Microsoft Versus Apple

Microsoft's stock price has been stagnant for years. This is a bummer, especially for employees of Microsoft. Back in the old days, employees would eventually gain wealth by obtaining stock options coupled with a rising stock price. Stock splits would go hand in hand with a continually rising Microsoft stock price. This is no more.

Apple is the hot company in town. Their stock price is on the rise. Their market capitalization has surpassed Microsoft. This is most surprising as they were in trouble financially in the past. The market cap is not to say that Apple makes money more than Microsoft. This also does not mean that they do more sales than Microsoft. It just means that investors predict that Apple is going to be worth more in the future. Why is this so?

In the past, Apple was a computer system company. They still sell Mac computers. However their rising stock comes from profits in a number of non-computer electronics such as music players and selling the music that goes with them. Then there is the iPhone phenomenon. I keep hearing that cell phones are the future. But are Apple iPhones a future cash cow? I am not sure. Steve Jobs is on a roll. Can Microsoft turn the tide and innovate on their own? It might be that copying other peoples' ideas is no longer favored in the investor community.

Poor User Interface

I found this site that posts good deals. Right now I am trying it out. One deal was that you could get a free MP3 player by submitting a comment on FaceBook. That sounded good to me.

Now I actually have a FaceBook account for these rare circumstances where I need to log into it. Here is the problem with this contest. It was mind boggling on how to actually post the comment.

There was a link to comment. But when I clicked It, I had to log in. After logging in, the comment link disappeared. Not sure if this was a problem with the sponsor, or with FaceBook itself.

Eventually I clear all my browser cookies, kept clicking all over randomly, and entered a comment. If they did not have a carrot (the free MP3 player), this would have been an absolute fail. It still is a failure in my book. How can this user interface suck so bad?

Eye Candy

I read a blog post about this great hack to make walkie talkies be texting devices. The dude had a bunch of AdSense ads up on his sites. I scrolled through to see if there was any ads that might be interesting. Only one had that ad copy that made me click. It asked if I wanted to be ripped. You bet I do.

At first I was disappointed with the landing page the ad took me to. I was expecting to see some dudes with exposed six packs. Nope. I found some non-famous guy posing as a basketball player. Weak. I could not tell if he was ripped or not.

Luckily a video of a hot blond chick appeared in the margin. She had a squeaky but sexy voice too. This helped me stay long enough on the page to scroll down. That's where I found pictures of ripped guys. But come on. These images should have been places above the fold.

Let's cut to the chase. Here was the proposition. I could get a free sample. However I would have to pay five bucks for shipping. I have heard about free sample scams before where you get placed on a subscription of non-free product. There are worse free sample scams out there as well. I did not want to deal with such a potential scam. So sorry blondie. I am going to have to pass.