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29 January 2008

Falling Far From the Tree

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Fortune - Apple's $300 Million Gray Market Dilemma
AppleInsider - Steve Jobs to Apple investors: 'hang in there'
Gizmodo - First Proof Apple Making Near Zero on AppleTV (And Big Bucks on iTunes)


Looking out on the tech world today, I see one article about slashed prices on one big Apple product, another article about a gray market problem on another big Apple product (and possible slashed prices in the future), and a "please let us keep your money" letter from Steve Jobs. This Apple is falling far from the tree lately.

For a company that is supposedly on the cutting edge of consumer tech, there have been so many obvious features omitted from several products debuted in recent years.

It's no stretch to assume that these missteps have indirectly contributed to the recent free-fall of Apple's stock price, down $65/share (roughly 32%) over the last month.

The point I'm trying to make is that, while Apple and Jobs seem to be laden with an uncanny sense for creating those gadgets that consumers didn't even know they needed, there have been surprising oversights in their product releases. Too many popular, and sometimes necessary, features have been missing on their new products. These latest stories about subsidizing Apple TV and gray market iPhones seem to be pointing to one idea - Apple either has to shape up and read the tea leaves better before releasing new products, or they must embrace a more open model of production. The current closed model seems to make every move too much of a make-or-break moment - it's too risky. It may still survive for a while to come, but in order for that to happen, Apple's got to put better features on it's "it" products.

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24 January 2008

Microsoft Helps Us All... For Now

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ยป Microsoft earnings shine; Ups fiscal year outlook Between the Lines ZDNet.com

Microsoft just reported a company record $16.36 billion in revenues for last quarter, which was just above what analysts had expected. In addition, the outlook for the coming quarter is in line with analyst's expectations. The earnings report was strong all the way around. MSFT stock was up $1.58 per share today, or 4.75%.

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Hold Your Breath On The Gathering Gloom: Everyone Waits For Microsoft's Earnings Report

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Microsoft Earnings: They Really Are A "Big" Deal

The market seems to be back up, along with Google, Apple, and the rest of the technology world today, but everyone also seems to be waiting to hear what Microsoft has to say. Microsoft is up $0.56 per share today, or 1.75%, and it seems that everyone is expecting them to give a favorable earnings report later today.

Analysts estimated revenue of $16 bil for Microsoft for the quarter ending December 31st. Everyone apparently thinks Microsoft made that target. If they did, then the economic gloom may not be gathering so quickly after all.

If they didn't make it, then... Well, I don't really want to think about what might happen if they didn't make it. Let's just hope they did, for the sakes of our IRAs.

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23 January 2008

Breathe Deep The Gathering Gloom: GOOG Down 3.5% In Early Trading

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Are we seeing further signs in the Internet world of a storm on the horizon? Early reports indicate that Google stock is down 3.55%, or about 20 points, at $564 per share.

According to Google's own SERP, the Nasdaq info that came up in a search for "goog" is delayed by 15 minutes. Whether or not 15 minutes is incredibly significant, when I started to write this post, reports where saying Google was down 2.6%. It's 9:04AM now, and apparently, 5 minutes has been enough for the company to lose an entire percentage point.

Microsoft is also reporting a pre-market loss of 1.9%, or $0.59 per share, which brings them to about $31 per share.

And just to make it a tri-fecta, Apple is also reporting significant losses, down $17.5 - no... $17.6 per share. This is yet another stock that fell further as I was checking on it. That's a whopping 11.3%.

Actually, the consensus seems to be that Microsoft, Google, and the bulk of Silicon Valley's business giants are all being affected by Apple's disappointing Q2 forecast, just released. Apple reportedly thinks that revenue will grow only 29% in Q2, down from Q1's 35% in revenue growth.

It's amazing that positive reports are bringing the world down this fast, just because they're not positive enough. I'm no stock analyst, or prophet of doom, but from the looks of these falling stocks, we could be watching lights fade from every room.

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22 January 2008

What? No Matt Cutts Among 10 Fascinating Googlers

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10 fascinating Googlers - FORTUNE

All I have to say is, Where is Matt Cutts? So what if one of the ones that they did pick eradicated smallpox?

Obviously, I'm just kidding. This is an interesting article over at Fortune, highlighting 10 Googlers with fascinating backgrounds. Maybe they consider Cutts to be too much of the Computer-PhD-type to be a "fascinating" Googler. Maybe. But it's still a look at some of the faces behind Google.

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20 January 2008

Another bursting bubble?

Sprint to cut 4,000 jobs | Tech News on ZDNet

Tip: Yahoo May Cut 1,500-2,000 Jobs Within 2 Weeks

Here, we have 2 huge companies that may soon be laying off as many as 6,000 workers between them. Is this the beginning of a trend? Even as companies like Slide report venture capital funding of $50 million and Facebook is somehow valued at $15 billion (even without a clear way to make money). So, we have $500 million widgets and $15 billion social networks, and 6,000 people out of their jobs. I'm no analyst, but I can see a storm a'brewin'.

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16 January 2008

Save Scrabulous!

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous

Above is a link to today's article about the current situation of the beloved Scrabulous game, which now has more than 500,000 daily users on Facebook. Amid all the fan protests, Hasbro and Mattel, who jointly own the rights to the Scrabble game, have put together a joint case asking Facebook to pull the game.

Now, I don't know what everyone expects Zukerberg to do about this - being such a young buck, he may just try to say no to the big corporate um... game... lawyers... and attempt some sort of stonewall on his own. However, my thought is, why does he have to surrender something that has half a million people logging on to Facebook each day to play?

Here's an idea: why doesn't Hasbro buy the Scrabulous game? Why don't they offer the software developer brothers from Kolkata some nice sum of money that's comparable to the cost of waging this war on innocent fun, and then just own Scrabulous? Why is that so hard?

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14 January 2008

Google Bread

Alas, I am breaking my silence in the blogging world. This one I decided was just too juicy to leave alone - it's another article about another professor out there banning their students from using Google and Wikipedia. Here's the link:

Lecturer Bans Students From Using Google And Wikipedia (from The Argus)

In the article, the professor, Tara Brabazon of the Univ. of Brighton, labels Google the "white bread of the Internet", which drew a good chuckle from my lips as I read. However, the other part of the story that caught my attention was the fact that Prof. Brabazon is a professor of media studies who is banning her students from using a resource provided by the world's largest media company.

Now, I know what the professor is saying - that she feels her students are not properly researching their papers. They are probably not including enough peer-reviewed sources in their bibliographies. But my question is, why then doesn't she just require more sources? Why not give the students a positive admonition, rather than just a negative one that resembles a simple rant against the modern advance of technology.

My view is that knowledge ought to be fluid, open, and above all, free. Knowledge ought not cost us any money. We should not place restrictions on who gets to learn what. And those of us in influential places should work to make sure knowledge is not bound by time or place, either. In my opinion, that's exactly what Google and Wikipedia are doing - they are using technology to bring knowledge freely and quickly to everyone with access to a computer.

Now, obviously, it's what the owner of the computer does with the knowledge that counts. Regurgitating the top 5 links on Google's SERP or an article from Wikipedia is not necessarily good research, but neither is regurgitating an article from the New York Times. One is not worse than the other.

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