Posts under ‘Uncategorized’

Wow, apparently Starbucks raised coffee prices today, up to 33% for some “complex orders”.  I’m not sure how I feel about it. Its discretionary spending, but they aren’t the only players on the block anymore.
Apparently the price hikes mean a Triple Grande Soy Vanilla Latte now costs $6.25, up from an already astounding $5.55.  I [...]

The “Tough Customer” column in November 2008’s SmartMoney magazine has some interesting tidbits in it.  Anne Kadet, the author, talks about how her favorite chocolate bar was reconfigured from 16 squares to 12 one day for no good reason.  Turns out, they did it to distract her from the fact that it had gotten smaller. 
Kadet goes [...]

So… today was “Phone Book Day” – the day they drop off piles of bagged telephone directories on doorsteps in my neighborhood, whether anyone actually lives there or not.  Now, back in the day these things were pretty handy.  Now I don’t even want to bother bending over to pick  up that ten ton piece [...]

Well, I finally managed to track down an iPhone in the Seattle area, no thanks to apple or at&t’s web sites. I’ve only had it for a few hours now, the verdict? Neat device but, so far, painfully slow to type on.
They were out of the 8gb models so I had to get a 16gig. [...]

Stocks are getting hammered today.  Like all small investors, watching your portfolio value drop considerably in just a few days hurts but I am taking advantage of the situation and buying some more TASR.

Show me some love

The company has great growth prospects, a (mostly) non-lethal protection device that police can use to subdue their subjects [...]

Yesterday’s nearly 50% decline in Heely’s (HLYS) caught my eye.   I remember their IPO back in December 2006, the closing price in their debut was $32.60.  Their stock approached 40 by February and has been on a bit of a downward trend ever since.  On Tuesday, August 7th, 2007, their stock closed at $21.90.  By [...]

Why do options offer any advantage over trading stocks? They’re riskier, since they expire within a certain amount of time and their values are more complicated to assess.
Because they expire on a given date, the investor has to make a choice within a relatively short time frame.  In my earlier post, I think this expiration [...]

Well, it was bound to happen, this week Yahoo! announced their SmartAds platform to allow advertisers to better target potential customers as well as more flexibly create ads for specific  markets.  The flexibility in ad creation is a neat feature for advertisers and seems fairly unique, but the improved targeting is the piece that is really [...]

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 [...]