@eponce

Apple ends day the most valuable public company on Earth (for real this time)

After temporarily passing oil giant Exxon Mobil in market capitalization yesterday, Apple has jumped into the lead again and remained there as the market closed today. (from AppleInsider)

Apple’s market cap valuation, which ended the day at $337.2 billion, edged into the lead despite the stock falling down 2.8 percent today. Exxon was valued at $330.8 billion after its shares closed down 4.4 percent for the day. 

Market capitalization only pertains to how much, in total, the outstanding shares in a publicly held company are valued by the market. Apple’s stock price is based on the composite of what investors think the company is worth now, combined with how much potential it has to grow earnings and expand into new markets in the future. 

In the past year, Apple has earned $23.6 billion on revenues of more than $100 billion. Exxon has earned almost $38 billion but has collected revenues of nearly $393 billion.

As Apple has appreciated in value, it passed Dell, HP and finally Microsoft in May of 2010. It is currently worth over $130 billion more than Microsoft (which ten years ago was itself worth more than Exxon).

The Social Media Experiment: Giving away coffee for strangers

Jonathan Stark is such a nice guy that he has given $300 to anonymous people to enjoy drinks and food at Starbucks. 

Stark launched Jonathan’s Card on July 14. At the time, he says he was unaware that others could add money to the card. The initial idea was to fund the card, then put it online and watch the balance fall, a process that Stark says he found “fun.” Why? Stark says he liked the idea of buying people something, but it’s always uncomfortable when one does that in real life. In contrast, doing it via social media “is impersonal enough that people feel comfortable doing it. It’s weird.”

Five hundred or so people felt the same way. Stark says the card has received a total of $8,700 in donations — including his $300 — so far. The card’s balance has been upped more than 500 times and it’s been withdrawn close to 900 times. That ratio was encouraging to Stark, a mobile app consultant, who sees applications for the idea in the future, like donating fees for medication or other services “for someone in a more desperate situation than the average person in line at Starbucks.”

But if the experiment doesn’t restore your faith in humanity, it may restore your faith in social media marketing. For $300, Stark’s campaign has netted close to 10,000 followers on Twitter so far and about 3,000 Facebook fans. It may also spawn some related apps. (The Jonathan’s Card website includes several APIs.) Jonathan’s Card may not do much for Starbucks, but it has certainly done a lot for Jonathan Stark

Google is changing your brain and how we think (study)

A new study confirms it: Google (GOOG) is altering your brain. More precisely, our growing dependence on the Internet has changed how — and what — our brains choose to remember.

When we know where to find information, we’re less likely to remember it — an amnesia dubbed “The Google Effect” by a team led by psychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University.

Goodbye, soul-searching; hello, facts-at-fingertips.

The finding, published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, doesn’t prove that Google, Yahoo (YHOO) or other search engines are making us dumber, as some have asserted. We’re still capable of remembering things that matter — and are not easily found online, Sparrow said.

Rather, it suggests that the human memory is reorganizing where it goes for information, adapting to new computing technologies rather than relying purely on rote memory. We’re outsourcing “search” from our brains to our computers.

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