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Technology Stocks : Lodgenet Entertainment -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Tokyo VD who wrote (55)6/16/1998 1:21:00 PM
From: Keliven Wong  Respond to of 79
 
Gee, VD, thanks for letting me keep my opinion. The information I was trying to convey was that your information on the ONCO lawsuit is really mis-information. If it were correct, I would be very appreciative for the warning. Turns out I cannot corroborate it from ANY source. In looking I came across a future action against ONCO from someone other than LNET, but IMHO it's no big deal.

Whats unprofessional to suggest that you are attempting to manipulate the stock price down? I don't understand the terms "profession" and "beneath" in the context of figuring present value from future likelihood. I'll go anywhere the facts take me. You have posted a couple of key "facts", and I cannot corroborate them. Simply, I'm saying that they don't appear to be "facts". Why else would you post stuff that's wrong?

Regarding MS analyst reports, I never talk to analysts. I never read their reports. Post them, if you like. I much prefer to look at the numbers, talk to customers, talk to suppliers, etc. I've even given up talking to IR. Reading the Annual Report is a lot faster. I feast off of Value Line number sets. I throw away the text. Little companies like LNET and ONCO are great because they are underanalyzed, and I have a chance to know more than the average bear. Trade shows are great because you can see the entire universe in one room - throws it all into context. You never know going in. With this business, there is a technological watershed approaching. The traditional way to make money has been to sell the product direct. The new way may be to capture eyeballs. The question is who can capture them cheaper? My guess is that LNET has been doing that better than ONCO. My info suggests that ONCO has been successful at keeping many of the high-end chain corporate contracts. However they appear to be losing some franchisees to LNET on the basis of service. In any case, a set of eyeballs is a set of eyeballs, doesn't matter what price the underlying room costs. The company that can harvest this captive audience should do very well. The question of capital costs for capture remain key.

I'll check out the Sky Mall stuff. Sounds crummy, I agree.

KW



To: Tokyo VD who wrote (55)6/17/1998 1:51:00 AM
From: Keliven Wong  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 79
 
Tokyo is almost like VooDoo: No sooner did you slam the static Sky Mall junk than Lodgenet buys a real live internet company - Connect Group out of US Web. If you've been to the SJ Hilton, they're the guys who did that site. They rave about it. Their public space connectivity solution has added significant efficiency to their sales effort in the convention arena. The access is ethernet to a T-1. It allows their guys to seamlessly cruise the internet to become knowledgeable about potential sales. They can run back office functions in an intranet using open standards protocols.

This appears to be a very smart move. If LNET can roll this out, they should be able to capture the convention spaces at hotels where ONCO is contracted for the guest rooms. By comparison, ONCO has no meaningful digital capability. This explains their MSFT move - desperation. MSFT is relying on @com with its kiosks and other weird stuff. They've been giving this stuff away because no one will buy it. It requires some special proprietary software to access the system. And it has a bad habit of reconfiguring your OS during a connection. Lot of complaints from the @com stuff. Bad, Bad, Bad.

Good Call.

KW