Seeking Alpha by Adding Beta

Everyone is talking about YouTube and within few months it has become "the" company - similar to Myspace. I thought let me check out it - especially when "OK GO" song video which was uploaded on YouTube few days back came on VH1 Top 20 Countdown Myself and Yash decided to give it a try by creating our own video and upload it on YouTube. Check it out and please rate it: Yash's Boom Chika Boom

We were discussing on how to get steady income from stocks which one is owning for long-term and do not plan to sell anytime soon. Basically lot of us own stocks through ESPP or boughts stocks which we are not planning to sell due to company's long-term prospects. e.g. I have bought some EBAY when in was in mid thirties and not plan to sell anytime soon - one because it is in mid-20's and other reason is that I believe it will go back to low 40's in 18 month. However just holding the stock is not doing any good to my return. Basically here is how it works in layman's term: If you have 100 shares of of a stock say EBAY (which is selling at $ 27.15). If you are willing to sell the stock in one month if it goes to say 30 (about 10 % return in one month). Just sell a covered call option for Sept 30 which would net you about $ 30 before commission (about $ 21 after commission). If stock goes about 30, you may have to sell stock at 30 giving you 10 % return in one month. If s

Over the weekend, I just completed a nice read of "Five point someone" written by Chetan Bhagat, 1995 IIT graduate from IIT Delhi. It is nice read about student life in IIT which is applicable to student life in any engg college in India. Some folks take it as 4 years of mugging and some folks go to extreme of just getting by enough grades to get a degree. The book was more about "what not do in IIT". It reminded me of my days at IIT Kanpur even though they were much different than what is mentioned in the book. It's nice read on sunny afternoon@beach. My next read is more serious: The end of faith by Sam Harris. So relavent to current events around the world with Israel/Hezbollah conflict, bombings in Mumbai, US war in Iraq and nuclear standoff with Iran. I have my own opinions but that's for later writing. Myspace has selected Google as ad provider. Great win for Google considering MySpace traffic is going gang-buster and that's more sticky than anyth