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By wire services
Published October 30, 2005

THE "QUIET PERIOD" will get noisier on Dec. 1, Inc. says. That's when new regulatory rules take effect governing what corporate CEOs can say on the eve of a public stock offering, a period when they have been muzzled. A year ago, the founders of Google were censured for granting an interview with Playboy magazine that came out just before the search engine went public. The quiet rule was added to the Securities Act of 1933 to prevent CEOs from hyping their stock before investors had access to financial information. "But the rules were always a little vague and enforced irregularly," Inc. says. Under new rules, companies will be able to provide basic information to the media and investors.

THERE ARE STOCKBROKERS and then there is "the hyperkinetic, red-faced Jim Cramer," BusinessWeek says in a cover profile of the CNBC stock picker. "No Warren Buffett, Cramer is a trading mercenary to the core," the magazine says. Cramer paid his dues in the 1980s as a Goldman, Sachs & Co. broker, followed by 14 years at his $450-million hedge fund, where he earned an average return of 24 percent a year. Despite his unorthodox way of picking and rejecting stocks, Cramer has managed to beat the market, BusinessWeek says. "Cramer's roster of picks of the week . . . since the show started in March have jumped an average of 7.1 percent after three months." In the same period, the Dow advanced 0.9 percent.

STEEP FUEL COSTS, low supplies of airline seats and hotel rooms, and growing travel demand will push prices higher on air fares and hotels next year, according to the American Express 2006 Global Business Travel Forecast. While demand is helping to make higher air fares possible, steeper fuel costs may be making them a necessity. And travelers shouldn't expect much price relief from low-cost carriers: Fuel is often a bigger percentage of their overall costs than it is for traditional carriers.

SENDING A THANK-YOU NOTE after a job interview - or failing to - makes a big impression on many prospective employers. About 15 percent of employers would not hire someone who failed to send a thank-you letter, according to a CareerBuilders.com survey of more than 650 hiring managers. Thirty-two percent still would consider the candidate, but they would think less of him or her.

ONLINE MAPS are as old as the Web, and the Global Positioning System has been around half a decade. Now, heavyweights such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are merging the two, and others, in a new kind of electronic mapmaking, Technology Review reports. Look at it as an ultrasophisticated replacement for the flip books from AAA, the magazine says.

Compiled from Times wires and Web sites.

[Last modified October 28, 2005, 20:11:02]