This south park episode aired in the fall of 2008 i believe. This clip is classic…

The Walt Disney Company on Tuesday became Hollywood’s leader in the booming social game business by acquiring Playdom in a deal worth as much as $763.2 million.

Playdom is one of a cluster of tech start-ups that make simple online games and sell virtual goods — like a $2.50 outfit for a character in Playdom’s Sorority Life, in which players shop, party and go to a spa. Such companies have grown by taking advantage of rapidly expanding social networks like Facebook.

Disney will initially pay $563.2 million for Playdom, which is the No. 3 social game company on Facebook with about 42 million monthly players. The deal includes $200 million in additional payments if Playdom achieves growth thresholds that were not made public.

John Pleasants, Playdom’s chief executive, will join Disney as an executive vice president and will report to Steve Wadsworth, president of the Disney Interactive Media Group. Mr. Pleasants, who impressed the Disney board with a presentation on social games at a recent company retreat, is expected to work to develop titles based on Disney characters and franchises.

As social games becomes a more crowded and difficult field — several hundred new games are introduced on Facebook weekly and most go nowhere — brands that can be used as the basis for titles are becoming more important.

(more…)

Global Axcess Corp (OTC Bulletin Board: GAXC; the “Company”), an independent provider of self-service kiosk solutions, today announced that three weeks ago it commenced deployment of new DVD kiosks with the major grocery chain (“Grocery”), that Global Axcess signed a three-year contract with to initially install 300 additional DVD kiosk locations. To date, over 85 new DVD kiosks have been deployed with the grocery chain, approximately 40 additional kiosks will be deployed by Saturday, July 31 and 323 total kiosks are scheduled to be deployed with this grocery chain by the end of August.

In aggregate, across the Global Axcess system, the Company will have 165 DVD kiosks deployed by Saturday, July 31.

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I just ran some numbers on the potential contribution from the DVD division.  These #’s are not from the company, but I think are fair estimates

Disclosure:  LONG GAXC

One of my investments is Intezyne (private company).  They have an amazing drug delivery technology that is starting to get traction.  CEO was interviewed recently:

[See Interview Here]

Disclosure:  LONG Intezyne

There were a few articles out this week that bodes well for Bacterin.  The common element is companies like Stryker Corp and Zimmer Holdings,  medical equipment, device, implant behemoths aren’t growing as fast..single digit revenue growth.  They are also sitting on hoards of cash.  The common consensus is the growth will pick up as the first of millions of baby boomers are set to retire next year…thus an onslaught of orthopedic procedures.  But M&A will most certainly be a way for growth.  BIHI had revenues of $7.8 million in 2009, expects $20 million in 2010, $60 million 2011.

Article 1

Article 2

Also, Bacterin’s new corporate website launched today:  www.bacterin.com

Disclosure:  LONG BIHI

Quepasa.com continues to get record traffic and page views.  This bodes well for new membership signups and unique visits for the month of July.

The high profile political campaign is to be launched in mid-August, along with the previous announced 3.5 million dollar Ecological campaign.  These high profile campaigns will bring more visibility to Quepasa.

With gaming, flirting and contest Quepasa is poised to have great growth in the Near future.

Quepasa Corporation (OTC.BB:QPSA – News), headquartered in West Palm Beach, FL with offices in Los Angeles, CA; São Paulo, Brazil; Scottsdale, AZ; Miami, FL; and Hermosillo, MX, owns Quepasa.com (www.Quepasa.com), one of the world’s largest, trilingual, Latino social networks. Quepasa.com is an authentic Latino community that provides fun, interactive, and easy to use social tools, and rich multimedia content in English, Spanish and Portuguese to embrace Latinos everywhere, and empower them to connect online, compete in contests and games and share their interests, ideas, and activities.

Disclosure:  LONG QPSA

I received my new Iphone 4 and bought a ZAGGSkin for it.  The side strip does in fact solve the antenna problem. I was actually surprised.  On another note I expect this will add yet another wave of buyers.  Since the launch of the iPad on April 1st, Zagg.com website traffic has been increasing rapidly.  My guess is the company will finally meet analyst estimates when they report Q2 results.

Goldman Sachs is suggesting that mining companies sell gold forward again.  The logic behind this is that although the bank reckons the gold price will increase to $1,355 an ounce over the next 12 months – a tiny increase from its earlier prediction of $1,335 – beyond that it is looking for prices to stabilise and fall as the U.S. Fed tightens monetary policy and the recession is seen to be ending.

Of course the big gold banks, of which Goldman is probably the most successful, can do very well out of its clients hedging their gold forward whatever the fortunes of its clients in so doing.  It was notably the bank which reputedly advised Ashanti Goldfields to sell its gold forward at gold’s low point back at the end of the 1990s – a policy which brought the gold miner to its knees leading to its takeover by AngloGold – another Goldman client.  Indeed commentators have suggested that Goldman made profits on every angle of the Ashanti hedging debacle, and on the sale of one of its clients to another.

Goldman would probably counter that its primary responsibility was to its shareholders – perhaps even more so than its clients – and that the sudden turn-around in the gold price which caused Ashanti’s effective bankruptcy, was completely unforeseen, but the whole episode left a bitter taste that lingers to this day, particularly in Ghana where Ashanti was seen as the country’s major gold player on the world scene.

However, the fact that Goldman is still looking for an increase in the gold price, even if only over the next 12 months, is positive for gold.  The bank actually forecast a six-month gold price (effectively a year-end figure) gold price of $1,290 rising to the $1,355 figure over the following six months.  With predictions being regularly updated (the latest figure is an update from Goldman’s previous one of only three weeks earlier) the position may again change depending on how quickly the global economy is seen as recovering.

Goldman also delivered forecasts for base metals and silver, all of which ranged higher than previous ones apart from zinc where the bank was looking or an 18% fall.

Global revenue from the sales of virtual goods will reach $6 billion by 2013, according to Minneapolis-based investment firm Piper Jaffray, which isn’t too shabby for a product that has been deemed by many to be “intangible” or “non-existent.” To the contrary, consumers have shelled out millions for clothing, housing and miscellaneous gifts made purely from a few kilobytes of data. The growth of the virtual economy is causing many to puzzle over how companies have reached major profitability from this phenomenon.

Virtual goods, which are basically electronic representations of objects in the physical world, have mostly been used to augment an already-engaging online experience, such as chatting, social networking or playing games. Zynga, for example, has profited from the wildly popular FarmVille application on Facebook, where users can grow and sell goods on an interactive farm, while socializing with other players in real time.

So what if you’ve already got your website or social platform set up, and are hoping to cash in by incorporating your own virtual goods market? Here are some tips to help you get started.

How to Create a Virtual Goods Market: Why Do People Buy Virtual Goods?

Your first step is to develop an understanding of virtual goods and why people buy them in the first place. Once you do that, it will be easier to figure out what types of goods you want to create and how to match those particular goods with the services your website or company offers.

According to Brian Balfour, co-founder of Viximo, a company that works with sites like BlackPlanet.com and Quepasa.com to help them profit from virtual goods, there are three basic reasons that people buy these products.

1. To gain an advantage. Users purchase virtual goods to compete with friends or to get ahead of other players and opponents, says Balfour. The role-playing game World of Warcraft, for example, allows users to purchase different levels of battle armor and weapons for their characters. This also applies to the online dating space, Balfour says. “It’s the typical scenario of a bunch of guys finding ways to stand out of the crowd and get the hot girl,” he says.

2. To communicate. All of these social products are simply about communication with other users, Balfour says. “There’s a huge desire to visually communicate with people the same way we do in the real world,” he says of the gifts that users can send one another on Facebook, for example.

3. To be unique. Many people buy virtual goods in the online space for the same reason they do in the physical world – to differentiate themselves from other people, much like shopping for clothes at the mall or getting a new hairstyle. “There’s a really big need for people to want to express themselves and make their avatars or social networking page unique,” Balfour says.

[Read Full Article Here]

Disclosure:  LONG QPSA

Geltech Solutions (GLTC) has taken a little bit longer to come to fruition then some have hoped, hence the stock price decline the last couple months.  The truth is Yes, it has taken longer but I still believe that this product will change the way we fight fires.  FireIce is a dry powder that when added to water produces a firefighting water enhancing gel, stopping fire in its tracks.  It works by making water more effective and gives the ability to fight more fire with less water.  FireIce is continuing to go viral in the fire fighting community as seen on the FireIce facebook page with close to 30,000 members/fans (started in December 2009).  GelTech produces a lot of updates on its facebook fan page like the one below from today:

“Hey FireIce Fans Breaking News!!! The massive mulch fire in Yaphank, NY was the scene of another FireIce conquest. The fire crews arrived on scene to find a football field size mulch fire that was fully involved. FireIce received the call, responded, and was flowing FireIce by 10 am. At 1 pm Suffolk County Command bega…n releasing fire crews and called the fire extinguished.  Our hats off to all 20 departments that responded for a job well done!! No firefighter injuries were reported… Stay Safe!”

What I’ve found is that the grass roots approach is working.  Firefighters love FireIce, but it’s just taking a lot longer for the powers that be inside fire departments and municipalities to budget for it.  I believe it will happen.  The almost 30,000 members/fans of FireIce, and adding ~1000 per week, are mostly all fire fighters.  They love the product because it will save lives.

A big catalyst for GelTech Solutions has always been receiving US Forestry Service approval to use FireIce on wildfires.  The company believes they are 4-6 months away from receiving this approval.  The reason this is so huge is that the USFS spends $160-180 million per year in “Direct Suppressants” per year to fight forest fires.  The USFS spends a balk of this on one product in particular which is dropped from the air.  GelTech Solution’s FireIce is equal in performance, without the environmental impact, and at 1/3 the cost of the main product used.  If FireIce would take just 10% of this market, it would be very material to the company and the stock.

An example of how quickly revenues can ramp upon approval and acceptance.  The Shultz Fire in Flagstaff, Arizona started on June 20, 2010.  The fire engulfed 14,000 acres (22 sq miles) and is still only 20% contained.  8 planes are dropping suppressant on the fire via 24 sorties per day.  There are 4000 gallons per drop which would equal 16 buckets of FireIce per drop.  1 day of full scale aerial operations would equal $522,209 in revenue to GLTC.  So you can see how quickly the revenues and profits can ramp once the product becomes USFS approved and accepted.

The USFS has already begun testing FireIce via aerial drops.  Here is an actual video of a test drop using FireIce.

It has taken a bit longer for FireIce to become widely accepted, but I think it will happen.  The stock price move from $1.50 to $1.00 is from investors being annoyed with lack of progress (big orders for FireIce).  The PIPE that I participated in late 2009/early 2010 starts to get freed up in the next 30 days.  I imagine that it could lead to some continued pressure on the stock.  That said, I won’t be selling my shares that I bought in the PIPE as I still believe that the product will be accepted by the USFS, fire departments, and internationally.  As I’ve outlined above, the revenue ramp could be quite significant once the first domino falls.

Disclosure:  LONG GLTC