Well, you may not realize it, but we’ve been essentially in a bull market for the last three years. In any other time in our nation’s economic history, at least in the last 50 years, one could say that our business cycle has come to an end. If you’ll recall historically they’ve taught in the major business schools that the business cycle is three years up, and two years down. therefore using such theory one could say that we are at the end of this up cycle, and it’s time to pay the piper. Okay so, let’s talk about this problem and shall we?

First, the Dow is now back at 13,000, and this is the first time since the crash of 2008. The NASDAQ is also nearing, or perhaps by the time you read this article it will be at; 3000. there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on March 12, 2012 titled; A Coming of Age for NASDAQ – as Tech-Heavy Index Nears 3000, Profits and Valuations Differ from Bubble Era, by Jonathan Cheng.

Right, okay so, this is fairly true isn’t it? It is the tech sector which is running hard and fast, and propping up the NASDAQ at this point. meanwhile one of the biggest contributors, now the company with the largest market cap in the world, is Apple. And they’ve just come out with their new iPad which has sold out at least online within the first four days.

Apple still expects to sell 25 million iPad II’s in 2012. In fact, they only dropped the price $100, and the new iPad (iPad III if you will) is expected to sell 45 million in 2012. Apple also announced that it is building a corporate campus in Austin Texas which will hire 3600 people and cost $304 million. that is a major undertaking for any other type of company, but it really is a drop in the bucket for Apple.

What I’m saying is that since Apple is the major driver right now of the NASDAQ, and it does not seem to be slowing down, it is true that we could see this high point on the NASDAQ continuing. Now then in China with their iPhone, they are actually getting slaughtered in the market share as their chief competitor is up threefold, and iPhone sales are flat. also, we should understand that the new iPad costs quite a bit more to make, and there is some wage inflation going on at Foxcon, a chief contractor and manufacture for Apple, their profit margin is less than on previous units.

Does this mean that they will not be able to meet analyst’s predictions? Or does it mean the analyst will take that into consideration, and Apple will once again blow the doors off those estimates? We don’t know yet, but if Apple continues to rise and pull the tech sector up with it, that will drive the NASDAQ even higher. so, what does it all mean in the gambling casino of the stock market? It only means the game continues. indeed I hope you will please consider this as you run with the bulls.

NASDAQ Index at 3000 – Thanks Apple and Tech Stocks

NEW YORK (AP) — Apple is set to report another record quarterly profit on Tuesday, continuing the relentless string of results that’s made it the world’s most valuable company. those profits don’t come out of thin air: A range of businesses —from the company’s wireless carrier friends to its PC-making foes— are seeing their profits melt away and flow to Apple’s bottom line.

Apple’s success is good for the U.S. economy, and some businesses, like software developers and memory-chip makers, have benefited from the disruption Apple is causing. but its enormous gains have resulted in others’ pains, sometimes in unexpected places.

AT&T Inc., for instance, took a chance on Apple’s unproven phone in 2007, but the company might be regretting that decision. since it became the first U.S. phone company to carry the iPhone, its stock is down 25 percent. Apple’s is up 415 percent.

Best buy has sold Apple products off and on since the late 1990s, but analysts now see Apple as a major threat to the U.S.’s only remaining national big-box electronics chain.

Worst off, of course, are rival phone makers. Apple has just 8 percent of the global phone market, but makes about 80 percent of the industry’s operating profits.

Wall Street analysts expect Apple Inc. to post a profit of $9.2 billion for the January to March quarter when it reports on Tuesday. That’s roughly in line with the profit expected from the world’s largest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp.

The majority of the profit will come from iPhone sales, especially now that three of the four national U.S. wireless carriers —AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon— sell the phone.

But, for a phone company, selling an iPhone is a bit of a gamble. The company pays Apple an average of $659 for iPhones and then sells them to consumers for between $50 and $200.

The phone companies count on making their money back, and more, in monthly service fees over the life of a two-year contract. each iPhone comes with a data plan that adds at least $30 to a consumer’s monthly bill. At AT&T, the average iPhone user pays more than $100 per month.

It turns out, however, that some of the added income wireless carriers get from data plans is just compensating for a drop in what they’re able to charge for calling minutes. The money is also eaten up by the cost of network upgrades to support all the data traffic — the emails, photos and YouTube videos iPhone users consume.

“The primary beneficiary of the growth in wireless data has been one company — Apple,” says William Power, an analyst with R.W. Baird & co.

Despite the smartphone boom created by Apple’s iPhone, “free cash flow,” or the cash left over every quarter after expenses and capital spending, hasn’t grown at the major U.S. wireless companies since 2007, according to Power’s calculations.

In the same period, Apple’s free cash flow has grown more than sixfold, to over $40 billion last year.

There are signs that U.S. phone companies are starting to take countermeasures. Apple’s stock has fallen 11 percent from its all-time high.

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Friday, March 9, 2012

CELEBRITY TV chief Mario Batali who owns a restaurant in new York, has been sued by his workers for cheating them of their tips, and not paying minimum wage and overtime.

Last Monday, at the new York federal court in Manhattan, Batali and his associate Joseph Bastianich agreed to settle the class-action suit for $5.25 million, Bloomberg News said.

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In 2010, servers at restaurants including Babbo and Del Posto had sued their employers for alleged violation of the fair Labor Standards Act. This was in line with their alleged pocketing of gratuities equal to up to five percent of nightly wine sales.

In their complaint, the employees said the two and their restaurants had “unlawfully confiscated a portion of their workers’ hard-earned tips in order to supplement their own profits.”

The settlement may cover as many as 1,100 employees who worked at Babbo, Del Posto, Bar Jamon, Casa Mono, Esca, Lupa, Otto and Tarry Lodge, from as far back as 2004.

These include waiters, servers and bartenders.

Rachel M. Bien one of the employees’ lawyers, said all parties were satisfied with the settlement.

This is not the first time the celebrity chef has landed in hot water.

Last November, he was criticized for taking a dig at bankers during a Time magazine-sponsored panel.

“The ways the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed and taken most of it into their hands is as good as Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys,” Batali said.

Stung, financial industry executives called for a boycott of his establishments, leading Batali to apologize the next day for his remarks.

Batali can currently be seen on the public television series On the Road again taste-testing Spanish food with actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on March 10, 2012.

Sun.Star on social media

Batali stiffed restaurant workers of tips, correct wages: lawsuit

With its first quarter of revenues over $10bn, there’s plenty in Google’s earnings details and executives’ calls to pick over. Here’s a selection

What did we learn from Google’s fourth quarter financial results, released on Thursday night? Quite a lot, though some is very well hidden. If you want, you can read the results, and also the transcript of the earnings call, and of analysts’ questions at SeekingAlpha.

• Google passed $10bn for a quarter for a first time. In fact it was knocking on $11bn with its $10.854bn revenues. Profits were slightly lower than the previous quarter, however – $2.70bn against $2.73bn.

• Gmail now has 350m users.

• Google+ has 90m registered users – that is, people and organisations that have gone to the bother of creating a profile on it. That’s more than doubled from the 40m announced at the last earnings call. There’s some more about Google+, but we’ll come to it presently.

• more than 250m Android devices have been activated. Larry Page, the chief executive, said so:

Android is, quite simply, mind-boggling. 700,000 phones are lit up every day. and I’m pleased to announce 250 million Android devices in total, up 50 million since our last announcement just in November. In just two days over the holiday weekend, 3.7 million Androids were activated. and today, we’re announcing over 11 billion downloads from Android markets. Wow.

Of course 250m activations in total doesn’t mean 250m necessarily in operation; that’s a lifetime figure. Most won’t be more than three years old though, so it’s a good bet that many are still active. Adding 50m since 16 November (the figure was given out at the Google Music event) is a run rate of 50m in 65 days, or nearly 770,000. Unsurprisingly, Christmas has given Android a bounce. Even if you take out those two exceptional days around Christmas, it’s still 734,000 per day in that period. But note that these won’t be strictly hot-off-the-press numbers. They’ll almost certainly have been prepared days earlier, and perhaps tweaked a little (if not by Page on his SEC-monitored phone calls, then at the Google Music event, upwards.)

• Page isn’t really clear about how to monetise Android. Here’s Benjamin Schachter of Macquarie Research with the question: “On Android, the numbers are obviously very, very strong. But can you talk about the monetization potential that’s beyond search? what has to happen with Android for you to actually make money on this? and how are you going to do it?”

“I think we are in a very — as I mentioned in my remarks, we’re in the early stages of monetization for a number of our new products, and Android is one of those. I think we do make money from Search on apps. we do make — we mentioned that we have a very strong advertising business on mobile, which we obviously — a lot of those people are on Android as well. and I think that you also see we announced 11 billion downloads on Android markets. Obviously, a lot of those are free, but we also are having a lot of people buy stuff there, too. We’ve seen a lot of potential for us to make money on Android, and I think you’ll see us increase that a lot over time. It’s hard to give you details about that right now, but I’m very, very optimistic.”

Odd how in the previous quarter’s earnings call he said that mobile was “at a $2.5bn run rate”. (Then there were only 190m Android devices.) What’s happened? well, some analysis suggested then that a lot of that revenue – certainly a lot of search, as much as two-thirds – really came from Apple devices. Page didn’t elaborate before or since. But monetising Android still seems like one of those “Any time soon, honest” problems.

• Motorola will be run as a separate business, if and when the takeover happens. Nor will it get special favours. Page again:

“on Motorola, obviously we’re going to break that out [in the financial results] separately, so you’ll be able to track the changes to margins and so on. I think that — and able to track the business separately. so that should not be an issue. We’ve been very clear that Motorola’s obviously going to remain a licensee of Android, and Android will remain open. and when we announced the deal, we really said our strategy is working with different manufacturers on lead devices is going to continue. and Motorola will bid with – just like any other OEM for those devices. so that process will be unchanged.”

That’s going to be interesting. of course, Motorola is going to weigh down Google’s profits: it warned earlier this month that it would miss expectations and show only “modest profitability”. It’s getting hammered in the Android fight.

• Google has been paying Apple and Mozilla (and various others) more than $440m per quarter to be the default search engine on their browsers, including desktop and browser. we learn this from the Traffic Acquisition Costs information. known as TAC, these are the money that search engines pay to be the default on a browser or system: every time someone uses the Google search box on the iPhone or on Firefox, there’s a reward in it for Apple or Mozilla. In the words of the release, “TAC also includes amounts ultimately paid to certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website, which totalled $442 million in the fourth quarter of 2011.”

Expect that figure to rise next quarter, because Mozilla renegotiated the deal, and is likely getting rather more. One to keep an eye on.

• now, those Google+ users. 90m, remember? Here’s what Page then said, after announcing that 90m figure: “Engagement on + is also growing tremendously. I have some amazing data to share there for the first time. + users are very engaged with our products. Over 60% of them engage daily and over 80% weekly.”

What this doesn’t mean is that 60% of people with Google+ profiles use Google+ every day, and 80% in a week. not at all. It’s saying that among people who have created a Google+ profile (a group that includes me), 60% use some Google product – which could be search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Docs or any other its dozens of things – while they are signed in using the same email that they have for their Google+ profile.

When you put it like that, it’s surprising that more of them aren’t signed in all the time – if you’re using your own machine, for example, then the cookie on your browser will usually keep you logged in until you specifically log out. One also begins wondering how Google knows this detail: if you aren’t signed in, how does it know you have a Google+ profile?

Even so, only 60% of Google+ users being signed in to use a Google desktop product each day, and 1 in 5 not signing in through a week, doesn’t sound like a terrifically engaged audience to me. However, Google is very determined that – as one Googler put it to me – Google+ should be the “glue” that links all its products together. so far, a bit of a questionmark on the stickiness. and you’ll note that Page said nothing about time spent on Google+.

• Advertising is pretty much Google’s only business. Revenues from non-advertising business this quarter (ie from Google Docs to business): $410m, up from $273m a year ago. That’s a 50% growth, but it’s still less than 4% of revenues. Compare Microsoft’s Business division, which had quarterly revenues of $6.3bn and profits of $4bn.

Then again, Microsoft’s search division had revenues of $784m, and lost $458m. so the two companies are like each others’ obverse.

In the end, then, Google’s drive is always going to be to drive any business it’s involved in towards something that’s free to access online, and advertising-supported – because then it can weigh in with its reach advantage and drive out anyone else trying to serve ads, because its auction model for text ads is more efficient as long as it remains the largest search engine. Quite how Motorola Mobility is going to survive in that environment we’ll have to see. Having been an independent company for a year, it hasn’t set the world alight – apart from chief executive Sanjay Jha’s very clever manoeuvring to make sure Google paid top whack for the company (or more specifically, its patents).

With rival Android maker Sony Ericsson looking ill too, it might be a question of which of the weakest two falls first. Will Google be more determined to keep its Android handset maker open, or will Sony? They both have a lot riding on it – though Sony might have slightly more reason to persist. Google, after all, just wants Motorola Mobility’s patents. the handsets are an afterthought. and once that’s done, Page can focus on monetising Android.

• Google
• Android
• Google+
• Smartphones
• Sony

Charles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. all rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

What Google’s financials tell us about Android, Google+ and Motorola

Unless you have been on the moon for the last 15 years then you know the impact that Steve Jobs has had on the world with his company Apple. It is great to hear the war stories but the real question is – How does he do it?

Why is this important to me?
It may not be but if you have seen any of my investment summaries and you want to make money than it may be important to you. Remember we make money in the business, hold it in cash flow real-estate and invest profits in paper assets and continue the cycle. The one thing that makes this all work is the business. if you build a great business then you can garner wealth at a much faster pace than any other investment vehicle. look at Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg is a billionaire at 26 years old.

Steve Jobs has a compelling why and it has to do with his legacy. Simply – We will be dead soon so make an impact. What is your compelling why? in my family the males do not live that long. my father outlasted each of his brothers and passed at the ripe old age of 58. Needless to say, time is precious so you need to invest it wisely. Who are your heroes? I point this out because roughly only 3 percent of the people are committed to designing the life of their dreams. The rest are sleep walking to the end. this summary is about innovation. some traits that all great innovators in the past share are: intense drive, unbridled curiosity, and a keen imagination.

This book is packed with 7 principles of innovation followed by Steve Jobs and Apple. They are all important and I am going to review each of them in summary.

1. Do what you love – Nothing great comes out of misery. Life is way too short to work a job you hate day in and day out. Doing what you love takes guts. most people will fight you on it and tell you that you will not make money or it is too risky or some other garbage. be true to yourself. Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class because he was curious. everybody thought he was nuts. We have the cool computer fonts today because of that class. now that is what I call impact – Millions of people using cool stuff because Jobs decided to go against the grain.

2. put a dent in the universe – this is motivation for yourself and your team. People need to be inspired to produce at a higher level. this is not easy. with pressures from all angles, it is easy to be mediocre. if you are working on putting a dent in the universe on every project then you will make great stuff. on a much smaller scale, we create software for police and sheriff departments in their dispatch centers. It is our vision to make their jobs easier. this does not sound like much but if we can help them dispatch better than they can save more lives, faster. That is putting a small dent in the wall anyway.

3. Kick start your brain – people are creatures of habit and habits are formed to make life easier. to kick start your brain, we need to experience different things and look for solutions in different areas. if you are familiar with the power supplies on Apple laptops, they have a magnet that connects the cord from the computer to the wall. Thus if you trip over the cord then it comes off as opposed to having your laptop pulled off the table. this seems obvious now that Apple is delivering it but that is an innovative idea. where did it come from? The Japanese have been making cooking appliances with that type of connector for years. Thus look outside your box for better ideas. this also means to look outside your industry. I can attest that sometimes you are so caught up in what the customers want that you forget that you need to innovate and your problem may be a simple routine in another industry. Keep your eyes open.

4. Sell Dreams not products – if you have not seen any of Steve Job’s presentations then I suggest you go to YouTube and check them out. he is a master presenter and excellent story teller. he sells possibilities and dreams not bits and bytes. Apple products are packed with great engineering and technology but he keeps the geek speak to a minimum. I can attest that our sales of our software went up dramatically when we stopped selling product tech babble and started selling dreams and possibilities. I only wish I would have read the book sooner.

5. Say no to 1,000 things – this has to be the hardest principle covered so far. if you look at the iPod, it does not allow you to interchange the battery. Steve Jobs kept his resolve and did not allow the customers to push him for convenience. Adding that battery changer would have added moving parts, complexity and reduced reliability. more important it would have made the product more complex. Remember that for every input you create an output. this creates two potential break points. Eliminate one thing and get rid of two problems.

6. Create insanely great experiences – Have you ever been to an Apple store? They are great and packed with people. They thought of every inch to make it a great experience. Do you remember Gateway Computers? They tried to make stores and got their asses kicked. They took the distribution model to the stores and died. Apple took the Starbucks experience along with knowledge and NO pressure selling to the people. Other companies try to copy but to no avail. I was walking in a mall in Oregon and I looked at the Apple store which was packed and right across the hallway was the Sony store which was empty. Both sell products in the same market. Innovation and Execution makes all the difference. by the way, Wall Street and all Apples competitors thought they would lose their shirts by opening stores.

7. Master the Message – you cannot hide passion. when you love what you do and prepare accordingly then people see it. this is why Steve Jobs has a cult like following. Mastering the message means being a great story teller. story telling will win you more business and create more passion around your company than anything else.

Innovation is this amazing intersection of someone’s imagination and the reality in which we live. your passion and excitement as well as story telling will attract great people. one person that needs to be acknowledged is Jonathan Ivy. he is the head of design at Apple. he is responsible for a lot of the great designs that are now second nature.

I hope you have found this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days.

One thing you can take away from this book is to look outside your industry. if you make a product or software or some other business then you need to innovate. Customers want to buy the best and want to follow leaders.

Book Summary – The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo

We are knee deep in 2011 football season with about 6 games left of the regular season. The NFL’s website is consistently getting thousands of visitors a day. their website is so SEO Friendly that they don’t even need to be listed on Google, Yahoo or Bing to get traffic. The majority of website owners seek to be on the first page of the major search engines due to the fact that it brings a substantial amount of traffic to their website and huge profits for their company. their website happens to be an exception to the search engine placement rule due to the fact that it’s America’s sport and has one of the easiest URL’s to remember with only three letters.

According to Alexa.com, The NFL’s website is ranked number 65th in the United States, has 20,276 links pointing to it (inbound links), has been registered since November 12, 1996 and is ranked 302nd globally. Those numbers are impressive Search engines, especially Google, will give them two thumbs up anytime.

The age of the website plays a huge factor in getting a high page rank (PR); it’s a great idea to get links pointing from a website that is above 3 years of age. The older the website the better it is because it shows that a website isn’t a fly by night website and that it is here to stay. There are many spam sites that Webmasters create to get a link pointing to their main website, known as a black hat tactic; search engines frown on these tactics and blacklist such sites.

The most important factor in getting valuable real estate in the search engines is to get quality inbound links pointing to your site. Each link pointing to your site is considered a vote amongst the Internet community. Each Webmaster and website owner voting to your website forces the search engines to notice your popularity on the Internet within your respected industry. getting links pointing to your site takes time and serious effort. The higher the page rank of a website, the more time and effort that will have to take part in order to get that link; it is ideal to reach for a link that has a PR 4 and above. one of the best ways to get links is to post on different blogs that are related to the keywords of your website. Tools like, Fast Blog Finder will save you an immense amount of time on your endeavor. Just between us, this software tells you the page rank, latest update of the blog and whether or not the blog is a nofollow or dofollow. It’s generally a good practice to blog for about 1-2 hours a day.

Video Marketing Strategy

Another good SEO advantage that the NFL’s website has is that they are constantly adding and switching videos. The search engines love videos, especially Youtube. NFL.com has well optimized video’s and an exceptional ongoing video marketing strategy for their website. Thousands of NFL fans comment on their videos regarding the football plays and the various shows that are aired on the NFL Network channel. every sports analysts (all of them happen to be Super Bowl Champions) have an active Twitter account that they use to interact with the fans live during the show.

After looking at all of the factors, it is understandable why their website is SEO Friendly and has an impressive PR 7. There are not many websites that can get past a PR 4 let alone receive a PR 7. their website is a hub of information for the National Football League and this is why it’s so popular. becoming an authority of information is what all websites should strive for. People are looking for answers and your website should be able to answer their questions quickly. I’m sure every website owner doesn’t have the $10,000 budget a month that the NFL has for SEO Services, but you can have a $10,000 a month attitude by being consistent and creative. It’s better to focus on your strengths, rather than your weaknesses. if you’re a writer than write blogs and comment on other industry leading blogs with relevant content. if you’re good with networking than pursue the Social Media Networking with a vengeance. Join community forums and industry groups on Linked in and Digital Point. every activity conducted on the Internet in regards to your website should be benefiting your website. keep in mind that the bottom line is to score a Touch Downs by getting The Links

Follow us, Boasting BiZ, on Twitter or Facebook and ask any questions regarding our amazing SEO Services. we enjoy conversing with potential clients and SEO Experts through the Social Media Networks.

NFL – What Makes This Website SEO Friendly