Mediaboss Marketing

Shares of Green Dot (Nasdaq: GDOT) hit a 52-week low yesterday. Let's look at how the company got here and if cloudy skies are still in the forecast.

How it got hereWhy Green Dot, a provider of prepaid debit cards, is trading at a new low is a general mystery to me, as the entire credit services sector has been on fire. Credit processors Visa (NYSE: V) and MasterCard (NYSE: MA) have both seen double-digit international transaction growth, while Green Dot's direct prepaid card competitor, NetSpend Holdings (Nasdaq: NTSP) , also logged robust growth with the number of direct deposits climbing by 20%.

Green Dot has been no slouch either. Despite management claiming the company missed its target growth for its most recently ended quarter, Green Dot grew revenue by 26% and non-GAAP income by 40%. The company has also been aggressively adding high-profile companies to its network, including Sears Holdings' Kmart and Rite Aid, which is in addition to longtime partners CVS Caremark, Walgreen, and Wal-Mart.

How it stacks upLet's see how Green Dot compares to its peers.

GDOT data by YCharts

It appears that investors are anticipating pressure on prepaid debit companies' business from American Express' (NYSE: AXP) entrance into the prepaid market.

Company

Price / Book

Price / Cash Flow

Continued here:
52-Week Low Alert: Green Dot

MILAN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

TCL, has partnered up with IKEA, the global home furnishing company, for the development of its new living room concept of complete TV-solutions that includes TV, Sound and furniture.

As manufacturer of TV's and sound systems and Blu-Ray players TCL accompanies IKEA in its desire to offer furniture solutions with integrated technology.

A new innovative partnership for TCL

This new partnership with IKEA is a natural move for TCL dedicated to offer a new TV experience to consumers and make innovation affordable. Thus, this innovative concept reflects the aspiration of TCL - THE CREATIVE LIFE - to bring innovative and creative design enhancing its technology advances and blending seamlessly in consumer interiors. As a result, TCL has been constantly been awarded by worldwide reputed organizations such as IF, Red Dot or CES.

According to Mr. Tomson Li, Chairman of TCL Group, "This partnership reflects our commitment to fully enable everyone to discover a new world of entertainment and services in an innovative design for seamless integration into your home."

TCL is a large and competent supplier that immediately understood our ambition to create unique and complete TV solutions from a home furnishing point of view and supported in making the right choices and by developing and manufacturing these products, said Marcel Godfroy Project Leader at IKEA of Sweden.

TCL: a brand dedicated to offering affordable innovations to consumers

As an example of TCLs innovative spirit, the company offers a Smart TV,based on state of the art cloud computing technology, intuitive graphic user interface, built-in WiFi connectivity that enables consumers in a simple and seamless way to access via internet a new world of entertainmentand interactive services.

About TCL

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TCL in Innovative Partnership with IKEA

LAS VEGAS, April 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- NAB Show 2012, Booth SL 13405-- Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL - News), a leading provider of SAN storage solutions, today announced that its AssuredSAN storage is being used by post production solutions developer SGO within its turn-key Mistika systems due to storage system flexibility and outstanding price/performance. The SGO Mistika platform is used for many applications including finishing and final rendering of leading 2D and stereoscopic 3D video and film productions.

Headquartered in Madrid, Spain, SGO is an established leading European developer of high-end solutions that allow total freedom to create and manipulate moving images in real-time for multiple formats including SD, HDTV, Film, Stereoscopic 3D, IMAX and multiple screen projection. SGO's customers include Park Road Post, BSkyB, Framestore, The Look, Identity FX, Preditors, Onsight, BTV Post, Videomedia, Annapurna Studios, Molinare Madrid, Infinia, CVisual, Chroma Film & TV Hamburg, El Colorado, Thomson Technicolor Madrid, Real Madrid Television, OPTIX Digital Pictures, Hocus Focus and Soundfirm, among many others.

To ensure that SGO's systems such as Mistika are able to deliver the performance required for the most demanding workloads, the Dot Hill AssuredSAN system was selected. Ease of use and simple capacity expansion are key features of the Dot Hill AssuredSAN system, allowing up to eight expansion chassis per configuration hosting either 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives.

The SGO Mistika platform utilizes the latest 8Gb Fibre Channel RAID technology with high performance SAS drives. This can deliver a total of 288TB using 3TB SATA drives and more as future drive capacities continue to grow.

Geoff Mills, director of Global Sales & Operations at SGO, said, "We choose the best technologies so that we can retain our leading position in the post production market. The film industry is constantly pushing boundaries, we need a storage solution that provides high performance and flexibility so that we can dynamically meet our Mistika end user requirements as their storage needs grow."

The Dot Hill AssuredSAN system enables SGO to freely mix drive types including SAS, SATA and SSD to allow the most effective allocation of storage resources based on workload and data life cycle. SGO regularly deploys the Dot Hill AssuredSAN 3722 systems using SAS drives for one shelf of high performance density with up to 24 2.5-inch drives per chassis and by mixing it with multiple shelves of SATA technology, SGO can cater for both high performance real time workflows alongside less demanding VFX, finishing and archival storage needs.

Thanks to Dot Hill, SGO has improved workflow productivity, increased performance and application response times, maximised performance density with small form factor 2.5-inch SAS drives and benefited from easy-to-use web-based storage management with simple license-free storage capacity expansion.

Warren Reid, EMEA marketing director at Dot Hill, said, "The post production video industry places high demands on storage systems and we have had great success with our AssuredSAN networked RAID products in this market. We are honored and very excited to be working with SGO who are raising the bar for high-end finishing systems with their non-proprietary open architecture."

About Dot Hill

Leveraging its proprietary Assured family of storage solutions, Dot Hill solves many of today's most challenging storage problems helping IT to improve performance, increase availability, simplify operations, and reduce costs. Dot Hill's solutions combine breakthrough virtualization software with the industry's most flexible and extensive hardware platform and automated management to deliver best-in-class SAN solutions. Headquartered in Longmont, Colo., Dot Hill has offices and/or representatives in China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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Dot Hill Chosen by 3D Stereoscopic Post Production Developer SGO

By Howard Baldwin, PCWorld Apr 17, 2012 6:55 AM

The Pew Internet Projects recent survey on Digital Differences revealed that 20 percent of adults are Internet innocents people who dont go online and do not think the Web is relevant to them -- but hidden beneath those overall numbers are even more interesting tidbits.

I delved further into the Pew survey results and these five surprising results:

When those Internet innocents were asked why they didnt go online, 31 percent of respondents said they were just not interested. This was by far the biggest percentage -- the next largest group of respondents (12 percent) said they didnt have a computer. How can you just not be interested in something that is rewriting the rules of communication, politics, publishing, commerce the list goes on. Even my 92-year-old father gets e-mail.

And speaking of senior citizens, the fastest-growing segment on social networking sites are older adults. You might have noticed this after your Aunt Ruth friended you on Facebook, but the results show that this growth may be driven by several factors, some of which include the ability to reconnect with people from the past, find supporting communities to deal with a chronic disease, and connect with younger generations.

Smartphones are doing what computers cant. The survey notes that groups that have traditionally been on the other side of the digital divide in basic Internet access are using wireless connections to go online. For instance, among those who own one, the smartphone is main source of Internet access not only young adults (no surprise there), but also minorities, high school graduates, and those with lower-than-average household incomes.

Even more surprising, in almost every smartphone category, Hispanics are more likely than whites to use smartphone features with greater frequency, whether its text messaging, Internet access, sending video, downloading an app or playing a game. Blacks also surpassed whites in their usage in most of the 14 categories, except for three in which the difference wasnt statistically significant.

Heres the only depressing statistic. According to Pew, the 27 percent of adults living with disability in the U.S. today are significantly less likely than adults without a disability to go online (54 percent vs. 81 percent). Computers have been heralded as the portal for the disabled to more fully participate in society, but whether because of cost, ability or technologys limitations, that hasnt come true yet.

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'Internet Innocents' Survey: 5 Surprising Results

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

The IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the full-year 2011 reveals that revenues soared to a landmark high of $31 billion. That milestone represents a 22 percent increase over 2010s full-year number, which itself had been a record-breaker at $26 billion. The report, released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC U.S., also unveils that fourth quarter revenues for 2011 hit a best-ever at $9 billion, marking a 15 percent increase over the third quarter 2011, which came in at $7.8 billion, and a 20 percent growth year-over-year in comparison to 2010s $7.4 billion.

Other highlights of the report include:

This historic moment, with an especially impressive achievement in mobile, is indicative of an increased awareness from advertisers that they need to reach consumers where they are spending their time--in digital media, said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. Pushing past the $30 billion barrier, the interactive advertising industry confirms its central place in media. Across search, display, digital video, digital provides a wealth of opportunity for brands and consumers. With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, it is likely that the tremendous growth in mobile will continue as these screens become even more crucial to the marketing mix.

The year 2011 saw mobile advertising become a meaningful category, said David Silverman, Partner, PwC U.S. By combining some of the best features of the internet, along with portability and location-based technology, mobile advertising is enabling marketers to deliver timely, targeted, relevant, and local advertisements in a manner that was not previously possible. It is for these reasons that we expect strong growth to continue with mobile advertising.

Digital advertisings stellar performance in 2011 attests to the high-value marketers put on the medium, said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics, and Measurement, IAB. In addition, with advancement in areas like mobile and digital video, it appears that there will be robust avenues for interactives growth in the future.

Here are the results from the full year in comparison with last years numbers:

Total display-related

IAB sponsors the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, which is conducted independently by the New Media Group of PwC. The results are considered the most accurate measurement of interactive advertising revenues because the data is compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertisements on the internet.

The survey includes data concerning online advertising revenues from Web sites, commercial online services, free email providers, and all other companies selling online advertising. The full report is issued twice yearly for full and half-year data, and top-line quarterly estimates are issued for the first and third quarters. PwC does not audit the information and provides no opinion or other form of assurance with respect to the information.

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Internet Ad Revenues Hit $31 Billion in 2011, Historic High Up 22% Over 2010 Record-Breaking Numbers