Apple’s dramatic return to power in the technology industry, fueled by its efforts in the consumer electronics field like the iPod and the iPhone, only suffered from the ongoing options investigation. Now that Bloomberg has reported on the lawsuit’s dismissal, the company should be able to add to its impressive run back to prominence.

Bloomberg cited presiding US District Judge Jeremy Fogel’s decision, leading to the favorable decision for Apple:

“While the subsequent disclosure that the options were backdated might require a restatement, without a discernible drop in the stock price there is no basis upon which to establish an injury to shareholders,” Fogel wrote in his opinion.

Apple has gained more than 95 percent in the past year, adding $80.25 to its stock price in the period. Shares of Apple closed today at $164.30.

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On average online retailers accepted 2.6 different payment types this year, up from 2.1 in 2005. Providing more payment options increases online retailers sales, last year sales increased an average of 14 percent for retailers offering three or more payment methods.

"As online shopping continues to grow, it is critical to not only expand your product assortment," but to also offer "alternative means of payment," says Marty Keane, senior vice president of e-commerce at Bluefly an online retailer.

According to Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner, online sales are not growing as fast as they could because of shoppers concerns about identity theft from online payments. Over half of online consumers who are nervous about identity theft have changed the way they shop online a Gartner survey revealed in August. Thirteen percent said they stopped shopping online and 68 percent said they were more careful where they made purchases online.

Online shoppers "should use the same skills for the online experience that they do in the real world," George Peabody, director of Mercator Advisory Group told USA Today. "Don’t go to places that you don’t trust."

Fake Steve Jobs (AKA Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons) has been penning the Fake Steve satirical blog of the Apple co-founder to the bemusement of folks in the Valley. With potrayals of Microsoft boss Bill Gates as “Beastmaster Bill” (both Bill and the real Steve are fans of the blog), it’s garnered nothing less than a rabid following.

The blog contains nuggets of Silicon Valley life, like the recent entry “Java Developers Finally Realize The Party’s Over“:

But I think they don’t quite know which party they’re talking about. See this screed where some Javatard says Apple has been spitting in his face because we didn’t include Java 6 in Leopard. Or something. So he says he’s selling his Mac. His headline is, “So long, Apple. The party’s over.” Well he’s right about one thing. The party is over — the Java party, that is. Glad to see the Javatards have finally figured that out.

The pithy entries, are as amusing as the videos like “No Violence, But Clearly An IP Violation”

WebProNews conducted an interview with FakeSteve in conjunction with the launch of the new 248-page “Options” penned by FakeSteve, here’s an excerpt of an interview WebProNews did with FakeSteve:

1) The black turtlenecks you wear – humble article of well-made clothing, or a divine right conveyed upon you by the higher power that inspires gadgets like the iPod and the iPhone?

The former. I view my outfit as a form of monk’s robes. The idea is to abolish vanity and express my humility so that I can focus completely on my art. All I want to do is create beautiful objects. That is the only thing I want to think about. Not trivial things like clothing.

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If anything, this is a classic case study that strong content can bring you to high places…

Now on with beautiful objects and creating things…

Fake Steve Jobs: Have You Heard Of oPtion$?

By hanging out with Nippon worshipper and fellow tech titan Larry Ellison, spooning with Sting, cruising with Bono, and firing people, of course. It’s all part of a day’s work in the three act play that is Options, the novel by Fake Steve’s alter ego, Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons.

The novel stems from the exploding popularity of Fake Steve’s blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Once an under the radar blog churning away in relative silence, it began attracting a higher profile audience, thanks to the ersatz CEO’s witticisms and scathing observations of the tech industry at large.

The real Steve Jobs, as well as Bill Gates (affectionately known as ‘Beastmaster Bill’ on the FSJ blog), both count among its readership. After interest in the blog hit a high note, Options began taking form, but not before New York Times reporter Brad Stone outed its anonymous author.

Throughout the fun 248-page romp, in which the more tech-inclined should recognize the real people behind some of the fake names, FSJ throws tantrums, works his Zen mastery on slavering Apple fanboys, and ponders the deeper meaning of the iPhone’s inner workings.

But real life intrudes, as vicious investigators for the feds, and a traitor in Apple’s midst, seek to undo Apple’s, and Fake Steve’s, resurgence as a tech industry titan. Improperly backdated stock options and the celebrity status of Apple’s leader have the forces of government allied against him.

Can he outlast the probe, the betrayal, and a frightening loss of confidence, to get the iPhone to the Apple faithful? You think you know the answer to this, based on real world events, but until you’ve read every word you really don’t.

As a bonus for our readers, we were able to secure some answers from FSJ about the book, himself, and people in his life. Enjoy this exclusive Q&A session with the legendary inventor of the friggin’ iPhone (and iPod) – have you heard of it?

1) The black turtlenecks you wear – humble article of well-made clothing, or a divine right conveyed upon you by the higher power that inspires gadgets like the iPod and the iPhone?

The former. I view my outfit as a form of monk’s robes. The idea is to abolish vanity and express my humility so that I can focus completely on my art. All I want to do is create beautiful objects. That is the only thing I want to think about. Not trivial things like clothing.

2) Which situation would you rather see happen to former US Attorney Kevin V. Ryan: a slow devouring by an endless supply of fire ants, or being subjected to hours of video of Woz and Kathy Griffin in flagrante delicto?

The former. I’ve seen the Woz videos and I swear to you, nobody deserves to see that, not even Kevin Ryan.

3) Hypothetical solution: Richard M. Stallman is drowning. What do you throw to him, and does it matter if what you throw to him instills a childlike wonder in horrified onlookers?

I would throw him a 24-inch iMac. It won’t save him but at least he’ll get to see what a real computer looks like before he goes under.

4) In oPtion$, you noted your management style uses fear and tantrums to get results. How many interns need to be in tears before you reach a higher level of consciousness for the day?

Half a dozen is an average day for me. Anything less than that and I get so antsy that I start firing executives. That’s why we’ve got so many interns at Apple. Phil Schiller calls them cannon fodder. Or, actually, "cannon foddah," because he’s from Boston. Phil has more interns than anyone, purely for sacrificial purposes. He keeps them lined up outside his office like captives on the steps of the great temple of Tenochtitlan.

5) You coined the acronym, Siooma. Why hasn’t this been added to the Oxford English Dictionary yet?

Have you ever dealt with anyone in the book publishing business? One word: Slooooow. It will be there eventually. Give them time.

• view:timeline – displays a graph indicating the number of results by date so you can track trends, e.g., coldfusion view:timeline
• view:map – displays a map highlighting top search results, e.g., sean corfield view:map
• view:info – displays additional ways to highlight parts of the results based on dates, measurements, locations and images, e.g., sean corfield view:info (then select "Locations")

In addition, from the experimental page you can choose keyboard shortcuts (to navigate your search results) or left-hand / right-hand search menus (they’re slightly different).

You can choose to "join" one of the experiments which makes it your default Google results format (assuming you’re logged in). I picked the left-hand context menus which seem to be richer.

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"One of the priorities we have identified is to improve the performance of Kelkoo," Yahoo told the Financial Times. "Today we are starting a process to give Kelkoo more independence – while we evaluate strategic options for the long-term future of the business."

Yahoo has never released revenue figures for Kelkoo since it purchased the company in 2004 for about $575 million. Kelhoo has faced strong competition in Europe from both Google and Microsoft.

Yahoo UK managing director Glen Drury told Forbes in an interview that Kelkoo has its good and bad points saying "I think that Kelkoo and all its competitors need to really re-think the way that they’re going to run their businesses in the future."

Scott Kessler, an equity analyst with Standards & Poor said that Yahoo was in transition and reviewing all of its operations. He pointed out that Kelkoo has not lived up to expectations and that there was added pressure to examine strategic alternatives.

Google had the most traffic in the majority of European countries in June, with Microsoft trailing and Yahoo in third according to a study from comScore.

Product #1 is, in this case, Google AdSense.  Comm led a session called “Contextual Advertising Options: Clicks Equal Cash,” and first mentioned the massive amount of money flowing through AdSense – an estimated $14 billion this year.  The author of “The AdSense Code” then complimented AdSense’s design and video ads.

Yet Google’s not perfect.  Comm, whose ClassicGames.com was sold and is now called Yahoo Games, is concerned about unknown payout percentages, Made for AdSense sites, and accounts being closed for invalid clicks, so he moved on to discuss the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN).

Comm recommends using YPN if you are banned from AdSense, if your AdSense click-through rate is low on a page, or if your YPN earnings per click are higher.  Otherwise, well . . . he prefers ol’ Google.

One more option, however, is Chitika.  Comm notes associations between Chitika, Shopping.com, and PriceRunner, and thinks that people should consider using the service if their pages are product-related.  He also gives fair warning that some family-friendly sites have been provided with porn links, though Chitika has recently conquered this problem.

So there you have it.  Good luck with your comparison shopping.

Users can input start and end addresses just like before (or use this sample set provided by Google).  But after the software spits out driving directions, that’s where the fun begins – simply click on the blue line and drag it to wherever you’d like your route to go.

You can also click and drag the green, yellow, and red markers, should you decide to edit your start and end points, or any of the stops along the way.  All the while (even mid-drag), Google Maps keeps you informed of how long your route is in both miles and minutes.

I like these new features – a lot.  And on Ogle Earth, Stefan Geens writes, “I have no idea how the algorithm for finding routes does its work so fast, or how address labels get to be displayed on the fly as you drag a destination around, but this bit of AJAX programming is simultaneously technically stunning, useful, and easy to use.”

Other mapping services may still be worth using – perhaps they can find a better route than either you or Google know of – but Google Maps has won my allegiance with this latest set of upgrades.

Will they?

Google isn’t the first company to have this kind of success. Microsoft’s stock turned a lot of workers into enormously wealthy people (there was always the joke of the millionaire secretary), and it cost the company some quality people. Google is going to lose a lot of employees, some of which have been biding their time waiting for their shares to vest, and those employees will leave and actually leave the company stronger. Other employees love working at Google, but will be distracted by the money and stop producing as well as they have.

Still, there will be employees who would never leave Google, but understand that it would be stupid to not cash in those shares. For all we know, Viacom could win its lawsuit against Google, and several lawsuits later, that stock will be worth a whole lot less. They’ll sell it all on day one to guarantee their financial security. Being millionaires, they might leave their jobs (which apparently pay less than similar jobs at Microsoft), or they might stay, but the sale of several billion dollars of shares will severely impact the stock.

On the anniversary day, I suggest preparing for a nice dip in the stock. Nothing terrible, but a ten-dollar drop wouldn’t surprise me.

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When I propose PPC to many clients 6 times out of 10 I get some push back. Typically they say they’ve either directly had a bad experience with PPC or someone they know has had a bad experience. I now know where these bad experiences originate. While I don’t doubt there are people touting PPC management services out there that also don’t know what they are doing, self managed PPC campaigns can be a disaster.

People I am hear to tell you that PPC can work. It probably won’t work if you spend 10 minutes learning about it, or if you use the starter edition of Ad Words. You need a professional to manage your campaigns. I manage small and large PPC campaigns and I make it very affordable to small businesses. If you don’t use me, please use somebody. There is traffic to be captured out there, and money to be made. Don’t leave it on the table for your competitors!

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