FluxHQ - Rambings of Beings from a Parallel Universe

Well, I tried to depart Chicago’s O’Hare to catch a flight to Miami, earlier today. I had been at the airport since 8am and around 11:30pm AA informed me that we were not going anywhere that night. This after we boarded the aircraft twice and the crew secured all doors, and the second time around we almost made it all the way through the movie “Marie Antoinette”. Trying to get home was no easy task, the taxi lines were 4-5 lines wide and it was freezing outside, so yours truly sans coat wasn’t about to freeze outside. The el was the next option, when I got there, no trains were running, “ice on the tracks and there are crews out there scraping the ice off the tracks” is what the platform agent told me. Great. About an hour later, another train shows up and an announcement was made that all of us needed to board that train. Finally around 1:30am I made it back home, just in time to find that the heat was busted and my place had turned into an icebox. Yippeee!

While at the terminal, I actually called the Platinum desk and got through to a human operator after about 45 mins on hold, not too bad, who re-booked me for a flight via Nashville the next morning. By the time I had reached home, that flight had been cancelled too and another call to AA confirmed my fears and got me a re-booking on a flight via Washington Reagan the next afternoon. When I awakened the next morning, the first thing I did was check the weather forecasts everywhere, good thing I did, since they were anticipating Reagan to be under a winter storm advisory later on that afternoon. I got back on the horn with AA and got myself on yet another flight, this time via New Orleans.

It was pretty bad when I got to O’Hare, not as bad as last night, I ran into some of the other passengers from my flight yesterday, who were still stuck there trying to get out and get on their cruise in the Caribbean. My flight to New Orleans went off without a hitch, but when I got there I learned that my flight to Miami was further delayed by an hour. Well all said and done, I finally made it on that flight and reached Miami at 9:30pm.

Just a schooch over 36 hours for what was initially a 3 hour flight.

Share This

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has entered the corporate office suite world with their for-pay offering, termed, Google Apps Premier Edition for $50/yr/user. The cost includes word processing and spreadsheet applications, calendar, e-mail, instant messaging, as well as guaranteed up-time, IT management tools, and technical support. A lot beefier than the free offering available on their website. Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), Proctor & Gamble (NYSE: PG) and General Electric (NYSE: GE) are some of the early adopters of the product, which lends more credibility to Google Apps. There are also companies working with Google to integrate their product suite into Google Apps, to make it more appealing to businesses. Avaya (NYSE: AV) is one such company, who intends to integrate its VOIP platform with Google Talk to offer subscribers a single in-box for voice, e-mail, IM, and faxes. Though this does not directly compete with Microsoft Office, it most certainly takes a bite out of Offices’ dominant market share.

Not too long ago people were writing off the online application market, citing the slow response times, lack of drag-&-drop, companies not willing to store their data on 3rd party machines etc. All a thing of the past, while apps like this does not mean the complete replacement of desktop apps, it does indeed signify a paradigm shift. The reasons for which are many including, an increasingly distributed workforce, becoming more cost aware, global data accessibility requirements and the wide availability of broadband. Sitting in your local coffee shop, collaborating with your co-workers via IM and while on a conference call with your boss in Japan is all now a reality and Google Apps is one of the tools required to achieve this nirvana. Just ask 37Signals about it, they’ve been peddling their brilliant online applications to small businesses for quite a while now, and have been very successful at it. They, as do Google, like to KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), which is something most other companies need to do. User adoption is difficult when application interfaces are complex and confusing and when they actually have to stop what they are doing to learn how to use a new product, instead of changing tools and chugging along like they used to. Hope someone at Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is listening.

Perhaps Scott McNealy will now want to amend his statement to: “The Network is the Desktop”.

Share This

Two of my favorite grocers announced today that they will become one. Whole Foods Markets (NASDAQ: WFMI) has is acquiring Wild Oats Markets (NASDAQ: OATS) for about $700 million including debt. The stocks for both companies have been on a tear since the initial announcement, the deal is expected to close in April. Life has been tough lately for natural food grocers like these two, faced with increasing competition from the likes of Trader Joe’s, conventional supermarket chains like Safeway and Kroger, and even Walmart. This is an interesting market consolidation, it gives Whole Foods a better presence in the South-East, Rocky Mountain Area and the Pacific Northwest. Whole Foods also has an impressive track record for the acquisition & turnaround of smaller non-profitable natural foods retailers, though Wild Oats will be it’s largest acquisition to date. Another issue, which I believe is significant, is the large duplication of overhead and management. Store closures and brand consolidation (Wild Oats operates under Wild Oats Marketplace, Henry’s Farmers Market, Sun Harvest, and Capers Community in 24 states & Canada) are bound to happen.

From a consumer standpoint, I would be interested to see what brands would be retained on the shelf from Wild Oats and whether the shopping experience would be altered. From an investor standpoint, would earnings for Wild Oats stores benefit from Whole Foods management, and how will Whole Foods deal with the acquisition of debt and several under-performing stores in markets they don’t have much experience in? If I may speculate here for an instant, based on Whole Foods track record, I’m feeling very positive about the whole situation. There are large pitfalls to navigate through, but in the end I believe that with ever increasing demand for natural & organic food, diet crazes, international cuisines and commercial farmer’s markets (for the lack of a better term), Whole Foods, under its current CEO John Mackey, will prevail.

Well it’s time to go grocery shopping. ta-ta.

Share This

I’m probably a bit late to the party but here goes. The saga that was JetBlue operations last week just goes to show you running an airline is not an easy business. Kudos to JetBlue though for coming out and admitting their mistakes and trying aggressively to patch up their relationships with customers, employees and investors. I like the way CEO David G. Neeleman took the whole thing so personally and was very vocal about it. They also released a pretty nice “Passenger Bill of Rights” for future events and all those affected by the delays, which has spurred activity on the Hill about the passenger rights bill, which had been struggling to gain much traction in Congress. Interestingly, Wall Street initially did not look too kindly upon any of JetBlue’s reparation efforts, plunging the stock a few points, but it’s back to prior levels as of today (NASDAQ:JBLU).

Of course, JetBlue failed quite spectacularly, but it’s from this failure that we have to learn and grow. Prior to last week, the consensus was that JetBlue was the best run airline in the industry. If this could happen to them, why couldn’t it to the others. I don’t think it’s that much of a threat to airlines like United and American, since they have a bigger operations setup and have enough staff bases to counter such an emergency. But that’s not to say they are immune to this, all the airlines need to sit up and reconsider their strategies to counter different situations. The industry as a whole is just recovering from a long history of bankruptcy and monetary losses, and unless they tighten the reins and be on the ball, the vapor thin veil of profitability from last quarter they are hiding behind, will vanish just as quickly as it came.

Being an American Airlines frequent flyer, I shudder to think what if what happened to JetBlue befell AA. There would have been bloodshed in the terminals, for sure.

Or it could all be sogrady’s fault for being in the area.

Share This

I was reading up on Neurocrine Biosciences(NASDAQ:NBIX) the other day, they have a drug in Phase III trial which is supposed to help people diagnosed with insomnia. Indiplon, the aforementioned drug, is a unique non-benzodiazapine agent that acts on a specific site of the GABA-A receptor. Indiplon has been shown to bind selectively to the specific subtype of GABA-A receptors within the brain believed to be responsible for promoting sleep. Insomnia affects a significant number of people in the United States. According to the National Sleep Foundation(NSF) Sleep in America Poll 2005, approximately 54 percent of the adult population report troubles sleeping a few nights per week or more. Approximately 38 percent of the adult population reports that they have experienced insomnia every night or almost every night within the past year. Shocking numbers, if you ask me, especially considering that these are the people with whom we interact everyday. It is also estimated that 1/3rd of American adults experience symptoms of insomnia at some time during their life. It’s more common in women, shift workers and older adults.

Insomnia is becoming more recognized by physicians as a disease in adults, that affects many aspects of patient’s health and well being. Insomnia not a one size fits all condition though, it encompasses various patient symptoms, like trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, waking up frequently during the night or awaken feeling unrefreshed. Patients suffering from insomnia frequently complain about feeling very tired, fatigued, having reduced energy levels and slower reflexes. Research also shows that their abilities to learn, remember and concentrate are affected adversely. There is also evidence that insomnia is a leading cause of mood swings, irritability and in some serious cases, even hallucinations. It all adds up though if insomnia goes untreated, though a symptom of some underlying disorder, insomnia becomes a cause of other physical and psychological illnesses when it is allowed to go on for a long time. More information can be found at e-insomnia and the National Sleep Foundation (NSF).

It’s a pretty scary picture overall, scarier perhaps when you make note of the fact that these studies consider adults only. Teenagers are prone to insomnia too, as the latest NSF studies show, and it adversely affects their behavioral patterns. Add this to hormones, peer pressure, increasing societal stress, the Internet and video games, you have a recipe for absolute disaster. Is it me or in the last 10 years have gun totting teenagers become more commonplace in schools?

Anyway, to get back to Neurocine and its drug Indiplon, which has had fantastic trials, but did not get FDA to give it a go. The reasoning behind the FDA non-approval was that they did not have time to work their way through all of the data! Simply jaw-droppingly dumb. While the majority of Americans could have been helped by this drug, the FDA does not have the time or inclination to even consider it! Combine this with the prescription drug import issue and you can see why some people are starting to question the existence of the FDA. Vanda Pharmaceuticals(NASDAQ:VNDA) is one of the other companies working on an insomnia drug, but its drug won’t hit the market until 2010 or so.

Perhaps it’s the solution to world peace, let everyone get more sleep.

Share This

We live in a world where 90% of the populace could be better off decaffeinated. The rise of modern society has been closely followed by the rise in coffee consumption, especially so in the United States. Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Caribou, Folgers and a whole herd of other “enablers” have made a fortuitous living off this craze. It almost seems that these days in order to be productive, or at least look productive, you must have a cup of coffee in one hand. Granted it is very stimulating and enjoyable to drink a cup of coffee, but honestly how addictive is it? Though not a very objective way to analyze the effects, I know a lot of people who are completely and utterly dependent on their morning cup of joe to jump-start their day, the lack of which causes them to be irritable, moody and sometimes even downright anti-social.

Some of you might argue that coffee drinking has some health benefits. It does, as numerous studies have shown, from reducing liver damage by alcohol to lowering risks of Type II diabetes in women. What the coverage of these studies fail to adequately state is the quantity of coffee consumption that leads to the discovered benefits. Still others might argue that coffee stimulates the brain so overall creativity and productivity is boosted. Well, yes, momentarily, what happens when the effects of the coffee wear off, the solution for addicts, drink more!

The bottom line is that addiction is bad, irrespective of what the person is addicted to.  To read more about this and to maybe find a few ways to lean you off the “juice” check out Steve Pavalina’s “How to Give Up Coffee“.

Share This