Pete Dapkus: biz

College Students Riding the "Connected" Wave

Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:27:42 GMT

How College Students Shop and What They Buy

"According to a survey of college students in the US, conducted by Harris Interactive for Alloy 360 Youth, 93% of college students go online in a given month. Harris surveyed over 2,000 college students between the ages of 18 and 30 and reported that college students were responsible for $210 billion in sales in 2002. As for their shopping behavior, Harris finds that 94% think that a good selection is important when shopping whereas just 27% are looking for specific brands....
College students are also highly likely to own a number of consumer electronic products. Harris determined that 88% have a personal computer (PC), 67% have a cellphone ad 85% own a television." [eMarketer Daily]

Even though this report was done for marketers and I never fully trust numbers that come from such studies, I'm fascinated by the statistic that more college students own a personal computer than own a television. And 67% of them have cell phones. In fact, if you visit the Harris Interactive summary of the survey, it elaborates on that last point to note that 67% of them have cell phones and 36% use them to access the internet. Do you know anyone that uses their cell phone to access the internet? I don't, and that includes me (yet).

Today at lunch, Diane, Kate, and I had an interesting conversation about when "instant gratification" became such a cornerstone of our society. Kate says it was the remote control, while Diane thinks it was computers. I brought up James Gleick's book Faster (which I highly recommend) and decided on the telephone. But imagine the changes we're going to witness when the current 67% of college students with cell phones enters the work force. As Carrie Fisher noted in Postcards from the Edge, "instant gratification takes too long."

These days, when I walk around the building at work or help staff members with computer problems, I see a lot more chat programs on their desktops. Chat programs that they've installed themselves in order to stay in touch with friends and family. Cross Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and NetGens with chat and cell phones and you'd better fasten your seat belt over the next couple of years.

[The Shifted Librarian]

Joel On Software: Mouth Wide Shut

Fri, 17 Jan 2003 07:40:57 GMT

When Apple releases a new product, they tend to surprise the heck out of people, even the devoted Apple-watchers who have spent the last few months riffling through garbage dumpsteron the other hand, can't stop talking about products that are mere glimmers in someone's eye. Testers outside the company were using .NET for years before it finally shipped.

So, which is right? Should you talk endlessly about your products under development, in hopes of building buzz, or should you hold off until you've got something ready to go?

Mouth Wide Shut

[Joel on Software]

blogs amplify

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 16:46:47 GMT

The great thing about a topical community of webloggers is not that it doesn't just filter, it selectively amplifies. First order, it will pick up and repeat interesting news and ideas -- if you are subscribed to a handful of the blogs in the community, even it's a small subset, you'll likely see everything interesting, and the really interesting things you'll see several times -- because interesting ideas at the shared "frequency" of the community make the network resonate. Second order, not only do the interesting bits get widely broadcast, they also get refined as they travel -- as add comments or criticism or just add their own riff to the item.

This is not just collaborative filtering. I think Dave Winer calls this "triangulation". That didn't really make the idea register for me.

Mon, 19 Aug 2002 18:17:30 GMT

New company aims for simpler PGP. PGP Corp. sets out to do what Network Associates couldn't--entice enterprise customers to buy encryption products based on the PGP algorithm by making them easier to use. [CNET News.com] Wow, PGP makes a come back, but without PRZ. Their "new" hook: ease of use. Good luck to them -- they'll need it.

Malcolm Gladwell: The Naked Face

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 20:49:29 GMT

From the August 5, 2002 issue of The New Yorker, this article by Malcolm Gladwell asks whether you can read people's thoughts just by looking at them.

Ekman recalls the first time he saw Bill Clinton, during the 1992 Democratic primaries. "I was watching his facial expressions, and I said to my wife, 'This is Peck's Bad Boy,' " Ekman says. "This is a guy who wants to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and have us love him for it anyway. There was this expression that's one of his favorites. It's that hand-in-the-cookie-jar, love-me-Mommy-because-I'm-a-rascal look. It's A.U. twelve, fifteen, seventeen, and twenty-four, with an eye roll."

[Scott Loftesness]

doom and gloom from the sage in omaha

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 19:38:20 GMT

Berkshire Hathaway. "Let's be clear here, this disaster that will someday arrive was caused by Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan." [The Motley Fool]

Making Money Warren's Way

Fri, 09 Aug 2002 07:14:18 GMT

[Business Week: Daily Briefing]

Thu, 08 Aug 2002 14:13:28 GMT

Intel Chairman Andrew Grove said the company won't expense stock options, but will provide a new level of detail about its options program in its f... [Wall Street Journal]

early indications the double dip has begun

Thu, 08 Aug 2002 14:07:22 GMT

Best Buy: Lowers outlook. Consumer spending has widely been credited with keeping the depth of the current recession relatively mild. This morning Best Buy, a major retailer of consumer electronics, announced that it is not going to meet Wall St. expectations for the current quarter -- attributing the miss to new weakness in consumer spending.

In revising its outlook, the Company cited declines in consumer confidence resulting in flat comparable store sales in the past four weeks, which reflected general softening across most product categories. "Our June results were in line with our expectations, but comparable store sales softened significantly in July, finishing the month essentially flat," said Brad Anderson, vice chairman and CEO of Best Buy Co., Inc. "In light of the environment, we are closely monitoring sales and inventories, and identifying ways to pare expenses in the second half."

Unfortunately, Best Buy isn't alone. Other retailers reporting this morning include Neiman-Marcus (July same store sales down 2.7%), JC Penney (down 2.2%), and Talbots (down 19%). [Scott Loftesness]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:14:43 GMT

Summer Reading. I finally had a chance to catch up on some of the backlog of web-services articles and papers on my desk. Here's a list of some of the goodies I found in the stack:

Intermediaries. A whitepaper from Primordial that suggests vertical hubs will replace the current crop of horizontal web-services network vendors.
Transactions. A thorough review of the technical issues surrounding transactions unders web services. Why ACID won't work, and an intro to the Business Transaction Protocol (BTP).
Break on Through. John Hagel and John Seely Brown's CEO's Guide to the New IT Strategy. Companies will soon buy their information technologies as services provided over the Internet rather than own and maintain their own hardware and software. (This is a superb 23-page PDF, which I assume portends Hagel's next book. Too many good quotes to list here.)
Where Will Web Services Be Deployed? More good Hagel. Don't forget Part Two. "Early adoption is proceeding along two parallel tracks. On one track, IT organizations are launching experiments with the implementation of Web services technology...The second track consists of business line executives facing real, near-term business issues - most commonly, these days, how to get more operating (expense and asset) savings quickly."
Why SSL Doesn't Cut It. SSL secures the connection, not the message. It's also bound to HTTP. [Source: Julian Bond]
Specs Unite Partners. "Together, WSCI (Web Services Choreography Interface) and BPML (Business Process Modeling Language), introduced late last month, should provide business analysts and software engineers with a view of how business processes perform in various business-to-business scenarios." Also discusses IBM's Web Services Flow Language (WSFL) and Microsoft's XLANG. [Source: eWeek]
The Role of Web Services in the Financial Services Industry. Gartner G2. Interesting for all, considering that financial services tend to lead in such technologies. [Source: Scott Loftesness, Glenbrook Partners]

[Doug Kaye: Web Services Strategies]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 03:02:22 GMT

Part-Time MBA Profiles [Business Week: Business Schools]

Useful Game Theory Site

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 02:50:33 GMT

Matt Mower: I know nothing about Game Theory really so I Googled and found this site which has some good basic information. [Curiouser and curiouser!]

Fri, 02 Aug 2002 14:15:04 GMT

Home Is Not Where the Returns Are [Business Week: Daily Briefing]

Fri, 02 Aug 2002 14:14:45 GMT

GE to Expense Options. Plus, Priceline toes the line, and Magic Johnson's money moments. [The Motley Fool]

manias, panics, and crashes

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 18:13:22 GMT

An expert on bubbles gives his thoughts on the current economy. In short, the technology bubble followed the typical pattern but was pretty large. Between that and the binging on debt based on home equity that American's have done, he thinks we're at the bottom and likely to "bounce along the bottom" for a few years. He sees signs of a housing bubble, particularly on the West Coast.

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 14:55:05 GMT

CNet. Western Digital's new hard-drive arrives at 200 Gbs. This is great:

>>>Drive makers will surely need the new interface, as developments push areal densities to 100GB per platter. Such density could allow desktop drives to reach 400GB of storage by the end of next year.<<<

It's too bad that overly generous copyright laws prevent this capacity from being utilized. If copyright was at the Lessig threshold of 5 years, all manner of scenarios are possible. A personal copy of the Library of Congress. Archives of major newspapers, magazines, etc. Societal memory at your fingertips. Amazing. What value is that to our civilization?

To not fill this capacity and unleash the creativity it could spawn would be tantamount to Caeser's burning of the great Library of Alexandria. In his quest for power and control, he accidently destroyed one of the founts of knowledge in the ancient world. Aren't we experiencing a similar power grab by corporate copyright holders for the same motives?

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Mon, 29 Jul 2002 21:28:15 GMT

Fortune. Interview with Pimco's Bill Gross, legendary bond fund manager. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Wed, 24 Jul 2002 15:58:33 GMT

Warren Buffet: "CEO's don't need 'independent' directors, oversight committees or auditors absolutely free of conflicts of interest. They simply need to do what's right." [Scripting News]

Greenspan: Options are a Perverse Incentive

Sat, 20 Jul 2002 17:33:25 GMT

CBS Marketwatch. Paul Erdman rants on stock options. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 16:25:32 GMT

The Beat of REITs. What's a real estate investment trust, and why would you want to invest in one? [The Motley Fool]

Five Ways of Valuing Options

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 16:21:20 GMT

The verdict on the best method: current value - strike price. Simple, can't be manipulated, doesn't unfairly penalize anyone. Compared against several variants of Black-Scholes.

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 15:58:16 GMT

The Economist. The telcoms bust was 10x larger than the .com bust and will be seen as the biggest bubble in history. >>> The likely winners, it is already clear, are the former “Baby Bells” in America and the former monopoly incumbents in Europe. Because they own the “last mile” of the network that runs into homes and offices, these operators have a firm grip on their customers and solid revenues. Compared with their upstart competitors that proliferated after the liberalisation of telecoms markets during the 1990s, these firms are relative safe havens. Customers can switch long-distance carriers at the first whiff of trouble, but often have no choice of local provider. In theory, regulators should require local monopolies to allow competitors to provide services over their lines, but most local monopolies have successfully obstructed such “local-loop unbundling” using a variety of technical excuses. In a further sign that local operators are seen as a safe haven, Michael Powell, America's telecoms regulator, even signalled this week that he would consider allowing one of the Bells to buy WorldCom. <<< Unless we can break the stranglehold of the baby bells on the local loop, all bets are off for the rebirth of the Internet. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Mon, 15 Jul 2002 17:30:46 GMT

Coca-Cola to expense stock options. In a press release this morning, Coca-Cola announced that it will begin expensing the cost of all stock option grants beginning in the fourth quarter 2002.

Management has concluded that stock options are a form of employee compensation expense and therefore it is appropriate that these costs be reflected in our financial results. I am pleased that our company's Board of Directors agrees," said Doug Daft, chairman and chief executive officer. "Our management's determination to change to the preferred method of accounting for employee stock options ensures that our earnings will more clearly reflect economic reality when all compensation costs are recorded in the financial statements."

Earlier this year, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman/CEO (and a Coca-Cola director) Warren Buffer had written an opinion piece urging that corporations that this approach.

If my company, Berkshire, were to give me a 10-year option on 1,000 shares of A stock at today's market price, it would be compensating me with an asset that has a cash value of at least $20 million -- an amount the company could receive today if it sold a similar option in the marketplace. Giving an employee something that alternatively could be sold for hard cash has the same consequences for a company as giving him cash.

Buffet's commentary about options in the 1992 Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders concluded:

The accounting profession and the SEC should be shamed by the fact that they have long let themselves be muscled by business executives on the option-accounting issue. Additionally, the lobbying that executives engage in may have an unfortunate by- product: In my opinion, the business elite risks losing its credibility on issues of significance to society - about which it may have much of value to say - when it advocates the incredible on issues of significance to itself.

Wow! And he said that 10 years ago. [Scott Loftesness]

survival instincts and productivity

Sat, 13 Jul 2002 00:39:18 GMT

At a previous job, I listened to strategy briefing by a guy who was a long-time management consultant. He'd been around during the days of Re-Engineering. The basic idea of re-engineering was that if you look carefully at the processes by which your company does business, you can rejigger and stream-line things to make the processes more efficient.

He done this at several places, including in a retail bank. There, he said, the problem wasn't that you couldn't make things more efficient but that when you *did* make a process more efficient, the excess capacity (i.e. people) would just pop up some up somewhere else and make *that* process less efficient -- net-net: no increased productivity (never underestimate the power of personal survival instincts). He said you couldn't realize the gains until you got a hold of the tellers and shot them (his words, not mine).

So, here's a what-if: what if for the last 20 years, we've been racking up productivity gains as a result of our investments in information technology, but they have been chewed up by people exercising their innate abilities of self-preservation. What will happen now that there's big pressure to lower prices and boost productivity? The big squeeze -- nice in the long run, probably a little ugly in the short term.

Sat, 13 Jul 2002 00:24:28 GMT

Business Week. Accelerating mutual fund redemptions shows that we have finally reached the classic bear market capitulation phase. Another couple months of this and we could finally see a bottom in the market. Excellent time to start getting funds together to begin investing again. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] probably a good marker for the beginning of the end... no telling when the end of the end will be... if the bad corporate news continues and we see more terrorist activity, maybe not too soon... a couple months seems optimistic.