winindthedust

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

I don't think it has anything to do with Republican or Democrat investors... but today is a nice buy in opportunity, tomorrow will rally higher.

Media and Tech Earnings: Barometers for This Week

Got to love those high Apple margins!

Betting Apple's New Netbook Is a Big iPhone

Apple stock is going to skyrocket, your buy in time is NOW (actually Monday would have been good, but better late then never! :-) )

Bull market rally in the whole market; Bears will be forced to cover by Friday.

Apple has historically had the ability to jump 80-100 points in just a few months. (Like August - December 2007 Remember?)

Apple's new products and product cycle means a stock build up to June. Then another build up to the December holidays.

There will be few consolidation pull-back periods from here on out after tonight's earnings call, so buy on the dips, which won't be many.

OH, and Spring & Summer are here, don't forget to get out and enjoy your families. Life isn't so bad after all! :-)

Do You Know What Your Stock Positions Really 'Delivered'?

So out of these stocks, which ones are you projecting as winners and losers using your analytics software? Does it work for horse races too?

Preparing for the Shift to Club Cloud Computing

With cellular & high speed wireless data becoming available everywhere, I can see an Apple hand held product being used for virtually everything on the go for business users. However, it will only rely on the cloud for unified business applications. These hand held products, though small, are now powerful enough to run local user applications without the need for the cloud.

The cloud isn't going to be used just because it's there... it has to make productivity sense or produce mass cost savings. Productivity: entering any data, whether input by hand, scanned, etc, then having it automatically sync with cloud software or to ones one servers... this will be big. Having the ability to run dynamic and automatically updated databases will be huge. Virtual databases will be the next big service for businesses on the go and even cash & carry. Sales force personnel will have instant & dynamic updates to inventory, schedules, sales, etc. all liked to each other and the business. Business management will be able to make changes on the fly and in the field.

I think of soo many applications across soo many businesses... down to even the guy cutting my lawn or delivering my pizza. But it will not be stand alone cloud computing, but rather a convergence.

Is Music Moving to the Cloud?

For music, this is a NO GO.

For video, that's a different story, however the model will NOT be subscription. Rather, people will be willing to "store" their movie in the cloud, that they purchased. It's already stored in the cloud anyway, as they bought it as a download. Video takes so much space, and fast internet is becoming ubiquitous.

The main reason rentals are more popular is three things:
Cheaper
Storage
Usually watch once

Some major things that Apple will introduce, that will spur movie and TV show purchases:

Once you buy, iTunes will keep track of your purchases, and you can re-download at any time to an authorized device. This will be major, as people will not have to worry about storage and back-up. This is a big reason people don't purchase on line video. TV shows are already cheap enough, and people like the a-la-carte purchasing of content. To be able to purchase, then have access via the cloud to content you OWN will be compelling.

Rent-to-own. People may not want to buy a movie, until they've seen it. Having iTunes keep track of rentals for a period of time in a rent to own model will indeed be compelling. There is a lot of ways they could go with this... the rent to own could be per movie, that is, rent the movie, and if you decide to buy it, the rental price is applied to the purchase price. Or, they could apply all rentals to the purchase price of any movie... that would be very easy, very cool, and give nice choice, as well as spur purchases of Apple products. Think about it, if you rent a movie, and those totals can be applied to the purchase of any movie in the store? Nice. Of course, there is the problem of multiple studios, and compensation... this would be complicated if they had to apply it on a per studio basis, therefore, I only see the rent-to-own model on a per movie basis being viable at first with studios warming to the latter idea later.

With Apple TV, IPv6, and Wide Area Bonjour, Apple will allow remote connectivity from stored content on the Apple TV & the cloud, to be streamed to other devices. On a trip to abroad, and you want to watch a TV show that's downloaded to Apple TV at home on your iPod touch or friends Apple TV? Enter iTunes password, and watch as streamed video, that auto scales to the internet connection. This solves ownership problems, as the content is not stored, but streamed, and therefore can be watched from any device.

With faster chips introduced in iPod touch & iPhone, direct purchase to these devices will become a reality. Once this happens, these devices will increasingly become "mobile Apple TV's". With the hardware now opened up to third parties, it's easy to imagine popping over to a friends house, and using their HD screen for viewing content from your pocket media device, seamless and on the fly. Yes, you already can do this, but it will be even more convenient with powerful choice and options.

All TV's will start adding CHEAP Bluetooth to their sets. They will do this, and all have a Universal Remote App in the App store. Think about the implications there... and don't stop at TV's.

Is Apple More Undervalued Than Other Tech Sector Stocks?

Wow, what a great spell out of Apple. Apple is indeed the best buy of 2008.

CE Spending Looks Dismal - But Macs Set to Hit New All-Time High

Macs are less hackable, because you have to have the user password to do anything.

Someone can email you a virus on a mac, but it can't execute, because of this simple fact.

To be hacked, you would have to knowingly, or unwittingly, hand someone the keys to your computer, or they would have to steel your user name & password through either physical access or observation, or "spoofing", that is tricking you into giving them your keys. Both of these scenarios are highly unlikely.

Even if they got physical access on your machine, they could not load a data logger, spyware, or virus execution program, without knowing your administrator password.

CE Spending Looks Dismal - But Macs Set to Hit New All-Time High

We certainly saved at lot of money, transferring our company over to Macs.

Not only did we save money, we are making more money with the increased production.

Worker moral is higher, too, with the decrease in frustration factor that come with IT support issues.

IT staff, can be retained for other functions, such as web site development, training & resource management, documentation development, etc.

All money in the bank.