When I added FilmLoop to the TechCrunch DeadPool last month based on rumors of mass layoffs, it was clear there was more to the story. The thirty person company had raised $11.5 million in capital and by any calculation should have still had at least $3 – $5 million left in the bank. They were trailing Slide, RockYou and Photobucket in their market, but had just launched a completely new platform that was getting good reviews. FilmLoop wasn’t dominating the market, but they were not on the ropes, either.
Toyota Memogate?
These issues pale in comparison to one problem that could make or break Toyota’s North American operations: their relationship with their hourly workers. In a confidential memo that accidentally ended up in workers’ hands, Seiichi Sudo, president of Engineering and Manufacturing in North America, discussed the cost of American labor and the steps they need to take to control those costs.
The memo, which was inadvertently stored on a shared computer drive, states the US auto industry pays some of the highest manufacturing wages in the world. It compares American wages to those in France and Japan (50 percent higher) and Mexico (500 percent higher). They project their American labor costs will increase by $900m over the next four years.
Ed Wallace on the upcoming truck wars.
Permanent Value: The Teachings of Warren Buffett
Well in 1962 I learned from Ben Graham how to assess businesses. He also had the cigar butt analogy for buying businesses…you can usually get one good puff out of it and it’s free. Berkshire made a lot of money after WWII (more than Pfizer and Merck) and then it steadily went downhill. Between 1955 and 1965 Berkshire went from 12 mills to 2 mills and they bought their own stock as mills closed. We bought 100,000 shares out of 1 million in 1962 at $7 3/8 and the company had $10-11/share in working capital…I knew I wouldn’t lose money because of the working capital. It was losing money but it was also liquefying assets by closing mills. Seabury Stanton was running Berkshire at the time and I went to go visit him. We had an agreement that Berkshire would tender $11-1/2 for my shares of the company. At this point, I could not buy any stock as I had inside information. A few weeks later I received a letter from Old Colony Trust containing a tender offer of $11-3/8. Early the following week, Seabury tendered the stock at 11 3/8. As result, I began buying more Berkshire. Other family members of Seabury Stanton sold their shares to me and I gained controlling interest in the company. The family members weren’t very happy with Seabury either really. We ran the mills until 1985. .
Google’s Arrogance in North Carolina: Learning from AT&T?
But it turns out that there was a lot more to the story. Google leaned hard on North Carolina lawmakers and officials, not just to get the fattest deal possible but to choke off the flow of information along the way.
According to documents obtained by The News & Observer of Raleigh, the company went beyond reasonable expectations of confidentiality to demand absolute secrecy while negotiations were under way, even asking participants to sign nondisclosure agreements; some legislators and local officials did so, but Department of Commerce officials did not. Google executive Rhett Weiss badgered Commerce Secretary Jim Fain about the state’s adherence to process, complaining, for example, when lawmakers wanted an estimate of the cost to North Carolina in lost tax revenue, and threatening to kill the whole thing if Google didn’t get its way.
Businesses need some measure of confidentiality when putting together this kind of transaction. Fair enough. But this is the people’s business, and Google’s high-handedness is an affront to the people of this state.
And then there’s that whole “Don’t be evil” thing. Google spokesman Barry Schnitt told me that the company’s negotiations with the state were “very standard.” If that’s the case, and this is standard operating procedure for the company, then something has gone wrong in Silicon Valley.
Barry Orton keeps up with AT&T’s Wisconsin Lobbying.
Yet another reason to use the excellent Clusty search engine.
Cheeseheads’ Taste of Chester
Frank Fitzpatrick pens a Philly view of UW basketball coach Bo Ryan (Ryan is from Philadelphia):
Ryan peddled the cards until he got the camera. Forty-nine years later, the big picture hasn’t changed much. He’s still fighting and selling relentlessly.
“You’ve got to sell,” he said, “because a lot of times you’re a perfect stranger trying to convince somebody to do something they might not want to do. If I wasn’t a coach, I’d probably be a salesman. I’ve got to have that competition.”
Now Ryan sells Badger basketball – to recruits, to his players, to boosters, to the media, to the nation. With that slick exterior abetted by street smarts, he has transformed Wisconsin, once an off-the-rack program, into one of the hottest items on college basketball’s shelf.
GPS Spying Case
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that police can place a GPS tracking unit on a suspect’s car without obtaining a search warrant. In US v Garcia (2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 2272), decided Feb. 2, Judge Richard Posner found that such a device was a mere “augmentation” of police officers’ natural ability to follow a car.
In the Garcia case, an information alerted police that Garcia used meth with her, said he intended to resume producing meth, and was taped on a security camera buying chemicals to make meth. The police found his car and attached a GPS tracking device. When they retrieved the device, they discovered that he had visited a large tract of land. They obtained consent from the owner to search the land and found a meth lab. As they were searching, Garcia drove up. They searched his car and found additional evidence against him.
RENEW Wisconsin’s newsletter online
This winter’s edition of the Wisconsin Renewable Quarterly, now posted online, includes the following articles:
RENEW and Clean Wisconsin Defend Wind Power Project;
We Energies Cops National Honors;
Don Wichert: RENEW Founder and Tireless Advocate;
How I Fell in Love with My Solar Dryer;
PSC Approves WE Wind Project;
Doyle Sets Plans to Expand Renewables.
Missouri Telecom Bill Tunes Out Customer Needs
The Missouri Senate is considering one of the best-written pieces of legislation to come before it in some time: Senate Bill 284, the Missouri Video Franchise Bill. It should be a good bill, considering how much money AT&T spent to write it.
The video franchise bill has something in it for every large telecommunications company: reducing public oversight, eliminating local control, cherry-picking high-profit customers and protection from prying public auditors. It would be wonderful – if it weren’t such a complete betrayal of the public trust.
SB 284’s most important feature is to strip local government of its authority to regulate companies that offer video services. Right now, local cable television companies receive their licenses to operate from the municipalities they serve. Cable TV companies get to use a city’s rights of way for running their lines. In return, local municipalities receive a franchise fee and are provided a few channels for local citizens and government to use, so-called PEG – for public, education and government access – channels. Until now, this arrangement seemed like a reasonable exchange for the huge benefit of accessing city rights of way.
Advocating DRM-Less Music
With this background, let’s now explore three different alternatives for the future.
The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music. It is a very competitive market, with major global companies making large investments to develop new music players and online music stores. Apple, Microsoft and Sony all compete with proprietary systems. Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods. This is the current state of affairs in the industry, and customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.
Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store. Is this true? Let’s look at the data for iPods and the iTunes store – they are the industry’s most popular products and we have accurate data for them. Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.
I hope the Hollywood types listen. Music should be very inexpensive ($0.05/track) and widely, widely used.
“Rights Managed Copy Machines”
Ricoh and Adobe are offering users the ability to manage risk at the point-of-capture. Paper documents are scanned at the Ricoh MFP where the security policy is applied. To ensure the information remains safe, the security policy remains with the document through its lifetime, whether it is transferred inside or outside the corporate firewall.
Wow. The Soviets denied ordinary citizens access to duplicating and copy machines….