I have been following up on Mr. Pavlina for sometime. I particulary appreciate his relentless amount of work he puts. Pretty neat fellow. Here his 5 laws to fight off procrastinating:  read more »

Yahoo! today announced the start of the (yet another) latest strategy to disrupt Google: Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS). Ok, the idea is neat, Yahoo would allow you to use their underlying technology and are hoping for the long tail effect to increase dramaticaly the revenue ads. The long tail, The long tail, The long tail. This is the strategy that is shaping the internet!

Neat idea, I wonder about it is going to pick up. Google please buy Yahoo! before they get ruined from Microsoft. 

Global markets are officialy in bear markets thanks to a myriad of negative events. Soaring oil and food prices, credit crunch in the US and to a lesser extent Europe,...etc

This weeks bloodshed hit the venerable Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae the hardest. Their stocks are down almost 75% off their highs. Before, you think of profiteering from their decline or bet on a government (likely) bailout, consider the following.  read more »

Three news of private equity deals were annouced today that involved Arab states' Wealth Funds. That excess wealth is of course a result of $2 extra billion a day Arab states are making. Simple math suggest that the extra amount represents almost $750 Bn a year. If oil reaches $200 / barrel, that would turn the extra gains into closer to $ 1.250 Trillion! Anyhow, the following are the deals reported in WSJ's Deals: 

Dow Chemical: The chemical maker agreed to buy coatings and electronic-materials company Rohm and Haas in an all-cash deal valued at $15.3 billion, signaling a possible consolidation wave in the chemicals industry. Dow is offering a price of $78 a share, a 74% premium on the $44.83 that Rohm and Haas closed at on Wednesday. Berkshire Hathaway and the Kuwaiti Investment Authority are investing in the deal.   read more »

HC Research reported today that:

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif announced the beginning of the implementation of the new energy prices, which will be applicable for energy intensive industries (cement,fertilizers, petrochemicals, and steel). New natural gas prices are set at USD3 per MBTU for energy intensive industries. Other industries will witness an increase in natural gas prices from USD1.25 per MBTU to USD2.65 per mbtu over three years with an increase of USD0.46 per MBTU per year.  (Al Masry Al Yom)

 Although the gap between energy prices in Egypt and the rest of the world remains a large one (It is about $14 mBTU in Spain, $22 mBTU in Japan), but this is a step in the right direction. The government needs to set the stage for industry growth through subsidies to remain competitive but it has to be relatively close to not waste our wealth.

Firefox has finally beaten a world record of most downloads in 24 hours. This is significant because, Firefox is managed by the Mozilla foundation, an NFP organization versus the billions that Microsoft spends on IE and still achieved a 20% market share. Second, Firefox is an open source application and yet it is more secure, better built, better managed then IE. This should put down to rest that if the code is available (open) it automatically means that it is less secure. It is weird how MSFT's IE is more vulnerable to attacks while being closed.

Bravo Mozilla and bravo AOL TimeWarner for allowing the browser to be open source. Yes, it makes commercial sense :-)