Author: Serkadis

To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

• Here are some companies and their market caps.  We tried to pick only those which didn’t exist, say, 25-30 years ago to show how the American economy is constantly coming up with new and better ideas, creating wealth, growth and jobs.

These five alone have a combined market cap of $931 billion! And don’t forget Amazon ($60 billion), Dell ($28 billion) and even Salesforce.com ($9.3 billion).  How can you possibly despair for the future when you look at how good we are at re-inventing the world?

• Are movie theaters a dying business?  Maybe, but last year, moviegoers paid $9.8 billion on movie tickets, more than the $8.1 billion spent on video rentals.  If the moviegoers spent $9.8 billion on tickets, we calculate that they spent another $247 billion on popcorn and soft drinks.  Can you believe paying $7 for a small bag of popcorn?  Or $6 for a Snickers bar big enough to feed a family of four?

• How did your stocks do last year?  Here is how some stock markets did around the globe:

Venezuela came in with a gain of 57%, but strongman Hugo Chavez is busy destroying free markets there, and they may not even have a stock market in 4-5 years.  Given all the turmoil in Pakistan , it was a surprise to see that their stock market was up 60%.

• Remember all those people who panicked last year and sold their stocks?  Since March, the S&P 500 is up 65%.
• The Wall Street Journal just reported on a University of California study involving more than 250,000 participants which discovered ”impressive benefits of being happy.” Are we missing something here, or was there ever any doubt about this?

• Craig Cole reminded us that Union Bank traces it roots to 1864 and is considered the first commercial bank incorporated in the West. Union Bank started as Bank of California, and you can check out their website (unionbank.com) which has a bunch of their history.  Like Wells Fargo, Union Bank has a very cool museum, and only half a block from the Wells museum in downtown San Francisco .
• And for all the banks that have been around forever, how about American Banker?  This daily newspaper (which we’re addicted to) was founded in 1836! Wasn’t Martin Van Buren President then, or maybe Andrew Jackson?  
• Speaking of dead people, this past Friday would have been Elvis Presley’s 75^th birthday. Had he been alive, he’d probably have eaten the whole birthday cake himself.  If you forget about Fat Elvis, he was an interesting amalgam of musical styles.  He was influenced deeply by blues, country and gospel, and his crazy gyrations on stage were pure Cab Calloway and Jackie Wilson.  Watch some old Jackie Wilson videos and you’ll see where Mick Jagger and Elvis learned all their moves.
  

• Ever wonder what the FDIC does with all those loans they take back when they seize banks and sell off their deposits?  The FDIC just sold a portfolio of $1.0 billion of distressed commercial real estate loans, 70% of which were delinquent. A REIT named Colony Capital paid $90 million for a 40% ownership, and the FDIC provided financing for the rest.  Essentially, the REIT and the FDIC formed a joint venture on the deal.
• Did you know that there are more Israeli companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange than all companies from the European continent combined?  Israel probably has more entrepreneurs relative to its population than Silicon Valley .
• In 2009, there were only 31 banks that increased their dividends, two of which increased it twice during the year!  But there were 203 banks which cut their dividends and 55 which eliminated them all together. If you like dividends but don’t want to own common stocks, there are some great yields in bank preferreds.
• With HUD moving toward a minimum $2.5 million net worth to do FHA loans, it’s believed that this will disqualify 70% of all current lenders. HUD estimates that about 40% of all currently approved lenders have less than $1.0 million net worth, and that’s a long ways from $2.5 million.
  
• We get confused ourselves occasionally as to which regulators supervise which types of banks.  The attachment is our little cheat sheet.
  
• We saw a list of the colleges whose football teams ranked #1 since 1936, and you had all the obvious ones.  Alabama and Notre Dame had won eight national championships, followed by Oklahoma and USC (7), Miami , Nebraska , and Ohio State (5) Minnesota and Texas (4) and so on. The only interesting ones were Brigham Young (1984), Syracuse (1959) and Maryland in 1953.  We wandered around the University of Maryland campus last year and thought it was spectacular.
  
• Let’s say you have a very nice community bank with $200 million of assets, but you’re losing $75,000 a month. If you can increase your net interest margin by, say, 50 bps, that will give you an additional $1.0 million of annual income, or $83,000 a month, and you’ll be in the black. So here’s the big question: Do you achieve this by (a) trying to get an extra 50 bps in yield on your loans or by (b) lowering your cost of deposits by 50 bps?  A matter of indifference?  No way, Jose.  If you go for higher yielding loans, you are going after riskier loans.  In our mind, trying to reduce deposit costs always beats chasing yield in your loan book. Look no further than those banks that failed due to higher yielding subprime or Alt-A loans.
  Higher yielding loans almost always imply higher risk. And while lowering your deposit costs can be hard work, it’s always worth it.
  
• Here are some of the nominations you sent in for so-called novelty songs. In many cases, there was no known title, so we just got an opening line.  A number of you submitted Louie, Louie, but we’d put that in a different category of party songs. Besides, no one really knows what the lyrics are.
  

The last one is interesting, and while it’s ostensibly about inter-tribal dating, it’s actually a warning against going swimming within two hours of eating.  Running Bear had been noshing on acorn nuts, and his girlfriend from an enemy tribe was gorging herself on knishes, and when they swim out to meet in the middle of the “raging waters”, just like that, they both drown.  The two Indians had completely ignored their parents’ warning that you’d drown if you went swimming after lunch unless you waited two hours.That’s about it.  Keep your costs down and your credit quality up.  And stay warm.   See you next week sometime.Garrett, Watts & Co. Who Regulates Which Types of Banks   <<< Today’s bonus “Helping lenders increase revenues, control costs, and better manage risk.”Joe Garrett   (510-469-8633)Corky Watts   (408-395-5504)
Mike McAuley    (281-250-2536)

The newest trend in sex technology are sex toys that simulate the real thing, and the SaSi Vibrator is no exception. This vibrator simulates oral sex with a nubby ball that rolls in different shapes, directions, simulating a real tounge or fingertip. The best part? You can easily change the pattern and even “dislike” a certain movement, that the SaSi will be less likely to repeat in the future, kind of like a well trained hubby. ..

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Filed under: iPhone, App Review

TUAWApp review roundup: VoiceBand, Soulver, Doc² originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we report on a new "superphone" launched by Google, take a look at how the Web is transforming personal finance, give you 5 reasons why RSS Readers still rock, get a first look at the new startup of ex-Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo, analyze the trends that emerged from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and more. And as usual we check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (our daily resource for entrepreneurs).

Also read on for details of the newly released printed edition of our current premium report, about the Real-Time Web.

Sponsor

Now Available: Printed Edition of The Real-Time Web Report

At the request of the librarian community and people that just like paper, we have made The Real-Time Web and its Future report available in print.

For those of you that prefer it digitally, you can still download it.

Don’t forget about our Community Management Report. It too is coming in print soon, so watch out for it!

Web Trends

How The Web is Transforming Personal Finance

Not too long ago, personal finance tools like Quicken and Microsoft Money used to be bound to the desktop. Today, free online tools like Mint, moneyStrands and Wesabe make it easy to track financial information. So you can now get a better overview of your personal finances than ever before.

Editor’s note: This story is part of ReadWriteWeb’s Personal Finance series, a weekly, three-month-long look at how the Internet has transformed personal finance. If you are interested in sponsoring this Content Series on Personal Finance, please contact our COO Sean Ammirati.

5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock

Recently we wrote about the decline of RSS Readers as a way for people to keep up with news. We noted that while many people still use RSS Readers, usage has decreased due to the emergence of real-time and social flows of information via Twitter, Facebook and other such services. The post sparked a fascinating discussion, with over 160 comments. What we learned from that discussion is that while the RSS Reader market is indeed in decline, there are still a number of compelling use cases for RSS Readers.

Welcome to the Age of Robot Reporters

Recently, three emergency vehicles responded to a report of an unconscious person at the world headquarters of Nike Inc. in Portland, Oregon. How did we know? An automated form-pumping robot from startup company Nozzl Media told us. Nozzl Media unveiled this week a demonstration of its first product, a widget intended for newspaper websites seeking to display real-time local information derived from Twitter messages, blog posts and automatically extracted public records.

Web Apps Meet Consumer Electronics at CES

The 2010 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) saw a big trend emerge: web applications being ported to consumer electronics, from the technology inside cars to Web-enabled TVs. Earlier this week we noted that online music service Pandora will be made available in cars, courtesy of a new Pioneer device that will begin selling in March. Other evidence of this trend can be found in Ford’s announcement of a new in-car system and Samsung’s latest Internet-connected TV.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ and using social software inside organizations.

The Pros and Cons of the Google Nexus One As An Enterprise Phone

The Nexus One is another smart phone that we will inevitably see inside the walls of the enterprise. Smart phones seem to have a way of being used for all kinds of work activities. So, what are the pros and cons of using the Nexus One in the enterprise?

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

5 Web Apps To Keep Your Startup Organized

In a world where emails, phone calls, texts, and Tweets constantly bombard us, it is getting harder and harder to manage the firehose of data and information being thrust our way. For young companies to succeed this environment, it is imparitive they become organized and efficient lest they fall behind and quickly become overwhelmed.

Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Los Angeles

Best known for its movie stars, sun and surf, Los Angeles probably isn’t the first place you’d think to breed technology. But when you consider the influence of investors like Jason Calacanis and Mark Suster, in addition to the fact that companies like Demand Media and Docstoc call Southern California home, it’s not surprising that the community is emerging as one of the country’s hottest startup hubs.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Products

Live Blog: Google’s Android Press Gathering

Google held a press event this week to showcase the new Nexus One, which it described as "Where Web Meets Phone.” Google calls this a new category of phones – the “super phones.” The Nexus One apparently “pushes the limits of what is possible on a mobile phone today.” Google will sell the phone in its own web store. Check out our live blog coverage for more details.

Droid’s December Boom: Metrics Show Device Use Doubled in One Month

The Android platform has grown exponentially since mid-2009, but December’s stats show a particular factor that might help catapult the platform to greater heights of user adoption. In figures just released from mobile advertising company AdMob, the Droid singlehandedly boosted calls to their network by nearly 300 million requests.

Facebook’s 1st CTO Launches His Next Company

Adam D’Angelo was a programming genius who knew Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in high school, became the young company’s first CTO and has just begun to unveil his new startup company, Quora. Built by D’Angelo and a team of crack young engineers, Quora is a real-time enabled Q&A site. The company calls itself “A continually improving collection of questions and answers.”

Skype: Coming to a Couch Near You

Starting this spring, you won’t need to gather the whole family around a 15-inch laptop screen to talk with cousin Joe on the other side of the country. As a matter of fact, you won’t even need to get up off the sofa after the evening news, because Skype is coming to the big screen – the big TV screen, that is. Skype announced this week that they have been working with LG and Panasonic to embed Skype in Internet-connected widescreen HDTVs.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Discuss

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from antifa germany, 7 January 2010: “Yearly german and european nazis march through the city of Dresden, Germany. This will show you how you could avoid danger and will inform you about the legal rights in Germany…” more

Square, the startup which may change the way consumers handle transactions, has just hired Bob Lee away from Google.  Lee, a key developer for the Android platform, is now headed to over to Square to change the world.  Square’s Buzz Anderson confirmed that Lee is now working full-time for Square and will be heading up Square’s Android App development team.

Currently, Square only works on the IPhone and the IPod Touch so it will be interesting to see how Lee develops for Android.  Presently, Square requires the use of an external hardware component which plugs into the headphone jack.  Hopefully, there will be a solution for Android soon and if there is, Lee will certainly have something to do with it. Good luck Bob!

Seemed Like a Good Idea Then – By RANDALL W. FORSYTH – Architects of the biggest blunders of the past decade continue to deny basic errors.  – talks about AOL, Greenspan, Bernanke, Low intereswt ratesw, and housing … – Barron’s

Top Market Timers Give Their 2010 Outlooks – By MARK HULBERT –  Five investment-newsletter soothsayers with solid track records discuss how they are allocating assets in the new year. ( all 5 are bullish – BC) – Barron’s

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Billionaire Predictions 2010 – Keren Blankfeld –  The world’s wealthiest share their thoughts and concerns for the economic year ahead. – Forbes

How Tech Will Change Our Future – Quentin Hardy – Say goodbye to nations, sovereignty and privacy. – With that in mind, I humbly file a few predictions for the first column of 2020, which looks back on what changes were wrought over the 10 years beginning in 2010. It won’t be 100% accurate, but it’s food for thought. To the extent it has contradictions, it is true to the times we inhabit. Besides, in a Twitter-driven news world, isn’t it better to be first than to be accurate? – Forbes

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Our double-dip future – George Soros – … We have just passed through the worst financial crisis since World War II.  –  In fact, the magnitude of the problem today is even greater than during the Great Depression. In 1929, total credit outstanding in the United States was 160 percent of GDP, and it rose to 250 percent by 1932. In 2008, we started at 365 percent – and this calculation leaves out the pervasive use of derivatives, which was absent in the 1930’s.  Despite this, artificial life-support has worked. … Unfortunately, the recovery is liable to run out of steam, and may even be followed by a second economic downturn, though I am not sure whether it will occur in 2010 or 2011 … – Mmegi Online

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Hoenig Says Fed Should Eventually Lift Main Rate to 3.5%-4.5% – By Steve Matthews – Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig said the central bank should move “sooner rather than later” to reduce stimulus, with a goal of eventually boosting the benchmark interest rate to “probably between 3.5 and 4.5 percent.” – Bloomberg
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wow has 3 part plan – PIMCO’s January 2010 Global Central Bank Focus, “Where Exit Should Be an Oxymoron: The Bank of Japan” by Paul McCulley and Tomoya Masanao – … Thus, we were pleasantly surprised in December that the Bank of Japan publically acknowledged that it would “not tolerate a year-on-year rate of change in the CPI equal to or below 0 percent.” The BoJ’s path to anti-deflation redemption must start somewhere, and simply stating that its comfort zone for inflation does not include zero is a start. The fact of the matter is that the BoJ is trapped in a deflationary lacuna of its own making and can escape if it is willing to do the opposite of what central banks in other developed countries will eventually do in the matter of exit strategies. Simply put, the Bank of Japan needs to credibly commit to not exiting reflationary policies, even as other central banks proceed along that course. … 

Filed under: Europe, Peugeot, Citroën, Design/Style

There was a time when “France” and “design” were nearly synonymous, at least in the automotive sphere. Delahaye, Voisin, Bugatti, Talbot-Lago (including the high-water mark Figoni et Falaschi “Tear Drop” cars), etc. Prewar, no one had anything on the French. Even Peugeot and Citroën were in on the action; the former producing the elegant 402 and the latter building the glorious Traction Avant.

However, after the Great Depression and post-WW2 auto shakeout, the scenery changed. Sure, Citroën still had a few design masterpieces left in the tank – the 2CV, the DS and SM. Peugeot made some excellent cars (205, 404) but they certainly weren’t lookers. Then a few years back, Peugeot bought Citroën. Since that time, Peugeots have become wildly bizarre-looking, while Citroën has produced exactly one beauty, the C6. Point being, France’s automotive designs are a far cry from their prewar glory days.

PSA Peugeot Citroën wants to change that trajectory. Under PSA design leadership of Jean-Pierre Ploué, Gilles Vidal has taken over design of Peugeot and Thierry Metroz is now in charge of how Citroëns look. Metroz might have an easy time of it, as Ploué has to some degree set Citroën on a halfway righteous path. Again, we’re big fans of the big C6 and in truth, the C3 and DS3 are pretty much OK-looking as well. Monsieur Gilles, however, has his work cut out for him. Have you looked at a 3008 or an 807 lately? Not so hot.

[Source: CAR]

Report: Peugeot, Citroën get new design chiefs originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:

Ask the attorney: Founder vesting — Attorney Scott Walker kicks off this regular Entrepreneur Corner series, answering the burning legal questions of startup owners. This week: Should you split company stock equally among founding partners? And what sort of vesting options should you enable?

Beware the hockey stick in your budget — Your 2010 budget is probably set, but have you made some critical assumptions of error? Brad Feld, an early stage investor and co-founder of Foundry Group, looks at the four most common types of budget models and the problems with each.

Outsourcing entrepreneurs: How the EU lets startups slip through its fingers — While America is flush with accelerator programs, there’s a paucity of them in Europe. The Difference Engine CEO Jon Bradford argues that this means the best and brightest start-up owners overseas are flocking to the U.S., which could leave the continent in a bind in the years to come.

The startup chronicles: It pays to be bull-headed — Determination can be one of the most important characteristics for entrepreneurs, says author and startup founder Bruce Judson. When people tell you something is impossible, but it’s critical to your company, a little stubbornness is often the only way to succeed.

Startup therapy: More questions to force you to face reality — Angel investor Jason Cohen offers up four more questions to ask yourself in order to figure out what you need to do today to increase your startup’s growth and profits.

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Droid gets overclocking, Nexus One gets tethering, Android hackers get mad props originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Touch Revolution puts Android in a microwave and makes an updated Nimble tablet, we go hands-on

Touch Revolution puts Android in a microwave and makes an updated Nimble tablet, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RunCore’s had a thing for delivering high-speed, enthusiast-level SSDs, and if you managed to pass right over the Pro IV, you may find the urge linked to the Pro V a bit too much to resist. TweakTown was able to spend some quality time with the device, which includes a SandForce 1500 controller and low(er)-cost MLC flash. Without getting into the dirty-dirty (trust us, you’ll find plenty of charts in the source below), we’ll pass along the following note: “we feel comfortable saying that the Pro V will be the enthusiast SSD to which all others will be compared to for the first half of 2010.” Of course, with the speed worries behind us, the only question remaining is cost — which always seems to best the case with SSDs. We’re told that it’ll cost more than the Barefoot-powered Pro IV, but with competition in the market heating up, hopefully the MSRP won’t sting too badly.

RunCore’s 100GB Pro V solid state drive gets benchmarked, loved originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Following the announcment of Heavy Rain’s release date, Sony has affirmed that they’re still planning to release a demo to give prospective buyers an idea of what the game’s all about.

When Microsoft announced that there would be new content coming to Modern Warfare 2—and the Xbox 360 would get it first—gamers had one of two reactions. People with 360s were excited, while other gamers complained that Microsoft seemed to be yet again locking down content by writing large checks. At CES we sat down with Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg, and asked about the business of getting exclusive content.

“I think about it like a sports team, when you sign a star athlete for your team… when you sign that free agent, I think it makes your team better. At the end of the day, we want to turn as many people as possible into Xbox 360 fans.”

Greenberg talks about Microsoft’s line-up of exclusive content this year as being incredibly strong. “And then to say, on top of that, to take the biggest game of last year, and be the exclusive place you can get that downloadable content first, I think that’s a big deal. That’s a big reason you’d want to buy an Xbox 360 instead of another console. So we think from a business standpoint that’s part of the reason more people are buying the Xbox 360, more people are on Xbox Live, it’s part of the reason more people are buying Modern Warfare 2—more than two to one our box vs. the PS3.”

He points out the “bet” Microsoft put on Modern Warfare 2, by putting out the custom console and showing it off at E3, and says now Microsoft wants to follow up that trend by offering the content first.

Will any of this convince gamers that are angry that Microsoft isn’t simply throwing money around? It’s doubtful. The fact remains, however, that you’ll have to own a Microsoft console if you want to play the newest Modern Warfare 2 content first. That’s a powerful selling point.

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MobilityMinded have published part 5 of their video review of the LG eXpo.  In this episode they demo the projector in what appears to be relatively bright conditions, which the small device appears to handle pretty well.

Read more at MobilityMinded.com