alarm:clock

Shedding A Few Pounds With NutriSystem

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:04:03 -0500

Today's market closing left us a little puzzled. As the Dow finished up 62 points, we couldn't help but wonder why considering the Fed's announcement that the recession is a little worse than they originally believed. Be careful investors. Along these lines, Bank Of America (BAC:NYSE) made the grandiose announcement that he wasn't going to accept a bonus for 2008. Are we supposed to thank him for being a responsible corporate executive or criticize him for the egotistical moves he made during 2008 (the acquisition of Merrill Lynch immediately comes to mind). In our opinion, not only should he not get a bonus, but possibly a written warning saying that his reckless string of acquisitions will not be tolerated in the future. We're willing to bet that he gives himself a larger bonus in 2010 because of his "sacrifice" this year. On a more optimistic note, many American's are trying to honor the traditional New Year's pledge to lose weight this year. To help them and investors, we are continuing this week's "grab bag of stock picks" by weighing the pros and cons of investing in NutriSystem (NTRI:NASDAQ). Tipping the scales in NutriSystem's favor is the announcement yesterday that...

The Sportster Is The Best Way To Invest In Harley-Davidson

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:53:03 -0500

With earnings announcements only a few days away, we expect investors to nervously scour their portfolios and possibly dump a few stocks that they believe will deliver disappointing news. While we are optimistic that 2009 will be a far better year for the market than 2008, that doesn't mean we're not going to have some days that will test our faith in the market. Investor's might be disappointed that market opened the week down but the staff at tech:stocker was happy that it wasn't a triple-digit decline today. Looking at the bright side, we were happy to hear that Steve Jobs' health isn't as bad as people shorting the stock expected. We're not fans of shorting stocks as its far more rewarding to bet on a company's success than their failures. Of course, we did reaffirm our faith in Apple back on December 16, 2008 setting a 12-month target price of $135. We're very anxious to see how we do against the shorts. Getting back to the "grab bag" of picks that we started last week, today we decided to take a look at the motorcycle manufacturer that has come to define machismo in America, Harley-Davidson (HOG:NYSE). While other...

Financial Advice For 2009 Taken From The Gridiron

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:12:03 -0500

While recovering from various injuries and illnesses over the last week, the tech:stocker staff could always be found watching a bowl game (we've watched all but one) and reruns of week 17's games on the NFL Network. Keep this in mind when you read our advice for investing in 2009. Overall, we believe 2009 is going to be a better year than 2008 but not by much. Unemployment, home foreclosures, weak international economies, and uncertainty in the oil market will all continue to weigh heavily on the U.S. economy. Troubles in the Middle East and the natural disaster wild card could always quickly derail any progress the economy makes. We do recommend being cautious and keeping a reserve of at least 40% in cash until the market truly recovers. To successfully overcome the challenges facing investors in 2009, having a game plan that meets your short and long-term investment requirements will be even more challenging. Now we're not saying that lessons learned on the gridiron will erase the losses in everyone's 2008 portfolio, but we do believe that some of the strategic and competitive lessons learned can benefit most investors, and possibly a few teams in bowl games and...

Mobile Soc Gaming's SocialBomb Does 1st Round

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:22:24 -0500

NYC's SocialBomb has raised $240K of a $350K round. The startup creates mobile games that leverage users' participation in social networks, drawing connections between those systems and their real-life relationships. Its proximity based games are built for the iPhone & Blackberry among other platforms. They plan to launch the first game in the Fall. As you can see from the video, their launch game called SocialBomb uses wireless devices to give points to people who spend time with other good socializers and deducts points if you waste time with wall-flowers. This concept doesn't have much appeal to us but we understand its just a start. SocialBomb is led by Managing Director Scott Varland who just wrapped up studies at NYU. UPDATE: Scott Varland gets in touch to add: "While our first game is still under wraps, I wanted to reach out with a few corrections to your post. We are making mobile social games, however they are not closely related to our research at NYU involving physical devices. We are, however, very interested in using proximity and real world social dynamics in our games. The first app will beta in the next 60 days and is targeted at iPhone...

New Year's Resolution: No Tech IPOs

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:31:57 -0500

Two long-time-and-coming tech IPOs have gone off the rails, while a third poked its head displaying cojones that it would IPO in their sted. Eyeblaster has withdrawn its planned $115M IPO. The online ad tech company has had an odd go of it with its funding events. It raised $30M Up country in Waltham, MA, NameMedia has withdrawn its $100M IPO. The captain of the domain name industry had raised $43.M from Highland Capital Partners and Summit Partners. Sailing into the headwind is Friendfinder which today filed for a $460M IPO. Friendfinder is an odd roll-up of Penthouse and the myriad Friendfunder sites, most notably AdultFriendFinder. The company reports that for the nine months ended September 30, 2008, revenue was $262.4M with EBITDA of $66.6M. The company hopes to use the proceeds to pay off the nearly $500M in debt that it's currently carrying. We will hold our breaths for a couple of months and are certain that this one will be DOA....

Give Us A Venti Latte, But Not Shares In Starbucks

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:15:02 -0500

Like many investors, we expected the markets to remain fairly steady the last few weeks of December. And like many investors, we were wrong. Unfortunately, the bad news doesn't stop and skittish investors keep pulling out of the markets. We expect this trend to continue for the next six months. While we believe there will be some surprises in earnings announcements next month, there triumphs will be drowned out by the sounds of groaning investors over the majority of the market. We did find Hewlett Packard's (HPQ:NYSE) announcement that they were entering the data warehousing segment fairly interesting. With their purchase of Electronic Data Systems, HP can finally make some headway in this profitable sector without having to spend the time and money on R&D. While this announcement is hardly a "get rich" scheme for the company, it does make sense and is another reason why we like this stock. This week the tech:stocker columnists are working on a "grab bag" of stock picks that were suggested by our readers. We asked for stocks that were not in our usual areas of focus, financial services and technology. We received emails about several interesting companies and everyone can thank Kristin...

Smart Elecrtricity Meter's Positive Energy Raises $14M

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:01:44 -0500

Arlington, VAs Positive Energy has raised $14M from New Enterpise Associates. The startup was founded in March 2007 and had previously raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding. We can certainly appreciate their game. Anybody and everybody has no clue why their electricity bill is a $100 and then $600 the next month. We make guesses but we don't know the cause and we certainly don't know how much that 2nd fridge in the garage is costing not that space heater. We agree then that the world needs the types of tools that Positive Energy is developing. And its not just consumers who want this info to make smart decisions. It seems the Coneds and PG&Es want and will incentivize consumers to monitor and deal with their consumption. Positive Energy is led by founder and CEO Daniel Yates who was CEO of Edusoft which he sold to Hougton-Mifflin View - site...

Most Investors Are Getting Coal For Christmas Instead of Profits

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:43:23 -0500

When we were in our local park this past weekend trying to recover from the flu and exhaust the kids at the same time, we were asked by several fathers attempting to do the same if we thought this week would be a quiet one for the market. Unequivocally, we responded that this week should be quiet. We couldn't have been more wrong. Home sales numbers today reinforced our claim that we are nowhere near the bottom of the housing market. We expected existing home sales to plummet in November, as the month is traditionally not a strong time for sales. But a drop of 8.6 percent was far more than anyone expected. Slow home sales combined with a ground shaking 13.2 percent drop in the median home price makes us wonder if the only people who will be qualified to refinance are the ones who owned at least 50 percent of their house before the housing crisis started. While 50% may be a little high, the reality is that many homeowners who bought their houses a few years ago with 20% down, may not have enough equity under today's valuations to refinance. People who have recently been laid...

Group Blogging Via Email's Posterous Raises $725K

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:21:25 -0500

The main stream media analysts keep writing articles, like this one today on Marketwatch, indicating that niche Web 2.0 startups like Posterous make no sense in the new dead economy. And yet here comes Posterous with its catchy name and cool kid founders and ever more simple way to post thoughts on the net. Given how much work we have put into our Movable Type platform over the years, it does seem like a breath of fresh air to hear that with Posterous we can just email our posts with a photo and Posterous will take care of the rest. The catch is that you really should be a blogging newbie to jump in as you'd probably want to ditch your platform to use it, and then if you have to chose you might just invest your time in Twitter. San Francisco-based Posterous has just closed an angel round at $725K. PaidContent indicates that Zimbra CEO Satish Dharmaraj and former Netscape CEO Eric Hahn led the round, with additional funds from XG Ventures, Mitch Kapor, AND Guy Kawasaki. Y Combinator was first with a $15K seed round in May. View - site...

Synthasite Buys Password Recall Tool ClickPass

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:15:17 -0500

San Francisco's Synthasite, which manages a simple-to-use Web publishing platform, has bought Clickpass, an OpenID provider that offers authentication gateway solutions. Synthasite has raised $5M in VC funding from Columbus Venture Capital, while ClickPass raised a much smaller amount from Ycombinator. The companies don't do a good job of explaining why they married. ClickPass is not really a tool that helps you to make your web site better. It would make more sense for a large company with lots of reach into consumers to buy ClickPass. Our suspicion is that ClickPass was running low on funds and was looking for anyone who could extend the life of ClickPass and that could give them a paycheck. View - site...

London Concert Recomendation Site SongKick Raises $3.5M

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:21:48 -0500

SongKick.com out of London has secured $3.5M of a $4M Series A round led by Index Ventures. SongKick had raised a $1.1M round from angels. Songkick has a lot of competition including LastFM and iLike as well as ShowClix and HearWhere. While we are fans of music sites like LastFM, Pandora, and Playlist, we feel like the concert space is a much smaller universe and that ad-supported traffic will not be enough to build a large business here . View - site...

Textbook Rental's Chegg Raises $25M

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:10:59 -0500

We know well the high cost of text books and most sane people will try to sell back their text books after the semester is over. So its a surprise that the concept of renting text books is commonplace. The price of an international relations book is listed at $108. On Chegg.com, it was rented for $29 for a semester's use basis. Here comes Santa Clara's Chegg.com which has raised $25M in Series C led by Kleiner Perkins and Foundation Capital with return backers Gabriel Venture Partners and Primera Capital. We understand why these guys are so pumped on Chegg. All it takes is good worth of mouth one semester - who talks amongst themselves more than college students? We also understand why they need to raise so much cash. If Chegg catches fire they will need to buy a lot of text books fast. Chegg does have more than a few competitors including: Bookrenter.com Campusbookrentals.com, Ourshelves.com View - site...

Who Is Really Going To Miss MacWorld?

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:23:39 -0500

Fresh off our recommendation of buying Apple (AAPL:NASDAQ) and setting a 12-month target price of $135, the company announces the end of their participation in MacWorld San Francisco beginning in 2010. Is this really a big deal? If you watched the stock tumble 6.5% today, then you might answer "yes". The staff at tech:stocker looks back at the company ending its participation in MacWorld Boston back in 2005 and what has the company done since then? Plenty. Is this move going to hurt them in the long run? No way. Many investors see this move as a reflection on the health of Steve Jobs. The staff at tech:stocker would easily dismiss this if there were a succession plan in place (or at least one that was announced to the public), but we haven't heard of plan. While announcing a plan at a time when Steve Jobs' health is in question could create increased nervousness amongst investors, we see this as an opportunity to reassure investors and the company's devoted followers that the innovative thinking and product development that has been associated with the company will continue long after his reign. We look at Apple's current position in the market...

SellMyTimeshareNOW.com Raises $8M

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:53:33 -0500

Edison Venture Fund has put $8.5M in SellMyTimeshareNOW.com, which is based in Dover, NH. The deal makes Edison the sole investor in the firm which has grown impressively with little investment and how has a head count over 150 people. As you might surmise, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com helps owners with the sale or rental of their timeshare. It claims over 42K paid listings, 2M monthly page views, and buyer and rental offers totaling $400M+ in 2008. It also operates a brokerage arm called Timeshare Broker Services. View - site...

Bernanke Claus Offers An Early Christmas Present

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:24:24 -0500

Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, or happy holidays investors! Now that the federal fund rate is between 0 and .25 percent, everyone should feel confident that the Fed is hardly going to sit back and wait for the economy to recover. Some investors may portray Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as a modern day Rambo, laying waste to the doubting investors who believe Treasuries are the only safe investment. Instead, we believe Mr. Bernanke is playing Santa Claus at a time when investors need a present to bring them confidence going into next year. While mortgage rates should drop below 4%, we don't believe this is going to create the bottom of the housing market, but it should help accelerate the process of finding the low. There are still plenty of people sitting on zero down loans whose homes are not worth what they paid three years ago. Unfortunately, lower rates doesn't mean these zero equity homeowners can instantly move into a more affordable loan, especially if they can't significantly increase their down payment. So this move will help some homeowners, but not enough to be bullish on bank stocks that have significant exposure to toxic mortgages. One group that...