And the beat goes on… Remember my Dead Man Walking post? Is 2008 the mile? First American Bank shutters wholesale in response to the market.

To our valued business partners,

Effective at 5:00 PM on Friday, January 4, 2008, First American Bank will discontinue our wholesale mortgage broker program due to unstable market conditions and the declining real estate values that our economy is facing.

We will accept applications until 5:00 PM on January 4, 2008 and will work with you on all loan requests currently in the pipeline. After 5:00 PM on January 4, 2008, we will not process any new referrals, fee paid or otherwise. Existing loan customers will continue to be serviced by our branch network and our Loan Call Center, (847) 952-3620.

We have worked closely with everyone for many years, I truly thank each of you for the business you have referred to us. This was not an easy decision to make, but the soft market, increased portfolio delinquency, and increasing losses makes this the most prudent path for us to follow.

Thank you for understanding and we wish you all the best!
First American Bank

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Google (GOOG), Entrepreneurs, Videos, Technology, Israel

With everyone and their mother trying to capitalize on the social networking fad, news came out recently that M.C. Hammer has a start-up to rival YouTube. This may seem like the bankrupt star is jumping on the bandwagon, but I actually think he may do well with his latest project.

“DanceJam.com. is scheduled to debut in mid-January, and will try to upstage Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) ’s YouTube and become the Internet’s hub for sharing and watching dance videos. DanceJam then hopes to make money by grabbing a piece of the rapidly growing Internet advertising market, which is expected to rake in $27.5 billion in 2008, according to eMarketer.”

I think this has potential because while YouTube is THE dominant player in this space, the fact that Hammer is specializing on one vertical makes it interesting. If he can get traction and become the site specifically for dance video sharing, this may just work. While we may think the shared content space is saturated, I think it’s just in it’s infancy. Wait until technological advances enable this type of sharing and social networking over the cellphone. That’s just going to be a massive market. There are some Israeli start-ups already close to a product on this. The leader is Vringo.

With Hammer’s name and celebrity, he may just be able to pull this off and take some significant traffic from YouTube.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Writer has no position long or short in any stock mentioned as of 1/2/7.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Products and services, Launches, Google (GOOG)

Will 2008 be the breakout year that some of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)’s products and services besides search-targeted ads are able to start contributing revenue to the company’s bottom line? Pundits will be watching for that, as will Google shareholders, who are mostly large fans of the stock, but reserved in the “eggs in one basket” approach Google still has when it comes to revenue diversification.

Are Google’s products like Gmail, Docs and Spreadsheets, and Calendar holding up their fair share? Gmail is the only product that includes advertising, and Google is careful not to say how much revenue it receives from customers clicking on ads within Gmail. How about Google Base? It’s just an entry point into Google Search. Google Trends? Google Book Search? Google Page Creator? Google Notebook? All of these nifty products are — for now — free of charge to use, but don’t have any kind of ads, which could directly produce revenue.

Google’s hope for 2008 revenue beyond search advertising rests in many areas, from YouTube advertising to generating an actual income from subscribers to its Google Docs and Spreadsheets product for large installations (universities, companies, small businesses, etc.) that would prefer not to spend a small fortune on Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office, and who also want web-based portability for their documents anywhere there is a web-connected computer.

Does the web search leader have plans to diversify revenue even further than these two examples? Surely — but gleaning that information from the company will be met with competitive-advantage silence for now.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Internet, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Employees, Technology

Another day, another high-profile defection from Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO). This time, it’s longtime Yahoo! web performance executive Steve Souders, who announced he was joining Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) come January 8. Souders has been at Yahoo! since 2000, which is a lifetime in the technology business.

Souder’s responsibilities at Yahoo! included managing the team for development of the “My Yahoo!” personal web start page that is used by millions every day. Souder was also into developing products and platforms to ensure the performance of Yahoo!’s web products (as in, speed) while ensuring the smoothest and most consistent customer experience.

One thing that most likely caught Google’s eye was Souder’s work on making Yahoo!’s sites faster. Google is so proud of how quickly it delivers global search results to each customer that it prints the number of milliseconds each search takes for each of the billions of monthly searches performed on its network.

Will Yahoo! have some serious work to do in 2008? Yes, it will — this year will be a make-or-break year for the company. It has quite a feat ahead to come back from piddly financial performance results (compared to the competition, anyway) and really deliver in some areas. For Yahoo!, revenue growth could come from internet search, but taking share away from Google may be impossible. Still, the growth from its paid services was not that hot in 2007 either, so where does that leave it? We’ll find out in 2008.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Products and services, Launches, Google (GOOG)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) just loves trying to get users of its services a more interactive experience. This past summer, Google announced a unique new offering where readers may be able to add their own two cents to a new story indexed by Google News if they find themselves quoted in the news.

The New York Times‘ Noam Cohen reminds us of Liebling’s words: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Well, with this service, Google has been allowing comments to be ‘paired’ with news articles indexed by its News website. Google News currently tracks over 4,500 news sources globally and is now resurfacing in the news as it gains more traction — and more watchers to what this could do to online news interaction.

The concept Google has here is brilliant and was overdue before its launch in mid-2007. The large number of quotes and sayings printed daily that are taken out of context for some publisher’s agenda molds the minds of many millions of people who — believe it or not — believe everything they read. Pity. However, Google’s attempt to level the playing field is an admirable one, and 2008 should see the uptake of this new “feature” turn online journalism more into a “blog-like” interaction between publisher and reader. Gone are the days of one-way journalism. Ask some newspapers about this.

The next step: Google needs to promote Google News as a one-stop source of news information regardless of location and language of the reader. Of course, Google is stressing that it is not in the business of journalism. Instead, it wants journalists and those used in news sources to embrace the feature even further to give differing perspectives on a news story, “across the political spectrum, geographically.” Sounds familiar with Google’s mantra of making information universally accessible. Currently, the English version of Google News is the only one that works with the new commenting service.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), eBay (EBAY), Amazon.com (AMZN), Research in Motion (RIMM)

If you watched the tech markets in 2007, you saw turmoil in some companies and triumph in others. Of course, I’m talking about stock prices first and foremost. The market can be unforgiving. Earnings in line with expectations can cause a stock to shrink while beating expectations by even a penny per share can cause a stock to rise. It’s all about context in the industry.

So, how about some winners in 2007. Let’s list them here courtesy of Om Malik: Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), up 166.3%; Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), up 134.8%; Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), up 134.7%, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), up 50.2%, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), up 20.9%, eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), up 10.4% and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), down 8.9%. Wait — why is Yahoo! in there? So a comparison to 2008 performance can be made a year from now.

Why did the stock prices of all these companies shoot up so high in 2007? Research In Motion continued taking the crown in mobile e-mail, Apple released the iPhone, Google continued phenomenal growth every quarter . . . you get the picture. Yahoo! was the lone loser out of the above group based on it continuing to lose ground to Google, the weak response to its new search engine platform and the ousting of former CEO Terry Semel after a few years of disappointing results. The other companies saw share gains for one reason or another. Will all of them see more gains at the end of 2008? You make that call now — and add to your portfolio if you have the itch.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Consumer experience, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL)

CNN had a story yesterday showing gains in Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) market share in operating systems. The recent gains in market share must be hard for Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to ignore. It also has to make life harder for Linux and other O/S makers.

The data released yesterday, showed that the MacIntel systems had a 4.01% share in December and the Mac OS share was 3.28%, making it a combined 7.3% share in December. While the data shows that Microsoft still dominates with a 91.8% market share, it also shows that it has lost ground for seven of the last eleven months. What is interesting is that out of this 91.8% market share for various Windows O/S sales is that 76.97% is still windows XP and only 10.43% is for Windows Vista.

CNN’s story covers a survey from Net Applications that uses a sample of visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by its clients rather than a total number of computer systems sold. So there is still some room for interpretation here.

Linux was shown as having a 0.63% market share. While that is up 10.5% from the previous 0.57% readings, it shows that Mac truly is the envy of Linux creators. It is also interesting that, at least according to this survey, much of the Windows sales might still be going into Windows XP rather than Windows Vista.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Consumer experience, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL)

CNN had a story yesterday showing gains in Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) market share in operating systems. The recent gains in market share must be hard for Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to ignore. It also has to make life harder for Linux and other O/S makers.

The data released yesterday, showed that the MacIntel systems had a 4.01% share in December and the Mac OS share was 3.28%, making it a combined 7.3% share in December. While the data shows that Microsoft still dominates with a 91.8% market share, it also shows that it has lost ground for seven of the last eleven months. What is interesting is that out of this 91.8% market share for various Windows O/S sales is that 76.97% is still windows XP and only 10.43% is for Windows Vista.

CNN’s story covers a survey from Net Applications that uses a sample of visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by its clients rather than a total number of computer systems sold. So there is still some room for interpretation here.

Linux was shown as having a 0.63% market share. While that is up 10.5% from the previous 0.57% readings, it shows that Mac truly is the envy of Linux creators. It is also interesting that, at least according to this survey, much of the Windows sales might still be going into Windows XP rather than Windows Vista.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Market matters, JPMorgan Chase (JPM)

Australia’s Centro Properties Group bet big on U.S. shopping malls, financing more than $15 billion during a spending spree in 2007. Thanks to the credit crisis caused by the U.S. subprime meltdown, Centro can’t refinance debt due Feb. 15 and has put itself up for sale [subscription required]. The stock lost 89% of its value in 2007, giving it the title of Australia’s worst performer in the S&P/ASX 200 index.

Centro owns 810 shopping malls in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. Potential buyers may find that a sale of the company’s assets may be more valuable than buying the company itself, and Centro already indicates it may sell properties as part of its plan to restructure and pay back debt. Analysts expect Centro will have to sell assets at less than book value, especially recent U.S. purchases that have been hit hard by the real estate crisis in the U.S.

Centro could become the second Australian company lost because of the U.S. subprime crisis. RAMS Home Loans Group sold most of its holdings to Westpac Bank Group when it couldn’t refinance its loans. Lenders holding Centro debt include the Royal Bank of Scotland, J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), BNP Paribas, Australian and New Zealand Banking Group, National Australia Bank, St. George Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Just looking at this list of lenders, you can see how global the subprime mortgage and credit crisis has become.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Market matters, JPMorgan Chase (JPM)

Australia’s Centro Properties Group bet big on U.S. shopping malls, financing more than $15 billion during a spending spree in 2007. Thanks to the credit crisis caused by the U.S. subprime meltdown, Centro can’t refinance debt due Feb. 15 and has put itself up for sale [subscription required]. The stock lost 89% of its value in 2007, giving it the title of Australia’s worst performer in the S&P/ASX 200 index.

Centro owns 810 shopping malls in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. Potential buyers may find that a sale of the company’s assets may be more valuable than buying the company itself, and Centro already indicates it may sell properties as part of its plan to restructure and pay back debt. Analysts expect Centro will have to sell assets at less than book value, especially recent U.S. purchases that have been hit hard by the real estate crisis in the U.S.

Centro could become the second Australian company lost because of the U.S. subprime crisis. RAMS Home Loans Group sold most of its holdings to Westpac Bank Group when it couldn’t refinance its loans. Lenders holding Centro debt include the Royal Bank of Scotland, J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), BNP Paribas, Australian and New Zealand Banking Group, National Australia Bank, St. George Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Just looking at this list of lenders, you can see how global the subprime mortgage and credit crisis has become.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This