Apple sliding

Apple will be a good buy at 180 down from its high of 208.

Stocks 101

Stocks represent ownership of companies. Companies from small start ups to established multinational conglomerates can have stock available to the public. Stocks can also be called shares. To define the total value of a company, multiply the number of shares times the price of each share. For example, if a company has 1 billion shares available and each trades for $25, then the total value of the company is $25 billion dollars. Valuation of a company is based on multiple factors. The price of shares is based on the perceived value amongst many buyers and sellers. Each individual allocates cash towards a stock investment and enters orders through their brokers to buy shares in a company. Two basic ways to create an investment return is to sell shares at a higher price or earn dividends. Dividends are usually excess profits dispensed to shareholders. Significant economic trends, company events, earnings, dividends, psychology, and many other factors come together to move the price. One objective factor to value a company is its earnings. A company's total earnings divided by number of shares is the earnings per share. A price to earnings ratio is the price divided by earnings per share. A lower price to earnings ratio is preferred by value investors. Growth investors will be willing to overlook a high price to earnings ratio if the company is showing substantial earnings increases. Dividends can be considered a more objective measure than earnings since earnings can be manipulated by accounting but cash distributions to shareholders can not be manipulated. A company's yield is it's dividend per share divided by price.

Palm Pre Available on Amazon

The Palm Pre is available on Amazon for $199 and free 2 day shipping. The iPhone is still not available on Amazon. However, the Pre is only #493 in cell phones on Amazon, although the top ten in their lists are the free phones. It's #11 in the smart phones division, although everything above it sells for $50 or for free.

Google search results for Zune

As a follow up to the prior post about Google search results for the ipod touch, there are no advertisements for Bing on Google about the Microsoft's own Zune mp3 player.

Google search results for ipod touch

Searching for "ipod touch" on Google (GOOG) showed some recent changes in advertising strategy. Amazon is no longer allowing associates to directly link from Google to an affiliate landing page. Instead, affiliates have to place a Google advertisement for their own web page with an Amazon link. After this change, the first spot on the advertising panel on the right belongs to Amazon and links directly to their page. Another interesting point is that Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing is advertising it's cash back program for the "ipod touch" on Bing. Recently, there has been a spike in the bid price for these advertisments, and this may have been due to Microsoft and Amazon entering the bidding war for placement. I am not sure how many product advertisments Microsoft is placing on Google, but they're sending cash to their competitor with every click.

Apple viewport meta tag to set iphone content

Viewport is a meta tag designed to display web content on the iPhone safari browser properly.

This is Apple's developer website instructions: http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/UsingtheViewport/chapter_4_section_5.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006509-SW26.

Chris Pirillo Website Malware

After visiting this link: "How to Make an iPhone website and icon" on Chris Pirillo's website, my Google Chrome browser notified me that this site is linked to a website known to host malware. The IP address may have had 68.102. After unsuccessfully trying to navigate away from the warning page, Mcafee anti-virus brought up several alerts about a trojan horse named Vundu. Then, internet explorer started to have several pop ups. The system became very unstable. Mcafee reported it needed to be re-installed and it's services cut off frequently. New icons started showing up in the desktop and start menu. Mcafee is not able to solve the problem itself. Atribune's fixvundo was not effective. The only effective measure seemed to be downloading and re-installing Mcafee. Installing Internet explorer 8 still had pop-ups for bogus anti-spyware websites. The vundu virus apparently uses a flaw in the Java run time environment, so all Java was uninstalled. I'm sure the Chris Pirillo website is unaware of it's malware problem.