Author: Serkadis

Online bank Ally has launched a new free online checking account that looks pretty decent. Free ATM access, free online bill pay, free checks, with no monthly minimum balance or maintenance fees. And get this, insufficient fund fees are only $9. That’s not per item, that’s just $9 for every day you are overdrawn.

Also, 24/7 customer support via phone, chat, and email, an free electronic fund transfers, overdraft service transfers and cashier’s checks.

.5% APR on balances up to $15,000.

There are, of course, a few fees that you can incur. Here they are:

Fees
Monthly Maintenance $0.00
Non-Sufficient Funds (daily maximum fee, no per item fee) $9.00
Stop Payment Item $15.00
Returned Deposit Item $7.50

Services
Ally standard checks, prices vary on custom check styles $0.00
Official/Cashier’s Checks $0.00
Check images online $0.00
Statement copies online $0.00
Incoming & Outgoing Collections (domestic & international) $0.00
Incoming Wires (domestic & international) $0.00
Outgoing Wires (domestic & international) $20.00
Expedited Delivery for items: debit card, checks, etc. $15.00

Seems pretty okay. Do you use online checking? Where do you bank? Sound off in the comments.

Now that Apple’s iPad has launched, what can you do with it? What kind of new and existing applications will we see on this new Apple product line? Apple has released an updated software development kit with an iPad simulator to encourage developers to create new applications or revised versions of existing ones.

The iPad, with an updated version of the iPhone operating system, can utilize the approximately 140,000 applications currently in Apple’s App Store, but there are limitations. The main one is that those applications were developed for the smaller screens of the iPhone and iPod touch.

Doubling an App’s Pixels

Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, attended the iPad launch and tested “a lot of applications.” He noted that existing apps run on the iPad in a boxed window. Within the box, he said, the resolution is fine, “but it’s just too small” when seen on the iPad. He noted that an on-screen button enables doubling the pixels of the app, so it fills the screen.

“For some apps,” Greengart said, “that works fine,” such as the popular Bejeweled game, where the small jewels become larger. But for other applications, he noted, this artificial resolution is not very satisfactory.

The additional screen real estate also gives more room for interaction and information. Greengart noted that office-productivity programs are available for the iPhone and iPod touch, but the screen size and lack of a keyboard greatly restrain a user’s ability to accomplish work. On the iPad, users can work more normally. In addition to the larger screen size, an iPad dock for connecting a keyboard is being released.

Greengart also pointed to a Major League Baseball application designed specifically for the iPad, which was shown at the launch. The iPhone version, he said, is intended for “quick hits of information,”…

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A friend recently admitted a favorite past time of his – watching plane crashes on YouTube. Planes crashing, helicopters twirling out of control, boats sinking – all are fair game. For a lot of people, this has been the story of the iPad over the past few days. While some of us take the higher ground, others revel in off-color jokes and nitpicking the different ways the iPad will be Apple’s biggest mistake ever.

TweetFeel, a sentiment analysis tool that uses tweets as its data set, offers us a snapshot of this darker side of the iPad.

Sponsor

According to an email from Andres Burgos, the project lead for TweetFeel, the company collected almost a half a million tweets since Steve Jobs took the stage on Wednesday, “cleaned the hell out of them and scored about 40,000″ and found an overall positive sentiment, hovering at around 60%. But this isn’t the fun part. Nobody wants to watch people gush, so let’s take a look at how that other 40% breaks down.

Some good news for Apple might be that a solid 38% of the negative has only to do with making fun of the name “iPad”, something even potential customers might find themselves doing because it’s just too easy.

After that, however, the biggest section of tweets complained that the iPad is merely a larger version of the iTouch or iPod. This could be a bit more serious, as it shows that people don’t see the iPad as fulfilling a need. From here, we have the final 35%, with the lack of a camera and flash running neck in neck. The inability to multitask and potential network problems round up the Twitterverse’s displeasure with the device.

We think it’s this last 35% that really has some substance, as we’ve seen a number of articles focusing on these very points.

When it comes to that positive side, that 60% majority, however, Burgos said the sentiment becomes quite simple and the news for Apple is certainly good.

“The positive tweets are mostly folks saying things like ‘It’s awesome’ [and] ‘I want one’,” he wrote. “When looking at Apple products, the positive responses are usually very ‘Koolaid-esque’ meaning they don’t really say why they like it but just that they do..and they want.”

Discuss

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Google doesn’t want to leave China. It just wants to fix it.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland today, CEO Eric Schmidt said he really doesn’t want to shutter Google’s (GOOG) operations in China, he’d just like the company to have more of a role in shaping its domestic policy.

“We like what China is doing in terms of growth … we just don’t like censorship,” he said. “We hope that will change and we can apply some pressure to make things better for the Chinese people.”

Asked later what it might take for Google to remain in China — aside from pull more Internet users than the total population of the United States — Schmidt replied, “We would very much like to stay in China. We would very much like the censorship we oppose to improve in China.”

Sadly, that doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon. Certainly, the public and confrontational manner in which Google has chosen to approach the issue has not gone over well with the Chinese government which seems unlikely to capitulate. Meanwhile, Google rivals are making it known that they are perfectly willing to step in if and when the search sovereign should leave the country. Consider this treatise on Sino-Redmondian relations from Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer:

Engagement in China and around the world is very important to us, in part because we believe it accelerates access to 21st century technology and services and helps provide the widest possible range of ideas and information.  We have done business in China for more than 20 years and we intend to stay engaged, which means our business must respect the laws of China. That’s true for every company doing business in countries around the world: we are all subject to local laws.
 
At the same time, Microsoft is opposed to restrictions on peaceful political expression, and we have conversations with governments to make our views known.  In every country in which we operate, including China, Microsoft requires proper legal authority before we remove any Internet content; and if we remove content, we give users notice.

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Lenovo introduces AMD-based IdeaPad G455A for China originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, hand-held phone bans have no effect on the frequency of car crashes. Wait, what?

Now, this seems different from specifically texting while driving, which is demonstrably dangerous. But in the four states the IIHS studied, the implementation of a ban on hand-held phones behind the wheel made no difference in the number of accidents:

Month-to-month fluctuations in rates of collision claims in jurisdictions with bans didn’t change from before to after the laws were enacted. Nor did the patterns change in comparison with trends in jurisdictions that didn’t have such laws.

Honestly, this makes some sense, given that it’s not phones themselves that are the problem, but the distraction they cause. There are plenty of other legal methods of taking your eyes off the road, and a hands-free conversation isn’t necessarily any safer than one where you’ve got your phone in your hand.

It’s unlikely that this will cause any states with bans of cellphone use while driving to backtrack, but it may force other local governments to look a little more broadly at what’s behind all those collisions. [NY Times via IIHS]

Yesterday, the League of Conservation Voters designated Blanche Lincoln one of it’s “Dirty Dozen” for her opposition to the climate bill.

LCV gave the moderate Democrat a lifetime score of 49 percent on environmental issues, the second lowest for any Democrat up for reelection this year.

“Most regrettable is the fact that Sen. Lincoln is walking away from her previous support for climate legislation — and given the scope, urgency and magnitude of this issue, she has more than earned a spot on LCV’s Dirty Dozen,” said Gene Karpinski, LCV president.

Blanche’s response? Punch the hippies.

“I have built a practical, common-sense record on energy and environmental issues while working closely with Arkansas environmental advocates,” Lincoln said, in the release.  “Threats from extremist groups from outside our state tell me I’m doing something right for Arkansas.”

It’s so incredibly helpful to the Democratic Party to have one of its own use “liberal” as a pejorative in their press releases.

A little while ago, we had a rather long and heated discussion over the question of whether or not embedding/hotlinking is infringement when the original content is hosted/served from elsewhere (in an authorized manner). I cannot see a truly defensible legal explanation for how that is infringing (the content exists solely in two places — the original server and the browser of the user, both of which are authorized). However, some lawyers clearly disagree. Over in the Netherlands, in fact, a court has disagreed and claimed that embedding is, in fact, infringement. While I think this is a poor ruling that makes little sense, there’s something more interesting in this particular ruling (sent in by an anonymous reader). It turns out that, in explaining why embedding should be considered infringing, the judges plagiarized the exact wording of a blog post by a Dutch lawyer.

Now, plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different (though sometimes overlapping) things, but it does seem a bit ironic — and even under Dutch copyright law, this bit of copying could be seen as infringement as well. Apparently, the judges directly cut and pasted the following two sentences:

“in case law and legal literature it is generally held that an embedded link constitutes a publication. After all, the material can be viewed or heard within the context of the website of those who placed the link, and placement causes the material to reach a new audience.”

The exact quote above came from a blog post by lawyer Douwe Linders, who had no idea the judges were going to copy it. While it seems like a simple quote like this should be perfectly legal in any context, let alone a legal decision, the discussion of this notes that while Dutch copyright law does let you quote short bits of content from others for a variety of reasons, it requires attribution. In this particular case, no attribution was provided.

What makes it even worse, of course, is that the quoted/plagiarized/infringing bit might not even be accurate. As we discussed in our own post on the subject, there appears to be significant disagreement over whether or not embedding authorized content could be seen as infringing — and apparently, there is a widespread debate about it in Dutch legal circles as well, saying that it is far from readily agreed upon in the legal literature.

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Filed under: Safety, Technology

This one doesn’t surprise us one bit and we’ll explain why in a moment. Until then, clock this: a Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) study determined that laws banning the use of hand-held phones have no effect on the crash rate. None, as in zero effect. Says HLDI and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety president Adrian Lund, “The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use.” So there you go, drivers get into an equal number of crashes with or without cell phones.

As to why we aren’t surprised by the HLDI’s findings, two reasons… well, really three. The first being that over the last decade and a half there has been an exponential increase in American cell phone usage. We went from only yuppies walking around with Gordon Gekko sized brick phones to nearly everyone having a mobile phone. If cell phones and driving are as dangerous as certain state lawmakers were led to believe, we would have seen a similar exponential rise in accidents. But, we never saw one. Instead, it was just one big hysterical case of causation without correlation.

The second reason is something Ford showed us while we were checking out their new MyFord Touch technology. Ford engineers were explaining just how crazy dangerous it is to text while driving. According to Ford’s data, texting while driving is 23 times their baseline as dangerous as just plain old driving – by far the most dangerous activity you can engage in behind the wheel. Looking at FoMoCo’s chart we noticed that hands-free cell phone usage registered a +1 in terms of danger – statistically insignificant. However, talking on a hand-held cell phone recorded -1, less accidents occurred in Ford’s study when people were talking on a hand-held phone than when they were just driving. That said, -1 is statistically nothing.

Our third reason is more observational than data of science based, though it does square with the HLDI’s findings: people seem to drive just as lousy phone or no phone. Wake up and drive people.

[Source: HLDI News | Photo: Corbis]

Study: Laws banning hand-held phones do not reduce crashes originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony’s PSP handheld has grabbed the top spot in Media Create’s Japanese hardware charts for the third week straight. PSP sales a couple of weeks ago were bouyed up by Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep’s release, and

Might We Suggest…

• HTC Supersonic Screen Grab Has Us SuperExcited, Confused
  We’re not even sure where to begin with this one.  Just this week we reported that an upcoming WiMAX-enabled handset called the Supersonic was headed to Sprint.  If you look at the picture to the left…

Filed under: Europe, Recalls, Toyota

As expected, Toyota Europe announced details today surrounding the recall of cars for defective accelerator pedal mechanisms that began in the U.S. Like the U.S. recall that involves 2.3 million vehicles across eight model lines, the European recall also involves eight models: the Auris, Avensis, Aygo, Corolla, iQ, RAV4 Verso and Yaris. All told, about 1.8 million vehicles are involved.

Unlike in the U.S., Toyota Europe will not be suspending production of any models because replacement parts are already being used at its various assembly plants. What’s interesting to note is that some of those plants are located in Japan, specifically ones that build the Corolla and RAV4. Until now, the reason given for all Lexus and Scion models being excluded from the recall was that they were built exclusively in Toyota’s native country and used an accelerator pedal mechanism sourced from a different supplier, not CTS Corp. that manufactured the defective part for North American plants.

Whether or not this means the recall could be expanded even further, perhaps to include vehicles from other Toyota brands, remains to be seen, but the fact that the defective part in question has now popped up on the other side of the Atlantic suggests that the problem lies in its design and not how it was manufactured by the supplier.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req.]

Officially Official: Toyota Europe recalling 8 models, 1.8 million cars originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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$1.2 Billion will Fund Chicago to St. Louis Corridor; Create 6,000 Jobs

Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin kicked off a series of announcements in Chicago today to discuss details about Illinois’ $1.2 billion federal award to bring high-speed passenger rail service to Illinois by 2014.

Illinois is among only three states to receive at least $1 billion for high-speed passenger rail, which will make the trip between Chicago and St. Louis faster than driving and will provide new train equipment.

“Illinois was one of only three states in the country to receive over $1 billion for high speed rail. We appreciate the confidence of President Obama to bring high-speed rail to Illinois,” said Gov. Quinn.

“Thanks to hard work and perseverance, our vision to have Illinois serve as the nation’s high speed rail hub is becoming a reality, bringing jobs and economic growth to our communities.”

The Obama Administration announced the competitive awards Thursday as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) program. The investment from the federal government is expected to create approximately 6,000 jobs in Illinois.

Illinois received the third largest award among 31 states chosen to share in the $8 billion made available nationwide for high-speed passenger rail. Thirty-seven states applied for funding.

“Investing $1.2 billion into improving our rail system is going to mean more jobs – jobs for today and jobs for the future,” said Senator Durbin. “Today’s announcement assures that Chicago, already a major rail hub of the nation, will soon become the major high-speed rail hub of the Midwest and nation.

“Today, President Obama’s vision is bringing high-speed rail to Illinois and the rest of the United States,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. “This groundbreaking program will put many people back to work in Chicago and across the country, and it will also help transform transportation for the entire Midwest region.”

Illinois’ high-speed rail signature route, Chicago to St. Louis, will receive $1.1 billion for corridor improvements. Improvements to this 284 mile route will allow passenger rail service to operate at speeds up to 110 mph, reducing the total trip time from Chicago to St. Louis by over an hour.

The improvements include an overhaul of track, signal systems and existing stations as well as the implementation of state-of-the-art train control technology that will improve train safety. In addition, Illinois will receive $1.25 million to complete an environmental impact study for a second track along the same route.

The award for Illinois includes $133 million to build the Englewood Flyover on Chicago’s South Side, a Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) project which will clear one of the largest rail bottlenecks in the nation.

The improvement will eliminate significant delays for commuter trains, Amtrak trains and freight trains.

“This is great news for Illinois and the Midwest,” said Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig.

“I commend President Obama, Governor Quinn, Senator Durbin and the entire Midwest region for their leadership and commitment through a long and competitive process. I also want to express my gratitude to the staff at the Illinois Department of Transportation who have remained focused and dedicated on efforts to make high-speed passenger rail a reality in Illinois.”

Thanks to multi-state steering group formed by Governor Quinn, Illinois will benefit from awards to several other neighboring states that make up the Chicago Hub Network.

The region received a total of $2.6 billion – more than any other regional network. The network is designed to connect cities throughout the region to Chicago with reliable high-speed and conventional intercity rail service.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) received 259 grant applications from 37 states and the District of Columbia requesting nearly $57 billion in funding – far exceeding the initial $8 billion available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

In total, 79 applications from 31 States were selected for funding.

For more information on the awards to Illinois and the other Midwestern states for high-speed rail, go to MidwestRail.org.

Everybody’s favorite cable company filed a public interest statement with the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday, explaining why Comcast’s proposed joint venture with NBC Universal (NBCU) will be, well, just a beautiful thing for everyone.

“By bringing together NBC’s high-quality content with the technology and innovation of Comcast’s technology platform, the new venture will increase the amount, quality, variety, and availability of content more than either company could on its own, which will promote diversity,” declared Comcast’s Public Policy Veep David Cohen on his policy blog. “The new venture will also provide more and better local programming, including local news and information programming, advancing localism.”

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A pair of papers that appear in this week’s edition of Nature report on
some interesting astrophysical observations. Two teams from different
continents have found supernovae that have an anomalous
feature: matter is moving away from them at significant fractions of the
speed of light—0.60c and 0.86c. The well known explosion dynamics of a supernova shouldn’t produce that sort of acceleration; in a typical supernova event, matter shouldn’t reach velocities much
beyond three percent the speed of light.

Speeds this great are often associated with gamma ray bursts, but these observations were missing that key component.
“In every respect, these objects look like gamma-ray bursts—except
that they produced no gamma rays,” said Alicia Soderberg, lead author
of one of the papers. Her team examined SN
2009bb, a supernova in the spiral galaxy NGC 3278, nearly 130 million
light years from Earth. The other team examined SN 2007gr, a supernova in spiral galaxy NGC
1058, a scant 35 million light years from Earth.

Using NASA records of known gamma ray bursts, the teams
attempted to find an event that had a spatial and temporal correlation with the supernovae, but none was
identified. Typical gamma ray bursts are thought to be the result of
the acceleration of matter by a black hole, with the matter reaching nearly 99 percent the speed of light. The fast-moving matter here suggests that these supernovae are powered in part by a nascent black
hole at the center left behind after the core collapse.

Casting a wider net for nearby supernovae suggest that these
‘central engine’ driven type Ib/c supernovae are fairly rare, only
accounting for about one percent of all cases. However, the work
provides a new tool for astronomers to be able to detect them in the future. “These observations are the first to show some
supernovae are powered
by a central engine,” Soderberg said. “These new radio techniques now
give us a way to find explosions that resemble gamma-ray bursts without
relying on detections from gamma-ray satellites.”

Nature,
2010. DOI: 10.1038/nature08714
Nature,
2010. DOI: 10.1038/nature08713

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Gov. Pat Quinn endorsed Joseph Berrios for Cook County Assessor in next Tuesday’s Democratic Primary.

“I am proud to have Gov. Quinn’s endorsement and thankful for his friendship over many years,” Berrios said today.

“I look forward to making the Cook County Assessor’s office the most responsive it’s been to taxpayers.”

Among the nearly 90 organizations, newspapers and elected officials who have endorsed Berrios are:

Advocate Society, AFSME, Association of Polish-American Attorneys, Chicago Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2, Cook County Democratic Party, Fraternal Order of Police Chicago Lodge #7, Hispanic American Labor Council, Journeymen Plasterers’ Protective and Benevolent Society of Chicago, Local No. 5, Local Union 597 Chicago Pipe Fitters, Operating Engineers Local 150 and United Hellenic Voters of America; Chicago Crusader, Evanston Sentinel, Polish Daily News and Southwest News-Herald;

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White; State Senators John Cullerton, James DeLeo, Ricky Hendon, Martin Sandoval and Louis Viverito; State Representatives Edward Acevedo, Maria Berrios, Daniel Burke, Marlow Colvin, John D’Amico, Anthony DeLuca, Mary Flowers, Esther Golar, Greg Harris, Joseph Lyons and Kevin McCarthy; Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart; Cook County Board Commissioners Jerry Butler and Deborah Sims; Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioners Frank Avila, Gloria Alitto Majewski, Kathleen Therese Meany and Mariyana Spyropoulos;

Chicago Aldermen Thomas Allen, James Balcer, Walter Burnett Jr., George Cardenas, Vi Daley, Sharon Dixon, Brian Doherty, Pat Dowell, Toni Foulkes, Margaret Laurino, Patrick LeVar, Lona Lane, Freddrenna Lyle, Richard Mell, Frank Olivo, Toni Preckwinkle, John Pope, Danny Solis, Bernard Stone, JoAnn Thompson and Michael Zalewski; Cook County Committeemen Randy Barnette, Maggie Crotty, Wilbert Crowley, Patricia Cullerton, Charles Hernandez, Jesse Juarez, Steven Landek, Lou Lang, Michael Looney, Robert Lovero, Dean Maragos, Robert Martwick, Terry Matthews, Brian McPartlin, Antonio Munoz, Mary O’Connor, Barrett Pedersen, Bill Powers, Robert Rita, Tom Sharpe, Samuel Simone, Edward Smollen, Rocco Terranova and Frank Zuccarelli.

Berrios has been a commissioner on the Board of Review since 1988. Prior to being elected five times to that post, he served three terms as an Illinois state representative.

He is chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party and Committeeman of the 31st Ward.

Berrios was the first Hispanic elected chairman of the party, a commissioner to the Board of Review and to the Illinois General Assembly.

In today’s Gartman Letter, analyst Dennis Gartman veers off course for a moment to discuss Russia and its impact on the world’s grain market.

It appears Russia is poised to control 9% of world trade by 2015. A scary thought for anyone involved in commodities or trade.

The Gartman Letter: Turning then to the grain markets, we found an interesting article this morning noting that the United Grain Company in Russia has issued a press release stating that it hopes to control 9% of the world trade by 2015. Further, UGC expects its annual exports of grain from Russia to reach 8 million metric tons in the next two years. A metric tonne of corn is approximately 40 bushels of corn or just under 37 bushels of wheat. Doing the rough math, 8 million metric tonnes is approximately 310 million bushels of “grain.” United Grain is aggressive if nothing else.

But this is not the important part of the press release. What was really important was buried a bit deeper into the press released, for there the company….which also acts as the Russian government’s official agent in grain trading in many instances…. expects it shall sell 4 million tonnes of grain from the state’s stockpiles this calendar year and expects to sell another 7 million tonnes next year. In the process the government will see its stockpile of grain fall to 5 million tonnes by 2011 from 8 million tons at the start of this year. Now that has our bullish attention, and certainly we shall keep that in mind going forward.

Nonetheless, the trend in the grain markets remains downward; the size of the US crop remains huge; demand seems, for the moment, to be a bit more demure than it was thought only a short while ago, and farmer selling remains an overhead problem.

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See Also:

• Gartman: Here’s How The Chinese Tightening Could Prick The Real Estate Bubble, But Help Inflate Stocks
• Gartman: Why The Nation’s Crude Refiners Have Turned Into Storers
• Dennis Gartman Goes Ape On Obama’s Banker War, Accuses President Of Being Anti-Capitalist