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Michael Zhang

Olympus Crisis Deepens: Allegations of Fraud and Plummeting Stock

Update: Olympus has released an official response to the allegations.

Since Olympus abruptly fired CEO Michael Woodford (pictured, on left) four days ago, the company's stock price has fallen from roughly ¥2,480 to its current price of ¥1,417, a 43% drop that wiped out nearly $4 billion in value. As we reported yesterday, Woodford is now asking the UK to investigate the company's financial practices, and is claiming that he was booted when on the verge of exposing fraud.

Michael Zhang

Kodak Adopts ‘Poison Pill’ to Protect Against a Hostile Takeover

If you look at the price of Kodak's stock, you'll see that the company is currently worth about $600 million -- a figure that may be significantly lower than what its digital imaging patents could sell for. With the risk looming that a buyer might try to acquire the patents by simply taking over the company, Kodak is taking evasive maneuvers.

Michael Zhang

Controversy After Vegan Magazine Found to Use Non-Vegan Stock Photos

In the past week or two there has been an interesting controversy regarding the use of stock photography: vegan blogger quarrygirl.com published a post on April 13th accusing the nations leading vegan magazine VegNews of using non-vegan stock photos to illustrate its vegan recipes. An example presented is a "Vegan Spare Ribs" article that uses a Photoshopped iStockPhoto image of actual barbecue spare ribs (shown above).

Michael Zhang

Photosimile: An Office Machine for Product Photography

At CES 2010 next year, photography automation company Ortery will unveil the Photosimile 5000, a device that they claim is the "next generation imaging device for the office." Essentially it's like a copier, except for stock/product photography. You can simply walk up to the machine, place what you'd like to photograph inside, adjust a few settings on the parameter, and walk away with a professional looking product photograph. The computer-operated system automatically adjusts lighting to remove shadows, and takes care of handling white balance.