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Macbook vs Motorola Q

Published on July 9, 2007 in business, stocks and tech.

Well I never thought I would say this, but apparently the Motorola Q is a more durable device than my once trusty Macbook. Last Friday my macbook’s hard drive crashed complelety, rendering the computer useless and wiping all my data clean in the process. (fortunately I’ve backed up most important items in one way or another) My Motorola Q on the other hand, despite all sorts of crappy design flaws, continues to work properly. Motorola 1, Apple Macbook 0. I guess beauty and good design doesn’t always win.

If you aren’t backing up your important data, do it now. Crashes do happen and they suck.

useful link:

Jungle Disk

How not to sell…

Published on April 25, 2007 in business and tech.

In trying to setup my HSA (Health Savings Account), I’ve been venturing into the world of horrible bureaucratic websites that require you to download PDF’s to get any information. I was fortunate to find a human friendly site in Vimo, which does a pretty good job of rating and explaining the different HSA options. It guided me to an HSA administrator I’ve heard good things about from other people called Exante Bank, so I went over to their site and was quickly frustrated.

I will pay someone a $100 if they can tell me what the fees / costs or even benefits are associated with having Exante manage your HSA because I’ll be damned if it’s anywhere on the site. But then again maybe I’m in the minority here in wanting to know what something is going to cost me before I go through application process. Perhaps there are lots of people out there who just like the name and don’t need to weigh the pro’s and cons. They can be persuaded to buy with a vague FAQ section and some pictures of happy people. Now I understand that HSA’s are a new thing and people need to be told what the general benefits are, but I’d also LOVE to know the benefits of putting my HSA in your hands instead of someone else. Hey, I’m ready to be sold, sell me!

This is a classic example of a site that is built purely from the perspective of the company/site owner and not from that of a potential customer. If a potential customer had built this site (or a smart selling company) it would hit you with the benefits right when you landed there. It would be extremely easy to navigate, and display all the costs/fees along with benefits in a clear box or diagram. It would display stories of successful customers, and it would show any press mentions they had. Maybe it would even show me / tell me their management features and just how EASY it is to mange my HSA with Exante. Actually, come to think of it, it would look a lot like this (just with HSA info)

Instead, you’ve annoyed me enough to look elsewhere.

Evolution of Electricity

Published on April 23, 2007 in Links, business, future and tech.

I’m officially obsessed with the TED talks website. For those of you who don’t know, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference held once a year to bring the best minds in the fields above together. It’s mission is simple: Spreading Ideas. Every year they get some of the best minds together and have them speak. They record every speaker and have 100’s of past talks posted on their website, which I’ve become obsessed with recently.

I really enjoyed a speech given by Amazon’s visionary Founder, Jeff Bezos in which he compares the state of the internet industry today to that of the electric appliance industry of 1916. I couldn’t agree more.

I went to Thomas Edison’s Ft. Myers home about 3 years ago, and I remember having this very same thought as I walked through his workshop with his scattered impressive collection of inventions. I couldn’t help but notice that at that time electricity was seen really as only useful for lighting and some heating. All the wiring and infrastructure that went into place was designed to deliver electricity just to do these two functions. In fact (as you’ll see in the video) the first electric appliances plugged into the grid with plugs that were nothing more than light bulb sockets. These first generic electric appliances were merely an indicator of things to come, a true unlocking of the power and versatility of electricity.

Interestingly enough the internet’s story is very similar to that of electricity. It runs through a wire to our homes, but is unable to offer any value until we actually plug into it. It was started really to create a communication network between computers, then built out to facilitate communication between people, and has exploded to facilitate self expression, commerce, and information sharing. But we’ve really only begun plugging our first appliance’s light socket plugs into the grid. Just as electricity’s infrastructure enabled a universe of appliances that bettered our lives (from the A/C to TV, to the computer and internet itself), so too will the very young internet infrastructure.

I’ve heard people say that all the good ideas are taken and the “gold rush,” is over. I’d say, we’ve only just begun. Exciting times ahead.

Check out the video.

Video Post…

Published on February 2, 2007 in business, stocks and tech.

Today I came across a few interesting videos in my normal blog reading that I thought were interesting…

One of my favorite bloggers, Fred Wilson, gave a keynote speech at the Software and Information Industry Association Summit where he talked about the future of information services. I really agree with Fred’s points about information becoming free, while attention is becoming scarce. The real future of information services will create value by capturing, filtering and delivering information at the most relevant time and place. The sea of data has become so vast, that there is no way for us all to stay up to date. There’s a tremedous opportunity in building out a service that can consantly monitor the data from all corners of the web, and alert customers when new, extremely relevant infromation become available. That’s what services like Monitor110 do for companies on Wall St, and I would imagine we’ll see more like them popping up over the next few yaers.

The speech and the Q&A session are worth watching.
Fred Wilson’s keynote
(via Darren Herman)

Get a glimpse at life inside Google from the work environment to the food. I’m really curious about Sergey’s shoes at the end called zcoils, they look comfortable but man are they dorky.
Google Recruiting video

Goog / Tivo together?

Published on February 1, 2007 in business, future, stocks and tech.

Google came out with blockbuster numbers yesterday prompting everyone but shareholders to gasp in awe. They had a profit of over $1B, nearly triple the amount from the same qaurter a year ago. It also appears that big brands, the slowest movers to the internet ad game, and also Yahoo’s one major advantage over Google are moving aggressively towards Google’s advertising platform. In an article in this week’s Business Week they review the Google call from yesterday, where they mentioned that these big brands such as Proctor and Gamble, Volvo, and Officemax have all placed video, banner, and text ads across google’s network.

I was most interested in the part of the article concerining Google’s ability to advertise on TV.

Schmidt even implied that television advertising was ripe for Google to handle. He said Google’s targeting technology can “really apply well” to TV, and allow television stations to charge much higher rates for that targeting. He said there was an opportunity for Google to use data from TV set-top boxes, which have unique Internet addresses, to do that targeting.

I think there is definitely a huge opportunity here for Google. But I think there may be an equally big opportunity here for a little company called Tivo. They are far and away THE brand of dvr devices. Like Google they have become a verb as people often refer to recording a program as “tivoing” it. My real question is when are they going to drop the hardware/service provider biz and start licensing their name/software to cable companies. If they would’ve done this already, they’d be sitting on top of access to the largest network of set top boxes in the world. We know they are building creative and interesting ways to deliver advertising by their recent patent applications, so why not move forward with the master plan already?

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again…Tivo is an acquisition target. At $518M market cap, it’s worth less than HALF of youtube, a company with very little revenues at the time of it’s acquistion. For a billion dollars or less (less than Google’s profit this quarter) someone could most likely have Tivo’s loved brand, name, and service to call their own. Can you imagine what a company with deep pockets like Google’s could do with Tivo? They could preinstall google earth on every device, run video ads and video adwords, and even show youtube clips right on the tv. They could open up google video’s video marketplace to let people pay and view videos streamed. There are a million possibilties.
Google, what do you think?

(by the way, I’m a tivo shareholder)

tunnel vision

Published on January 20, 2007 in business, delicious, nyc and tech.

Something I’ve talked with my friend Lee about extensively is the somewhat dangerous tunnel vision that goes on around here in the web/tech world. People seem to dismiss “old school,” companies as the has-beens of the economy. I swear I hear more about Digg supposedly being worth $60M, Facebook being worth well over $1B, or Delicious supposedly being sold for $30M than I’d like. These are not economic power houses as some seem to believe. Now don’t get me wrong, they are fantastic numbers for the investors and founders because these are low cost businesses to build/operate , but to portray any of these guys as new “players,” in the economy is laughable. Everyday, there are far bigger companies executing on 10, 20, or even 100 times the scale. Let’s not forget about the true leaders.

I think this guy sums it up best (from Reddit, via Drew )

Think about that, and then think about just how much panache WalMart has compared to google: Zero.

I get this impression everyday, and I’ve come up with an answer: I
am online everyday, and looks like always reading the same sites (a
little bit of herd mentality, I guess).

I was reading someone talking about how “Google is the 3rd computer era” and he made some snarky comments about IBM.

You know, IBM? That small 100 year old company with 80 billion in revenues last year? Yeah, that one.

And when I read about how Paul Graham got ~$40 million from his
“lisp startup” or the off-hours delicious got ~$30 million with “social
tagging bookmark WEB TWO POINT WOW” and people go NUTS on this, like if
it’s epitome of business, I just remember IBM makes daily deals of $200
million dollars.

Is it cool? Does it have free soda, candies and massages?
No. But do they know how to make money? You bet. And it’s damn hard to
make what IBM does too. If you play a video game from the next
generation, you own them that :p

iPhone, what’s really important?

Published on January 19, 2007 in business, stocks and tech.

I’m definitely in the crowd oohing and ahhing over last week’s release of the Apple iPhone, but I’ve been shocked by the sheer number of nerd complainers across the blogs lately. I keep hearing the same complaints…touch screen bad, closed platform very bad, no third party apps, way too expensive, etc…The truth is the avg joe could care less about “closed platform,” or lack of “3rd party apps.” Most people are really blown away from what they’ve seen of the phone, and I would imagine that Apple won’t have a problem selling it. Bloggers are sometimes too techy for their own good, failing to realize the (and the people Apple REALLY cares about) masses could care less about all that junk above. Charlie says it best:

They didn’t care about iHandcuffs, third party apps or whether or not they are locking themselves into Apple.
The fact is… Apple’s products are such a vast improvement in overall consumer experience that most users will be more than satisfied. All the technobloggers are bitching about the lack of openness.

My 2nd favorite response to tech complaints was an Engadget comment (I don’t usually read them, there are always too many) posted by a guy named Russel. He posted a response to this comment:

Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a touch-screen

is on a phone. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.

I’ll be keeping my Samsung A707, thanks. It’s smaller, it’s got a protected screen, and it’s got proper buttons. And it’s got all the same features otherwise. (Oh, but it doesn’t run a bloatware OS that was never designed for a phone.)

Color me massively disappointed.

Russel’s response:

And this is what Jeff said back in 1984:

“Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a mouse is for a computer. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.

I’ll be keeping my Commadore 64, thanks. It’s cheaper, it’s got Lotus 1-2-3, and it’s got a command line operating system. And it’s got more software. (Oh, but it doesn’t run a bloatware “Graphic user interface” that eats all the processing power.)

Color me massively disappointed.”

And this is what he said in 2001

“Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a clickwheel is for a mp3 player. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.

I’ll be keeping my Diamond Rio, thanks. It’s cheaper, it’s got all my music on it, and it’s got a better battery. And it’s smaller. (Oh, but it doesn’t run a bloatware GUI that eats all the battery power.) Color me massively disappointed.”

Will you never learn?

There’s a reason why people like Jeff aren’t running consumer product companies like Apple. They lack the ability to see beyond the tech side of things into what the average consumer really wants. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, is a genius at this.

Weatherbill…a market for wacky weather protection

Published on January 18, 2007 in business, climate change, stocks, tech and weather.

One of my favorite blogs, Paul Kedrosky’s Infections Greed has a post today on a new company called WeatherBill.
WeatherBill is:

In effect, a tool to allow people to create their own weather-related
short- and long-term insurance policies — and it will appeal to a
broad swath of companies whose business are weather-affected.

It appears to essentially be a marketplace where people can first evaluate what bad weather costs them in terms of sales, then they can purchase short or long term insurance plans to cover themselves from these losses going forward. On the other side it gives investors the opportunity to own these contracts or create their own that businesses can purchase. It appears it may definitely take some work to build up an efficient market, but I believe that the rapidly changing and increasingly sporadic weather makes a service like this definitely worth watching.

Aapl’s numbers

Published on January 18, 2007 in business, stocks and tech.

For a good break down of Apple’s earnings numbers release Wednesday, take a look here. The quarter was simply amazing and Apple continues to experience explosive growth. Some of the highlights (in my opinion):

the amazing ipod…Apple shipped 21.1 million ipods in Q1 resulting in an astonishing $3.43 billion in revenues or half the company’s total revenue for the quarter
1.6 million mac computers sold, up 28% over last year’s number (compare that to nearly flat growth in pc sales)
Apple’s share of the PC market in the US grew to 4.7% up from 3.6% a year ago

I think Apple is simply an amazing company to have stock in right now, and they are simply on a tear. I remember telling a friend a few years ago that the iPod was simply a “trojan horse,” into the the PC world. By introducing a somewhat revolutionary, yet incredibly simple to use universal device to the world they were able to show the PC users just how great Apple’s products work. The change is occurring with more and more PC users choosing macs as their next computer. This is even more true the younger, and younger you are with the majority of people I know under 21 telling me their next computer with be a Mac. Just imagine when this group enters the workforce.

A final thought comes from a comment on Barrons about the recent quarter and the stock price:

Having demonstrated massive 70%
YoY earnings growth for Q1, and after one of the largest “beats” in its
history (an 80% upside surprise), and having guided for 30% YoY growth
for Q2, it is hard to see how AAPL can possibly grow earnings less than
40% YoY for FY07 now.

Isn’t it insane that it currently bakes in just 20-25%?

Massive
earnings upgrades ahead IMO. And they’ll have to be massive just in
order to accommodate the Q1 results, let alone any bullishness for the
rest of the fiscal year!

This stock should be trading at $120
right now. Its forward PE of 27 is laughably low given growth of 40%
ahead. If you took the almost-$12B in cash out of that, then its
trading with a forward PE of about 22. That’s 22, with YoY growth of
40%. Can you scream “disconnect?”

Once the earnings estimates
upgrades for FY07 start coming out, the stock will finally climb to its
justly-deserved destination, but it might take the end of options
expirations for that to happen, not to mention the SEC rubbish finally
put to rest.

A huge driver for Mac sales near-term is going
to be the imminent arrival of Adobe CS3. Once that comes out, Mac Pro
sales are going to soar, adding, IMO, about 200-300k unit sales in a
single quarter to desktops and a ton of revenue on these high-cost,
high margin products.

I don’t believe the Street has begun to
work out the true impact of this, and it - combined with the iTV, new
iPods, updated Macs, new software, should provide considerable upside
to earnings estimates for the next two quarters.

Apple said
they will be including estimates for iPhone sales in their guidance for
the June quarter, so we can pretty much guarantee that Q3 guidance from
the Q2 report is going to be fantastic. And then there’s the
educational buying season of course, not to mention MacBook updates.

I
see nothing but massive upside for the company going into the remainder
of this fiscal year. I see a market fast asleep at the wheel and with
no clue whatsoever about the true earnings potential of Apple.

40% YoY growth on the cards. Buy this dip.

Predicting the Trends

Published on January 16, 2007 in business, future and tech.

As I’ve said before, the more shopping, communicating, news gathering, and just flat out living people do online the more capable good web stats are at predicting trends, sales, and even votes.

Once again today Hitwise announced their successful prediction of a winner in the the UK version of Dancing with the Stars named Strictly Come Dancing. Utilizing website traffic trends, especially search trends and search market share, Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer correctly picked the winner 7 weeks before the finale.

strictly come dancing small.PNG

The consciousness of the crowds comes through clearly in closely watching website traffic patterns. I wonder how many companies truly use website stats as more than just a way to monitor their own site traffic but instead as ways to innovate existing products, spot sales trends, and follow interest in the competition.