Category: News

We’ve been pretty hard on Nokia with regard to its miserable S60 5th (aka, Symbian^1) user experience as compared to the competition. Fortunately, Nokia’s bound and determined to freshen things up in 2010 with two major updates scheduled for the first and second halves of the year. At the moment, Symbian^3 (that’s Symbian three) is expected first with Symbian^4 coming before the end of the year (functionally complete in Q3 with S^4 devices shipping in early 2011 according to the symbian.org wiki page). What we’ve got above then, is a UI Concept proposal for the latter. As you can tell from the pics, Symbian^4 promises to deliver an entirely new user interface: navigation is streamlined and platform apps will be reorganized and redesigned to leverage next gen graphics meant to deliver visually appealing transparencies and transitions on Symbian devices. The experience is based on Direct UI and built upon Qt and Orbit — a strategy that Nokia hopes will lure developers to the table by making apps easy to build and update with broad scalability across Nokia’s entire lineup of handsets. Note that the concept is open for discussion (and thus change) so voice your opinion now. And no, responding “N900 FTW” doesn’t count. One more image after the break.

Continue reading Symbian provides early glimpse at 2011 Nokia smartphone experience

Symbian provides early glimpse at 2011 Nokia smartphone experience originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bank earnings officially gets underway this morning.

—

NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase & Co. is expected to continue to show that it’s one of the strongest national banks when it reports fourth-quarter results Friday morning.

JPMorgan Chase quickly recovered from the instability that nearly led to a collapse of the financial services sector late in 2008, and has been one of the most profitable banks in recent quarter. The New York-based bank has used its strong investment banking and trading operations to help more than offset ongoing problems in the consumer lending divisions.

Nearly all banks have struggled with mounting loan losses as more customers fall behind in repaying loans while unemployment remains high.

Many analysts predict loan losses should peak some time in the first half of 2010, which could eventually pave the way for even bigger profits for banks like JPMorgan Chase.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, on average, forecast JPMorgan Chase will earn 61 cents per share during the fourth quarter on $26.8 billion in revenue.

Credit Suisse analyst Moshe Orenbuch estimates fourth-quarter revenue will fall somewhat, compared with the third quarter, because of the traditional seasonal slowdown of trading activity around the holidays at the end of the year.

Orenbuch predicts trading-related revenue fell 19 percent during the final three months of the year, compared with the third quarter.

He estimates that JPMorgan Chase earned 59 cents per share during the final quarter of 2009.

Exactly how much of that revenue JPMorgan sets aside to pay out year-end bonuses for its workers will likely be closely scrutinized. Big Wall Street firms have come under fire for doling out big bonuses shortly after receiving government bailout money and helping push the nation’s economy into recession.

JPMorgan Chase received $25 billion as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program late in 2008. It repaid the money in the middle of 2009 when it first was granted the opportunity to do so.

Rochdale Securities analyst Richard Bove JPMorgan Chase increasing its dividend could help cut down on bonus furor because it would show the bank is also rewarding investors for the company’s strong performance. The bank said last quarter it might increase its quarterly dividend from the current 5 cents per share payout.

A dividend increase would also show the bank is confident that the economy is rebounding and consumer banking operations are improving, Bove wrote in the note.

“By increasing the dividend the Board and management will be signaling their confidence in the 2010 earnings outlook,” Bove wrote in the note. “No increase means that the outlook remains clouded.”

Bove forecasts JPMorgan Chase earned 51 cents per share during the fourth quarter.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• JPMorgan: Absolutely Nothing Is Getting In The Way Of The Ongoing Recovery Trade
• WaMu Wants Documents From The Fed About Its Talks With JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon
• Jamie Dimon Has Had It With The Bonus Bashing

We were in a broody mid-winter kind of mood and looking for a broody beer to match. If labels are anything to go by, this one from Canadian Brewery Unibroue was sure to do the job. We’ve tried a few of Unibroue’s unique and tasty brews in the past, but this was our first encounter with the ominous-looking Trois Pistoles.

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Japanese carmaker Toyota announced today it will build the hybrid Prius at its Blue Springs, Mississippi in the US starting from an yet undecided date. Most likely, production of the Prius, currently imported from Japan, in the US will not begin before the American market stabilizes.

"Because the economy went sour, we had too much capacity and decided not to spend all the money – and to use our underutilized plant in Indiana," a Toyota spokesman was quoted as saying by just-auto.co… (read more)

La compacte de Fiat, la Bravo II, qui peine à trouver son marché hors d’Italie, profitera de 2010 pour se faire un léger lifting et revoir via des packs ses équipements à la hausse.

–> Toute l’actualité des marques du groupe Fiat en continu, c’est sur les Fils News: Chrysler/Lancia, Fiat, Alfa Romeo.

–> La Fiat Bravo restylée se dévoile à travers quelques photos (en fait des photoshops officiels basés sur des photos de la Bravo actuelle), avant d’être présentée mi-février. Les retouches sont assez légères. Une nouvelle grille fait sont apparition à l’avant, noire ou métallique selon les finitions. L’encadrement est metallisé, sauf sur les Emotion, où il devient chromé. L’habillage intérieur des phares avant est également revu et de nouvelles teintes (gris et perle) sont disponibles. Dernière modification extérieure, les rétroviseurs et poignées de portes couleur carrosserie.

 

A l’intérieur, à noter l’apparition du bandeau de tableau de bord couleur carrosserie, comme sur les 500, Punto Evo ou Fiat Coupé pour remonter un peu plus loin. Les versions d’entrée de gamme Active et Dynamic bénéficient désormais de la planche de bord « carbon look ». Les tissus de sièges évoluent également, pour s’harmoniser avec l’ensemble.

 

Côté équipements, la voiture bénéficie de packs « Sound » et « Blue »; l’Active Sound bénéficie en plus d’une radio CD MP3 et de feux antibrouillards, la Blue Dynamic s’enrichit du système Blue&Me, du radar de recul et de vitres arrière électriques. La Blue Sport de son côté ajoute à la finition Sport des jantes de 18 pouces, des vitres surteintées et le système Blue&me. Enfin, la Blue Emotion reçoit des radars avant et arrière, des rétroviseurs rabattables électriquement, un capteur de luminosité et le système Blue&Me. Les packs Blue seront tarifés à 800€.

Les prix de ce nouveau millésime 2010 revu seront inchangés par rapport à la version 2009.

Nouveau: pour profiter facilement et rapidement des notifications de nouveautés sur le site, pensez à vous abonner via Twitter. Chaque modification, nouvel article ou nouvelle vidéo sur notre chaîne Youtube, fait l’objet d’un Tweet immédiat!

The Dubai 24 Hours has become a major event on the international sportscar racing calendar and the 2010 race has attracted some 80 competitors from all over the world. A record number of nine Aston Martins have entered the Dunlop 24 Hours of Dubai which kicks-off today and takes place at the Dubai Autodrome on the FIA sanctioned 5.39 km GP circuit.

The Aston Martin Vantage N24/GT4 race car was first launched in January 2007 and since then it has established various success in 24 hour races a… (read more)

On last night’s Jay Leno Show, Strong Jaw went one-on-one with Jimmy Kimmel, who impersonated Leno beneath a grey wig and fake chin on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night. In a word, Leno got murked.

Leno doesn’t appear to be winning anyone over with his move to retake The Tonight Show, as Jimmy Kimmel and Rosie O’Donnell tell him to let Conan O’Brien keep the show.

“The best prank I ever pulled was I told a guy that—five years from now—I’m gonna give you my show. And then when the five years came, I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly.”

General Motors India is planning to increase its annual production figure to 200,000 units by 2013 and want to export a part of it to the European and Asia Pacific markets, as The Financial Express writes.

Karl Slym, GM India’s president & managing director considers India to be one of the company’s large-growing markets with good prospects for the following years.

We manufactured 65,000 cars in 2008, which grew by 6% in 2009 to 70,000 cars. This year we expect to make 100,000 cars; and wi… (read more)

Here’s an article from our friends over at The Toilet Paper. To subscribe to their free ball busting daily newsletter, click here.

Attention all vagineers!

After years of exhausting exploration, it’s time to take off your spelunking helmets and come up for air. Scientists in London have discovered that the elusive and mysterious G-spot does not exist. Either the data was skewed due to these limey bookworms having short peckers or some women just like to scream unintelligibly while boning. The findings in this study serve as vindication to every man that has ever gotten a cramp in his neck, twisted a tongue muscle, or nearly thrown out his back in a panicked pursuit to find his lady friend’s make-believe pleasure zone. In closing, told ya Michelle!

Number

75% – Percentage of women that never reach orgasm from intercourse alone. Ten to fifteen percent never climax under any circumstances. At ease, ladies. Say hello to “The Situation.”

Quote

“The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers.”

Woody Allen, comedic geezer who married his own adopted daughter

Word

chimerical

Retweet

adj. 1. Unreal; imaginary.

See Heidi Montag’s singing career.

Fact

The Sybian, an auto-erotic device designed for females and made famous on The Howard Stern Show, was originally called the Master Better. Dave Lampert, the device’s creator, wanted a more sophisticated-sounding name and chose “Sybian” after an ancient city in Rome known for its luxury. We prefer the name “Vegas”. With a price tag of $1300, thrill-seekers are truly getting screwed.

The List

Other Mythical Searches

The Lost City of Atlantis – No proof of Plato’s sunken island, but two cool resorts.
The Fountain of Youth – Ironically, Ponce de León’s search led him to Florida, where old people go to die.
Bigfoot – Tall furry figment of some unique individuals imaginations.
A Chicago Cubs World Series Championship – A century-long pursuit continues.
Nickleback – We’re still searching for their appeal.

For more in your face news blasts, click here to subscribe to The Toilet Paper now.

Related posts:

1. The Toilet Paper Article of the Week: Been Caught Stealin’
2. The Toilet Paper Article of the Week: Back In The Ring
3. The Toilet Paper: Busting Balls Daily

Just as picking fruit from a mango tree does not harm it, living off dividends does not damage the investment’s ability to produce future results. A mango tree’s life will easily span an entire generation. Similarly, well-chosen dividend investments will not only provide income in retirement, but can be passed to your children who can continue to reap the benefits.

Below are several select companies that recently decided to reward their shareholders with fruits of their labor in the form of increased cash dividends:

Epoch Holding (EPHC) is an investment advisory and investment management services company. January 11th the company increased its quarterly dividend 67% to $0.05/share. The dividend is payable on February 12, 2010 to shareholders of record as of January 29, 2010. The ex-dividend date is January 27, 2010. The yield based on the new payout is 1.84%.

CVS Caremark (CVS) is a leading operator of both retail drug stores and pharmacy benefit management services in the U.S. January 12th the company raised its quarterly dividend 15% to $0.0875/share. The dividend is payable February 2, 2010 to holders of record on January 22, 2010. The yield based on the new payout is 1.03%.

Duncan Energy Partners (DEP) gathers, transports, markets, and stores natural gas, as well as in transporting and storing natural gas liquids (NGLs) and petrochemicals in the U.S. January 12th the company raised its quarterly distribution 4.1% to $0.445/unit. The cash distribution will be paid Friday, February 5, 2010, to unitholders of record at the close of business on Friday, January 29, 2010. The ex-dividend date is January 27, 2010. This distribution is the fifth consecutive quarterly distribution increase. The yield based on the new payout is 7.35%.

Linear Technology (LLTC) manufactures high-performance linear integrated circuits. January 12th the company boosted its quarterly dividend to $0.23/share. The dividend will be paid on February 24, 2010 to stockholders of record on February 12, 2010. LLTC is a Dividend Achiever and has raised its dividend for 17 consecutive years. The yield based on the new payout is 3.08%.

Fifth Street (FSC) is a specialty finance company that lends to and invests in small and mid-sized companies. January 13th the company increased its quarterly dividend 11% to $0.30/share. The dividend is payable on March 30 to shareholders as of the close on March 3. The yield based on the new payout is 10.15%.

Shaw Communications (SJR) is a Canadian communications company that provides broadband cable television, Internet and satellite direct-to-home services to apx. 3.4 million customers. January 14th the company boosted its dividend 5% to $0.8775/share. Shaw’s dividends are declared and paid on a monthly basis and this increase will commence March 30, 2010. The yield based on the new payout is 4.37%.

While a mango tree gives fruit for several generations, a great dividend stock will give increasing dividends each year. For a list of stocks with a long string of consecutive cash dividend increases, see this list.

Full Disclosure: No position in the aforementioned securities. See a list of all my income holdings here.

(Photo Credit)

Related Posts:

• Bank of America Headed Back to the TARP ATM
• 3 Dividend Stocks Rewarding Their Shareholders

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We already put together a presentation on the gobs of reasons that Chinese real estate is one of the most obvious bubbles ever — even seen from halfway around the world.

Here’s another point we should have put in, however: property hoarding.

Developers are tossing up condos, but refusing to sell units on anticipation that they’ll be able to get a better price in a few months down the road.

CCTV:

At a sales center of a new property project in Beijing, the salesperson says many units with three bed rooms are available. But they have fewer numbers of two bed room units.

A real estate agent said, “The developer is holding on to many units and wants to sell them later at higher prices.”

Developers have managed to find their own way to dodge regulations.

A real estate agent said, “If the developer doesn’t want to sell units in a new building, they will avoid applying for permission for pre-sale by telling the regulator they don’t have money.”

…

A real estate agent said, “All the developers are hoarding properties. If you want to buy an apartment, you can only register now and wait until March or April. Because the developer says the price of a unit will be more than 100 thousand yuan then.”

Read the whole story and watch the English-language video at CCTV.com –>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Chinese Property Prices Soar At Fastest Rate In 18 Months, Ignoring Government Attempts To Cool The Bubble
• Why Shanghai Real Estate Is The Most Obvious Bubble Ever
• China Tanks 3.1% As Investors Fear That The Bubble’s Been Pricked

Voici que la low-cost du Turinois montre son nez, et même un peu plus. Fiat met acutellement au point une stratégie proche de celle de Renault avec la Logan. Le premier rejeton sera cette Uno…

–> Toute l’actualité des marques du groupe Fiat en continu, c’est sur les Fils News: Chrysler/Lancia, Fiat, Alfa Romeo.

–> La nouvelle Uno, low-cost pour l’Amerique latine dès cette année, puis les marchés émergents, puis l’Europe en 2011, est dévoilé par un premier spyshot sans camouflage. Les rendus de cette version 5 portes (la 3 portes arrivera plus tard), conformes aux spyshots des caisses sur les chaînes, donc fiables, nous montrent une voiture assez proche de la Panda de profil et de l’arrière, bien que la Uno soit en fait plus longue. Par contre, ce spyshot de l’avant rappelle également la première Panda avec sa calandre asymétrique. Le comparaison s’arrête là bien entendu.

 

Côté intérieur, du simple et du costaud, dumoins l’espère-t’on, avec cette planche de bord monobloc, comme chez Dacia.

On ne sait pas encore avec ceritude quels moteurs équiperont la voiture. Si le nouveau 900 bicylindre n’est guère cité, curieusement, on parle parfois du 1.2 65cv, mais aussi d’un 1.0 ou d’un 1.4, en plus du très probable 1.3 JTD. A suivre donc côté mécanique…

 

La Uno sera produite dans un premier temps au Brésil, puis en Serbie chez Zastava, dont Fiat a finalisé la reprise le mois dernier et dont la firme compte faire « son Dacia ». A ce propos, pas d’indication non plus de la marque sous laquelle cette commercialisation se fera en Europe. Pourquoi pas Innocenti par exemple ?…

On notera tout de même que Fiat a choisi une voie risquée; les pays émergents ont une nette préférence pour les 3 volumes à coffre, type Logan…

Enfin, aucune indication du prix pour le moment.

Nouveau: pour profiter facilement et rapidement des notifications de nouveautés sur le site, pensez à vous abonner via Twitter. Chaque modification, nouvel article ou nouvelle vidéo sur notre chaîne Youtube, fait l’objet d’un Tweet immédiat!

After nine years of strong bond inside the World Rally Championship and adjacent rally programmes, Henning Solberg and Cato Menkerud will go their separate ways starting the 2010 season. As confirmed by the Norwegian driver during the course of this week, Menkerud will no longer read him rally notes in 2010.

Although he insisted there is nothing wrong with the partnership between the two – as they have been racing in rally for almost a decade – we can’t help but wonder why the sudden change? … (read more)

Q: The couple across the street from me snow-plowed my driveway while I was at work, without asking. They did this last year, too — my husband and I offered to buy gas to offset the work, but we were waved away with a smile, told the “toy” didn’t get much use and they were glad to do it.

This time around, I would like to at least give them a little something, but I’m at a loss as to what to do.

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The Internet identity landscape is about to get a lot more interesting if the latest rumor that Twitter is launching its version of Facebook Connect materializes. The war is being fought right now largely between Facebook and Google and the social network has a clear lead in mind-share snatching up some big-name websites which Google b… (read more)

The Edge has a talk with Wealth of networks author Yochai Benkler on the shortcomings of economic models based purely on (narrowly defined) self interest – THE END OF UNIVERSAL RATIONALITY (via P2P Foundation).

The big question I ask myself is how we start to think much more methodically about human sharing, about the relationship between human interest and human morality and human society. The main moment at which I think you could see the end of an era was when Alan Greenspan testified before the House committee and said, “My predictions about self-interest were wrong. I relied for 40 years on self-interest to work its way up, and it was wrong.” For those of us like me who have been working on the Internet for years, it was very clear you couldn’t encounter free software and you couldn’t encounter Wikipedia and you couldn’t encounter all of the wealth of cultural materials that people create and exchange, and the valuable actual software that people create, without an understanding that something much more complex is happening than the dominant ideology of the last 40 years or so. But you could if you weren’t looking there, because we were used in the industrial system to think in these terms. …

The big question I ask myself is how we start to think much more methodically about human sharing, about the relationship between human interest and human morality and human society.

There are lots of different disciplines where people have been doing work for a long time. In many cases, doing work that was peripheral during the period of the rise of selfish rationality. Really we’re talking about a period from about the 1950s until roughly now, when in economics, in political science, in law, in evolutionary biology, you got an increasing relative importance for explanations that depended on individuals acting in ways that maximize their returns, where their returns largely are assumed, though not universally, to be material with self-interest.

Game theory and mechanism design imagines people as acting with self-interest and guile. Political science builds models that are based on self-interested voters and self-interested Senators and self-interested Congressmen, each one trying to understand what is their interest. Is it to get elected again? Is it to maximize a particular position? And each time you build a system around this idea of individuals interacting, trying to maximize their own returns.

In evolutionary biology, for example, one thing that you saw was the rise of very sophisticated ways of explaining behavior that seemed to be altruistic, purely in terms that redounded to the benefit of the individual organism. This is where reciprocity becomes so important. What we see again throughout all of these different disciplines is that somewhere around the 80s in some places, like organizational sociology, somewhere closer to the 90s, if you talk for example about evolutionary biology and the resurgence of the possibility of multi-level selection and group selection where it’s not all reduced to the individual, there are also components that happen at the group level.

Certainly in the context of political science and the emergence of some studies of commons and common property regimes and collective actions — successful collective action models. In economics, we see a substantial work in experimental economics, like Ernst Fehr’s group in Zurich and Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis in Santa Fe, starting to do experiments that show that people deviate from selfish rationality. That people systematically and predictably behave in ways that are much more cooperative than would be predicted by the game theoretical impact.

You’ve got theoretical economists, like Roland Benabou, Jean Tirole, and Matthew Rabin, who begin to build quite sophisticated models that try to implement very different kinds of motivations, like even a sense of self image and a sense of ‘I’m okay’ relative to the world. (There is a beautiful study, for example, from two or three years ago about knowledge workers. (Bruno Frey and Margit Osterloh)) A sense of what’s normal and moral. A sense of what’s socially preferable. You begin to see even in economics in the ’90s and early ’00s, an increased salience and attention and major complications to(?) efforts to build much more sophisticated models of multiple motivations including pro-(Inaudible) motivations.

In organizational sociology, in management science, you look — Toyota production system was the big ah-ha moment, when Toyota came to the U.S. for the first time and created the first NUMMI plant in GM’s Fremont plant in the early ’80s. All of the stories that used to be “oh it’s Japanese culture, it’s something completely different, it’s not about us,” were flipped. One of the worst performing GM plants in 1980 closes down, opens up two years later under Toyota management, almost the entire same employees said the entire union leadership. Within a couple of years it becomes the most productive plant in the U.S.

Who knows what the situation is now, but as of the numbers last year, it continued to be one of the three most productive plants in the U.S. Same people, same industry, very different organizational structure built a lot less on hierarchy, a lot less on precise specification of exactly what everybody needs to do. Much more on teamwork, much more on supporting normative commitment to innovation, to process innovation. And still relatively very constrained. It is the automobile industry.

We’re not talking about high-tech industries. But there you have a very different orientation in terms of setting up the motivation and relationships among workers, between workers and management. You move from having 70 process engineers on the floor telling each employee exactly what to do, to having none. And having the teams have a lot of autonomy on how they do things.

I heard the words "Deep Web" used this week at an industry gathering. It’s something I have not heard in quite a while, and looking around me in the room I figured that few people there had any idea what this term actually refers to.

In essence (though you can go and read up further on this for yourself), the Deep Web refers to the non-public, non-indexed web. Which amounts to a volume of content that is at least (depending on whose calculations you believe) 1,000 times bigger than the public web. It’s interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive to think that the vast bulk of the world’s web is not indexed on Google and likely never will be.

I am not going to cheerlead for the revival of Deep Web as term, but I think it’s something we all need to think about at times, since that Deep stuff is the stuff we all too easily forget about.

You might also ask yourself: what’s Deep within your enterprise, potentially accessible, but not easily found?

Moleskine notebooks have a cult following (and extremely good brand PR!). Those little black notebooks are used for many things, and they have even been cleverly adapted by some cooks into recipe organizers (see this neat one from Delicious Days). Well, now Moleskine is responding to those who would like a little more from their black notebooks. They’ve issued several new editions, two of them pointed directly at cooks and wine-lovers.

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Neil Young covers American Idol’s breakout hit “Pants On The Ground!”