The Galley Slave

Well, I’m back from Bangalore in one piece and am starting to get back into normal sleep patterns. It’s definitely hard to move from 85 and sunny every day to dreary, freezing Northern Virginia!
The trip was a success - I’ve got a good sized group of talented folks over there. This will be an interesting year in the sense of how we better integrate with the US based teams and mix in some transitional EU support. Definitely interesting times!

So, I’m back in Bangalore - cheating death twice every day on my way to and from work
A quick word about the trip itself. It’s no wonder that US airlines are going out of business. I had two legs, United and Lufthansa - and they could not have been more different. The food and service of Lufthansa were of a very high quality - United was depressingly poor.
The traffic in BNG is possibly even worse than my last trip (6 months ago). We saw an accident on the way in this morning - motorbike vs. auto rickshaw, that livened things up. Otherwise things are fine (although I seem to have caught a cold) - the team is doing well and we are expanding again.
More to come!

I’m heading to lovely Bangalore for about a week, so I should have some interesting pictures in a week or two. The flight sucks, but the weather on the other side is sooo much nicer than it is here now (DC area). Also, I’ll be visiting the troops in their brand new digs, so I’m looking forward to that, too.

See you on the other side!

Schaeffer’s Investment Research - Schaeffer’s Daily Market Blog: Breaking Option News, Commentary, & In-depth Analysis

RANT WARNING!

I don’t even know where to begin with bilge like this. I know I’m a homer, but the sheer ignorance displayed in this post is truly stupefying. Do any of these folks read monthly traffic numbers before wearing their incompetence on their sleeve? Look, I’m not sure that this is a great tie-up, but there’s clearly room for synergizing - perhaps even more so than with MS. For Gods’ sake, how about an intelligent assessment?

mediabistro.com: MobileContentToday

Well, here’s one scenario that I didn’t really consider as viable. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I don’t think Yahoo’s board is playing from a position of strength - never a good way to open negotiations.

$100 price drop on iPhones and iPods coming in the next two months | 9 to 5 Mac

This could be handy for me! My 20Gb iPod is approaching 3 years and is starting to “lose” songs. Although I would like video, I’m not sure that the Touch is the way I would go (at this stage). I would probably impulse buy way too many songs

Microsoft’s $80 billion (and growing) Yahoo Headache

With this rejection and the market fleeing for the door, it will definitely be interesting to see how MS responds. Unless I’m mistaken, they’ve already made their intentions known that they will pursue a hostile bid - something I’m not sure that Yang & Co. can survive.

Meanwhile, at AOL HQ we’re talking about quickly splitting the company in two (good luck) and seeing how the Platform A strategy looks a couple of quarters from now. As I was saying in an earlier post, this internet shake out is ugly.

Time Warner (TWX) Call: Bewkes Good, Outlook Poor - Silicon Alley Insider

I’m not a big Blodget fan, but his brutal honesty can be refreshing. He hits a lot of the AOL stuff on the head, anyway. I think the split is probably a precursor to something else - spinoff is unlikely in the current IPO environment, but sale or some other serious joint venture is a possibility.

Bush Unveils $3.1 Trillion Spending Plan - New York Times

Oh boy, if you’re an old school Republican, this has got to have you hopping mad. Almost half a trillion dollars in deficit spending for the next two years?! Whoever the next president is, I hope they hide the checkbook.

Amid Yahoo Turmoil, AOL Makes An Acquisition

It will be interesting to see how this fits in with AOL’s strategy. I was expecting some larger content purchases, but the year is young.