I think all those ‘de-listed’ Chrysler dealers would do well to apply to become Alfa Romeo/Fiat dealers if they get the opportunity from whichever company ties up with Fiat.

In addition, a profit sharing contribution of 25% of W-2 compensation can be made if you run an incorporated business and 20% of self employment income if you are a sole proprietorship. The maximum contribution for 2008 is $46000 and $51,000 if your age is above 50 in 2008.

The bottom line is that if you are in a job where there is an option to get paid Corp. to Corp., consider setting up your own company and billing out your services. Right now the stock markets are depressed. And this is a great time to get into a Solo 401k and get your retirement account rolling. $46,000 is a whopping savings any way you slice it.

Etrade.com is one of the companies that gives you the ability to manage your own Solo 401k – which I think is great considering that money managers on the whole have little or no credibility today.

Upon closer examination, I found that there was the “certificate of authenticity” sticker with the product code still attached to the backplate. And the eBay listing title did say: “Dell Inspiron 2650 Bottom Case with XP Home Sticker”.

What this means is that to comply with the OEM requirements of the operating system license, the product key code for which is on the sticker’, the seller sells you the bottom part of the laptop case along with the sticker containing the product key. Because the broken case does qualify as an OEM part.

So if you have a copy of the software (XP Home in this instance), you can use the product key and get the installation activated.

This seems a good way to avoid spending money on buying a new product which is on its last days anyway since Microsoft has moved on from the XP series of Operating Systems.

Note:
I do not think ‘legally’ OEM licenses are transferable to other PCs. But tell that to a person with a broken laptop where he/she can still salvage the operating system.

But now Blockbuster seems to be silently making its way back into the marketplace. The fiasco of high late fees far behind them, Blockbuster is now promoting DVD rental plans that offer the online ordering capabilities of Netflix and leveraging their brick and mortar stores by providing the alternative to return DVDs to a regular store along with instant exchanges.

What this means is that, at a similar price point, Blockbuster’s offerings are now better than Netflix and you can avoid the hassle of mailing DVDs.

Most Blockbuster stores have been given an extensive facelift with more emphasis on HD entertainment and console games. All of these efforts along with selective advertisement on the internet looks like Blockbuster is on its way back to reclaiming top position. Whether this actually happens, remains to be seen but what this means for us is:

An opportunity to pick up Blockbuster shares on the cheap (BBI). At about $2.50 per share, I see can see this stock going to atleast $3.50 in the near term. While this company has plenty of debt, it has the cash flow necessary to service the debt and has seen increased same store sales and profitability over the last quarter.

Overall, the company is profitable. On the extreme side, the whole company could be a buyout candidate. One more thing billionaire activist investor Icahn holds a lot of ‘BBI’.

Consider this: if you are in the business of providing web development services or in the web design business, you’re likely to have built several applications and data intensive websites over the years. Almost all of these websites/web applications can benefit from qualitative upgrades using Ajax techniques.

For a reasonable charge, boring data entry and retreival applications can be souped up using any number of easily integrated visual interface elements. You are not messing with the internals of an application, just improving the user experience so you’re unlikely to hit  major roadblocks. The resulting ’Ajaxed’ application looks and works much better, the client looks great to their management and its a win situation for everyone.

The easiest way to sell this is to invest the time in re-engineering say one web page/report (with some nice visualization effects) and letting the client see the benefit for themselves.

This is a site that is a spoof on speed dating. Essentially, the site is a slick organization of videos clips that have been stitched together using Flash to deliver a message – interactively. In this case, the message is about the effects of diabetes.  The whole concept is so innvovative that viral marketing alone would have made this campaign a success.

This innovative site is worth looking at both from marketing as well as technology perspectives.

I came to this site looking for a place to recycle CFL bulbs that Walmart, Lowes, Bed Bath & Beyond etc are selling. But only Ikea has a program in place to recycle these mercury (toxic stuff) containing bulbs. I suppose for most retailers unless volumes are built, it would be too expensive to recycle these bulbs.