Biotech investing is fraught with pitfalls. One of the best discussions of what a sophisticated investor should look for is Adam Feuerstein's article, "How to Review Biotech Clinical Data." He exposes some of the data trickery used by Introgen in a recent scientific presentation. Major red flags! If you don't want to look at actual data, you'll need to rely on third parties like Adam Feuerstein to tell you who's playing fair and who's not. He does mention Celgene  (CELG) as one of the good guys, and I fully concur. They are my favorite biotech with an incredible pipeline, excellent patents, and strong technology. I also like Sangamo Bioseciences (SGMO) with their zinc-finger proteins that I see as revolutionary.

I gave up on GTCB recently (sold when they briefly rose above $1, breaking even) and took a small position on ENZ because I think the sell-off over a patent problem was overdone. But Celgene is my major position and a great play for the future. 

In other areas, I think this is a good time to add OESX (Orion Energy Systems) to your portfolio. I recently toured the factory and had a wonderful interview with the CEO that I'll be writing about in the future, and I'm solidly impressed. Get it under $12, if you can. 

Also a good time to get into Dennison Mines (DNN), Endeavor Silver (EXK), Sterling Mines (SRLM.ob), Ceradyne (CRDN), refiners like FTO and MRO, and the oil services company, Flotec (FTK).  All cheap!!

GATA (the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee at GATA.org) published a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal documenting manipulation in the price of gold and the possibility that central banks are grossly overstating the amount of gold they hold. It appears they have been selling for some time to manipulate the price down to prop up fiat currencies. When word gets out on just how scarce gold is, the price could move strongly upwards. Take a look at the ad (click on the image on the left-side of the GATA page in this link) and check out the references as well. Sobering information!

Denison Mines, a leading mid-tier uranium producer with properties in the US and elsewhere, has surprisingly descended from a high over $15 down to under $7 a share right now. Given the steady demand for uranium and its high price of almost $90 per pound, Denison is well positioned for growing profits in the future. The sell-off strikes me as utterly irrational. Thus, it is with great pleasure that I present you with my stock pick of the week, Denison Mines (DNN). It's $6.59 as I write. This could be near the low, according to my instincts (hah! - it's just a gut feel, of course). Consider adding DNN to your portfolio today. Options are also available. If you buy now, I suggest a target price of $12 within 16 months to sell half, and keep the rest with a target of $20 in 3 years. 

Another grossly oversold top-notch company is Frontier Oil (FTO), an excellent refiner. Down way too fast. I think it bottoms near 31 and heads above 50 by summer. But hold for my 2010 target of $70. 

And don't forget gold, silver, and some leading mining stocks like SLW, EXK, SRLM.ob, KGC, and AUY. 

An organization I work with originally had a site hosted at Burlee.com, which was bought out by Web.com. Today I spent some time trying to rescue the site after Web.com killed it for non-payment, when the payment notice was never received. The phone system they have is terrible - calls go to the Philippines over a line that drops out repeatedly. Neither billing nor technical support were able to answer basic questions about the account. Billing had to put me on hold to calculate what was owed to pay up the account before it could be transferred to another service, and then they simply dropped me. Neither technical support nor billing could tell me what features go with the account. After I insisted that they must have access to that information, they put me on hold for about 6 minutes and came back and read something off a Web page, but couldn't answer any meaningful questions. Incredible. I'm out of there. Hope you won't get stuck with them, either.

My son's HP computer came from TigerDirect.com, where we made the mistake of buying a refurbished computer that was sold with a "warranty." We called and asked about the warranty before we bought, and mistakenly understood that it was as good as if we were buying it new. We didn't realize that the 90-day warranty offered is just a fraction of the normal 1-year warranty HP offers on new laptops, and when we asked about disadvantages to the refurbished route, that didn't come up. Our mistake, certainly, but a frustrating one. We saved a few bucks short term, but about 120 days later the screen started malfunctioning. HP would have covered the repair if it had not been refurbished. The cost to repair is about $400 - the better part of what a new laptop would cost. Not worth it. Ouch. 

Don't buy refurbished computers! And perhaps those selling them should let consumers know the risks they face and the lost warranty rights they will suffer.

In general, I'm noticing that recently made computers from several brands are having a lot of problems, as if cost-cutting pressures are leading to cheaper parts and construction. Beware. And the extended warranty may be a good idea for computers, though I agree that it's a waste of money in general for most products.  

The MP3 file here is made available through the kindness of the performer, Kerstin Koldewyn of Utah. An amazing vocalist (as well as an amazing relative of mine). Men, you should pick up on the advice this gives regarding women. It's the little things you do that make all the difference. But don't forget the big things!

 

Sakar International (Edison, Jew Jersey) is selling a series of low-cost cameras. We tried their Digital Concepts 5.1 Megapixel Camera that we purchased for about $70 plus the cost of a 1 GB SD card. Looked nice, but proved to be horribly inadequate.

Very poor interface, very limited control over images. When you take a picture, you have to hold the camera still for over 2 seconds as the screen goes black and tells you to wait - but you don't know when the photo gets taken or what exactly you're photographing. Very hard to capture a moment, very likely to result in blurring and low quality.

Worst of all is the flash. The camera overexposes terribly when flash is used. I don't think the flash is too bright, but the camera seems to not adjust its exposure time to compensate for the presence of flash. I called tech support a couple times to address this issue. First they said they were too busy and would call me back within 24 hours. Almost 36 hours later, no one had called back. Then I tried again and finally reached someone. They told me that the camera just needed to be reset to the factory default. To do this, just take the batteries out and wait 30 minutes (i.e., go away and try calling us again later). He assured me that "everything will be alright" if I do that. I didn't believe it because we had that problem right out of the box with factory settings - and there are so few settings that it's hard to imagine what could be incorrectly set. So I asked to speak to a supervisor. When I reached the supervisor, he asked what kind of memory card I had in the camera. When I said it was a 1 GB card, he said that was the problem. The camera can only take SD cards up to 512 MB. Again, I was incredulous. First, how could that cause the problem? He said the bigger card put too much stress on the camera and made it unable to process the image properly. That sounds crazy. And second, I pointed out that their own printed materials state that it can take a 1 GB card, and pointed specifically to page 3 in the user manual, for example. Oh yes, they are aware of that typo and are working to fix it. Really?? So he said that all I needed to was run off to the store and buy another card with 512 mB or less and all would be rosy. I also asked why the first tech support guy gave me a different story. "Oh, he didn't know you had a 1 GB card." Right. Well, I borrowed a 256 MB SD card and found out, as I expected, that it made no difference. The camera grotesquely overexposes with flash regardless with 256 mB cards as well as 1 GB cards. And now that it has been over 30 minutes with the batteries out, I've also tested the initial "cure" and found, naturally, that resetting the camera doesn't solve its overexposure problem.

Others at Amazon.com have reported this overexposure problem, so it's not just me. But tech support doesn't seem to understand the problem and certainly not the cure. 

Even without flash, image quality is poor. Stick with your cheap cell phone camera or buy a real camera. This one doesn't even provide the basic functionality that you expect in a cheapy like this. And their tech support, if you can reach them, won't be of any help. Stay away.

Cheap doesn't have to mean ridiculously poor.

On the plus side, it is small enough to fit into a pocket. For best results, keep it there.

Sakar, you've got some serious product quality problems. I hope you can get them fixed quickly before you lose whatever customer base you have.  

Pure Digital's Flip Video camera is a delightfully simple and easy-to-use video camera that has caused me hours of grief due to various errors in copying videos to a computer. I ahve repeatedly encountered the dread "Cyclic Redundancy Error" or other strange behavior associated with I/O errors when trying to save the videos I made onto a computer. Flip Video's technical support had me delete some drivers that only caused more trouble for me (now my screensaver doesn't work!), and that didn't help. They had me delete and reinstall the Flip-related software. That didn't help. Finally they said the only hope was to send the camera back so they could repair it.  Unfortunately,  just a couple days after I paid to ship it back, I received an email sent to all registered Flip Video owners informing us of a potential copying problem that can be resolved with a firmware update available online. Well, I wish they would have told me that they were working on a firmware update before having me mail my camera back unnecessarily. I think Tech Support is out of the loop - maybe that's the price you pay for having outsourced tech support on the other side of the globe. The Technical Support people don't seem to be in the loop, because I have been corresponding with them regarding my problem using an email account other than the one I registered with. The account where I've been describing my problems to them in details has not received a courtesy email back from them letting me know of the new development. Maybe they don't follow up with customers having problems, I don't know. 

Here's the news sent to registered owners:

Dear Flip Video user,

Thank you for purchasing our product and trusting us with your memories.

This message has been sent to you because your version of the Flip Video
camcorder requires a critical firmware update. This update resolves
issues related to copying videos off the camcorder to a PC or Mac and
improves overall camcorder and software performance.

While only a few incidents have been reported to us, we have updated the
firmware to ensure your camcorder works properly. We request that you
perform this simple update by clicking the link below or by visiting
theflip.com website.

To get this simple update, click on this link:
http://www.theflip.com/update

We apologize for this inconvenience and welcome your feedback.

Thank you,

The Flip Video Team

Customer Support available 24 hours; 7 days/week. Visit http://www.theflip.com/support. 

After a painful summer that wore out many precious metals investors, this time of pain is the best time to buy. Here's one explanation about the potential of gold from Peter Degraaf:

Throughout history, once a nation embarked on the inflationary route, there has only ever been one final outcome:  total destruction of the currency. Since 1913 the Fed,  (supposedly created to protect the US dollar – must read: ‘The Creature of  Jekyll Island”), has managed to destroy 95% of the purchasing power of the dollar. Does anyone really believe the remaining 5% is safe?

Currencies in a number of countries are being inflated at double digit rates, while the gold supply can only be increased at about 1.6% per year. All the gold ever mined, piled up, would form a cube of less than 20 meters, growing by 12 cm per year. Most of the gold in this hypothetical cube is in the form of jewelry. The driving force behind the current bull market in gold is the fact that fiat money is being created some twelve times faster than gold. In 1980, when gold topped out at 850.00, the US M3 money supply was 1.8 trillion dollars. Today gold is pegged at 800.00, but M3 is now 13 trillion dollars (www.nowandfutures.com). A ratio similar to 1980 puts the potential gold price at $5,600.00. 

Central banks are battling the gold price, and they are capable of slowing down its ascent, but they cannot stop it. If they could stop it, gold would still be selling at 260.00 an ounce, the price where Gordon Browne made his last ditch effort, by selling 25 tonnes of British Government gold.

Following are just a few reasons why gold will rise:

1. Annual deficit between production vs consumption.
   
   
2. Federal Reserve is printing dollars.
   
   
3. USA government is running a fiscal deficit.
   
   
4. Congress does not worry about deficit spending.
   
   
5. U.S. private debt is at a record high.
   
   
6. Many large banks are over-exposed to derivatives.
   
   
7. The world is at war against militant Islam. Wars cost money. Wars always last longer than anticipated. Wars are inflationary. 
   
   
8. The US has gone from a net creditor to a net borrower.
   
   
9. The US dollar is in a bear market.
   
   
10. ‘Real’ interest rates are negative. Whenever the true rate of price inflation rises to or above interest rates, gold rises.
    
    
11. Gold is rising in virtually every currency.
    
    
12. Central banks, including the USA, are overstating their gold reserves (www.gata.org)

Gold stocks are severely undervalued right now, as are silver stocks. Get some of both, and get some of both metals. The US dollar is weakening and many forces are preparing to escalate precious metals far above their current values.

I'm afraid that Toshiba's newest Satellite computers may have some quality control problems, or may have some trouble using Vista (of course, that's true for most computers, except, perhaps, the Mac). I purchased my son a Toshiba Satellite A215 S7437. Great computer - except it froze up with the black screen of doom several times while in use. He took it back to Best Buy and got a replacement. After a couple hours of use, the same problem occurred. He took it back in the locked-up state of doom for the to see. Instead of replacing it, they suggested some updates to try. So he came home and downloaded the latest Vista updates to the system and restarted. After a short while, the same problem occurred. This is just using basic Microsoft software, nothing unusual or demanding. It froze for me, once, just moving through folders in Explorer. It froze looking at a simple Web page and also playing a DVD.

So he took it back and upgraded to a lower-cost HP computer.  

Toshiba, what's up? I've got an older Toshiba that has been fine.  Is it Vista or Toshiba to blame for this? Three computers in a row all failed. Ouch.  

Ever had the horror of accidentally erasing the photos from a memory card before they were saved? Or did you think they were saved only to have them be lost from your computer - and the disk has been erased? Even if you've started overwriting the erased disk with new photos, many of the images that used to be there can be recovered. I've used a couple of different programs for recovering photos from disks, and am happy to recommend a free program: Art Plus Photo Recovery 3.0. Free! Download the executable file (photorec.exe) and launch it to immediately begin your recovery. Connect the camera card to a reader, select the reader, select a folder to place recovered images, and then let the program run. In a few minutes, you'll be surprised to see most or all of your "erased" photos have been recovered. Erasing usually just deletes directory information on the card but does not remove the data that was there. Reformatting the card may do that - so just erase unless you have some kind of problem that requires reformatting, or unless you want to prevent others from recovering the images you had. (Spies take note - but even reformatting a memory card may not defeat high-tech recovery methods.)

I've also used Recover My Photos and thought it was pretty good and perhaps more thorough in recovering all kinds of files and file fragments (including movies - something that the Art Plus product may not recover), but it's $40. The free competitor might be adequate for most needs, so start there.  And once you've recovered your photos, back them up so you don't have another tragedy.