Monthly Archives: March 2008

Google: We see no evil.

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I’m very disappointed in the Google board’s recommended decision to reject a shareholder request for a human rights committee and anti-censorship rules.

These decisions make Google’s claims to be improving search around the globe ring somewhat  … hollow:  Official Google Blog: Making search better in Catalonia, Estonia, and everywhere else

Here are the details:
www.investor.google.com/documents/2008_notice_n_proxy_statement.html

I have a longer post about this  this over at WebGuild

Over there I wrote:

This is a sad day for Google and the recommendation is a death blow to their now transparently specious “Do No Evil” mantra. Google has an obligation to promote human rights within the reasonably confines of their business structure and goals. In this obligation, they have now dramatically failed.

Yahoo Microsoft: Is the fat lady almost singing at $34?

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Henry Blodget is whining that the Yahoo Microsoft deal is back to where it started, but I think Henry’s wrong … again!     

I’m glad Henry was wrong about the rumor that Yahoo’s Q4 would beat expectations because it was part of the reason I bought YHOO then, and even though the stock dipped due to a bad Q4, it surged on Microsoft’s offer of $31 per share so I’m well in the black.   But now he’s wrong to say the deal is not almost done.  I think this Yahoo Microsoft merger is coming very soon to an internet near you.

Citibank Analyst Maheney upgraded Yahoo this morning, anticipating a boost in the MS bid to $34.   Hey, maybe he read my blog post of about 6 weeks ago where I suggested Microsoft raise their bid to $34?    

Unlike Henry, I think this is not back to where it all started at all!

Yang didn’t want to merge, now he sees it as almost inevitable.  Yahoo board wanted more, now they know anything past initial offer is gravy.  Part of the show was probably the board protecting itself against lawsuits from the unlucky minions who bought their Yahoo at $35+, some at over $100.

Barring a Q1 miracle that would recalibrate Yahoo prices without help of MS bids, I think the fat lady is now almost done singing on this deal.

 Disclosure:  long on YHOO

Craiglist Prank = horse stealin’

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I’m reporting a remarkable local story from Jacksonville, Oregon that strains even one’s interenet sensibilities about a guy in Jacksonville who had his horse and property stolen after Craigslist postings said it was up for grabs.   The incredible part is that after the guy returned home the people would not stop taking his stuff, citing the Craigslist ad as some sort of permission!     http://www.webguild.org/2008/03/craigslist-prank-listings-lead-to-major.php

Island Pacific Hotel, Hong Kong

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We are booked for three nights at the Island Pacific Hotel in Hong Kong and I’m looking forward to enjoying what looks like a great hotel very near the waterfront along Hong Kong’s spectacular Victoria Harbor. 

We appear to be about two miles to the west of downtown Hong Kong, though only about a mile from the metro which can take us all over the city, and I think we are easy walking distance from the Macau Ferry Terminal where we can catch ferries to other parts of the Hong Kong island empire.   There are several huge ferry terminal complexes along the harbor and I’m not sure how this works yet.   The site of all those ships in the harbor must be amazing.

Hong Kong to Shanghai by Train

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With less than a week to go on the China trip I’m trying to pin down some trip details.   We have our China Visas Passport attachments, which my friend picked up for us at the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco.   We’ve got our Medford to Hong Kong Plane Tickets, and we are booked at the Island Pacific Hotel on the harbor in the western part of Hong Kong.    The hotel appears to be excellent quality and appeared to be a very good deal at Hotels.com’s $87 per night.

From Hong Kong International I understand we take a metro or bus that will deliver us to the Metro station at the Macau ferry terminal .   Update:  There is an express train to downtown hong kong from the Airport leaving every 12 minutes that costs about $15 US, but we’ll take the Island Pacific hotel shuttle for about $19 that departs from A02 every 30 minutes and will deliver us to the Island Pacific Hotel = cool!.   which is within a mile of the hotel.   I think the hotels have pickups but not at the airport which is some 60 miles away by road on Lantau Island.  Hong Kong is the major city on the Island of Hong Kong, but there are many other big cities and activity on many other islands in the area, all connected by a massive ferry system that centers on docks along the Hong Kong  Waterfront or Victoria Harbor, one of the world’s busiest ports and most spectacular waterfront skylines.    We’ll be able to see this from our hotel.

We’ve heard some criticism from folks who have travelled in China about the plan to take a 20 hour overnight train to Shanghai, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be just fine and will see more of the countryside this way.  The train system is huge and there are many classes of travel.   We’ll probably try to get the “soft sleeper” which looks great from pictures on non-official websites.   Some have said that travelling in the seats will hurt backs, but I have a hunch many of the bad rumors are from China’s pre-capitalist days when travel was a lot more spartan. 

From the excellent (and I hope very accurate) train travel website www.Seat61.com :  HK to Shanghai runs on odd dates in Jan, March, June, July 2008, & even dates in Feb, April, May 2008

We need to remember this:

 The station in Hong Kong is in Kowloon and called ‘Hung Hom’ …. the Chinese refer to Hong Kong/Kowloon as ‘Jiulong’

So it looks like we’ll shoot for the April 4th train to Shanghai!    Cost should be about $120 per person for a really nice sleeper.

 I’m a little concerned about trying to buy tickets there just a few days before but that gives us some flexibility and also I’m hearing it can be more expensive and complicated to reserve them here or online.

Facebook owes me $1.50 per year!

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Over at WebGuild I was doing some simple calculations about my value as an information slave to social networks like Facebook.    Using their 150MM revenues last year and dividing by approximately 100 million current users, we get a value of only $1.50 per year per average user.

The value of an average user in terms of the capitalization of these companies is obviously much greater.  Facebook is (over) valued by some measures at 15 billion based on Microsoft paying 240 million for a tiny share.   By that metric I am worth $150 to the company.    By traditional stock metrics this should jive  in logical ways with the revenue and profit potentials, but the internet economy has shattered many of the old sensibilities about company values, which these days are largely a function of hype, competitive takeover strategies, and other unusual metrics.

Blogs as a digestive tract

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Nick Carr is rapidly becoming one of my favorite bloggers.   Not so much because I agree with his points, but because his style is sharp and brilliant and because he recognizes that many of the elitist current distinctions in the writing community are, in a word, nonsense.

This Gaurdian article contains the very clever notion that blogging’s virtue is what others have called a blogging vice – the tendency to regurgitate articles and news gleaned from major outlets, adding personal notes or spin in the process.      Carr notes that this is a *good* thing as it processes information in ways he likens to a digestive tract.    Unflattering as it may seem to the times when bloggers are actually out in the world researching elusive and exclusive topics and writing about them,  much of blogging is just this sort of “reprocessing” of information as it flows through our vast networked media extravaganza.    Re-examination can be as helpful as examination, and I can’t help but think that blogging is making the pie much bigger in the sense that more people are paying more attention to more information.    As long as we brew more coffee to keep everybody awake to read all this, it will all work just fine.

Bay Area Driving Tip: Stay off the roads..

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I´m in the Bay Area several times each year, but I never get used to the traffic here, which seems to get worse each year.

A good tip I am finally starting to follow is to avoid driving before 9am and avoid driving between 3 and 7pm.    Obviously that is sometimes not possible, but often you can arrange meetings and schedule around that.

I am usually driving alone here, but if you have two or more in the car you can use the carpool lanes which always seem very clear.  I think in that case the hours are not as important, though you will still get gummed up when there is no car pool lane.