New York’s Mayor Is Officially Insanely Rich

At work today, a minor debate broke out: Is infinity plus one much greater than infinity? Perhaps that same debate occurred in the Mayor’s office today when the Wall Street Journal reported that Merrill Lynch sold its 20% stake in Bloomberg LP for between $4.5 and $5 billion today. At this sale price the company’s valuation is $25 billion.

Silicon Alley Insider points out that Mayor Mike still owns 68% of Bloomberg LP, making him worth $17 billion, a full $6 billion above the most recent guess by the wealth gurus at Forbes. It’s good to be the mayor. But is $17 billion much better than $11 billion? At some point, it all becomes funny money, right? Thus the infinity plus one debate.

Bloomberg LP, which had the first right of refusal on the sale purchased the 20% stake.

Kindle 2.0 Vs. iPhone 2.0

CrunchGear reports that Amazon is ready to unveil the 2.0 version of its (maybe) popular e-book, Kindle, this October. Allegedly this new version will skip a few generations of technology, akin to the going from the first iPod to an iPod Mini.

Will a second Kindle create a flurry of excitement like the new iPhone? Definitely not. Will it pique the curiosity of tech fans? Maybe. While the Kindle is a noble effort by Amazon, it hardly appears to be a blockbuster gadget that people clamor to purchase. Amazon tightly controls sales figures for its gadget, only saying that it is popular and often sold out. Is that because of production constraint? Or are they actually selling the thing?

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney estimated that Amazon sold between 10,000 and 30,000 Kindles, in its first six months. He estimates that it will eventually contribute between $400 and $750 million in revenue, 1-3% of Amazon’s total revenue. Impressive figures for a digital book reader, but are they realistic?

In New York, seeing an iPhone, BlackBerry or other smartphone is common. However, when a Kindle or Sony e-book user is seen on the subway, bloggers take their photo then make posts with headlines like, “Kindle User Spotted in the Wild.” SAI’s Dan Frommer speculates that this does not bode well for the Kindle. He thinks Apple’s all in one wunderdevice will eat at Kindle sales. With Bloomberg, The New York Times and the AP already offering native news applications, and a plethora of book options also available, Frommer doubts that an iPhone user would bother with a Kindle.

Kindle advocates fire back that signing up for AT&T is much more expensive than just purchasing a Kindle. They might also point out that the Kindle is designed to be toted everywhere from the Subway to the fire side chair to the beach for extensive dedicated reading. The iPhone’s battery would quit after just over 5 hours of reading, while the Kindle should last much longer. Also, it is less of a strain on the eyes.

Amazon desperately needs the Kindle to work, because its core business–book sales, c.d. sales, d.v.d sales–is in great peril from an attack by the iPhone and the growing army of iPhone clones. As sales of physical items declines with a rise in digital downloads, Amazon, once the darling of the tech set might see the same problems its brick and mortar foes face.

Short Sellers And Rumor Mongerers, The Jig Is Up!

When the financial world falls apart, it’s time to find a culprit. So far it appears as though it is the Rumor Mongerers and the Short Sellers. The SEC is going after both of them.

Bloomberg: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed Wall Street’s biggest firms and hedge-fund advisers in a widening effort to crack down on suspected manipulation of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. shares, said three people with knowledge of the matter.

The SEC is looking for evidence that Goldman Sachs played a part in fueling the speculation that Bear Stearns was screwed. If that speculation became fact and Goldman was shorting Bear, then Goldman would make a good amount of money. Short selling? A Journal blog explains:

First of all, what the heck is short-selling? A primer, for those curious: Short selling, the WSJ explains, is a legitimate trading strategy in which traders aim to profit from falling stock prices. In a short sale, a trader borrows stock and then sells it, in hopes it will later fall in price. If it does, the short seller then buys the stock in the open market at the lower price, returns what was borrowed, and pockets the difference. The SEC said Tuesday’s move aims to stop “unlawful manipulation through ‘naked’ short selling” — the practice of selling stock short without taking steps to borrow it.

Guns N’ Roses To Debut Chinese Democracy on Video Game

After a decade of fine tuning Gun’s N Roses’ follow up to the Use Your Illusions records, it appears as though Axl Rose is finally ready to drop some Chinese Democracy on us.

According to the Times, one song from the album–Shackler’s Revenge–will be available in the video game Rock Band 2 this September. The Times then speculates that this means Chinese Democracy will finally be released by yearend.

McCain to Obama: Why You Duckin’ Me?

The New York Times ponders whatever happened to those town hall meetings McCain and Obama were going to have together:

Mr. McCain wanted to hold these town-hall meetings every Thursday until the Democratic convention at the end of August — about a dozen of them in all. The Obama campaign countered with an offer of five — but that included the three debates the two men were already scheduled to hold in the fall, meaning that Mr. Obama was really only agreeing to two of the sessions that Mr. McCain proposed. And the Obama camp wanted one of the two to be held on July 4, a day when Americans could be expected not to flock to their televisions.

The story starts, “At nearly every town-hall meeting that John McCain conducts with voters these days, he stops to point out someone missing from the room: Barack Obama.”

I’d like to picture McCain on his tour bus re-creating the opening to Rocky III screaming, “I want Obama! I want Obama! You hear that, Young Man? You tell Obama to come here! Nobody can beat me! You tell him what I said! And he’s NEXT! I’m gonna kill him! Nobody can stop me! You tell Obama that! I’M COMING AFTER HIM! YOU TELL HIM!”

And then Adam Nagourney from the Times slumps off to his laptop muttering, “Jeez, alright already, I get it, I tell him.”

Microsoft-Yahoo: Finally Over?

Henry Blodget is sick of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal:

We imagine you’re as sick of reading about this soap opera as we are writing about it, so we’ll close (for today) with these predictions:

• It’s over:
  • Carl Icahn has lost.
  • Yahoo will win the shareholder vote in a landslide
  • Yahoo needs to focus on getting its own act together

Maybe, at some point, a few months down the road, Microsoft and Yahoo can see if there’s some way to work together to combat the GOOG–perhaps even an acquisition. But that will be many months down the road.

Apple Tallies: 1 Million iPhone 3G’s Sold, 10 Million Applications Sold

Apple released two boastful bits of info today.

1.) “Apple today announced it sold its one millionth iPhone 3G on Sunday, just three days after its launch on Friday, July 11.”

2.) “iPhone and iPod touch users have already downloaded more than 10 million applications from its groundbreaking new App Store since its launch late last week.” (No word on how many were free or paid.)

Mike Abramsky at RBC guessed this one correctly. On Friday he predicted 1 million units would sell during the weekend citing pent up demand and a greater global market for the phone in places such as Japan, where 1500 people waited in line Friday to get the buttonless phone box.

Terrorist Fist Jabs On The New Yorker

This New Yorker cover has been out for just two days. Judging by the media coverage, it is a picture that tells more than a 1,000 words. I’m not the type of person that has framed New Yorker covers in his house, I’ve got nothing to prove. However, this cover might just change all that.

David Remnick, The New Yorker’s editor explained his decision to use this cover to the Huffington Post:

Obviously I wouldn’t have run a cover just to get attention — I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama’s — both Obamas’ — past, and their politics. I can’t speak for anyone else’s interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama’s supposed “lack of patriotism” or his being “soft on terrorism” or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office…

We have now published three very long, extensive Profiles of Barack Obama and any number of Comment pieces, and I think it adds up to detailed, fair, insightful coverage. This cover is part of the picture, too, but it uses the language of political satire and cartooning, not of reporting and essays, and sometimes not everyone likes that or gets what’s intended. I would prefer not to over-explain things, but I’d rather be clear than there be lingering misconceptions about what [the cover artist] was exploring.

iPhone Craze

I covered the iPhone craze for BusinessWeek. It was a ton of fun. One guy said he’d sleep with his iPhone. Another postponed his vacation to make sure he bought an iPhone. Check it out. Good stuff in there.

After covering the asylum, I dove in myself. I waited an hour and got an iPhone. And let me just say, after less than a day of ownership–Holy Moley. This thing is fantastic. I haven’t run through the vagaries of it just yet. The keyboard will take a little getting used to. Also navigating the interface for making phone calls and text messages is new. I was apprehensive about buying one, but now I have no regrets. I can’t imagine a BlackBerry delivering the way the iPhone delivers.

Two Weird Advertisments

I don’t watch much television. And when I do watch, I watch through the web. As a result I miss many advertisements. Today I set up my new phone and did laundry. In the background I kept old episodes of PTI and CNN running. I saw these two adverts. I know they’re old, but still, holy cow. What is going on in these things?

Especially the X Games ad. What on earth are they thinking?