Eric's Other Blog

On Monday, my mother Enid (Jacobson) Savitz passed away peacefully in her sleep. She was 82. She was, in short, an amazing woman, a quiet revolutionary who was decades ahead of her time. Mom lived almost her entire life in or near Philadelphia; she graduated from Girls High School, and then earned B.A. and Master's degrees in math from Temple University. For decades, she taught math at Temple and other schools in the Philadelphia area.

Many people knew my mother as the parent of three kids, the grandmother of six, and the wife of my Dad, Paul Savitz, for 51 years. Many others knew her from her teaching career. When my sister Nina asked my mom toward the end of her life about how she wanted to be remembered, she said simply "I made good soup."

Which she did, in fact. But she was also a computer geek ahead of her time - had she been born 60 years later, I suspect she'd now be raking in the big money writing code for Google or Facebook.

Before I was born in 1962, my mother worked for the U.S. Navy, at a facility called the Naval Air Development Center, in what is now Warminster, Pennsylvania, but at the time was sometimes known as Johnsville. My mom worked as a computer programmer, among other things helping to run the world's largest human centrifuge, which was used to help train astronauts for the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo programs. In the process, my mom worked with the seven original astronauts.

In you happen to be in the area, there's actually now a small museum at the site called the Johnsville Centrifuge and Science Museum.

For decades, my parents have had some amazing pictures from that period hanging in their house; while in Philadelphia this week to be with my family I scanned some of the pictures, and I post them here to share them with the world.

My family and I will miss her terribly. 

All of these pictures are from NADC from sometime in the late 1950s or very early 1960s; you will note that a number of them are in front of the Johnsville U.S. Navy centrifuge

That's my mom sitting at the table.

My mother is at lower left. Not sure who the little kid is.

Mom is at lower left. The guy in the center of the photo holding the helmet is astronaut Gus Grissom, who was killed in the explosion of Apollo 1.

There's mom again, at lower left. In the bottom of front are a pair of test pilots, names unknown.

Mom on the phone; computer equipment all around.

The astronaut Alan Shepard, the second person in space, and the fifth man to land on the moon, in front of the Johnsville human centrifuge. Note the autograph under the words U.S. Navy.

There's always another blog.

I started this one, for instance, after I handed the reins at Tech Trader Daily over to Tiernan Ray.

But this blog - which I'm now calling Eric's Other Blog - was something of a placeholder pending the debut of my new Forbes blog, Tech Musings. I'll continue to post here periodically, but at this point most of musings will be on Tech Musings at Forbes. (I've set up the blog and made a short introductory post, but it really gets going on Monday.) Posts from both blogs should continue to show up on on Facebook page and on Twitter.

Thanks to everyone who read my stuff at TTD, and to the hardy band who has been reading my posts here at Tech Musings Eric's Other Blog.

Dice Holdings (DHX) shares are trading down after the company announed plans for a 10 million share stock offering - 8,924,367 of those shares from selling holders, with the rest from the company. The selling holders include investment firms General Atlantic and Quadrangle Group, as well as several Dice insiders. Selling holders have granted underwriters an option to sell another 1.5 million shares to cover over-allotments.

Dice, which runs employment Web sites, said it will use the proceeds from its portion of the offering to buy an equal number of shares from current and former execs and directors. A buyback just for insiders, how thoughtful!

Nothing irritates the Street like insiders cashing out: DHX is down 59 cents, or 5.1%, to $10.91.

Google (GOOG) today confirmed that it has acquired Phonetic Arts, a small company based in Cambridge, England that's focused on speech synthesis. Google says they are "delivering technology that generates natural computer speech from small samples of recorded voice."

No terms werre announced. The company has 14 employees.

According to the Phonetic Arts web site, many of their current customers are video game compaies, including Electronic Arts, Sega, Sony and others.

Time to buy chip stocks. Except for the ones you should sell.

Busy morning for semiconductor analysts, with ratings changes for a number of key stocks. Here's a quick rundown:

• Broadcom (BRCM): Wells Fargo analyst David Wong cut his rating on the stock to Market Perform from Outperform on a valuation basis; he lifted his valuation target range to $45-$49, from $40-$45."Even with the higher valuation range, Broadcom’s current stock price is within our range (having risen 48% year-to-date, compared to the SOX semiconductor index being up 14% and the S&P 500 up 10% over the same period), suggesting to us that the stock is fairly value," he writes.
• Marvell (MRVL): Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider pulled the stock from his firm's Buy List, cutting his rating to Neutral. "We believe Street estimates now more accurately reflect our expectations for Marvell’s hard drive share gains in 2011/2012," he writes in a research note. He also reports that he now sees less upside in the stock "as its multiple has recovered post a period of market concern over near-term dynamics in the hard drive industry." And he sees "headwinds to Marvell’s long-term growth given the company’s relatively weak exposure to tablets and smartphones."
• PMC-Sierra (PMCS): Goldman's Schneider upped his rating to Buy from Neutral. He notes that the stock is down 13% this year, and that the inventory correction at the company's communications customers is largely complete. He also says the Street is under-estimating the company's growth in storage, fiber-to-the-home and optical networking. "We believe that PMC is now under-shipping end demand from its customers, and that continued growth in focus product areas will drive upside to Street estimates in 2011," he writes. His target on the stock goes to $10, from $9,
• National Semiconductor (NSM): FBR Capital analyst Craig Berger today raised his rating to Outperform from Market Perform. "Recent checks with distributor and chip management contacts suggest the analog chip sector remains surprisingly resilient in Q4," he writes. He thinks chip stocks could "melt up" further in 2011, abesent some major maco crisis. Berger says the time has come to "chase lesser-performing stocks that still have attractive valuation multiples and 2011 risk/reward dynamics."

In today's trading:

• BRCM is down 18 cents, or 0.4%, to $46.37.
• MRVL is up 3 cents, to $20.49.
• PMCS is up 26 cents, or 3.3%, to $8.21.
• NSM is up 55 cents, or 3.9%, to $14.66.

Buh-bye, John.

Following yesterday's news that John Malone's Liberty Media has traded his stake in IAC/Interactive (IACI) for Evite, Gifts.com and $220 million cash, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post this morning raised his rating on IACI to Neutral from Underperform.

"We view the deal as positive as it will be accretive to EPS, acts as a below-market buyback of a large percent of shares (13% of total) and simplifies the complex ownership structure," Post writes in a research note.

Post upped his 2011 EPS forecast to $1.54, form $1.41; for 2012, he now sees $1.78, up from $1.58. And he says buybacks could drive 2012 numbers higher still. His new price target on the stock is $33, up from $28.

IACI this morning is up 96 cents, or 3.3%, to $30.31.

While neither Verizon (VZ) nor Apple (AAPL) is yet talking about the arrival next year of a Verizon iPhone, everyone else on the planet is. In fact, Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves is so sure the device is on the way that he's now adjusted his earnings model to reflect its debut early in 2011.

To reflect the arrival of the CDMA iPhone, he's boosted his March quarter iPhone unit forecast to 15.3 million units from 12 million; Hargreaves this morning raised his full-year unit forecast for the September 2011 fiscal year to 59.9 million from 54.1 million. And to reflect the higher anticipated iPhone sales, he's bumped up his FY 2011 EPS forecast to $19.61 a share, from $18.43; for 2012, he goes to $20.89, from $19.62. And to factor in the higher estimates, his new target price on the stock is $355, up from $330.

This morning, AAPL is down 20 cents, to $317.95.

It's a journalistic law: three is a trend.

Earlier this week, eBay shares were downgraded by analysts at Stifel Nicolas and Piper Jaffray. This morning, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney added to the pile-on, cutting his rating on the e-commerce giant's stock to Hold from Buy, while keeping his price target at $31, a bit above the current level. His basic view: let's not be piggish.

"With EBAY approaching our $31 price target, we see the risk-reward as less compelling," he writes in a research note "We do view the recent share price surge as well justified and, therefore, would be buyers of the stock on any material pullback, all else held equal." The downgrade, he says, is "purely a valuation call," noting thatthe stock at $30 trades at 18x his 2010 non-GAAP EPS forecast of $1.68 a share, and 16x his 2011 forecast of $1.89. "Given our outlook for sustainable 10% EPS growth, we don’t see a near-term path to material multiple expansion."

This morning, eBay is off 48 cents, or 1.6%, to $29.43.

The local bargains snowball rolls on.

LivingSocial, which competes with potential Google (GOOG) target Groupon, this afternoon said it accepted a $175 million investment from Amazon.com, while also taking another $8 million from previous investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company also said it is booking revenue at the rate of more than $1 million a day, and expects to top $500 million in revenue in 2011.

The company said it will use the cash to invest in additional global markets. The site already operates in more than 120 markets in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia.

Seagate (STX) turned down a takeover bid from rival Western Digital (WDC), Bloomberg reports, citing "two people with knowledge of the matter."

Given the strong market positon of the two hard drive companies, you have to imagine that such a combination would run into huge antitrust issue.

Bloomberg reports that Western was willing to pay 10%-50% more than private equity firm TPG, which apparently made a bid for Seagate that was rejected.

The two companies are not commenting on the report.