Posts under ‘Commentary’

There have been many claims of late that the mobile web is the “next big thing” that is expected to explode over the next few years. More and more cell phones are able to surf the web, smart phones are getting smaller, and web developers are finally starting to develop sites that work on [...]

Henry Bloget has a blog posting on Seeking Alpha today titled “Is Google’s YouTube Toast? Not Even Close”.  He discusses Viacom’s recent one billion dollar lawsuit against Google/YouTube for having Viacom’s copyrighted content on YouTube.com and the recent pact between News Corp and NBC (read: FOX, NBC, Microsoft, MySpace, etc) to start their own online content [...]

Recently, the time came for me to refinance my house to lock in a longer term interest rate.  I bought my house on a three year interest only adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) and my interest lock was ending so it was time to find another mortgage.  I had entered into the property with 100% financing [...]

In the time of blogs, online media, aggregation services, message boards and 24 hour a day business television, it is easy to cast printed business magazines to the side as a valuable tool for getting investment news. I disagree and think there is a strong case for maintaining a few magazine subscriptions to publications such [...]

At $21.80 per share, RadioShack stock (symbol: RSH) is resting close to its 52 week high today.  Goldman Sachs upgraded it on the fact that the “powerful” turnaround effort is going well.  While my belief back in December was that the stock would decline on heavy competition from its competitiors, I’m starting to believe that the stock is [...]

This week’s Business Week has an interesting article about the Ethanol-based fuel boom and how it is affecting the world economy. I had heard through other sources about the limitations and drawbacks of shifting to a more ethanol based fuel supply, but hadn’t thought of all the ramifications.
According to the Business Week article, the ethanol [...]

I recently watched Who Killed the Electric Car? and found it quite interesting from a business perspective. Narrated by Martin
GM’s main reasoning to kill the car was that there was insufficient demand for the automobile. Chelsea Sexton says this argument is unconvincing because she, as a lead marketing employee for GM during the time [...]

If you haven’t heard of Prosper.com yet, you may hear about it very soon. The company was started by E-Loan cofounder Chris Larsen and, according to their website, they have 140,000 members and have funded $27,000,000 in loans in the past year. Their platform allows individual borrowers and lenders to come together to [...]

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Google for the last few years.
While I love their ability to innovate rapidly and bring some valuable tools to the user (Google Search, Google Gmail, Google Toolbar, Google AdSense, etc), I have this thought in the back of my mind that they have the ability to become really nasty [...]

Calculating compound interest without a calculator can be difficult. Thinking back to my business school days, I remember the formula is something like:
present_value * (1 + interest_per_period) ^ number_of_periods] = future_value
Even if you can remember the formula, calculating 1.08 to the power of 9 is not an easy task to do in your head.
If you [...]