From All Things Digital, Oct. 19, 2009:

When Apple reports its fourth-quarter earnings today, investors are hoping–actually, expecting–that the iconic computer company will look a lot now as it always has.

In other words, don’t go changing and it will please us.

Wall Street is anticipating, as it has throughout the econalypse, another estimate-beating performance from Apple.

While Apple has signaled it would be making up to $1.23 a share for the quarter, the “whisper” number for the quarter is much higher.

Revenue is also expected to rise strongly to upwards of $9 billion.

The reason for all this happy talk? Strong sales of all of Apple’s innovative hardware products, including iPods, iPhones, computers, as well as big, fat profit margins that come with the upgrades this past quarter by consumers to its new Snow Leopard operating system software.

And, of course, the stock has been showing all this investor love by–as BoomTown has noted recently–defying gravity.

Apple shares are up just above 120 percent since the beginning of the year.

It closed at $188.05 on Friday, giving it a market valuation of $168.5 billion.

Whether it will continue going up is a big question of investors, although Apple is entering the holiday season, which is one in which it typically does well.

Plus, many are expecting the company to goose excitement for 2010 with the announcement of its secret-but-everyone-knows tablet offering.

That said, Microsoft also officially is launching a new operating system out this week–Windows 7–which is expected to give Apple some clear competition.

More coverage from All Things Digital:

• Sprint Nextel Silences iPCS
• Viral Video: The Rock Obama Returns

It's fashionable these days to criticize social networking sites for their inability to connect with teens (NYT on Twitter), potential to ruin friendships (WSJ on Facebook) and lack of profitability (all).

But beneath the surface - in this case on top of Twitter's platform - some entrepreneurs are seeking to turn the power of social networking into actual businesses.

Take, for example, StockTwits.com, which bills itself as "Bloomberg for the little guy and gal."

After just seven months, StockTwits.com has 90,000 users and over 1000 unique contributors sharing ideas about stocks and the economy in a community built on Twitter's open software architecture.

Unlike the "computer generated" tickers at the bottom of CNBC or Bloomberg TV, StockTwits is "the human ticker," says co-founder Howard Lindzon...

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From The Business Insider, Aug. 6, 2009:

Until today, we had nothing but respect and admiration for Cisco CEO John Chambers.  Now we're wondering whether he has gone insane.

Check out Ben Worthen's description of Cisco's new senior management structure:

Mr. Chambers has replaced Cisco's top-down decision making with committees of executives from across the company. Some teams provide strategic advice and evaluate the progress of these projects. In total, Cisco now has 59 internal standing committees...

It is not uncommon for top Cisco executives to serve on 10 or more committees and spend 30% of their time dealing with the issues raised there. Cisco said as it adds more businesses, it plans to expand the number of people who participate in these meetings from 750 senior employees to about 3,000...

Mr. Chambers said part of his goal is to make employees rethink how they work and what they work on. The new management structure "makes everyone uncomfortable, including the CEO," he said.

What happens when decisions get made by committees?  They don't get made.

In late 2007...H-P started promoting a warranty for its switches that provides free upgrades and support. Under Cisco's new structure, a decision about how to respond to H-P's offering was delayed as it worked its way through multiple committees, these people said. Cisco didn't match H-P's promotion until this April [2009], and during that period Cisco's market share fell.

John says the new management structure is ...

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Read Ben's full article from the WSJ here.

More coverage from The Business Insider:

Cisco "thinking about" going up against MSFT Office and Google Apps » More

There's been a lot of stories lately about high-frequency trading, which has been characterized by some as just the latest Wall Street scam designed to rip-off the individual investors.

Adam Sussman, director of research at TABB Group and author of many reports on market structure, joined us this morning to help clear up some of the confusion about what high-frequency trading is (and isn't).

So here's a little primer/cheat sheet that hopefully will clear up some confusion and misconceptions about these super fast, computer driven trades:

• It's a good thing: High-frequency trading provides liquidity and helps ensure the "certainty of orders," Sussman says, by giving investors rapid response to their buys and sells. In this regard, computer-driven high-frequency trading makes for more efficient markets vs. the old days, when human "specialists" could sit on a order for seconds or even minutes before executing. (Eric Falkenstein delves deeper into this topic on Clusterstock.com)
• It's huge: TABB estimates high-frequency traders are involved in 73% of all U.S. equity volume today, up from 35% in 2006. The research firm estimates high-frequency traders have generated $21 billion in annual revenue over the past 12 months. (Notably, high-frequency trading isn't new it's just getting more popular as the cost of computing has come down and barriers to entry fall.)
• There's a difference between high-frequency trading and "flash orders": This is key because many recent reports have wrongly conflated the two. "Flash orders" - provided by electronic exchanges such as BATS and Nasdaq OMX - give the recipients an advantage by providing them a look a buy and sell orders a fraction of a second before they are made available to everyone. Flash orders slow down execution and increase uncertainty, Sussman says. "The problem with flash orders is it introduces the same level of uncertainty as sending orders to a human being," he says. "It's an intentional slowing of your order" -- even if just by milliseconds.

As discussed in the accompanying video, "flash orders" emerged from SEC Regulation NMS...

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From The Business Insider, July 27, 2009:

The Palm Pre still costs $199, but over the weekend, more than a few customers bought new ones for $99.

The confusion in Best Buy stores across the country began when a picture of an in-store banner promoting a week long special of a $99 Pre with a 2-year contract was posted online.

But turns out, it was a mistake. And Best Buy marketing manager John Bernier announced the error on his Twitter page Sunday afternoon.

But somehow the deal got programmed into vendor systems and soon, stores across New York and nationwide began selling the phone at the new lower price during the weekend.

Lucky customers who got their phones cheap get to keep them at the lower price, one sales rep told a WSJ reporter:

WSJ: At Best Buy’s store at 13th and Harrison Streets in San Francisco, the salesman told me that the $99 offer might be a glitch in the system...

More from the Business Insider:

• The Scary Reason Healthcare Can't Be Reformed
• When Workers Attack!

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The mass protests in Iran have captured the world's attention. A major sidebar is the role technology has played in shaping these major events, most notably social networking sites like Twitter.

Twitter has played a "pretty extraordinary" part in the protests, giving average Iranian citizens the ability to "broadcast to the world" the events in Tehran, 140 characters at a time, says Wall Street Journal Deputy Managing Editor Alan Murray.

Twitter, Facebook and other sites show the power of technology to express the voice of the people and tear down walls between closed and open societies.

On the other hand, technology is also enabling oppressive regimes like Iran to exert greater control over what citizens can and can't do online. "Deep-packet" technologies provided by Siemens and Nokia have given Iran "one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet," The WSJ reports.

Meanwhile, all PCs sold in China starting July 1 must have government-approved software called Green Dam Youth Escort. The software is ostensibly designed to block pornography but could potentially be used to censor political opposition and religious sites.

Murray is confident technology will ultimately be used to empower the voice of the people, not governments seeking to suppress them.

Check the accompanying video to hear Murray's views on how he thinks the events in Iran will play out, and whether he agrees with criticism that President Obama has not done enough to show U.S. support for the protestors.

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With more investors stepping off the sidelines and edging back into stocks, a key question is -- where's the growth?

Joe Ransom, a senior portfolio manager at Silvant Capital Management, argues there's plenty of growth left in big tech names including Google, Qualcomm, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle.

One piece of advice from Ransom: Don't just rely on sector plays. Do the homework and sift out individual companies with a competitive edge. Case in point, Apple. Despite this week's sell-off after Steve Jobs failed to appear at their developers' conference, Ransom notes Apple remains attractively valued and a darling among consumers, who continually trade up and expand their family of Apple products.

Silvant, which has about $3.8 billion of assets under management, is long all those names in Ransom's funds, including the RidgeWorth Select Large Cap Growth Fund (STTAX), which is up 12.5% year-to-date. 

Stay tuned for part 2 of the interview, where Ransom discusses his other favorites, including energy.  

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At 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning, Facebook will allow user to register user names and domain names (facebook.com/username) to go with them.

One marketer tells me employees at her firm have been instructed to wait up until midnight Friday so they can quickly register user names for all of the firm's clients before squatters can claim them during the land rush.

This approach may not be necessary.

On Digital Media Law, Jonathan Handel explains how a company can protect its trademark before the land rush commences:

At http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights, there’s a “Preventing the Registration of a Username” form for entering your company name, title, email, trademark, and registration number. (Oddly, there’s no place to enter your own name.) As that last data item suggests, only registered marks are eligible, although I’d recommend that holders of trademark applications in process simply enter the application number instead. Filling in the form will prevent someone else from using your trademark as a user name.

What happens if an infringer registers your trademark before you fill out the form?...

See also:

• The Future of Facebook Usernames Revealed!
• Facebook Misses Anotehr Revenue Opportunity

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Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla may have the largest cleantech portfolio in Silicon Valley, but he made his fame and fortune as an IT guy. So does the about-face mean IT growth is officially dead? Not if you pick and chose wisely. Khosla cites his investment in Aliph, the company that makes the Jawbone Bluetooth headsets. It did $500,000 in revenues in 2006 and a whopping $140 million last year. Guess what? It’s still growing even in the recession.

In the final segment of our rare sit-down interview with one of Silicon Valley’s most renowned investors, Khosla talks about what he likes in IT these days and what kind of companies he’s avoiding. The former Sun-founder also gives his thoughts on the Sun-Oracle deal.

But it’s not just IT that’s changed. The venture business itself has grown and matured during Khosla’s multi-decade career as an investor, and not all for the better. His thoughts on why venture capitalists need to focus more on the “venture part” and less on the “capital” on the clip.

See also:

• Can Cleantech Produce "Ten Googles"?
• Why Ethanol--Not Electric Cars and Hybrids--Is the Answer

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The AllThingsD conference is over, so let the post-op begin!

With the conference fresh in my mind (but my mind not fresh after taking the red-eye) Henry and I discuss some of the key themes and big takeaways from the D7 confab, including:

• Web 2.0 is dead, long live Web 3.0: This was the major theme set out by conference co-hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, who write: "So what's the seminal development that's ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It's the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services."

Mossberg believes the iPhone and iTouch represent the "tip of the spear," as discussed here, but he does not believe Apple has an insurmountable lead in Web 3.0.

As Henry and I discuss in the accompanying video, if Web 2.0 really is "over" (a debatable proposition, for sure) what's going to happen to all the social networking sites? It's especially relevant considering another big theme was how the Web 2.0 leaders still haven't figured out a revenue model; Twitter served as the Web 2.0 posterchild at D7, although most observers believe they'll figure it out. (Click here for the AllThingsD presentation of Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.)

• Microsoft and Yahoo, NOT Sitting in a Tree: With Steve Ballmer unveiling Bing, and Carol Bartz telling Tech Ticker talks are in the ebb vs. flow position, it doesn't look like a search deal is going to happen anytime soon...if ever.

And while Microsoft's new search engine garnered a strong initial response...

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