Recent Posts  By   (Read times)

Personally I like elmos "elmo has mail", at least I can tell my phone apart from others lol that and my ringtone is actually a ring.

cgi.ebay.com/Nokia-6010-AT-T-/310295851800?pt=Cell_Phones&hash=item483f12f318

Fleabay has plenty for a buck or two plus postage. Pick one up and if you want you might be able to record it onto a new phone , no idea if you can use a data cable to pull the tone off the phone directly, probably not if its a proprietary one (i havent used a nokia in so long I cant remember), but I fell your pain, I hate trying to remember a song from a film.

Facebook sells targeted advertising.

Ebay is a marketplace that also owns paypal.

Amazon is also a marketplace but they also (quietly?) pioneered that cloud computing thing we all hear about If you don't follow 'tech' news you may not realise how intrusive and/or innovative these companies have become, especially amazon. If I mentioned AAWS or S3 or EC2 most people wouldn't have a clue what they did or their relationship to Amazon. Theyre great stories of a company innovating for its own need then commercialising those innovations. Amazon is a website, it runs on servers, it needs to be working to make money and it needs to work fast. They built a system where (in laymans terms) they had servers all over the world that could provide a fast a reliable, redundant service, resilient to local faults and issues. Part of this was how the 'thinking' was done by the machines and part on how the 'remembering' was done. They realised that they could make a shiny heap of coins selling this to others, they did and its turned into a huge industry. Also check out
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
go down and check out the websites and services sections near the bottom Amazon at least does pretty well!
Fleabay does pretty well also, theyre a story of the perfect storm. A great idea, well capitalised, well executed, well positioned and they 'owned the chain'. They swamped google with adverts, go search for any product and if its on ebay the ebay listing should show high up the rankings if not also in the sponsored ad's, they also own reviewing sites (where they get their reviews written for free), the place where you buy the stuffs and they payment system you buy it with so basically they get their coin from everyone and their income scales with costs. There is no seamonkeys economics involved. On the surface sure they are mostly just electronic mallmarts but both did well for good reasons.

Facebook has something a whole bunch of people want to use (at least for now, myspace was also popular once, many moons ago, before it became 'uncool'). The issue is in turning that into a pile of cash. Not just a little pile, but a scruge mcduck swimming pool of gold coins kind. I think amazon made just over a billion usd net income, and ebay around the 2bn mark last year, thats a pretty respectable income. That means in theory, using the same metrics facebook needs to be pulling in about 2.5-3bn of net income give or take.
Twitter is hugely popular, but has only recently managed to start making any kind of profit (and is doing ok from what figures have been leaked).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
The problem with offering a free service is you need to make the money somehow. Amazon makes a profit, they make it from the items they sell, they have no 'free users' taking up resources but making no money. Ebay makes money from the seller for the listings and the buyer if they use paypal. They have awesome business models Facebook makes nothing from adverts unless somebody clicks on an advert (like google in some respects, although googles edge is that people are looking for something when they visit whereas a FB user isn't in the same mindset) or from alternative revenue streams (similar to how twitter makes money from large companies, selling metrics and advanced services).
It's not that I cannot see FB making money, its just it seems that based on myspace, it is at risk of people going elsewhere and declining in popularity, and in having to support a huge number of users who may not make them any money. If you have a FB account would you pay for it? I suspect the answer would be no, do you tend to click on ad's on websites?
On the flipside I have seen quite a few photographers switch from google advertising to facebook as they could target their ads better.
It just seemed to me that this was a HUGE pile of money and part of it may have been investors wanting to buy into the 'popularity' at any cost, perhaps they missed the boat on investing in google / amazon / fleabay ?

I think your comment about air is spot on It will be interesting to see if / when they do an IPO what the market cap is when the shares aren't hugely restricted in availability.

Probably most important for those who have to leave scoots outside a locked garage but what do you use?

Right now locks and chains although if I pick up a more expensive scoot I will be installing a tracker as a minimum. Bike and scoot theft is rampant here, just checking craigslist and seeing the number advertised 'without papers' is crazy, some may have valid reasons but when I called when I was looking there were plenty of I'll meet you at the supermarket parking lot, bring cash, no papers type sellers which I obviously avoided!

Does anyone use lojack or similar? anything inventive ?

The roaches are fine, its the centipedes which hurt. They are mean arse creatures and the sting (they actually sting rather than bite as many people say) is roughly on a par with a stab wound pain wise. They also love to get you while asleep, usually on the traps or shoulder. At least theres virtually no snakes (the spiders and the centipedes ate them all). I've not seen a roach take anything alive (although I've seen plenty of ants take a roach) but I have seen a centipede take a mo'o (small gecko type thing) and a baby bird.

Tropical weather, it has its ups and downs, I wasn't rubbing it in when I mentioned them temps, I would genuinely love a few months of snow. Incessant tarmac melting heat gets old quickly! I was brought up in the snow and rain so this is my idea of hell, I would trade tomorrow for 4 months of snow. Not to mention 12 ft surf, great if you want to surf, soul destroying when you are trying to do a photo shoot in the water. I managed about 60 minutes swimming in it before I was totally exhausted. Not to mention the flash floods, 6 inches of rain in 90 minutes lol. trust me paradise is nice when you want to go to the beach, but living here (whilst I probably wouldn't chose to move) isn't quite the postcard it may seem lol Seriously, I left a hex key on my plastic socket set case in the sun for all of the 2 minutes it took me to undo 2 screws and burnt my hand picking it up. I burnt my legs on the tarmac and had tar literally sticking to me and this is in winter remember, and in a place that actually gets some cooling breeze.

85+ today, flash flood warnings and high surf warnings I would welcome a serious snow storm, I love them.

Lewis Hamilton from the motorsport where the wheel turns both ways F1 is starting up again soon, can't wait! Its been a long time since we have had 4-6 guys in cars all capable of winning. If anybody hasn't watched before its carried on Speed in the USA, set your tivos. It may take a little while to get used to it, but after the years of schumacher dominance its a great time to start watching. I should try watching nascar etc again.