International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) recently signed a seven-year agreement with the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) of the UK to facilitate the Government's plans to upgrade to biometric passports and enhance the security of the UK border. IPS is an executive agency of the UK Home Office.

By using this technology, the passport office will be able to store databases related to facial and fingerprint images for the next generation of biometric passports and will support the delivery of the National Identity card. We believe this is a goldmine opportunity for IBM, as the usability of this technology is vast and the company hopes to receive perpetual benefit.

Google (GOOG) announced the Google Chrome “Operating System” a few days ago, and the world I used to live in is abuzz with people talking about the earthquake this represents for the computing industry. TechCrunch says, “Google Drops a Nuclear Bomb on Microsoft.” Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has a more thoughtful response, but also subscribes to the “future of computing” theme: “Google is moving everything online, and I really believe this is the future of computing. The desktop model of computing — the Microsoft (MSFT) era — is coming to an end. It’ll take a few years, but it will happen.”

F1Q10 Earnings Call

July 10, 2009 8:30 am ET

1. The first great period to buy SNDA was the first three months after its IPO on May 13, 2004. At that time, online gaming was a new concept to most investors in the U.S., where console games dominated the video game market. As a result, investors were generally cautious on SNDA, the first Chinese online gaming IPO on U.S. exchanges. What they ignored was that the Chinese online gaming industry was at the expansion stage of its life cycle, driven by fast-growing Internet usage, PC ownership, and broadband penetration in China. From August to the end of 2004, Shanda reported great earnings for 2Q04 and 3Q04, and its stock surged to around $45.40 on December 30, 2004, quadrupling its $11 IPO price.

F4Q09 Earnings Call

July 9, 2009 5:00 pm ET

Deutsche Bank analyst Tom Ernst Thursday morning cut his ratings for five enterprise software stocks, advising taking profits in each after substantial recent gains. Here’s a rundown on his moves:

• Concur Technologies (CNQR): Rating to Hold, from Buy. Target $32. “We see limited upside potential after recent market appreciation,” he writes. Ernst also writes that “checks continue to show pressure on corporate travel and some modest challenges associated with integrated travel bookings and expense implementations given change management and process requirements within larger enterprises.
• Kenexa (KNXA): Rating to Sell, from Hold. Target $7. He notes that the stock trades at a premium to the rest of the software as a service group, but that that the company is suffering falling customer retention rates and is competitively weakened. A premium valuation, he contends, is not justified.
• Neustar (NSR): Rating to Hold, from Buy. Target $25. Recent appreciation in the stock, he writes, reflects a “relatively more balanced risk vs. reward.”
• RightNow (RNOW): Rating to Hold, from Buy. Target $14. The downgrade is largely valuation based, but he also says that competition is likely to get tougher as bigger players like Salesforce.com and Oracle complete more seriously in the call center knowledge management segment with software as a service offerings.
• Ultimate Software (ULTI): Rating to Sell from Hold. Target $18. He sees limited upside potential after recent appreciation in the stock.

In Thursday’s trading:

According to Nielsen, metered minutes, the firm’s broad metric for time spent playing games, was up throughout the first quarter. Key demographics including men between 18 and 24 and female gamers between 13 and 17 showed significant gains. The male group saw year over year gains of 16 to 29% for each month of '09. The 13 to 17 year old female demographic was up between twelve and thirty percent. [click images on right to enlarge]

Dennis Gaughn of AMR is quoted in InformationWeek with the first viable alternative theory I've seen. (This as opposed to the hysterical or non-Java-related theories that have been thrown against the wall in the last two weeks.) Dennis' thought is that the DoJ is concerned that so many enterprise applications companies use Java and that enterprise applications is a market in which Oracle participates.

Date/time of earnings release:

Duoyuan Global Water (DGW) - Began trading on 6/24 after pricing at $16 per share. The stock ran up to the mid-$20’s in the first week of trading and has held steady since. The company is a maker of water treatment equipment in China that includes wastewater treatment and water purification. One of my favorite long-term investment themes involves water and water-related stocks. The ties DGW has to China make the stock even more attractive because the country has major water issues and will have to address them in the years to come. The most recent Chinese stimulus package is actually going after upgrading infrastructure and will be a boost for DGW.

Halifax is a 42 year old company that currently participates in the supply chain management industry. For the past several years Halifax had been operating as a company with sluggish revenues and inconsistent profitability.

Google (GOOG) is starting to respond to questions about the just announced Chrome operating system. In a short FAQ Wednesday they talked about cost and initial partners.

Net income came in at $4.1 million, reversing a prior year loss. It also appears to be the company's first profit in some time.

A fight over control of the home (and office) seems to be taking shape.

To be a fly on the wall at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley, Idaho, confab as always would be an interesting experience. However, this year's event, while potentially overshadowed by the G8 Summit, promises to be as exciting as ever, especially in light of the announcement from Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) that it will launch the Google Chrome OS, a new computer operating system squarely aimed at Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT) bread-and-butter Windows business.

As TechCrunch declared, "This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft."