iRobot (IRBT) had about $76 million in cash after its IPO in 2005, which was priced at $24.00 per share for approximately 23.4 million shares.

After WowWee's pseudo reverse merger into Optimal Group, Inc. (OPMR), and OPMR’s Optimal Payments subsidiary assets sales, OPMR will likely have significantly more cash than what IRBT had after its IPO, about the same number of shares [with OPMR’s share buyback], and about the same revenue [$142 million revenue for IRBT in 2005 vs. WowWee 2008E revenue of $130 to $140 million].

Cypress Bioscience, Inc. (CYPB) is a favored stock for selling covered calls. But on Thursday (8/14) and Friday (8/15) last week, 1,000 Dec. call options and 1,000 Dec. put options at the strike price of $7.50 were purchase on each of these two days.

This may be indicative of an upcoming event between now and December, which could result in a dramatic price move in the stock, either up or down. The million dollar question is in what direction?

Optimal Group, Inc. (OPMR) expects to divest itself of its remaining U.S. Optimal Payment assets within the next 12 months. This means that the company will be focusing primarily on the growth of its WowWee subsidiary.

OPMR management indicated that they expect OPMR to be well capitalized going forward with their WowWee business, which was recently acquired last year. WowWee is a leading designer, developer, marketer and distributor of technology-based consumer robotic, toy and entertainment products. A video collection of WowWee’s 2008 expanded product lineup can be viewed at the following link.

Optimal Group Inc.'s (OPMR) conference call is scheduled for Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 4:30 p.m. [EDT]. OPMR should know what WowWee revenue for 2008 will be from distributor orders already placed. Last conference call the company stated that WowWee orders (as of 4/30) were 25% ahead of 2007 orders (but did not say what 2007 orders were).

Bladestar, Cubs, Chatterbots, Tribot, Fairyfly and Butterfly are already in stores. FemiSapien should be in stores soon. That leaves Rovio, Wrex the Dawg, Bug-Bots and Mr. Personality.

Yahoo’s (YHOO) strength today is primarily in its display advertising, and secondarily in its search advertising and Asia investments.

Investors however have likely overlooked a potentially very significant Yahoo press release, due to headline news coverage of the Microsoft (MSFT) potential takeover of all or part of Yahoo assets. On July 10th, Yahoo announced its entry into the In-Game Advertising [IGA] market, by partnering with Double Fusion and NeoEdge. By leveraging Yahoo Games and its relationship with Activision Blizzard (ATVI) though Yahoo’s Board of Directors, Yahoo could potentially turn its IGA initiative into a strong offensive play, putting Google’s (GOOG) IGA initiative, with the acquisition of AdScape last year, at a significant disadvantage.

If a CEO cares so little about his company's shareholders, as to not attend his company's conference calls, then maybe he should be replaced by a CEO that does. If Carl Icahn aspires to be a shareholders advocate, maybe he should consider replacing Microsoft's (MSFT) Board of Directors, instead of Yahoo's (YHOO).

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Optimal Group Inc. (OPMR) last week extended the expiration date for options granted to its directors and officers to 4/29/2014 from 4/29/2009 at an exercise price of $7.10. For these options to be worthwhile, the price of OPMR would have to increase at a compound annual growth rate of at least 21.5% from its closing price of $2.30 on Friday over the next six years.

Since the granting of the options back in April 2004, Optimal Group acquired WowWee, a unit sales leader within the personal robotics market. ABI Research forecasts that the personal robotics market will be worth $15 billion by 2015 [source]. Electronics.ca Publications reported that the educational and entertainment robot submarket, which WowWee dominates, is expected to reach $3.9 billion by 2014 [source].

A phugoid is an aircraft motion where the vehicle pitches up and climbs, and then pitches down and descends, accompanied by speeding up and slowing down as it goes "uphill" and "downhill." A divergent phugoid is an unstable oscillation, typically caused by a large difference between the incidence angles of the wing and tail [1].

United Airlines (UAUA) Flight 232 suffered an engine failure which caused total hydraulic system failure. The crew flew the aircraft with throttle only. Suppressing the phugoid tendency was particularly difficult, and ultimately Flight 232 crashed.