Author: Serkadis

The Samsung Omnia Pro is one of the best business-focussed Windows Mobile phones available now, and the current deal available at Clove simply blows the mind.

The Samsung Omnia Pro, which offers an AMOLED WVGA screen and 800 Mhz processor is available for only £295 excluding VAT (less than $480).  The Quadband device unfortunately does not have 3G on AT&T frequencies, but is an exceptional buy and value for money for the rest of the world.

To take advantage of the deal read more at Clove here.

Bologna, Italy | Relics and Reliquaries

This celebrated baroque Basilica is quite large, and as one wanders the echoing church they will find a number of relics sprinkled throughout.

The relic of St. Dominic is found in the form of his skull, encased in a decorative gold reliquary atop an alter. At the far end of the church lays the spectacularly fresh looking Blessed James of Ulm.

At first, the full figure in the glass coffin appears to be the very fresh face of an mummified relic, but he is in fact a wax figure. His true remains are kept in a discrete urn nearby. To the left of the coffin, hanging on the wall is what also appears to be actual mummified remains, in this case of Ven. Serafino Capponi, a noted theologian. Capponi is posed with his head tilted lifelessly to one side, holding a cross in his brown withered hands. But this too is an illusion. The bust is actually papier-maché, although it is said to cover his true remains.

However the church is not without true relics, in fact it has a whole room full of them. At the back of the church is a small reliquary museum full of real bodily bits of saints. The glass cases are full with mummified finger relics in fantastically ornate reliquaries, alongside a wide collection of stunning monstrances, chalices and works of macabre bone art.

Two more classics in the form of Blaster Master and Earthworm Jim 2 head off to the Virtual Console just in time for the holidays, as well as several more puzzle games to keep you preoccupied until

Coming staright from the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, THQ has finally released the first trailer of UFC Undisputed 2010, the sequel of the best-selling MMA game in history.
 

You had to be pretty clueless in 2007 not to recognize that the major record labels were seriously struggling. Still, we thought that the decision by private equity firm Terra Firma to buy EMI in 2007 might actually be an opportunity for a major record label to change, since the new bosses did not come from the recording industry, and weren’t saddled with silly preconceived notions about how a major record label had to do business. And, early on, things actually looked positive. New boss Guy Hands was quick to embrace Radiohead’s experiment and let everyone at EMI know that they needed to learn from it, rather than deny it or freak out about it. He also threatened to leave both the IFPI and the RIAA if they didn’t stop suing fans (eventually he stuck with both, but cut their allowance). On top of that, he hired some smart outsiders to help.

Since then, however, everything has pretty much collapsed. While they weren’t saddled with preconceived notions, they were saddled with dreadful contracts, and every attempt to change them resulted in charges from EMI’s biggest artists that the company was trying to screw them over. On top of that, the company started giving really mixed messages. At times it seemed to be embracing the new, and at other times, it would try to personally bankrupt the CEOs of innovative startups. It didn’t take long for the tech experts EMI brought in to quit. Then, there were stories of infighting at Terra Firma, with arguments over what to do with EMI altogether, which could explain some of the contradictory strategy decisions.

Either way, Terra Firma has now decided to sue Citigroup for misleading it into the deal. Again, given the state of the recording industry, it’s hard to see how they thought it was going to be a good deal in the first place, but Terra Firma claims that Citigroup lied to Terra Firma about other bidders to get the firm to pay more and pay now — noting that Citi had a major conflict of interest in acting both as an advisor and a financier of the deal. Of course, that’s how investment banks make their money anyway. They want deal flow, so they have a neat little script that always encourages more deal flow. At times, they talk about synergies, and why companies need to buy each other, and then once they get big, they talk about spinning off parts to “unlock shareholder value.” You can’t trust those guys for an honest assessment of such a deal, and if Terra Firma did so, it seems like it should be the firm’s own fault.

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Alien vs. Predator was awarded with a RC classification (Refused Classification) by the Australian Classification Review Board earlier this month. As you know, getting an RC from the Board is tantamount to having the game banned in

Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Convertible, Mercedes-Benz, Luxury

The 2011 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Cabriolet is ready for its close-up at the Detroit Auto Show, but before the shindig in Michigan gets underway next month, Mercedes has dropped all the official details on its CLK convertible replacement.

Like the coupe on which it’s based, the Cabrio is a step up from its predecessor and comes packing a choice of powerplants: a 3.5-liter V6 putting out 268 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque in E350 guise or a 5.5-liter V8 churning out 382 hp and 391 lb-ft of torque in the E550 cab.

Unlike some of its competition, the E-Class Convertible doesn’t employ a retractable hard-top, but rather a 0.9-inch cloth roof that pays dividends in the capacity department. With the top up, the trunk is good for nearly 14 cubic feet of space and cut down to just over three cubic feet when the top is dropped and stowed behind the rear passengers. There’s also a pass-through underneath the roof’s enclosure — similar to the recently released Audi A5 convertible — that should make schlepping longer parcels a bit easier.

The real party piece on the convertible E-Class is the new AirCap system, which includes a 2.4-inch wind deflector that extends from the windshield, along with a draft-stop mounted behind the rear seats. According to Mercedes, this limits the amount of wind intrusion into the passenger compartment up to speeds of 100 mph, keeping your perfectly coifed hair in check and making conversations easier when storming the autobahn.

Other tech includes the Mercedes Airscarf, which blows warm air around the neck of the front seat passengers (originally seen on the SL) and Mercedes’ first application of head airbags in a convertible. If you’re champing at the bit to get your hands on the 2011 E-Class Convertible, you’ll have to wait until May, but in the meantime, you can scope out all the details in the press release below the fold.

Continue reading Detroit Preview: 2011 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Cabriolet

Detroit Preview: 2011 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Cabriolet originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends, 

• A friend wrote us that there are tons of openings at FDIC.gov.  If you’re interested in doing failed bank clean-up work, you should also check out the contractors they use.  One of them is Solomon, Edwards (solomonedwards.com), and there are others as well.  We hear that it’s much easier to get hired by one of the contractors than by the FDIC.
• This photo is a fake, but it’s still pretty cool.  The setting is under San Francisco ’s Golden Gate Bridge .
  

• If you’re a Husky, you can be proud that of all the public colleges and universities in the United States , University of Washington alums have been awarded more Congressional Medals of Honor than any other school.   And next to Cal , their students rank #2 in students who join the Peace Corps. The University of Washington was a pretty good (but not great) University for years, till they made a stunningly brilliant move.  Some number of years ago they appointed Bill Gates’ mom to their Board of Trustees, and over the years, tons of Microsoft dollars flowed to the campus.  It’s now gone from pretty good to very, very good.  Their medical school is considered one of the ten best in the nation.
• Remember our mentioning Tightwad Bank as being in the Hall of Fame of Great Bank Names?  Well, there really is such a bank (www.tightwadbank.net), and, no surprise, it’s located in Tightwad, Missouri . The town has a population of 66 people. And one bank.
• What is a Brooks Machine? From a friend at the BofA:  “I hate to admit it, but I know what a Brooks machine is. It’s a machine that would print out TIL information. I remember loans like GPM’s and the tapes the machines generated to show the loan payment stream. Those tapes were a mile long.”     Debbie Lane from Monarch Mortgage in Virginia Beach wrote about the machine and its inventor and several others also wrote in with similar comments.
• The comment from our friend refers above to GPM’s.  If you never heard of them, they were Graduated Payment Mortgages. We used to like calling them gyp ‘ems. And speaking of giving names to loans or securities, when the 30 year Treasury bond was at 10%, we used to refer to them as Bo’s, as in Bo Derrick.  Actually, you might have been in middle school then, but 25-30 years ago Bo Derrick was the drop-dead beautiful star of a movie called, simply, “10’, as in ‘”On a scale of one to ten, she’s a ten.”  We all called a 10% bond a Bo, and we all thought we were terribly sophisticated and wildly clever.
• We got an e-mail from Jeff McCalmon, one of the owners of Tightwad Bank telling us “We do enjoy the amusement of the name.” 
• We’re always hammering on clients to calculate their exact cost-to-originate every month, and not estimates (“It costs us about $1,200 to originate a loan” is not good enough). You need to know it precisely, and in bps.  You need to be able to say “Our cost-to-originate was 127 bps last month, it’s 117 bps year-to-date, and it’s 113 bps year-to-date in our Manchester office and 142 bps in our Concord office.”
• You need just as much specificity in calculating your gain on sale.  You need to be able to say that “Our gain-on-sale was 155 bps last month and 147 year to date v. 163 for all of last year.  So far this year it’s running 132 with conventionals, 188 with FHA, 193 for VA, and 201 for USDA.  Our loan officer, John Galt, is our highest producer by volume this year, but the gain-on-sale on his loans has only been 83 bps, and the 2^nd highest producer by volume, Hank Reardon, has been averaging a gain-on-sale of 153 bps.”  Get the picture?
  If you can’t spit out numbers like this, you’re not managing your business in a way that lets you make the best decisions. And the crazy thing is that all this data is in your system somewhere.  It’s just a matter of extracting it and presenting it.  We were at Monarch Bank subsidiary Monarch Mortgage, and they have all this!  They really have their numbers down. It wasn’t a surprise that they are also highly profitable, and it’s always that way.  The companies that know the metrics of their business best are the ones that are the most profitable.  And vice versa.
• And how about that Bernie Madoff?  Only 148 years and five months left on his sentence.
• Here’s from someone we did a FOCIS-plus for, after she started tracking these metrics as we suggested:  “We’re tracking the things you told us to track, and we’ve found that some of our highest producers are our worst performers for profitability and loan quality…”
• Do first impressions really matter when important guests visit your office?  We say they do and former warehouse lender Bob Murray agrees, providing this mental checklist: “What does the office look like?  Is it spartan or decked out in all cherry wood paneling?  Is the office clean and orderly, or is paper piled everywhere?  Is the overall environment (the facility, staff, and tone) professional and understated or over the top?  Good companies are busy but organized and they keep overhead down…. While these are only initial impressions, they often prove to be indicative of how owners/managers run the business.”
• We still think you’d really enjoy Brothers. Toby McGuire was excellent, as was Natalie Portman.  By the way, the Harvard educated Portman has a very interesting YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8e6-IeQ0aw.  If you’re easily offended by a bit of foul language, do not watch this!  But if you can handle it, it’s pretty hilarious given her squeaky clean, Ivy-educated image.
• We wrote about the Schwab Bank portfolio of HELLOCS, and we got the following from a Schwab official. “I believe that in our case a much better measurement in terms of understanding both the concentration of risk and our basic approach to bank lending is to look at HELOCs as a percentage of total bank assets, not as a percentage of our loan book.  Our client loan book is small relative to assets.  Bank assets here tend to be concentrated more in securities, particularly government backed….. In addition, there is a high concentration among Schwab Bank clientele of Schwab brokerage clients, hence our high average FICO scores, and low default rates.”  That makes us feel lot better as we’ve always thought of Schwab as a really well run company.
• We were wrong.  Indy Mac was not seized on a Thursday, but apparently Wamu was.  Someone wrote us that it was on July 11 that Indy Mac was closed, and isn’t 7-11 supposed to be a lucky number?
• It looks like BAC sent loans to Freddie with a Bailee letter stating that the funds were to be wired to BAC as collateral agent, with Freddie ignoring it and wiring them to Taylor Bean’s account at Colonial. BAC is now being sued by the warehouse lenders. 
• Possible the best mortgage newsletter is written by Rob Chrisman, and he reported recently mortgage brokers are originating less than 13% of residential loans.  Wow.  Remember when it was running at 60%?  Most of our wholesale clients have spent the last year or two moving into retail, but interesting, we also have some who don’t feel the need to move big time into retail.  We think there were always be wholesale, and we admire those mortgage bankers who are committed to staying in wholesale and seeing that it works.
• Sport Quote of the week, from Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal:  “Soccer is a gentlemen’s game played by hooligans. Rugby is a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen.”  Don’t you wish you’d come up with that line?

With so many of us sending our kids off to college, it’s only normal to think about what we owe children for these first 18 years or so.  It seems that we owe them love, a set of good values, a safe environment, and an education. Can you think of anything else?

Garrett, Watts & Co.   

Today’s special: The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Mortgage Bankers!

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

• Mike McAuley      ([email protected])
• Corky Watts         ([email protected])
• Joe Garrett         ([email protected])

We’ve been discussing the trouble that’s been going on in the world of ebooks, as publishers are still coming to terms with the ebook era, and it seems that there are similar problems in the older world of audiobooks. TorrentFreak points us to an article by Cory Doctorow at Publisher’s Weekly, where he discusses the difficulty he has had in publishing a DRM-free audiobook. Even once his publisher got on board, there were problems. First it was with Audible, the main audiobook seller — who flat out refused. Yet on a more recent book, Audible was willing to go DRM-free, but Apple turned them down. Yes, Apple. The company that at one point claimed DRM was bad and should be ditched, and convinced the record labels to ditch DRM. Yet, as we’ve noted in the past, outside of music, Apple is still a huge DRM supporter. So it is with audiobooks apparently. When Doctorow, his publisher and Audible all told Apple they wanted to put a DRM-free copy of his audiobook in iTunes, he was told no. Other audiobook publishers are just as bad, if not worse, apparently requiring ridiculous license agreements, DRM and even software downloads. One of these days, the audiobook world is going to have to come to terms with what pretty much every other digital content provider has realized: making life more difficult for customers is not a way to succeed long term.

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Filed under: Etc., Videos

Remember Michael Winslow, the guy from the Police Academy movies and The Man of 10,000 Effects? When it comes to cars, this gent could be his follow-up act, having worked out his own technique for imitating a number of powerplants.

There are a selection of engine sounds on offer, including a convincing import four-cylinder, two-stroke motorbike, a V6, and a Weedwacker among others – and what else are you going to do while the xBox loads up a game? You can check out his repertoire in the video after the jump. *WARNING: NSFW language. Thanks for the tip, Duy!

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading VIDEO: The Michael Winslow of engine impressionists

VIDEO: The Michael Winslow of engine impressionists originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Key West, Florida | Watery Wonders

Juan Ponce de Leon first stumbled upon this stretch of islands in 1513, back when they were nothing more than clusters of coral inhabited by sea turtles. Upon his discovery, de Leon named the islands “Las Tortugas” (meaning “the turtles”), and is said to have subsisted off 160 of these very animals while on his journey through the high seas. (“Dry” was later added to the islands’ name as an attempt to warn mariners of the lack of freshwater in the area.)

After de Leon’s discovery, the Dry Tortugas became a fixture on Spanish ship maps for merchants and explorers going to and from the Gulf Coast. Seventy miles west of the Florida Keys, and in a prime location between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, the Dry Tortugas soon became a popular shipping corridor.

Despite the passageway’s popularity, the Dry Tortugas also became the site of hundreds of shipwrecks. The seasonal shallow waters and hazardous weather conditions lent to the corridor’s infamous title as the “ship trap.” To this day, a large collection of sunken treasures still lies beneath the surface waters. Seventeenth-century vessel remains, cannons, and glassware are among some of the maritime relics.

Of all the Dry Tortugas treasures, though, Fort Jefferson perhaps remains the crown jewel. Once Florida was acquisitioned from Spain in 1822, the United States began plans to erect a naval station that would help combat piracy in the Caribbean. Eventually, the U.S. Navy agreed on the Dry Tortugas as the site for their fortress, arguing that U.S. shipping in the Gulf Coast would be in jeopardy if a hostile power were to take over the islands.

In 1847, after seventeen years of extensive planning, Fort Jefferson began construction on the Garden Key Island. The design plans called for a practically indestructible hexagonal fortress, complete with a massive 420 heavy-gun platform. Two sides of the fort measured 325 feet and four sides measured 477 feet. The structure stood 45-feet above sea level, surrounded entirely by a wall and a 70-foot wide moat. Though construction lasted for roughly thirty years, Fort Jefferson was never fully completed. Despite this, 16 million bricks were laid, making it one of the largest coastal forts ever built.

During the Civil War the fort was also used as a prison, mainly for Union deserters. The most famous inmate, however, was Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. After shooting President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth jumped from the theater box, broke one of his legs, and immediately fled to Dr. Mudd’s farm where he received medical assistance.

In 1865, Dr. Mudd was sentenced to life in prison and sent to the remote fortress. Two years later, a yellow fever outbreak occurred at Fort Jefferson. The outbreak took a number of lives, including the lone doctor who had been stationed at the fort. Dr. Mudd agreed to step in as a replacement and, as a result, many lives were saved. Consequently, the soldiers started a petition demanding Dr. Mudd’s release; a petition which President Andrew Jackson granted only four years into Dr. Mudd’s life sentence.

The fort was abandoned by the Army in 1874. In later years it served as a coaling station, quarantine hospital and, in 1935, it was registered by President Roosevelt as a National Monument. Today it operates as part of the Dry Tortugas National Park. Accessible only by boat or seaplane, the Dry Tortugas are considered to be one of America’s most remote and least visited national parks.

Review: 2010 Nissan Maxima SV Sport is a lot of car for a lot of coin

Despite being hobbled by front-wheel drive, the Maxima SV Sport can hold its own on the bi-ways and backroads. But at what cost?

Kepler Motors Motion supercar to debut at Dubai Motor Show

We’ve seen plenty of supercar start-ups come and go, but Kepler Motors appears to have the right stuff with its carbon fiber, Ecoboost-powered Motion coupe.

VIDEO: GM commissions Chevrolet Volt dance to go with song. Yes, really.

Following the release of the Chevrolet Volt theme song, GM tapped a handful of dancers to perform an accompanying two-step at the LA Auto Show. And yes, it’s bad.

Also of interest:

• Reader Spy: SRT-fettled Dodge Journey R/T spotted
• VIDEO: 2011 Audi A1 teased ahead of Geneva unveiling
• Detroit Preview: Toyota teases new hybrid concept vehicle
• 9ff reveals even more bonkers GT9-R – is this the world’s fastest production car?
• VIDEO: Australian Yaris ad gets banned for being raunchy

Browse our archive of Daily U-Turn posts or subscribe to the RSS feed

Daily U-Turn: What you missed on 12.14.09 originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After the VGA 2009 trailer reveal for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Ubisoft has now sent out more details about this multiplatformer game. And just in time, too, cos with its May 2010 release date drawing

2009Dec14: “Climate change is causing accelerated sea level rise and an increase in the salinity of the southern Sundarbans,” says Professor Pranabes Sanyal of Jadavpur University in Calcutta, India. “That in turn is causing the migration of the tigers from the southern islands towards the north, close to the human habitation. That’s why we have this man-animal confrontation – and the confrontation is increasing” (BBC).

Reference: BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8411225.stm

Image Description: Tiger tracks in Sundarbans National Park. Photo by Peter Andersen, 2006Dec10. Image Location: Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunderbans_049.jpg Image Permission: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

Homeowner Warning: Mortgage Payments Lost In Ginnie Mae Shuffle – Asher Hawkins – Lend America shutdown shows risks with fed-backed lenders. – When the government shuts down a federally guaranteed home lender, it leads to headaches for homeowners whose mortgage payments are at risk of getting lost in the shuffle. – Forbes
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Speech: Envisioning a Future for Housing Finance – Governor Elizabeth A. Duke – At the Mortgage Foreclosure Policy Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago – FR Board of Governors

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Foreclosure relief program is stuck in first – JUST 4 PERCENT IN FINAL STAGE – By Renae Merle – Thousands now risk losing mortgage help – Washington Post

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Invisible threat to home values – By Marilyn Kennedy Melia – on spotting clusters of “underwater” homes –  Bankrate.com

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BUYING MBS SECTION:

NY Fed says bought $1.570 bln of U.S. agency debt – …  aiming to hold down mortgage rates and revive economic growth. …  – Reuters

and 

WHERE HAVE ALL THE MBS GONE? – … The Fed purchases represent roughly 12% of the market.  This begs the question:  who did they buy all of these securities from? … MBS represent a significant risk to the financial system once the Fed stops buying them.  US households were right to liquidate their holdings.  Once the Fed is gone from the market, there will be no incremental buyer and prices could collapse. …  gives answers to who the buyers are  – The Hedonic Calculus Blog