You Learn Something New Every Day

Sarah Hornik is an extremely talented artist who lives in Tel Aviv. She makes some of the most beautiful glass beads I’ve ever seen; each one is a colorful jewel, completely unique, whimsical, fun, and loaded with color. She also has a blog, and this week she uploaded a video of how she makes her beads. I’ve never actually seem lampwork done before, and it was fascinating to watch how fast she worked.

So, if you’ve ever been curious how someone would make something as beautiful as this:

awesome bead!

then check this link out.

She sells her work on her website, as well as on eBay, if you decide you have to own some of her stuff (although the bead show above has already been sold, sorry. And not to me.)

Penny-Stock Spammers Get Rich

One of the things I’ve always wondered about e-mail spam has been — who is actually making money off this stuff, and how much? Well, an article Yahoo! News today shows that there is, in fact, serious money to be made by spamming. I’d always assumed that there had to be some profit in it, or else spammers would not keep on doing it, but this was the first time I’ve actually gotten a window into how much.

In one spam campaign involving Apparel Manufacturing Associates (APPM) the SEC said the company’s stock closed at 6 cents on trading volume of 3,500 shares on Friday, December 15, 2006.

After a weekend spam campaign distributed e-mails proclaiming “Huge news expected out on APPM, get in before the wire, We’re taking it all the way to $1.00,” trading volume on Monday, December 18, 2006, soared to 484,568 shares with the price spiking to over 19 cents a share.

Two days later the APPM price climbed to 45 cents. However, by December 27, 2006, the price had slumped to 10 cents on trading volume of 65,350 shares, the agency said.

There’s no way to know from those numbers exactly who bought and sold when, but it’s easy to see that someone who knew what was happening could easily make a five or six-figure profit in less than two weeks. Lather, rinse, repeat — and you’re doing quite well for yourself.

Fortunately, the SEC is starting to take some steps to try to reign this kind of stock manipulation in, but I suspect as long as spam and penny stocks are around, we won’t be completely free from the practice.

Morning Vignette

or, Dogs have masters, Cats have staff.

So as is usual in the morning, I’m standing in my bathroom, getting ready to brush my teeth. Gimi, also as usual, saunters in and lets out a little yelp as he launches his big fatt butt up onto the sink counter. I fill my drinking cup with some fresh tapwater and power up my nice electric toothbrush. Meantime, Gimi sticks his nose into the cup and starts lapping up the water like he hasn’t had a drink in a week (although there’s a full water bowl over by his food dish).

A minute or so later, I finish up, spit, and turn the faucet on. Gimi keeps on drinking. I cup my hands under the water running out of the tap and rinse my mouth out.

I am well trained.

The Death of Internet Radio?

If you like listening to music streamed via internet radio, or from websites like Pandora, you might want to click through and read the FAQ at Save Our Internet Radio.

On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 – plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009.

There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money. That’s over $11 per listener in 2007. No Internet radio station currently operating comes even close to that kind of income. Also keep in mind that 1000 listeners is not a large number. Popular stations like Radio Paradise, SOMA, Digitally Imported, radioio, etc have many times that many listeners.

In other words, if they are allowed to stand these rates are a death sentence for independent Internet radio stations. The only stations that would survive would be those who can afford to operate at that kind of loss, such as AOL (who would owe over $20,000,000 in 2006, far in excess of their income from radio).

Unless the Feds change their current ruling, it’s looking like RIAA has been able to strike a death blow against all but the biggest and best-funded companies that stream music online.

Hat tip: Craig.

Passover Travel Booked

I wasn’t too sanguine about our ability to find an affordable, non-jetBlue flight home for Passover, but with a little help from Fare Compare, we scored non-stop, round-trip tickets for $200 less than I thought we were going to have to pay.

The flight out is a little full, and it gets us into Newark a little later that I would prefer. We also haven’t flown Continental in years, so that should be a nice change of pace.