WHAT TO BUY

China Medical Technologies, Inc. CMED 24.45 9.83% 383,567
Sell @ 24.64

Multi-Fineline Electronix, Inc. MFLX 34.4 N/A 538,540
Sell @ 34.64

Geac Computer Corporation Ltd GEAC 10.74 22.46% 1,319,095
Thoughts? Up too high at 2Pm for a profit

Internet Initiative Japan, Inc. IIJI 10.87 9.31% 2,155,565
Sell @ 10.95

U.S. Concrete, Inc. RMIX 7.00 9.37% 83,078
Sell @ 7.05
eSpeed, Inc. ESPD 7.89 8.67% 179,432

Dendreon Corporation DNDN 6.09 9.13% 1,580,497
Sell @ 6.14

ECC Capital Corporation Completes $1.4 Billion Offering

ECC (NYSE: ECR), a mortgage finance real estate investment trust that originates and invests in residential mortgage loans, announced on PRNEWSWIRE.COM the successful completion of a securitization and related offering by Encore Credit Receivables Trust 2005-2.

The offering includes approximately $1.4 billion of notes backed by a pool of fixed and adjustable rate, subprime mortgage loans secured by first liens on one-to-four family residential properties transferred to the trust in the securitization. The securitization co-lead managers were Countrywide Securities Corporation and Wachovia Securities and the Co-Manager was Credit Suisse First Boston.

The notes are offered pursuant to a Prospectus dated October 25, 2004 and Prospectus Supplement dated May 25, 2005.

CHINA JOINS IN

ChinaView.cn reported that The China Development Bank (CDB) will launch asset securitization this year after about three years of preparation.

Securitization, which originated in the United States in the 1970s, and has grown a following in Europe, has become a major financial instrument around the world. Asset securitization can be defined as changing non-liquid assets (mortgages, automotive financing) into securities that can be traded in a capital market. The practice bridges currency and capital.

Earlier this year, authorities ratified the asset securitization plans in the China Development Bank (CDB) and China Construction Bank (CCB).

The CCB, one of the country's Big Four state-owned commercial banks, will launch the asset securitization move backed by housing mortgage loans.

The CDB, a policy bank whose loans largely go to construction of infrastructure, was given the green light to securitize its loan assets, involving electric power, railway, high ways, airports, ports and other public facilities, and energy industries including oil and natural gas.

Asset-Backed Alert, by Harrison Scott Publications

The writers at Asset-Backed Alert reported in March that market players were starting to worry that the values of asset-backed securities may have climbed too high.

The article noted "... as investors continue to gorge themselves on securitized products, industry participants are beginning to wonder whether it would take much to send those buysiders scurrying out of the market - reversing the favorable technicals that have been in place for the past two years.

Their concern is that less-experienced buyers are indiscriminately purchasing bonds without enough regard to the risk they incur, therefore driving up the values of lower-quality products to unjustified levels. "We've seen better economic conditions, and spreads haven't been this tight," one longtime investor said..."

Special risks of mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities

Mortgage-backed securities represent an interest in a pool of mortgages. When market interest rates decline, more mortgages are refinanced, and mortgage-backed securities are paid off earlier than expected. Prepayments may also occur on a scheduled basis or due to foreclosure. The effect on the fund’s return is similar to that discussed above for call risk. When market interest rates increase, the market values of mortgage-backed securities decline. At the same time, however, mortgage refinancings and prepayments slow, which lengthens the effective maturities of these securities. As a result, the negative effect of the rate increase on the market value of mortgage-backed securities is usually more pronounced than it is for other types of fixed-income securities, potentially increasing the volatility of the fund.

Asset-backed securities are structured like mortgage-backed securities, but instead of mortgage loans or interests in mortgage loans, the underlying assets may include such items as motor vehicle installment sales or installment loan contracts, leases of various types of real and personal property, and receivables from credit card agreements. The ability of an issuer of asset-backed securities to enforce its security interest in the underlying assets may be limited. Asset-backed securities are subject to many of the same risks as mortgage-backed securities.

At times, some of the mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities in which the fund may invest will have higher than market interest rates and therefore will be purchased at a premium above their par value. Prepayments may cause losses on securities purchased at a premium. Unscheduled prepayments, which are made at par, will cause the fund to experience a loss equal to any unamortized premium.

Rapid Reporting's President Addresses Fraud, Quality Subprime Loans and Regulatory Compliance

Businesswire.com reported that on Thursday, May 19, 2005, industry observers will meet for a finance symposium.

WHAT: SourceMedia's Subprime Lending Symposium Forum entitled, "Building a Quality Subprime Business."

WHO: Jay Meadows, CEO and president of Rapid Reporting,
will provide commentary on the checks and balances in
place to prevent fraud within the mortgage industry,
the integration of fraud prevention tools at the point
of sale as well as legal requirements and regulations
surrounding consumer information security.

WHERE: The Rio Suite Hotel and Casino; Las Vegas, Nev.

WHEN: 1:30 p.m., Thursday, May 19

CONTACT: Meredith Fletcher,Media Contact for Rapid Reporting
678.781.7207

Math for the Networks

Gen X + Gen Y = An Audience Harder to Delude Than We Baby Boomers.

It's not pre-calculus, but it's close. The equation comes from a quick read of Merrill Brown's article Abandoning the News published in the Spring issue of the Carnegie Reporter, the online journal for the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation. Mr. Brown's premise is that the future of American news is being threatened by the younger generations tuning out and away. Now I find that an interesting angle to investigate. Unfortunately Mr. Brown doesn't offer any facts to his premise. Scanning through the report you'll probably come to the same conclusion I did: here is some overpaid journalist-turned-consultant who got paid thousands of dollars to write well-known facts about teens and college folks using cell phones, the web and Palm Pilots to access news, moaning about it as if in 2005 that were news itself.

Mr. Brown writes, "... through Internet portal sites, handheld devices, blogs and instant messaging, we are accessing and processing information in ways that challenge the historic function of the news business and raise fundamental questions about the future of the news field."

Fine, but is that threatening the amount of news consumed?

Brown adds. "... clearly, young people don't want to rely on the morning paper on their doorstep or the dinnertime newscast for up-to-date information; in fact, they—as well as others—want their news on demand, when it works for them. And, say many experts, in this new world of journalism, young people want a personal level of engagement and want those presenting the news to them to be transparent in their assumptions, biases and history."

So for once the major networks will have to acutally report a real story, vette the issues and not just share and re-write a pretty version of the AP Wires, let me get a tissue. Maybe I'm jaded but this is where I think Mr. Brown earned his money. He keenly uncovered and revealed interesting blends of business and grassroots romances including The Command Post a site created by a worldwide network of bloggers set up to cover stories and package links to other sites that add documentation. The Bakersfield Californian's approach to citizen journalism was also mentioned with its Northwest Voice Project illustrating how a community weekly paper and its internet site can provide really localized news. In addition the financial success of the multi-faceted and fascinating Craigslist.com an uber site with city-specific laundry lists trumpeting everything from jobs, to prospective spouses to a used bicycle was discussed. Apparently the Craiglist.com website has reportedly re-directed $50 - $65 million dollars in ad revenue away from San Francisco Bay newspapers alone. These facts are probably provoking news executives 'round the world to regroup and react to this new environment.

Before I continue on a tangent, read the survey data and powerpoint. If you have a chance, write Mr. Brown himself at Merrillbrown02@hotmail.com. He is a dot com journalist from the print world and was the founding editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com (1996 to 2002.) He also served as a senior vice president of RealNetworks and was a founder of Court TV. He started his career in print and was the Wall Street correspondent for The Washington Post.

Trophy Site: Divorcing Google for Technorati

If you find information on Google.com because the web page has high rankings due to Google's page-rank system (as some mysterious calculation of the importance of its external/internal links and incoming vs. outgoing links as well as keywords being consistent with the overall purpose and design of the site, to weed out "link farms"), but that page has not been updated for a long time and still shows up on the first page of the search results, how useful is it to the surfer?

You have to admit, it's a good point. Blogger Iyengar (or Aiyangar) from India posed that question on his blog pointing out the perils of the world's greatest search engine (my words) versus a younger, more attractive URL.

Enter Technorati. Writes Iyengar, "... with XML, RSS feeds and all the other things that blogs and their ilk live by and breathe today, to me it makes more sense to rank sites based on the frequency of their updates. This way, these newer crop of search engines like Technorati that search the "World Live Web" incentivize freshness of an entry (it may be a post or any other content and that is why I am careful to include not only blogs for this discussion but any site for that matter).

It is a real kick to watch your site show up on the top, only a few minutes after you have updated it. If this can become the paradigm for prioritizing the display of relevant pages for keyword(s) search (other than most tradename searches like IBM for example, where it is reasonable to expect that www.ibm.com shows up on top regardless of when it was last updated), I am sure we can move on to a brave new world where anyone can expect to land up on the first page of search results as long as they pass Google's existing methodology *and* update their content often."

BUILD YOUR OWN --- FREE COURSEWARE

UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is the teaching/learning arm of the UN. Their website serves as a clearinghouse for the dissemination and sharing of information and knowledge. Here is a partial list of free courseware to support course/content managment.

Dokeos Open Source Learning and Knowledge Management is free software translated in 31 languages. The technology is being used by 1000+ organisations.

Moodle is an open source learning management system for producing Internet-based educational courses and Web sites on any major platform (Linux, Unix, Windows and Mac OS X). Courses are easily built up using modules such as forums, chats, journals, quizzes, surveys, and assignments.

OLAT - Online Learning And Training is a web-based Learning Management System (LMS) used in Switzerland's public sector and developed at the University of Zuerich. OLAT is open source and completely free of charge.

Ganesha
is a French Open Source LMS. The developer is currently working on AICC SCORM and XML features and will release Ganesha in other langauges in the near future.

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) allows MIT course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects to be available on the web, FREE OF CHARGE. The purpose of MIT OCW is to serve as a model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age.

Coursework is an open source course management system based at Stanford University. The CourseWork source code is free and open, and can be downloaded for any organization to use and modify to their own needs. You will need your own staff to install and manage the system, but the code is free and open.

Review additonal freeware on the UNESCO website.

GEM - The Gateway to Educational Materials

The Gateway to Educational Materials is the joint effort of several groups including The US Department of Education, The National Library of Education, and a team from Syracuse University. The site is geared to educators but anyone can access the materials which include thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites,

Resources and tools are in a variety of formats, including lesson plans, educational Web pages, books for sale, and web pages for national museums by subject, keyword or grade level. Great news: the majority of these resources are FREE.

High Tech High

Philadelphia - - The past two years has witnessed an escalating debate on the state of high schools around the nation. Alicia Mundy wrote in the Seattle Times that Bill Gates blasted the state of U.S. high schools in a speech before the National Governors Association education summit on February 27th. Gates has not chosen Philadelphia as one of the cities receiving money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has committed more than $2.3 billion to education since 1999. Some $733 million of that money focuses on the small schools initiative, smaller, organic, learning communities with 200 - 400 students designed to replace the country's aging, massive, impersonal high schools.

Gates' prescence will still be felt here. A Philadelphia Inquirer article written by Susan Snyder reported that Gates will put up funding for what can be dubbed "High Tech High" a yet unnamed $46 million school with the latest technology - from interactive digital textbooks and computerized tablets to electronic play diagrams for the basketball team. The project will be a joint venture with the Philadelphia School District.

"We have the premier techological entrepreneur teaming with us - absolutely incredible," said James Nevels, chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission.

The school is set to open in September of 2006.

Creating and Working With PDF Documents with Adobe Acrobat

Creating PDF (Portable Document Format) documents can make life much easier for those desiring to put documents on the Internet. PDF documents allow the end user to view and interact with them without the need to have the application used to create them. For instance, a newsletter created with PageMaker and converted to PDF can be viewed by anyone having Acrobat Reader, even though they don’t have PageMaker.

Ask Your Doctor?

Douglass B. Humphreys, CEO of Patient Interaction writes that patient education, or “issue marketing,” provides patients with valuable information crucial to their purchase decisions and health and safety. He writes that pharma-sponsored patient education campaigns can have an extremely positive impact on patient attitudes towards health care professionals and the treatment programs they prescribe.

Another nice piece answers the million dollar questionWhat does it take to get patients to comply? Check out this abstract on Pharma Marketing News.

OLD HEAD PRE-MED

Historically medical school applicants had to have had not only a college degree (preferred by not required) but three years of apprenticing to a practicing physician for possible admission to medical schools. Degree candidates often had established success in other careers, were well known in a specific field or city, and were normally in their late 20's to late 30's.

Harvard Medical School lauded a group of students of African descent who studied at Harvard between 1850 and 1930. Most were over 35, respected 'coloured' gentlemen, whose admittance to the school appeared safe, progressive and practical as all of the black graduates were presumed to be preparing to serve all black patients in the States or leave to go to the Caribbean or Africa.

Nora N. Nercessian, supported by Harvard Medical School, created and presented Against All Odds: The Afro-American Presence in Medicine, 1850–1930 an exhibit that ran during Black History Month in 1990. Follow the links below to go to the exhibit's companion book in PDF format. The book further expanded the parameters of the exhibit and on the literature that has appeared since the 1950s on some of the graduates.

Please click on the links below to view PDF files.

Acknowledgements, Preface, Introduction
Part One: An Evolution of Attitudes
Part Two: Biographical Sketches
Appendices

College Lecture Material

I am taking a class in microbiology - - the macroscopic study of microorganisms and viruses - - and I am particularly interested in a sub-area, immunology. Immunology specifically studies the way in which the body fights off microorganisms and how we maintain health even in the midst of billions of antigens. Somehow the body recognizes and teaches itself what is internal and what is foreign and it's the how & why that comprises much of the work in this ara.

To learn more, read a powerpoint presentation based on an article written by Aude M. Fahrer et al in Nature, Vol. 409, 15 ebruary 2001 and presented by Amy Marie Sepan at a seminar at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. To check it out, look right to the featured article.

The Mega-Deals Are Back in Commercial Real Estate

So you want to know how true players in the commercial real estate space get the big deals done? Many investors do. Analysts who monitor the real estate industry say investors who left traditional brick-and-mortar industries -- such as real estate -- during the dot-com and telecom booms have come back.

This has resulted in large amounts of capital driving massive real estate deals according to Wharton Business School professors and industry experts. The school's Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center recently organized a meeting with three panel sessions, one of which was called 'Mega-Projects in Real Estate: Where Are They and How Do They Work?" to discuss recent trends.

Attendees learned about the challenges and creativity required to get big deals done. The panelists discussed aspects of structuring, underwriting, pricing, negotiating, financing and execution. It's safe to say that mostly everyone came away with the knowledge that while risks are high in commercial real estate transactions, so are the potential rewards.

Should Your Next CEO Be a Philosopher?

This in from one of the Wharton Business School's e-newsletter's called Knowledge@Wharton. According to the article, a Wharton professor and an Israeli venture capitalist believe that a firm's financial success comes more from a deep understanding of the customer's philosophical perspective than other areas such as effective marketing, research and developement, building brand loyalty and other efforts. Zen anyone?

Toxic Breast Milk? By FLORENCE WILLIAMS

Apparently you are what you eat. Ms. Williams wrote this article for a January 9, 2005 issue of the New York Times. In it she asks readers to imagine human milk from mammary glands with an ingredients label. Read down and one will see 100% of the nourishing and life-enhancing minerals and vitamins needed by babies. Keep reading. Tests show that along with the good comes the bad: trace amounts of of DDT (the persistent pesticide) PCB's, dioxin, trichloroethylene, perchlorate, mercury, lead, benzene, and arsenic.

Where is this coming from? Ms. Williams notes that the small amounts of paint thinners, dry-cleaning fluids, wood preservatives, toilet deodorizers, cosmetic additives, gasoline byproducts, rocket fuel, termite poisons, fungicides and flame retardants passed to infants comes from the mother's diet, neighborhood and, increasingly, her household decor.

Source: The New York Times

Philadelphia (Free)dom

City government in Philadelphia appears to be using wi-fi technology to attract new business and also offer a free perk to those who currently reside within its limits.

Marc Levy wrote an AP article that ran on December 1 on the Washingpost.com. website and reported that the City of Philadelphia had struck a deal with Verizon. This new development has helped the city move along in its quest to provide free and/or inexpensive high-speed wireless access to all businesses and residents.

The city's website has several news briefings on the subject. I've quoted one of them:

"... the goal will be to provide some level of free wireless Internet access to everyone living, working or visiting in the city. It is anticipated that some sort of tiered service levels will be created for higher levels of service and individuals and organizations will pay a fee for these higher tiers of service/ How these levels of service are defined and the fees associated with them will be part of a much larger effort to create a public/private partnership to move this initiative forward..."

Update: Buzz Marketing and the Blog

Two interesting articles on the rebirth of word-of-mouth marketing, now called buzzing. The angle of the story was seen through the career and business of Elisa Camahort, founder of a San Francisco marketing firm called Worker Bees. One piece was written by Jane Allen in Vault.com and the other by Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins in About.com. Both authors describe Ms. Camahort's journey to the marketing profession and how she used buzzing to do it.

I liked the articles because both described another former corporate/creative type, and it was interesting to read about Ms. Camahort's approach. She started a company, established a sophisticated web presence and began to use a unique brand building strategy with actual results. The key for me was finding a good example of subtle, effective marketing with interesting prose, flowing from a well-written blog. The more I research this newfound blogging space, the more I really appreciate that.

This should be an interesting year as more and more major and boutique ad agencies grow their business blending buzz and guerilla-like marketing tools with traditional campaigns. I was intrigued enough by how Ms. Camahort used blogs in marketing for the arts for San Francisco clients - - -
among them the Foothill Music Theatre's Blog
and The TheatreWorks Blog
that I created one for an NYC theater group called the American Theatre of Harlem. If/when I receive responses to a query that I wrote, I'll follow this post with a published article in a circulated magazine or newspaper.

That being said, let me give a free plug of the Worker Bees Hive (my shorthand for the company’s portfolio). See below:

David Curley Web Design

Flashlight Graphics

Joy Design Studio

TriDigital Inc Web Services

Carla Befera & Co. P.R.

"Silicon Veggie" in the Metro

42nd St. Moon Blog

Elisa's Personal Blog

Foothill Music Theatre's Blog

SC County Democratic Party Blog

The TheatreWorks Blog

The Worker Bees Blog




*************************************
NOTE: The original post on 1/9/05 mistakenly cited TheatreWorks, another Worker Bees client, as the blog/buzz case study. The correct client is the Foothills Music Theatre. For more information on Worker Bees, email Ms. Camahort directly at elisa@workerbees.biz. or call the company at 408.504.5708.

Health Care Marketing
How then do healthcare marketers determine an e-marketing strategy?

According to Daniel Fell in healthleaders.com the key is the organization's specific goals. He lists three defining criteria:

Brand Building - mix of online branding strategies and consumer information services.
Driving Traffic to Physicians - offer referral services and promote the services/practices/clinis of individual physicians
Product-Specific Marketing - - create an interactive channel to draw patients into the service or serve existing patients with health management tools

Interetsing piece ... his article and discussion on six channel strategies is worth reading.

Looking Back: Bayer and Company ... The Way of Vioxx?

A recent book authored by Diarmuid Jeffreys' "Aspirin: The Story of a Wonder Drug" takes a look at what may be a too-sensitive consumer marketplace that could have even aspirin in question. Jeffreys' writes:

" ...imagine that this wonder drug had been introduced today. Would it have been approved? No doubt early testing would have shown the anti-coagulant properties. But instead of seeing this as a benefit (aspirin and related compounds are used to treat heart attacks today) it would likely have been seen as a fatal flaw preventing widespread use – in today’s risk averse climate, you can’t have people getting anticoagulants over the counter, and the idea that a drug with such a side effect might be used very widely would send shivers down the spine of the regulators. Even worse, imagine the discovery a few years after approval that aspirin does increase risks of bleeding. It would have gone the way of Vioxx, a much more specific cox inhibitor than its ancestor...."

As remarked by Diarmuid Jeffreys in his book Aspirin: The Story of a Wonder Drug.

Marketing and PR Blog Examples

By B.L. Ochman

• Loosetooth uses this blog to drive traffic to a Cafepress store, which handles order fulfillment.

• CEO Blogs List

  Actually,
  that's a misnomer. This is a list of weblogs authored by people who are
  in a leadership position in various organizations (corporations,
  non-profit, etc.)

  Hundreds of CEOs are blogging, and the vast majority of their blogs are just plain dull ... as in "who cares?"

• CEO Bloggers Club:

  An international blog dedicated to helping CEOs be better bloggers.

  Membership rules: you have to agree to update your blog at least three times a week.
  

The Online Journalism Review

A web-based journal produced by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. The Online Journalism Review covers the full range of journalistic issues in all media, but with a particular emphasis on the Internet.

Blogging, Citizen Journalism and the Website as Public Square

Jay Rosen a journalism professor NYU, press critic and writer follows the media industry through his blog PRESSthink. Mr. Rosen has a post covering a consultant's report to the Greensboro News & Record editor. The report details how best to take the and "... re-create the print product online... understanding the culture of the Internet, and of blogging in particular ..."

Blogging: Product Spin and Mindware Marketing

Journalist Ian Palmer wrote an article in IT Business Canada about businesses using blogs as an indicator of newfound respectability. IBM, HP, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are identified as sponsoring blogs, probably a good thing, but phony? Robin Hopper, CEO of iUpload, is quoted as saying his company's high Google ranking came not from its website, but its blog.

iUpload and Mr. Hopper aside, no one looks to business for sincerity. In many ways, ethics has been to difficult to get, so sincerity is way far off. But, business can be critiqued and reviewed for its creativity and you can see that in a new wave of biz blogs.

Sun Microsystems has an employee-driven blog Sun Bloggers where staff chat, vent and pound their chests. They do talk product, but in a developer sort of way.

IBM went into the freeware blog business with developerWorks a portion of IBM.com that allows visiting user/developers to created personal blogs. IBM has this in its "community section" within IBM which features forums, blogs and user groups. Now that spells marketing with "educational" before it and that might not be so bad. Mr. Palmer does not mention Ford, but the automaker had a splendid idea re-introducing its 1960's powerhouse seller, the Mustang, with a concept-to-showroom blog with pictures and commentary from the engineers.

It will be interesting to see how far companies will push a subtle blog-as-product or product showcase strategy. It will probably be for a while. The burgeoning blog sphere reportedly contains consumer/readers journaling and viewing more than 6 million sites.***

** PubSub Concepts Inc. in New York, has said that it’s now tracking over 6.5 million blogs..."

MacWorld 2005 - New Apple i-Pod Audio Systems Hit the Road w/Alfa Romeo

Apple is trying to make using an i-Pod in the car a reality for today's drivers -- wedding gate crashers and all. News from San Francisco this morning (January 12, 2005) is that Apple and Italian car company Alfa Romeo have entered into a joint agreement. According to news reports, Apple is promising Alfa Romeo owners "...the excitement of driving an Alfa Romeo with the ability to match their driving pleasure to more than 10,000 songs stored in an i-Pod and available at the touch of a button."

The first Alfa Romeos to offer the new Apple i-Pod audio systems will be launched this year with existing models gaining the option of Apple i-Pod integration as and when revised models are launched.

Google's Suggestive New Service.

Check out Google's latest product, "Google Suggest." Dr. James F. Moore, a Senior Fellow at the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society put a posting about it on his blog, noting the new service "...is useful and accurate..." Read reporter Alyce Lomax's December 13th article in the The Motley Fool.

What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers

First of two articles on what bloggers and traditional journalists can teach one another. Part 2: What bloggers can learn from journalists