I like self-made billionaires — especially when they made it competing against the likes of Nikon, Pentax, Canon, Hasselblad, Leica, etc. This is Nick Woodman, GoPro founder:
GoPro is now the fastest-growing camera company in the world. Strap your GoPro on. Jump off a cliff. Surf the biggest wave. Drive a racing car. GoPro will record it all. For last night’s wonderful 60Minutes segment on Woodman, click here.
This is Anthony Wood, founder of Roku:
Over the weekend, I installed my second Roku box (cost — one-time charge of $99):
Not: the remote now comes with wireless headphones. Brilliant idea. After a minor fiddling, this is what my TV screen now looks like:
These are my Roku “channels.” They augment the hundreds I have on Verizon FiOS and DirecTV. The BIG difference is that my Roku channels are on demand. I can watch movies, sports, movie series whenever I want to — not when they insist that I watch them.
There are dozens of channels on Roku. It’s matter of signing up to them. Some cost money — NetFlix is $8 a month. Amazon Instant Video is free if you’re an Amazon Prime customer. HBOGO is free if you already get HBO through Verizon FiOS. PBS is completely free. You get the idea. Roku gets its movies over the Internet — either WiFi or wired Ethernet. I didn’t believe it would work wirelessly. But it’s flawless. I’m impressed.
This is a huge revolution — Once there were three over the air networks. Then there was cable TV. Then satellite TV. Now Internet TV. Every revolution brought new investment opportunities. I thought about this one all weekend. I’m stumped. Roku is private. The content providers like Disney, Sony, etc. are huge. What’s left? I don’t know. I’m mulling. Anyone got any ideas how to play this one?
By the way, one major trend is the new networks — like NetFlix and Amazon — are now making their own content. And some of it is really good. Here’s a glimpse of what NetFlix is offering:
This is a clip from Amazon spouting their benefits on Roku (that’s the Roku remote on the left):
Google’s Gmail is a mess. They tried to “enhance” it, but made it so complicated it lost its ease. It sorts incoming mail into “Primary”, “Social” and “Promotions.” If you subscribe to the emails of my blog (sign up on top left), you might find the column in Primary. You might also find it in Promotions. How and why Google sorts — and does it inconsistently — beats me.
There’s an old rule in IT (information processing) world — If it works, don’t mess with it. Why Google did I have no idea. I bet you have no idea what they call a blind deer? …A no idea.
Funny world. To test sending the email of my blog, I signed up at Google for Plumpudding@gmail.com. Taken. I then tried ApplePlumpudding@gmail. Taken. I finally got cherryplumpudding. Maybe it’s time for me to form a social blog devoted to fans of plumpuddings. … As if we need yet another Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace.
Matt and I spent the weekend fixing this blog, its software and the email delivery. Email should work perfectly now. My thought: It’s easier to automatically receive an email than to have to schlepp to a Internet blog site each morning.
Good news: I even know how to unsubscribe people who are bothered by my burblings. And I thought it was only Susan, my long-suffering wife.
Self-inflicted idiocies. The average age of my reader is between 40 and death. That means none of you are spring chickens. None of you move as quickly as did when you were 20. You also probably weigh a tad more, too. And you don’t recover from sickness quickly.
So, please:
+ Stop falling down stairs. Hold the handrail. Beware of the lowest step.
+ Stop catching colds on planes. Keep your air vent open and breath its air. Don’t use the seatpocket in front of you. It recently had a Kleenex from someone who caught something awful in Burma. Wash your tray table and your hands with Purell. And don’t even think about touching your eyes.
What’s Twitter worth? The Wall Street Journal has a theory.
Getting a Handle on Twitter’s Value
Investors Must Look Beyond the Basics to See Just How Expensive Twitter Really Is
For the piece, click here.
The New York Times’s Gretchen Morgenson also did a piece on Twitter:
Earnings, but without the bad stuff.
Twitter’s red-hot stock offering last week makes clear that, as in the first Internet bubble, investors will pay up for a company even if it hasn’t turned a profit.
And managers of companies that have generated only losses, like Twitter — and even those that are profitable — are happy to suggest metrics that they think are better suited for assessing their operations.
Managements’ recommended measures, typically not found in generally accepted accounting principles, have an uncanny way of burnishing a company’s results. They do so by eliminating some pesky costs of doing business.
As such, these benchmarks are also known as earnings without the bad stuff. They were central to the valuations that propelled Internet stocks skyward in the late 1990s. Then, the higher the market climbed, the kookier the metrics became. …
Twitter’s recent prospectus serves as an example. Its management suggests that investors not focus solely on its $134 million net loss for the first nine months of 2013, a figure calculated under generally accepted accounting principles. If you want to see the company’s operating results “through the eyes of management,” the prospectus suggests, look at its “non-GAAP net loss” of $44 million for the period.
To get to that figure, Twitter backs out two large costs. Stock compensation for the first three quarters of 2013 is the biggest, at $79 million. Twitter also removes $11 million in costs associated with amortizing or reducing the value of intangible assets it acquired previously.
There’s nothing improper in Twitter’s filing. But the idea that these items don’t cost the company is nonsense, says Jack T. Ciesielski, an accounting expert at R.G. Associates in Baltimore and publisher of The Analyst’s Accounting Observer.
“When they back out stock-based compensation they’re basically saying that management is working for free,” Mr. Ciesielski said. “And we know that’s not the case.”
Ditto for the intangibles, he said. “When they acquired a company, they spent money for things like in-process research and development, contracts and customer lists,” he added. “To back out those intangibles is bogus.”
For Gretchen’s entire piece, click here.
The Barclays Indoor Tennis is in London. The final tonight is between Joko and Rafa. It’s on the Tennis Channel. I believe at 8 PM.
Reverse Logic gems.
+ I handed the teller at my bank a withdrawal slip for $400.00 I said “May I have large bills, please”
She looked at me and said “I’m sorry sir, all the bills are the same size.”
+ We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING sign on our road.
The reason: ‘Too many deer are being hit by cars out here!
‘I don’t think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore.’
+ I was at the airport, checking in at the gate when an airport employee asked, ‘Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?’
To which I replied, ‘If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?’
He smiled knowingly and nodded, ‘That’s why we ask.’
Harry Newton’s dearest friend in Sydney, Australia runs a classy hotel at which you should stay. It’s called the Admiral Collingwood Lodge. He emails,
Just had a house full of Tea Party Minnesotans whinging (complaining in Australian) at how expensive Sydney is. And they are right.
The exchange rate is killing me.
GM have threatened the Government they will pull out if they don’t get a (bigger) subsidy. Ford has announced they are going from 2016.
And we may not even get any new mines or gas projects, because the set-up costs are too high.
His lodge is really nice. Worth a stay next time you’re in Sydney. Click here.
The Admiral Collingwood Lodge in Sydney, Australia:
i love the new gmail. think of it as next generation spam filtering — it filters out quasi-spam for you (facebook notifications, notice of bill payments, monthly statements, etc.) and leaves your primary box much cleaner. you can tell it’s effective because of the uproar from advertisers. huge win.
You are certainly correct about Roku. Several TVs in the house now ONLY have Roku, no extra cost for cable drops. It’s great. An excellent product line and Apple is NOT going to catch up using its current product strategy.
Must disagree with you concerning the changes to GMail (you’re an Outlook guy! How would you know?) IF you are active on Facebook or other social media, the message segregation is very welcome and works surprisingly well. Similarly, getting the “Promotion” incoming email under one tab (and then hitting Select All –> Delete) is dandy. It really does reduce email overload. IF something is mis-categorized it takes only a second to correct that and the correction lasts forever. AND, by the way, the Tab system is completely optional. You can make it go away with two mouse clicks. I don’t agree with your critique.
We picked-up a 47″ Samsung Smart TV for our summer cottage this year and enjoyed many, many Netflex movies and especially enjoyed the British TV shows like back dates of Doc. Martin and Hotel Babylon. The WiFi connection worked near perfect even from my neighbor’s router about 100 feet from our cottage. Only problems were when their 18 year old got on his X-Box. Then we had to just give-up sometimes due to reduced bandwidth. Next year we will provide our own internet, I can now get it on a seasonal subscription from Bell Canada.
I am waiting for Black Friday or Cyber-Monday to buy a new
Samsung 65″ F9000 Series 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV. for our home in AZ. if you have not seen one of these demonstrated…it will knock your eyes out! Also WiFi, SKYPE with camera and the whole ball of wax. They are down to $4999. with free shipping and no sales tax from B&H, I am hoping for another $500 to be knocked off, I hope.
After more research and reading several negative reviews on Amazon I may not be so quick to buy the Samsung 65 inch F9000. More research needed. I only saw the demo model in action…must now see one connected to cable or satellite, could be big difference.