Monthly Archives: July 2008

Harpers Ferry – West Virginia to Maryland Bridge

Posted on by
Reply

Harpers Ferry – West Virginia to Maryland Bridge

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Harpers Ferry WV was the scene of several significant historical events. John Brown’s slave rebellion is the most notable but this was also a key supply point for the Lewis and Clark expedition and “Thomas Jefferson Rock” was a vantage point from which Jefferson had written about the area. The city lies at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers and is a popular tubing spot as well as home to Harpers Ferry National Historic Park.

During your visit the steep uphill walk to Jefferson Rock and Harpers Ferry Cemetery is well worth the trip.

Also notable is one of the US’s most historic pieces of commercial graffiti on the rocks above the tracks – an advertisement for (I think) baking powder – over 100 years old..

Greetings from Manassas, Virginia

Posted on by
3

Woke up this morning thinking I’d be with my cousin in Baltimore, but wound up travelling without parents from Medford to Dulles, now back with them driving to Shenandoah Valley for the big Glick reunion  at Bridgewater College.

United told me delays would make me miss my BWI flight this morning *unless* I could rush in and board an earlier flight.   In my haste I forgot my wallet which my son quickly retrieved and brought back, but not in time to board the first flight.   But the really helpful United ticket guy rerouted my via Dulles which matched up closely enough with my folks schedule that we met up at Dulles.

The excellent guy at Alamo / National was super helpful and now we are at Super 8 in Manassas with a nice car and only a short distance to the family reunion.   I don’t think I’ve ever had so many twists in a trip, but it seems to be working out OK.

Manassas is quiet now, but was the scene of one of the deadliest battles of the civil war and now home to Manassas National Battlefield Park.    If you are a civil war buff you’ll find several battlefield parks with excellent interpretive exhibits.  Antietam MD, Gettysburg PA, and New Market VA to name a few more.

Twitter Gets Search

Posted on by
2

Twitter has aquired Summize, a search utility that will make Twitter a lot more friendly than it has been if you want to drill down in Twitter results and find more relevant information and people.

Twitter is practically gushing about the aquisition of Summize, so it’s likely that Summize is solving a major problem they have been struggling with for some time.

Here’s the scoop

I’ve been somewhat skeptical in the past that Twitter will ever be much more than a sort of social post it note service, but if they add enough functionality to the existing design Twitter’s huge and influential social network could turn this into the major application that some suggest Twitter could become.    It already seems to me that key folks often prefer microblogging to Facebook or email, though I’m still not convinced that Twitter will catch on with regular folks as it must to compete with Facebook and Myspace.

Would You Outsource Alzheimers Care to India?

Posted on by
3

A friend of mine has been making a case that we should be lowering the cost of care for Alzheimer’s folks by setting up facilities in India.    Quality of care and facilities would be the same or better than in the USA, but at a fraction of the cost.

Here’s an article about a guy who did this

Question:  Would you consider this option?     If your spouse had Alzheimer’s and it looked like you’d lose everything paying for care, would you move to India to preserve your standard of living?

Yahoo Microsoft Boxing Match

Posted on by
Reply

Yahoo and Microsoft haven’t been able to agree on very much over the last few months so it now appears fairly likely the battle will head into the shareholder meeting on August 1st.

Microsoft hasn’t lost many of these matches and the smart money remains on them to “win” this battle and take over Yahoo.   My take is that there is now enough ego investment on all sides that you can expect Microsoft to be pretty ruthless in their efforts to replace the board and overhaul the company.  Of course with with management leaving Yahoo at a record pace anyway, Microsoft is likely to inherit more of a management skeleton than a burden, and they are probably fine with this.

How poison will Yahoo make the pill?     As a shareholder I’m concerned about this but comforted that the current board and Jerry Yang have a huge financial stake in this outcome.    To Bostock and Yang’s huge credit they has been playing this game with their own money, though I’d argue they have not been playing it very well or with anybody’s best interests in mind (including their own).    My take is that Yahoo simply could not readjust their expectations from the dramatic success story they enjoyed early on and the belief they could see that kind of success again.     This gave them a perception of the current value of Yahoo that was completely out of line with the market perception, which by definition is the real value of a company.    The $33 sale price has come from the desparate realization by Yahoo that they are going to lose the battle and possibly be forced to sell well below this price, though I think it’ll be in Microsoft’s interest to keep the tensions to a minimum and keep their new “post Yahoo merger” shareholders marginally happy with an offer above $30.

That said, Ballmer is clearly smelling the blood in the water and could probably force an eventual sale of Yahoo in mid to high twenties by jerking the strings for a few more months to soften up Icahn and other major shareholders who are clearly looking for something above the $31 offer Yahoo rejected a short time ago.  Without Microsoft Yahoo’s share price would be well under $20 and this is now clear to everybody.

So the boxing match moves into the final rounds.   It’s pretty much a corporate death match between Jerry “the Yahoo” Yang and Steve “the Basher” Ballmer.    Although my money is invested with Jerry right now, I’d be betting on Ballmer to win this fight.

Disclosure:  Long on YHOO

Microsoft Yahoo: Is $32 now the magic number?

Posted on by
3

Microsoft’s very well played game to win Yahoo at a bargain price is wrapping up even more favorably than Microsoft planned. Yahoo refused the Icahn MS offer today to buy just pieces of the company, though in typical fashion Yahoo did not outline many details of their decision making process, rather they simply asserted it was a bad idea.

Obviously this was a strategic rather than serious move by MS as noted by Henry Blodget, though he’s wrong to think this is just a small play to soften up the Yahoo board before the proxy fight in August.

In fact this is the end game of a very smart plan by Ballmer / MS to aquire everything for less than they have been planning to pay for over a year. Yahoo’s intransigence has simply delayed the process by a few months and saved MS a few dollars per share on what they would have paid.

Over at Silicon Valley Insider we have Henry basically begging for an offer over $31 and indicating support for less.

Yahoo board is now *begging* MS for the $33 they could have had easily a few months ago but may not see again. MS can get it all for less so I’m now guessing the meeting offer will be $31 or $32. That will make MS look generous for keeping to the original plan in the face of a weakening Yahoo, and it will be acceptable to shareholders fearful of YHOO at $18 or lower if this all collapses.

Although this is likely to be resolved at or soon after the upcoming Yahoo board meeting it doesn’t have to resolve to work in MS’s favor. Yahoo’s pretty much exhausted all their options to the extent that it’s either Yahoo in the 30 range with Microsoft or Yahoo under 20 without MS.

Disclosure: Long on YHOO

Blog Revolution Needed?

Posted on by
1

I think I’m too lazy to start the blog revolution some of us were carping about last year, but I hope somebody else does it.

Update: Jim Kukral says the Revolution is over!    I think he’s way too optimistic.

Marshall has a thoughful post about some of the issues surrounding tech blogging and the challenges of surfacing new voices within a system that increasingly seems to center on a handful of good blogs again and again rather than helping bring more attention to the *best* writing on a given topic.

Here’s his take on this.

I replied over there:

Marshall thanks for a thoughtful post. Although I think “A list” blogs are generally very good, I think ranking and commercial issues are keeping a *lot* of quality writing from surfacing. Huge search engine advantages are enjoyed by blogs with extensive incoming links.

Links can be a pretty good and democratic measure of what users want, but with so many A list blogs using very strategic linking, combined with so many “wannabe” blogs linking to existing A lists, combined with A listers rarely linking to even the best writing of others for competitive and commercial reasons, the system is probably no longer working well to bring new voices into the mix.

Solutions? Aggregators like FriendFeed should surface more new writers and content proactively rather than defaulting as they have. A listers should commit to featuring new voices much more regularly, and new voices should find a way to band together so the best writing – rather than the best linking and strategy and commercial cleverness – tends to prevail.

Yahoo’s Don Quixote

Posted on by
1

The Yahoo Microsoft fiasco saga continues as Jerry Yang, in today’s interview with Kara Swisher, seemed to suggest he’d basically go down with the ship.   Or perhaps more accurately he’s willing to take the ship down with him in what appears closer and closer to a Quixotic vision of what to do about Microsoft.   Yang seems to suggest two incompatible things – first that Microsoft has not given a clear offer to Yahoo and second that:

“Their motivations are suspect and there is simply no good reason to think they will actually show up at the end of the day.”

Huh?   MS is clearly prepared to buy Yahoo.   This is obvious to everybody including Jerry.   He could argue that they are going to screw up Yahoo after buying it, but that rings a bit hollow given the sad conditions of the company right now.     In fact it’s hard to imagine how Yahoo, a key brand in the key global sector, can be doing so poorly right now.   How in the world could Microsoft screw the company up more than Yahoo is screwed up right now?

Even if Microsoft *is* going to bring devastating changes to Yahoo, there is a shareholder obligation here that probably is not met without a sale to Microsoft.     It is simply no longer viable to suggest that an independent Yahoo is likely to show the revenues required to bring the stock to 33+ within a year.    Without any Microsoft interest  YHOO would be trading at about $18, so the likely Icahnesque MS offer can arguably be viewed as a premium of close to 100% on what shareholders can expect if this deal *really* crumbles, which is what Yang clearly wants to happen.

I agree with Swisher:

… even with all the noise, it should be entirely clear by now that Microsoft and Yahoo need each other.

Disclosure:  Long on YHOO