Business.KnowMoreMedia
• The Naked Miley Cyrus Circus Keeps Getting Better (view article) - AdHurl
• Miley Cyrus and Brand Management (view article) - Manager's Realm
• Hannah Montana: "G" Rating for Audience...? (view article) - Branding Post
• Disney Channel: Miley Cyrus "Manipulated" in Photo Shoot... (view article) - BizofShowBiz

The 134^th annual Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs is set to take off this Saturday May 3, 2008 at 6pm EDT. The Kentucky Derby is said to be the king of all horse races, with an overall purse of $2 million, attracting all the best horses, best ownership teams, biggest crowds, and thus the best sponsors and advertisers of the year. The TV coverage is mostly provided by ESPN and NBC, with the main coverage, including the race itself, broadcast live on NBC starting at 4pm EDT.

The business of horse racing and horse betting is only getting bigger. The Kentucky Derby typically brings in at least 150,000 spectators. Add that to the number of horse ownership teams, media crews, and support staff that come for the race, and you’ve got yourself a nifty weekend boom for the local businesses of Louisville, Kentucky. Hotels, restaurants, convenience stores, clothes retailers, Derby merchandisers, golf courses—they will all experience a significant surge in business.

The Kentucky Derby betting element alone spawns many businesses and millions of dollars. There are books, websites, brochures, consultants, and call-in numbers—each created to help bettors pick the best horses and increase their chances of winning. Fortunes can be made and lost, and there are many people and agencies jockeying to facilitate the process. Where does all this money come from and go? Is it a zero-sum event, or is more money spent or earned? The long-reaching trails of the Kentucky Derby makes it very difficult to determine, but one thing is for sure: the local businesses of Louisville, Kentucky are certainly glad when the Derby comes to town.

Across the U.S. tonight from 5 pm to 10 pm local time, Baskin-Robbins is offering 31-cent ice cream scoops in many of its ice cream stores to honor American firefighers. Baskin-Robbins plans to donate $100,000 to the National Fallen Firefighters Association.

Anything with the words "ice cream" in it gets me to listen.

Like yesterday's Ben and Jerry's "free ice cream day" promotion, the Baskin-Robbins move is clearly meant to get new customers to start coming to its stores throughout the spring and summer.

I just want to point out a few ways the Web makes these promotions easier or harder to do.

Easier: It's so easy to spread the word nowadays, and customers have the tools to spread it quickly and easily. BUT ...

Harder: Your promotion has to be legitimate - otherwise the buzz will turn negative quickly and bury it. BUT ...

Easier: You can turn the tide back to positive buzz quickly as well, and even quell negative buzz before it can surge. BUT ...

Harder: Everybody and their hamster gets wind of these kinds of promotions every day, it seems. So you really have to make your stand out.

I could go on, but it's clear that the Web makes amplification easier for businesses looking to spread buzz through one-time promotions - and simultaneously makes the "needle in a haystack" problem emerge more readily.

Cherry Garcia. I have never tasted better. Free or for $2.29 – I love the stuff. Given a choice, however, I choose free. And today I could. April 29^th is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. God Bless America.

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., the Vermont-based business known for its innovative and tasty ice cream as well as its idiosyncratic brand of socioeconomic responsibility, is celebrating its 30^th anniversary. Year and year out, you can get a free cone at Ben & Jerry’s on April 29^th.

Last year, Ben & Jerry’s scooped ice cream onto more than 1 million free cones worldwide! That is a lot of Chunky Monkey. By my calculations, about 15,000,000 grams of fat (sorry to spoil it).

If you just can’t decide what free cone to choose, you can phone a friend or go with the audience for help. According to Ben & Jerry’s website, the following flavors are their top 10 sellers.

Mylie Cyrus, the squeaky-clean Hannah Montana and resident Tween icon brought her game to the big leagues perhaps thinking it was still just a family picnic. Seems like just another cog in the Disney line-up of young seemingly innocent teens who are pushed to places they don’t belong.

You can be 15 years old. You can be nice and sweet. But if you are going to keep your has-been Dad employed and the studio bosses happy, forget acting like a 15 year-old. As proven by Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, naughty sells - not nice. And the more you dress and act like a hot 19 year-old, the more the cash rolls in.

Every time I see footage of Mylie Cyrus in concert I ask, “she is 15 years old?” Older stars routinely play younger-aged characters in movies and on TV. And it seems younger stars keep being pushed to look and act older.

And so it is with the photos of Cyrus by celebrity photog, Annie Leibowvtz. I am sure it seemed like a good idea to be on the cover of Vanity Fair. I suppose the plan made sense given the reputation of Liebowitz. I don’t doubt that Cyrus and her parents reviewed the plan and reviewed the photos.

Shelley Fralic, from the Vancouver Sun

“As for that sultry photo, you can bet your east-side fixer-upper that not one person going into that photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz, including Disney or her parents, didn't know what would come out the other end, and that it would hardly be suitable for the average mall rat.”

Disney likes their child stars wholesome, a stipulation that contrast sharply with the day’s era of bad boy and girl celebutants. Miley Cyrus’ preemptive apology for the image presented by her recent Vanity Fair photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz is a perfect example of the challenges facing young stars these days.

While some will no doubt turn this story into an issue of Disney control over Miley Cyrus, it is really about Cyrus and her family’s desire for the young starlet to remain a good role model for young viewers. If she were older, the photos taken by Leibovitz may not be an issue, but the fact is that the pictures were quite grown-up for a 15-year-old. Granted, at some point the world will have to accept that Miley Cyrus is growing up and as she does so, she should be allowed to be presented as a young woman as opposed to a little girl. Truthfully, I doubt these images would be such a big deal if it were not for Cyrus’ age because they are not obscene; simply not age appropriate. 

Of course this does not mean that as she makes the transition from a girl into womanhood that Cyrus’ image must become less respectable. However, in this time of over-sexualized teen and tween idols, the line delineating what is age appropriate is increasingly blurred. According to one Hollywood gossip blog, Miley Cyrus has been shirking her wholesome image in other ways as well with pictures of herself suggestively showing off her bra and Gawker actually accused Vanity Fair and Annie Leibovitz of grooming Cyrus like pedophiles. I think that's taking it a bit far.