USEDCARSALESMAN

Google Video

Usedcarsaleman will have to admit that the following has occurred over the last 20 years: big changes in the business of distributing a "self-created" film/video product.

Usedcarsalesman will take you from his personal "Point A," 20 years ago, to his "Point B," in the present day, to give you an idea of the big change.

• Point A: The first video I ever made was for an 8th grade social studies project. Usedcarsalesman and his father spent much of the spring/Easter holiday in 1985 using a consumer Sony Beta-cam to shoot video of photos in various science and future-oriented books. Now, Usedcarsalesman will admit, that he did have a little bit of an advantage getting this done due to the fact that my dad worked in the film and television field professionally; anyway, my video project was called -Future Cities- and I basically narrated the story as the video moved from one still photo to the next, describing various concepts of what life was going to be like in the future here on the planet and perhaps off, as in space colonies and so forth. Well, when we completed the project, Usedcarsalesman took the finished tape to the school's library so that the librarian could play it on a video player that was wired by cable to a television in the class room. It received an "A"-grade and that was the end of it: the total "distribution" of -Future Cities,- a very professional looking production involving a lot of work, was to one television in one classroom (which is admittedly all that Usedcarsalesman intended). Now perhaps one other center of video content distribution might have considered airing -Future Cities,- the local cable company in Arlington, Va. If Usedcarsalesman had mailed them a tape, he is sure they might have considered playing it in the late hours of the morning. But that, at most, was the extent of his video distribution capabilities at the time as an early teen, at least in my family :)
• Point B: It's 2005 and a very different world for people, young to old, amateur to professional, who wish to make self-created video/film productions. Obviously, we have seen millions upon millions of people begin to use the Internet and, in the last few years, to use more advanced services like broadband and P2P file-sharing networks. But recently, services such as Google Video have emerged that, at least for now, allow any person to essentially upload and store a large, hours-long video file on a Google server for free. Once there, the video file becomes available for millions of potential viewers to download and it's not amidst "a hive of scum and villainy" as it would be with most P2P networks :). Furthermore, Google is even setting up Google Video so that producers can charge viewers of the video in an electronic, "pay-per-view" fashion.

Now, if you took Usedcarsalesmn as a kid in 1985 and sent him forward in time to 2005, he'd certainly be looking at making a video production to show to more people than just the few occupants of a single classroom, that's for sure. As a matter of fact, he's not sure where his limits would be. One can also say the same about the limits of others producing self-created video today thank to Google Video.

Buy On The Rumor: F**kedCompany.com

Until a few years ago, if you were an individual, "Main-Street" investor, you probably didn't have information available to you that would enable you to take an aggressive short-term position in stocks with confidence. Actually your information was limited to what you read in business magazines, what you heard from friends, family or coworkers or what your own insights were regarding a publicly traded company. Generally, unless you had access to outright "inside information" (with its corresponding legal ramifications) you were in the dark as an individual investor.

Unfortunately the retail investment professionals, your local broker, planner, and/or investment adviser didn't have it much better. If they were affiliated with investment banks, the aforementioned financial personnel could generally show up in the dark hours of the morning and listen on the "Squawk Box" to hear the "Morning Call" (an investment firms Morning Call was -- and still is -- the product of a bunch of very intelligent analysts in NYC sitting in what looks like a Senate Committee Hearing room talking on microphones to no audience other than affiliated advisers scattered throughout the country). But, at best, the information provided in "The Call" was general in nature and based on the analysts' take on the information that public companies were -- and are -- required to disclose by law.

         

Seeking to obtain more trade-able information, advisers in brokerage offices would often pool their resources and subscribe to highly expensive financial news letters (which shall remain nameless). This kind of information would put advisers in a more informed position that most -Main Street- investors, true. But, again, as with the in-house,"Morning Call", this was not exactly "stop on a dime" information by which to make aggressive, but well-secured short term trades.

What's changed in the last few years for both the "Main-Street" individual investor and the retail financial adviser is the advent of "corporate rumor" web sites, such as "FuckedCompany.com." Usedcarsalesman has been reading Phil Kaplan's FuckedCompany since 2001 and it was really the first "blog" 'Used' paid any attention to.  Kaplan's blog ultimately evolved to chart the declines of many publicly traded dot-com companies and has since moved on to post on all manner of organizational decline. Like a spy-network, a site, such as Fucked Company, may provide a direct inside picture of small to large matters within various public companies (which are kind of like Armies) well ahead of traditional news sources (which are more like low earth orbit military satellites, generally outside and/or useless until they are in the right position).

Everything posted in Fucked Company is a rumor and nothing more, which keeps the site operating in a legal "grey area"; however, its posts have proved to be surprisingly prescient. And, for a monthly fee, you can access all of the negative incoming email rumors that FuckedCompany receives. Philip Kaplan has gone on to do pay sites such as LuckedCompany.com (positive corporate rumors; strangely this site is no longer up) and Internal Memos.com (leaked corporate email) which also provide trade-able information. Of course, Usedcarsalesman has to add that it is the responsibility of the user to interpret and take well-secured investment positions on the information conveyed in Fuckedcompany.com so as to minimize his or her exposure.

   

But if you are a retail financial adviser or a financially fluent -Main Street- investor, you can make short term plays with greater confidence using a site like FuckedCompany.com. Usedcarsalesman hopes to see more of such sites in the future.

Maybe the Mojave Space Port is California's Next Silicon Valley

In the 1990s, people my folks age threw a lot of 401K money at .com stocks and development of the Internet in general. Usedcarsalesman guesses that the massive "roll-out" of the computer network in to people's every day lives was a big deal for Baby Boomers. They had gone to college pushing punch cards in to room-sized computers and the whole "connected-to-the-world- from-your-house" thing of the Internet was a dream come true.

Well, as a kid who grew up watching films like Wargames, Ferris Bueller, Weird Science or The Running Man (Arnold buys plane tickets using a keyboard connected to a TV in Maria Conchita Alonsos's character's apartment; the first depiction of e-commerce?) or reading books like Enders Game or Neuromancer, the concept of an individual imposing himself on the world by way of his connected computer already seemed kind of familiar. Frankly, oceans of 401k money or not, "cyberspace" and .coms didn't really do it for Usedcarsalesman in the 1990s. However, there was always another type of "space" that, in the back of his mind, he was curious about getting involved with or investing in. That's right..."outer space."

Last year, in June 2004, Usedcarsalesman drove up from L.A. early on a Sunday morning to see the first launch of SpaceShipOne at the Mojave Airport (later that day named the "Mojave Air and Spaceport," the first commercial space-port licensed by the FAA). 'Used' saw the crowd of almost 20,000 people and the apparent professional diversity of these people seemed almost representative of the chocolates in a Whitman's Sampler box.  He saw Cal Tech aerospace-nerds, Ribbon-covered-Edwards AFB staff, hardcore Star Trek marshmallow shaped fans, the odd shiny celebrity and assorted nutball locals wearing colorful SpaceShipOne T-shirts. Usedcarsalesman thinks about 4-5 regular-type people from L.A. were there, but he'll be liberal and say "10."

         

Anyway, the event was a very big deal that was really under most of the world's radar screen: SpaceShipOne didn't blow up; it took off, actually made it in to the vacuum of space and then landed on a runway in front of us an hour later. Usedcarsalesman was like holy cow!  And, then he was like "hmmm" (thinking) and all of these analogies started pouring through his head in Mojave like, "Northrop-Grumman is to IBM as Scaled Composites or Space Dev is to Microsoft," that kind of thing. And he continued to wonder, thinking, "could outer space-related companies be one of my age-group's big long-term investment plays, just as tech and bio-tech stocks enjoyed strong support from Boomer-aged investors?" 

                     

Usedcarsalesman will now hazard a guess and say "yes," at least to some extent. He thinks that these companies may evolve similarly to the way the Wright Brothers various companies evolved in the first 50 years of powered-aviation in the U.S.  These companies will grow, the practical application of their service will evolve and may become evident to many.  They will ultimately they get taken public, bought-out or merged over the space of 50+ years. 

               

So, Generation X'ers, get ready to park you 401k money in your investment adviser's latest choice of "AstroFund" around 2020 :)

         

Note: Usedcarsalesman doubts there will be a justifiable reason -- barring military conflict or some kind of semi-nationalistic "space race" the U.S. may engage in with China or other states -- for an investment boom/bust in these commercial aerospace ventures.  He thinks investments in these ventures will simply appreciate gradually over time.