Archive for February 1st, 2008
Posted by: in Productivity
Filed under: Fun, World wide web, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Blogging, Productivity, Web services, iPhone, web 2.0
In this day and age, who has time for reading? You don’t — obviously. There’s this site out there called PimpMyNews and it reads blogs aloud for you using text-to-speech software. You can even listen to the stories on an iPhone or iPod Touch through the site, and the service will even let you transfer stories onto your regular ol’ iPod.
Despite being perfect for those too busy (lazy?) to read blogs, the site could also work in favor of the blind and others unable to read regular text. And for the skeptics: the text-to-speech software does a surprisingly decent job at being very understandable and comfortable enough to listen to, but others might be annoyed by the non-human elements in the the voice.
Read
Share This
Share This
 No Comments »
Posted by: in Productivity
Filed under: Fun, Internet, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Blogging, Productivity, Web services, iPhone, web 2.0
In today and age, who has time for reading? You don’t — obviously. There’s this site out there called PimpMyNews and it reads blogs aloud for you using text-to-speech software. You can even listen to the stories on an iPhone or iPod Touch through the site, and the service will even let you transfer stories onto your regular ol’ iPod.
Despite being perfect for those too busy (lazy?) to read blogs, the site could also work in favor of the blind and others unable to read regular text. And for the skeptics: the text-to-speech software does a surprisingly decent job at being very understandable and comfortable enough to listen to, but others might be annoyed by the non-human elements in the the voice.
Read
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
Posted by: in Productivity
Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Social Software
 If you remember the late 70’s, you probably remember gas rationing in the United Says when OPEC cut oil production. This lead to pandemonium at the pumps and confusion for American citizens. Well to a lesser degree, having bandwidth cut off would also lead to having to make tough choices.
Perhaps this is why the Egyptian government has asked that all Internet users temporarily stop downloading movies, music, and other large files as a result of their Internet access being hampered earlier this week. Egypt’s main cable link to Europe was inadvertently cut by a ship’s anchor, causing widespread Internet bottlenecks to Egypt and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.
Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has asked that consumer stop downloading massive file so they don’t affect “affect businesses who have more important things to do.’”
Ars Technica points out that this isn’t the first time this type of event has occurred. Algeria, Taiwan, and Vietnam have all had their World wide web access affected by similar circumstances. As the world becomes more and more dependent on the ‘Net, we think it’s alarming to see how fragile the infrastructure truly is.
So, in conclusion, if you’re in Egypt and your downloading last nights Lost episode, knock it off! 
[via Slashdot]
Read
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
Posted by: in Productivity
Filed under: Fun, World wide web, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Blogging, Productivity, Web services, iPhone, web 2.0
In today and age, who has time for reading? You don’t — obviously. There’s this site out there called PimpMyNews and it reads blogs aloud for you using text-to-speech software. You can even listen to the stories on an iPhone or iPod Touch through the site, and the service will even let you transfer stories onto your regular ol’ iPod.
Despite being perfect for those too busy (lazy?) to read blogs, the site could also work in favor of the blind and others unable to read regular text. And for the skeptics: the text-to-speech software does a surprisingly decent job at being very understandable and comfortable enough to listen to, but others may be annoyed by the non-human elements in the the voice.
Read
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
Filed under: Products and services, Marketing and advertising, Stocks to Buy
The choppy/consolidating (or perhaps worse) market conditions sometimes gives the impression that growth plays do not exist, but that’s not the case, and one growth company worth reviewing is Omniture.
Omniture (Nasdaq: OMTR) is a leading provider of on the internet business optimization services, which customers use to manage/enhance on the web, offline and multi-channel business initiatives.
Analysts really like the company’s primary product: SiteCatalyst, which helps clients electronically measure web site traffic, visitor activity, advertising effectiveness, and e-commerce transactions. Analysts also are impressed by Omniture’s Fortune 1000-level clientele.
The company offers several additional tools, including a product designed to enable customers to access all of their data in real time. The Reuters F2007/F2008 EPS consensus estimates for Omniture are 20 cents/42 cents.
The risks? Analysts are keeping an eye on the company’s order backlog for any signs of a slowdown in business.
The First Call mean rating for Omniture is: Buy. [22 firms.] Mean 2008 target: $35.00. [high: $44, low: $26.]
Stock Analysis: Omniture is a moderate-risk stock not suitable for low-risk investors. Investors with an investment horizon longer than 2 years should be rewarded from Omniture’s shares. Sell / Stop Loss if you were to purchase shares in this company: $16.
Disclosure: Lazzaro has no positions in stocks. In addition to private real estate holdings, he owns corporate and municipal bonds, and cash certificates of deposit.
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
Posted by: in Productivity
Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Social Software
If you remember the late 70’s, you probably remember gas rationing in the United Says when OPEC cut oil production. This lead to pandemonium at the pumps and confusion for American citizens. Well to a lesser degree, having bandwidth cut off would also lead to having to make tough choices.
Perhaps this is why the Egyptian government has asked that all World wide web users temporarily stop downloading movies, music, and other large files as a result of their Internet access being hampered earlier this week. Egypt’s main cable link to Europe was inadvertently cut by a ship’s anchor, causing widespread World wide web bottlenecks to Egypt and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.
Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has asked that consumer stop downloading huge file so they don’t affect “affect businesses who have more important things to do.’”
Ars Technica points out that this isn’t the first time this type of event has occurred. Algeria, Taiwan, and Vietnam have all had their World wide web access affected by similar circumstances. As the world becomes more and more dependent on the ‘Net, we think it’s alarming to see how fragile the infrastructure truly is.
So, in conclusion, if you’re in Egypt and your downloading last nights Lost episode, knock it off!
[via Slashdot]
Read
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
Posted by: in Productivity
Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Productivity
 Wobzip is a new startup service that allows you to uncompress a wide variety of compressed files directly on the web. Not sure why you’d want to do that? Read on, friend.
Wobzip offers a easy, clean interface, with a paucity of buttons: you’ve got the browse button (we know what that does by now, don’t we?) and the uncompress button. Once you’ve selected a file from your machine, set Wobzip to work by hitting the uncompress button. After a short period of activity, which includes a quick virus scan, Wobzip displays the uncompressed files for you to pick and select from.
Not impressed yet? We were just holding back.
Wobzip’s main strength (and usefulness) comes from the capability to uncompress files directly from a URL. Rather than having to download a file in order to uncompress it, you can paste in a URL, and Wobzip will uncompress the file and show you its contents. This is especially useful for users with slow world wide web connections: you can pick and choose which piece of the compressed file to download rather than having to download the entire file.
At this time, Wobzip supports 7z, ZIP, GZIP, TAR, RAR, CAB, ISO, and more, with a maximum file size of 100 MB.
[via CyberNet.com]
Read
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
Filed under: Products and services, Marketing and advertising, Stocks to Buy
The choppy/consolidating (or perhaps worse) market conditions sometimes gives the impression that growth plays do not exist, but that is not the case, and one growth company worth reviewing is Omniture.
Omniture (Nasdaq: OMTR) is a leading provider of on the web business optimization services, which customers use to manage/enhance on the web, offline and multi-channel business initiatives.
Analysts really like the company’s primary product: SiteCatalyst, which helps clients electronically measure web site traffic, visitor activity, advertising effectiveness, and e-commerce transactions. Analysts also are impressed by Omniture’s Fortune 1000-level clientele.
The company offers several additional tools, including a product designed to enable customers to access all of their data in real time. The Reuters F2007/F2008 EPS consensus estimates for Omniture are 20 cents/42 cents.
The risks? Analysts are keeping an eye on the company’s order backlog for any signs of a slowdown in business.
The First Call mean rating for Omniture is: Buy. [22 firms.] Mean 2008 target: $35.00. [high: $44, low: $26.]
Stock Analysis: Omniture is a moderate-risk stock not suitable for low-risk investors. Investors with an investment horizon longer than 2 years should be rewarded from Omniture’s shares. Sell / Stop Loss if you were to buy shares in this company: $16.
Disclosure: Lazzaro has no positions in stocks. In addition to private real estate holdings, he owns corporate and municipal bonds, and cash certificates of deposit.
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
Filed under: Marketing and advertising
With many of the world’s top companies lining up to shell out massive bucks for Sunday’s huge game, investors might want to take a look ting-to-do-with-the-stooo.
According (subscription required) to the Wall Street Journal, “Shares of Super Bowl advertisers tend to outperform the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index in the week after the game. A trading strategy based on buying those companies would have beaten the benchmark in 10 of the past 12 years, by an average margin of 1.3 percentage points, the research shows.”
Of course once you factor in the trading costs and tax burden of buying a bunch of stocks and selling them a weak later, this isn’t such a hot strategy.
But hey — This one’s slightly less dumb than the more famous Super Bowl indicator, which I gave a well-deserved trashing to yesterday.
The correlation is interesting. If the effect is indeed causal — it’s difficult to state — it may be that investors are so tuned into the most anticipated commercials of they year that it impacts their stock trades on subconscious level: see Doritos ad, purchase PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE: PEP) stock.
I’d take a pass on this predictor.
Share This
Share This
No Comments »
|
Entries (RSS)