Study Points to Windfall for Goldman Partners

Goldman Sachs executives have long been among the most richly paid on Wall Street in the best of times. They are now poised to reap a windfall that was sown in the dark days of the financial crisis in 2008.
Nearly 36 million stock options were granted to employees in December 2008 — 10 times the amount issued the previous year — when the stock was trading at $78.78. Since those uncertain days, Goldman’s business has roared back and its share price has more than doubled, closing on Tuesday at nearly $175.
The options grant is among the many details that emerge from a study of regulatory filings and internal partnership documents by The New York Times and Footnoted.com, a division of Morningstar that scrutinizes corporate disclosures. These filings provide a much fuller picture of both Goldman’s compensation and its elite partnership of 475 people who run the firm.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/study-points-to-windfall-for-goldman-partners/?src=dlbksb

Google Voice Is About To Take Off

We’ve been huge fans of Google Voice for quite a while now — it makes screening calls and managing multiple phones a breeze — but there’s always been a huge thorn in its side: it didn’t allow people to port their existing phone numbers over. In other words, in order to take advantage of all of Google Voice’s benefits, you’d have to get a new phone number. Now, after years of waiting, that’s finally changing: Google has quietly enabled number porting for Google Voice.
Update: Google tells us that this is currently just a test available to some users and is not rolling out to everyone yet. However, it seems likely that a wide scale launch is coming soon.
Here’s a statement from Google:

“We’re continually testing new features to enhance the user experience. For a limited amount of time, we’re making the Google Voice number porting process available to users. We don’t have any additional details to share at this time, but plan to offer this feature to all users in the near future.”

The feature was first noticed by Engadget, and I’m seeing it in my Google Voice account as well. The process appears to be fairly straightforward (and yet terrifying at the same time): tell Google your existing cell phone number, agree to some strongly worded warnings, pay $20, and you should be in business.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/19/google-voice-is-about-to-take-off-number-porting-enabled-for-20/