Posts Tagged
‘technology’
by ilene - February 28th, 2011 2:20 am
Stephen Colbert reports on technothriller going on between Wikileaks, Anonymous (a "global hacker nerd brigade") and Aaron Barr. H/t Ron. – Ilene
A corporate hacker tries to take down WikiLeaks by faking documents and blackmailing American journalists.
Tags: Bank of America, business, government, intelligence, internet, Julian Assange, justice department, mail/e-mail, Obama Administration, technology, WikiLeaks
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by ilene - November 18th, 2010 2:48 pm
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
Just as the Microsoft Windows/Intel Pentium combo (Wintel) came to rule the PC business, smartphones are starting to standardize around their own Big Two. According to a recent study, that standard is the new Qualcomm chip/ Google Android operating system one-two punch. The cool kids are calling it Quadroid.
CNNMoney’s David Goldman takes us inside the numbers:
But now, for the first time ever in the wireless ecosystem, a standard platform is emerging: At least a dozen handset makers have brought to market more than 90 different smartphones that run Android, and more than three quarters of those handsets have Qualcomm chips embedded in them, according to a new study by consultancy PRTM.
The Qualcomm-Android standard, or "Quadroid" as PRTM calls it, is becoming a parallel to the Windows-Intel, or "Wintel," standard that developed in the 1990s.
Qualcomm held their Analyst Day meeting yesterday and the The Street apparently loved what they heard. Goldman Sachs reiterated their Conviction Buy and raised their target to 58 this morning. Credit Suisse upped their target to 60 and gave it a buy rec as well.
As far as Google, Android is not the engine driving the stock right now but it is obviously of immense importance to the company strategically.
It’s too early to tell if this Qualcomm/Google duopoly is really going to own the space but so far their partnership appears to be the front-runner. If you’re trading technology stocks, wireless plays, chips, operating systems etc, you may want to get up on this story.
Source:
Android and Qualcomm are the New Wintel (CNNMoney)
Qualcomm Upgrades/Downgrades (TheStreet)
Tags: Android, chips, GOOG, Google, operating system, QCOM, Quadroid, Qualcom, Stock Market, stocks, technology, wireless technology
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by ilene - October 14th, 2010 6:49 pm
Courtesy of Reggie Middleton
Bloomberg reports: Google Profit Beats Estimates as Companies Boost Ad Spending; Shares Climb
Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, said third-quarter profit increased as businesses spent more on advertising to attract online consumers. The shares jumped in after-hours trading.
Net income rose 32 percent to $2.17 billion, or $6.72 a share, from $1.64 billion, or $5.13, a year earlier, Google said on its website. Profit excluding some items was $7.64 a share, exceeding the $6.68 average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Google is benefitting from increased spending on search- based ads as it pursues opportunities in mobile communications and display advertising. Online spending is expected to account for 15 percent of total U.S. advertising this year, up from 12 percent in 2008, according to EMarketer Inc. in New York.
“The underlying strength in the core search business basically means advertisers are spending healthily on search,” said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in Boca Raton, Florida, who recommends buying the shares. “They beat on the top line and also on the bottom line.”
Google, based in Mountain View, California, climbed as much as 9.6 percent in late trading to $592.82. It closed at $540.93 at 4 p.m. on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have dropped 13 percent this year.
Excluding revenue passed on to partner sites, sales were $5.48 billion, topping analysts’ average estimate of $5.26 billion.
…
Display, Mobile
Google is seeking new revenue streams, including searches on mobile phones. Its Android software has surged in popularity among consumers, overtaking Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry to become the top smartphone operating system in the U.S. in the second quarter, according to research firm Gartner Inc.
Display advertising at Google is growing as its YouTube video-watching service attracts more marketers. The company said in May it had boosted the number of display advertisers 10-fold on YouTube.
“Our newer businesses — particularly display and mobile — continued to show significant momentum,” Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in a…
Tags: Android, Eric Schmidt, GOOG, Google, JPM, mobile computing, RIMM, technology
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by ilene - August 29th, 2010 1:01 pm
Charles presents the dark side of social media and argues that along with hip hop and fast-food, it is a mechanism to wreck the best within us and turn us into over-consuming, desensitized airheads and zombies. He argues that the "global marketing complex" is designed to undermine "our sense of internal security by objectifying the measures of self-worth." Let’s say this is so, but has it ever been different and are hip hop, fast foods and social media really just new tools and devises to accomplish this goal? – Ilene
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
The shock troops of Corporate Empire actively undermine traditional culture, health and engagement with the real world, clearing the way for colonization and passive consumption.
The defenders of hip-hop, fast food and social media are legion. Critics of these Corporate Empire shock troops are labeled (and thus dismissed) as fusty social "conservatives," anti-technology Luddites and "liberal" busy-bodies getting in the way of "consumer’s right to choose" their own music, food and hobbies.
The irony is the most passionate defenders of hip-hop, fast food and social media are unaware that they are actually defending the storm troopers of Corporate Empire.
Yes, there are hip-hop atists with positive messages, and fast-food giants attempting to improve the range of their offerings, and examples of social media enabling political resistance.
But all these arguments, justifications and polemics boil down to the equivalent of all the arguments, justifications and polemics in favor of corporate fascism, colonialism and Empire: the trains run on time, we’re spreading "civilization" to the "primitives," capitalism and technology will free the oppressed classes, etc.
The spirited defense is not coincidence, for hip-hop, fast food and social media are the shock troops of Corporate Empire. While marketed by defenders as either essentially harmless "youth-oriented" avenues of self-expression or the progressive vanguard of individual choice, they are the active agents of Corporate Empire "soft power," undermining traditional cultures, human health and engagement with the real world --the subtle, largely invisible realm of unconscious assumptions and propaganda I term the politics of experience.
Once traditional sources of stability and health have been undermined, dismantled and replaced with a mono-culture of marketing that glorifies self-absorption, conspicuous consumption and personal worth measured by broadcasted "likes" and other visible measures of popularity, then the Corporate…
Tags: brain washing, consumers, corporate empire, exploitation, fashion, fast-food, hip hop, independence, intellectual poverty, invasion of the mind, shock troups, social media, technology, teens
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by ilene - August 12th, 2010 8:20 pm
"Creative Destruction is Secular not Cyclical"
Courtesy of Gordon T. Long
What made America great was her unsurpassed ability to innovate. Equally important was also her ability to rapidly adapt to the change that this innovation fostered. For decades the combination has been a self reinforcing growth dynamic with innovation offering a continuously improving standard of living and higher corporate productivity levels, which the US quickly embraced and adapted to.
This in turn financed further innovation. No country in the world could match the American culture that flourished on technology advancements in all areas of human endeavor. However, something serious and major has changed across America. Daily, more and more are becoming acutely aware of this, but few grasp exactly what it is. It is called Creative Destruction.
It turns out that what made America great is now killing her!
Our political leaders are presently addressing what they perceive as an intractable cyclical recovery problem when in fact it is a structural problem that is secular in nature. Like generals fighting the last war with outdated perceptions, we face a new and daunting challenge. A challenge that needs to be addressed with the urgency and scope of a Marshall plan that saved Europe from the ravages of a different type of destruction. We need a modern US centric Marshall plan focused on growth, but orders of magnitude larger than the one in the 1940’s. A plan even more brash than Kennedy’s plan in the 60’s to put a man of the moon by the end of the decade. America needs to again think and act boldly. First however, we need to see the enemy. As the great philosopher Pogo said: “I saw the enemy and it was I”.
THE PROBLEM IS NOT CYCLICAL, IT IS SECULAR.
The dotcom bubble ushered in a change in America that is still reverberating through the nation and around the globe. The Internet unleashed productivity opportunities of unprecedented proportions in addition to new business models, new ways of doing business and completely new and never before realized markets. Ten years ago there was no such position as a Web Master; having a home PC was primarily for doing word processing and creating spreadsheets; Apple made MACs; and ordering on-line was a quaint experiment for…
Tags: America, business models, creative destruction, cyclical recovery, dotcom bubble, fighting the last war, financial bubble, financial markets, Gordon T. Long, growth, IBM, innovation, intellectual capital, IP, Jobs, Microsoft, patents, Politics, secular problem, standard of living, stimulus money, structural problem, tax loopholes, technology, unemployment, Zero Hedge
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by ilene - August 11th, 2010 2:49 pm
Courtesy of Reggie Middleton, writing at Zero Hedge
Sometimes the best laid plans can be put out to pasture due to a lack of foresight in regards to the ever changing, liquid landscape known as the Internet. What fascinates me so much about the Web is that it is the great democratizer, it brings down the barriers to entry and allows for unfettered information flow. For instance, who would have thought that your local public library could lay low the massive aspirations media and retail titans such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple? Put simply, why would you buy an eReader from these vendors for several hundred dollars, then go ahead and spend more money buying the eBooks for said reader when you can simply download the books from your local public library’s website into the equipment you already have? Okay, I know why those Apple heads would do it – because they want to spend money on Apple products,,, the eBooks may look cooler with that shiny Apple logo-thingy indicating that you too have donated unnecessarily to the Steve Jobs’ enrichment fund, but how about the rest of the vendors???
As a matter of fact, you can kill several birds with one stone simply by buying one of the recent Android phones. Google is really on to something here, and the growth potential of Android is simply phenomenal. When those Android tablets get moving at Kmart for $100… Whoops, there goes that Amazon Digital eBook business model.
Attention Kmart shoppers: $149 Android tablet on aisle 5 : The Android OS isn’t just powering high end smartphones, it also runs barebones tablets sold at Kmart for the price of an iPod nano.
Think about this! Hundreds of thousands of titles freely and legally downloadable from your local public library to play on your $150 tablet with standard ports, HD video, the whole 9 yards, or maybe just on your cell phone. Android can scale pretty high in the capability department and reach rather low in the price category as well.
NY’ers, check this out from your NYC Public Libraries:
These books use DRM protection administered by Overdrive. Guess what platforms they won’t play on (okay, I’ll spoil it for you – the two front runners in the…
Tags: AAPL, Amazon, AMZN, android os, apple iphone, cellphone, ebooks, free books, IPad, library, Microsoft, paradigm shift, RIM smart phone, RIMM, technology
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by ilene - July 10th, 2010 4:42 am
Courtesy of Tim at The Psy-Fi Blog
S-t-r-e-t-c-h
Stretch your arms out to either side and imagine you’re looking at the economic growth of the human race over its entire four thousand year documented history. From the fingertip on your right hand to the first wrinkle on its index ftinger more or less covers the first three thousand eight hundred years. From there to the end of the index finger on your left hand represents growth over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
We truly live in an age of miracles and wonders. Medical advances have ensured more people live longer than ever before, scientific achievements have created a world in which we’re surrounded by astonishing labour saving creations and inventions which allow us to waste the time we’ve saved and the extra years of life we’ve been granted. Meanwhile our economic understanding of how this happened has, well, gone nowhere very interesting really. How did we achieve this state of grace?
Science and Medicine
One thing’s perfectly clear – the massive economic growth seen over the last couple of hundred years doesn’t have an awful lot to do with economics. Perhaps the prevalence of capitalist doctrines has prevented excessive government intervention in free markets at too early a stage, but otherwise we’ve veered about wildly while booming and busting our way to a greater level of wealth and health than ever before seen on the planet.
On the other hand this has had a lot to do with medical advances. Medicine has ensured that our useful lives are greatly extended – although a lot of the increase in average lifespans so often discussed is down to vast decreases in infant mortality. Still, we no longer die en-masse of septicaemia. Better, though, improvements in healthcare have extended the useful working lives of people: imagine a world in which most people were dead by 45. Heck, no politicians.
From Third World to First
Along with this we’ve seen incredible advances in science and engineering. In my father’s living memory he recalls the arrival of electricity, sewage disposal and tarmac to his home village. My grandmother was born before the Wright Brothers took flight and outlived – by far – the Apollo program. Yet her grandfather lived in a world virtually unchanged for a millennium: a world of hard…
Tags: Financial System, history, innovation, internet, medical advances, property rights, science, society, technology
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by ilene - March 15th, 2010 12:58 pm
Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler
Driving down the broad avenues of Cleveland, Ohio, was like flipping through the pages of a picture book about the rise and fall of our industrial empire. Where demolitions had not removed things — a lot was gone — stood the residue of a society so different from ours that you felt momentarily transported to another planet where a different race of beings had gone about their business.
Among the qualities most visible in the recent ruins of that lost society is the secure confidence expressed in its buildings. Even the most modest factory or business establishment built before the 20th century included decorations and motifs devised for no other reason but to be beautiful -- towers, swags, medallions, cartouches — as if to state we are joined proudly in a great enterprise to make good things happen in this world. This was true not just of Cleveland, of course, but the whole nation, for a while anyway.
Equally arresting are the changes visible in the collective demeanor from the mid-20th century, especially after the Second World War, when the adolescent panache of a rising economy had morphed into the grinding force of a place devoted to the production of anything. The memory of the Great Depression lingered like a metabolic disorder, and the spirit of the place was no longer caught up in the muscular exuberance of self-discovery but the sheer determination to stay powerful and alive. This phase didn’t last long.
By the 1970s, signs of a new illness were clear. Production was moving someplace else, incomes and household security with it. An existential pall settled over the city as ominous symptoms of waning vitality showed up in the organs of production. Steel-making and car-making staggered. Even the Cuyahoga river caught on fire, as if fate was a practical joke. Major retail was moving elsewhere — to the suburban outlands — where so many of the people who worked in the downtown towers had already fled. The population that remained in the city center was made of recently uprooted agricultural quasi-serfs who had only just come up to the city a generation before to make better livings in the factories that were all of a sudden shutting down. It seemed like a kind of swindle and they were understandably angry about…
Tags: Cleveland, economic development, Economy, James Howard Kunstler, Jobs, production, society, technology, the Great Depression
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by ilene - January 8th, 2010 8:00 pm
Courtesy of The Shocked Investor
As an IEEE member, this is an issue I receive eagerly annually. The IEEE has issued its list of technology winners and losers for 2010:
(please click to enlarge)
Here are summaries of the winner and losers.
Winners:
1. Google Chrome
The Chrome suite looks an awful lot like a dagger aimed straight at Microsoft’s heart. Who needs 500-gigabyte hard drives and a 6-megabyte L2 cache when lots of input ports and a fast wireless connection will do? That’s the rhetorical question that has lately prompted the meteoric rise of the netbook, a bare-bones laptop that gets most of its muscle from online services. Google, in Mountain View, Calif., is the first software company to truly capitalize on the promise of these machines: to allow casual users to live entirely in the cloud, without realizing they’re there.
Chrome OS has no built-in applications—no iCal, no Outlook, no TextEdit, no Word. You just turn on your netbook and you’re on the Web, in what we now call the cloud, where all your stuff lives: all your photos on Flickr, a long trail of your daily foibles and frustrations on Twitter, your purchasing history on PayPal, your prolix unpublished novel on LiveJournal, your music collection on Rhapsody, and the stuff that might be a little embarrassing if your coworkers came across it on Facebook. In fact, cloud computing is what makes Google’s strategy possible.
2. Russian Railways and IBM
The backbone of the Russian Federation is its railways. With 85,500 kilometers of track and 664,600 railcars transporting people and goods across 11 time zones, Russian Railways is practically a force of nature.
Russian Railways has struck a technical partnership with IBM. With IBM’s help, the railway is at last overhauling the hardware, software, and communications architecture that underpin its operations. The overhaul will centralize the management of data into new computing hubs, restructure the collection of information on the railroad’s field operations, and integrate new automation software to help the railway strategize how to deploy its assets. When the redesign is completed in 2014, the company will do business in a fundamentally new way.
3. Pixel Qi’s Everywhere Display
The picture quality is fine, if nothing special.
…
Tags: Airport security, Amazon Kindle, biofuel crops, Cellulosic Ethanol, D-Wave Quantum mechanics, GM Volt, Google Chrome, Grassoline, IBM, IEEE, Intrinsity's More Cerebral Cortex, liquid Helium-cooled computer, NanoGaN's Crystal Method, NanoUV's Bright Light, Pixel Qi's Everywhere Display, Russian Railways, Samsung, technology
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by ilene - January 5th, 2010 11:24 am
…
Tags: auto industry, Cars, Economy, Jim Kunstler, motoring society, Oil, over-indebtedness, techno-triumphalism, technology, thermodynamics
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.