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Per the Wall Street Journal, French giant Vivendi is set to purchase a majority stake in Activision, Inc. which will add hits such as “Guitar Hero”, “Tony Hawk” and the “Call of Duty” series to its existing gaming portfolio. I believe this is a good move by the French company, which already owns online gaming bellwether Blizzard.

Why is this good? Vivendi already has a huge online gaming footprint with World of Warcraft. Now they are purchasing strong brands with a following which they can slowly transition to a web format. When this happens (and even prior to it) the new in game advertising model will shine. Games where ads are “natural” and don’t provoke gamer mutiny (i.e., signs and billboards on the street in Tony Hawk’s skateboarding game) will take windfall profits. They can even throw an ad platform like Google Adsense into the mix as well, which will further boost revenue. So, watch this space - if executed correctly, Vivendi can reap huge benefits from this acquisition.

Tags: Investing in Stocks, software

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Don’t worry folks, I won’t quit my day job, even with unbelievably innovative and clever post titles like this one. Back to business - The WSJ announced today that Google is close to officially announcing a suite of software that will enable wireless phone makers to make the “Google Phone” available by next year.

As expected, a bundle of Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail will be enabled on the phones. But the more controversial piece is the fact that Google wants the software to be completely open source (including the OS). At first this makes me cringe and conjures up visions of the worlds first pandemic cellphone virus. However, if you think about it, it may just be a good option.

Open source platforms on PCs such as Linux have been successful because the community in effect acts as the “safety net” for the code. That is, the collective would quickly identify and correct these problems as they occur. I may be oversimplifying this (or just naive) but I think this just might work for Google.

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Don’t panic folks, as outlined in the post here, Ellison had set up a plan to sell shares a while ago in order to diversify his individual holdings (my understanding is that part of the proceeds will also be gifted to a medical foundation). The trades fall under the somewhat controversial 10b5-1 rule, which allows executives to set up transactions in advance of possibly learning of material inside information.

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BEA Systems (BEAS) continues to hold out for a better deal from software giant Oracle (ORCL). The current board of directors sent a note to BEA shareholder Carl Icahn today explaining that they weren’t opposed to selling the company, but they felt that the current offer of $17 per share was far too low.

Personally, I believe Icahn is right to demand a sale at $17 - with the trouble BEA has had recently growing licensing revenue, as well as the fact that the company hasn’t reported earnings for several quarters (due to options backdating and earnings restatements), the stock could really benefit from the acquisition.

Enterprise computing is all about momentum and compatibility, as the stuff is really expensive to implement and maintain. Bringing BEA into the Oracle portfolio would allow both to benefit, as the joint company would likely realize economies of scale in the sales pipe as well as through integrating SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) efforts.

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After the dot-com crash almost 7 years ago, many investors swore they would stay far away from the likes of tech stocks for good. But it looks like things are finally looking up for the industry. Per Barron’s, August was the first time since 2000 that tech growth funds saw an influx of cash from investors.

So, while valuations of Google and Apple are much too rich for my taste, I thought I would take a look at some of the more reasonably valued large cap tech stocks. At the top of the list is Oracle.

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