Believe it! I know what I'm talking about. - Nostradamus

The Nostradamuses of Their Times

Some of the most intelligent forecasts from the world's most famous, prominent and intelligent persons, who actually changed the world.

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people,
and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?"
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,
commenting on the microchip

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder
of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"There is no real need for sales people.
Customers will be attracted to good products without assistance."
Ken Olson, addressing a convention of DEC sales people

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.
Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings
for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed,
but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
A Yale University management professor in response
to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.

"Who would want to hear actors talk?"
H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face
and not Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role
in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea.
Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies,
not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment.
The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives
for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?
Or, we' ll give it to you. We just want to do it.
Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.'
And, they said, 'No.' So then, we went to Hewlett-Packard,
and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you.
You haven't got through college yet.'"
Apple Computer Inc. (Apple Inc.) founder Steve Jobs
on attempts to get Atari and HP interested
in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction
and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.
He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development
across all of your muscles?
It can't be done. It's just a fact of life.
You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development
as an unalterable condition of weight training."
Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem
by inventing Nautilus.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy."
Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut
from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."
Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon,
appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Bill Gates, 1981

Wallstrip interviews Tim Wolters, CTO of Collective Intellect

Hmmm. Interesting. Tim Wolters, CTO of Collective Intellect, essentially just borrowed and paraphrased the views, thoughts, and words of Roger Ehrenberg, which Mr. Ehrenberg gave at an interview with TheStreet.com TV several months back. Well, I can't blame Wolters for trying to sound intelligent, cool, novel, and all in his interview because after all, serious money can be made with the idea and technology that Monitor110 came up with.

Here is a point-by-point take on the two interviews:

Tim Wolters: “I founded a company in 2005...we were following certain individuals on message boards, blogs, who seem to know a lot of information. How can we automate that? How can we do that for investors? Package that as a service blah blah blah. And the business model is essentially similar to Bloomberg or Reuters or something like that.”

Roger Ehrenberg: “Monitor 110 gives institutional investors the ability to access the information, from the tens of millions of sources out on the Internet, in the same way that they would access information from their Bloomberg service terminal. Monitor 110 is at the intersection of search technology and domain expertise....what we are really doing is real-time vertical search specifically geared towards institutional investors.“

AnitoKid: If my memory serves me right, Monitor 110 was conceptualized in 2003 by Jeff Stewart, a serial entrepreneur and applied-technology visionary . And in 2004, Monitor 110 began developing and testing its real-time Internet monitoring service for institutional investors. Being first has all its advantages; after all a head start is a head start, especially with regards to such real-time Internet monitoring service.

Lindsay Campbell: How is Collective Intellect different from Monitor 110?

Tim Wolters: “We're actually trying to find a signal for you like ah from Info Arbitrage of Monitor 110. Info Arbitrage takes a bunch of data and they actually interpret the data and try tell you whether it is a long or short blah blah blah...make money or lose money – how you're long or short on these things. We don't tell people how they should list this or not...We tell people: this is really good information, you make your own judgments on how you like to use them. So i think that is the unique piece that this software provides. If you think about it, it is software that everybody can use.”

Roger Ehrenberg: “We are helping intelligent, knowledgeable investors find information and decide what to do with that information. The system is not going to say “Buy this! Sell this!”. What it's going to do is give you data and insights. And the thing is, a sophisticated investor might look at the information in one way, and another sophisticated investor might look at it in a completely different way.”

AnitoKid: Cough! Cough! Cough! See what I mean?

Lindsay Campbell: Why do you traders want this information?

Tim Wolters: “I want to know that I have a comprehensive view on what's going on with these positions...these companies...that I might be thinking about having a position in. A lot of that space, you know, is when are you gonna establish credibility. You go and read something from the New York Times. You hope, at least, that it is credible because they have fact checking teams and all of those things. On the blogs, it's sort of like a wild west.”

AnitoKid: Mr. Roger Ehrenberg profiles his blog as “A Wall Streeter's Ride into the Wild, Wild Web”. Mr. Tim Wolters, have you seen Roger Ehrenberg's Information Arbitrage lately? Of course you have! It sounds like you've been reading a lot of his posts. I can't blame you...he is good.

Tim Wolters: “What we do is to figure out what is the credibility, what is the veracity. We look at the individual over a period of time as they talk about certain topics. So we funnel people into what we call topic nets (neighborhoods of individuals that talk about certain topics). So we are able to assess over time what the credibility of sources are based on the past information, what they posted about on those topics. And then we create a sort of a probability distribution model about how likely is this new post by this person to be really good on this topic so you should pay attention to it.”

Roger Ehrenberg: “The issue of reputation is a big one out on the Internet as is the issue of the relevance of the information towards what you actually want to find. So what we do as information comes into the system, we give it two scores. One, based on the reputation of the source; and we have a proprietary algorithm to look into that. As well as the relevance of the content to your query, to the thing that you want to find. And investors can dial up, dial down on these thresholds to target writing on their specific query.”

*from TechCrunch: “Monitor 110 gathers information from millions of sources of various types, ranked by financial market knowledge through a proprietary algorithm that takes 50 factors into account. Users can chose between top sources preselected for their market sector and subscribe to sources of their own.”

AnitoKid: Tim Wolters wonderfully "borrowed" Roger Ehrenberg's words and thoughts to promote his product. Mr. Wolters also miserably failed to advance examples of Collective Intellect's efficiency and effectiveness or even the feature to find relevant and/or investable information. Roger Ehrenberg gave two excellent examples of Monitor110's ability to cash in, i.e., problems that Sony (SNE) was about to have with regards to shipping the PS3 because of the blue diode issue; and Accentia (ABPI), a company that specializes in cancer vaccines. For months it had little trading volume, with its share price in slow but steady decline. Once word came out that its vaccine demonstrated promising results, millions of shares traded hands and the stock price surged over 40%. BANG! Proof is always a polite way of saying: Shhhhhhh! Silencio! Mr. Tim Wolters: Please stop blabbering. And it is not polite to "borrow" other people's words and thoughts, particularly when they are your competitors and especially when you do not have the permission to do so.

*an interesting post from one of my favorite bloggers, the Silicon Valley Watcher...Enjoy!

*I wonder why the picture slots at Collective Intellect's site are empty. Emptiness can sometimes be correlated with incompleteness or inability to deliver on promises. Imagine that! Such incompleteness from a company that touts itself as one "offering a new model for relevant new media research, with specialized services for institutional investors and investment professionals as well as Fortune 1000 companies". Tsk.

The Literatis at the Philippine Stock Exchange, Makati City

The Literatis had a grand time at the mall,
errr The Philippine Stock Exchange
Makati City
- part 1 of many -

I smell money, ma!

everyone was excited
"they are going to teach us how to beat the market!"

after this training,
i'll change my name to Don Dondon

and the best part of the training exercise?
L-U-N-C-H-!!!

amidst the background of the movers and shakers
of the Philippine capital market...
move it! move it!

sign language
used to be an essential part of any stock exchange

and they felt the presence of the King!
King Ary

Dundee: wala akong gana
Richard: I wish for more rice

Karlo: Yoga Before Meals

a behind the glass look
at the state of the Philippine economy

Art and Cha

half full or half empty?

and everybody left!

Yes, they did!

"upong mayaman"

na-jijingle na ako!
(I need to go to the men's room)

- Leo Quinitio -
schooled in the money art
in Sweden

Leo's partner in crime,
his right hand man,
Jay Peñaflor
Carlo: What the hell is this guy up to?

I guess I have to tell the boys
that I'm leaving on a jet plane
and I don't know when I'll be back again

sugar and spice
and everything nice

The AnitoKid with Kathleen Buenaobra
One of Leo's Sidekicks

The Quintessential Hotshot
and I kid you not!
Sikat na Sikat sa PSE!

tit-for-tat
I'm Tit, he's Tat

again with the famous jingle composer

and this is the Da Vinci code...
notice the candlestick? how about the meridian?
and the median? and the Indian?

I don't want to leave

sino sa palagay ninyo ang nakainom?

magnetic personality

Dax: I learned a lot today!
Leo: Really? Wow!

Amy: I should have cashed it in!

we're just friends - hi hi hi hi

Dondon: still counting the money he made
during the mock trading exercise
(in reality: dito na ko jumingle!)

dancing the night away at the PSE

me and my stomach ache

a requested presence

Dax: So this is a tsupitero!
Ricky: You learn fast, my young apprentice

Dax: Are you really the quintessential hotshot?
with the hot Ferraris, the fat wallet, and the big mommas?
Ricky: I'm not ready to answer that question

just passing through

if it could only speak!
the deals, the meals, and the steals

memory lane

the $$$3 billion dollar-man
those were the days
I remember them well

and how to end a nice post?
with a nice pic! that's how!

A Gold Badge from Seeking Alpha!

Guess what?

The AnitoKid has just been certified!
We received a Gold Badge on our first try!
And I kid you not!

WOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Seeking Alpha Badges -- An Objective Indicator of Quality
"Over 200 contributors have been accepted by our editors to provide articles for Seeking Alpha and have already agreed to our minimal compliance standards. The majority are finance professionals, and many have their own blogs."

*for my loyal readers and followers,

for my friends and colleagues,

for the Filipino people,

for Rick who introduced me to the wonderful art of blogging,

and for my sons and daughters...KLAPKiDS.

much much thanks to Seeking Alpha,
its Editors and Staff