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The stock tracking and community site Cake Financial is getting some interesting new features, including its first branded financial instrument, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that rolls up the best stock ideas from the Cake communuty.

Cake CEO Steve Carpenter believes that of the approximately $100 billion that consumers pay for stock management services, "a lot is wasted." He's built a service that identifies the stock picks from the best performing members in his community, and lets other users take advantage of their investing skills. Importantly, Cake doesn't show you just which stocks have done well … Read more

Paul Kedrosky notices an impressive feat for Microsoft: for the first time in a long time, its stock has outperformed Google's this week, this month, and this year.

Granted, this is like calling Microsoft the sexiest nun in the convent, given how poor its performance has been, but it's also an indication that Microsoft may have more life in it than widely assumed.

Former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen has settled with the SEC over charges that she improperly backdated stock options at the company.

The SEC filed a lawsuit against Heinen last year charging her with cherry-picking grant dates for stock option awards to Apple executives--including CEO Steve Jobs--and falsifying paperwork in order to cover up the selection of the favorable dates. Stock option backdating is legal if properly disclosed, but dozens of companies--including CNET Networks--in the earlier part of this decade failed to do so, and executives at other companies have gone to prison as a result.

Heinen will pay $2.… Read more

On Monday we heard that Facebook was allowing current employees to sell a delineated portion of their common stock, something that the company confirmed on Tuesday.

Now, VentureBeat's Eric Eldon, who also originally reported the Facebook tidbit, says that LinkedIn employees are going to have the option of doing the same. The business social network, Eldon wrote, is allowing current employees to sell 20 percent of their equity in the company at a $500 million valuation. That's quite a bit lower than the billion-dollar valuation reportedly bestowed upon the company after its recent $53 million Series D funding … Read more

If you see an increase in the number of 20-somethings driving nice cars around Palo Alto any time soon, maybe this is why: VentureBeat reported Monday that Facebook is ready to let current employees unload a fifth of their stock options, at the company's internal valuation of $4 billion. It's slated to start this fall. For early employees of the company, which was founded in a Harvard dorm room, this could mean some legit cash.

Facebook's valuation was reported at $15 billion when Microsoft took a $240 million stake last year, but the company has backtracked on … Read more

Shares of Nortel Networks sank as much as 17 percent on Friday after the company reported a wider second-quarter loss and warned that it faces challenges ahead.

The Canadian telecommunications equipment company posted a quarterly loss of $113 million, or 23 cents a share. That compares with a loss of $37 million, or 7 cents, a year ago. The results included $67 million in restructuring charges.

The company also warned that it faces increasing challenges amid concerns about the economy and lower spending by certain North American CDMA customers. But it asserted that revenue is expected to grow in the … Read more

The world of finance is sober, serious business, ever more so in a struggling through economy. Bloomberg's freeware application for the iPhone and iPod Touch gives information-seekers a clear view of the moment with financial headlines, a ticker finder, and a fleshed-out index of world markets.

An appealing dark-themed application, Bloomberg contains a read-only newsfeed and statistics on various exchanges in global markets. Highs, lows, and a graph of yearlong performance are displayed for each exchange--further charts and tables are available for industry and stock movers.

To discover individual stock performance, users simply enter the company name into the … Read more

Flickr on Tuesday entered a partnership with Getty Images to offer its users a way to potentially make money off their photography.

The Yahoo-owned photo-hosting community will be a new resource for Getty, which can now contact Flickr members directly through the site and ask them if they want to share one or more of their images for use in a special Flickr-branded Getty collection.

Flickr members interested in getting their images featured in the special Getty gallery will have to simply wait to be contacted. Otherwise, Getty and Flickr are encouraging aspiring photographers to post their content on the … Read more

Current and former members of Apple, including CEO Steve Jobs and several directors, have been sued again over their role in the company's stock options-backdating affair.

The latest case, filed in federal court in San Jose last Friday, was put on record Monday. Martin Vogel and Kenneth Mahoney, the plaintiffs, are charging several executives and directors of Apple with securities fraud for failing to disclose the company's practice of backdating certain stock option grants in the early part of this decade.

Apple has admitted that the company backdated certain option grants, including two awarded to Jobs, in order … Read more