Archive for January, 2012

In the past few days, Verizon and GoDaddy.com have both reversed courses, pushed to change policies and proclamations by a groundswell of customer dissatisfaction. After thousands of customers switched away from GoDaddy.com domains, prompted to do so by a social media campaign headed by Reddit users, the company reversed its approval of the SOPA Internet-censorship bill. Verizon’s ill-conceived $2 fee for one-time online payments couldn’t even survive 24 hours, immediately targeted by vocal web users. Both companies are just the latest examples of an age-old expression given a modern twist: The active social media customer is always right.

It started last year, when Gap proposed a new logo that was universally derided on Twitter, Tumblr and more. Gap’s new logo, which featured a white background and a small blue square, was mocked and parodied on all forms of social media, prompting campaigns to restore the original logo. Within a week of introducing the new logo design, the company had returned to its traditional blue and white square. It set the tone for a 2011 full of company reversals, spurred by vocal online backlash.

Perhaps the company that faced the most online backlash in 2011 was Netflix, which heard the clamoring hordes after CEO Reed Hastings announced Netflix would be splitting its DVD and streaming packages into separate services and charging more for each. The social media cries were nearly deafening, as Twitter timelines filled with cancelation threats. The company attempted to jog left by announcing a complete separation of streaming and DVD services – and the creation of DVD-by-mail service called Qwikster – but that change, too, was met with protest. Although some of the pricing plan change stuck, Netflix abandoned Qwikster a few short weeks later. Still, Netflix’s customer service ratings suffered as a result of its mixed message, even though the company eventually reversed course.

HP also announced a change in its business model, only to turn back (and change leadership) after hearing support for its personal computers on Twitter and other social media networks. In August, CEO-at-the-time Leo Apotheker announced that HP would be ditching its personal computer business, in favor of other markets. He was quickly removed from his position as HP CEO and replaced by Meg Whitman. Whitman announced that the company would continue to produce personal computers, although it will not make any more TouchPad tablets.

Verizon wasn’t the only company to change its mind about charging customers fees after customers took to social media to protest the change. After growing backlash – and public promises from competitors not to follow suit – Bank of America was forced to retract its announced $5/month debit card fees at the end of October. “We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee,” said David Darnell, co-chief operating officer at Bank of America. “As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so.”

Social media has changed the way companies and customers interact, and often David ends up taking Goliath down. 2011 was a year of companies igniting social media firestorms and then putting them out by changing their tone – will 2012 continue the trend?

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Jan 24
2012

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The hacker who published tens of thousands of Israeli credit card numbers denied
reports that an Israeli blogger unmasked his identity on Friday.

Channel
10 and other media reports said Amir Fedida spent eight hours researching the
hacker’s identity.

RELATED:
Hackers post 1000s of Israeli credit card numbers

Fedida said the hacker was Omar Habib, a 19-year-old
man living in Mexico with origins in the UAE. The hacker goes by the
online name of “OxOmar.”

But OxOmar later denied any connections to
Habib, describing attempts to link the two as false. OxOmar, who was originally
believed to be Saudi, dared Mossad to track him down, boasting it would be
impossible to find him.

Fedida said his research found the hacker is not
Saudi as widely reported, and the hacker committed several errors that allowed
others to track him down.

The biggest mistake was communicating with
Israeli media by e-mail, Fedida said.

The hacker is active in pro-
Palestinian Internet forums, where he posts anti-Israel messages, Fedida
added.

The credit card list published on Friday contains no new
information, but can damage computers that run it, Leumi Bank, the CAL credit
card company, and Isracard warned. They instructed their customers to refrain
from downloading the file.

OxOmar reportedly responded to reports of
another file disseminated on Friday that contained Trojan horse malware, and
denied responsibility for it.

On Thursday, OxOmar released almost 11,000
new Israeli credit card numbers and personal contact details, following the
publication of around 15,000 numbers earlier this week.

Credit card
companies were examining the latest list and were prepared to cancel any
affected cards for phone or Internet use, as well as issue new
cards.

OxOmar threatened to release many more credit card numbers, and
claimed to also be in possession of “data I have downloaded from Israeli
military contractor companies.” The message, posted on the “uncensored text
hosting” website Pastebin, contained numerous anti-Israel and anti- Semitic
references. The hacker repeatedly referred to the “Zionist lobby” and the
“Jewish lobby” throughout the post.

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Jan 23
2012

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PHILOSOPHY: MARY MORRISSYreviews
The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern WorldBy David Malouf Chatto Windus, 106pp. 10

BLAME JEFFERSON. Thomas Jefferson, that is, who on a hot summers day in June 1776, penned the Declaration of American Independence and elevated happiness to an unalienable right along with life and liberty. Or rather, the pursuit of happiness not quite the same thing: but the end result, whether Jefferson intended it or not, is a notion that has persisted tenaciously in western industrialised society. That ordinary everyday happiness is somehow guaranteed to all of us, and we feel cheated if we dont get it.

So says David Malouf, Australian poet and novelist, in this slim volume that takes on such a large subject. The book itself is the size of a missal, and looks like one of those 18th-century pocket books favoured by ladies. It makes perfect reading around this time of the year, a season so unrelentingly bent on happiness that the word invades every greeting. (One of the curiosities of the etymology of the word happiness is that it shares its root with words such as happenstance, happening and hapless and originally meant, not the joy and contentment we define it as, but a state of being lucky and favoured by the gods.)

The Happy Lifeis neither self-help manual nor how-to guide; rather its that old-fashioned beast, a philosophical meditation. In a mere 100 pages, Malouf ranges freely on the nature of happiness, drawing on the work of Plato, Ovid, Montaigne, Pascal, Rubens, Rembrandt and Shakespeare, among a host of others.

If that sounds high-faluting, fear not. Malouf is no fusty academic. As a writer, his relationship with history, art and philosophy is one of intellectual curiosity. He is an imaginative traveller who sees the continuity, not the ruptures, between our world and the past. (An early novella of his,
An Imaginary Life, transplanted the exile of the Greek poet, Ovid, from the Black Sea to the outback landscape of Australia; his last novel,
Ransom, retells an episode from the
Iliad.)

What makes this book both invigorating and accessible is Maloufs luminous and, more importantly, lucid prose, and his delight in the lovely doubleness of language. Here he is writing about Rubenss
Het Pelsken, a nude painting of the artists young wife: Painting is a physical act in which the painters energy is dynamically of the moment, in the quickness of the eye, the sureness of his hand, as brushstrokes and paint reproduce what he feels in the moment itself. That energy is a form of joy. What he is setting down, direct onto the canvas, is his happiness, and this perhaps, is as close as we will ever get to it, to anothers mans being; the closest we will get and we take the phrase in both senses to happiness in the flesh.

Getting back to Jefferson, Malouf contends that the happiness guarantee is very much a New World concept. A decade after the American Declaration of Independence, the French revolutionaries put forward their stalwart triplets Liberty, Equality and Fraternity but happiness didnt get a star turn in their pantheon. Inserting the pursuit of happiness into the declaration, Malouf believes, was a language act, rather than a considered political one. He [Jefferson] was led in the act of writing itself, to speak more radically than he knew.

So why arent we happier in the 21st century? (Those of us, that is, who have the luxury of considering our own happiness.) Even in the midst of a world-wide economic crisis, we dont have to contend with the plagues and famines, terrors, tortures and wars of our medieval forefathers. Malouf contends that it has to do with our view of ourselves and our view of the planet.

In the early 1970s a point was reached far out in space from which the earth could be filmed and beamed back at us. This, Malouf suggests, made us feel small but it also gave us a vision that saw things in global terms. It gave birth to a new sensibility a global one.

Not surprisingly, Malouf argues that the global economy has much to do with our 21st- century unease. The bankers and brokers are like the gods of old but, unlike them, the Economy is impersonal. It lacks manageable dimensions. We have discovered no mythology to account for its moods.

The other difficulty in working out how happy we are is in measuring it, another 21st-century mania. Happiness is stubbornly singular. It belongs to the world of what is felt, what cannot be presented or numbered on a scale because it cannot be seen.

It is similarly reductive to single out just a few of the strands in Maloufs wonderfully digressive book. The brain-versus-mind debate, the cult of body image, the joys of writing by hand all get an airing in this miscellany.

Even Ireland being descended upon like Joves eagle by the IMF gets a mention. In fact, it seems vulgar to splurge 800 words on so elegant and concise a volume, except to urge readers to experience for themselves the singular happiness of Maloufs lyrical pursuit of Jeffersons fugitive notion.

Mary Morrissy is a novelist and critic. She is currently writer-in-residence at UCD

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Jan 22
2012

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CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA, Dec 28, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) –
Newegg Inc., the second-largest online-only retailer in the United
States, today announced its best-selling computer components and
consumer electronics products this holiday shopping season. Holiday
sales, beginning with Newegg’s launch of Black Friday on November 23
and continuing through the month of December, indicated that laptops,
video game consoles, monitors and hard drives were among the most
popular items on Newegg.com.

The top-selling products on Newegg.com this holiday season by
category were:

— Laptops/Notebooks — ASUS A53E-EH91 15.6″ Notebook
— Televisions — Sceptre 32″ 720p LCD HDTV
— Video Games — Microsoft XBOX 360 250GB Holiday Bundle with Halo Reach
and Fable 3
— Digital Cameras — Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ47K 12.1 MP Digital Camera
— Software — Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit
— Monitors — Acer G235HAbd 23″ Widescreen LCD Monitor
— CPUs/Processors — Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3 GHz Processor
— Motherboards — ASUS P8Z68-V PRO Motherboard
— Hard Drives — Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 3.5″ Hard Drive
— Memory — G.SKILL Ripjaws Series F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Memory
— Video Cards — EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card

"This holiday shopping season was very strong with Newegg experiencing
year-over-year growth in both web traffic and sales," said Dr. S.C.
Lee, CEO of Newegg North America. "The increase in spending is a
positive sign that the economy is slowly but surely improving and we
look forward to this trend continuing in 2012. As we head into the
new year, Newegg remains committed to delivering the best selection
of IT and consumer electronics products, as well as a superior
shopping experience for our customers."

About Newegg Inc.
Newegg Inc. is the second-largest online-only
retailer in the United States. It owns and operates Newegg.com
(
www.newegg.com ) which was founded in 2001 and regularly earns
industry-leading customer service ratings. The award-winning website
has more than 16 million registered users and offers customers a
comprehensive selection of the latest consumer electronics, detailed
product descriptions and images, as well as how-to information and
customer reviews. Using the site's online tech community, customers
have the opportunity to interact with other computer, gaming and
consumer electronics enthusiasts. Newegg Inc. is headquartered in
City of Industry, California.

Contacts:

Scott Meaney
DBA Public Relations
(212) 388-1400
Email Contact

SOURCE: Newegg.com

http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=60EF178AED22970B

Copyright 2011 Marketwire, Inc., All rights reserved.

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Jan 21
2012

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SIMSBURY Their devotion is unconditional and their contribution invaluable.

Thats why Simsbury Animal Control Officer Mark Rudewicz is collecting items to send military bomb dogs, who search out improvised explosive devices in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I am always moved when I think, these dogs have probably saved countless American lives, Rudewicz said.

This is the second year Rudewicz has held the collection drive and decided to open it up to public participation after receiving such an overwhelmingly positive response from his colleagues at the Simsbury Police Department and other town employees last year. Rudewicz said he appreciates his superiors at the simsbury Police Department for approving the effort.

A lot of us in law enforcement are former military, he said.

Rudewicz has spent most of his life in uniform, and much of that time working with animals. After serving in the US Marine Corps, he worked 22 years for the Hartford Police Department, where he headed up the canine unit and was involved with the mounted patrol. After retiring from Hartford, he came to Simsbury, where he has worked with the police for six years and is active with public outreach. During the recent storm he operated an animal shelter in the basement of Simsbury High School, where about 70 pets stayed, from dogs and cats to ferrets, guinea pigs and iguanas. He so loves dogs that he sometimes teaches canine handling at the police academy, and has traveled to Alaska to volunteer with handling dogs that participate in the Iditarod dog sled race.

Rudewicz said his love of animals, and deep appreciation for the sacrifice made by American troops in harms way so far from home during the holidays, inspired him to send the care boxes as part of Operation Military Care K-9.

During the holidays it is hard, no matter where you are stationed, but I think it is even harder if youre deployed far from home, he said.

Rudewicz explained on missions, bomb dogs go in ahead of other soldiers, for example, leading Humvees and conducting sweeps. Bomb dogs are so respected that they are given one rank higher than their handler. Not long ago, Rudewicz was visited at the station by Fox, a retired US Army bomb dog who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has been adopted by a Simsbury family.

He is a pure German Shepard, six years old and retired at the rank of sergeant major, said Rudewicz, Continued…

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Jan 21
2012

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THE CENTER FOR ANIMAL HEALTH WELFARE

Doogie

He is so sweet. He is a tiny fellow and the noise and large dogs do scare him at the shelter. He doesnt mind being held and would prefer a lap to a cage any day. Doogie is a wonderful little doggie looking for a home!

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Jan 20
2012

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Jan 19
2012

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Jerseys Home Affairs Minister has said he wants to correct the worst exaggerations of reporting of the historical abuse inquiry.

Senator Ian Le Marquand has released a statement defending the actions of senior police officers in the case.

Officers were criticised in a Wiltshire Police report, released 18 months ago, which looked at the handling of the historical abuse inquiry.

It found serious concerns about the financial management of the inquiry.

It criticised former Police Chief Graham Power and the Chief Investigating Officer Lenny Harper for a lack of management and the £7.5m costs in the inquiry.

Senator Le Marquands statement quotes the two Wiltshire Police reports which said the inquiry was appropriately managed in the early stages.

And it said the decision to start digging [at Haut de la Garenne] was not enough to cause a disciplinary issue.

Senator Le Marquand said: This inquiry led to a significant number of successful prosecutions as well as to the discovery of significant other allegations of physical and sexual abuse which did not, for a variety of reasons, lead to successful prosecutions.

Lenny Harper, who lead the inquiry, said: Its very welcome that hes tried to reign back some of the criticism, albeit rather late.

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Jan 18
2012

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The January Effect is well known (and well played by traders) in the US stock market. In addition to the numerous trader articles, there are scholarly studies that suggest that the January bounce is particularly pronounced amongst small stocks where the bounce back from tax-loss selling can be more pronounced even with small swings in the trade. If youre a nimble trader, you can play that dead cat bounce, but there is also an opportunity here for the investor to pick up a good stock at a great price. To quote a wise man, Price is what you pay, value is what you get.

Another contrarian philosophy in small-caps is to try to maximize returns by buying stocks with bad technicals and a catalyst on the fundamentals. Note that this is the exact opposite of technical analysis which is obsessed with good technicals and a quick buck, and only somewhat similar to deep value investing where you buy cheap and wait (potentially forever). Highly regarded investment firms such as Standpoint (which is in the 91st percentile in returns and 97th in accuracy for 2011) explicitly state this as their analysis methodology.

Here are my five January Worthies (in order of drum roll power), below. To the earlier point about bad technicals being good, Ive included the well known technician Louis Navelliers freely available stock grading service ratings in Figure 1 below as evidence of the same. As you can see the ratings of four of the five are somewhere between unremarkable and abysmal, and the fifth is too small to count in Louiss 5000-stock database. So whats the evidence of a contrarian view on these five small caps? Well, see below :

  • Applied Micro Circuits (AMCC). A high flier surviving a ten year drought is rare. An optical company with insider buying is rare. A small company making a big but credible gamble is rare. And as I wrote here, AMCC is all three. If youre looking for a wild January ride, AMCC is likely to be on the tame side. But it was genuinely oversold, is currently trending positive and has a catalyst in both the next month and the next six in their X-Gene efforts.
  • Triquint (TQNT). TQNT traded down from an October $7 value to the current $4 and change, due to its uninspiring earnings on the October quarter. But if you consider the multiple insider buys recently in the $4.25 to $5.25 range, and the bright future of Gallium Nitride technologies (at which TQNT is a veteran) in LEDs, the stock is a viable company at a bargain price.

Figure 1. January Worthies as viewed by Louis Navelliers Portfolio Grader

  • NPS Pharmaceuticals (NPSP). NPSP is a biotech that primarily focuses on developing treatments for patients with uncommon gastrointestinal issues, and endocrine disorders. This is a market is largely untapped thus far. The stock has been in a malaise for most of the second half of 2011. But the positive results on their Short Bowel Syndrome SBS drug, and the recent cluster buying of the stock in the $5.50 range that this stock has room to run. The fact that October to April is seasonally strong for Biotechs (given all the analyst conferences and the forward looking excitement therein) is a meaningful plus. You could argue that the run to its current $6.50 price is a bit fast and a bit far, but the number is far below the $10 price target that is prevalent for the stock given the positives on the GATTEX drug for SBS.
  • Active Power (ACPW). Active Power, a pioneer of Flywheel technologies, was trading at a low of $0.66 on January 4th, close to its 52-week low of $0.59 and far cry from its high of $3.03. The departure of their CEO to pursue other interests led to a decline from about $1.40 to the current price of $0.70 and change, with little else changing at the company. A large investor (Kinderhook Partners) whos had an equity stake in the company since 2008 just bought a million shares at between $0.59 and $0.80. The inevitable annoucement of a new CEO should be a new catalyst that makes the January 5th rise of 10% on the stock a trend over a one time event.
  • Oclaro (OCLR). Why is a stock with a $4.41 book value trading at $3 and change? Answer, Thai floods. The flooding of contract manufacturing sites in Thailand led to an unknown in OCLRs ability to meet customer demand, and Wall Street doesnt like unknowns. But this isnt the customer demand going away. It isnt like were awash in bandwidth, in fact quite the opposite. And as it turns out, the recovery from the Thai floods was quicker than anticipated and OCLR offered some clarity on this issue and upped its 4th quarter guidance. Consider the pent up demand, better guidance and the fact that OCLR was about $4.50 in summer when the floods hit (and summer is a scary time for Technology stocks!), and you can imagine good things happening here. As I write this, OCLR galloped to a 15% gain today, but theres more room to run.

Disclosure: I am long ACPW, OCLR, AMCC.

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Jan 17
2012

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CHICAGO, Dec 13, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
NES Rentals Holdings, Inc., one of the largest aerial equipment rental
providers in the country, today announced that it has implemented a new
real-time delivery notification system that allows customers to know
when their equipment has been delivered to a job site. This is the first
system of its kind in the aerial equipment rental industry and is a part
of NES Rental’s ongoing strategy of being first in customer service in
the aerial equipment rental marketplace.

This electronic notification system is a part of an overall investment
the company has recently made in handheld wireless scanners carried by
every NES driver. When a piece of equipment arrives for customer
delivery, the barcode on the equipment is scanned on-site by the driver.
That information is relayed back to NES where an email notification is
pushed out to the customer within minutes. The customer can click on the
provided web link where they can review equipment condition and terms of
the equipment contract.

“Our customers typically find out their equipment has arrived by seeing
it on-site,” stated Andrew P. Studdert, NES Rentals Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer. “But what the industry has failed to recognize is
often equipment is ordered through an office off-site or by someone who
is travelling among multiple sites. By notifying in real-time when
equipment arrives at a job site we help our customers contain costs and
curb down time. This is just another way NES has continued to outperform
the competition in customer service.”

This new notification service is provided free of charge to every NES
Rentals customer.

Thanks to cutting edge programs like these, NES Rentals continues to
lead the industry in customer service ratings as demonstrated by its Net
Promoter Score (NPS) most recently measured in the third quarter of 2011
at 83.9. NPS measures customer loyalty by asking the customer how likely
it is that they would recommend a company to a friend or colleague.
Companies, like NES Rentals, that achieve a score above 80 are in the
same NPS category as some of the most efficient growth companies in the
country like Apple, Amazon and Federal Express.

About NES Rentals Holdings, Inc.

NES Rentals Holdings, Inc. is one of the largest companies in the $25
billion equipment rental industry. The company specializes in renting
aerial equipment to industrial and construction end-users. It rents and
distributes new equipment for nationally recognized original equipment
manufacturers. NES Rentals also sells used equipment as well as
complementary parts, supplies and merchandise, and provides repair and
maintenance services to its customers. The company is a leading
competitor in many of the geographic markets it reaches with 80
locations in 30 states. For more information on NES Rentals, visit
www.nesrentals.com .

Forward-Looking Statements

Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein,
statements contained in this release may constitute forward-looking
statements that invoke known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other
factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements
to be materially different from those projected in forward-looking
statements made by, or on behalf of, us. In some cases, you can identify
forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,”
“should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,”
“predicts,” “potential,” “continue,” “projects,” “intends,” “prospects,”
“priorities,” or the negative of such terms or similar terminology.

SOURCE: NES Rentals Holdings, Inc.

Media Contact:
NES Rentals Holdings, Inc.
Christopher D. Bowers, 847.597.9122
Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing
cbowers@nesrentals.com

Copyright Business Wire 2011

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Jan 16
2012

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