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You may have heard the boy-wonder story of sports journalist Graham Bensinger: Launched his own radio show at 18. Weaseled his way into OJ Simpson's circle of approved journalists shortly thereafter. Sparked Terrell Owens' suspension from the Philadelphia Eagles. Bensinger looked to be on an upward-trajectory tear -- but when the economy crashed in 2008, everything came to a screeching halt. He lost his deal with NBC Sports, which aired Bensinger's old-school athlete sitdowns online and on selected TV properties. But Bensinger wasn't ready to stop -- so he decided to create, host and distribute a similar Internet-TV hybrid program himself. "On the distribution and advertising side, I had no experience," Bensinger told The Wire by phone. "I was searching for people's contact info and cold-calling them. It was mind-numbing. I was putting in nineteen hour days and I was still behind." After a year and a half of pitching advertisers, Internet platforms and television networks, Bensinger finally had a roster of backers -- including Yahoo! Sports and Fox. He was ready to launch -- all he needed was a sports great who would take a chance on him and his new-media format. Thank God for Pete Rose.  A last-minute backout left Bensinger, who does 100 hours of research on each of his subjects, scrambling for a guest. "We had two weeks to go, all the distribution and advertisers lined up -- and no guest," he said. "I had to just man up and find somebody." Finally, he convinced Pete Rose to be his inaugural interview. How'd he get him? "It's all about making sure people have confidence in you to tell their story," he said.
On surprising Manny Pacquaio at home:  "We flew halfway around the world to meet him in the Philippines, and we had four and a half days to be on the ground. We met him seven hours outside of Manila, and [it turned out] he didn't know we were coming. We had talked to his people, but somehow he just didn't know, and we had to convince him to talk to us."
On his 2005 interview with Terrell Owens, which prompted Owens' suspension from the Philadelphia Eagles:  "Prior to our interview, someone told me that T.O. was friends with [ESPN analyst] Michael Irvin, and that he often used Irvin to get his feelings out to the press. At the time, Irvin was saying that if Brett Favre was the Eagles quarterback instead of Donovan McNabb, they'd be undefeated -- so I asked Terrell if he agreed with that, and he said he did. That interview was the only time I've ever been sitting in an interview and was shocked that a person was saying what they were saying. He was too honest. And you know, we also talked about his grandmother having Alzheimer's, [but you didn't hear about that]. The viewer wasn't able to get the context of the comments. That's why I really wanted a platform like the one I have now, where I can look at athletic figure in the eye and tell them their story is going to be portrayed fairly. Occasionally I'll see Terrell at events, and he'll smile at me. In his book, he said he doesn't hold me responsible. But I think we had a better relationship prior to doing that interview. Now, it's strained."
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In the early 1500s, according to legend, the Spanish explorer, Ponce de Leon, traversed Florida looking for the Fountain of Youth. He never found it. 500 years later, scientists are still searching for it. They haven't found it either, but they might be getting close. A certain anti-aging enzyme has captured the attention of the scientific community. Telomerase is the name of this "immortalizing enzyme." There is no publicly traded company doing real telomerase gene-activation research now. Moreover, there is no guarantee that those who are working in this area will accomplish their goals of stopping or reversing the cellular aging process. This is, however, an area that investors in transformational technologies should be monitoring closely. So consider this a heads-up. In the last 100 years, improvements in medical technology have had an enormous impact on life expectancies. In America, life expectancy has gone from 47 years in 1900 to 78 years today. Although life expectancy has improved, the maximum human lifespan of 125 years has not. Few of us make it that far, of course. Big things, though, are happening in regenerative medicine and anti-aging technologies. Clinical evidence is mounting that one of the most important mechanisms of human aging, telomere shortening, can be arrested or even reversed with drugs that induce telomerase production. Telomerase is the enzyme that regenerates telomeres. Telomeres form the end pieces of our DNA strands in chromosomes. Without telomerase, telomeres shorten every time a cell divides. As we age, cumulative divisions increase, and the length of the telomere caps decreases. Eventually, the strands get too short to permit cells to divide and regenerate accurately. Cells become senescent – old. Eventually, when enough of our cells become senescent, we die. Therefore, if we could somehow lengthen the telomeres in human cells, we could theoretically greatly increase human lifespan. The potential of telomerase-activating compounds, therefore, extends far beyond lifespan extension. Studies show that short telomeres are a risk factor for diabetes, Alzheimer's, atherosclerosis and cancer. When the cells lining our blood vessels break off because of turbulence in the bloodstream, other cells have to divide to replace them. The replacement cells, of course, have shorter telomeres. Studies have found that the parts of the circulatory system that have the most plaque buildup also tend to have the shortest telomeres. Alzheimer's has also been shown to have a connection to telomere length. Although causality has yet to be determined, the brain cells of Alzheimer sufferers are shorter than those who do not have the disease. Until recently, most scientists believed it was impossible to halt or reverse the molecular aging that takes place inside of our cells. That began to change with the publication of a paper detailing a study done by Geron Corp., Sierra Sciences, T.A. Sciences and the Spanish National Cancer Research Center. The paper describes the activity of TA-65, the first compound discovered that activates telomerase in the human body. T.A. Sciences, based on licensing from Geron, markets TA-65. Geron is the original discoverer of the compound. TA-65 is derived from the roots of Astragalus membranaceus, a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine. But TA-65 is a relatively weak telomerase-activating agent. The question, therefore, is, "What would a strong telomerase inducer do?" Specifically, many scientists wanted to know if telomerase could merely slow the aging process, or whether it might actually turn back the clock. The journal Nature recently published an article showing that telomerase reverses the aging process in mice genetically engineered to lack the enzyme. The study was carried out by scientists at the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science and various departments of Harvard Medical School. Let me explain the purpose of the study by quoting the source. This is a little technical, but it is worth reading carefully: An aging world population has fueled interest in regenerative remedies that may stem declining organ function and maintain fitness. Unanswered is whether elimination of intrinsic instigators driving age-associated degeneration can reverse, as opposed to simply arrest, various afflictions of the aged. To find out if these dramatic effects are reversible, Dr. Ronald DePinho's team engineered mice with the telomerase inactivated in such a way that it could be turned back on by feeding them the chemical 4-OHT. The researchers allowed the mice to grow to old age without the enzyme, and then reactivated it for a month. Nature News reports the following: "What really caught us by surprise was the dramatic reversal of the effects we saw in these animals," says DePinho. He describes the outcome as "a near 'Ponce de Leon' effect" – a reference to the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, who went in search of the mythical Fountain of Youth. Shriveled testes grew back to normal and the animals regained their fertility. Other organs, such as the spleen, liver and intestines, recuperated from their degenerated state. The one-month pulse of telomerase also reversed effects of ageing in the brain. Mice with restored telomerase activity had noticeably larger brains than animals still lacking the enzyme, and neural progenitor cells, which produce new neurons and supporting brain cells, started working again. "It gives us a sense that there's a point of return for age-associated disorders," says DePinho. "Drugs that ramp up telomerase activity are worth pursuing as a potential treatment for rare disorders characterized by premature ageing," he says, "and perhaps even for more common age-related conditions." Over the past decade, Sierra Sciences has been working on finding more potent telomerase-activating compounds. Laboratory tests reveal that several of these molecules have 100 times the potency of TA-65. These, however, are man-made molecules and would require many tens of millions of dollars to obtain regulatory approval. Currently, the company is looking at naturally occurring substances because they would be easier to bring to market than a man-made drug. Sierra Sciences has discovered various natural compounds that increase telomerase production, but it is not yet clear if they will increase telomere lengths. Telomerase research is still in the early stages, but the financial implications of success at extending life spans through regenerative medicine would be unfathomable. Time is the one product for which there is unlimited demand. Regards, Patrick Cox,
for The Daily Reckoning The Immortalizing Enzyme originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning provides 400,000+ readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. The Daily Reckoning features articles by Addison Wiggin author of Empire of Debt and Bill Bonner author of Financial Reckoning Day and The Idea of America. Read more posts on The Daily Reckoning » Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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U.S. middle-market companies are under siege by a confluence of factors, many of which have arisen as a result of the 2008-9 recession. The following factors are substantially undermining the economic health of the U.S., setting the stage for considerable economic distress in the near to mid-term. 1. A Multi Speed World: Mohamed El-Erian at PIMCO has made much of the “multi speed world” we now live in, with emerging economies taking on the mantle of drivers of global economic growth while developed economies are seemingly consigned a much less vibrant, slow-growth mode. This macro economic reality is a gut-punch to U.S. (and other developed countries) middle-market companies, as growth prospects in their home market slacken and the barriers to international growth opportunities threaten to shut them out of international expansion. 2. Commodities Prices: We are in the midst of a remarkable demand-driven commodity price shift which with threaten the gross margins of all companies lacking pricing power (hello middle-market). Price trends have shifted radically in the past 10 years. Analysis of the IMF Primary Commodities Index since January 1992 starkly illustrates this trend. By dividing the period of Jan 1992 – Dec 2010 into two equal periods of 114 months, we see that at the end of period 1 (Jan 1992 – Jul 2001) the index had increased 18.3%. However, at the end of period 2 (Jul 2001 – Dec 2010), the index had increased 194.4%. Not only are prices reaching new heights, but quarterly volatility in these prices is also remarkably high, presenting a purchasing manager’s nightmare (see Exhibit). 
3. The Lending Market: The recession of 2008-9 was extraordinarily harsh, and management teams that survived those harrowing days will not soon forget. One of the lessons learned was a healthy respect for cash and an aversion to too much debt. This is bad news for banks, which are seeing declining loan demand and a collapse in pricing in some segments of the market amid furious competition for what loan demand there is. In addition to this many observers have noted the increasing bifurcation of the U.S. lending market, which is only being exacerbated by the pressures facing small banks. 4. PE Dry Powder: The pro-cyclical bias of the business press is such that there is always a new breathless article, post, etc about the massive overhang of committed capital that private equity firms must put to work. Mega deals still appear to be out, which is heightening interest in middle-market transactions. But we can’t all be winners, and some companies are going to find their niches invaded by PE portfolio companies acquired at aggressive valuations and under urgent orders to grow. 5. The Data Flood: We are living in an age of an awe-inspiring flood of data, but this flood is both a gift and a curse to middle-market companies. Those companies that fail to seize the information newly available and convert raw data into actionable business intelligence will increasingly find themselves at a disadvantage to their more nimble, data-savvy competitors. The middle-market is an interesting place, especially now. The five threats I identified above are ones that I believe will challenge all stakeholders in the middle-market in the coming years. Recent history teaches us that weakened but seemingly durable systems can collapse suddenly in the face of pressures that most consider manageable. Change is coming to the middle-market, best to prepare. Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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Skype today introduced video calling for Android, in an app that positions the chat service as a de facto standard across mobile platforms. The new feature lets select Android phones make video calls over Wi-Fi and cellular connections to other devices, including iPhones, PCs, Macs and other Skype-enabled products. As more Android phones are supported, Skype may find itself the go-to solution for VoIP and video calls across mobile platforms. Apple's FaceTime service, for example, only works with iOS devices and Mac computers. Skype, which had average of 145 million users a month, now connects all the major platforms. That's good news for Microsoft, which bought Skype in May to presumably integrate it into its Windows Phone platform. The more entrenched Skype is, the more useful the functionality will be. Skype users made around 207 billion minutes of calls last year, with 42 percent of them being video calls. The lion's share of that time would have been desktop-to-desktop calls, but VoIP is quickly gaining momentum in the mobile sphere, driven by the uptake of smartphones. Faster networks and increasingly common front-facing cameras also make quality video calling possible. The biggest hurdle to mobile VoIP, once carriers, saw Skype as a threat to their lucrative voice business -- if people can make free calls over a data connection, voice minutes are an afterthought. But recently there have been signs that carriers are relaxing that stance: Skype announced a deal with Verizon to allow Skype calling on the company's LTE 4G network. A similar agreement with AT&T is said to be in the works. The first Android phones to support Skype video calling are the HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo and Pro and Google Nexus S. This post originally appeared at Mobiledia. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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We mentioned last week how the new "hot meme" in econ circles was that the fading recovery was already picking back up a bit. The rebound in Japanese data definitely supports this. And today's Chicago PMI supports this. And this Kansas City Fed announcement, via Calculated Risk: The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City released the June Manufacturing Survey today. According to Chad Wilkerson, vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the survey revealed that growth in Tenth District manufacturing activity rebounded solidly in June after a brief slowdown last month, and producers remained generally optimistic about future activity.
“Factories in the region basically resumed their solid pace of growth from earlier in the year, following some disruptions in May,” said Wilkerson. “Also, hiring plans remain fairly solid for the second half of the year.” Seeing a clear improvement from last month? Can't argue with that. Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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TweetMarc Benioff may think that SharePoint belongs in your Grandmother's attic because he has not seen Colliers International site. For that matter, he probably has not seen a lot of SharePoint Social sites. The first time I remember hearing the terms 'social' and SharePoint in the same sentence was when I was being asked to attend a business sponsored charity event. "Please RSVP on the SharePoint Wiki", the email read, but instead of calling it SharePoint we gave it a Latin name for brain. Like magically, that was supposed to make the company smarter. Back then, our site perhaps did belong in the attic. Primarily because we did not have a visionary like Veresh Sita, the Global CIO of Colliers International. And Sita is no senior citizen stuffing the family heirlooms up into the rafters. He's taken SharePoint and built a village. Can SharePoint be Social? Yes of course it can. Pause for a moment and study how Sita and his team at Collier's are creating one of the most prolific SharePoint Social sites in the Global 1000. Expert Search "We have the equivalent of LinkedIn for Real Estate on the SharePoint Platform," Sita told me as we were discussing how Collier's views SharePoint as mission critical to their global business.
Sita elaborated, "When we first started out with we asked, 'if only Colliers knew what Colliers knows.' and after implementing SharePoint plus our own custom enhancements, we now know what we know." This is not your Grandmother's people search engine. In fact, SharePoint is pulling information from enterprise systems to create a more complete profile of their employees. That way, if an employee needs help on almost any esoteric subject, the system responds with individuals that can help. How they did it: In order to create the powerful expert search engine, Colliers had to customize SharePoint's enterprise search to suit their specific requirements. They also integrated their CRM and ERP systems for increased relevancy. Colliershub is Social "Everything that Microsoft dreamed SharePoint would be used for is how we are using it," Sita explains, "SharePoint out of the box is not as friendly as we wanted it to be, so we spent a lot of time customizing it"
SharePoint is so successful at Colliers that Sita points out,"The word SharePoint in our company seems to be the answer to everything. Whether it will work or not is another matter" Sita wanted the company to use SharePoint to connect and collaborate with customers and employees. Colliers does that by enabling external client access to SharePoint. Clients can see individual dashboards, documents and can interact with brokers all from a secure SharePoint portal. Employees interact with each other through activity updates, wiki's, blogs and Microsoft's Lync (peer to peer video, audio, web conferencing). They can also create MySites (from Colliers' customized templates) for specific topics or themes. Why it's important: Most SharePoint sites are out of the box installations that provide little more than a document repository. Colliers proves that with some effort, SharePoint can be transformed into a social solution that helps build a valuable community for clients and employees. Colliershub Generates Revenue "People care about how they are represented in the company and we are a business where people rely on referral business. So if our employees are anonymous they will not get a referral," says Sita. And since clients are connected via a secure portal, brokers have a customer service advantage over their competitors because of the direct client relationship and increased transparency. Brokers and clients also use forms in SharePoint that connect directly with Colliers line of business applications for quick access to information. They no longer need to context switch out of SharePoint and into yet another application. It can all be done in SharePoint, all in context. Why it's important: Sita and team have intelligently designed SharePoint to be a platform for prospecting, a platform for best practices and place to connect directly with clients. It's generating measurable increases in revenue while giving their sales team a competitive advantage. This is not something you want to toss up in the attic. A Closer Look at Colliers SharePoint (colliershub) | THE VITALS | UNDER THE HOOD | | Based in Seattle, WA. USA | Customized enterprise search | | 15,000 employees | Custom MySite templates | | 60 countries | Automated self service content creation tools | | 500 offices | Some integration with Microsoft Office | | 60% employee adoption rate of colliershub | No 3rd party add-ins (yet) | Recommendations and Advice "In our early days we spent a lot of time with the Naysayers. But now if they don't want it, we move on. In fact, I am proactively telling them that they don't qualify to use our SharePoint site. Ironically we found the adoption rate is going up and the Naysayers are coming back," says Sita after I asked him for advice for other companies caught in similar situations. Colliers has a 60% adoption rate for SharePoint and Sita claims it will be higher once they roll it out to the entire company. "We are also creating specific business use cases so that people start to understand how to best use SharePoint," Sita said. A few other pointers: - Do not build SharePoint by committee. It's faster and more efficient to get a few people to build it, receive feedback, then change SharePoint accordingly.
- Create and promote areas in SharePoint where people will receive a direct benefit.
- Launch a pilot with groups of people that work well together. Then measure and evangelize the success.
In Summary The "Grandmother's attic" metaphor certainly does not apply to colliershub. They are leveraging the information in SharePoint to increase revenue and client satisfaction. And admittedly, for most users, SharePoint is not seen as Social. Benioff's Chatter has more people talking. But from my conversations with leaders like Sita, they'd probably retort that the Chatter stops when Grandma loses her dentures. TweetRead more posts on Seek Omega » Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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Hedge funds have surpassed the magic $2 trillion mark. And new hedge fund launches have reached their highest levels since 2007, with nearly 300 hedge funds launched in the first quarter of this year, according to HFR.
However, one group seems reluctant to participate in this renewed euphoria: high net worth individuals. According to the recently released Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management 2011 World Wealth Report, just 5 percent of the HNWI set’s assets were found in alternatives investments—hedge funds, structured products, derivatives, foreign currency, commodities, private equity, and venture capital at the end of 2010. This was exactly half the 10 percent allocation made in 2006. (HNWIs are defined as those having investable assets of US$1 million or more, excluding primary residence, collectibles, consumables, and consumer durables.) What’s more, the exposure has steadily declined since the peak. And within the alternatives group, hedge funds are not exactly the favored asset class. According to the survey, commodity investments accounted for 22 percent of all alternative investments made by HNWI in 2010, up from just 16 percent the prior year. Foreign currency holdings climbed to 15 percent of all alternative investments in 2010 from 13 percent. “Investors bought into currencies where country interest rates were higher than in the developed markets of the U.S. and Europe,” the report notes. On the other hand, hedge-fund holdings declined to 24 percent from 27 percent in 2009. The report points to a Hedge Fund Research report that stressed most of the hedge fund inflows in 2010 took place at the end of the year. Investors are apparently still spooked from the days of the financial meltdown, when many of their funds of funds investments performed poorly. And many hedge funds gated their assets, preventing them from redeeming. “High net worth individuals are looking for liquidity,” confirms William Sullivan, Global Head of Market Intelligence, Capgemini Financial Services. “Their top priority is preserving capital.” This sentiment is also underscored by the increased allocation to cash and fixed income investments in recent years. The report found that HNW individuals held $18.6 trillion or 43.5 percent of all their assets in conservative instruments such as fixed-income and cash/equivalents, up from 35 percent in 2006, even though global equity-market capitalization had risen 18 percent in 2010 and 46.3 percent in 2009. This reflects an underlying uncertainty that markets will remain stable and that the financial crisis is over and fear that new and unforeseen systemic shocks could emerge, the Cap Gemini/ML report emphasizes. “HNW investors are not easily convinced that alternative or emerging opportunities are worth the risk,” the report adds. The declining commitment to alternatives among HNWI contrasts with that of institutional investors. According to a recent Preqin survey, 30 percent of institutional investors said they will definitely invest more capital in hedge funds over the next three years and 64 percent are considering doing so. And in March, Preqin reported a 50 percent rise in public pension plans investing in hedge funds. And earlier this year, hedge fund consultant Cliffwater noted that endowment allocations to alternatives exceed 50 percent of assets, up from 37 percent before the financial crisis. It added that hedge funds now account for 3 percent of total public pension assets and 18 percent of alternative assets, up from 2 percent and 15 percent, respectively, in fiscal 2009. It looks like those who act as fiduciaries for their own money are much more conservative than fiduciaries for other people’s money. This post originally appeared at Institutional Investor. Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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Enfield, North London is trademark British suburbia. Middle-income but with patches of poverty and patches of wealth, the high street is dominated by chain stores and a scattering of chain-owned pubs. On first sight, there are signs here that the UK is recovering slowly from a deep recession. But look closer and things don’t look so good. The local council is one of many in Britain to adopt the policy of dressing up closed-down storefronts to resemble thriving local stores. With many of the facades now entering their third year, some are faded and peeling. On one, a scribble of graffiti backs the ‘BNP’, a far right fascist party.
Poker players might call it a ‘tell’ – a ripple of nerves from an economy that knows it’s anxiously hovering around zero. UK GDP contracted by 0.5% in Q4 2010 and grew by 0.5% in Q1 2011. With last winter’s terrible weather forcing down the Q4 result and displacing some activity into Q1, that’s in effect six months of no growth. Britain’s Chancellor is already committed to an economic policy of rapid deficit reduction that starts to bite this year. All sides wait to see if GDP growth will now tick up or down.
New figures this week from the UK Office for National Statistics gave cause for concern, showing terrible performance from consumption. From Q1 to Q2 this year, UK disposable income saw its biggest fall
for 44 years. With Retail Price Index (RPI) inflation running at 5.3 percent and nominal earnings growth at 1.8 percent, households are seeing their wages (and savings) fall sharply in real terms. Even Mervyn King, the measured governor of the Bank of England, says Britain’s households are now experiencing a “substantial squeeze on real living standards”. That’s reflected in figures showing that
household final expenditure is down 0.6 percent in the quarter. This week saw new waves of high street names announce store closures; major British chains from Thornton’s to Habitat to Comet are all
scaling back. Thousands of jobs will go.
Perhaps most worrying, though, is what this week’s new stats say about the UK savings ratio. Normally, so long after a recession, households are beginning to repair their balance sheets. Yet Britain’s savings ratio is not rising but falling, down from 5.1 percent in Q1 2011 to 4.6 percent in Q2. Even while they’re cutting back on spending, households are having to take on more debt just to stay afloat. Given the role of consumer credit in triggering the 2008-09 financial crisis that’s not a fact we should take lightly. On current
trends, the UK is heading for a debt-fuelled recovery from a debt-triggered crisis.
Of course in some sense it’s not surprising that households are now dipping into their savings. The Chancellor’s program of spending cuts are only now starting to bite and with inflation spiking on the back of global commodity prices, this was always going to be a difficult year. Yet this explanation would be more reassuring if the current squeeze on real incomes looked likely to be brief. If forecasters were predicting a strong recovery next year, or if Britain’s program of spending cuts and tax rises was set to abate
in the near future, a temporary dip into healthy savings would be nothing to fear.
But the average independent forecast for the UK economy is now for growth of 1.5 in 2011 and 2.1 in 2012, figures that have been revised down in recent months. Inflation is set to outpace wage-growth until at least 2013. On the government’s current plans, benefits for families – from tax credits to Child Benefit – won’t see
their biggest cuts until 2013. The negative impact of those cuts on consumer confidence is likely to continue. And of course household savings aren’t at a healthy level; household debt is historically
high. Access to credit remains limited. In that context, further borrowing can’t offer a sustainable route to recovery by propping up consumption over the medium-term.
Even so, some would say, the UK is in a period of rebalancing. The British government are pursuing an export-led recovery. That is a sensible strategy and, as a natural corollary, means weaker consumption-growth as the weight of Britain’s economy shifts. But even a rapid rebalancing can’t get away from the fact that household final consumption spending is currently 65 percent of UK GDP. If it continues to fall, that will exert a drag on economic recovery that’s very hard to overcome. Moderate consumption performance is likely to be a precondition for a return to strong, sustained growth.
That all explains why concerns about household living standards are moving to the forefront of the UK’s national economic debate. A recovery at the household level will be critical to a recovery at the national level. If Britain’s workers don’t soon feel relief from the ongoing squeeze, the impact on the high street will become increasingly hard to hide. Please follow Europe on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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The free ESPN App for live sports on the iPad was released in April. When combined with the downloads on the Android platform, the ESPN App has had in excess of 2 million downloads, says Tim Connolly, VP of Digital at Disney/ESPN in this interview with Beet.TV. The App has been widely used this week for ESPN's coverage of Wimbledon and the women's World Cup competition. The use of the WatchESPN app is currently restricted to video subscribers of Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Verizon FiOS TV who are required to log onto the App using their subscriber credentials. This is similar to the recent mobile HBO offering. While ESPN declines to provide streaming numbers, Connolly sees the implementation of its sports App as a milestone in the development of "TV Everywhere," the industry initiative of bringing premium television content to digital devices. In this video, he provides a live demo of the World Cup on his iPad. Programming Note about Wimbledon: ESPN streams the weekday matches. The weekends are streamed by NBC Sports. Andy Plesser You can also find this post up at Beet.TV. Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong plans to ride in a weeklong bicycle event through Iowa. Manager Mark Higgins says Armstrong will take part in a portion of the 39th annual RAGBRAI, which crosses through the state from July 24-30. The acronym means "Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa." The Des Moines Register newspaper, which sponsors the ride, says Armstrong likely will ride for two days with his Livestrong team through central Iowa. The ride starts at the Missouri River in western Iowa and ends at the Mississippi River. The event attracts thousands of bicyclists each year. Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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Earlier this month a report from Credit Suisse Hong Kong warned that China's risks were about to "touch down." This may be the first sign. According to Caixin Magazine (via FT), The Yunnan Highway, a project in south-central China, can no longer find financing or pay the principal on its debt- debt which amounts to almost 100 billion yuan in loans from a dozen different Chinese banks. China started using local government financing platforms to fund infrastructure projects back in 2008. Now it looks like there are about 10 trillion yuan in outstanding loans on the books. The government tried to reign in this spending, but banks didn't cooperate. Even in March, banks' annual reports were still broadcasting that the non-performing rate for platform lending was below 1 percent. With the banking industry well-capitalized and making adequate provisions, they said, the risks were not worth worrying about. Then, one month later, they were hit with notices of LGFP contract breaches. In April Yunnan Highway Investment Limited informed its investors, including China Construction Bank, China Development Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, that it would not be paying them the principal on their loan, just the interest. Bottom line- they were not collecting enough money from he highway's tolls. Yunnan is an underdeveloped part of Western China, and there simply aren't enough passengers. And the Yunnan Highway developers know this. In their best case scenario they hoped to make 1 billion yuan with 370 million yuan in operating costs per year. But in the last five years, the highway has only made a total of 800 million yuan in profits. So the banks are trying to restructure the Yunnan highway's debt, but that won't help the company find financing for the 52 secondary highways that it still wants to build in the province. In 2010, the China Banking Regulatory Commission made a rule- companies actually have to pay back their loans before they take another one. It all sounds like the perfect storm. The takeaway from all of this? Watch western China. Those provinces depend on the federal government for 60% of their expenditures. In Yunnan, the GDP per capita is $2,320 and its overall GDP ranks 24th in the country. At the same time, there are 20 LGFPs in the province. The federal government wants to develop these regions and has promised to help them continue with infrastructure projects, but can they? Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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Don’t confuse a one trick pony, first mover niche player with a visionary company. An opportunist does not a visionary make. One of the problems that killed My Space and threatens on a yearly basis to take Microsoft plus Yahoo plus AOL down and is nipping at Cisco is that they all discovered a niche and were the first movers into that niche. However first mover advantage into a niche does not a visionary company make. What happened to all of them is that they all hit grand slam home runs close to their first times at bat and then confused being lucky and quick with being smart and visionary. They became too self-congratulatory and when they so quickly became the one trick pony 800 pound gorillas without a continuing vision to stand on they left themselves open to truly visionary companies doing something that none of them could and still don’t seem able to do. The secret to visionary companies’ continued success was explained best what NHL great Wayne Gretzky stated: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” What Apple and Facebook know and more specifically their founders/CEOs’ Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have in common is aspirational clarity. They appear to be able to see where the puck will be and into the future of what their market will not just want, but go ga-ga over and then they deliver it. Some may refer to that as their being market makers, but what enables them to make their market is that they can anticipate what will delight their customers and members that those people don’t even know will delight them. In speaking to and interviewing CEOs for blogs, articles, columns and books as well as in my c-suite executive coaching practice I have been fortunate to come upon aspirational clarity for these high performers. Initially they and I thought it was about being more impactful and more persuasive from a top down level. However as the economy has shifted and people have grown wary and very weary of “pushy” types it has become clear that leaders and executives (and sales people) need to do something that provides more of a pull and that is more compelling than a push that is more convincing (and pushy). And what provides that pull is presence. I discovered it for myself from my good fortune to be mentored by Warren Bennis. I will listen, take to heart and follow anything he “suggests” to me (Warren doesn’t tell anyone to do anything). And the reason I will do that with him and that I didn’t do it with other “authority” figures is that Warren is present and has presence. To me that makes him much more authoritative than authoritarian and not only someone I will listen to, but someone I have hungered to have in my life for all of my life. Why is presence so powerful and so influential and why is being pushy becoming less effective? Most people in the world feel multiple absences and gaps in their careers, their effectiveness, their jobs, their relationships, their marriages, their families, their friends and perhaps most importantly in their actual being. They not only feel these absences, they feel self-doubt and confusion. That is what makes them initially open to pushy people (who on the surface seem supremely confident). However when it is revealed that those pushy people don’t really care about them and only about themselves, self-doubting people feel baited and switched, ripped off and betrayed. On the other hand when you are present, and by that I mean fully engaged in listening to the other person and helping clarify what is most important, urgent and critical to them and then help them achieve, accomplish or attain whatever that is, people will be irresistibly drawn to you. And as they said in the iconic movie, Field of Dreams, “If you build it (i.e. are present and have presence), people will come (and do whatever you want them to do, because it really is in their best interest). Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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With grilling season now in high gear, it’s about that time when we all want a change of recipes and some new tools to improve our summer meals. But it’s easy to get distracted at your local home goods store when faced with a towering wall of wacky options like meat-branding irons and baseball bat pepper grinders.
After all that time staring perplexed at the shelves, it seems best to just throw in the barbecue sauce-free towel and order a pizza. Do not give in to delivery temptation! We sorted through the mess of available grill gadgets to give you our top grilling tool picks so you can get back out there on the grill. And be sure to let us know you’re favorite grilling accessories in the comments below. This post originally appeared at What's Cookin.
Oxo BBQ Tongs  You can’t grill without tongs and these OXO BBQ Tongs are the perfect choice to extend your reach safely. 18’’ long with oversized stainless steel tips, these tongs allow you to easily lift and turn your meat while staying comfortably away from the flames. And they are dishwasher safe!
Fire Wire Flexible Grilling Skewers  On top of being our pick, these Fire Wire Flexible Grilling Skewers won a 2010 Good Housekeeping Very Innovative Product Award. Made of 100% food-grade stainless steel, the skewers can bend and coil to fit into a bowl or bag for marinading, and then popped onto the grill without any extra effort. Say goodbye to fumbling with slippery raw meat.
Tool Wizard Grill Brush  Check out the Tool Wizard Grill Brush for super easy grill cleaning. The stainless steel woven mesh scrub pad easily scours away difficult cooked-on sauces and grease, and an extra long handle lets you get to the tough spots while the grill is still hot. Plus, they were tested and recommended by Cook’s Illustrated in 2008.
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Fifteen years ago this evening, my wife made the biggest mistake of her life. And she still hasn't repented. But that doesn't mean there might not be a little "buyer's remorse":
G-d help me, that was the best specific option I could find.* So let's go instead with a standard:
*Really, folks, does no one celebrate fifteen years? The only other alternative I could find that specifically mentions "fifteen years of marriage" is even more depressing.
Read more posts on Angry Bear » Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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By Beverly Blair Harzog
No doubt, Sony's PlayStation Network breach has left many wondering how safe their credit card information is when it's stored online. My 15-year-old son plays Xbox LIVE, which so far, seems safe. But I'm sure parents of kids who played on the PlayStation Network thought their data was safe, too. So I decided to take a 3-hour tour of Xbox LIVE with my son. Who better to show me all the millions of opportunities where he can spend my money? He's been on Xbox LIVE for two years and I was stunned by how much more is offered since I'd last taken a good look at the site. I went through all the terms, and let me tell you, this alone can take three hours if you're a slow reader. When you sign up—and you're the one signing up unless your kid is 18—you're asked for your name, the type of credit card, the number and verification code, expiration date and your ZIP code. After the PlayStation debacle, I'm a little concerned that my credit card information is safe. A spokesperson for Xbox told me via email that "The security around our Xbox LIVE service and member information is our highest priority." While it's comforting to know that the security around my information is their "highest priority," I'm not that easily convinced that all is well. And you shouldn't be, either. So if you have a teen gamer, here are a few things you can do to protect your credit card information. [Related Articles: Sony Breach] Create strong passwords. If someone breaks the password, your account information, including your name and ZIP code, is accessible. The hacker will also see the name of your card and the last four digits of your card number. When I played with the system, I didn't see my security code on the screen. In card-not-present transactions, you're supposed to be asked for the security code. It proves that you have the card in your hands and that you didn't just steal the number. But I've made many purchases online where I was never asked for this code. So if a hacker gets your credit card number, they can still do a lot of damage. Use a disposable credit card number. For added security, consider using a disposable credit card number (also called single-use, secure or virtual numbers). A disposable number is an alias for your real credit card number. Most of the major credit card issuers offer this service. From your credit card issuer's website, you follow the steps to generate a disposable number. You'd then use this number as your credit card number for the gaming website. If the website is hacked, the hacker gets your alias number instead of your actual credit card number. Require permission to buy. On the site, kids buy Microsoft points that can be redeemed for movies, games and more. Much, much more! So make it clear that your child has to ask your permission before they buy something. Don't be surprised if your kid makes an unauthorized purchase. Sometimes, online offers are ambiguous. Kids might think a product is free only to discover later that they signed up for a monthly subscription service of some sort. So if you see a charge you didn't approve, talk to your kid and find out what happened. Check online credit card accounts daily. Checking your accounts daily is a good thing to do anyway, but when your account number is "out there" and accessible by your kid, you simply must make this a part of your daily routine. Now, I also get emails from Xbox when my son makes a purchase. It might seem like overkill to also check your accounts daily online. But what if a hacker has your information? You don't want to wait until you get a fraud alert from your card issuer. If there's anything to take from the Sony PlayStation debacle, it's that your credit card information is never truly safe.
Beverly Blair Harzog Credit.com’s Credit Card Expert, Beverly focuses on credit card issues and provides insight about current news that affects the credit card industry and consumers. She’s a nationally recognized expert on credit card issues and is also the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Person-to-Person Lending. This article originally appeared on Credit.com. Read more posts on Identity Theft 911 » Please follow SAI: Tools on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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According to Kaspersky Labs, a monstrous piece of malware called TDL-4 claimed 4.5 million computers in the first three months of 2011, and it's still growing. TDL-4 infects computer and copies itself to another over the internet. This network of compromised computers is called a "botnet," and cybercriminals end up gaining control of the infected computers. Experts say that this one is the strongest botnets they've seen. Its strength is in its decentralization -- if one computer is repaired, the botnet is still in place. Every computer is connected to every other computer. Please watch yourself online. Please follow SAI: Tools on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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First, the market news. Yesterday, stocks went up. Gold went up. And bonds went down. It was a 'risk on' day…but not so much of one that you could draw any conclusion from it. Investors still had the Greek debt crisis on their minds. But they seemed to have gotten tired of worrying about it. All the financial sweepers in Europe are working around the clock, trying to get the mess under the carpet or out the door. By the looks of the markets, they were succeeding. But it's not over yet. You'll remember that we gave some advice to the financial officials who are in charge of bailing out Greece? We told them to take a page out of Gerald Ford's book. Just tell the Greeks to "drop dead." Today, we give advice to the Greeks. Tell the bankers to 'drop dead.' A vote is expected today…which will tell us something. The Financial Times says it could be a "suicide vote." That is, the governor of Greece's central banks says the Greeks will be committing financial suicide if they don't go along with the plan. Speaking to The Financial Times, Mr. Provopoulos expressed concern that Greece's economic crisis had been played down by politicians over the past 18 months as the country lurched towards a possible default. "We have never really had a debate in this country about what went wrong. In Portugal the new government has come in and said that there will be a difficult two years ahead. We have not had that kind of talk here," he said. He added: "For parliament to vote against this package would be a crime – the country would be voting for its suicide." Turning up the heat, Olli Rehn, the EU's top economic official, dismissed German suggestions that the eurozone was contemplating a "Plan B" in case the Greek parliament failed to approve the austerity cuts. "The future of the country and financial stability in Europe are at stake," Mr Rehn said. "I trust that the Greek political leaders are fully aware of the responsibility that lies on their shoulders to avoid default." We're not so sure. From what we've been able to make out of the rescue plan, they'd be better off rejecting it. Not that we're in favor of people who don't play fair. But this deck was always stacked. And the dealer had a few aces up his sleeve at the get go. The way we figure it, the politicians, the banks – notably Goldman Sachs, as well as the big French banks – were in on the whole thing from the get-go. It would be considered rude to mention it, for example at a champagne-swilling reception hosted by Christine Lagarde, but the whole deal was always corrupt. Goldman Sachs helped the Greeks disguise their debt so they could get in the EU system. Then, more or less the same bankers, advising pension funds, the IMF and the European Central Bank, urged them to buy Greek debt. And then, when the debt went bad, they organized a rescue – which spared the lenders any losses. And then, when the rescue went bad, they set to work figuring out the terms of a new rescue…and warning the Greek people that if they don't go along, they'll have to face Armageddon. The Greeks would be better off calling their bluff. Then, they could go broke with some dignity. They wouldn't get any more credit. But more credit is the last thing they need. Besides, each time they are rescued, they end up in worse shape, with more debt to pay…and higher interest rates to pay on it. So tell the bankers to 'drop dead.' Of course, the Greeks themselves were as corrupt as the bankers. They took their opportunities, too, as they came along. If they could get paid for not working, they didn't work. If they could get a subsidy and not have to compete in the real world economy, they took the subsidy. If they could retire early, or get something for nothing, or hoodwink investors with some nonsense figures…of course, they did it. So, there's a pot. And there's a skillet. Both are as black as a tax collector's heart. And now they are both colluding to make sure neither has to reckon with his greed and errors. Trouble is, that's not the way it works. Debt doesn't go away just because a knave and a fool decide they don't want it. It's still there. Like grinning death. It knows it will have its way. Let's see how things are going in the US. We're here in South Florida…where consumer confidence is falling, just as it in the rest of the nation. Hey, if there were a recovery, how come consumer confidence is falling? The answer is simple: there ain't no recovery and consumers know it. The feds can babble about anything they want, but the typical consumer knows he is in a tough spot…and it's getting tougher. The good news: gasoline prices are falling. "But so are home prices in South Florida," says the Palm Beach Post. House prices rose in 13 cities says the latest news. But not in Miami…which is in Palm Beach county. Over on page 4 it says "Fla. Seniors insecure about income." They ought to be. They've lost purchasing power for the last 10 years. Of course, that's just a part of the story. As we keep saying, the last 10 years has been a 'lost decade' – for Florida seniors as well as just about everyone else, except the rich. The middle classes have lost ground on every front. Their houses are now back to 1990s prices. Their real incomes have actually gone down. Their stock portfolios too have lost value in real terms. And the job market offers them fewer jobs than it did in 2000. A gallon of gasoline costs only $3.64 in Palm Beach County, down from $3.85 a month ago. But it's up from $1.30 in 2000. "Consumers will keep their wallets closed until they feel a heightened level of confidence," says a source interviewed by the Palm Beach paper. When will that be? No one knows, but if present trends continue Florida seniors will have turned up their toes long before they turn up their confidence. Regards, Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Why Greece Should Default and Go Broke With Dignity originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning provides 400,000+ readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. The Daily Reckoning features articles by Addison Wiggin author of Empire of Debt and Bill Bonner author of Financial Reckoning Day and The Idea of America. Read more posts on The Daily Reckoning » Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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The Minnesota Star Tribune is reporting Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican lawmakers met today to try to reach a deal to temporarily fund the government beyond midnight tonight. The talks broke off after about an hour and fifteen minutes. No deal, the paper reported. With 12 hours left until the all but the most critical state services cease operating, there are few indications the two parties are moving any closer to reaching an agreement. No further talks are currently scheduled. Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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Between night vision, radar, and GPS, who would've guessed that the newest innovation in nighttime military navigation would be a belt? The belt in question is loaded with accelerometers and a compass, so it always knows a soldier's orientation, even if he's laying down. Now here's the killer feature: to help a soldier move silently and accurately in total darkness, the belt with vibrate a sort of Morse code for cardinal directions. When he's traveling the correct direction, he'll feel the proper vibration. Different vibration patterns will even signify "halt" or "move out." Such a simple premise that's been wonderfully applied. Please follow SAI: Tools on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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Gov. Rick Perry went five-for-six on the emergency issues he declared for this session. A ban on sanctuary cities, an idea borne of his 2010 reelection campaign, died in the Senate during the regular session and in the House during the special session. Everything else got through the Legislature: Voter ID, pre-abortion sonograms, limits on eminent domain, an appeal to Congress for a balanced federal budget, and making losers pay the costs of the lawsuits they start. Some of those were outright wins, like the Voter ID bill that reads pretty much like its promoters wanted it to read. Some, like loser pays, were heavily amended versions of what was originally proposed. It's still a potent political line, but isn't the big policy change Perry and others originally sought. Conservatives—even some who aren't happy with the session's outcomes—generally praise the governor. He's got a knack for keeping the factions in the party happy, or at least subdued in their criticism. Attribute it to a Teflon coating, to his decisive win in a divided primary against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and GOP activist Debra Medina last year, or to luck, but Perry is coming out of the legislative session without many bruises. "I would say it's masterful," says Michael Williams, a former railroad commission who's now running for Congress. "I don't think I've seen a politician as artful as Perry." He remarked on Perry's ability to recover from missteps like his "alphabet" proposals for TTC and HPV, or the Trans Texas Corridor and the human papillomavirus vaccine. Neither issue hurt him in his elections, and two of his emergency issues this session—eminent domain and sonograms—play well with the groups most upset by the earlier miscues. Will that work elsewhere if Perry runs a national campaign? "What we do down here plays a little differently down here than in the rest of the country," says Williams. Tea Party and social conservatives like what Perry says, even if what comes out in Austin is something short of what was promised, says Harold Cook, a Democratic consultant. "There's a good reason why Republicans say buzzwords like 'states rights'," he says. "He's giving them the buzzwords to hear that he's one of them, while leaving the rest of the electorate clueless." For most of the year, the governor let lawmakers do their thing. His staff monitored and advised, but he asserted himself infrequently. Exceptions included his vocal opposition to any budget relying on money from the Rainy Day Fund, and his threat to call a special session on the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association if lawmakers didn't institute reforms that cut costs and lawyer fees in lawsuits stemming from hurricane and other storm claims. He ended up compromising on the budget issue, telling lawmakers he didn't object to using Rainy Day money to help cover a $4 billion deficit in the current budget. And he didn't object when clever budgeteers chopped $4.8 billion from Medicaid spending and promised to make it up with either changes in law, better efficiency, or with a draw on the Rainy Day Fund in January 2013. Early in the session, the governor sided with budget hawks who wanted to cut spending in the 2012-13 budget by about $28 billion. That number came up significantly as budget writers did their work and the House and Senate negotiated over whether and how much to cut schools, nursing homes, and other specific areas and programs. Perry stuck with his general orders—balance the budget without new taxes and without spending the RDF—but left the details to legislators. He did get them to write a budget without increasing taxes, whether it ends up—after Medicaid is patched over—actually cutting overall spending. And without any of the adjustments that will probably be done in 20 months or so, the new budget is smaller than the current one. The sanctuary cities legislation didn't make it. With his emergency order, Perry plucked that issue from a long list of immigration reforms pushed by the Republican Party of Texas, legislators, outside groups, talk show hosts and writers, elevating it and leaving the rest of the list for others to worry about. On this issue, the Republican rhetoric was stronger than the governor's remedy. Perry has been outspoken about the porous U.S. border with Mexico and about the need for border security. That's been featured in both of his last two campaigns, and with some of the same footage of the governor talking to law enforcement people on the Rio Grande. The state GOP platform on immigration is explicit. It includes support for: "… criminal penalties and aggressive enforcement for those who knowingly employ illegal workers … amending the U.S. constitution to suspend automatic U.S. citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants; elimination of federal and state funding to cities with “sanctuary” laws; empowering state and local law enforcement agencies with authority and resources to detain illegal immigrants … elimination of day labor work centers … elimination of laws requiring hospitals to give non-emergency care to illegal’s … elimination of social security benefits or federal and state funding to illegal’s for education, housing or business loans … requiring all employers to utilize E-verify system to confirm the legal status of all new hires." From that list, sanctuary cities is the immigration issue he chose to highlight and, having done so, let lawmakers do their work. "The far right would have liked it better if Perry had gone whole hog and done a full Arizona on that policy front," says Cook. "Perry understands the nuance, I think. He said from the start that the Arizona way wouldn't work in Texas." It passed the House and died in the Senate during the regular session. It passed the Senate more than a week before the end of the special session and never advanced in the House. In a news release on the final day, Perry singled out Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, for refusing to put the immigration legislation into a budget bill. Duncan replied that the bill was in enough trouble without the sanctuary cities controversy and, in fact, it initially failed in the House before Republicans caucused, flipped some votes, and won approval. The governor also danced between his party's conservatives and its moderates on what became known as the TSA "anti-groping" bill—a proposed restriction on invasive pat-downs by federal security guards at airports and other public buildings. It failed during the regular session. Perry added it to the special session agenda with only ten days left, after a widely circulated video of an activist asking him at a book-signing why it wasn't on the list. The governor replied that it didn't have the support, but added it when he got back to Austin. With the late start, it ran out of time. But, as with the sanctuary cities bill, Perry ducked the blame while the House and Senate each blamed the other for the bill's demise. The House bill was too late for the Senate to avoid a filibuster, and the House couldn't muster the votes to pass the bill on the final two days of the session. After putting it on the call, Perry didn't say anything publicly about the bill until lawmakers were gone. "Although the airport pat-down bill did not pass, it did initiate a public discussion and some changes in airport security procedures," he said in an end-of-session press release. Perry, like his predecessors in the governor's office, gets to hit the high points and leave the messy details, for the most part, to legislators. He gets the credit for putting things on the list and for setting broad guidelines. Legislators get blamed for any unpleasantness in the details. And while they're still bickering, he can turn the session's news into a political message in no time at all. In a fundraising email sent by his campaign a few hours after lawmakers left town, his post-session bragging points were in evidence, as were his intended targets: "With another legislative session behind us, Texans can again celebrate yet another balanced budget under Gov. Perry's leadership—attained without raising taxes—despite the destructive fiscal policies of the Obama Administration and Congress. In addition, the session yielded legislation to protect the integrity of our elections and "loser pay" elements to our legal system that do even more to combat the frivolous lawsuits that kill jobs." This post originally appeared at The Texas Tribune. Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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It turns out Queen Elizabeth summoned Prince Andrew to the Royal Palace after pictures of him with convicted hedge fund sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were published in the Daily Mail, according to a profile of the wayward British prince in this month's Vanity Fair. Even though Prince Andrew -- who is the UK's Ambassador for Trade -- had embarrassed the Royal Family before, apparently remaining chummy with Epstein, who has been accused of inappropriate sexual relations with at least 30 underage girls, was what sent the Queen over the edge. In particular, allegations made by a woman called Virginia Roberts, against Epstein and the Prince, triggered the Queen's scolding. Roberts alleges that when she was younger, Epstein flew her out to the States where she was trained as a prostitute, and that she was flown specifically to meet Andrew. The Prince says he never engaged in sexual contact with her. According to Vanity Fair, The sordid connection to Jeffrey Epstein inflicted by far the greatest damage on the prince’s reputation. According to a sworn deposition by Juan Alessi, a former employee at Epstein’s Palm Beach estate, Andrew attended naked pool parties and was treated to massages by a harem of adolescent girls.
The phone call from Sian James of The [Daily] Mail... created a 36-hour maelstrom at Buckingham Palace,” a royal source told me. “At some point during those 36 hours, the Queen summoned the Duke of York to a meeting.” According to several well-informed individuals, the Queen was not amused. The Queen asked Prince Andrew why he had consorted with someone like Jeffrey Epstein, whom the F.B.I. had reportedly linked to about 40 young women, most of them underage. More to the point, the Queen demanded to know if her son had any more surprises up his sleeve. Prince Andrew swore to his mother he'd never slept with Virginia Roberts, or any of Epstein's other alleged victims. Don't miss: An Alleged Victim Of Hedge Funder Jeffrey Epstein's Sexual Advances Tells All > Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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On Wednesday, the Village Voice published an article criticizing Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's crusade to end human trafficking through their organization DNAFoundation. As we reported, the couple's work recently caught public attention with a bizarre ad campaign, featuring "Real Men" videos of male celebrities. In response to the ads, the Village Voice writes: "The PSAs have made some observers scratch their heads and others guffaw. Ostensibly about an intense issue—childhood sex slavery—the videos reek of frat-boy humor." But here's what really set Kutcher off: the newspaper also claims that Kutcher's facts aren't exactly straight. Pointing out a recent interview on "Piers Morgan Tonight," during which Kutcher says there are "between 100,000 and 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States today," Village Voice writes: "The real issue is that no one has called out Kutcher and Moore for their underlying thesis. There are not 100,000 to 300,000 children in America turning to prostitution every year. The statistic was hatched without regard to science. It is a bogeyman." Needless to say, Kutcher is furious. His response? A "Twitter meltdown." On Wednesday night, Kutcher took his Twitter to send a tirade of angry messages to the publication's accounts, many of which focusing on the paper's "escort" ads in its back pages. So far, the paper is awaiting response from Kutcher: "@villagevoice OK @aplusk, we’ll bite. Tell us the hard facts you have collected. We'll fact-check for you." 
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Flipboard is our favorite way to visualize news on iPad, and it's just been updated to include support for LinkedIn, a platform more and more people are starting to use to share news. This follows the launch of LinkedIn Today back in March, a home page for users to share content and links when they log in. Flipboard now has built in support for the 30 industry verticals LinkedIn uses to categorize news. Also included in the app update is a red ribbon (pictured in the top right) to show what's popular on Flipboard, save-able searches for your favorite topics, and integration for the Economist as well. Lastly, the update should improve rendering speed for articles, except you'll now need to pin them to your iPad if you want to read them offline. (via Mashable) Please follow SAI: Tools on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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 Huma Abedin -- wife of sexting-scandal-embattled Anthony Weiner -- is reportedly planning to take some time off from her job at the State Department.
Abedin travels with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her longtime boss. Her return from a state trip to Africa prompted Weiner's resignation from Congress. Abedin is currently pregnant with the couple's child. The rumor comes days after cameras spotted the couple eating lunch in Manhattan together. Please follow The Wire on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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How often have the words "I wish I could just win the lottery," rolled off your tongue? Probably a few times at work when your boss makes you do something tedious, or when you can't afford that vacation to Europe you've been meaning to take. These 13 lottery winners may tell you to be careful what you wish for. Denise Rossi: $1.3 million California lottery  Denise Rossi won $1.3 million in the California lotto, didn't tell her husband, and divorced him just days later. Her husband, Thomas, found his wife's behavior very strange, but moved out anyway. It wasn't until two years later that Thomas received a letter to his new Los Angeles apartment (accidentally postmarked to him) revealing his ex-wife had won the lottery. Thomas took Denis to court for not disclosing the money in the divorce papers and the judge awarded Thomas the money in full. If Denise had disclosed the money during the divorce, she more than likely would have been able to keep all, or at least half of the cash.
Bazil Thorne: $2.2 million in the Austrailian lottery  Bazil Thorne won $2.2 million back in 1950. About a month later, his son Graeme went missing and Thorne received a ransom note for the money he had won from the kidnappers. But when it was time to give the money to the kidnappers to get his son back, the kidnappers never answered. This was Australia's first kidnapping and there was a massive search for Graeme. Unfortunately he was found murdered on August 16.
Ibi Roncaiolo: $5 million in the Canadian lottery  Ibi Roncaiolo and her husband Dr. Joseph Roncaiolo's marriage had been on the rocks. Ibi was a heavy drinker, and high spender, and their son felt as though his parents didn't really care about eachother. Then Ibi won $5 million from a lottery ticket. After she quickly burned through that, her husband got suspicious. Ibi kept track of all the finances in the home, so Joseph had little idea of how much money they had. When Joseph looked into their finances, and realized Ibi had burned completely through their savings he snapped. The doctor then injected his wife with two lethal shots of anesthetics, killing her.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook. See Also:
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A disgruntled Philadelphia Flyers fan put his fanhood for sale on eBay. But the more ridiculous part is that people are actually bidding on it. It's up to $41.00, and there’s still four days to go. The seller posted the listing, “Hockey Loyalty For Sale” last Friday. The description is as follows: Today (6/24/11), I awoke to find that Paul Holmgren had traded Jeff Carter and Mike Richards from the Philadelphia Flyers. After watching Mr. Holmgren make one bone-headed move after another for this organization that I have loved since childhood, I have decided that I cannot take watching him destroy the team any longer. So I have decided to put my team loyalty up for sale. The highest bidder will be able to choose the team (with the exception of the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New Jersey Devils) that I support. I will send you pictures of me throwing away/destroying my Flyers jersey/gear, and will use the money from the bid to buy a jersey/gear from whichever team the winning bidder chooses. I will also buy a subscription to NHL Center Ice so that I can watch all of my new teams games and cheer them on. If there are any more questions, please contact me and I will answer them as quickly as possible. The Flyers have controversially blown up the core of their team this offseason. But rumors are swirling that they’re going to make a move for Tampa Bay Lightning superstar Steven Stamkos. And they’ve already added a top-flight goalie in Ilya Bryzgalov. So maybe things might work out in the end, and this guy will feel like even more of an idiot. The seller has a feedback rating of 100%, so at least you know you’ll be getting your money’s worth. Source: The700Level.com Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we asked serial entrepreneur Jason Flick to share some of his insights on getting tech to market with lean thinking. This is the first of his commentaries and we welcome your feedback. By Jason Flick You would have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the billions in venture capital flooding into the Valley. Venture firms raised over $60 billion in Q1 2011 alone. Some companies are ramping from zero to billions in revenue in years rather than decades. Students fresh out of school are being offered six-figure salaries, four-month signing bonuses and iPads to come on board. (VentureBeat summed it up well in this recent story.) Of course, these stories seldom report that for every company like this, there are 99 others that flounder and end up as large financial craters. Here in Canada we would of course like to have billions in venture capital, but would we like all the headache of a “home run or nothing” mindset? Or what about young hires with salaries greater than that of a senior developer, who, spoiled by a culture of “gimme gimme,” move on to the next hot company without so much as a thank you when the perks stop coming? I wouldn’t. I would like a place where people work hard and have aspirations to build amazing businesses with growth plans that don’t require a $1 million round followed in six months by another $5 million and then of course the much needed $30 to $100 million round. So let's assume you are operating in a bubbling area, but you have a great business idea. How do you get it rolling? I think you need two things. The first is a method to self-fund your project. The second is a process to keep all the varied team members engaged when you may not be able to pay competitive full-time salaries. How do you fund your unfunded company? In an earlier post, Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette wrote about lean startup. Here’s my take on the lean approach to getting your unfunded company funded and your product to market. If you have an idea that solves a customer’s problem, preferably a large customer, then you should be able secure “funding” from them. This funding might come in the form of services, prepayment on the product or even as a strategic investment. While you are out doing your market research—the part where you actually talk to potential customers—seek out these types and arrange meetings by being open about the concept product you are working on and your interest in their feedback. Being honest and upfront starts the relationship off on the right foot and encourages them to be open with you. If your product idea is indeed a fit for them, a contract will develop from it, provided you give them added incentive to take the risk. Offer them the first mover advantage with a price point that will be half of what your product will cost in full commercial release. You can also take advantage of this time to have them prepay some of the royalties, device costs and so forth up front. Remember, if you’ve made it to the negotiations stage, you’ve done very well and hold far more power than you may think. A few dollars more Once you have this first customer, it isn’t time to just buckle down and work hard on the deliverable. Rather, this is the best time to go in search of additional funding from government sources, angels, and friends and family. Don’t wait until the few dollars you’ve secured from the customer are running out to start this search. Government programs such as IRAP, the Investment Accelerator Fund managed by MaRS, and Ontario Centres of Excellence are amazing resources if you are based in Canada. And don't forget BDC and EDC. For every dollar you pull in, you can find another dollar or two from the government to match it. At YOU i Labs we were able to secure, through five different programs, well over $1 million in government grants and loans on a very small upfront investment, much of which was sweat equity. There is a very long list of programs and organizations that can help you such as Communitech, DemoCamp, Ryerson University’s DMZ, OCRI, Toronto Tech Meetup and Mobile Experience Innovation Centre. I don’t recommend you formally ask for their help until you have that very interested, preferably signed, first customer. There are thousands of great ideas that people are trying to bring to life, but securing that first customer raises you above the noise and into the top five percent. If you start off on the wrong foot with these organizations it can be hard to build up the momentum later. Startup isn’t a culture, startups have DNA This road of services-to-product is fraught with traps. Many startups turn into lifestyle businesses, which are great, but it’s unlikely you’re reading this if that’s your goal. The challenge is that if a company wants to be a product company, it needs to have a culture of product and a product-oriented team even though it may be operating with a services model in those first years. With a services model, billings will be low but often the customers will be very happy. The other risk is that you build a product for that first big customer that isn’t what the larger market wants. While you are building and deploying to your first customer you are often re-selling across their organization to secure buy-in from other decision makers. As you’re going through this process you are building the DNA for your startup. Most entrepreneurs don’t appreciate how fundamental that DNA is to their everyday operations. A company run by a friend of mine sold its software to a very large tier one company, but when a new opportunity came up in a smaller and more nimble market where the technology was a perfect fit, they pounced. Two years later my friend and his team came to realize they couldn’t sell their process into smaller organizations. Their model just couldn’t be scaled back and simplified enough to succeed in this market. But other startups with a very different model and a lower price point where able to fly in and successfully deploy a similar technology. After this experience my friend’s company refocused and found success with tier one customers. At Flick Software, we know we are best at large and complex mobile solutions and poor at small marketing applications that often also require creativity. We know our DNA. Know yours. Next week I’ll help you measure your DNA and use that to keep everything on track. Get out there and create some amazing companies! Jason Flick is co-Founder and President of YOU i Labs and President and CEO of Flick Software, a successful serial entrepreneur and product visionary. Jason has founded half a dozen companies in the past 18 years and is advisor and executive to nearly a dozen software companies. He is passionate about the disruption mobility has created and how businesses can lever it. Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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In the world of advertising, an “impression” is how many times people look at a website (or other forms of media/advertising.) I just read a fascinating article in the Harvard Business Review about how Coca-Cola is shifting from measuring impressions to measuring expressions. Expressions are the comments that customers make on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. One person comments on Twitter to their followers. If they have 500 followers, some of those people “re-tweet” or share it with their friends. Same thing on Facebook. Before you know it, one impression from an advertisement or experience becomes hundreds, even thousands (and possibly millions) of expressions. Here’s my take on this: Social media is now accepted as a powerful marketing and advertising strategy. Still, we have just scratched the surface of how to use this to our advantage. New ideas on how to use exploit this medium will continue to surface. Paying close attention to how many people visit your website or “like” your Facebook page is important. But while those impressions are strong, it is your follower’s expressions that will help grow and strengthen your brand. Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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Another vote this morning will take place in Greece, this being the most important thing of the day… So, I guess that's all we need to talk about, eh? Not so fast there, my friend! There's more to talk about, so stop beating around the bush and get to it! OK? Front and center today, there's more optimism that the "implementation" part of the 2-day Greek voting in Parliament, will pass, and that optimism has the euro (EUR) on the rise again. The first vote to accept the austerity measures passed yesterday, with only one dissenting vote… In fact, a trader friend of mine (thanks S.M.L.) sent me a note that said the markets misread the story at first, and thought that the vote had failed, thus causing a brief, but quick weakening of the euro. But that all changed once the "true" story was produced. The euro, when I came in this morning had a 1.45 handle, but has steadily weakened, as I read and researched stuff for the Pfennig… I told the boys and girls on the trading desk yesterday that I really felt as though the euro was seeing profit-taking, as every time it would rise in price it would get knocked back down… It was a classic case of reaching a level that had been marked as "profit taking" … But you couldn't keep the euro down… At not least yesterday, that is… And gold too had a nice gain when I came in this morning, but that has been wiped out now too… It's as if the markets know something about the second Greek vote… Or, it could be a case of buy the rumor sell the fact, which makes a lot of sense, given the price action I've seen already this morning. Yesterday, I told you that the French banks were on board for a "rollover" or extension of Greek bonds (debt)… Well, now it is being reported that the German banks are also warming to the idea… German banks and other European investors holding Greek debt are considering a 30-year rollover, as proposed by France, was the news item this morning… 30-year Greek debt? WOW… That would be one Tom Dempsey-like kicking of the can down the road! And the original idea was hatched by yours truly, several months ago… Good to see these guys are reading the Pfennig! HA! Remember, though… Greek debt isn't like, say, Japanese debt, or US debt… There's no way bondholders would be able to give up the interest payments or principal of the debt that each of these two respective countries have! So… Back to the currencies for a minute… The Aussie dollar (AUD) has really "shown off" with their rally this week. On Monday, the Aussie dollar was around $1.0440… This morning I saw the Aussie dollar at $1.0740 (it has backed off a bit with the euro as I type), but that doesn't water down the fact that the Aussie dollar has recovered 3-cents this week! WOW! On Monday, it was all that gloom and doom talk about needing an emergency rate cut… (I disputed the need for a rate cut, but still that didn't change the fact that the Aussie dollar was much weaker.) But, here we are 3 days later, and those thoughts of needing an emergency rate cut have been put in the rear view mirror, and it's as the Big Boss, Frank Trotter, likes to say… Onward and upward! Yesterday morning, I mentioned that the Canadian dollar/loonie (CAD) was rallying on the back of a huge jump in their Consumer Price Inflation… The month-on-month increase was 0.7%, but the increase to last year at this time was the real eye-catcher… +3.7%! And that rally in the loonie didn't stop all day and through the overnight session, with the loonie now demanding $1.0345 versus the US dollar… There's no way the Bank of Canada (BOC) can ignore this… Unless that is, they've torn a page out of the Federal Reserve Chairman's book on ignoring inflation, and calling it "transitory"… I would think that the BOC is seriously considering another rate hike now, and they had better do it quickly! The New Zealand dollar/kiwi (NZD), outperformed just about every currency last night on the back of news that New Zealand businesses remain upbeat… The Business Confidence Index increased to a 46.5 level this month, which happens to be the highest level since May of 2010, before all the earthquakes began hitting New Zealand. Kiwi actually traded up to 0.8320 overnight, but has since backed off in sympathy of their kissin' cousin across the Tasman, Australia… 0.8320 is a post-float high for kiwi… Pretty amazing for a country that has seen the devastation of earthquakes, and emergency interest rate cuts, don't you think? One of my fave currencies, that I tell people about when I'm out on the road, The Singapore dollar (SGD), continues to push higher… There's not much to talk about here, when there's been no news from the Monetary Authority of Singapore… So, the markets have taken the Monetary Authority's last statement to heart, which was to allow a wider trading band. The markets have been OK with that statement, and have moved the Sing dollar higher and higher… They can't let it get too far ahead of the Chinese renminbi (CNY), though… Speaking of China… The renminbi has hit a speed bump this week, but that's no biggie, folks… There's no such thing as a one-way street in currencies, and although the renminbi has appeared to take on that look, since June of last year when the Chinese officials announced that they would seek a faster appreciation of the renminbi, there has to be speed bumps, to keep the speculators at bay… And while we're talking about China, I came across an interview with one of our old friends, Jim Rogers (thanks Ty), who has this to say about the calls that the Chinese economy would collapse… (You all know I've made fun of those people who have said that, so here's Jim Rogers…) What do you say to the people who say China is heading for a crash? Rogers: "Well, I feel sorry for them. They've been dead wrong for two years. Hugh Hendry has at least acknowledged that being short China is hurting him. I don't know about Chanos – Jim said he was short, and if so, he's hurting too. China has not gone down. It's been two years now and, sure, there are going to be setbacks in China along the way, but China has not collapsed. We, in the US, had many depressions – with a "small d;" we had a horrible Civil War; we had very little rule of law; we had periodic massacres in the streets; we had virtually no human rights; you could buy and sell congressmen – well, you can still buy and sell congressmen in America, but they were cheap in those days. As recently as 1907, the whole system was broke in the US, and yet we were on the verge of becoming the most successful country in the 20th century. Maybe real estate speculators in Shanghai will go bankrupt. I expect that, I hope it happens; it would be good for China and it would be good for the world. But in the meantime, these guys shorting China have been dead wrong. But I want to repeat this: There will be massive setbacks in China along the way. It's the way the world works. If I see serious problems in China, I'm not going to stop teaching my children Mandarin." When you get Jim on a roll, he's amazing with his thoughts and the way he says things… OK… Back to the euro and Eurozone for a minute… This morning, the latest inflation data for the Eurozone printed, and remained unchanged at 2.7% in June… But European Central Bank (ECB) President, Trichet, was quick to point out that "inflation pressures are on the rise"… So… I think that means that Trichet still wants to hike rates, otherwise he would have let that inflation data just filter though the markets, and not react to it… I know that it sounds strange to think of a rate hike in the Eurozone with all the goings on with Greece, Portugal and Ireland… But… They signed up for the "one policy fits all" that the euro brings to a nation, and the ECB's mandate is to provide price stability… Their inflation ceiling is 2%, so even with the inflation rate remaining unchanged in June, it's still 2.7%, which even using my "old math" skills, I can see that inflation is stronger in the Eurozone than the ECB's target ceiling… And, as I've said many times in the past, why have a "target" or "ceiling" if you're not going to react to it, when the time comes? I have two "Then there was this" items today… But first, we need to do a check on the US debt situation… I saw a graph in The Economist yesterday that showed the countries with the greatest debt are the US and Japan… Greece is not in the top two… I'm still waiting for the bond vigilantes to focus on the US debt like they did Greece… And Moody's is warning the US again that their credit rating will slip if they don't resolve their debt ceiling impasse… I see that the President was blaming the lawmakers for the impasse… Hmmm… I think I'll just skip past that, and keep my initial thoughts to myself… You know… Going back 11 years, I've been writing about the growing debt problem in the US. Yes, that's right! Long before all these new writers came along and jumped on the bandwagon, I was one of the lone wolves that saw this as a growing problem. I banged on the previous president time and time again about the growing debt, and the budget deficits, and those that said that deficits don't matter… I used to say that knowing that the debt was out there and would eventually lead to a problem, was like driving down an icy road, and your car begins to spin out of control… You know that eventually, you're going to end up crashing into the guardrail… Well, the US debt problem is about to meet up with its own guardrail… OK… Here's the first "Then there was this"… From Reuters (thanks Scott)… When the President cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars. Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the US Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday. The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. And then there was this, that will just make you want to yell at the walls… From Bloomberg… In 2000, a Fannie Mae executive discovered that Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage had sold the government-sponsored entity a mortgage it didn't own, but the matter was never reported to law enforcement. Instead, Fannie Mae bought more fake, nonperforming or defective loans from the firm. That was the beginning of a $3 billion swindle, one of the biggest fraud schemes in US history. The former chairman of the Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp, Lee Farkas, is scheduled to be sentenced today in Federal Court in Virginia… I'm just sitting here wondering about responsibility… I think you know what I'm thinking… To recap… The first leg of the Greek austerity measures vote passed easily yesterday, and now the second leg, which won't be as easy to pass, will be voted on today, that being, the "implementation" of the measures. The euro went on a rally yesterday with the assumption that the votes would be positive, and didn't stop until it reached 1.45 and change this morning… It has backed off since, on what looks like profit taking, along with the other currencies that have rallied alongside the euro. Chuck Butler
for The Daily Reckoning German Banks Warm to 30-Year Greek Debt originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning provides 400,000+ readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. The Daily Reckoning features articles by Addison Wiggin author of Empire of Debt and Bill Bonner author of Financial Reckoning Day and The Idea of America. Read more posts on The Daily Reckoning » Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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A chess engine called Rybka has won the last four World Computer Chess Championships in a row. No small feat. But there's trouble in paradise. It seems that Rybka cheated, according to Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech. The problem isn't with the programming, but with the construction. Vasik Rajlich, the creator of Rybka, plagiarised volumes of code from two pre-existing chess engines called Crafty and Fruit. He's been stripped of his titles and ordered to return all the prize money. It turns out that the judges who made the decision were more bothered by the fact that he didn't give credit to the other programmers than that he used their code. [ExtremeTech] Please follow SAI: Tools on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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When we sat down with Krista Canfield, LinkedIn's senior corporate communications manager last week, we asked her how many people have landed jobs through the site. "We don't keep track of those numbers," she told us. "It's too difficult to know. Did your status update get you the job, because it got the attention of an old colleague? Or was it the message you sent, that led to talking with a friend of a friend?" If LinkedIn did quantify how many users landed jobs through the site, she'd be one of them. While happily employed at a PR firm, she sent out a status update on the site, asking if anyone had been to Paris. An old colleague replied, and one thing led to another. Soon, she had an interview in Silicon Valley. Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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As the entire world knows by now, Apple recently released a major update to their professional video editing software, Final Cut Pro. The update was so radical in nature that Apple increased the software version number from 7 to 10, with the 10 denoted by the Roman X. Shortly after Final Cut Pro X was released, a vocal group of Final Cut Pro 7 users went bonkers with indignation. The offense that triggered their outrage? The new version did not include several popular features from the old version Clearly, this group of consumers expects major software releases from large software companies to contain all features from previous versions plus (presumably) several compelling new features. Unfortunately, such a product development strategy inevitably leads to complex, bloated software that only meets the needs of the high end of the market – to the exclusion of other, larger customer segments. As Clayton Christensen pointed out nearly 15 years ago, bloated software like this from an incumbent technology company is a prime target – and I mean, as in turkey-shoot; or fish-in-a-barrel; that kind of thing – for disruptive young companies looking to knock the king from the top of the hill. It’s no secret that video editing software is too complicated for Joe Average. Whether it’s Final Cut Pro, or Avid Media Composer, or Adobe Premiere, everyone knows these products are for the pros, and the rest of us are forced to either learn how to use them (not) or use the crappy consumer grade products. Thus, the market is over-ripe for disruptive innovation. Over the past six years I’ve observed several startups come and go, trying to disrupt the video editing software market. The first was a company I started in 2005, Eyespot, which was followed over the years by Jumpcut, MotionBox, Jaycut, Pixorial, Mixmoov, Stroome, and probably several others I’ve overlooked. The writing is on the wall: if you believe Christensen’s thesis, Apple has been setting itself up for eventual failure by perpetuating the Final Cut Pro line with sustaining technology improvements – while barbarians are aggressively storming the gates. So what did Apple do? They disrupted themselves by doing exactly what any disruptive innovator worth his salt would do: they released a disruptive innovation (FCP X) with lower performance and price than the incumbent (FCP 7), improving the product in radical ways that the market would never expect. Existing FCP users, for their part, launched into indignant tirades of entitlement: Apple owes them; Apple has sold them out; Apple has abused their trust; Apple murders kittens; etc. It left me wondering: where does this sense of entitlement come from? Why does Apple owe FCP users anything? If sometime in the past you paid Apple $1000, and in turn Apple gave you a copy of FCP 7, the commercial transaction has been completed. Apple owes you nothing. I’m even more perplexed because Apple is, generally speaking, the inventor of awesomeness. If Apple wants to re-invent something, I say: by all means, go ahead! I’m old enough to remember that MP3 players existed – and sucked (sorry Diamond Rio) – long before the iPod was unveiled. And I also remember so-called “smart phones” – which also sucked – long before the the iPhone graced this good Earth. Nevertheless, FCP users should not despair. If Apple continues to play by the Christensen playbook – and they most certainly will – the next step (after FCP X has gained a foot hold in the market) is to begin iteratively adding advanced features until the new product eventually appeals to the high end of the market! How do we know Apple will continue to follow this playbook? Because they’re loyally following it play-by-play. And because Apple has played the disruptor role in the past with great success, most recently with the iPhone. Remember the righteous indignation from arm-chair quarterbacks everywhere when the iPhone launched without obviously necessary features like: a video camera (gasp!), MMS (horrors!), cut-and-paste (shocking!), and so on. Yet here we are, a few years later, and all of those advanced features (and more) are safe and warm in our pockets. So buckle down, FCP 7 users, and bide your time with the software version that you love so dearly. After all, you still have FCP 7 – it’s not like Apple took it away from you. You’ll just have to wait a few years until all the professional features are restored to the product line. Then you’ll be ready to upgrade to...Final Cut Pro XIV? Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story »
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According to CNBC, John Paulson just dumped Bank of America. The stock has been a big loser lately, though it's popped recently on news of its putback settlement. The sale comes not long after his big sale of Sino-Forest, the Chinese timer company accused by Carson Block of being a fraud. It's been a horrible year for the world's largest hedge fund manager, with June having been particularly terrible. Earlier Oppenheimer's Chris Kotowki explained why he thought that BofA was still in the "Penalty Box". Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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The Google Investor is a daily report from SAI. Sign up here to receive it by email
 GOOG Up As Market Continues Its Flight
Markets are on the rise again. The S&P 500 has gained more than 3% in its best three-day run in three months (nearing a technical breakout) as the Greek parliament adopted austerity measures to avoid a debt default. Shares of GOOG are up over 1% in early trading. Upcoming catalysts include second calendar quarter results released in July; continued Android momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets; regaining ground in China; updated software, adoption and media partners for Google TV; the roll-out of Google Music; and progress in other newer initiatives (social networking, location-based services, mapping, gaming, Chromebooks, etc.). The stock trades at approximately 11x Enterprise Value / EBIT, inexpensive relative to peers and historical trading levels.
The Search Giant Takes Yet Another Stab At Social (Various via techDygest)
Google, frustrated by a string of failed attempts to crack social networking, is taking another stab at fending off Facebook with the new service Google Plus. Google designed the service to tie together all of its online properties, laying the foundation for a full-fledged social network by basically turns the all of the search engine into one giant social network. Once users sign up, it shows up across all Google sites. Steve Kovach at Business Insider believes that Google Plus won't work in the long-run. Office 365 Could Give Google A Run For Its Money (PC World)
For the launch of its first full-fledged online office suite, Office 365, Microsoft is paying particular attention to small and medium-size businesses. Office 365 combines access to Exchange e-mail, Lync messaging, SharePoint collaboration, the Office Web Apps, all into one monthly subscription. With new collaboration tools like Lync and SharePoint Online, and Web-based versions of staples like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Office 365 should give Google a run in this market. Google Seeing 500K Android Devices Activated Every Day (Various via techDygest)
Half a million Android devices are activated every day, a number that's growing 4.4% each week, Google's Android chief Andy Rubin revealed in a tweet. That means that Android could hit 1 million daily activations by October if this growth rate maintains. Henry Blodget at Business Insider says this leaves Apple in the dust. Back in January, Apple announced (in a roundabout way) over 360,000 daily iOS activations, and at that time Google was seeing 300,000 activations. Getting to $14 billion in mobile ad revenue in the next 4 years doesn't seem so far-fetched. Where Netflix Lags, YouTube Can Dominate (CNet)
Greg Sandoval at CNet, having overdosed recently on the supply of documentaries and foreign films at Netflix streaming, was looking for something more action-packed. So he went to YouTube's relatively new and much-ignored movie rental service, where the streaming shelves overflowed with full-length titles that were a couple of grades higher than the dregs found at Netflix. Sure, the cost of the movie was equivalent to 30% of his monthly Netflix fee, but what it came down to was that Netflix didn't have what he wanted. Oracle Seeking About As Much As Android's Made For Google In Damages Plus 15% (PC World)
An Oracle damages expert estimates that Google owes the company $2.6 billion for alleged Java patent violations. That figure falls in between the "breathtaking" $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion range Google previously cited. Oracle is also seeking 15% of the revenue Google receives from advertising on its mobile operating system. Google May Launch Ice Cream Sandwich With Several Hardware Partners (mocoNews)
A few months ago, several Android partners raised quite a stir complaining about Google’s practice of picking a single vendor as the primary launch partner for a new generation of technology. The company may be preparing to launch Ice Cream Sandwich (the next version of Android) with multiple partners (Samsung, Motorola and perhaps others). It would allow all the major vendors to have new products going into the all-important holiday shopping season, rather than just one lucky company. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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Chris Whalen, a bank analyst, warns that JPMorgan and the top 5 or 6 banks might have to pay billions to settle class action lawsuits. He told King World News in an interview (which you can listen to by clicking here) that even though banks have been fighting them, a ton of class action lawsuits against banks have survived past petitions for dismissal, etc. And they could cost JPMorgan, for example, up to 50 cents on the dollar (on the $45 to $50 billion in lawsuits against them, that's $20 -$25 billion). “The surviving 33 claims which are straight forward securities fraud claims, much like WorldCom, Enron and that sort of thing, those claims were settled at 50 cents on the dollar. So today of the trillion dollars or so in class action claims that were filed right after the crisis started, there’s about $200 billion left that have survived motions to dismiss and other procedural efforts by the banks to knock this litigation out. JPMorgan has somewhere around $45 to $50 billion worth of current claims that look like they are going to go to trial.” Usually, lawsuits like this don't stick around so long, and the claimants have to fight them for themselves. But not this time, says Whalen. “Now we in the community that watches this stuff had thought that eventually the New York courts were going to shoot down the class action lawsuits, and force all of the claimants to basically litigate on their own. That’s the tendency in America, that’s our federalist system. However, this time around we have bondholders in these classes and I think there is enough commonality in the claims that the court may actually let the class actions proceed, which is much more efficient for the plaintiffs obviously..." "There’s still some significant claims out there. It’s not certain that the banks will lose, but I will tell you that once a claims like this gets passed preliminaries and they are actually going to trial, the plaintiffs have a good chance of winning." Translation: the top 5 or 6 banks, and in particular JPMorgan, might have to pay material settlements. "This may force the banks to settle. Now, if we settle at 50 cents on the dollar do the math, that becomes a very material hit not just for JPMorgan, but for all the top five, six banks that have home equity loan exposure that’s been reflected in securities act claims or just primary mortgage backed securities that have fraud claims..." If Whalen's prediction plays out, the settlements could crush bank earnings in future quarters. Bank of America just settled a mortgage lawsuit for $8.5 billion and it's going to cost shareholders as the firm will announce losses of around $9.1 billion this quarter. Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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Remember when the Treasury Department modified its rules for government bond auctions two years ago? Turns out "technical modernization" was a euphemism for China buying more treasuries than it had disclosed, according to a new report from Reuters. The Chinese government buys most of its U.S. treasuries through China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), a unit of the Chinese central bank, and China is said to hold about $1.115 trillion or approximately 26% of U.S. government debt. According to the report, the Treasury found that China was buying more U.S. debt than it had disclosed and was possibly violating auction rules which limit one bidder to 35% of a batch. At the time, acting assistant Treasury secretary told his staff not to talk about any one creditor so the matter could be handled quietly without upsetting Beijing. Another official categorically instructed officials not to refer to China or SAFE in email subjects. Reuters reports: The Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial markets, Karthik Ramanathan, told subordinates in an email: "Please let's stick to the 'Modernization of Auction Rules' when outside requests come in on the (rule) change. Please DO NOT emphasize the guaranteed bid portion, or mention any specific investors." Typically the Treasury holds weekly auctions and investors can buy up bonds directly or via 20 primary dealers. China had used multiple firms to buy U.S. Treasuries through purchases dubbed "guaranteed bidding" and to U.S. officials it would appear as though the firms were adding them to their own portfolio. Reuters reports: China was forging gentleman's agreements with primary dealers to purchase a certain amount of Treasury securities on offer at an auction without being reported as bidders in that auction, according to the people interviewed. After setting the amount of Treasuries the guaranteed bidder wanted to buy, the dealer would then buy that amount in the auction, technically on its own behalf. Because firms aren't prevented from later selling them on a secondary market this isn't illegal, breaching the 35% limit and acquiring a control stake however is. On June 1, 2009 officials changed the Uniform Offering Circular to prevent guaranteed bidding. Immediately, the auctions saw a jump in bids through primary dealers (in the absence of guaranteed dealers) skyrocketed after the ruling. Meanwhile Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, RBS Securities and UBS were all approached for secret bid arrangements. U.S. officials have been wary of the massive political clout such moves give the Asian giant. Moreover, if China suddenly decided to dump its treasuries it would push interest rates higher crushing U.S. markets. In a bid to mollify investors, officials have since raised the amount of securities it was possible to buy at a single auction from $750 million, to $2 billion. Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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SMBs using a powerful email archiving solution are likely to reap higher benefits with 100% ROI and enhanced work processes. The critical part, however, is in choosing the right archiving solution, given the unlimited choice of well-packaged products for small to medium businesses by vendors and the emerging cloud-based archival solutions. Email Archiving Solutions Email archiving is a stand-alone IT application that integrates with an enterprise email server, such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino. In addition to simply accumulating email messages, these applications index and provide quick, searchable access to archived messages independent of the users of the system. The reasons a small business may opt to implement an email archiving solution include protection of critical data, record retention for regulatory requirements or litigation, and reducing production email server load. A study produced by Radicati Group in October 2009 estimated that the world-wide market for archiving will grow from nearly $2.1 billion in 2009 to over $5.1 billion in 2013 Third party products such as Zantaz, SourceOne and Enterprise Vault have dominated the market place, and come with a separate email infrastructure. Nevertheless, excellent products, which integrate messaging solutions like the Microsoft Exchange and the Novell GroupWise are popular too. Third Party Solutions Messaging software developers are sprucing up their built-in email archiving processes, and SMBs have another alternative to explore. However, third party solutions will be around in the future too, to achieve compliance standards. The third party solutions will depend of how you want your business archiving structure-regulatory compliance or for saving deleted accounts. Secondly, it should integrate existing messaging, storing, as well as supporting data. Thirdly, policy management, search, reports, user interface, retrieval need to be analyzed. On-Site Solutions Email archiving with on-premise could be through virtual machines or standalone appliances such as Barracuda Networks. Today, about 75 percent of all archiving solutions are still being sold as on-premises products, whereas only 25 percent of archiving solutions are being sold as hosted services. Cloud-Based Solutions SMBs who are on cloud migration or entering cloud computing should look at cloud archiving solutions through the SaaS or Software As A Service solution for lower entry costs and nominal monthly subscriptions. Typically a fraction of the cost of on-premise systems, cloud-based email archiving is budget friendly with a per mailbox, per month pricing structure. Plus, there is no need for expensive hardware or software purchases, and with a fully managed archiving solution, you and your staff can focus on other important business objectives rather than maintaining the systems necessary to run it. How to Choose the Best One for Your Small Business - Low costs – an all inclusive entry cost, training costs and integration costs
- Time scales involved in deployment and implementation
- Level of interoperability and live support offered
- If migratory solutions are offered
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I received an email from an entrepreneur today asking me about something that made my stomach turn. It’s a first time entrepreneur who is raising a modest (< $750k) seed round). There are two founders and they’ve been talking to a VC they met several months ago. Recently, the VC told them he was leaving his firm and wanted to help them out. This was obviously appealing until he dropped the bomb that prompted their question to me. This soon to be ex-VC said something to the effect of “I can easily raise you money with a couple of phone calls, but I want to be a co-founder of the company and have an equal share of the business.” In my email exchange with the entrepreneur, I asked two questions. The first was “is he going to be full time with the company” and the other was “do you want him as a third full time partner.” The answer was no and no. More specifically, the VC was positioning himself as “the founder that would help raise the money.” I dug a little deeper to find out who the person was in case it was just a random dude looking for gig flow. David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars, has written extensively about this in our book Do More Faster – for example, see the chapter Beware of Angel Investors Who Aren’t. I was shocked when I saw the name of the person and the firm he has been with (and is leaving) – it’s someone who has been in the VC business for a while and should know better. I find this kind of behavior disgusting. If the person was offering to put in $25k – $100k in the round and asking for 1% or 2% as an “active advisor” to help out with the company, I’d still be skeptical of the equity ask at this stage and encourage the founders to (a) vest it over time and (b) make sure there was a tangible commitment associated with it that was different from other investors. Instead, given the facts I was given, my feedback was to run far away, fast. Entrepreneurs – beware. This is the kind of behavior that gives investors a bad name. Unfortunately, my impression of this particular person is that he’s not a constructive early stage investor but rather someone who is trying to prey on naive entrepreneurs. Whenever the markets heat up, this kind of thing starts happening. Just be careful out there.
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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel yesterday came out with a surprisingly hardline stance toward organized labor, telling the city's powerful unions that he will lay off 625 workers if they don't agree to cost cuts. Emanuel's ultimatum comes just one day before a two-year agreement, requiring unionized city employees to take 24 unpaid furlough days, is set to expire. The city's current budget, passed under former Mayor Richard Daley, only balanced if the savings continued until the end of the calendar year, but Daley failed to negotiate an extension with the unions. Now, Emanuel must figure out how to trim $30 million from this year's budget. He has rejected furloughs as "demoralizing", but said yesterday that he has identified about $20 million in savings through "work rule and workplace reforms and efficiencies," according to the Chicago Tribune. Union leaders told the Chicago Sun Times that they would not accept any cost cuts associated with the expiration of the deal tonight. The unions have hired an "expert municipal budget analyst" to come up with an alternative proposal for how the city can save money, which they plan to deliver in the coming weeks. That may be too late. “We are collectively as a city on a deadline, and I’m gonna operate accordingly," Emanuel said Wednesday. "I’m not gonna just sit here and wait.” He wouldn't say whether he plans to send the 30-day layoff notices when the deal expires tonight. The exchange is likely a harbinger for future labor clashes as Emanuel tries to tackle Chicago's dire financial problems. In the coming months, the administration will have to cut more $650 million to balance the 2012 budget; City Hall unions are an obvious target — employee payroll costs make up 83% of the city's spending. Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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Americans are overwhelmingly pessimistic about their own future and about the fate of their country, according to a new poll by Penn Shoen Berland presented at this week's Aspen Ideas Festival. Sixty-eight percent of Americans think the last decade showed a marked decline in American life. Most applicants do not expect things to improve in the near future. Largely due to the election of Barack Obama, minorities are an exception to this overwhelmingly pessimistic trend. Whites tend to view the last decade as one of the worst of the last century. African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than others to say that the quality of life in America has improved. African-Americans mostly like to say decade has shown progress 
Republicans and elderly most likely to say it has been a decade of decline 
Biggest decade trends are economic 
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 WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Maria Sharapova overcame a poor serve Thursday to reach her second Wimbledon final, where she will meet Petra Kvitova.
The fifth-seeded Russian beat Sabine Lisicki 6-4, 6-3 despite 13 double-faults. Earlier, Kvitova defeated fourth-seeded Victoria Azarenka 6-1, 3-6, 6-2. Both winners struggled on Centre Court. Sharapova trailed 3-0 in the first set, but then won 12 of the final 16 games to advance. Kvitova easily won the first set but had trouble in the second before recovering to reach her first Grand Slam final. Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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The Microsoft Investor is a daily report from SAI. Sign up here to receive it by email.
 MSFT Continues To Soar
The markets are on the rise including the S&P 500, which is poised for a technical breakout as the Greece debt crisis unwinds. Shares of MSFT have been on a roll, up 6% on the week. Currently the shares are adding to their gains. Upcoming catalysts include second calendar quarter results to be released in July; the company's Analyst Day at its new developer conference (BUILD) in September; Windows Phone 7 / Mango adoption with hardware partner Nokia; strides against current market leaders in cloud computing; entrance in the tablet market at some point; making money in the online business including integration of Skype and improving the search / display business (see below); and continued evolution of Kinect and the next generation Xbox console. The stock currently trades at 8x Enterprise Value / TTM Free Cash Flow, inexpensive compared to historical trading multiples.
Office 365 Could Give Google A Run For Its Money (PC World)
For the launch of its first full-fledged online office suite, Office 365, Microsoft is paying particular attention to small and medium-size businesses. Ballmer dropped the names of large companies already using Microsoft cloud services, including DuPont, Hyatt, Starbucks and Volvo. Office 365 combines access to Exchange e-mail, Lync messaging, SharePoint collaboration, the Office Web Apps, all into one monthly subscription. With new collaboration tools like Lync and SharePoint Online, and Web-based versions of staples like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Office 365 should give Google a run in this market. Microsoft Nails Another Company To Pay Royalties On Patents In Connection With Android (SlashGear)
Velocity Micro has become the second company this week to agree to pay royalties to Microsoft to use the Android platform. Earlier this week, General Dynamics entered into a similar agreement for mobile devices, joining HTC. The exact terms of the deal have not been made public, nor exactly what either company will be paying Microsoft. A recent report states that Microsoft has made five times more from Android than their own Windows Phone 7. Yes, that's without building, supporting, or developing a single Android device. Microsoft Granted Patent To Secretly Intercept, Monitor And Record Skype Calls (InformationWeek)
Microsoft has been granted a patent for technology that acts as a wiretap of sorts for Internet communication, allowing governments or other law-enforcement authorities to record the data without detection. The newly patented technology called Legal Intercept would allow the company to secretly intercept, monitor and record Skype calls. This is clearly stoking privacy concerns. Basically Microsoft bought Skype to spy on us. Lovely. Ballmer Fights Back At The Critics, By Yelling (GeekWire)
There's a great audio clip of Ballmer speaking at the Seattle Rotary Club where someone asked him for his reaction to people that say it's time for him to leave. He bellowed as only he can, "YOU TELL ME IF I LACK ENERGY OR CONVICTION, or we're not driving all the change we need to drive." I don't think anyone has ever questioned Ballmer's energy or conviction. It's always been about his ability to execute and see around the corner that has been under question. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story » See Also:
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TweetThe eloquent bar chart here speaks long and loud about changing the marketing mix. It shows where marketers report their business lead come from. Look at it and tell me what it says about the businesses that aren't at all online: I picked this chart out of literally dozens of great charts related to marketing, media, advertising and such offered for free in Hubspot's Marketing Data Box. I realize I frequently criticize survey results and the conclusions people draw, but I love a whole lot of data condensed into a good-looking chart (like this one) so much that I don't even want to drill down into the methodologies and poke holes in the conclusions. What I draw from this chart goes back to the absolute fundamentals with the concept of the marketing mix, with emphasis on the word mix. I don't think every business should run from everything on the right of this chart over to everything on the left. I think it's a mix because you're sending messages to different people using different media, hoping to optimize results from a given unit of resources. I do think you have to take a fresh look at regular intervals, so you change your business plan to keep pace with changes in the business landscape. Share and Enjoy:
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