Thursday, October 20, 2011

Nokia Covered Call Experience

Bought shares of nokia for 5.79, sold October covered call at 6 in September for 60 cents each. Watched stock go to low 5 area, and the coverd call drop to nearly 17 cents. Could have bought back the covered calls and locked in that profit. Instead Nokia reports better than expected results and the stock goes up to 6.6 the day before the options expire. Instead of nearly doubling profits, I have the flat even result of buying shares at 5.79, selling the shares at 6, and the total profit from selling the covered calls at 60 cents each. Basically, buying at 5.79 and selling for 6.6 in 2 months. But if the covered calls were bought back at a lower price, that would have been 45 cents per share extra profit.

Monday, October 10, 2011

iPhone 4S Airplay Video Game

With Apple TV, Airplay and an Iphone, video games can be played on large tv screens in the same manner as console games. As the controls for the games get better on the iPhone and iPod touch, this could be some serious competition for Sony and Nintendo. The motion sensors on the iPhone and iPod touch are excellent for game play. The only remaining factor is developing software that will provide accuracy similar to gamepad buttons. With the Airplay monitoring technology, the device can possibly display the video on the television while displaying the controls on the device screen. This would require the device to somehow support dual displays. This might be possible since the latest device does have a dual core A5 processor, and the controller display should not be taxing on the device.

Apple October 2011 Event

http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2011/

Watching the Apple October 2011 Event. Looks like Apple is doing the same thing Microsoft did with Windows. Integrating independent application developments into their iOS 5. iCloud has taken a lot of features from popular services like Dropbox. That seems to be the most obvious one so far. The location services are similar to Loopt.  I'm just waiting for Apple to integrate search into their iOS. As I finished watching the talk, I realized Siri is Apple's entry into search. Stock quotes, directions, restaurant reviews, weather are all available. Soon, Apple just needs to start running related advertisements next to Siri results, and they will be the same as Google.

The iPhone 4S is still very good compared to other Android devices, but the gap is closing. The Galaxy S2 is a good example, but Android devices still are not as fast or smooth as iOS devices.

Reader Option in iOS5

The Reader option in iOS5 allows mobile browsers to strip away extraneous content and only show text for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. I'm a bit disappointed with this development. About 10% of the visitors to my website are iOs device visitors. It's actually the second most popular operating system after Windows. Now with this development,  people can strip away the advertising revenue by getting rid of advertisements and only leaving text.