Boo.com is relaunching in June. They have a fantastically witty strapline, presumably created by the people that Pajamas media originally hired, wait for it… “The Boo is Back” That’s right, the Boo is back, cos Boo.com was so successful the first time it was called ‘the Boo’ – boooolshit. You can almost hear the distant rumble of discount Aeron chairs. Boo.com
ConEd win this years prize for worst customer service. Having waited on the phone for half an hour because they don’t take credit card payments over the web (I mean my corner store does that), they don’t take credit cards over the phone – despite the fact that they say they do. Not just that – but if you change your bank and your payment doesnt go through, in their infinite wisdom, they decide that they will stop you from being able to pay by phone for six months. They basically don’t want your money. Please, please let Con Edison go bust.
My bullshitters investing guide, based upon absolutely no analysis or experience. I don’t even know if ‘Hearst’ is public – I don’t care. Iwonder how it will do? I’ll check back in a year. Pharma and cosmetics. L’Oreal They make proper sunscreen that the FDA haven’t yet approved, apparently. Or so some geezer down the pub said. Buy All the best deals are here, but nobody understands it, including professional investors. Buy into the people that make lab coats instead. ————— Media Hearst If big media doesn’t own little electronic media – Sell Clearly all media is undergoing a massive revolution everything big is going tits up. But the small stuff that will replace it is not public. So only big people who can invest in VC funds etc. will make money out of the little guys. ————— Commodities: Oil There is no way that the Saudis are telling the…
I disabled comments a while back because of the spam issues from gambling and porn sites, but noticed that 10% of my traffic was to inbound links to some poker site comments that I hadn’t deleted. The inbound linking is to game Google into indirectly boosting pagerank for the eventual destination using clustered keyword terms, a more sophisticated variant of placing outbound links in comments. The traffic came from what appear to be affiliates of a CPA affiliate program site, 888.com, which in turn linked to poker sites that were owned by the same company as 888.com, operating out of the UK’s Gibraltar. These companies are owned by Cassava Enterprises, who, one might imagine, are a small, shady company, operating offshore. However, it turns out that Cassava Enterprises are in the process of going public in the UK for an estimated $1.5 billion, underwritten by Credit Suisse First Boston. See…
Below is the top story on Reuters: it shows a recent trend where Greenspan has had to repeatedly warn against government spending and yet the markets and the party favored by the markets doesn’t react… There was a point when the government and markets would quiver if Greenspan looked like he had got out of bed on the wrong side. Nowadays, idealogy and faith seems to be driving capitalism too – a dangerous thing. Greenspan Warns Deficits Endanger Economy “Much of the Fed chairman’s testimony echoed prior cautions he has made to Capitol Hill lawmakers. He stressed that steps to fix the problem were essential. “As the latest projections from the (Bush) administration and the Congressional Budget Office suggest, our budget position is unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken,” the Fed chief said.” Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.com
Foremski ups the ante on the Flickr/Yahoo partnership rumor, suggesting that an acquisition is about to be announced. Silicon Valley Watcher: Scoop! SiliconValleyWatcher reports Yahoo is negotiating acqusition of Flickr
My good friend Nick Aster has been doing an MBA with a difference, one that combines business with sustainability, at the Presidio World College. They are shortly having open days for their MBA in Sustainable Management.
Wired News: Monster Fueled by Caffeine on a startup that works out of a coffee shop. After a false start with ‘hot desking’ in the 90’s freely available wifi, laptops and cellphones really do mean that in some case you can work anywhere. In this case, history has come full circle with some of the biggest institutions in the world, such as Lloyd’s insurance, having been started in 18th century coffee houses. Increasingly I am meeting people, that like myself would rather work out of a coffee shop than some anonymous cube hell that is the staple of most US work environments. I have a friend who is looking to buy a coffee house in San Francisco as space for his startup, whilst keeping it selling coffee to the public. From an architectural standpoint I see this as the perfect rebellion. Unlike coffee houses, office space does not have to…
My recent experiences with realtors show me that: most of them don’t know very much about buildings; waste your time by lying in descriptions; seem to be the last people on earth to use email and digital cameras instead of time wasting phone calls and expensive on-site visits. Realtors charge up to a quarter of what architects do, without most of the skill, service or liability. The reason that this happens is that they own the customer. By extension, if their services don’t benefit customers then this will change. Why hasn’t the Internet destroyed the current hopeless realtor merry-go-round. Perhaps a listings service could be built where data can only be submitted if: 1. the realtor or seller lists a contact email(rather than them contact you, or by phone). 2. all listing have digital pictures of outside and all rooms. 3. all room sizes are listed in square foot. 4….
Sample chapter headings: The Morons Who Are Sitting Next To You Business Culture, My Arse Why You Can’t Lose By Resigning Corporate Culture – Stupid People BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Lazy joke lands author in trouble
Coke has had to recall Dasani feared to be contaminated with a carcinogen. Coke started by selling drink with narcotics, last century. It then took the narcotics out, building a brand by selling sugared water at a massive premium. It then launched Dasani, removing the sugar and selling water at a massive premium. It turned out that Dasani isn’t a mineral water, but is purified tap water, selling at a massive premium. With this recall, they were selling lipsmackin, thirstquenchin contaminated, non-mineral, unsugared, ‘coke’ free water.
Ed Sim points out something that instinctively should be a truism: companies are bought and not sold. In other words, if you look to shop a company you reduce its attractiveness. So what makes the playing-hard-to-get game, different for companies than products they sell. Are products sold and not bought? Does Coca Cola’s sugared water sell itself or do they have to market it? What is happening in both cases is price – Coke play hard to get by saying that you can only have their sugared water by paying a huge premium over cost. All companies are for sale, but the price, like a discreet ad for an expensive piece of real estate, is not published – if you need to know then you can’t afford it. Everything has a price and surely, even companies need to proactively seduce their potential suitors.