Know News is Good News

What's up this weekend? Well, Mavis Staples of the former Staples Singers is at Stern Grove on Sunday for free. I really like the Cannonball Adderley song Walk Tall written by the leader of the former Staples, Roebuck Staples.

I really won't go into news topics much, mainly because that just isn't my thing. But(..........) I thought some current business news was interesting enough to mention. Here are some business news postings from earlier today I took note of.

Cingular is the #1 mobile-service provider in the US, I remember in 2002 when I signed up for Verizon, Verizon was then the leader with I think a 22% total market share. Cingular had net income rise to $540 million from $147 million a year earlier. Total revenue was $9.2 billion.

Motorola (MOT), a company I've always liked for strong stock value ('specially when it was well under $10/share each time over the years), rose $2 to $21.26 today as a response to Strong 2nd Quarter growth (quarterly income of $1.38 billion, total revenue rose to $10.9 billion).

I may be the only person to have switched from Mac to PC in recent years, it seems. Apple's marketshare is growing in the computer segment. And their stock rose 12% today based on quarterly earnings report. Plus, AAPL announced a 2-for-1 stock split yesterday. If only I kept my shares ....longer.... that I bought in '97(?) for 14 3/4. They've sold some ree- E-dic-u-lous number of iPods, to the tune of 60 million units to date. I still think there are better mp3 players (I've already blogged this, or maybe I haven't); but hey, I guess 60 million people can't be wrong (or simply like the coolness factor Apple does well). Read my CNet review posted here.

How about our friendly neighborhood Google? Well, 2nd Q profit more than doubled. So, our local economy can breathe a collective sigh of relief. People, this is good news. And Google is still working on the free WiFi network for SF. In fact, they sent a letter to the city and the letter is available for public viewing here.

Totally different topic, here's a kewl review of eateries in SF, Jatbar.com. Over 700 restaurants reviewed. And nice site too. Did I mention they have downloadable vCards (for your mobile phone)? Yup. That's the serious hook-up if you ask me- they've done the work, you get the rewards. Great work peeps. Keep it up JaT. Cheers.

Lastly, some stats for my sites.

My Flickr photo galleries have now had 1,241 unique views. Feel free to browse, leave comments, whutever. New pics going up all the time.

This blog, since its inception a two months ago, has had 755 unique visitors for a total of 1275 unique page views. I'm happy to see a very significant majority of viewers use Firefox 1.5 for their browser (see my favorite Firefox extensions blog post here). I can't believe some peeps are still on Windows 95 and 98 operating systems. But hey, whatever blows your hair back, I suppose. Linux users accounted for only 5 visits that are recognizeable by my stats counter app.

image credits: Apple and Google icons from their respective sites, photo from my Flickr photoset.