Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

You never knew Flipmode records did news, did you? Busta Rhymes reports in his own videocast about a hopping party that was interrupted by a crashing Ferrari, complete with jabs at the police on the scene. “That s[tuff] is crazy:”

Please note that this documentary is not for children whose parents are concerned about them hearing foul language. Busta Rhymes is hood, and he swears like a sweating donkey. He does have that nice song with Mariah Carey, though!!

I’m filing this away for tomorrow:

Win a Trip with Nick Kristof

I’m hoping that you’ll be changed when you see a boy dying of malaria because his parents couldn’t afford a $5 mosquito net, or when you talk to a smart young girl who is at the top of her class but is forced to drop out of school because she can’t afford a school uniform. I’m not saying you’ll turn into an aid worker — but I’m hoping you’ll remember how much of the world lives and carry that memory through your life and let it affect your work and priorities. I began backpacking through Africa and Asia when I was in university, and the experiences changed me as I hope this trip will change you.

I’ve never been outside of North America except for a brief NAFTA visa run to the Mexico border a couple times when I used to live in Phoenix and before my greencard came. I’ve never pumped gas, worked theatre popcorn, or mopped floors, let alone done hard, bluecollar labour. My skill with computers has mostly isolated me from the hard, gritty parts of life. Even our American bums make enough to eat every day–where do I go on this continent to find the truly poor? I’ve travelled extensively and never seen anything shocking enough to change my life. Perhaps travelling to a third-world developing nation would let me experience life’s struggle instead the American dream.

It seems like the folder icons for bloglines have all been updated and blue’d:

I wonder if this is sign of more interface improvements to come…

Although profit doubled in q4, they still missed their projected earnings by a large margin. Maybe now the share price will start to reflect actual worth of the company, instead of VC wet dreams…

There is a good discussion going on over at Digg, where Anon writes:

I’m trademarking the term “Google Bubble” right now. Maybe Wall Street is finally seeing that the only thing they’ve done is a sparce set of average (or less) quality releases. I can’t believe this didn’t happen sooner, like when they unveiled the amazing “Google Pack” lol

Another digg’er is making some money short selling the stock:

I shorted this at $439 earlier today, before the earnings. Shorted right into that nice runup we saw before Greenspan spoke. I would be VERY careful about buying this in the morning. Although there is a chance this stock will rebound some, this is a “dead cat bounce” as we call it. There is a lot more to come off the share price, and I am not convering my short at this point. I love this company, but their market valuation is way out of whack.

Seagate just bought Maxtor for 1.9B. In their press release, they write:

“Seagate is excited about the opportunity to achieve greater scale, reduce supply chain costs, and leverage combined R&D efforts across a broader product set. With the increased scale of the combined company, we can reduce overall product costs and provide more innovative products at more competitive prices,” said Bill Watkins, Seagate CEO. “We believe this is a strategic combination that will provide value for our shareholders as well as benefits for our customers.”

Personally, the merger is a good thing, although the relative quality of their products may cause future problems in integrating the two. Seagate, for example, offers typically 5 year warranties with an excellent high-end reputation on its disks, while Maxtor hard drives usually are insured for a single year and have a “may break” commodity reputation.

Seagate stock (STX) is up about 2% at time of writing, Maxtor (MXO) is up 51%.