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That helps a lot, Capn. Very good explanation - I appreciate your reply!
SB
Hi, Mr. Capn.
Could you provide any info about what it takes to integrate a program such as SpoozToolz with someone else's API. I have heard about this process quite a bit, but I am wondering about how hard and time consuming it is, and what problems might be encountered in the process.
TIA!
SB
Lots of good points here, IW.
I don't think Spooz revealed exactly when the deal was signed. It could have been before the PR was posted on the Spooz Web site (since removed).
Also, I wonder how Spooz has been covering costs since we haven't seen any increase in AS for a long time now, and it is pretty close to being maxed out.
SB
Thanks, nicehit. Good find!
Here's a link to the article that nicehit posted.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/2/bloomberg_lp_seeing_weakness__slowing_hiring
The author of the post, Henry Blodget, is well known as a business journalist.
I though this was an interesting article considering the times Spooz finds itself in.
10 Ways the Financial Meltdown Impacts Tech
by: Trade Radar Operator
Can the problems impacting the financial sector impact technology companies? You bet they can!
We know there is a credit crunch and that the economy is slowing. This is translating into falling revenues and a drop in new orders. Tech company management is hunkering down. So are consumers. IT budgets are stagnant or falling and cost cutting will be the order of the day. Below we look at some specific ways that the tech sector will be reacting to this situation.
Surprisingly, there are some impacts that may turn out to be net positive for certain tech companies. As expected, though, there are also some seriously negative impacts.
Positive Impacts
1. Increase in cloud computing - Companies may look to avoid buying data center equipment and will instead look for a "pay-as-you-go" model. Beneficiaries Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), eventually Microsoft (MSFT)
2. Increase in usage of open source products - Generally cheaper to acquire and implement than the licensed products from vendors like Microsoft and Oracle (ORCL), we may see an increase in the adoption rate of Linux operating systems, Apache web server software, Google Docs ... Beneficiaries could be Red Hat (RHT), Google or Citrix (CTXS) who now owns open source virtualization vendor XenSource
3. Industry Consolidation - Those companies with money will acquire companies with good technology who are suffering due to this crisis. With financing difficult and expensive, those companies sitting on plenty of cash will be able to out-maneuver their competitors. Think of Oracle and Microsoft scooping up more software companies on the cheap. Intel (INTC) and IBM also have the heft to be players here.
4. Integration - Consolidation among tech companies and in the financial sector will increase the need for system integration services and software. This could benefit big consulting companies like Accenture (ACN) and the HP/EDS (HPQ) combination, for example. Also some of the software companies specializing in products that tie systems together like Informatica (INFA) and Pervasive Software (PVSW).
5. Cost cutting is in - Look for more emphasis on virtualization in an effort to reduce data center costs. Beneficiaries are VMWare (VMW), Citrix.
6. Investing - Angel investors and venture capital firms will have more opportunities to invest in up-and-coming young companies as these entrepreneurs are turned down for bank financing.
7. Software-as-a-service (SAAS) may become more attractive. With this model, the initial investment to get up and running on a particular software application tends to be much less than it would be if a company were purchasing and installing the full licensed application in their own data center. Look for Salesforce.com (CRM) and Concur (CNQR) to maintain leadership positions through this downturn (if not high stock prices) and perhaps even NetSuite (N) will at least hold its own.
Negative Impacts
8. Hardware spending delayed - Expect server sales to decrease as businesses put off spending on new equipment and focus on consolidating servers through virtualization. Who gets hurt: Sun (JAVA), HP (HPQ), Dell (DELL), maybe IBM. Big telecom suppliers are feeling the pressure in their sector: Nortel (NT), Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) reporting losses though Cisco (CSCO) seems relatively solid at this point. And with the consolidation mentioned above, it is quite possible redundant systems will be decommissioned, leaving surplus hardware and further reducing demand.
9. Consumers cut back - Worried consumers may decide they can do without the latest gadgets. This will hurt the semiconductor stocks as more than half of all semiconductors find their way into consumer electronics. The semiconductor equipment stocks, currently deep in the doldrums, will find their bear streak extended. High-flying gadget stocks like Apple (AAPL) and Blackberry producer Research in Motion (RIMM) may likewise see their growth curtailed. Who really needs a new TV? Makers of LCD panels for TVs are already seeing growth slow - think Corning (GLW).
10. The weak get weaker - Financing is something all companies need whether it is for growth, carrying inventory or making payroll. With lending tight, credit lines being reduced and banks reeling, tech companies won't be the only ones feeling the effects of this credit crunch. But for those tech companies teetering on the edge, this kind of environment could be enough to push them into bankruptcy or into the arms of a suitor. Think of AMD (AMD) and Micron Technology (MU), both reporting big losses, seeing their stocks crushed and facing an uncertain future. Where do they go from here?
In summary, today's environment will provide opportunities for some companies and serious challenges for others. As tech investors, the 10 factors listed here should be kept in mind as we tiptoe through this bear market minefield.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/98431-10-ways-the-financial-meltdown-impacts-tech
I wonder if the passage of the financial rescue package will have any impact on when we hear more news from Spooz.
Thanks very much for the snippets of information, IW.
Always good to hear from you.
SB
New to me, Zoey. Thanks for posting.
Thanks, Allie. Without Paul's explanation you have posted here, there would be lots of questions!
Songbird
Yes Birdito. Q3 Financials should be expected in mid-November. I wonder what we'll see. The recent update didn't say anything about revenues, but there is some kind of contract in place.
GM, Birdito. This announcement may have been as far as Bloomberg would allow Spooz to go in letting shareholders know what was going on. I'm sure Paul is anxious to inform shareholders, and I'm glad we got at least this much information. Much better than not knowing anything.
SB
I am pretty sure that Spooz would have run the PR on the web site by Bloomberg before they posted it.
Hi, Curly. Bloomberg is a private company, so no ticker symbol.
GM, Allie. At this point it looks like Spooz may have this news on their web site out of consideration to the shareholders, many of whom have been anxious to learn about what has been going on at the company.
At this point, it is not clear when, or if at all, Bloomberg will PR the Spoozberg partnership. Until they do, the market at large will only learn about this via word of mouth from people who have been following Spooz closely.
'I've got to have a Bloomberg'
(Exerpt from Fortune article about the Bloomberg product)
The mountains of information on a Bloomberg, and the functions that allow the data to be usefully analyzed, are both the service's glory and its occasional burden. One Manhattan value investor said recently he'd removed the Bloomberg from his desk because he was spending too much time on it. Some technical fumblers and old-school moguls also find the sheer size of the Bloomberg menu daunting.
Michael Steinhardt, the hedge fund pioneer, said recently that he has a Bloomberg on his desk but doesn't know how to use it. The retired chairman of Citigroup, Sandy Weill, says he uses his but wouldn't dare stray from the pages that show the price of Citi stock and changes in the major indexes, for fear he could never get back to them. (Another financial notable, Warren Buffett, does not have a Bloomberg on his desk, though a member of his staff uses one gratefully.)
To be sure, if you're willing to learn, training classes are freely given and hordes of Bloomberg customer-service people will "smother you with love" - that's how Lex Fenwick puts it. You could tax them with questions 24/7, and they would politely pass you around the world's time zones, from one help desk to another, normally talking or writing to you in your own language, even if that's Urdu.
As for Bloomberg prices, they have no direct connection to the mass of content the company has added over the years - they just go up periodically. Not by a bundle, either, since it is pretty clear that Bloomberg does not see itself as blessed with price elasticity. Late last year, the company raised rates roughly 5 percent, as it has done about every two years in the recent past.
Here are the current particulars: When a customer buys a standard Bloomberg Professional subscription he enters into a two-year contract, paying quarterly in advance. If the customer has just one Bloomberg, the rate is $1,800 per month. If he has multiple Bloombergs, which is overwhelmingly the case, the charge is $1,500 for each. Should the customer want Bloomberg to, for example, effect equity trades or supply flat-panel screens, there are additional charges; real-time stock prices are among the other items that cost extra.
An unusual element of this pricing structure - and a pillar of the business model - is that Bloomberg absolutely will not provide volume discounts. The monthly price if you have two Bloombergs is $1,500 for each; the price if you have 2,000 Bloombergs is $1,500 each. Neither can you buy only a portion of Bloomberg's data. It's the whole megillah or nothing.
Big news at Dow Jones
In contrast, Reuters and Thomson Financial are much more flexible about both price and what they will sell. Reuters actually has more terminals installed than Bloomberg but doesn't come close to getting as much in revenues out of each one.
Talk to a large number of Bloomberg customers, and you will find some who don't know what a subscription costs and others who think the price steep, to the point that they contemplate having their Bloombergs removed. In between, there are people who know precisely what they are paying and find the product worth it. The technical expert at a respected money-management firm recently called Bloomberg "an essential component of our business process" and went on to give his view of the world: "There are really two types of market-data users out there - the ones who have a Bloomberg and the ones who wish their firm would spring for one."
There are funny echoes of that opinion in a recent experience of Paul Darrah, an architect who oversaw the construction of Bloomberg's new Manhattan headquarters, then last year took a new job as head of real estate at Lehman Brothers. Darrah recalls being introduced early on to a Lehman executive who, hearing where Darrah had come from, tore into him about Bloomberg, gathering steam as he talked.
"It's like drugs," railed the executive, "like selling heroin, and they get you hooked, and they screw around with cables under your desks, and they keep selling ... All the traders are out there saying, 'I've got to have a Bloomberg, I've got to ... ' It's like crack cocaine, because everyone has to have it, right?" He stopped and pinned Darrah with a fierce look: "I'll bet you're a spy. They put you in here, didn't they?" It took a while, says Darrah, but finally the executive cooled down and allowed, "It's a brilliant product."
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/8404302/index3.htm
A great achievement for Spooz. Obviously this is a great third party verification of the quality of Spooz products.
I found this article about Bloomberg which contains a lot of interesting information about the company and its products.
Bloomberg's Money Machine
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/8404302/index.htm
Thanks, MC. About 50 mil traded in the last 15 minutes.
Thanks for pointing that out, Birdito. From that answer, it appears that no dilution is allowed during the uplisting process.
I'm sure you are right about selling products being the priorit at present. However, if they do enough funds to self-sustain though sales - and don't have to dilute any more - then an uplist might be on the table, IMO.
Looks like it is a brand new ETF that was just started on Thursday. Today may have been the first day it traded.
Hi, Milo3. No problem. I check it once in a while. Actually, it is the AS that hasn't increased since June. The OS hasn't increased since Aug 1, according to reports from the TA. (Latest report was on Monday)
Spooz must need funds to keep operating, but it doesn't seem that they have been diluting to raise money lately. Makes me wonder where funds are coming from.
Here is a link for people to check for Spooz filings with the Nevada Secretary of state.
The AS has not increased since June 26, and the OS has been holding steady since Aug 1st (as of the last report from the TA on Monday)
https://esos.state.nv.us/SOSServices/AnonymousAccess/CorpSearch/corpActions.aspx?lx8nvq=zQzOVoNHbqLvNhFmqPsPLA%253d%253d&CorpName=SPOOZ%2c+INC
MC, you have to respect the tenacity of the company. They have been working on their programs for years now, and there have been bumps and setbacks along the way. I sense that Paul has had a vision of what he wants to accomplish, and as far as I can tell he has never contemplated giving up. Maybe all the years of hard work and preparation are going to pay off at long last.
Hi, MC. It has been a little less calm the past few days. There were a few days recently where we were perfectly calm at .0001.
You think the seas could get rougher soon?
Thanks, Jack. That's 45 days without a change in the AS or OS.
And no R/S.
I would guess they have to have funds to keep functioning - and they haven't been raising them through dilution lately.
With no news it is really hard to know what is causing the buying at this volume. Possibly people expecting good news, and not wanting to wait beyond the day to get in. We did get a buy at .0006 today which registered after hours - and the tape says that at the time of the after hours buy, the bid had moved to .0004.
I just did a quick calculation and approximately 80 million shares were traded in the last 10 minutes of trading today.
Looking at the tape, there were lots of buys in the last two minutes at 0.0004 - and one buy for 1 million shares at 0.0006 at 16:00:50 p.m.
Thanks, Allie! Good to get the explanation. :)
It would be nice to hear more of what has been going on at Spooz - here's hoping Zoey's prediction comes to pass!
Thanks, Allie, for passing on the clarification.
Hi, MC,
I realize that there is a connection between the companies (Spooz and 141), I was just wondering if 141 Capital would be involved in the reorganization which Spooz mentioned in the PR that GP posted. It seemed that the reorganization involved Spooz's wholly owned subsidiaries mentioned in the PR. I think three have been mentioned: Spooz Technologies, Spooz Trading Technologies and Spooz Europe.
I would really interested to get more details about the reorganization. As things stand now we don't have much information. I would be surprised if 141 was part of it, because it seems like Spooz made such an effort to get an independent trading company established.
I look forward to learning more.
Songbird
Hi, GP.
I realize that Paul is an officer of 141, but I hadn't considered 141 to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Spooz, like Spooz Technologies is.
141 has its own symbol, and appears to be a stand-alone company which I assumes licenses SpoozToolz to carry out its trading operations.
Just not sure it would be affected by a Spooz reorganization. I could be wrong, though.
Songbird
Yes, Gbathat, although the share price has tanked, as far as I can tell, the company is the same and perhaps stronger with the addition of new, talented employees - and hopefully stronger products
I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised to see the decline with the increase in AS and OS, and practically no revenues.
However, things could turn around quickly if strong sales and accompanying revenues are realized.
The fact that the OS and AS has been stable for over a month, and no R/S has taken place could be an indication of what is going on.
Time will tell.
All IMO,
Songbird
On the OQ web site it says:
System Requirements
You need a subscription to an online trading platform to use Omniquant. Currently, integration is available for:
Townsend Analytics’ RealTick Pro with the API activated. (Contact Townsend Analytics at (800) 997-9630 for information on subscription options.)
You will also need:
A Microsoft Windows system with at least 256 Mb memory and a 1Ghz processor
Microsoft Excel 2002 or above
Download the sample trial
Download and try Omniquant for 30 days.
Omniquant 1.0 will be available for download in June 2006. Check back at that time.
http://www.omniquant.com/downloads.html
RealTick Pro is available for $200 per month from Townsend
Catani, I think if you take a careful look at the financials you will see that in the first half of 2008 there has only been around $10,000 of deferred salaries and that took place in the first quarter. See my posts from yesterday for the details.
GM, Georgie. I noticed that the amount of deferred salaries owed to employees has not increased since the 1st quarter report.
The number is in both the 1st and 2nd quarter financials is $789,907 of which all but $88,365 is owed to officers and stockholders of the company.
So, it looks like during the second quarter, everyone got paid their full salaries.
Edit: In the 2007 year end statement, the amount of deferred salaries due to employees was $778,657.
Thanks for doing the math, mtncabin. Perceptive observations, IMO.
Hi, Stockguy - some have been expecting a R/S or an increase in the A/S for some time now. We haven't seen any change for over a month now, and it would seem that Spooz has met its last payroll without a change in the share structure.
Not sure what it means - but one possible explanation is that revenues have started coming in.
Until we hear news, we won't know for sure.