iPhone At Walmart

Finally, the iPhone has made its appearance at Walmart - a little late to take full advantage of Christmas shopping.

What I find really hilarious is the price - after all the breathless rumors about the iPhone price getting slashed for Walmart's sake, it turns out the discount is 1%.  For the 8 GB phone, that means a $2 discount.  For the 16 GB phone, thats a $3 discount.

Hahahahaha.  Who would put up with the lines at Walmart for that discount?  I'll tell you who - people who were shopping at Walmart to begin with. 

Advantage Walmart - it gets to sell the iPhone, right next to the Google-phone.  And gets bragging rights about the lowest price for an iPhone

Advantage Apple - the discount doesn't even register, and other retailers won't care enough to quarrel with Steve and co.  At the same time, this is another 2k - 3k outlets to sell the iPhone, which is great.

Advantage the Consumer? - Seems rumors of a price decrease are still around;  and the iPhone has a fat enough (and growing) profit margin to allow for a nice price drop in the near future.

Bushism Of The Week

Old G-dub is hilarious.  I'll post up my favorite Bushism each week - something that never fails to make me laugh.

For this week, how about a relatively recent statement?  This is from May 2008....

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this oval office"

 

Uhhh..... true?  Not really, I think we all know about the bad job he's done.... or do we?  Maybe there's a lot more hidden out there!

Who's A Cash Cow? More Layoffs At LifeScan

Can you spell C-A-S-H C-O-W?  J&J spells it L-I-F-E-S-C-A-N.

I had covered LifeScan's last layoffs in October.  Seems there was more to come. 

Another 10% of the company, specially in the US division in Milpitas, is being shown the exit door, including the entire Business Development department.

LifeScan is doing well compared to the rest of the Blood Glucose Meters companies, specially in the US.  They are a $2 Billion company with manufacturing and operations in Milpitas (California),  Inverness (Scotland - at the tip of Loch Ness),  Mayaguez (Puerto Rico), and marketing and sales arms around the world.  And now, they are considered ripe for rationalization.

This makes sense, if you think of LifeScan as a cash cow.  J&J can continue to reap the profits from R&D mostly done 5 - 10 years earlier  (not talking about incremental changes to the product, of course),  as well as Business Development deals put in place as early as 10 years ago - including one that is supposed to be the product of the near future, out of Australia. 

With this in mind, only functions necessary to continue operations satisfactorily are needed; the rest can either be consolidated within J&J headquarters,  or gotten rid of altogether. 

The Business Development team has some outstanding people.  I'm sorry they need to look for new opportunities in this job environment.

Tuesday Workout

Another light workout on cardio today, but made up a bit with weights.

Cardio - Elliptical:  84 minutes (1 hr 24 minutes),  870 calories,  7.57 miles)

Weights:

Biceps - 4 exercises of 4 sets each for a total of 16 sets

Triceps - 4 exercises of 4 sets each for a total of 16 sets

"Ridiculous" Is Spelt "Maybach Landaulet"

The Mayback Landaulet, or 57S, is a study in over-the-top luxury.  What qualifies it as over-the-top?

• Is it a 612 hp, 738 lb-ft of face melting torque?
• Champagne cooler and 2 silver flutes, held by an automatic clip? (what?)
• Reclining rear seats?  Leg rests?
• 40 inches of rear legroom?  (where's my business class seat?)
• Retractable hard top.... only for the passenger?  (what? why can't the chauffeur have an open roof as well?)
• Illuminated vanity mirrors (ooh, how pretty we are)

No.  Those are run of the mill (cough).  What is over the top is the black star granite, sourced from India, that is in the passenger section.  Granite.  Stone trim.  Shaped to fit the car's interior. 

This is ridiculous.  I love it.

Monday Workout

Sunday was a complete rest day.  Monday, light elliptical:

55 minutes, 635 calories.  This machine didn't show distance, unfortunately

Saturday Workout

A little bit of a rest day, to give my tweaked back some rest. 

Biking:

77 minutes (1 hr 17 min)

438 calories

19.68 miles

Increased Page Rank

This blog,  Capoeirista  has a Page Rank = 2 now, an increase of 1 

PR increase is a painful process.

Ning And Glam - Cost Cutting Time

Ning and Glam Media are two companies that have a lot of funding - over $100 Million each. 

Ning is also a lean company - they have a lean staff, and everyone works really hard (even by Silicon Valley standards).  I visited their office a couple of weeks back.  They have a normal office as startups go, except for the enormous monitors each person gets.  If you work at Ning, watch Hulu at your desk, no need for a big screen tv!

And Glam has all sorts of claims of success.  CEO Samir Arora is a consummate salesman and PR guy. 

But such are the times, both of these companies, awash in capital, are cutting down on costs.

Glam is reducing everyone's salaries - 3% - 15% for the employees, 25% - 60% for Samir and some top execs and sales people.  They're replacing this with a variable bonus element.  It is a good idea... but might still lead to some top people defecting.   Glam has also started delaying payments to partners and publishers even further.  Hopefully, this doesn't drive any partners out of business, or causes them to scale down their business - because that would come back to haunt Glam.

And Ning is rumored to be readying itself for layoffs, or other cost cuts as well.  This is completely unconfirmed, but several valley folks (none of whom work at Ning) are talking about it, as is FuckedStartups.com.  Hope its not true, but......

Scary times, my friends.

Friday Workout

Yesterday turned, inadvertently, into a rest day.  Caught up Friday.

Cardio:  90 minutes (1.5 hours),  1,111 calories,  9.47 miles

Weights:  Back.  4 exercises of 4 sets each, for a total of 16 sets