I have finished up my academic portion of the semester. I had two night classes this past semester and finished both finals this week. The finals were about what I expected; nothing too surprising, although my fingers on my writing hand are hurting! I’m sure my marks will be lower than my semester’s work, but I’m sure I’ll do alright. It feels good to be done classes, since now I don’t have any stress from trying to remember all the information that we had to know. I can let my mind go free again and explore new knowledge on its own. This semester has been a busy one, with working my coop job full-time Mon-Fri, and then the two night classes on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Then working my other job on weekends. Not to mention soccer games on Monday nights. My schedule was pretty much packed solid. Next semester should be nice with classes taking up my mornings leaving me with a lot of time! I suppose I could use that time to study for the classes… but that’s not likely going to happen. I just calculated how much books are going to cost me.. this is going to be my most expensive semester yet, they are around $750.. and thats with one class not listing anything yet!
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Updated Google Finance
For the past week I have been getting used to Google Finance’s new front page. They launched the new front page on Monday. The new design is cleaner, and provides more information that is relevant to the user. It remembers the stocks you recently have been looking at and includes them in a list so you can see them all updated on the recent quotes section. As well with the recent quotes, it provides recent news stories on them as well. One addition with the redesign I like is the Sector Summary, and the Top Movers tabs. Both features provide more information which is never a bad thing. Other features include the market summary which has some currency exchanges as well.
One comment that I would like to make about the whole design is that, the user should be allowed to make some customizations to the site. Such as the http://www.google.com/ig/ site, I want to be able to add and remove pieces that I feel are more important to me. As well, with things like the currency exchanges, I would like to be able to choose which currency exchanges are being updated. Overall though, I’m happy with the redesign and I hope that google is able to steal some market-share away from Yahoo! Finance.
Mosaic Opens Strong
The Mosaic Company (NYSE: MO) opened today and shot up strong. At one point this morning the stock as up over 1.00 but edged back and was up 0.81 to 23.09 at around 10AM EST. The day has barely started and the volume traded today is already at 20% of the average. The stock was featured on last Friday’s Mad Money show. Cramer was mentioning that the stock was likely to be promised things from presidential hopefuls in the upcoming presidential elections due to Iowa. I do not know how American politics works, or the significance of Iowa, but I believe Mosaic can stand on its own as a strong company without the presidential speculation.
When he began to talk about the company, I immediately knew what company he was talking about. Living in Saskatchewan, I live near Saskferco, a company which Mosaic has a 50% stake in. This potassium mining facility is at Belle Plaine just west of Regina. As well, the football stadium in Regina, Taylor Field, was just renamed Mosaic Stadium for the corporate naming rights. Both of these things, make the whole Mosaic Company seem closer to home, even if the company’s headquarters is in Plymouth, MN.
BIDU Roundup
Baidu.com Inc (Nasdaq : BIDU) continued on its roll again today. After profit taking yesterday, the stock continued to rise up 4.12 to 122.06 at around midday on Friday. Last night on Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money”, he mentioned how eBay is going to benefit from its partnership from Baidu. I was saying that a month ago when Baidu was trading for 96.10, too bad I didn’t buy any stock then since it has gone up 25.96 in a month!!
Baidu is always an interesting dot com stock that seems to be announcing positive news frequently. Just last week they were announcing that they will be entering the Japanese search market. This should be easier for them as they have experience with the Chinese search market. There are some similarities between the Chinese and Japanese languages which will be easier to understand that it will for companies like Yahoo.
I am not sure how the mindset of the Japanese will react to a move like this. I know that if a Japanese company enters the Chinese market, there will most likely be a negative reaction due to their long history. I don’t have the experience to know if that will work the other direction. I suppose the Japanese could always choose an American search engine…
A dog ate some guy’s XBox 360!
I have been in a situation like this before; “Some guy sold his 360 on eBay only to have it shipped back to him a month later after being pretty much devoured by a dog.” I remember when my dog was still a puppy, it would chew everything. I used to get so mad whenever it chewed on anything of mine. What I don’t understand in the case of the story is, why they buyer sent the item back to the seller. It seems strange since the seller still has the money. Maybe the buyer is collecting some sort of insurance for the item. Regardless, check out the pictures in the article; it looks like he got off lucky since it’s salvageable.
Two Years of Digging!
“Hard to believe, but two years ago today, Kevin decided my code was bug- free enough to take down the beta sign and unleash Digg upon the world. It’s been a crazy and exciting time since then, and we owe it all to you – the loyal and passionate members of the Digg community.” Thanks everyone and Happy Birthday to all! : ) –kevinrose
I remember finding out about digg very early. I know I wasn’t hardcore enough to actually know about the site on the first day but I would have to say I was among the first group. I had gone to the site a few times in December 2004, and then it was also mentioned on one of the first episodes of TWIT (this week in tech, previously known as Return of the Screen Savers). I registered my username in April, since I’m such a big lurker who doesn’t see the need to contribute. It has been a pleasant past couple of years for Digg, with visitor numbers constantly increasing and the site expanding into areas beyond tech. I can’t wait to see what else is going to be in store for the next birthday.
Mac Vs. PC Commercials
I really dislike all those Mac Vs. PC commercials. I use a PC all the time and don’t consider it to be solely a “business” platform like they keep trying to say in the commercials. They continually say I am unable to do fun things, which is a lie. Also, looking at games, how often does that Apple guy get to play new fun games.. never, since Mac doesn’t have games (don’t try to say WoW and Warcraft 3). Well enough of Mac vs PC, I ran across another spoof commerical. This video is kind of old but its the PS3 vs. Nintendo. Although I will disagree a little bit with it, I generally think its pretty funny though. I just wonder what an Xbox 360 girl would look like in that style commercial?
IMDB Gets a Face Lift
International Movie Database finally gets a face lift. The new website seems to perform much better and also has a much cleaner look. Backed up by a Table-less design with power of CSS, IMDB has finally taken the web 2.0 plunge. Take a look for yourself! This is one of my most visited sites. If I want to find out any information regarding a movie, or actor this is the site I go to. I am glad they didn’t change the site too much and I like how they kept the overall feel the same. It also looks like the new design is setup to allow more advertising! :)
SIRIUS cuts Subscriber Forecast – Stock Drops
SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Nasdaq : SIRI) announced late Monday that they are cutting their subscriber forecast for the end of the forth quarter. They now feel that with the slowness of the current holiday sales, they will likely have between 5.9 – 6.1 million subscribers. This is slightly down from previous forecasts which saw between 6.1 – 6.3 million
With the news of the lower subscriber forecast, shares fell big in early Tuesday trading. Only a couple hours into trading and shares were down 31 cents or 7.43% to 3.86. Surprisingly, XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq : XMSR) who had not mentioned a decrease to their subscriber forecast is also down 70 cents or 4.79% to 13.91.
Shareholders must have a sense that the satellite radio market isn’t quite as hot as they were thinking. I was predicting that consumer demand wouldn’t be as high this Christmas season since neither Sirius or XM has made any new major programming announcements. The battle for SIRIUS and XM isn’t between themselves, it is between them and other modes of entertainment. Hopefully someone in their marketing departments will think of something quick because this holiday season is quickly coming to a close.
Azureus 3.0 Launched
Lots of new bells and whistles, the future promises more. With a new version of Azureus, we are going to be getting something very different. They have integrated in something called Zudeo. It sounds like this is some sort of legitimate web page that will appear in the client to download from. That also means that they are probably trying to get content partnerships with various media groups. These advancements sound less like they are advancements and they sounds more like they are to get rid of the public opinion that Azureus is only for piracy. Good luck to them with that.