Will Warren #Buffett's 'Midas' touch work on Yahoo?

Do you Yahoo? That probably not as awkward as 'I Yahooed the web and found this'. To find anything, people google it, never yahoo it. Yahoo has never able to turn itself into a verb, despite numerous campaign, it does sound awkward.

Yahoo was in trouble and perhaps managed to keep itself being in trouble by having Marissa Mayer as the CEO. Her actions in Yahoo were exactly what Carly Fiorina did with HP until she got fired by HP BOD. Yahoo BOD should have been able to 'smell' issues as Marissa was once demoted by Eric Schmidt when she was still in Google.

Looking at Yahoo's performance, it has a gross margin of more than 50% all the way from 2006 to date, and it even went over 70% in 2013 & 2014. It drops below 60% in 2015 and this year. Their per share income was the minus in 2015 and this year so far. 2015 onwards are definitely not a good year for Yahoo. Other than experiencing declining traffic on its search site, Yahoo is also facing the falling revenues of their full of security issues advertisements.

Known as 'The Man' at Berkshire-Hathaway, Warren Buffett was known to turning struggling organizations downside up. Other than over $200k working stock at the Berkshire-Hathaway, he did the same with Media General, Nevada Energy, and Kraft Heinz.

Buffett is helping to invest in Yahoo venture by offering Dan Gilbert to be a potential partner. Even though verified on CNBC, no one is sure if Buffett will be watching and consulting as needed. One would easily perceive that he has no operating designs on the company. No one is sure if he is doing the right thing with technology related companies. Would he still be the hands behind the door having significant says in Yahoo? How should Google be viewing this, or should Google be worried?

The 'Midas' has not always succeeded in his ventures. IBM for example, faced major losses within 5 years after Warren Buffet started to buy tons of their shares. Would this indicate that he has no understanding in IBM businesses? Would that intricate Yahoo in the same way? Not to mention, AMEX, Walmart and Wells Fargo (and of course IBM) shares lose billion of dollars in 2015. Does Yahoo fit into his value model to be exact? Is Buffett losing his 'Midas' touch perhaps?

There are other parties also interested in acquiring Yahoo. Perhaps Microsoft is no longer interested after it got rejected in 2008. Despite being huge and having a large client base, no one can get a good design of growth for Yahoo. Buffett would perhaps look into a change of management in order to revive Yahoo to survive.

Perhaps by focusing on niche products like Mail service, News and venturing into the stock market and especially e-Commerce through joint-venture with logistics companies like DHL, Yahoo would be able to redeem themselves out of their current situation, and most importantly, to enable people to exactly define 'What is Yahoo', easily.

On another note, acquisition of Tumblr was definitely a big mistake and should be reversed!

Bicentennial bliss: celebrating 200 years of forwarding

2015 marks the 200th anniversary of the forwarding business as we know it. In 1815, Louis Danzas founded the company that still forms the backbone of DHL's Global Forwarding, Freight division.

In 200 years the world of freight forwarding has changed dramatically. But one name has remained consistent throughout Danzas. It may have been absorbed into the DPDHL Group, but its legacy remains. Visit regional offices and you'll still find the name on branded posters and merchandise, or a Danzas map proudly displayed on a wall. Many long-timers still think of themselves as 'the Danzas band'.

But what's the story behind the Danzas name? And how did it manage to survive – and even thrive – for over two centuries? The story begins at the end of a war and the resounding defeat of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Waterloo. A demobilized young French lieutenant named Marie Matthias Nicholas Louis Danzas, or Louis Danzas for short, decided to seek his fortune by joining a small freight forwarding company called Michel l'Evêque, Etablissement de Commission et d'Expédition, in St. Louis, France. By 1840, Louis had moved up the ranks to become joint owner of the company, now named Danzas and l'Eveque.

The company took advantage of new technologies and the rapidly expanding rail and steamship routes in Europe. In 1855, it merged with the transport companies Favier-Gervais Vonier and Ouzelet & Cie to form a new general partnership, Danzas, Ouzelet & Cie. 

Rapidly expanding

Louis Danzas remained a senior partner of the rapidly expanding company until he died in 1862, at which point his son, Emile Jules Danzas, succeeded him. Jules Danzas began to expand his branch network in Switzerland establishing an office in Basel. New mountain tunnels and rail links enhanced Basel's role as a trade center on the Rhine River at the point where Germany, France, and Switzerland meet, and Danzas took advantage of this geographic position to forward freight between these countries and to the larger continent beyond. In 1886, Laurent Werzinger became chairman of the company and he expanded Danzas' branch network, acquiring an interest in the Rhine steamship company, Basel Rheinschiffahrt AG. 

Fast forward 37 years. Danzas suffered great material and personnel losses during World War II, but its base in neutral Switzerland remained intact, allowing the company to make a speedy postwar recovery. Fritz Hatt took over as chairman in 1948 and under his leadership the network of branches was expanded in Switzerland, France, Germany, and Italy. The company's name was changed to Danzas AG in 1960. New branches were established in Greece, Spain, and Portugal and representative offices were set up in Latin America and New York and other commercial centers. International expansion continued throughout the 1980s and by 1989 Danzas had established representative offices in 36 countries and 41 U.S states.

In 1990, The European Community ended national restrictions that had prohibited trucks based in one country from carrying goods within the borders of another member state. The move, along with the opening of East European borders and markets, transformed the goods transportation industry. But the end of customs barriers throughout the European Community in 1993 resulted in a sales drop of 35 percent for Danzas. At the end of 1998, Danzas allowed itself to be acquired by Deutsche Post AG, which paved the way for further acquisitions.

Major acquisitions

In 1999, Danzas acquired Sweden's ASG AB and then Netherland's Nedlloyd's European Transport and Distribution (ETD) unit. At the end of 1999, the company acquired Air Express International, the leading freight forwarder in the United States. These three purchases helped to triple the company's sales, turning Danzas into an international giant with European leadership in overland cargo and worldwide leadership in air cargo transport. All of the company's new operations were now united under the Danzas name.

When Deutsche Post acquired DHL International in 2002, it fully integrated Danzas, DHL, and EuroExpress under the DHL brand. In 2005, Deutsche Post dropped the Danzas brand and renamed the business unit DHL Global Forwarding, Freight. In 2006, it combined parts of Danzas and other ground-based freight subsidiaries in its new DHL Freight division.

Today DHL Global Forwarding Freight is the number one in air freight, the number two in ocean freight and the leading European road freight provider. It is present in over 150 countries and territories and employs some 42,000 people around the world. A lot has happened in 200 years and the story continues today.

MacOSX on Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (1011)

It is the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (1011) which had the most compatibility with MacOSX. All its hardwares are supported in MacOSX.

I did it twice before getting it right. It's running MacOSX Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Yet updated to the latest update. Installation was made through a 8GB USB flash disk. Steps:

1. Partition USB disk to GUID partition format and format it to HFS+ using Disk Utility
2. Restore Snow Leopard CD to the USB flash disk using Disk Utility
3. Download NetbookMaker 0.8.4 RC1 and install it to the USB disk
4. Install Snow Leopard to your Dell Inspiron Mini 10v
5. Once installed, the machine will automatically rebooted. Download NetbookInstaller 20100616212351, install and reboot
6. Install MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.8.dmg and legacy_kernel-10.6.8.pkg. Install Mac update but do not click restart when asked. Instead, install the legacy kernel package and restart.
7. System will be rebooted, running for 10-15 minutes and restarted again
8. Run the NetbookInstaller 20100616212351 again, and install SleepEnabler.kext to enable sleep.
9. Done!

Everything should work. WiFi, Ethernet, TouchPad. The best is you can configure the touchpad to be used just like Apple's touch pad, with the use of 2 or 3 fingers touch. Kewl isn't it?

It's now officially a toy to my son to watch youtube. It's a lot more stable and better responding.

Thanks MacOSX.