Reading Time: < 1 minute eBay agreed to sell a majority stake of Skype to a consortium of private investors lead by Silver Lake Partners. (WSJ: EBay CEO: Skype Investors “Confident” of Work-Around Software, get it from Google if necessary). Silver lake is not new to me. Because they bought Seagate, and my former employer (hint: a major CAD/PLM software

Reading Time: 2 minutes VHS:blockbuster vs. DVD:Netflix This is the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) analogy I would use for movie rental companies Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) and Netflix (Nasdaq:NFLX). The popularity of VHS tape made the success of Blockbuster, as I read from Wiki, the first Blockbuster movie rental store was established in Dallas in 1985 (24 years ago). By similar

Reading Time: 2 minutes Some thoughts after reading Wang Jiansuo’s Craziness of Real Estate Market. 1) Fundamental: demand, new household forming, and demand to live better (more space). In the US (according to Buffett) 1.3 million household forms every year, while in the booming years they are building 2 millions houses per year. I don’t have China’s number. Note

Reading Time: 2 minutes Gainskeeper ™ is a little program keeps tracks of stock cost basis, and the profit and loss. Scottrade provides this service to its customers. This program is not without problems (for me), such as mess up positions and long/short term profit/loss. It seems to me the program improved quite a bit lately, or it could

Reading Time: 3 minutes 炒房揭秘内幕(translation by Google translate below). Let me summarize because Google translate did not do a good job. The guy was in pawn business. He used little own money to buy a house (he borrowed the money from bank). When the one year loan is due, he was very worried because his money is stuck in

Reading Time: 8 minutes (Update 16Sept09) Brean Murry is out with a selling rating with Emdeon (source: StreetInsider). Quote: While investors may be focusing on the potential benefit from healthcare reform, we view the benefit as a potential one-time boost to the growth rate in claims that will revert back to the low-single digits after the anniversary of enrollment…We

Reading Time: < 1 minute Healthcare (excuse me, Health Insurance) reform debate has heated up lately, esp. in those contentious townhall meetings. One hot issue in debate is the Public Option (not the stock option, but rather a public choice for general public to buy). It seems to me this is losing steam recently, because of a mistake made by

Reading Time: 2 minutes I got all the fun of driving in Boston traffic during rush hour. It took me more than an hour driving from Waltham to Boston Logan, and my Garmin 755T GPS helped this time. One thing I noticed in Boston is driving is a lot more hectic than in the River city. People won’t yield

Reading Time: < 1 minute I am using a Garmin 755T GPS to nagivate Boston. This is my 3rd trip using GPS. The first one was Chicago trip before July 4th. Pros Recalculating when I took the wrong road; Cons Dependency on GPS, so I will not read maps in the future? One more thing to pay attention besides road

Reading Time: 2 minutes Went to Harvard Square this evening, took some pictures (the quality is not as great as I liked, but you know it’s Harvard). (Harvard Theater) (Harvard Square, Sumner’s statue)