TAM Money and Finance

What does Wal-Mart (WMT) have against Firefox? I showed earlier their new movie download service on the open-source browser looks like something produced by an IBM Selectric on LSD. It looks just as bad on Firefox on the Mac. (The comparison is better understood if you are on LSD as well or weed.) At first look I figured it was just a glich–a HUGE glich–with the Wal-Mart beta. But the retailer has had all day to fix it. Nothing’s happened. Michael Arrington quotes a web designer, “I could fix this in 30 seconds. Did they even test this in Firefox before launching?”

To appreciate Wal-Mart’s efforts you need to fire up Microsoft Internet Explorer. With it the movie download sight looks like, well, the Wal-Mart website.

One of TechCrunch’s commenter told Firefox users to do a hard refresh of the web page (shift-control-R). That does the trick, but Wal-Mart’s had all day to fix this. At the least they could put up a redirect to a page saying the beta site works only with Internet Explorer. A Google beta this is not.

Gizmodo questioned Wal-Mart about the service. The company emphasised the service is a beta and it’s a chance for them to feel things out at the beginning of a downloadable media world.

So what does Wal-Mart have against Firefox? Nothing. Things are just a work in progress.

Wal-Mart’s new endeavor gets an Om Malik beating calling it another in a long line of “too many me-too download services out there, muddying the waters and confusing the consumers about which movie or television they can download from where, and why.” Om thinks the winner won’t be Wal-Mart shareholders by Steve Jobs.

IDG News gives us the techy scoop on how and who brought the movie download site to life:

The offering is built on HP Video Merchant Services, a Web-shopping technology also launched Tuesday that allows businesses to set up an online video store. HP holds hundreds of petabytes of digital films and TV shows in its data centers, and provides back-office sales and search applications, said Willem de Zoete, vice president and general manager of Digital Entertainment Services at HP.

Customers like Wal-Mart use the service as part of their online retail offerings, allowing cinema fans to browse movies based on genre, or search by entering the name of an actor, director or film. Customers can then download the movies to play on their PCs or portable video players, or order a packaged disc to arrive in the mail, choosing a DVD, HD-DVD or Blu-ray format.

A first-time user must install a program on the PC before starting the 30- to 45-minute process of downloading a 1.5G-byte movie over a typical household broadband connection, although most can start watching within five to 10 minutes, said Kevin Swint, Wal-Mart’s divisional merchandise manager for digital media.

I wonder how much of a turn-key system HP Video Merchant Services is. How easy would it be for this website to set up movie download service? Thousands of movie sites would be great for the movie studios and television networks. It wouldn’t be so good for Wal-Mart to have their competition only a click away.

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[Button via James Kolbern.]

TAM Money and Finance joined some great webloggers at Ashish’s Niti who hosted the Festival of Stocks. Here are some highlights:

• Larry Russell tells us average investors don’t do well actively investing. They should stick to index funds.
• With fossil fuel dependence making constant headlines attention should be paid to uranium. The Australian industry is the focus at Investor Trip.
• For the newbie technical traders (I’m not raising my hand) Trade 4 Cash guides you through an analysis of two stocks.

Wal-Mart (WMT) is jumping into the digital movie download market almost like they’re a innovator. Sure, having customers pay someone for movie downloads isn’t new, but the world’s largest retailer is bringing something new to the table: more flexible pricing and price competition:

The nation’s largest retailer is using its buying power to beat the prices charged by other download services in many cases, offering films from $12.88 to $19.88 and individual TV episodes for $1.96 — 4 cents less than Apple Inc.’s iTunes store.

Apple charges less for some films sold on iTunes — $12.99 when pre-ordered and during the first week of sale, or $14.99 afterward. But it only carries films from two studios, The Walt Disney Co. and Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Studios.

Most studios have resisted signing deals with iTunes in part because of Apple’s desire to sell movies at one price. Studios prefer variable pricing such as Wal-Mart is offering.

Apple’s pricing has also caused scuffles between studios and major retailers, including Wal-Mart and Target Corp. The retailers don’t want studios to sell digital copies of films cheaper than the wholesale price of physical DVDs.

Wal-Mart’s online store will sell older titles starting at $7.50, compared with the $9.99 charged by iTunes.

From the looks of things something has gone seriously wrong. It may be a beta but it has to at least be viewable.

With Wal-Mart in place movie studios are set to make more deals with the likes of Amazon (AMZN) and others.

Geeks and even mild techies hooked on our YouTube age won’t be pleased with Wal-Mart’s offering. Customers won’t be able to burn their movies to DVD or play them on their iPods. That’s not so much Wal-Mart’s fault as that of the fearful movie studios.

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comScore released some data on the world’s most popular web properties. Despite Google (GOOG) doing so many things right with so many services Microsoft (MSFT) still garnered the most visitors in 2006. World web use increased 9%, Google’s visitors grew 13% (with 71% rise in Gmail users), while Microsoft and Yahoo (YHOO) each grew 5%. Like Toyota’s inevitable climb to the top of the auto industry Google will soon be king of the web.

The biggest areas of growth were a combination of old and new with multimedia (YouTube grew 1972%!), community (think MySpace), and e-mail (again Gmail) topping the list.

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The Gap (GPS) is looking internally to turn around its namesake store chain. Marka Hansen is moving from the company’s Banana Republic division to run The Gap’s North American stores. Hansen served in many positions including “helping expand the chain into Europe and Japan” as “vice president of merchandising for Gap’s international unit.” Hansen has had success in the ailing retailer. While Gap stores same-store sales went down 9% last December sales at Banana Republic stores increased 2%.

The search for a permanent replacement for ex-CEO Paul Pressler continues.

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It’s been a shaky few days for Dell Computer (DELL). First, a leadership shake-up brings Michael Dell back as CEO replacing Kevin Rollins. Now, an investor lawsuit contends Dell improperly accounted for rebates from Intel (INTC):

The suit alleges that Dell received at times as much as $1 billion a year in “secret and likely illegal” kickbacks in the form of “e-Cap” or “exception to corporate average pricing” payments” from Intel to ensure that Dell used no other chip supplier, according to The Journal. Specifically, the complaint alleges that Dell received payments from Intel for not doing business with American Micro Device The Journal reported.

Intel must not have been paying enough. Dell started selling computers with AMD (AMD) chips last year.

While recent events have been a little unsettling The National Post’s Jonathan Ratner reports stock analysts welcome Michael Dell’s return to running his company. The hope is Windows Vista will boost corporate computer sales and Dell starts buying companies to boost profits.

The challenge for Dell (Michael and his company) is

its manufacturing prowess isn’t the edge it used to be. And Dell doesn’t spend enough on research and development to truly innovate. As a result, Dell is mired in a commodity hardware game. That game plan was fine when rivals were inefficient, but HP can now squeeze Dell on price.

Dell’s purchase of Alienware is a sign they know they need to inject a product innovation ethos. They have to project something other than a basic, dependable image. Right now they’re The Gap of the computer world. They’re bland yet dependable–I’d buy a Dell in heartbeat just like I’d go to The Gap for some t-shirts and khakis. Grabbing a few Apple (APPL) people would really shake things up on the consumer side. Or if they can’t convince anyone there to leave the Cult of Jobs they should look at Sony (SNE) people who make sexy Vaios. On the corporate end going more into services means taking on IBM (IBM).

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AirTran (AAI) will extend its $345 million offer for Midwest Airlines (MEH) for another month until March 8. That could mean the low-cost airline has some takers for the deal but needs more time to get a majority. What they didn’t do is up their offer which would be hard since AirTran’s stock has gone down in the last month.

AirTran also announced Jeffrey Erickson, Charles Kalmbach and John Albertine will be nominated to Midwest’s board of directors.

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UPDATE: Midwest comments on AirTran’s slate of directors:

Midwest believes that AirTran has nominated this slate to allow AirTran’s representatives, if elected, to push for a sale of Midwest to AirTran, which would deny Midwest’s shareholders the opportunity to benefit from our strategic plan.

Duh? Why else would AirTran offer up those specific people?