Christopher Judd writes:

I have given a presentation I call Agile Development with Groovy and Grails at CodeMash, the Columbus Ruby Burgage and other places around Columbus, Ohio. Unfortunately most of the presentation shows the power of Groovy and Grails in demo but if you are interested you can download it at:

http://www.juddsolutions.com/downloads/AgileDevelopmentwithGroovyandGrails.pdf.

In addition, I offer to freely give this presentation to any companies or organizations interested in Groovy and Grails in the central Ohio area.

Tags: Groovy Grails

By Joshua Lipton, data provided by Marketocracy 04.21.08, 5:30 PM ET

The U.S. continues to deal with a range of serious economic concerns, including costlier energy and tighter credit. The response from stock-market investors last week: Who cares?

After nervously spending some time fretting over General Electric’s performance in the prior week, investors chose to put aside those jitters and instead moved back into the market. Bulls kicked their heels down in lower Manhattan, as the stock market surged on news of solid results from a slew of bellwethers, like Google and Caterpillar.

The Dow Jones industrial average shot up 4.3% for the week, to close at 12,849, the tech-heavy Nasdaq leapt 4.9% to 2,403 and the S&P 500 index rose 4.3% to 1,390.

In Pictures: 10 Guru Buys And Sells

The best-performing online investors, Marketocracy’s “M100,” were also busy buying. These market gurus looked over the indexes and decided their money was best spent in the energy sector, where they committed a lot of capital last week.

Specifically, the M100 are following crude to new heights, and acquiring drillers as a way to play persistently high oil prices, which have been climbing due to a weak dollar, global growth and speculation.

Drillers have benefited from the huge hike in the price of all that black gold. The stock price of the Oil Service HOLDRs, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the oil services industry, has skyrocketed more than 36% in the past 12 months.

Here is how our M100 played it: They pushed hard into shares of Tulsa, Okla.-based Helmerich & Payne.

The company, which has a market capitalization of about $6 billion, is an oil-and-gas driller. Big customers include BP and Marathon Oil; the company’s fleet includes 172 U.S. land rigs, 27 international land rigs and nine offshore platform rigs.

There are some risks here for investors to consider: The contract drilling business is competitive, and oil and gas prices are, of course, very volatile. But analysts covering the company also point out reasons for optimism.

They say H&P stands out from other U.S. land drillers because of heavy demand for its FlexRig drilling rigs. These are highly mobile land rigs that can be easily moved, which reduces drilling costs for producers. H&P’s revenues and earnings growth have been accelerating. Its balance sheet is in solid shape.

Last week, Calyon Securities initiated coverage of H&P with an “Add” rating and $60 price target. Analyst Mark Urness told clients HP has been able to defy the softening U.S. land-drilling market by offering superior rigs that are the newest, safest and most innovative in the industry.

He also sees international markets as providing yet another growth driver for the company.

“International markets have good longer-term growth potential for HP, as international operators are beginning to realize the advantages of new drilling technologies,” Urness wrote.

The stock of H&P has proved to be a real investor-pleaser, surging 77% in the past year. The M100 clearly thinks this stock can run even higher. The company is expected to release second-quarter results May 1; our gurus carved out a stake ahead of that report.

The M100 played the oil services sector by also snatching shares of international offshore oil and gas company ATP Oil & Gas and Calgary-based oil and natural gas company Connacher Oil and Gas.

On the sell side, the M100 checked out of Diebold, which makes automated teller and voting machines.

Last month, Diebold rejected a $3 billion hostile takeover bid from United Technologies. “The board strongly believes UTC’s proposal significantly undervalues the company and fails to reflect Diebold’s strengths and significant upside potential,” said Diebold Chairman John Lauer.

Lauer said UTC’s proposal is an opportunistic attempt to buy Diebold at a time when shareholders don’t have sufficient data to evaluate the offer. Diebold hasn’t filed financial statements over the past year because of an accounting investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. (See: “Diebold Plays Coy.”)

Diebold’s stock has slid over the past year. It’s now trading at around $38, well below its July 2007 high of $54. Last week, the company said it will release its 2008 first-quarter preliminary revenue estimates April 30.

But the gurus aren’t waiting around for the report–they decided now was the time to sell the stock.

Our M100 also sold a few other names last week that they believe no longer deserve their capital, including consumer products company Colgate-Palmolive, recreational vehicle maker Thor Industries and insurance holding company WR Berkley.

Guru Buys:

Helmerich & Payne

ATP Oil & Gas

Connacher Oil and Gas

Thomson Reuters Corporation

PowerShares DB Agriculture

Guru Sells:

Diebold

Colgate-Palmolive

Thor Industries

WR Berkley

Savient Pharmaceuticals

In Pictures: 10 Guru Buys And Sells

Marketocracy.com tracks more than 60,000 online stock portfolios. Of those, the top 100 performing portfolios, the M100, are used to create a real-life mutual fund, the Masters 100 Fund, which is managed by founder Ken Kam. Each week, Guru Picks analyzes the buys and sells of the M100. Click here for more information about Marketocracy.com and its money-management services.

Tags: Marketocracy

Joshua Lipton of Forbes.com writes:

Industrial stocks were hammered last week after General Electric undershot analyst expectations, but the sharp sell-off provided a buying opportunity for those investors shopping around for attractive places to buy into the sector.

General Electric missed forecasts with its first-quarter earnings and was quickly punished for those results. The stock tumbled 12.8%, to $32.05, its worst decline since the stock market crash of 1987.

Investors are worried about the implications for other industrial stocks. As the U.S. economy was sputtering, investors believed that international exposure of multinational conglomerates like GE would protect them from a stumbling domestic market.

Now stock market investors are concerned that these industrials might not be as secure as they first thought.

GE wasn’t the only industrial to get pummeled by jittery investors. Other names like United Technologies, 3M, Cummins and Tyco all received a whacking heading into the weekend.

The Industrial Select Sector SPDR shed 3.9% on Friday.

In Pictures: Five Buys, Five Sells

Another industrial loser last week was Oshkosh Corp., which slipped 2.4% to $35.37 on Friday. (The stock gave up about 6% on the week). But here, the best-performing online investors, Marketocracy’s M100, figured there was a buying opportunity.

Oshkosh is a leading manufacturer of specialty vehicles, including fire trucks, military trucks and concrete-mixer trucks. The company has a market capitalization of about $2.6 billion.

Bears on the stock have their criticisms. They write that Oshkosh has a lot of customers in cyclical industries, like construction. They also point out that about 25% of the company’s sales are to Uncle Sam, mostly to the defense department. It’s unclear which presidential candidate will be moving into the White House next and what that new administration’s plans are for defense spending.

The stock of Oshkosh hasn’t been a crowd pleaser. Over the past 12 months, it has gone down about 34%. Over the past six months, it has slipped about 43%.

But there are reasons for hope here, analysts say. They point to the company’s strong profitability, as well as its high stability in earnings and dividend growth.

Oshkosh bulls write that it has the No. 1 market share in many of its product categories. Competition in fire trucks, which represent about 9% of the company’s sales, is weakening, analysts say.

Back in February, Oshkosh issued second-quarter guidance, which undershot Wall Street estimates. (Oshkosh will report Q2 results May 1.) But, looking ahead, the company reaffirmed full-year guidance, saying it’s still looking for 2008 earnings per share in the range of $4.15 to $4.35, compared with EPS of $3.58 in 2007.

So, basically, Oshkosh is telling Wall Street that the road traveled by its rumbling vehicles might be bumpy in the second quarter. But it’s looking for a smoother ride for the full year.

“Oshkosh is meeting weak market conditions head-on by investing in global initiatives to improve distribution in key international growth markets and reducing costs across all businesses,” said CEO Robert Bohn. “This permits us to maintain our positive outlook for fiscal 2008.”

Our M100 are always looking for a bargain before they commit capital. Oshkosh would now appear to provide one. Compared with the competition, Oshkosh is run more profitably and it’s cheaper (and will continue to be less expensive in the future). In fact, the company now has a very attractive price-to-earnings-growth ratio of just 0.38. Anything less than one is considered cheap.

Looking ahead, analysts expect a lot more growth out of this company. Over the next five years, professional stock watchers think Oshkosh will grow, per annum, at 21.33%, far ahead of how much they see the rest of the industry growing.

The M100 liked what they saw, figured it was a steal and moved in–aggressively.

Other big buys last week for our gurus included health insurer Aetna and insurance company HCC Insurance Holdings. They also liked the look of lawn mower maker Toro.

Analysts partial to Toro emphasize its solid history of growth and margin improvement and its low level of debt.

Last week, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services revised its outlook on Bloomington, Minn.-based Toro to positive from stable. S&P also affirmed all of its ratings on the company, including its BBB corporate credit rating.

The outlook revision reflected the company’s improved business risk profile as it has expanded its more profitable and stable professional segment, S&P said. The M100 moved in.

In Pictures: Five Buys, Five Sells

But the gurus weren’t just busy buying last week. They also decided it was time to bail out on a few names, including Brady Corp., a Milwaukee-based company that makes labels and signs.

The stock, year-to-date, is off about 8%. It’s also a bit more expensive on expected growth, compared with its competitors. The gurus jumped out.

They also bailed on toy maker RC2 and satellite communications company Globalstar.

The M100 are now feeling a bit more bullish on health care, it looks like. They sold completely out of UltraShort Health Care ProShares, an exchange-traded fund that moves double in the opposite direction of the Dow Jones U.S. Health Care Index.

Health care stocks haven’t been treated kindly by investors. Year-to-date, the Health Care Select Sector SPDR is down more than 10%. In the past three months, it has gone down more than 13%.

But there are reasons for optimism here, one could argue.

There has historically been little relationship between dips in gross domestic product during recessions and health care spending. Also, as the first quarter drew to a close, the health care sector as a whole had become slightly undervalued, according to some analysts. (See: “Gurus Heal Portfolios with Health Insurers.”)

In Pictures: Five Buys, Five Sells

Guru Buys

Oshkosh (nyse: OSK)

Aetna (nyse: AET)

HCC Insurance Holdings (nyse: HCC)

Toro (nyse: TTC)

Xinyuan Real Estate Co.

Gurus Sells

Brady Corp. (nyse: BRC)

RC2 (nasdaq: RCRC)

Globalstar (nasdaq: GSAT)

UltraShort Health Care ProShares (amex: RXD)

WuXi PharmaTech

Tags: Marketocracy

Welcome to Issue #2 of The SocialPicks Weekly Newsletter, where we highlight some of the best content that SocialPicks has to offer.

Analysis Roundups - Bringing You the Web’s Best Stock Analysis and Market Commentary

Roundup #1: Google’s Earnings - Dispelling fears of weak paid-click growth and slowing online ad spending, Google delivered solid results. What do these results say about Google’s competitive positioning going forward? And with the stock having surged following earnings, is its current valuation justified? Analysis from Peridot Capital, WC Power Tech Fund, Piper Jaffray, Silicon Alley Insider, and 24/7 Wall Street.

Roundup #2: J.P. Morgan’s Earnings - Historically speaking, It wasn’t the best of quarters for J.P. Morgan. But given the circumstances, the market felt that it could’ve been much worse. How much will the company be affected by the credit crunch and housing market implosion in future quarters? And what doesit plan to do with the $6 billion that it’s now set to raise? Analysis from BloggingStocks, Barron’s, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs.

Roundup #3: Intel’s Earnings and the Impact on Semi Stocks - The market responded positively to Intel’s latest results, which seemed to suggest that the company’s manufacturing and R&D strengths have left it in a strong competitive position relative to AMD. Will industry fundamentals allow Intel to keep the good news coming? And what do these results tell us about some of Intel’s peers in the semiconductor industry? Analysis from Financial Joyride, Wedbush Morgan Securities, BloggingStocks, and Morgan Keegan.

Roundup #4: Johnson & Johnson’s Earnings - For a company that’s so dependent on the whims of U.S. consumers, Johnson & Johnson seems to be handling itself quite well, judging by its earnings. But to what extent can the earnings be attributed to one-time events? And can the company’s growth outlook justify its current valuation? Analysis from Seeking Alpha, The Business Word, Citigroup, and Bear Stearns.

Roundup #5: The Delta-Northwest Merger - Delta and Northwest are touting major synergies and cost-savings as a result of their proposed merger. But are there hidden costs and complications involved with this deal? And how will their competitors choose to respond? Analysis from BloggingStocks, Trader’s Narrative, 24/7 Wall Street, and Goldman Sachs.

Roundup #6: Blockbuster’s Offer for Circuit City - Blockbuster investors weren’t pleased with the company’s surprise offer for Circuit City, and a lot of analysts were left scratching their heads as well. How valuable would the synergies stemming from such a merger be? And would the move do anything to stem the competitive threats that both Blockbuster and Circuit City are facing? Analysis from Seeking Alpha, Herb Greenberg, Metue.com, Wedbush Morgan Securities, and Deutsche Bank.

Roundup #7: Solar Stocks - Off the Beaten Path - The booming solar energy industry has drawn plenty of attention from growth-stock investors. But outside of top-tier module vendors such as First Solar and Suntech, what’s the best way to play this space? Do second-tier module manufacturers such as Trina Solar and Evergreen Solar make sense? Would an ETF focused on the solar industry be a good way to approach the sector? And how about Applied Materials, which increasingly derives much of its revenues from solar panel manufacturing equipment? Analysis from Trader Mark, StreetAuthority Market Advisor, Seeking Alpha, Blogging Stocks, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank.

Roundup #8: Market and Macro Commentary - With the market having rallied, is this a good time to take some money off the table? What does GE’s surprisingly weak earnings tell us about the U.S. economy at-large? Will the credit crisis keep the U.S. dollar in a tailspin? And what kind of investing system might let investors better cope with market downturns? Analysis from The Correct Call, Vestopia, Seeking Alpha, and StraightStocks.

Tags: SocialPicks

Shawn Hartstock writes of his experience creating a sophisticated Hibernate-related plugin for Grails:

Before yesterday, I had no experience with Hibernate event listeners and no experience with Grails plug-ins yet in a single day I was able to create what might be a rather sophisticated plug-in for Grails using internet available resources. I’d love to know if anyone else uses this project or is inspired by it to do some other work based on it. This is my detailed write-up of the experience.

Read Inside Hibernate Events and Audit Logging with Grails Plugins by Shawn Harstock.

Tags: Groovy Grails

Zach Coelius, CEO Triggit, writes:

I am very excited to announce that Triggit has been selected to be part of the Web 2.0 Expo Launch Pad next Thursday. We get to present Triggit in front of the whole Web 2.0 audience and show them what we are up to. It should be a great opportunity to talk about helping small publishers monetize their websites and client side editing of websites.

Tags: Triggit

Rod Johnson, CEO SpringSource, writes:

Spring Security 2.0 has been released. This is a major step forward for the Spring Portfolio. Spring (Acegi) Security is already the Java platform’s most widely used enterprise security framework, with over 250,000 downloads on SourceForge and over 20,000 downloads per release. Through making it so much simpler to use, this release will undoubtedly take adoption to a new level.

I’m particularly pleased about this release for a number of reasons:

• It’s a great thing for the Spring community. It’s (a lot) simpler to use, as well as more powerful. It puts the most powerful enterprise Java security solution within the reach of many more users, pretty much eliminating the hurdles to adoption. See this tutorial for an example of just how much easier it makes it to secure a typical web application. The proliferation of XML bean definitions is a thing of the past.
• It’s a continuation of the work of Spring 2.x, through applying the power of a custom XML namespace to enable aggressive defaulting, while still allowing for customization.
• Like Spring 2.5, it exhibits the current Spring Portfolio trend toward radical reduction in the need for XML.
• It’s a proof of the value of the SpringSource business model. Our revenue model enables us to invest more than ever in creating open source software. Without being able to hire both Acegi/Spring Security creator Ben Alex and the other major committer, Luke Taylor, this release either wouldn’t have occurred or would have been much less extensive.
• It’s good for the fairy kingdom.

Acegi/Spring Security creator Ben Alex and Luke Taylor have done a great job. Ben will be talking about Spring Security at Java One next month. If you’ll be in San Francisco then, it will be a great opportunity to hear about the new features and get a chance to talk to the guy behind the product.

Download here.

Tags: SpringSource

Thanks to Scott Davis of aboutGroovy for pointing this out.  In an InfoQ interview with Keith Donald and Jeremy Grelle, Groovy and Grails seems to figure prominently in the next version of Spring Web Flow 2.1.

I think you’ll also see us explore scripting languages as means of defining control flow in the 2.1 release. Grails, which builds on the Web Flow 2 engine, has already shown that a Groovy-based flow definition language is viable, and we are working with Graeme on incorporating his GroovyFlowBuilder back into Web Flow proper. In addition, I think there is real opportunity in broadening the flow definition language into what I call a “site definition language”, where you can define an entire site macrostructure declaratively, where some of the site elements are flows. Jesse James Garrett’s Visual Vocabulary is really an inspiration for some of these ideas, and I think there is a lot of interesting work to do in this area.

The entire interview can be found at InfoQ.

Tags: Groovy Grails, SpringSource

Timothy @ Marketocracy writes:

I am reading a book, A History of Venice, by John Julius Norwich, that I can recommend without reservation. As I read, I am struck by the parallel between Venice, the powerful republic that dominated Mediterranean trade for over 500 years, and Google. Both Venice and Google have a subtle yet critical advantage over their competitors. In both cases, this advantage matters far more in any analysis of future prospects than the latest news of ships arriving laden with goods from the Levant, or paid clicks per month.

In the case of Venice the great advantage was the defensibility of the Venetian lagoon. It seems strange to me that a lagoon could be a better protective shield than a strong wall or mountain redoubt, yet this was the case. The shifting sands of the lagoon bottom made navigation through this body of water very difficult. When the Venetians knew an invading army was approaching, they would remove the navigational markers they used to guide themselves, and make their lagoon unnavigable to others. They could still sail in and out from memory. As a result they were able to survive unscathed as invading armies sacked all the other northern Italian cities. It cannot be coincidental that pluralistic political systems evolve in easily defended places like the British Isles and North America, and so it is unsurprising that the Venetians developed an intricate system of republican government that served them well for over 1,000 years, providing a man created advantage to match the natural advantage provided by the Venetian lagoon.

In the case of Google the great advantage is that Google has ensconced itself at the top of the web. Having done so, they are now impregnable, yet able to threaten all other web enterprises. A search engine is the top point from which the entire web can be seen. From this high vantage point the user descends to a particular website that is spotted in his search, and may descend further to a particular page in order to purchase, for example, a pot or pan. Having taken the high ground, Google has the resources to continually invest in their search engine, to provide the type of search experience that users want. Why would I ever try another search engine? I know Google. I know it works. I know it works quickly. I know how to use it. To try another search engine would be to take a risk I do not want to take. A Google toolbar is on, at least, tens of millions of computers. That is a huge intangible asset and a huge advantage that no competitor can hope to trump.

The Google position at the top of the web provides an advantage of visibility for any service Google may wish to introduce. To find an example of this I just went to Google and typed in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Not to disappoint, the first hit in the Google list was for Google Books, a service with which I was not previously familiar. Not surprisingly, when I went to Google Books I was given the opportunity to purchase this book from several different web sources. Book sellers tremble. Google is in a position to take its cut. Google did not have to run a hundred million dollar advertising campaign to make me aware of Google Books. They only had to make it pop up first when I did a search for a particular book title. THAT IS AN ADVANTAGE.

The web is still growing. More people are getting web access or upgrading to high speed access. More people are taking the plunge to order items on line. More people from around the world are starting to use the web. This translates to built in growth for Google even without the constant rollout of new initiatives. But new initiatives will be rolled out, because just as the sanctuary of the Venetian lagoon fostered an innovative and effective system of government, so the web supremacy of Google is fostering an innovative and effective corporate culture. The best and the brightest want to work with the best and the brightest-at Google.

The famous contemporary poet, Billy Collins, said that a reader should not tie a poem to a chair and try to force a confession out of it. In like manner, the financial analyst who wants to bring Google into his world of measurable quantities, like paid clicks per month, completely misses the point. Get your damn calipers off of Google. That bears repeating: Get your damn calipers off of Google. That was so much fun I think I’ll do it again: Get your damn calipers off of Google. Don’t try to grab Google and pull and tug into your room of financial figures. Go to its peak of delicious possibility. You will understand Google far better if you do.

Now if you are a day trader, feel free to disregard every single word I have written. None of this will make a difference day to day or week to week or even month to month. But true investing is the art of seeing reality as it really is, and profiting from it. To do that, one must be a little patient, because fools will tug the stock price up and down for silly, insubstantial reasons. But if you buy some Google stock and wait for a year or two, I make bold to predict, you will not be disappointed.

Tags: Marketocracy

Howard Lindzon, our co-investor in Buddy Media (AceBucks) writes:

Late yesterday, Buddy Media closed a $6.5 million round led by Softbank and Greycroft Ventures in New York. I was an angel investor and really proud to have been the first backer of Michael when I got the pitch. I also upped my investment in the new round. I will be stepping down from the board to be replaced by smart people .

Tags: AceBucks