blog.thomaspan.com

When Prince Charles is mentioned, people would think about his affair with Camilla, or the Dianna tragedy. In his first 60 Minutes interview, he surprised me with his hard work, good thoughts, and deep vision.

Prince Charles started his organic revolution in early 1980s, which resulted in UK’s leading premium organic food brands – Duchy Originals. The Prince leverages the profit from his organic empire to fund his fundation – The Prince’s Charity Foundation.

In 1993, he developed a model town called Poundbury, which is built of native or recycled materials where people of all income levels live side by side. Cars are not allowed within the town. People have to park off-street in rear alleys.

He said in the interview: “I would list it (duty to the country) as worrying about this country and its inhabitants. That’s my particular duty. And I find myself born into this particular position. I am determined to make the most of it.”

Finally, Comcast’s stock slowly rises from its 52 week’s low. Back to early this year, Comcast had pretty bad publicity: its domain name servers failed twice nationwise within six days in April. Actually, I have encountered more outages from the cable giant afterwards. Recently, it teamed up with Google chasing AOL. The news came out at Oct. 17, following the talk between AOL and MSN. These days, everything related to Google seems to fly. But, would Comcast?

Fundamentally, its PE value is way high at 50 while its competitors seem to be more humble: 20 for SBC and less than 10 for Dish Network. Its Q4’s earning estimate is 3 cents short compared to the same quarter last-year, which means that its stock could fall in the short term. Further, price pressure from DSL would cut into its profit. It has already offered discount to lure new customers. DSL providers are catching up quickly. Overall, Comcast’s long term image is not as bright as its TV commercial shows.

IPods have finally saved Apple. At the beginning of this year, even though my powerbook’s hard drive failed, I still like Apple products. Check out Amazon Electronics “top sell” list to see how popular the recently released iPod Nano is. The 4GB black version has been in top 10 consistently since the product launch was announced.

This year Apple has made strategic steps towards its future successes. We have seen a broader line of iPods, including video iPod, and a deeper line of macs. Mac mini will become THE entry level PC. It is so small and quiet. I am seriously thinking to build a home Mac mini cluster. The boldest move from Apple is the marriage with Intel. For a long time, Apple has failed to deliver products on time due to the shortage of components, especially CPUs. Geeks have complained for years for Apple to leverage Intel CPUs, which would reduce the CPU shortage. Further, rumors have already been spreaded that Mactel computers are actually faster than normal PowerPC-based Macs.

The result? Apple stock has jumped from $25 to $55, which outpreforms Google, not to mention DELL. According to its recent earning’s report, it has shipped 48% more Macs and 220% more iPods over the year-ago quarter. I would expect its stock to reach $70 sometime next year based on projected $2.01 estimated earning per share.