BranchOut might over take LinkedIn one day

In two years I have gotten a new job, sold my car, moved into a new place, started a very successful blog (SaintelDaily), traveled out the country(Mexico counts), brought two iPads (damn you Apple) and broke up with my long time girlfriend  (Cry me a River comes to mind). That is nothing compared to BranchOut in two years the Facebook dependent company has gained 25 million registered users.  The company works just like LinkedIn but with the same dependency that Zynga has on Facebook.  BranchOut is now considered one of  LinkedIn’s biggest competitors. CEO Rick Marini says BranchOut’s relationship with LinkedIn is; “At this point, it’s Coke and Pepsi.”

BranchOut allows users to see which of their Facebook friends (or friends of friends) work at specific companies. Unlike LinkedIn, it doesn’t require users to build a professional network one person at a time. Rather, they simply connect to their pre-existing Facebook graphs. The interface works a lot like LinkedIn from there: users can fill in their work histories, send messages to their connections, collect endorsements and request introductions to friends of friends.

BranchOut has about 3 million job listing. They work recruiters via a product called RecruiterConnect that works like LinkedIn Recruiter. LinkedIn blocked BranchOut from accessing its API. That has not stopped the  startup from gaining another $25 million in funding, bringing its total venture capital backing to $49 million.

BranchOut is more popular than  Instagram and Twitter on Facebook. They have 13 million monthly unique visitors. Half of new members of the company are from overseas.  They owe that to StepStone and Totaljobs.com which are big overseas.

CES 2012: SaintelDaily.com Hands on with CaseMate’s Tuxedo

CaseMate’s Tuxedo can hold your iPad without any cords holding it down. It is using a sticky pad. Once the pad gets dirty just wet it a little and reuse.

2nd day After Downgrade; One company says it’s not a problem. Apple now most valuable company in the world

As you may know the stock market is in complete shambles. What you maybe asking yourself is what do now. It’s going to be alright. The market will will rebound. Now I don’t think it will be an incredible jump. Surely in the grand scheme of things it will not be long term. The market will go down and up. That is the market in a nutshell. You should trade as you have always traded. With good research.

One such company that shows no sign of stopping is Apple. They have now surpassed ExxonMobil as most valuable company in the world. Less than 10 years ago they were dead in the water and needed TARP from Microsoft. Now they are on top of the world. Even when the market was going down they were going up. So the moral of the story is that you need to not over react now.

The only company that should be over reacting is Google. Although they have been steady they are no where the well deserved hype that Apple is getting. People are worried about RIM but honestly RIM has a quality product and loyal owners. I mean the owners call their phone a Crackberry. Management is what is hurting RIM at the moment.

Google on the other hand has Search. Alright great but as we have seen in China with Baidu and in Russia with Yandex they are not king of the hill world wide. They are very vulnerable. Although Android is synonymous Google, they do not make any device. What’s more, Amazon and others have shown that they don’t even need Google to make the Android relevant.

FotoLia: A great service for stock photos

FotoLia is one of those service that you didn’t think you needed until you started using it. They have a rich community and an overwhelming amount of stock pictures.They have great quality as well. Fotolia calls itself the social marketplace for stock images. That is putting it mildly. At last count they have over 2,677,363 professionals within the community. Why is that important? Well having a large community allows for creativity and choice.  Professionals can buy and share stock pictures as well as video clips. One could also get  royalty free licenses. This would let you to use an image without restrictions. There are two ways to get pictures a single download model and subscription model. We tried out the subscription model and found it to be rather useful.

Now if you are the one selling the pictures you have to have  a Paypal or Moneybookers account. I would like to have seen an automatic transfer to my bank account. The site also lets you FTP into the FotoLia network. A great feature when you are on the run or have large amount of content that needs to be moved. Alright now with all these great things there has to be something that is not great. Well there is. The original reviewer of the site found it bland. She said all the pictures looked the same. I am quoting now. “They look like stock pictures.” While I can certainly see that. One can argue the point that is what the site is going for.  After reading her review, I resided to write my own.

The site offers so many options that sometimes you can get lost in the sea of bland. Pic a topic and you will get pictures for somethings that are not related. Other times you find that you have too many great choices to pick from. The site is a stock site and as such you have lots of options just not in my opinion too many original works. Or rather works that look like you won’t find them anywhere else. I would think one would go to Deviantart for that.

Pro: The site is packed with options for sellers as well as buyers of pictures and videos. Great payment scale.

Con: At times the pictures can seem repetitive. Not a lot of one offs. Must use Paypal or Moneybookers

Cost: $$0.75  and up

Aye/Nay: This is a Aye. This is a great site for stock pictures. Bonus for videos and a downloadable program for the desktop.

iTunes Link: Forolia

Site Review: CouponChief.com shows how coupons can be a community and save you money

This site is at its heart a Sunday flyer. At its worse a cluttered site. What it does is fall somewhere between both of those. It goes a step further than clipping. It is also a sharing site sort of like Living Social.  When you upload a coupon for people to use.  Every time someone uses a coupon you’ve uploaded, Coupon Chief will give you 2% of the sales.  This is something that no one else is doing and does set it apart from the others.

It also has stores. These stores are listed in alphabet order from 1 Stop Florists to zZounds and everything in between. These stores have coupons. Lots and lots of coupons. The problem comes in when these coupons do not work. I tested 125 coupons for this review of the site. Just 32 did not work. Which in the grand scheme of things that is a good ratio. You would think that but as a customer I expect all of them to work. That can not be done since users are the ones uploading the coupons. I think to help with this out, users should be rated on their reliability.  Couponchief.com works on it by asking you Did this coupon work? You can say yes or no. If you say no, the coupon goes away right then and there.

Below is how the site works.

• Most online retailers now include a field to enter a promotional or coupon code during the checkout process. Some typical discounts might look like “10% Off your order” or “Free Shipping on orders over $25″
  
• Head over to CouponChief.com and search for the domain where you’re making a purchase (ie. http://www.target.com or even just target.com)
• Write down or copy the code to your clipboard. Then click the “use it” link to go directly to the store where you want to make a purchase.
• Shop around the store and find what you want to buy.
• During checkout, look for the special box that says coupon or promotional code. Sometimes this might be after submitting your credit card but always before final order submission.
• Submit the coupon code you copied down earlier and…
• Voilà! You should see your savings applied.

What I do not like about the stores section is that it is not really official. The companies do not endorse these coupons nor do they offer any. A company such as Best Buy has a big bank check. That means they have a lot of cash. Cash helps with lawyers. Lawyers take down sites that infringe on their clients copyrights and trademarks.

Best Buy is a store that is listed on the site with logo and all. If you go to the bottom of the stores it will read:

“Attention Store Owners - Are you an owner or representative of Best Buy?  Click Here to claim that role, and unlock our Merchant Portal functionality”

I find this problematic for the longevity of the site. That is really the only bad thing that can be said about this site. It is well designed for the way it is going to be used. The navigation is to the point and clear. I have been using it since I started testing it last week. To take full advantage of the community being built look for CouponChief.com to get a mobile app. It would be wonderful if could just enter a coupon you see in the store via an app or let the cashier read your phone to see the code. I look for this site to grow soon and fast. Join now.

Apples to Windows: New infographic makes it hard to be a Microsoft stock holder

If you had $2000 and spent it on Apple stock in 2003 when it was just under $14 per share. You could have had 142 shares. Today those same shares would be worth over $42,000. Apple does not seem to be stopping anytime soon and with each new iDevice they get more and more fanboys. While on the other hand Microsoft has gone the other way. This has been know for awhile if you follow tech or business but this info graphic makes it hard to be a stock holder of Microsoft. I wonder what the company would be like today if Bill Gates had stayed on board.

Review: Seasonalysis works well if you are willing to invest in it

If you trade stocks or thinking about trading stocks. The first thing you need to do is your research. You need to know where a stock has been and where it is going. The best way to do that is with something called seasonal analysis. It is where you look for reliable seasonal patterns in the market. That is what the app Seasonalysis does quickly, effectively and most importantly; accurately. Just enter a company name or symbol and Seasonalysis give you data in tabular and chart formats.

Seasonalysis uses a comparative analysis algorithm that goes through every year of available data to determine if any seasonal patterns exist. The minimum criteria for a valid seasonal pattern is at least 75% past repeatability. If you know that a good stock is going to dip lower than its 52 high. You can buy it on the cheap. One thing to know before you get started is that it does not come cheap. You have heard it takes money to make money. In this case that is a fact.  Seasonalysis has a very high price. Seasonalysis is a unique app in that it does in fact work very well and is one of the few apps that can pay for itself in a matter of a few trades. There is nothing like it in the App Store and the closes program for the PC cost a few  hundred more. The Pro Trader platform for the PC which has seasonal analysis by comparison cost $898.

Pro: The app is the lowest you will pay for anything comparable on a pc. There is no other app like it on the iOS. It does in fact make you money.

Con: The cost is $79.99. That is a big number to get over to pay for an app. So try to look at it this way. Would you pay that much for a good stock? If the answer is yes. Then buy this app. If the answer is no then this app is not for you.

Cost: $79.99

Aye/Nay: This is a Aye. This app is for people who a really into stocks. This is not for the average Joe unless they are serious about doing research on companies are ready to make an investment in their investments.  $80 is worth it for what it does.

iTunes Link: Seasonalysis

Review Week: Forecastica Premium for iPad makes trading a no brainer

Forecastica Premium for iPad is for anyone that is really into making money in the stock market. It is a very helpful tool that lets you look at stocks and determines where they will be in the future based on a lot of variables.  You  can look up any stock on many markets and get a clear reading on what the stock is going to be doing. Forecastica Premium lets you look at what stock price changes might be in the next 4, 8 and 12 days out.

You can look at about 150,000 stocks in 79 global exchanges. The Company Screener feature is a cool simulator that trades based on algorithms. It starts off with $25000 for every company in your portfolio. It then shows you the money you would have made had you followed the forecasting algorithm used by the app. It’s a big told you so built into the app. They are very confident that it works.
Profit Calculator shows what your hypothetical profits might have been if you had traded by using the app.  The most consistent and reliable measure provided by Forecastica is the Short Term Volatility indicator. The indicator measures the volatility of a stock over the past 90 days.

Pro: The app is a great tool for day traders more so than long term investors. Long term investors usually invest and forget.

Con: The app works pretty well. The interface is a bit too plain. Not much to work with. There is a learning curve that is not explained well in the FAQ. All these things are minor though.

Cost: $4.99

Aye/Nay: This is a Aye. This program has worked to create me a profit which is what it said it would do. If you follow the instructions which are color coded. Red for sell/green for buy you can not go wrong. $5 is worth it.

iTunes Link: Forecastica Premium for iPad

Review Week: Deliveries is the best tracking app. No other app comes close

 

I have a package that I need to track. What should I do? If the first thing that popped in your head is to check the web; you would be right, sort of.  Lets say I am in on the road or something like that. Deliveries is here to help with that delimia. This app can track  your package from pretty much any source in the world. I am not joking. There are some delivery service that I have never heard of before. The app even shows up on a map using your location in relation to the package.  There not much  to say about this app. It does it job very very well. It is the only one that should be used for tracking packages. I have found it to update faster than the FedEX site it’s self. You can even sync your deliveries using the website. If you create a Junecloud account, you can update your tracking numbers from any web browser, or sync with our Dashboard widget for Mac. Being able to track packages from Apple.com is also a big plus.

Junecloud is a small software development company located in Northville, Michigan. We create software for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac OS X, and the web. Junecloud was founded in August 2008 by Mike Piontek. Mike has been designing and making software for over 20 years. His first usable app was a game was called “Beaver Pelt Man”, created entirely in HyperCard.  O’Reilly put it best “Best App for Tracking Packages. Who knew tracking deliveries could be so classy?”

Below are just a few of the places that it can track from:

• Adobe.com US and Canada only
• Amazon Including Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.de, Amazon.at, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.it. When you track an Amazon order you’ll get tracking details from many of the shipping companies they use, including the US Postal Service, UPS, OnTrac, LaserShip, Ensenda, Prestige, and more.
• Apple.com Including all international stores. The iPhoto print service is not currently supported, though you may be able to track these shipments with a different service once you receive a tracking number.
• Aramex
• Canada Post (Postes Canada)
• City Link
• DHL Including Express deliveries in most countries, US GlobalMail, UK Domestic Express, and Germany. DHL Express Germany, UK Domestic Express, and SmartMail are not currently supported.
• DPD Germany only
• FedEx Including most countries, as well as FedEx SmartPost. FedEx UK is not currently supported.
• GLS Including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Spain
• Google Checkout
• Hermes Logistik Gruppe (HLG) Germany only
• Hongkong Post
• Japan Post Including EMS, Yu-Pack, Registered Mail, and Morning 10 Overnight Mail. JP Express is not currently supported.
• La Poste (France), including Colissimo and Chronopost.
• OnTrac
• Parcelforce
• Post (Austria)
• Post Danmark
• Purolator
• Royal Mail
• Poste Italiane Including Postacelere1 Plus, Paccocelere1 Plus, Paccocelere Maxi, Paccocelere3, Paccocelere Internationale , and EMS
• Posten (Norway)
• Posten (Sweden)
• Sagawa Express
• Swiss Post
• TNT Includes most countries, as well as TNT Post Netherlands. TNT Express Australia, TNT UK, TNT France, and TNT Italia are not currently supported
• UPS and UPS Mail Innovations UPS Freight and UPS Air Cargo are not currently supported.
• USPS (United States Postal Service or US Post Office)
• Yamato Transport (Kuroneko)

 

Pro: The app is an app the does what it says and it does it well. Very well in fact. So well that you never even have to go to a website to track your package.  Bonus is that it works on iOS 5.

Con: The only con I can think of is the price. $4.99 is very high for a iOS app. Not so high if it is worth it and used daily though and it has so many sources that it would be nearly impossible to not be able to track your package. So in the end it is worth it if you have daily packages.

Cost: $4.99

Aye/Nay: This is a Aye. This program has so many delivery choices that its just ridiculous. It’s my go to app for checking on deliveries. $5 is worth it.

iTunes Link: Deliveries

LinkedIn IPO reminds us of the old days. Priced at $45 & opens at $80 now over $100. Should you buy or wait?

Remember when IPO’s would open up and than jump to over $100 a share. There was a new .Com IPO almost everyday. At least two or three would hit the market. There are not too many left over from those good old days. When that boom went bust. We should have learned not to jump on the train so fast without checking to see what stops were ahead.

I knew better although I did buy GeoCities stock and was very happy with my return. This time around you should know better too. So let’s get to the point. Is LinkedIn a good buy? The short answer is yes. As long as you have an exit strategy. The stock was priced at $45 but backroom deals (I mean early investors) drove the price to open to the public at $80 a share. I got in at $82 a share. Why would I buy an IPO for that much?

Stocks are a momentum driven beast. IPO’s are the cool kids. Everyone wants a to have a part of it. The more people talk about it the more it will drive the price up. LinkedIn in the long term is not a smart buy. The stock will not and can not sustain above $100 per share. The value proposition is just not there. It’s not like Google that was and still is a leader in it’s field.  LinkedIn has just above 100 million subscribers to its service. Although it has a good mix of revenue from premium service subscribers, advertisers and recruiters; the amount of income it does is not a justification for the inflated price of its stock at the moment.

If you are looking for a quick buck you should have got this stock this morning at $80 to $85. Right now if you jumped in on the stock that was at last glance $110 you would be waiting for the downswing. The MACD Lines should be crossing anytime now. I think the stock will hit $125 before it goes back south. My exit in case you wanted to know is that. I have triggers set at $125 for a high and $100 for a low as an exit. The stock should stable around $60 to $85 in the next few weeks.

If you want a long term stock wait for Yandex. They will hit the IPO market next week. They are the Google of Russia with currently over 64% market share in search and has over 10 billion web pages indexed. Google has about 21.9% of search engine generated traffic. Yandex is the national non-English-language search engine. Expect to see the same price jump that Baidu had.  Unlike LinkedIn Yandex is a long term win.