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Rabble Rousing Random Ramblings by S Jagadish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
The power of the internet, and Google in particular
Although I've been online for over 15 years now, I continue to find the power of the internet fascinating.
I'm fairly sure that rumours have impacted the market valuation of companies in the past, well before the internet became ubiquitous. But now, the reality is that news goes around that much faster. It isn't inconceivable that a company's stock price dips by 10% (or more!) in a span of a few minutes after rumours of job cuts, M & A, bankruptcy or the exit of marquee names hit the airwaves.
The worry though is that in the matter of 2-3 weeks, there have been two such instances.
On Sep 8, based on a crawl of the 'Sun-Sentinel' newspaper website, Google News started showing a story that UAL was filing for bankruptcy as the top news search result for that company. Immediately, the stock price took a battering, reaching a low of $3, and over 54 million shares were dumped (compared to a share price around $11-$12 and a daily trading volume of 11 million shares). It was then subsequently revealed that a combination of factors (low traffic volume resulting in a story accessed a couple of times showing up on a 'Popular stories' section at the #1 slot, the story not having a dateline, Google's indexing service unable to place a story as not being related to a current event and business press reporters not bothering to verify if the story was still current) had resulted in the error.
Last week (Oct 3), a false report on CNN's citizen journalism website (iReport) that Steve Jobs was being rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack was picked up by several agencies. Once again, the result was predictable, and disastrous. Apple's stock price dipped to $97 and over 80 million shares were sold (compared to 30-40 million on a normal day).
Does this mean news reporting (online and offline) needs to be regulated more? Perhaps. But, in my opinion, the fault rests with those investors or agents who did not verify the story. If you've put in so much money in a company's shares, the least you'd want to do is to verify a rumour!
Labels: apple, google, internet, rumour, united airlines
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No, I'm not referring to Apple changing its name from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc.
I'm talking about what Apple will call it's iPhone in the light of Cisco's trademark infringement suit over the name.
Maybe they'll call it 'iHateTrademarks'.
But forget the name: Get astounded by the beauty of it all!
On a related note, if Apple does come out with a robot (not entirely unlikely), will they call it iRobot? But hang on, that's gone too!
Previous posts about Apple: 10 years that changed the world, top 100 gadgets, Brand of the Year, Mac Mini, iMac G5, OS X and 20th anniversary of the Mac.
Labels: apple, cisco, iPhone, iPod, lawsuit, trademark
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Wired Magazine: Ten years that changed the world
The next issue of Wired Magazine focusses on the decade since the Netscape IPO which revolutionized the way people looked at the internet. Obviously the internet, and the web, became a lot more ubiquitous as the years rolled on.
The issue features a virtual who's who of the internet age. There're the usual suspects, Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Shawn Fanning (Napster), Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Page & Sergei Brin (Google), etc.
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The top 100 gadgets of all time
Mobile PC Magazine reveals its top 100 gadgets.
The Rubik Cube is placed a lowly 89, the abacus at 60, the Newton at 39, the JVC Camcorder at 37, the telephone at 23, the Swiss army knife at 20, the IBM ThinkPad at 19, the iPod at 12, the Motorola Startac at 4, the Sony Walkman at 3 ... the Apple PowerBook is the best gadget of all time!
Of course, I obviously dont agree with many of the selections. I'd think the #1 slot should be taken up by a gadget which has changed the way people work and live. I'd put the telephone at that slot.
Labels: apple
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Al-Jazeera a bigger global brand than Coca Cola
The 2004 Readers’ Choice Awards for the brand of the year has Apple coming in first with Google second. The surprise element though is Al-Jazeera which is in the top five and ahead of the likes of Coca Cola and Nokia.
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Last year they hit the industry with the iMac. Now, Apple has revealed the breathtakingly miniscule Mac mini, starting at US$ 499. Read more at Apple's Mac mini site and at CNet's coverage of MacWorld.
This is how it looks
Labels: apple
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Apple continues to amaze with their amazing design. Check out the new iMac G5 and wonder where did all the hardware go? The iMac in pictures.
Labels: apple
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Steve Jobs announced the new version of Mac OS X at the Apple Developer Conference. The OS is called Tiger and boasts a superior search mechanism to help users look for information on their computers easily.
Labels: apple
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Link of the day
Monday seems to be a good day to find new stuff on the web.
The USA's military budget increase of $48 million is larger than the annual military budget of any other country!
The 20 Macs that mattered most according to Wired, during the 20th anniversary after the first Apple Mac came out.
Doug Engelbart, the inventor of the device we now call the mouse on what it felt like to launch the point-and-click revolution 15 years before the Mac. Oh, and he also did some work on videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration and digital text editing.
The Worldwatch Institute's magazine which says that while annual ice cream consumption in Europe last year was $11 billion, clean drinking water for the entire planet could have been provided by spending $10 billion. Rather revealing! Madras denizens would no doubt argue that as little as .5% of that amount (Rs. 23 crores approx) would solve a significant portion of their water problems.
NB: Free registration required to access some content on the Worldwatch site
On the occasion of Tintin's 75th birthday, the BBC on his enduring appeal.
Politics
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on CBS' 60 minutes programme talks about the lack of democracy in US cabinet meetings on the war on terror.
Labels: apple
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Some of the links may now be broken/not take you to the expected report since the original content providers may have archived/removed the contents.
All opinions expressed are mine alone. My employers (past, present or future) are in no way connected to the opinions expressed here.
All pictures, photographs used are copyrights of the original owners. I do not intend to infringe on any copyright.
Pictures and photographs are used here to merely accentuate and enhance the content value to the readers.
