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Archive for November, 2008

Nov 30 2008

Food coma

The days following thanksgiving always seem like a blur of eating, drinking and shopping. This year I was pretty impressed with the Black Friday weekend sales, I have to say. I didn’t do any camping out, but there were tons of pretty awesome deals on everything from sporting goods to TVs.

I think this is going to be the christmas that blu ray really takes over. I got a TON of movies – most of which were less than $10. Also, box sets like Pirates or Die Hard were going for less than $40. Another good find was the 1st season of the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Only $15 at Frys. But, the best find came today – the Coppola restoration Godfather box set, only $42 at Best Buy.

I have to say, with all the talk about hard economic times, this seemed to be a very very busy thanksgiving holiday. It seems like Apple was a hot ticket, and the Xbox 360 and PS3 were dirt cheap.

The biggest Thanksgiving deal, however, looks like it may be coming from Yahoo!. The search giant is supposedly in talks to sell its search business to Microsoft for $20 billion – far less than the $47 billion Microsoft offered for the whole company.

Sure, search isn’t all Yahoo! has to offer…but it’s a lot, and Microsoft will be getting a steal here. Much to the chagrin of Yahoo! shareholders, who missed out on Microsoft’s $33 a share offer. Now that Yahoo! stock is at only $9 and Jerry Yang has departed, looks like this year’s biggest door buster is a $20 billion sale.

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Nov 28 2008

Man dies in black friday stampede

Published by japadamus under news

So, people who sit outside all night on black friday to save $100 on a ‘door buster’ are assholes. Retarded assholes. But that’s just my opinion.

In Long Island today, things got violent when a crowd of 200 people burst into a Walmart store, trampling a maintenance worker in the process. The worker was trying to secure the store doors in order to control the crowd…but they burst in anyway.

The worker was pronounced dead after being taken to the hospital.

Now, shouldn’t there have been a better mechanism for handling these crowds? The picture above shows the crowd from a security camera moments before the guy got trampled. I mean, look at them…they look quite unruly standing out there in the cold. And most of them look kind of thugged out…like, how was this ever a good idea?

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Nov 27 2008

Black Friday

Published by japadamus under best of the internet, Pakedamus

Thanksgiving is wonderful. First of all – lots of food. Secondly, you don’t have all of that present giving bullshit that makes christmas so expensive.

And the best part of thanksgiving? Black Friday.

Now, in the past you had to do the retarded wait in line in the freezing cold at 3am thing. But that’s not the case anymore. Lots of Black Friday deals are online either today, or at 12am this morning when Black Friday officially kicks in. So far, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Amazon, Dell and OfficeMax have a bunch of Black Friday deals available.

There are also a bunch of Black Friday sites that list known deals. Lots of retailers published their deals early this year. A few good sites:

Theblackfriday.com

Blackfriday @ Gottadeal.com

Blackfridayonline.com

So, what’s hot this year? Blu Ray? PS3, Xbox or Wii if you don’t already have one. Digital SLRs? What’s on your list?

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Nov 25 2008

Auctions meet gambling

Published by japadamus under Bob Loblaw, best of the internet

I came across Swoopo the other day. It’s an interesting concept. Instead of having a single winning bidder pay for a product, why not have every bidder pay a little, while the winning bidder pays the difference. Make sense?

It’s a bit difficult to explain, but this site is really quite fascinating. Here’s how it works. Users bid on products listed on the swoopo website. The winning bidder at the time the auction ends is the winner. But get this – each bid costs around a dollar. Not only that, but each bid increases the time of the auction by 15 seconds. Finally, each bid increases the price of the auction by 15 cents.

The end result is that you get great deals on products. I’ve seen MacBooks sell for $300 and Wiis sell for less than $100. The downside, however, is that it’s very hard to win an auction. You’re competing with many others to win, and since each bid costs $1, this could get expensive.

It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also very frustrating. And, if you don’t bid well you may even end up paying more for a product. I saw a $500 netbook sell for $420 today. But, to win the winning bidder put in 160 bids, meaning he spent roughly $580 for a $500 product. Not a great deal. But I’ve also see PS3s go for $60, so you gotta pick your auction.

To start, you need to buy credits. 30 credits cost $20 – and each bid costs a credit.

Take a look. The size is fun to play around with…as long as you don’t spend too much on bids. And, it’s very competitive…you’ll find yourself in back and forth wars with other bidders quite often.

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Nov 21 2008

Japa makes an LOL Cat

Published by japadamus under Bob Loblaw

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Nov 20 2008

Al Qaeda called Obama house negro

Published by japadamus under news

Great! It appears that the organization is more desparate then ever. As a side note, I don’t know a lot about Malcom X but I believe that he had more morals than to support cowards hiding in the mountains of Pakistan that fund their wars selling drugs.

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Nov 19 2008

Woot! Off is on!

Published by japadamus under Pakedamus

This is probably gonna be the last Woot! Off before christmas. Lots of binoculars for sale so far.

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Nov 19 2008

Tori meets PS 22 Chorus

Published by japadamus under music

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Nov 18 2008

Meet the first female professional baseball player

Published by japadamus under sports

If you would have asked me what would happen first, a female professional baseball player or a black US president, I would have guessed female professional baseball player by a long shot. Well, technically Obama isn’t president yet, but man, that was close.

Eri Yoshida is a 16 year old schoolgirl from Japan. She’s only five feet tall and weighs 114 pounds. And she’s the first female professional baseball player…ever.

Yoshida was drafted by the Kobe 9 Cruise, a professional baseball team in Japan. She is a pitcher and throws a kunckleball. She wants to be like Tim Wakefield from the Boston Red Sox…and Wakefield is one of the best knuckleballers ever.

Who knows how this will turn out. I mean, it could be some sort of publicity stunt. But it also reminds me of Michelle Wie who played with pro mens golf players when she was only 15.

It’d be pretty amazing if this girl was actually pretty good. I mean, knuckleballers don’t need to be big, really. But to be a woman and only 16 and go to the pros…that’s a pretty tough transistion. She’s not exactly rosa parks, but I’m anxious to see how she does.

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Nov 18 2008

Yang out

Published by japadamus under Bob Loblaw

It must be tough being Jerry Yang. The guy lost $30 billion for his investors after guiding Yahoo! away from a $33 per share deal from Microsoft.

Well, today he announced that he is stepping down from his position as CEO of Yahoo!, the company he co-founded.

What went wrong here? Well, clearly Yang wasn’t the right CEO for the company. Sure, he started Yahoo! and made the company huge. But at the end it seems like he had too much of a personal bias against Microsoft to do what was right for his shareholders. Today, the company’s stock closed at $10.63…more than $21 less than what Microsoft was offering.

What’s worse is that Yahoo! doesn’t really have a successor in mind. The company is really in the battle of it’s life with Google - which is a tough time to look for new leadership.

In any case, the company still has a big operating margin and will continue to crank out modest dough even in a recession. They’ve cut staff which should help to cut costs as well. But the company has really lost much of its shine during the past couple of years and it will take a long time for that to wear off.

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Nov 18 2008

Hold me closer Tiny Dancer

Published by japadamus under music

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Nov 17 2008

YouTube out, Hulu in

Published by japadamus under best of the internet

YouTube used to be the shit. I mean, there was a time when everything, from episodes of south park to hot girls dancing while barely clothed, could be found within seconds.

But now, YouTube seems like yesterday’s news. There are a ton of better video hosting sites on the net - most of which have hosting rules which are far more lenient than YouTube’s.

But content is what will win in the video space, and it seems like recently YouTube has faltered. Sure, they have signed a bunch of deals for music video, TV and movies, but it’s not really easy or convenient to hunt through videos and find what you want on YouTube.

Enter Hulu. The networks really are doing something right here. They accepted that people will inevitably shift to watching TV online, and they got on the bandwagon.

Hulu has tons of TV shows that are easy to find. And these shows are popular ones, like the Office - none of this indie artsy shit.

Sure, you do have to watch a few ads, but not as many as you would on regular TV. And, you could never watch TV shows at work so easily before Hulu.

Analysts are predicting that Hulu will catch up with YouTube in terms of advertising revenue next year - a huge blow for Google, who paid $1.65 billion for YouTube.

I have to say, unless I’m watching some short video clip or a blooper or something, I’m rarely on YouTube. And Hulu is great for watching one episode of a show, like, if you’re just trying it out.

If you’re not on Hulu yet give it a try. If anything, it will give you something to do while you’re eating lunch at your desk.

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Nov 16 2008

and Japa cries

Published by japadamus under best of the internet, music

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Nov 13 2008

Ala Moana, Ward Centers bankrupt?

Published by japadamus under Hawaii

Things are not looking good for General Growth Properties, the owner of Hawaii’s Ala Moana Shopping Center and Ward Centers. The company is having a tough time raising funds and has billions in debt to pay off in coming months.

It’s kind of insane to consider that Ala Moana could go bankrupt…I mean, everyone goes there. And Ala Moana is bigger now than ever and whenever I go there it has been packed with both locals and tourists.

I guess the constant building that has been going on at the centers have been expensive. Still, there’s little chance that the centers will close - it will probably at most just change hands. It’s a bad sign though as the economy worsens in the islands.

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Nov 13 2008

Google below $300

Published by japadamus under news

Less than a year ago Google crossed the $700 mark, and the company seemed on its way to break $800. Over the past several months, however, analysts haven’t been so big on the company’s prospects.

Today, the company crossed the $300 mark, closing at $291…the first time the company’s stock has closed so low since late 2005. It seems that with a recession creeping up online ad spending is expected to start falling rapidly.

Google’s market cap now lies around $91 billion…a pretty big fall from just a few months ago.

Still, I have a feeling that this is a great time to buy. It may take a few months for the stock to recover, but once things turn around ad spending will probably rebound.

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November 2008

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