Weekend Miscellany

Whoa, somehow our harsh posts about Blogginstocks.com got a lot of attention.  To be honest, there was no intention to bash it so much -- we're not haters, and we hope they do very well.  There's no doubt that they'll get it together. 

One point.  We mentioned the problem of credibility, but one may ask what kind of credibility The Stalwart has.  In the beginning, we didn't even post our names -- you still don't know which one of us wrote each entry unless you subscribe our RSS feed.  So does this contradict our point about credibility?  Maybe.  But our original plan was just to link to folks like Om Malik, Aeroposte, and SheFinds.com, i.e. folks who know their industries that people on Wall St. should be reading.  If Bloggingstocks can do this it won't matter that their bloggers aren't experts, and they'll be valuable to both the average investor as well as (possibly) those on Wall St.

OK -- so now that we've had our Steve Rubel moment, let's talk about something of substance.

Today was sales tax free day in NYC, and it also happened to be the one day of the year that I want shopping in Manhattan.  Lucky me?  Perhaps, except that it was rather crowded, and I would have preferred to pay a nominal amount to avoid the crush.  Unfortunately, there's really no free lunch.  You gotta either pay the tax man or pay father time.  And when you waste your time, nobody gets this from you; it's just pure waste. 

This is the reason that lines and under-priced gas isn't preferable to market-priced gas, at least from an economic standpoint.  When you pay for gas in money, instead of time, someone at least gets that.  Here's a good explanation of this from Alex Tabarrok.

And speaking of being out shopping, I stopped in the SoHo Mac store today.  Not the makeup company, the computer company.  Whatever you say about them, they have an amazing business -- iPod hysteria hasn't died down at all, and people are willing to stand in line for :30 just to buy a new adapter.  Also checked out the new Macbook Pros (i.e., the Mac PC clones).  So has Apple given up their uniqueness by using Intel and allowing Windows?  Doesn't look like it, the computers are beautiful and have unique functionality.  Take for example that little camera built into each Macbook.  Apple had the ingenious idea of making the entire monitor flash to serve as a flash for the camera.  Can Dells do this?  Could Dell have done this?  Was the commoditization of the PC industry inevitable, it doesn't seem like it had to turn out this way.  Yes the guts are all the same now, and that's a good thing, but Apple is demonstrating that a computer isn't just a box, and a computer company doesn't have to just be a logistics company.

Comments

[carlo]

touche on gas :P

[angela]

I would like to think that good information has value and that it will revolutionize investment with people using low costs tools to implement intelligent strategies of various complexity.

But having looked at the groups asociated with yahoo stock displays I must also point out that there is an active, enthusiastic commuity of idiots, people who want bits and pieces of transient often, irrelevant information with no concern for accuracy.

AOL is well positioned to take this market.