Chavvon Smith’s Blog

I’ve been playing with some remote desktop sharing applications lately and I stumbled upon Yuuguu.com. It’s a free tool that let’s you web conference and share your desktop with other users. This could be a very disruptive technology considering how big companies like WebEx and Citrix have become. If they continue to add in features, they may get acquired just to remove a thorn from someone’s side.

I’ve been using the service lately as a support tool and I’ve been impressed. It lets us do everything we need to do from a collaboration and basic support standpoint. As we use the application more, I’ll write another review.

Chavvon Smith

I’ve been waiting for about 3 months to get into the Grand Central beta and I finally got an invitation. I must say I haven’t ever been this excited about a service. It gives you the same amount of control over your phone as you have with email.

Send callers to voicemail depending on groupings (family, friend, other), permanently block callers, transfer calls from your cell phone to your office phone while you’re on the call, and countless other features.

I’ll be disconnecting all my current numbers and using my grand central phone number exclusively. Visit GrandCentral.com and get on the list. It’s currently free and the service is very nice.

Chavvon Smith

I was helping a friend out with some finances over the weekend when he told me he had gotten some pay day loans he was having a hard time paying off. I asked some of the details about the loan and realized this is the biggest waste of money possible! This is how the loan was setup.

The initial loan was $800. He pays $129 per pay check (every two weeks), just to maintain the loan! Zero of this goes to the principle. The only way to pay off the loan is to pay $800 all at once.

Theoretically, if you had this loan for one year, you’d pay $3,354 in interest/fees or 419%. At that rate, you could have a 75% loan failure rate and still make money. If you’re considering a payday loan, don’t do it.

Chavvon Smith

When I walked into the office today, I was greeted by a friend telling me that he heard an announcement that the iphone was going to be reduced to $200 this weekend (the previous price was $499 and $599). The only problem was how Apple would deal with the buyers that just paid $500-$600 for the same device.

After checking around, I found the price was cut to $399 for the 8GB device. This was previously $599. All my friends that own the iphone are in love with it. I think sales will pick up quite a bit with these price cuts. We may see even more price reductions around Christmas time. I guess it’s time to get my own.

Chavvon Smith

A couple of days ago, my 3 yr old son decided it would be a good idea to put a popcorn kernel in his ear. When you think about it, extracting sounds easy. Tilt his head to the side, flush it with water, try a little vacuum, etc….nope. A 3 yr old has a very small ear canal, so when it’s pushed in with a very little 3 yr old finger, it tends to go quite deep. We could barely see it when we turned him on his side and tilted his head just right.

We tried flushing it with water, turning him on his side and flushing with water, we tried using a bulb to suck it out….and still no luck. After about 4 hrs, we finally gave up and went to the kids urgent care clinic. They tried the same things. Flushing with water, this special syringe full of water, and a bulb full of water. No luck. They told us we need to go see an ENT (ear, nose & throat) Dr. to get it removed.

We wake up the next day, it was midnight by the time we got home, and schedule a visit with the ENT. He looks in ear and says “oh, it’s in a good spot”. He then turns him on his side and while three people are holding him down, he goes in with this special tool and “pop”, out comes the seed.

A nice chunk of money and two days later, he’s now popcorn kernel free. It will be a while before we have popcorn in my house again

Chavvon Smith

The hype around online virtual worlds has been peaking lately with the recent acquisition of Club Penguin by Disney for $700 million. Club Penguin is a safe environment where kids can join and play games in what we hope is a safe environment. No worrying about pop-ups or surfing to other sites where they can communicate with potential predators. Disney obviously thought this was a nice addition to it’s current portfolio of characters and another avenue to bring visitors to it’s online site.

While site’s like Club Penguin are great, I have completely different thoughts towards other sites like Second Life. While the concept is amazing, the nature of man I think will eventually ruin the site. It’s already full of gambling, sex, and other adult themes. The FBI has had numerous investigations into the activities going on in the virtual world.

If you’re interested in getting a piece of a virtual company, take a look at Whuddle World. This site was forced to shutdown due to financial problems, but I think with the right partners it creates a nice opportunity. Contact them directly for investment opportunities.

Chavvon Smith

I’ve been reading about GrandCentral.com and I want in. GrandCentral is a new service that’s still in beta mode that Google purchased for $50 million a month or so back. The service allows you to control your phone numbers with the same control as you control your email. The service claims to let you keep a phone number for life, but they’ve already ruined that claim because they forced all beta users to change phone numbers. They’re still in beta, and with the Google acquisition, change is to be expected. I would think phone numbers will stay put for the forseeable future.

The service allows you to setup access list and route incoming phone calls accordingly. You setup a directory with all your known contacts and define rules for them. Friends and family can first ring your home, then your cell phone, and then go to a voice mail you have setup just for friends and family. Business associates can be automatically routed to your cell phone, but only between the hours of 9am to 5pm. They would then get a business oriented voice mail. Unknown callers can go directly to voice mail. The features go on and on. The service sounds really slick, but it’s in beta and it’s only available via invitation. I’m on the waiting list, but there’s no telling how long it will be before the service is opened up to the public.

One phone number for all of your communication needs. Never have to update friends, family or clients when you move or get a new cell phone number. If/when I get into the service, I’ll write about my actual experience.

Chavvon Smith

I’m 30 years old, and since I’ve been in business, there seems to be a market correction/crash every 5 years or so. I can only really say I’ve been in business since 1995, so that gives you my frame of reference. The Internet and technology is what I know.

Each market correction shows a shift in investor interest from debt to equity markets or vice versa. Pensions funds and other money management groups move large amounts of money between these two investment tools depending on what’s going to yield it’s investors/members the most return with the least risk. In the past five years, the markets have been focused on debt markets. This is evident through the large number of leverage buyouts through firms like KKR and all the new mortgage types that have come to market in the last few years. Companies are making the most money using these debt instruments. When you have one billion dollars in the bank that has to generate a return, people tend to get creative. The more money that’s available, the more risk that has to be inherited to put the money to use. There are just so many low risk, high return opportunities on the market.

With the debt market crashing in the last few weeks which includes the hedge fund crashes, mortgage company bankruptcies, and significant reduction in subprime markets, we’re about to see a substantial shift in money allocation. (more…)

I’ve been driving lately and with every mile, I hear a cha-ching sound go off in my head. With gas prices as high as they are, I hate driving to the store to buy milk because the price doubles by the time I get there and back. I’ve looked at hybrids, electric cars, you name it. Nothing has interested me until I saw this one. Take a look at www.TeslaMotors.com.

This is a new electric car that is scheduled for release in the summer of 2008. Listen to these specs:

0-60 mph: 4 seconds

top speed: 135 mph

miles per charge: 200

Cost to drive: ~2 cents per mile

Those are stats I can live with. It looks good, cheap to drive, and it’s fast! Now if I could just talk them down on that $98,000 intro price.

Chavvon Smith

About a year ago, I had an idea for a website where bloggers could go and get paid to blog. You can see it at www.blogchex.com. I felt like it was a great idea. Bloggers could go and setup a blog and we find the advertisers for the blog. Other sites are making money off bloggers without giving them any revenue split, so I felt like it was a good idea.

Bloggers write, we find advertisers, we all make money. I still like the idea, but I’m not so crazy about the quality of bloggers the site is getting. Rather than getting people that express their true feelings, ideas, hobbies, etc., we tend to get more people that share other ways to make money online. Blogs that tell you how to make money online are traditionally not read by many people.

The only advertising is word of mouth at this point. Online entrepreneurs tell other people so that’s the core of the site. I’m hoping that as the site grows, we’ll get other people with real content and emotions to share. Give it a try, it’s a great site that’s still in development.

Chavvon Smith