Author: Serkadis

The cream of the American OEM, aftermarket and racing automotive world will be inducted into the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame today, in recognition of their merits. Those to enter the hall of fame are Jack Roush, Roger Penske, Rusty Wallace and Robert Yates.

"Jack Roush’s induction to the NMPA Hall of Fame is a well deserved honor for a man who has impacted not only NASCAR but racing with his innovations and ingenuity throughout his career, Dustin Long, President, … (read more)

As expected, Apple just responded to Nokia’s ITC request to ban Apple device imports with a US embargo request of its very own. Notice of Apple’s complaint (without any detail) was posted yesterday on the website of the International Trade Commission — a government agency tasked with protecting the US market from unfair trade practices. As you might recall, the whole Nokia v. Apple legal spat started with Nokia suing Apple for infringing upon Nokia patents relating to GSM, UMTS, and WiFi; a claim later expanded to include “implementation patents” covering a wide range of items including camera sensors and touchscreens. While the ITC hasn’t agreed to investigate either Nokia’s or Apple’s complaints, it is customary to do so with investigations usually taking about 15 months to complete. We’ll post more when the details of Apple’s patent infringement complaint are revealed.

Apple retaliates: requests US import ban on Nokia phones originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Korean Air subsidiary Jin Air has a new trick up its sleeve for entertaining passengers going to and fro South Korea. The airline is now offering a 16GB PSP Go to rent for in-flight gaming. No clue what games are on the device, but it’s probably the best 4,000 won (about $3.50) you can spend — assuming, that is, there’s more than a sudoku app.

Korean Air subsidiary renting out PSP Go consoles for in-flight gaming originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You probably don’t clean your computer screen very often
and it is really hard to do the inside,
so here  is my present to you.

click on the word  “here”  above and wait for a few seconds and the inside of your screen will be cleaned for you!

Article Tags: Frederick Forsyth

THE doom-and-disaster stories pour upon us from our wintry landscape but it is nice to note that some of the catastrophes never happened.

What about Mexican swine flu? All right, we are having the usual seasonal winter flu but do you recall the now retiring government chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson telling us of the apocalypse that was coming upon us all?

Sixty five thousand corpses, we were promised. We’d be tripping over them come muck-spreading, he said. We needed a trillion doses of Tamiflu, he said. Visions were unavoidable of handcarts pulled through the streets to the cry of “Bring out your dead”.

Nostradamus was portrayed as an optimist compared with Sir Liam D. It seems to have gone the way of the Millennium Bug, the computer virus that during the first seconds of 2000 AD would destroy every cyber-gizmo we have and terminate civilisation as we know it. Never happened.

Source: dailyexpress.co.uk

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends, 

• Are mortgage bankers getting smarter about compensation? We’re finally seeing some pushback on the outrageous commission splits we used to see, and 90-10 splits seem to be going the way of the dinosaur.  We’re also seeing salaries in general adjusting downward compared to 2005-06.
• Four years ago, we saw Ops managers at $150,000 a year.  We saw that drop to $90,000 as the mortgage world started collapsing in 2007 and then watched it fall even lower in 2008.  It’s coming back, but it’s still a long way from the peak a few years ago.
• A hero has died, Miep Gies passing away last week at age 100.   She was the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family in her Amsterdam apartment during the Nazi occupation.  If we could name some sort of award to people who act who display great courage, we’d call it the Miep Gies Award.
• With Mark McGwire admitting the obvious about his steroid use, it’s time to remember the true record holder for the most home runs in one season.  Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961, passing Babe Ruth by one. Yes, we know he played in a longer season, but the asterisk next to his record is long gone.  The movie about him (*61)  is worth renting.

The middle photo of McGwire was when he was right out of college, and we remember him vividly as a tall, lanky, scrawny 1^st baseman for the Oakland A’s.  The third photo is when scrawny Mark started doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.  At least Arnold admitted his steroid use from the start.

• We got a few e-mails about our thumbs down on Up in the Air, and watching George Clooney travel from city to city made us think of Willie Loman.  How can you be in the housing finance business and not think about Death of a Salesman?  Willie Loman’s last act before taking his life was making the final payment on his mortgage, and the man who spent a lifetime in search of the American Dream finally achieved a piece of that dream by owning his home free and clear.  In fact, his wife’s last words at the gravesite were “Willie, why did you do it?  We’re free and clear, Willie, free and clear.” A few parts of the play feel dated (it was written 61 years ago) but it’s still a timeless piece of literature.  And isn’t it interesting that paying off one’s mortgage was once such a big party of the American Dream?
• We hate to be cynical, but sometimes we think people view the American Dream as getting a cash-out refinance at 4.5%.

• Look up the performance of AmeriCredit’s sub-prime auto loan portfolio.  Their 30 day delinquencies were 9.3% in December and their 61+ day lates were only 3.09%.  That looks pretty good compared to subprime mortgages, doesn’t it?  Wouldn’t you think subprime auto loans would be a bigger disaster than subprime residential? But think about all the gardeners and contractors who depend on their Toyota pick-ups to carry their tools when they go to work.  The theory is that you can always sleep in your truck, but you can’t drive your house to work.
• Although it was filmed fifty years ago, Splendor in the Grass may still be the most poignant story of young love ever made. Here’s the final segment of that movie, and if you haven’t seen it, this just might inspire you to rent the movie:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylal5gfj_kY&feature=related.  Watch it with your wife or husband or date.  Shocking as it might sounds, you could even take your spouse asyour date.
• We meet a lot of bank Presidents, and they always impress the heck out of us. When things are going well, it’s the most fun job in the world, but in tough times like these, it’s probably the toughest job in the world.  If we really did get to pass out Miep Gies Awards for sheer courage, we’d give them to all the bank Presidents we know.
• We’ve done a fair amount of Due Diligence for banks acquiring mortgage banking companies lately, and if you’re a bank which is thinking about buying one, check out page nine of the January 15^th American Banker.  They ran an article we wrote on the things banks must look at prior to an acquisition.  One example is that lots of banks want to project earnings once their capital allows the mortgage company to really grow its volume.  That’s fine, but we like to show the acquiring bank what things will look like if margins drop by 30% and volume drops by 50%.
• We’ve said it many, many times, but we still think most of the regulators’ criticism of brokered deposits is misplaced.  They seem to think that brokered deposits cause management to make bad loans, but it’s really the opposite.  Banks that make bad loans tend to use brokered deposits. The bad loans come first. And let’s remember that correlation is not causation.  Crack down on bad loans, not brokered deposits.
• Speaking of banks, we were just at NexBank in Dallas , and our hotel was in nearby Frisco.  If you’re from San Francisco , that will make you laugh because we consider it really bad form to call our fair city Frisco. San Francisco has had a long tradition of eccentrics, and one of the biggest was Joshua A. Norton.  He made a fortune in the Gold Rush but lost it all through speculation, and when he lost his money, he also lost his mind. He declared himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico , wore a Royal uniform, and made various declarations. One was that he declared it illegal to refer to San Francisco as Frisco, and he wandered the streets handing out citations to people who referred to it is as such.
  
  He convinced the papers to print his various declarations, a list of which is attached. While everyone knew he was crazy, people loved him.  Restaurants gave him free meals, hotels gave him free rooms, and when he died, 10,000 San Franciscans turned out for his funeral. 
• We have a ton of coffee mugs given us by banks we’ve done work for, and here are a few comments:  We normally don’t like light lettering on dark backgrounds, but the Liberty Bank mug is okay,  The lettering is big enough to make it work. We love the look and feel of Farmers National Bank (“celebrating 100 years”), but the gold lettering doesn’t stand our enough.  First Security Bank has bold lettering that jumps out at you.  Nice.  The Goldman Sachs one is boring, and we’re surprised they even have them.  We love Alta Alliance Bank and think the world of their management, but guys, the gold lettering on the green cup is almost invisible.  Our favorite is the Golf Savings mug.  We like the shape, the size, and the clarity of the name. We realize that how your coffee mug looks isn’t quite as important as your CAMELS rating, but hey, it’s a lot easier to your coffee mugs look cool than to get your CAMELS rating down to a two.
• Can you believe we write about bank coffee mugs? Or even think about them?
• Are you really bored? We have an idea for you.  Collect coffee mugs and giveaways from banks and thrifts that no longer exist. Great Western, Home Savings, American Savings, Homeowners, Dime, Imperial, Gibraltar , State Savings, Lincoln, Citizens.  You could display them on a website, and in the background, you’d have someone singing Where have all the flowers gone, but you’d change it to Where have all the S&L’s gone….
• Wouldn’t you agree that mortgage banking is a commodity business?  Everyone does the same types of loans (GSE and FHA), everyone sells to the same investors (BofA, Chase, Wells, and directly or indirectly, FNMA and Freddie Mac), and everyone uses the same underwriting standards.  Why, then, is there such a disparity in profitability.  We see top performers making 100+ bps per loan, and we see companies struggling to make 10 bps. Why? There’s no Secret Sauce, so why?
  In the past year, the  biggest cause of under-performance we’ve seen has been leakage.  If you build in a profit of, say, 125 bps on a loan, you should be realizing 125 bps. The most profitable companies have almost no leakage.  The strugglers always do.
  Take Bill & Ted’s Excellent Mortgage Company and let’s compare it to Bob & Tom’s Horrible Mortgage Company.  Both are in the same city . Both are retail originators.  Both pay the same commissions. Both originate FHA loans.  Both sell their loans to BofA and Wells.  Both use DataTrac.  Both use Optimal Blue as a pricing engine.  Both build in the same profit margin.  But Bill and Ted net 120 bps on each loan and Bob & Tom net 20 bps.  We see this all the time, and the reason for the disparity in profitability is leakage.  The Horrible Mortgage Co. is just not realizing on their loan sales the margin they built in. There are a finite number of reasons for this leakage, and we don’t have room to go into them here.  But if there’s one thing you should look at if you’re uncertain why you’re not doing better, look at the gain-on-sale you build in and compare it to the gain-on-sale you actually realize.
  Maybe there needs to be a Leakers Anonymous.  “Hi, my name is Bob and I suffer from leakage.”   Actually, the good news is that you don’t need 12 steps to get better.  But you do need to see what your numbers are. Once you do that, the rest is pretty straightforward.

Richard Nixon’s 97^th birthday just came and went with nobody noticing, and won’t it be interesting to see how history views him 50 years from now?  If Martin Luther King were alive today,  he’d be 81, and it seems that with every passing year, his message of love and tolerance looms ever larger.

Garrett, Watts & Co.

“Helping mortgage lenders increase revenues, control costs, and better manage risk.”

Joe Garrett   (510-469-8633)

Corky Watts   (408-395-5504)
Mike McAuley    (281-250-2536)

France seems rather confused about the whole Internet thing and it doesn’t look like it has any idea of how to handle all the changes and new challenges it brings. On the one hand, it seems determined to put a stop to the horrible file-sharing plague that has taken over the country’s Internet users much like in the rest of the world. T… (read more)

Brawn GP and Graham-London have released two new and exclusive limited-edition watches, the Tourbillograph Trackmaster G-BGP-001 and the Silverstone Trackmaster Year One. The first is available in two versions (black and white or black and yellow), limited to 100 pieces each.

On the other hand, the Silverstone Trackmaster Year One, available in two versions (black or white dial)features a part of the Brawn GP World Championship winning cars, with the disc coming from a distinct part of the car…. (read more)

ComScore provides the third search market report in as many days and the data, unsurprisingly, is different from all the other analytics firms, not only in absolute numbers, which was to be expected, but also in the trends it reveals. The report shows that Google dominated in December and even saw a very slight rise in market share but it… (read more)

British manufacturer Triumph Motorcycles have introduced new colour options for two of the company’s most popular machines: a striking Scorched Yellow color option to accentuate the Street Triple’s aggressive, stripped down looks and an all-black version of the popular 60’s styled T100.

Triumph are renown for offering eye-catching colours on their streetfigher machines and the new Scorched Yellow option joins Tornado Red, Fusion White and Jet Black in the current range.

Ever since its launc… (read more)

After the company reported its fifth year of record growth, Audi Australia’s managing director Joerg Hofmann announced he will leave looking for a new challenge. Hofmann will move to Germany, as managing director of AUDI AG’s Retail Network, based at the company’s headquarters in Ingolstadt.

Hofmann has had several important achievements within the company since he first took the managing director in 2004, including the opening of the world’s largest Audi Terminal , known as the Audi Lighthouse… (read more)

The Spanish circuit at Jerez has been awarded by the International Road Racing Teams Association (IRTA) with the 26th annual Best Grand Prix award. Jerez hosted the third round of the 2009 MotoGP season in May, when Valentino Rossi took his first win of the season.

"Jerez has always been a fantastic location for the Grand Prix, a great racetrack with the huge crowds giving the event a unique atmosphere, one which truly highlights the passion and excitement of MotoGP. It also has the accol… (read more)

Written communication has long suffered from losing much of the non-verbal communication that a face-to-face talk expresses. This has only gotten worse with the proliferation of online communication. People have adapted, leading to the invention and adoption of the wonderful emoticons that have made instant messaging, email, not to mention online me… (read more)

TweetSwitch has come up with a nice idea in re-routing and re-transmitting tweets to the user’s desktop IM client. When direct access to Twitter is blocked or unavailable, the startup’s newly launched service will help users send and receive status updates through a simple IM chat window.

Currently in alpha testing, the service seems to work f… (read more)

Yesterday, BoomTown began grading the performance of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, after she gave herself an overall B- for performance for the one year since she took over the troubled Internet giant.

But I decided to be more specific, splitting the grades into five categories: Management, financials, product innovation, deal-making and moxie.

For management, I gave Bartz an A-, because she has been a definite improvement on previous leadership, in terms of decision-making, speed and essentially grabbing the mantle of control firmly from the start.

Some thought I was too generous and others thought it should have been an A+. Which means, it was just about right!

Today, let’s look at financials–by which I mean Yahoo’s fiscal performance and its stock price.

In this regard, Bartz only gets a C++ (it’s a techie joke, get it?).

I could have also given her a B- here, I guess, but–to me–C+ simply means financials have remained in a holding zone under Bartz, so she does not deserve to be completely decried or applauded either.

Why? Well, let’s start with the stock.

While Yahoo (YHOO) stock is up about 38 percent for the year, which is a good thing, it still lags those of other Internet companies and also the market.

In the same time period, the Nasdaq was up about 44 percent, Google’s stock has doubled in that time and Microsoft (MSFT) shares are also up a lot more too.

In an interview with Bloomberg recently, Bartz claimed that Yahoo was in the “penalty box” with investors–a hangover from former management, presumably–and that was the reason for its weaker stock gain than others.

Well, whatever, but she has been the CEO for a year and Wall Street is still holding out. Thus, she has to fully take the blame, instead of pointing the previous administration.

In other words, former CEO and Co-founder Jerry Yang and the Yangtanic are ancient history. So, all is forgiven, Jerry (call me!).

Bartz also blamed the recession for Yahoo’s continued revenue declines in 2009, which were down by 12 percent overall in the most recent quarter.

She told Bloomberg: “We came out of one of the worst climates ever. And if you look at growth of Fortune 500 companies, only being down 12 or 15 percent is damn good. I’m not going to apologize for our growth.”

Again, whatever. But she runs a company in a high-growth industry and is not selling hams or socks, so perhaps bragging that being down 12 to 15 percent was “damn good” is a bit of a stretch.

(Microsoft certainly did not crow over its 14 percent decline in revenue in the most recent quarter, even though it beat Wall Street expectations, and its fiscal results rely a lot on something that does get profoundly impacted–namely, sales of PCs–in a recession.)

Specifically, in the third quarter, Yahoo’s search advertising revenue was off 19 percent and display was off eight percent at “Owned and Operated” sites on Yahoo.

Google, in contrast, reported a seven percent rise in its third-quarter results, and its execs projected a mood of smooth sailing ahead and no more econalypse.

Still, Yahoo’s fiscal performance relies a lot on graphical and premium branded advertising, so it has remained weaker and will do so until the economy really comes back.

Many analysts are predicting exactly this, with double-digit sales growth in this area ahead.

And Yahoo’s bottom line is likely to get a boost when its costs are off-loaded to Microsoft, as part of the search and advertising deal Bartz struck with the software giant earlier this year. It awaits regulatory approval, which is likely, and will then start to kick in later in the year.

Still, a dark cloud hangs ominously over the persistent search share declines Yahoo has suffered, which Bartz and others attribute to loss of toolbar and other distribution deals that Google and Microsoft picked up.

But query growth rates are also down and that’s a red flag to watch for, especially since Microsoft and Google are up a lot.

Nonetheless, depending how these various parts of Yahoo revenue sort themselves out, along with Bartz’s cost-cutting, Yahoo’s bottom line is most likely to look better in the quarters ahead, so the stock could certainly go up quickly.

And so could her financial grade. Bartz is well known for being great at managing the bottom line and Wall Street expectations, so I suspect it is top of mind for her.

That said, once that registers, everyone will then be looking for not just a return to normal, but actual growth.

And that can only come from product innovation, which is what will be on the grading block for Monday.

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In a decision that seems rare these days, common sense has prevailed in one illegal file-sharing case. The first person in the UK to go to court over file-sharing-related charges has been acquitted of the innovative ‘conspiracy to defraud’ the music industry, a turn-around of similar high-profile cases like the Pirate Bay trial. Alan Ellis, the… (read more)

Locatia :unul din laboratoarele facultatii
Scopul : terminarea unui proiect
Ce faceam eu? : numai de proiect nu ma ocupam

Se facea ca toata lumea din laborator lucra la un proiect (care desigur ca,trebuia terminat),numai eu si un coleg ne gasisem alta ocupatie.Cum nu aveam chef sa ne ocupam de chestii asa de neimportante,am inceput sa povestim.
Printre numeroasele intamplari despre care am vorbit,una mi-a ramas in minte. Ceva ce i s-a intamplat colegului intr-o sesiune…ceva ce ma face sa rad de fiecare data.

Era la un examen.Cunostiintele lui despre materia respectiva pur si simplu te dadeau pe spate (nu stia nimic).Pe langa acest fapt,a mai avut si norocul de a fi asezat exact la marginea bancii.
Nu putea copia,nu putea vorbi cu nimeni,nu putea folosi hands-free-ul.Si,colac peste pupaza,mai era si racit.

Neavand nicio sursa de inspiratie/neputand face nimic, a inceput sa scrie din amintiri.Si scrie el,ce scrie,pana ii vine sa stranute.
Si stranuta,”degajand”/”depozitand” o importanta cantitate de “muci” in mana stinga.
Batista/servetele nu avea,cei din jur la fel,asa ca,ce sa faca?
A strins “mucusul” in mana, si a reinceput sa scrie.

Si cand sa termine de scris,il vede o profesoara.I se parea dubios felul in care tine mana stinga,asa ca s-a dus sa vada daca ascunde ceva in ea.
Va redau o parte din conversatia lor:

Profesoara: Ce-ai in mana?
El : Nimic,doamna profesoara !
Profesoara: Si chiar vrei sa te cred ? Deschide pumnul !
El : Nu pot,doamna profesoara !
Profesoara : Daca nu deschizi pumnul,te dau afara,si pierzi examenul !
El (s-a gandit sa-i povesteasca intamplare,poate il lasa in pace):Doamna profesoara.Am stranutat,nu am nicio batista la mine,si am “muci” in mana.Nu pot sa deschid pumnul !
Profesoara: Nu ma intereseaza ! Crezi ca sunt proasta ?!? Deschide pumnul! (ea inca credea ca are o fituica in mana)
El: Bine.doamna profesoara!

Si a deschis pumnul.Nu exista cuvinte care sa exprime figura profesoarei cand a vazut pumnul deschis !
Pur si simplu, s-a intors repede si a plecat.De atunci,nu l-a mai deranjat niciodata pe coleg.

Trimite si prietenilor:

Related posts:

1. Activitatea sexuala
2. Palaria
3. Gestul
4. Zugravii
5. Ascultarea telefoanelor
6. Scufita Rosie – Analiza
7. Tipuri de orgasme
8. Spalatori de geamuri
9. Soferii si politia
10. Romania

Averatec’s Lookie is medium power in a small package originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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