Filed under: Google (GOOG), Next big thing, Tech for the rest of us, Technology

It’s been a good week for Wi-Fi startup Meraki. First of all, the company raised a cool $20 million in venture capital. Investors included Sequoia Capital, DAG Venture and Northgate Capital.

What’s more, Meraki says it will offer free high-speed wireless Net access throughout San Francisco. No doubt, the announcement is getting a lot of buzz.

But what does this really mean? I had a chance to interview Craig Settles, the author of Good Fight for Municipal Wireless. According to him:

“It is vitally important that people realize Meraki is NOT making this service available for free elsewhere. People have to pay for the hardware and individuals have to step up to provide DSL or some other high-speed landline access for some of these repeaters. Meraki is doing what EarthLink — along with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) — should have done, that is, use the big, high-profile city as a marquee account, but sell the service to everyone else. Don’t get sucked into the ‘free’ hype.

“However, municipalities also have to realize that the cost of the Meraki solution is going to be a lot less than building out what has been a typical muni wireless network. Also, the revenue is very much driven from the community level, so some of the development costs are going to be borne by end users. This could make it easier for cities to do what Wireless Philadelphia is doing, which is finding government agencies, philanthropic organizations and others to underwrite the cost of getting this technology into the hands of low-income communities.

“As with all things related to muni networks, anyone who jumps on board with the Meraki solution without being prepared for the long implementation journey is setting themselves up for disappointment and failure. This happened too often when politicians blithely announced they were going to cure all of their city’s economic development woes with a muni network, but clearly hadn’t thought through the logistical, financial and technical challenges.”

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

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Filed under: Consumer experience, Internet, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) had a very busy 2007 — initiatives and projects, product launches and a furious growth rate that kept analysts guessing every single quarter. With so much going on at the world’s most popular internet search engine, will Google lose focus on the bread-n-butter machine of its revenue — web searches?

If Google would pour as much focus and resources into all its products as it does the constant refinements it gives its search-related advertising, the company would have many revenue legs to stand on (most likely). However, Google has a history of launching products to see how they do before dedicating too many resources to it. After all, it took years for text advertising on Google searches to produce billions in quarterly revenue. The more products prove themselves, the more attention they get.

What other products from Google will get more and more attention in 2008? The New York Times says that Google could eventually control 80% to 90% of internet searches, up from today’s sub-70% level. Can Google really attain search engine growth to attain complete and utter domination of search?

If not, where are supplemental revenues going to come from? Google is lining up products to fill this void, but it can’t lose focus on its core search business, even for a nanosecond. To fuel all the growth and the massive product launches from the company, the revenue will have to be there. Right now, that’s all search — and it must continue to be Google’s main focus in everything it does.

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Filed under: Blogs, Google (GOOG), About the stock bloggers, Insider Blogging

Over the past few months, I’ve received a ton of emails asking what my favorite finance blogs are (other than BloggingStocks of course). So here are my top ten favorites:

(in alphabetical order or else I’d be killed by bloggers)

1. ChrisPerruna.com - the most well organized stock blog around, very useful analysis
2. Dealbreaker.com - if you want Wall Street gossip, this is where you go
3. FeedTheBull.com - an up and coming site where bloggers can submit articles and users can vote their favorites
4. HowardLindzon.com - one of the godfathers of stock blogging, a real pro investor focusing on stocks making new highs
5. pfblogs.org - a blog comprised of posts from 1,000 different finance bloggers, say good-bye to whatever life you had

1. Slope of Hope - written by charting master/short seller Tim Knight, great charts!
2. The Kirk Report - a pro trader’s take on just about everything, great links!
3. Trader Feed - dedicated to the psychology of trading written by one of the world’s foremost experts
4. TraderMike.net - a day trader who shows off some great links daily
5. Trading Goddess - mixes financial commentary with pictures of scantily clad women, why didn’t I think of this! (wait a minute, I did, I did!)

All this information can get a bit overwhelming, so I like to pop each blog’s RSS feed into my Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Reader, so I can review all the posts in one sitting. Good reading!

(FYI you can see a much longer list - think 100+ blogs - on the right hand column of TimothySykes.com)

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, the star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund

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Filed under: Google (GOOG), Apple Inc (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Market matters, Halliburton (HAL), Citigroup Inc. (C), Bed Bath and Beyond (BBBY), Circuit City Stores (CC), Merrill Lynch (MER), Black Friday, Research in Motion (RIMM), Newmont Mining (NEM)

Normally, I try to avoid overall market prediction. I think it’s a waste of time. But just as my Scooby sense told me
that Solarfun (NASDAQ: SOLF) looked ripe for a fall yesterday — even as the stock was breaking out to new highs on news of yet another contract — I’m feeling pretty bearish on the overall stock market for 2008.

I won’t bet on it because a.) I don’t have the patience and b.) I’m a momentum stock trader, what do I know about the macro picture? But that’s the beauty of blogging; it’s all about the sharing of ideas. And since, even with all my mistakes, my cumulative nine-year investment return is 4,832% (a little better than most, as detailed in my book), I know a little something about nearly everything stock market related and maybe I might be able to make/save you a buck or two. So, here we go, please comment as I’d like to get your opinion too!

Sure, today’s jobs report is tanking the market and bringing up recession talk, but this is just a blip in the grand scheme of things. For the past few weeks/months, the stock market has been heading lower and there are tons of articles talking about how 2008 is going be another tough year for the stock market. (As if a 10% year for the Nasdaq is “a tough year” LOL, you spoiled, spoiled people, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!)

The positives: The dollar keeps weakening, making our products cheap and popular overseas, energy and mineral stocks like Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM), Newmont Mining (NYSE: NEM) and Haliburton (NYSE: HAL) are rocking; cutting edge companies with cutting edge products like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) will surely keep innovating and profiting; stocks are still somewhat cheap historically and inflation remains low.

The negatives: Consumer debt keeps surging (rising oil prices don’t help); housing could/should collapse (sorry, way too much greed/leverage/uncertainty/lying to give it the benefit of the doubt); financials like Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) are a mess as are retailers like Circuit City (NYSE: CC) and Bed Bath and Beyond (NASDAQ: BBBY); China’s stock market, along with that of many other third world countries will probably crash sometime this year and we’ve had a four-year bull run (that’s like 100 years old in bull market years), and most importantly for me, the charts of all the major indexes look like they’re about to roll over.

Since there seems to be more negatives than positives, and none of the problems have any quick fixes, what do investors have to look forward to this year? And we’re only in January - habitually the most optimistic month of the year, smack in the middle of historically best performing time of the year! Sure, sure, it hasn’t paid to be a bear, but sometimes, you just have to sit back and say, wait a minute, since people are naturally optimistic, they usually don’t see the danger/downside potential/risks until it’s too late.

Consider this your warning.

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, the star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund

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I found this at www.paul.kedrosky.com and Paul got it from businessweek.com.    It’s a map of the concentration of option arms by state.   The thing that struck me about it is that if you look at the areas feeling the most pain in the real estate world, they are either in the categories of higher concentration of option arms or they are places like Michigan and Ohio who are undergoing structural recessions.    I hope you enjoy it…..

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The New York Times reports that nobody knows where the price of oil will go next. It quotes John Richels, president of the Devon Energy Corp. (NYSE: DVN), an international oil and gas company based in Oklahoma City, saying $150 a barrel was possible, but so was $55.

To me, the most interesting part of this forecast is that an executive in the industry has no idea where the price will go. As the Times suggests, this is because the price is determined by traders and hedge funds. And these market participants view U.S. equities, housing, credit and currency markets as shaky. By contrast, they see oil and other commodities as a safe haven.

If the Times is correct, then the price of oil will be determined by the direction of U.S. equities, housing, and currency and whether these traders and hedge funds continue to see oil as a store of value. If you think that housing prices will rise in 2009; that the U.S. economy is in for robust growth and a balancing budget in 2009; and that peace will break out in the Middle East then those traders and hedge funds are likely to sell oil and buy dollars — dropping the price to Richels’ $55.

Otherwise, $150 here we come.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Devon securities.

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Wal-Mart (WMT)

Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) has been spending like mad in Washington recently, as the world’s largest retailer was reported to have spent $1.8 million on lobbying efforts in the first six months of 2007. Once the figures from the second half of 2007 show up, we’ll see if Wal-Mart surpassed 2006, annual $2.5 million figure. My guess: Wal-Mart will have more than doubled 2006’s lobbying levels in 2007 once the smoke clears.

While Wal-Mart tells customers to Save Money. Live Better, it’s spending more and living large on Capitol Hill these days. More figures? Try this: the retailer spent more than $4 million lobbying in the past 18 months. Compare that to the $6.6 million from the prior seven years combined and Wal-Mart has been turning up the lobbying heat since 2005.

Some of the agenda items on the minds of Wal-Mart’s lobbyists recently have been pushes for better, more efficient fighting tactics against organized retail crime in addition to finding legislation to give it a leg up when it came to electronic health records that could save the company quite a bit in health-care costs.

And, the retailer’s lobbyists pushed for legislation to not allow employees to form or join labor unions and related organizations. Add that to the standard corporate fare of international trade and income taxes and Wal-Mart’s been a very busy lobbyist in Washington.

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Filed under: Forecasts, Indices, Barrick Gold (ABX), Economic data, Goldcorp Inc (GG)

As Michael Fowlkes discussed yesterday, gold prices have been rising strongly over the past few days as fears about a possible recession increased and the U.S. dollar continues to weaken. Gold for February delivery rose in the previous session $9.10 to end at $869.10 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange. There have been a handful of notable names that have benefited from these news to trade up to new highs.

Gold has been strong lately, and gold stocks have been following gold’s lead. Gold had a very strong day yesterday, with prices breaking through a new record for the second straight day. Josh Bridges, analyst at JP Morgan, anticipates the new year would be a strong one for gold as “it must be remembered that gold is typically a late-stage performer.”

As gold moves higher, so have gold stocks, with some big names trading up to set new 52-week highs yesterday evening. Here are a couple names of interest making strong moves yesterday:

• Streettrack Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) - set a new 52-week high yesterday of $85.94;
• Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: ABX) - traded up to new 52-week high yesterday of $49.33;
• Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. (NYSE: AEM) - set a new 52-week high yesterday of $59.45;
• Goldcorp Inc. (NYSE: GG) - set a new 52-week high yesterday of $38.55.

As the market continues to deal with mounting economic concerns and oil prices continue to gain ground do not be surprised to see gold continue to move higher into next week.

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

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Filed under: Products and services, General Motors (GM)

General Motors (NYSE: GM) will be celebrating its 100th birthday this year. Instead of completely focusing on the past, the automaker will focus on the future and what the next century will bring to the storied Detroit auto company.

Right off the bat, GM wants to have the first mass-produced, 100% electric vehicle on the planet available to its customers. Unless ExxonMobil and Valero Energy are prepared to shrivel up and go away, we’ll all believe that when we see it. But when GM CEO Rick Wagoner starts talking about a future GM vehicle that’s a safer, more fuel-efficient transportation “appliance,” that garners much more attention. Wagoner will be giving his pitch at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the gadget gathering to which automakers and cellphone manufacturers come together to talk about working together.

Wagoner recently said that “A lot of the first century was about the U.S. and developed markets … it’s really going to be a very different geography for our business as we go forward.” GM’s 100-year celebration - -dubbed GMnext — gives some interesting insight into what the automaker has planned for the near and far future.

Although GM has been credited with taking Henry Ford’s idea of assembly-line car manufacturing and giving customers several brands, styles and colors to choose from, the company lost U.S. market share domestically in 2007 and saw its stock dive to low levels. Let’s hope the next 100 years end in a much brighter picture.

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Filed under: Analyst initiations

MOST NOTEWORTHY: TheStreet.com, Corning and AeroGrow were today’s noteworthy initiations:

• ThinkEquity believes TheStreet.com (NASDAQ:TSCM) has solid growth prospects and sees catalysts from the integration of Promotions.com, expansion into new verticals, and new syndication deals. The firm intiiated shares with a Buy rating and $18 target.
• Corning (NYSE:GLW) was initiated with a Buy rating and $31 target at Jefferies, as they believe the LCD industry is positioned for healthy trends in 2008 and beyond.
• AeroGrow (NASDAQ:AERO) was initiated with a Buy rating at Merriman, as they believe infomercials, catalog mailers and the company’s website should enhance product visibility, driving higher sales across all distribution channels as well as brand awareness.

OTHER INITIATIONS:

• Baird started Pennant Park (NASDAQ:PNNT) with an Outperform rating and $13 target.
• Spansion initiated Under Armour (NYSE:UA) with an Overweight rating and $55 target.
• UBS started Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) with a Buy rating.

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