Published Jan. 12, 2010
By Dori O’Neal, Tri-City Herald staff writer
Ron and Vicki Gerton will show pieces of their art at a joint art exhibition starting Jan. 11 in the Fred Esvelt Gallery at Columbia Basin College in Pasco.
An opening reception for the artists is at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 12 in the gallery. Admission is free.
Ron will show his sculpture and Vicki will exhibit a selection of her fabric art.
Additional news stories can be accessed online at the Tri-City Herald.
One of our close Apple connects who haven’t steered us wrong dropped a little bit of information on us. Here’s what we know:
• The tablet’s multi-touch gestures are “out of control.”
• It’s powered by an incredibly fast ARM CPU
• It runs on the iPhone kernel.
• The internal model number is K48AP.
• There hasn’t been an updated iPhone OS build because there’s too much tablet-related code/references in the OS and Apple obviously didn’t want that to leak. Oops.
• The tablet is basically an “iPhone on steroids.”
That’s all we’ve got for now!
BGR features the latest tech news, mobile-related content and of course, exclusive scoops.
The New York Times reports that Michigan has sued Illinois in an effort to close the Great Lake waterways leading to Lake Michigan, and the case has now made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The reason: Asian carp, the “voracious, non-native species” that consume 40 times their body weight a day and eat the food of other native fish. The Guardian (UK) says Asian carp now make up to 95 percent of the biomass in areas of the Illinois River. According to The New York Times, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio now all support Michigan’s efforts to close waterways to Asian carp.
Asian carp have been moving up the Mississippi River for years, but have just recently threatened the Great Lakes region: “For years, leaders in the region worried about Asian bighead and silver carp — large, imported fish that can take over an ecosystem by consuming the food supply of other fish and that were known to be making their way north up the Mississippi River. But the efforts took on a new urgency in November, when the authorities reported finding genetic evidence of the carp within about six miles of Lake Michigan, in the Chicago-area waterway system that links the Mississippi to the Great Lakes.”
In addition to the damage to local native fish stocks, the non-native fish threaten to create a wider rift in the “carefully-constructed” Great Lakes compact, which prevents water from being diverted from the Great Lakes unless all eight neighboring states and Canadian provinces are in agreement about water use. There are concerns the recent Supreme Court case could reopen a 1920’s agreement on water use.
The City of Chicago is concerned about the carp making it to neighboring lakes, but is more worried about the economic impact of waterway closures. Suzanne Malec-McKenna, Comissioner of Chicago’s Department of Environment said to The New York Times: “While we recognize that Asian carp pose a significant threat to the Great Lakes, shutting down the waterway system in Northeastern Illinois before fully understanding the impact it would have on the movement of people, goods and storm water is a shortsighted answer to a complex problem.”
The Great Lakes provide 20 percent of the world’s freshwater, and are a crucial freshwater ecosystem.
The Guardian (UK) adds that Asian carp aren’t the only invasive animal or plant species the U.S. is concerned about. The International Union for Conservation of Nature recently stated that 38 percent of the 44,838 species catalogued on its “Red List” are faced with extinction. ”At least 40 percent of all animal extinctions for which the cause is known are the result of invasive species.” Invasive species not only negatively impact existing ecologies, but also wreck economic havoc: “The UN Convention on Biological Diversity says the spread of invasives costs 1.4 trillion dollars a year globally in damages and control measures. The U.S. alone loses 138 billion dollars a year in the fight.”
In another example, to protect native plant species in the midwest, The New York Times writes that the Chicago Botanic Garden and Morton Arboretum have been collecting prarie plant seeds, and creating plans for the assisted migration of some plant species in the event that climate change or invasive species destroy native ecosystems. “Scientists from the botanic garden are sending teams out across the Midwest and West to the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin to collect seeds from different populations of 1,500 prairie species by 2010, and from 3,000 species by 2020. The goal is to preserve the species and, depending on changes in climate, perhaps even help species that generally grow near one another to migrate to a new range.”
Kayri Havens, the Chicago Botanic Garden’s director of plant science and conservation said: “We recognize that climate change is likely to be very rapid and that seeds only disperse a few hundred yards, half a mile at most, naturally. They’ll need our help if we want to keep those species alive.”
The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management and its Seeds of Success program, the National Science Foundation, and Cedar Tree Foundation are funding efforts to catalogue, store, and preserve native plant species in the midwest.
Image credit: The New York Times / Nerissa Michaels/Illinois River Biological Station, via Detroit Free Press
Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:
Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE), the Carlsbad, CA-based provider of biomedical diagnostic equipment and laboratory supplies, has agreed to acquire AcroMetrix, a diagnostics controls specialist based in the Bay Area community of Benicia, CA. Financial terms of the deal were not disculosed. Life says in a statement that AcroMetrix’ diagnostic quality control products allow a laboratory to achieve better standardization across systems and are more economically efficient to use than “homebrew” control reagents.
The real-time web has been making waves for the best part of 2009 and many were quick to herald it as a crucial component for the future web. Recently, it looks like those voices may have gotten it right, as both Google and Bing have introduced real-time results, mostly from Twitter, to their searches. Google, in particular, has mad… (read more)
Solyndra, the California maker of thin-film photovoltaic cells, received the most amount of venture capital cash in 2009, raising $198 million. Its backers are counting on a hefty payday with the company having recently filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). A123 Systems, the Massachusetts battery maker, which IPOed last fall, raised $100 million, according to data compiled by market research firm the CleanTech Group. Swiss smart meter maker Landis + Gyr, smart grid developer Silver Spring Networks and V-Vehicle, a clean vehicle manufacturer, also each raised $100 million last year — see charts below the fold.
Which VC firm invested the most money in renewable energy in 2009? Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers was the most active, having invested in 19 venture rounds in 2009 followed by SAIL Venture Partners, which invested in 15 rounds, according to the CleanTech Group.
Largest Cleantech VC Players in 2009:
Source: CleanTech Group; Barclays Capital
An interesting article at the financial blog 24/7 Wall St. today estimates the total cost of pirated apps to the App Store, for both Apple and developers, to be somewhere near the $450 million-mark. That number depends on a revenue estimate of between $60 million and $110 million per quarter, which is probably less than the actual number since those figures are based on a slightly older report by Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi.
The article also notes that finding good solid numbers related to both the number of jailbroken iPhones that are out there, and the number of those devices that are actually pirating games is difficult to do. After reviewing numerous sources of information, 24/ Wall St. arrived at the conclusion that an estimate of 75 percent piracy rates for paid apps was most accurate.
That means that for every paid app download, there have been three pirated downloads of the same app that result in no revenue. Given that the researchers behind the report also estimated that around 17 percent of the 3 billion app store downloads, or 510 million, were paid apps (though we found 1 in 4 in December, so that number seems to be growing), that means that the number of pirated apps is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.53 billion apps. Not a number you’ll see Apple using in its promotional material anytime soon.
Even considering that only around 10 percent of those who pirated apps would’ve purchased them instead if the illicit option was not available, this represents a loss of around $459 million for both Apple and the app developers working with the Mac maker. Doesn’t seem like an insignificant number.
Insignificant or not, Apple isn’t doing much to quell piracy rates, either. Sure, it counters the most recent jailbreak exploit every time a new model of the iPhone is released, but those countermeasures are usually pretty easily overcome. Apple could do more on the software side, with apps themselves, but that would only spark another arms race-type situation between the company and the hacking community, and allowing users to jailbreak and pirate frankly helps Apple sell hardware, which is the real cash cow.
It’s a troubling report for developers who can’t afford to just eat these kinds of losses the way Apple can. But it also makes the assumption that piracy will continue to grow, which I think is a false one. Yes, it’s easier than ever to jailbreak your iPhone, but as Apple continues to work on the operating system behind the platform, there is less and less reason to do so.
Many users only jailbreak to get some extra functionality out of their device that already exists there, rather than being set on trying to get software for free. As long as iPhone 4.0 introduces true multitasking, I think we’ll see overall jailbreak rates fall off considerably, and likely piracy numbers will follow, too.
Peugeot is using the Brussels Motor Show today to launch an eco-driving contest for European drivers. The competition opens today (entries will be received through February the 10th): candidates form 18 countries can enter through their national Peugeot websites or by following this link *.
Four candidates from each country will be selected in accordance with the regulations, on the basis of their sensitivity to environmental issues. They will be allowed to choose a co-pilot and then they w… (read more)
Producers of the Spider-Man Broadway musical are offering ticket refunds, MTV News said yesterday.
The most recent in a series of delays in bringing Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark to the New York stage has prompted show producers to offer refunds to fans who had purchased tickets for performances.
The show — like the latest edition of the film franchise — has been postponed indefinitely. Previews, which were expected to start Feb. 25., have been cancelled. The production “is moving forward,” but a revised scheduled, along with an opening date later this year, will be announced shortly.
In the meantime, ticketholders can request an immediate refund from Ticketmaster or wait to exchange them for another date when the new performance schedule is announced.
The Spider-Man Musical will be directed by Julie Taymor and features a score by Bono and The Edge of U2. This isn’t the first drawback for the musical, work was stalled on the musical last summer because of financial difficulties. The show’s budget could hit the $50 million mark — that’s the largest in Broadway history.
More AC action is in store for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners. The latest issue of Japanese gaming mag Famitsu has preemptively announced a new entry in From Software’s Armored Core series.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8456819.stm
Haiti earthquake: devastation emerges
The extent of the devastation from a huge quake in Haiti is slowly emerging, with a number of UN peacekeepers among thousands of people feared dead.
Jordan, Brazil and China have all reported deaths. UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the head of the UN mission in Haiti and many others were missing.
The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti’s worst in two centuries, struck south of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday.
The Red Cross says up to three million people have been affected.
Describing the earthquake as a "catastrophe", Haiti’s envoy to the US said the cost of the damage could run into billions of dollars.
A number of nations, including the US, UK and Venezuela, are gearing up to send aid.
The quake, which struck about 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, was quickly followed by two aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude.
The first tremor had hit at 1653 local time (2153 GMT) on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said. Phone lines to the country failed shortly afterwards.
UN officials said at least five people had died when the UN’s headquarters in Port au Prince collapsed and that more than 100 staff were unaccounted for and feared to be under the rubble.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said: "It would appear that all those who were in the building, including my friend [UN mission head] Hedi Annabi… and all those who were with him and around him are dead."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed the Tunisian head of the UN mission in Haiti and his deputy were missing, along with many others.
He said hundreds of people were feared dead and aerial reconnaissance showed Port au Prince had been "devastated" by the quake, although other areas were largely unaffected.
Stressing a major international relief effort would be needed, Mr Ban said the UN would immediately release $10m (£6.15m) from its emergency response fund.
The airport in Port au Prince and a UN logistical base are operational,the UN said, allowing aid to start arriving soon.
China has already indicated in reports in state media that eight of its peacekeepers are dead, with another 10 unaccounted for.
The AFP news agency quoted the Jordanian army as saying three of its peacekeepers had been killed and 21 wounded.
The Brazilian army said four of its peacekeepers had been killed and a large number were missing.
A French official also told AFP that about 200 people were missing in the collapsed Hotel Montana, which is popular with tourists.
There were also some reports of looting overnight.
Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity, told Reuters the capital had been in total darkness overnight.
"You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go."
People were "trying to dig victims out with flashlights", he said. "Hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement."
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and has suffered a number of recent disasters, including four hurricanes and storms in 2008 that killed hundreds.
‘Thoughts and prayers’
With communications destroyed by the earthquake, it is not yet possible to confirm the extent of the destruction, although there were reports on Wednesday of many bodies piled in the streets.
People in the capital were lifting sheets on bodies to try to identify loved ones.
Haiti’s ambassador to the US, Raymond Joseph, said there was "no way of estimating" the casualties.
"I’m quite sure we’re going to face a disaster of major proportion," he told ABC.
Mr Joseph said the presidential palace, the tax office, the ministry of commerce and the foreign ministry had all been damaged.
UN officials confirmed that Haitian President Rene Preval was alive.
US President Barack Obama said his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti and that he expected "an aggressive, coordinated [aid] effort by the US government".
Venezuela says it will send a 50-strong "humanitarian assistance team".
The Red Cross is dispatching a relief team from Geneva and the UN’s World Food Programme is flying in two planes with emergency food aid.
The Inter-American Development Bank said it was immediately approving a $200,000 grant for emergency aid.
The UK said it was mobilising help and was "ready to provide whatever humanitarian assistance may be required".
Canada, Australia, France and a number of Latin American nations have also said they are mobilising their aid response.
Pope Benedict XVI has called for a generous response to the "tragic situation" in Haiti.
‘Shouting and screaming’
In the minutes after the quake, Henry Bahn, a visiting official from the US Department of Agriculture, said he had seen houses which had tumbled into a ravine.
"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Mr Bahn, who described the sky as "just grey with dust".
He said he had been walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake.
"I just held on and bounced across the wall," he said. "I just heard a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."
Reports on the Twitter message site, which cannot yet be verified by the BBC, expressed the chaos in the wake of the quake.
Tweets from troylivesay spoke of the worst damage being in the Carrefour district, where "many two and three storey buildings did not make it".
In the immediate aftermath of the quake, a tsunami watch was put out for Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas, but this was later lifted.
Acting United States Attorney Kevin F. McDonald stated that David Courtney Childers, age 45, of Myrtle Beach, pled guilty in federal court to possession of child pornography, a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2252A(a)(5)(B).
United States District Judge R. Bryan Harwell accepted the plea and will sentence Childers at a later date.
In June 2008, FBI agents in Illinois conducted an undercover online investigation using the identification of a known child pornographer.
Using “peer to peer” sharing software, the agents made contact with Childers, who was offering to share child pornography. Agents downloaded the child pornography, and traced the communication back to Childers’ computer at his Myrtle Beach residence.
A search of Childers’ computer confirmed the presence of child pornography. At the time of the incident, Childers was employed as a police officer with Horry County.
Mr. McDonald stated the maximum penalty Childers can receive is a fine of $250,000.00 and imprisonment for 10 years.
The case was investigated by agents of the FBI. Assistant United States Attorney William E. Day, II, of the Florence office handled the case.
Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.
On my second day of work, I was asked to find a Stephen Colbert video.
I found it on the Comedy Central web site
The subject of Colbert’s mockery is actually one of the most significant air studies recently published. It presents evidence, for the first time, that breathing cleaner air actually makes people live longer.
A 2009 study by Arden Pope, Majid Ezzati, and Doug Dockery published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that cleaner air in the U.S. has increased life expectancy by an average of 5 months.
Over the past few decades, EPA has regulated air pollution because various scientific studies have determined that it is harmful to human health. As particles emitted into the air have been gradually reduced, pollutant levels in air have significantly decreased.
But despite the obviously cleaner air, it has been extremely difficult to confirm the resulting health improvements. Couldn’t better health also be attributed to decreased cigarette smoking, better eating habits and health care, or a variety of other changes?
Pope, Ezzati, and Dockery—an EPA PM Research Center grantee—matched air monitoring data with life expectancy data spanning three decades and 51 cities across the US. Using advanced statistical models, they accounted for any other factors that might also affect life span (like cigarette smoking) in order to see the effects of air quality alone.
Their results showed that an increase in life expectancy of 5 months was directly attributable to an average reduction of 6 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particle air pollution between 1980 and 2000.
The implication of the study—that EPA air regulations have directly and substantially lengthened human lives—is a triumph for both regulatory agencies and researchers world wide because it shows that air research and policy really do work.
Stephen Colbert isn’t the only one to recognize the importance of this finding. News of the study was reported in the Washington Post, New York Times, and in an entire segment on NBC Nightly News.
I spoke to Doug Dockery, investigator of the study and scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, to get his take on the impact of this finding.
“There is an important positive message here,” he said.
“Efforts to reduce particulate air pollution concentrations in the United States over the past 20 years have led to substantial and measurable improvements in life expectancy.”
About the Author: Becky Fried is a student contractor with EPA’s National Center for Environmental Research, part of the Office of Research and Development.
Article Tags: Alan Caruba
Just when you thought “global warming” has been put to rest by the revelations of how the computer models supporting the hoax had been deliberately falsified to “hide the decline” in the Earth’s temperature, along comes the next Big Lie, focused again on carbon dioxide (CO2).
Wednesday, January 13, has been designated “Wear Blue for Oceans Day” by some coalition calling itself Clean Ocean Action. I don’t even care whose funding this scam, but Friends of the Earth is proudly announcing it is part of it.
They are still smarting over the December debacle in Copenhagen despite being “one of the main groups organizing a December 12 march that attracted more than 100,000 participants…” The FOE neglected to mention they all stood out in a snow storm to make their voices heard on the way the Earth was warming.
Source: factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com
Thought it may appear to be a deja-vu, current MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi will take a Ferrari to the track again later this month, Ferrari confirmed today. The Italian earned this by clinching the ninth MotoGP title the last season. He will reportedly get behind the wheel o a F2008 in Barcelona, on January 20 and 21.
Rossi also had several tests with the Pracing Horse team in 2006 and 2008. Current test restrictions, however, do not allow him to use the latest car.
"Chairma… (read more)
When Flash appeared near the end of the last millennium it promised a bright new world of rich multimedia content creation and delivery via what would otherwise be drab old web pages. At a time when Geocities was the best the Web had to offer, Flash was a tempting — and not to mention dazzling — new kid on the block.
Over the years, as web technologies evolved and matured, Flash proved to be problematic; for those who make websites (and care about accessibility and web standards in a way ordinary people just don’t) it has gradually aged into an unwieldy, outmoded platform.
Even for those enjoying the most remarkable fruits of early Flash labor — for instance, YouTube relied on the technology heavily in its formative years — Flash was simultaneously the bringer of video entertainment and the most common reason for all browser (and a great many System) crashes. Also — did I mention the security vulnerabilities?
I hoped (foolishly, it seems) that it was only the big movie studios who, paranoid we’re all stealing their stuff, were still insisting on Flash-based content delivery, but according to Erick Schonfeld over on TechCrunch, there’s a whopping two million Flash developers out there, and they’re simply dying to bring their Flash-authored wares to the last platform on Earth that has, so far, remained blissfully Flash free — your iPhone.
The iPhone has always been marketed as a breakthrough Internet device, in spite of two limitations considered by some people to be significant — the iPhone’s browser, Mobile Safari, has never supported Java or Flash.
While the absence of Java is no big deal (honestly, is there anything more horrid than Java web plugins?) the lack of Flash support on the iPhone was considered debilitating enough that, in the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld viewer complaints and banned one of Apple’s iPhone commercials for ‘misleading’ customers with the line “All the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone.” It sounds rather like an over-reaction, but consider that in his 2008 WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs proudly announced, “Mobile browsing has gone from nothing to 98 percent with iPhone.” With so much mobile browsing going on, it seems any limitations matter profoundly. So, after almost three years browsing the web on our iPhones, how has the lack of Flash truly affected us?
Here’s the answer to that in three succinct syllables; not at all.
Seriously, has it so greatly inconvenienced anyone that they were driven away from the iPhone forever? (That rhetorical question will be read by our resident comment trolls as an open invitation to loudly proclaim their Android-based phones ‘superior’ because they do support Flash.)
Schonfeld offers an ominous prediction for 2010.
Adobe is going to bring its 2 million Flash developers to the iPhone, with or without Apple’s blessing. As it announced in October, the next version of its Flash developer tools, Creative Suite 5 […] will automatically convert any Flash app into an iPhone app. So while Flash apps won’t run on the iPhone, any Flash app can easily be converted into an iPhone app. This is a bigger deal than many people appreciate.
While Schonfeld thinks Apple’s lack of Flash support represents a “gaping hole in iPhone’s arsenal” I rather think the opposite is true. For all the iPhone’s inimitable prowess as a mobile computer, it’s not supposed to replace a laptop or desktop-class machine. What the iPhone brought to mobile phones (both in terms of functions and ease-of-use) was revolutionary in ways we readily take for granted today. But just think again of that figure; 98 percent browsing? That had never happened on mobile phones before, and it happened despite the lack of Flash.
Steve Jobs announces 98 percent of iPhone owners are using it for web browsing
But while I (perhaps incorrectly) assumed the lack of Flash was a usability consideration on Apple’s part, Schonfeld thinks the decision was motivated by a less obvious, and far more cunning, desire.
[Apple] wanted a chance to become ingrained with developers. Apple had to hold off Flash not so to control the video experience on the iPhone, but because it needed to establish its own Apple-controlled iPhone SDK. The last thing it needed was a competing developer platform getting in the way.
But Adobe Creative Suite 5 will provide precisely the magic button developers need to port their Flash apps to the iPhone.
…those 2 million developers will be able to keep working with Adobe tools and simply turn them into iPhone apps automatically. …if you thought there were a lot of iPhone apps now, just wait until the Flash floodgates are open.
This, frankly, scares me. I’ve rarely seen a flash site that I enjoyed. Even those which I thought impressive at first-blush rapidly became cumbersome and slow. And don’t get me started on the platform’s propensity for random crashing. If developers are granted the freedom to assault the stable, clean and comfortable world of my iPhone with gaudy, pointlessly-animated applications with inconsistent, ill-conceived UI’s, I can only hope there’s a quick and easy way to identify them in the App Store so I can avoid buying them altogether!
Schonfeld thinks CS5 will result in an avalanche of Flash-authored iPhone apps; I hope he’s wrong. Even on the desktop, Flash is something I prefer to avoid when I can. (I use three browsers — all of them employ a flash blocker — and as a result I feel my experience of the web improved markedly.) I honestly thought that, as 2010 gets under way, we’d all come to the same conclusion; that Flash is an antiquated technology whose security vulnerabilities and performance issues make it deeply undesirable.
If Apple can block these flash-authored apps, would it? Should it? Tell me how wrong I am, and why I’d better embrace it, in the comments below.
By Juliet Ye and James T. Areddy, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal
The news that Google might pull out of China has quickly become the hottest topic among China’s millions of Web users, prompting expressions of shock and disappointment — as well as flower offerings.
“I heard people talking about Google’s leaving a couple of days ago, but I was still was completely stunned by the news when I arrived at the office this morning.” wrote Twitter user Fenng. “Ten years online has turned me from an optimist into a pessimist.”
Some Web users are showing their support for the company on Twitter, which, though blocked in China, can be accessed by tech-savvy netizens, where they began organizing to take real-world action. At Google offices in China, pictured below, fans of the company gathered, some bearing flowers and messages wishing Google well. The so-called “flower campaign” gave rise to several slogans, such as “Farewell for Reunion” and “GoogleBye.”
In Beijing, supporters gathered early to offer flower bouquets in front of Google’s office in the Tsinghua Science Park. Attached to the flower bouquets were handwritten notes, including one reading “Google: Pure Man.”
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On the Internet, everyone loves Conan O’Brien. But that doesn’t translate into ratings, which means that most of you Conan lovers didn’t actually see his show last night.
So here you go. Here’s last night’s monologue, replete with many excellent digs at GE’s (GE) — and eventually, Comcast’s (CMCSA) — troubled broadcaster: “Welcome to NBC, where our new slogan is, “No longer just screwing up prime time”.
It also stars, sort of inexplicably, fellow NBC employee Howie Mandel.
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“The technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over.”
This, according to Forrester, which claims technology spending will roar back to life in 2010, ending the econalypse once and for all. “While the Q3 2009 data for the U.S. and the global market showed continued declines in tech purchases (as we expected),” the company said in its report, U.S. and Global IT Market Outlook: Q4 2009. “We predict that the Q4 2009 data will show a small increase in buying activity, or at worst, just a small decline.”
The research outfit expects U.S. IT spending to grow by 6.6 percent in 2010 after plummeting 8.2 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, global IT spending, which plummeted 8.9 percent last year, will rise 8.1 percent in 2010 to more than $1.6 trillion.
Driving the recovery: software, hardware and communications equipment. According to Forrester, worldwide spending on software is set to grow by 9.7 percent in the months ahead; spending on hardware and other computer equipment by 8.2 percent; and spending on comms gear by 7.6 percent. Said Forrester principal analyst Andrew Bartels, “All the pieces are in place for a 2010 tech spending rebound. In the U.S., the tech recovery will be much stronger than the overall economic recovery, with technology spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product this year.”
But that assumes that there’s no further financial disaster in 2010. If that’s not the case, then we have this to look forward to. “The most likely alternative to our forecast that the U.S. and global IT markets will recover in 2010 is a faltering tech market due to a double-dip recession that returns in 2010 after a brief two- to three-quarter economic recovery,” Forrester explains. “Should this happen, U.S. tech purchases would decline by 3% to 4% in 2010, with a second-half decline offsetting a first-half tech revival.”
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Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Alfa Romeo, Fiat
We were getting amped up for Alfa Romeo’s return to the U.S. and the chance to drive Breras and Guilietta’s on our favorite roads, and then Fiat head Sergio Marchionne delivers what they call a “smackdown” at the Detroit Auto Show. According to Autocar, Marchionne says that Fiat has to show it can sell enough cars in America to make the enterprise worthwhile on its own, which we take to mean he’s not content with Alfa being a critically loved but money-losing division of a profitable conglomerate. If Alfa can’t prove the worth of flying to America, then it will stay grounded in Europe. We have but one word to say to this news: maledizione!
[Source: Autocar]
Report: Alfa Romeo’s U.S. launch delayed originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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