Category: Business
The Future of Facebook and the World as We Know It
By Rick Bookstaber (A cross post by Rick Bookstaber which originally appeared at rick.bookstaber.com.) The following reflects my views and not those of the SEC or its staff. Where will Facebook be in ten or fifteen years? In our immediate euphoria, such a long term view may be like taking a good joke too far.
The Future is Streaming Content to Any Device, Anywhere and at Any Time
Interview with Michael Whalen In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we speak to Michael Whalen, Emmy award winning composer and new media observer, about the outlook for the business of creating and delivering content. Since graduating from Berklee College of Music, Michael has taught a business for music class that has saved thousands
SNL Spoof of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks
A funny look at Time’s selection of Mark Zuckerberg for Person of the Year over Julian Assange
Android’s Rising Dominance
Here’s a CNBC Asia video that tells the story of the rise of the smartphone as a phone and computing device. I have been on this story for sometime. My view is that, just as computers have become super cheap (they were expensive once. I remember buying a top of the line Dell laptop in
Fedex disappoints; should we care?
Fedex is often seen as a general proxy for US economic activity in the way that rail or freight traffic or cargo shipments are. They ship to such a wide variety of companies and individuals that they have taken on a bellwether status. Unfortunately, they released some disappointing earnings today. Given the recent spate of
Site Scrapers Find Free Money on the Web
This is about how site scrapers use loopholes in the Google Search algorithm to rank highly for content they scrape from the sites of others. These activities may eventually become an issue for regulatory officials since Google also earns revenue from these practices in the online advertising space that it dominates
Walt Mossberg Reviews The New Apple TV
To me, these small TV-attached multimedia devices represent the perfect example of the so-called convergence of computing and multimedia that people have been talking about since the late 1990s. Take a look at what Walt Mossberg has to say about Apple’s gizmo in the video below
Car Sales Rise $23 Billion
by Annaly Capital Management Okay, so this wasn’t the exact headline after GM’s record setting capital raise this week. Including over-allotment option, the offering of common and preferred stock should bring the total dollars raised to $23 billion, making it the biggest IPO ever done. Of that amount, approximately $4.8 billion will be netted by
Why investors should beware tech’s strong fourth quarter
Since Cicso’s miss earlier this month, a lot of people have been talking about technology and capital investment. Cisco said its miss was more about government spending, but we should still ask whether capital spending in the private sector is going to deliver. During the end of the tech bubble, channel stuffing became widespread. Is
Ireland and the US: Depth of Corporate Ties May Be Surprising
Market participants are rightfully focused on the contagion of Ireland within Europe. However, the depth of US corporate ties to Ireland may surprise many investors. The value-added of majority owned affiliates of US companies account for more than a fifth of Ireland’s GDP. This is the greatest share that American affiliates account for in any
The Beatles Invade iTunes
The guys at the Wall Street Journal figure this is a win-win for Apple because it is a great marketing tool just in time for Christmas, irrespective of whether one buys Beatles music. (video clip below) For the Citigroup-owned EMI, it will certainly be a good thing. Guy Hands is probably not that amused though.
Apple is still screwing it up
To my eyes, this is looking like a repeat of the Macintosh-PC Wars of the 1990s which Apple lost. On the one side, you have Apple, competing at the high end and very concerned about platform integrity and control, and preventing other manufacturers from building its hardware. On the other side, you have another operating