Category: News

AT&T’s still rolling with Palm, eventually, along with Android. Is that what Palm’s announcing tomorrow? AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega says they’re going to have two webOS phones—revamped Pre and Pixi?

Normally folksy Warren comes down hard on Kraft’s plan to issue 370m shares

Kraft’s $10.4 billion bid is so close to Cadbury’s current value as to be neglible, so some analysts believe Buffett’s public opposition to Kraft issuing shares to finance the deal is simply his way of driving Cadbury’s price lower. And indeed, after his warning, Cadbury fell 3.2 per cent to 779p in London.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is, after all, Kraft’s biggest shareholder and the US company appears so committed to acquiring Cadbury that it is selling off profitable assets, including its frozen pizza division to Nestle, at reduced prices to raise money. Buffett, it turns out, wins both ways: he holds a stake in Nestle, too.

So it seems Buffett may not be the harmless, folksy granny-tickler he likes to portray and he’s certainly not above manipulating situations to his advantage. In the past, Buffett’s been a vocal dissenter on Coca-Cola’s board when directors were looking at a $15.3 billion bid for Quaker Oats. Yet rarely does he do it so publicly.

And where the ‘Sage of Omaha’ leads, others follow: “If he says no, everybody else is going to pile on and say no too,” explains Justin Fuller, a partner at Midway Capital Research & Management who runs the buffettologist.com website.

Yet could there be something else going on? Warren Buffett has an ego the size of one of the freight locomotives on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the railway operator he bought for $44bn last year. Many think he overpaid.

Last year, he delivered his worst performance compared to the S&P 500 index in a decade. Berkshire’s value rose just 2.7pc on the New York Stock Exchange compared with a 23 per cent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, according to Bloomberg. In other words, he’s got something to prove and buying Cadbury is not, he’s telling Kraft’s management, the way he wants to go.

Not that Cadbury shareholders should care – they’ve consistently signalled they won’t accept the current offer. The company, too, is unimpressed, saying in a very British way yesterday that it still considers the American company’s offer “derisory”.

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From Amazon – Apple iPod touch 32 GB (3rd Generation) NEWEST MODEL

There’s been a definite buzz around eBooks and eBook readers in recent times, and despite Asus challenging the price point last year we’re yet to see what we’d guess to be an affordable enough solution to break the mass-market. There are some pretty tidy devices on the shelves though, with Amazon’s Kindle proving popular enough to ‘go global’ last October, a move that has now been repeated with the spacious Kindle DX. ..

Tags: Amazon,
Book,
CES 2010,
EBook,
Electronic paper,
Kindle

Related Articles:

• Amazon Kindle e-book reader goes global
• Amazon unveils the Kindle 2
• Amazon Kindle beta for PC available to download
• Kindle DX: Amazon upsizes e-reader
• Kindle 2 images, pricing and release date leaked?
• Asus to release world’s cheapest eBook reader

Look at all those apps people are downloading. On our network. Man, so many apps! Okay, I’ll let AT&T’s very orange PowerPoint tell the story.

You would think AT&T’s an app company, not a phone company. Well, I guess that’s sort of the case. Though, I’d sure like a phone company sometimes.

Aaaaaaaaaaapppppppppppsssssssssss.

by Joseph Romm

Sen.
Byron Dorgan, a 18-year veteran Democrat, dropped a late-day bombshell,
announcing he will retire when his term ends this year. Dorgan’s
announcement represents an opportunity for Republicans: North Dakota is
a Republican-leaning state, where President Obama got just 45 percent of the
vote last year.

What’s bad news for the Dems in the longer term could be good news
for the climate bill in the short term. Nate Silver had given Dorgan a
“Probability of Yes” vote of 22 percent.  He was certainly going to be among the 5 toughest Dem votes to get.

But now he doesn’t face a tough reelection, and the Senator from the
state he himself calls “the Saudi Arabia of wind” is free to vote his
conscience. Indeed, all things being equal, I think he’d like to vote
‘yes’—see post “When Sen. Dorgan finds out what’s in the climate bill—hint, hint, White House—he might just support it,” which I’ll excerpt and update here:

In July, Dorgan published an op-ed in The Bismarck Tribune with contents that mostly suggests he might actually be a real
fence-sitter and filibuster buster if somebody actually explained the
bill to him and worked to address his concerns—and if he didn’t have
to worry about reelection.

Indeed, the sole objections he raises to the bill—the potential
for Wall Street to engage in questionable derivatives tradings and
speculative bubbles that might drive the price of CO2 soaring—are
actually addressed in Waxman-Markey by multiple provisions. As an important aside, it would be almost impossible to write a bill reducing CO2 emissions that would not lead to “derivatives,” which, after all, include futures contracts and options.

If you are going to create a CO2 price—really the only way of
reducing CO2 other than mandatory, command-and-control, sector-based
emissions regulations (which it is impossible to believe Dorgan
supports)—then Wall Street is going to create futures and options to
allow companies to mitigate risk. And that’s a very good thing, as
even conservative economists will tell you.

The only question is whether you design a system
with checks and balances against fraudulent derivatives and
speculation, which the House bill does and which the Senate bill will
no doubt improve.

Now, you might say that Dorgan isn’t interested in a real bill, that
he is just positioning himself for a “no” vote.  Well, if so, he has
written a very strange op-ed. Let me excise all the “railing against
Wall Street” stuff, and see for yourself:

I’m in favor of taking action to reduce CO2 emissions and to protect our environment …

I support capping carbon emissions. But it has to be done the right
way, with targets and timelines that allow us to accomplish our goals
without driving the cost of energy for homeowners and businesses out of
sight …

I’m willing to cap carbon to address the threat to our environment.
But it has to be done right. I will support a plan that establishes
workable caps, invests in technology to decarbonize fossil fuels, and
sends the majority of the revenue raised to consumers to offset
increases in the price of electricity resulting from the caps.

Energy is an important part of our lives. We need to work to
decarbonize the use of coal so that we can use our most abundant fossil
energy resource. We have to maximize the development of renewable
energy. Green, renewable energy protects our environment and it also
makes us less dependent on foreign oil (70 percent of our oil comes
from other countries).

Here’s what we need to do to protect our environment and make us less dependent on foreign oil:

1. Establish caps on carbon that are accompanied by both adequate
research and development funding and reasonable timelines for
implementation to develop and commercialize technologies that will
greatly reduce the CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Well, that’s certainly Waxman-Markey.  You can’t argue the targets
are too tough or that the bill doesn’t spend tens of billions of
dollars on technology development or deployment. In fact, as Waxman’s
summary explains, the bill “Invest[s] in new clean energy technologies
and energy efficiency, including energy efficiency and renewable energy
($90 billion in new investments by 2025), carbon capture and
sequestration ($60 billion), electric and other advanced technology
vehicles ($20 billion), and basic scientific research and development
($20 billion)”—see “A useful summary of Waxman-Markey.”

2. Use the majority of the revenue from a plan that caps
CO2 to provide refund payments to those who would otherwise experience
increased energy costs.

Again, that’s Waxman-Markey (see Robert
Stavins: “The appropriate characterization of the Waxman-Markey
allocation is that more than 80 percent of the value of allowances go to
consumers and public purposes, and less than 20 percent to private industry.” and UPDATED
exclusive report: Preventing windfalls for polluters but preserving
prices—Waxman-Markey gets it right with its allocations to regulated
utilities).

3. Even as we continue to decarbonize the use of fossil
energy, we should maximize the production of renewable energy from
wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and more.

4. Set an ambitious renewable electricity standard (RES)
along with longer-term tax incentives for the wind, solar, biomass, and
other renewable energy.

5. To move this new energy, we need to build a transmission system
to allow us to produce renewable energy where we can, and move it to
the load centers where it is needed.

Check, check, and check. Ironically, the Senate energy bill is
weaker than the House on the RES, so presumably Dorgan will vote to
strengthen it on the Floor. And yes, the House RES cannot be called
“ambitious” anymore, but that’s in large part thanks to the huge push
on renewable energy in the stimulus (see “EIA
projects wind at 5 percent of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14 percent,
thanks to Obama stimulus! Now can we get a stronger renewable standard?”).

6. To reap the benefits of cleaner energy and reduced
dependence on foreign oil, we need to move toward using electricity to
fuel our transportation fleet.

That’s already in Waxman-Markey (and was in the stimulus).  Love to do more, Senator.

North Dakota and the nation have a lot at stake in this
debate. We are a major energy-producing state, with our ability to
produce large quantities of oil and our large deposits of coal, which
is our country’s most abundant form of energy. We have the greatest
wind energy potential of any state, and we have the ability to produce
a large quantity of biofuels.

It’s clear we are going to have to use energy differently in the
future to protect our planet. And to do that I will support a plan that
puts achievable caps on CO2 emissions – if it is done the right way.

If that were his entire op-ed, you’d say he was at least 50-50 for
the bill and certainly would be a realistic possibility for voting
against a filibuster, like Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). But he rails at length against Wall Street speculators and
derivatives. Yet, his  concerns about speculators and market fraud—which Mississippi Governor (and global warming denier/delayer) Haley
Barbour has been playing up, along with James Hansen and Robert Shapiro—are ones that the authors of Waxman-Markey were quite aware of when they wrote the bill.

That’s why the bill has many provisions (and realities) that would
stop “a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the
permits and their derivatives,” as Hansen put it, or someone cornering
the market, as Barbour put it.

First off, the permit market is huge.  Even purchasing 2 percent of the
permits in, say, 2015, would probably cost $1 billion. And speculators
would have to purchase several times that to significantly run up the
price.

Second, it will be so easy to meet the targets for at least the first decade (see here)
that the “real” price of a permit will probably be slightly below the
auction price (which has a floor). So it will be highly unprofitable
to buy lots of permits, which would run up the price, in an effort to
make money selling those permits sometime in the future. I can’t
imagine a plausible scenario in which this would make economic sense
for any entity even if they could get away with it, which they cannot.

Third, the bill requires EPA to promulgate regulations to cover the auction.  As CQ‘s summary of the bill explains:

Bidders must disclose all parties sponsoring their bids;
Individual bidders would be limited to purchasing up to 5 percent of allowances sold at any quarterly auction;
EPA would have to publish information about winning bidders

So it would be very difficult to do any major purchasing in secret
and virtually impossible to acquire a large fraction of the permits.

Fourth, the bill has a whole section devoted to “Carbon Market Assurance.”  As the WRI summary describes it:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is given
regulatory authority over allowance and offset markets and allowance
derivative markets (Sec. 761, pg. 449). The President is also delegated
authority to instruct agencies to take on pieces of market regulation
based on existing authority as long as regulations are consistent with
this section. The draft makes it a federal crime to commit fraud or manipulate any carbon market.
In addition, the regulations facilitate and maintain market oversight
and transparency and require market monitoring to prevent fraud,
manipulation and excessive speculation.

That section explicitly includes derivatives, with further oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Fifth, the bill has a Strategic Reserve (with tons originally
skimmed off from each year’s total target) that an entity can purchase
permits from if the price sees a short-term run up of about 60 percent. So
again the bill will is designed to prevent someone from cornering the
market or running up the price.

So these concerns, while potent from a populist perspective, are
simply not a reason to oppose this bill if one supports the general
goal of a shrinking cap that doesn’t force reductions down at an
alarming pace, does mitigate most of the price risk to consumers, does
spend many tens of billions of dollars on clean energy development,
demonstration, and deployment, and promotes renewables (albeit not
enough) and electrifying transportation system.

I expect the Senate bill will be even tougher in this arena—perhaps aided by a new financial services oversight bill—since that
will be needed to get the vote of other senators with similar concerns
(see “Cantwell, Collins join bipartisan call for market-based carbon pricing to achieve shrinking cap on carbon”).

So let’s say for now that Dorgan is 50-50 or better to vote for the
final bill—and maybe higher for at least cloture. After all, what
possible reason could he give to support a filibuster?

Related Links:

Community-Owned Clean Energy

Reports of climate bill death are greatly exaggerated

Q&A: what will happen with climate legislation in 2010?

AT&T’s announced an SDK for the BREW platform, which is available today over at sdk.developer.att.com under the blazing headline ‘Apps for All.’

As they say:

“Apps for ALL is AT&T’s plan to get the development community’s help to create cool, innovative applications for the two-thirds of devices on our network that are not smart phones and are underserved by apps.”

Think of all those poor, app-less phones out there languishing on AT&T, needing your help.

Working with Qualcomm’s BREW platform, the SDK supports cross-platform APIs, with the process listed on the Apps For All site sounding pretty straight-forward. They’re even offering a pre-approval process for anyone unsure of the strength of their app, with AT&T giving you feedback on whether it’s likely to be approved.

Revenue share is apparently a 70/30 split, if you’re into this kind of thing. [Apps For All]

Among the natural flora and fauna, in an otherwise uninhabited field in Gunskirchen, Austria, the Raumstation house sits conspicuously on a low hillside, in unabashed contrast to its surroundings. Designed by x architekten, the structure is composed of a cantilevered, geometric upper volume anchored to a concrete base. “Raumstation” translates to “space station,” and the home certainly fulfills its designation in the given context.

An open, linear floor plan creates fluid living spaces defined by changes in floor height. Generous glazing and white surfaces combine to reflect light throughout the interior. Exposed concrete and select floors clad in wood vary the otherwise homogenous texture and color palette.

Continue reading for more images.

Source: Daily Tonic

There are few technologies more hotly anticipated in the TV/display market than OLED, but sadly we’re still a way off replacing our 50” plasmas with these wafer-thin low-power alternatives. Affordability is the main issue, and so far Sony has been one of few to have an early crack at the market with its US$2500 11” XEL-1…

Tags: Display,
OLED,
Screen,
Thin,
TV

Related Articles:

• LG entering OLED-TV market
• Sony shows off prototype OLED TVs at CES 2009
• Sony’s XEL-1 OLED TV launched in the UK
• Sony delays larger screen OLED TVs?
• Sony OLED XEL-1 television hits the U.S. market
• Matsushita/Panasonic joins the OLED TV race

By Michael Corkery

• January 5, 2010, 10:16 AM ET

Investors in London and New York are handicapping the Cadbury takeover drama as the dust settles from this morning’s whirlwind of news.

The short of it: Kraft Foods has improved its chances of acquiring Cadbury, but only at the right price.

Cadbury shares are down nearly 4%, to 770 pence on the London Stock Exchange, as investors digest news that one possible white horse bidder–Nestle–is out of the running and Kraft’s largest shareholder, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is opposed to Kraft issuing new shares for an acquisition.

In a statement, Buffett says he isn’t against a deal, but he isn’t willing to give Kraft the ability to overpay for Cadbury by issuing 370 million new shares.

The result: Kraft’s shares rose 3% on the New York Stock Exchange this morning, as Buffett’s statement eased concerns that existing Kraft shareholders would be diluted from the large share issuance and that Kraft would overpay for Cadbury –a concern that has weighed on Kraft’s share price since the takeover battle began late this summer.

Buffett’s move could have the double-barrel effect of making a deal more palatable to Kraft shareholders and to Cadbury shareholders. Kraft’s current offer is a mix of cash and stock. The more Kraft shares rises, the more valuable its bid becomes. Kraft also this morning pumped more cash into its offer, making it a 50-50 stock-cash mix up from 60-40 stock and cash).

While Kraft sweetened its bid today by tweaking the cash-and-share mix, it hasn’t raised the price from its original 740 pence-a-share offer, which explains the fall in Cadbury shares. They had been trading above 800 pence for several months in anticipation of a higher bid from Kraft or another company.

As for Nestle’s exit, it “reduces the likelihood of a successful counterbid scenario” writes Jefferies & Co. analyst Simon Marshall-Lockyear in a research note. He said the most likely counterbid to Kraft’s offer would come from Nestle teaming up with Hershey.

With Nestle out and a lone Hershey bid seeming more unlikely, Marshall-Lockyear downgraded Cadbury to hold from “buy” and reduced his expectation for a deal price to 810 pence from 945 pence.

Kraft may yet bump up its bid, but the Kraft management and Buffett, continue to play this chess game cautiously. This morning’s moves by Kraft could be the check before the checkmate.

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	The Real Warren Buffett: Managing Capital, Leading People by James O’Loughlin Buy new: $13.57 / Used from: $1.99 Usually ships in 24 hours
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From Amazon – Apple iPod touch 32 GB (3rd Generation) NEWEST MODEL

Volkswagen’s heroic R-Line is finally available for the German marque’s sportiest sedan (yes, despite the monaker, it’s still a sedan). While it may be tough for some to see the value in a tuner package that doesn’t improve horsepower or handling, one look at a CC with the redone package is enough justification for us. The bundle adds a front spoiler with fog lights, side skirts, and smoked rear taillights in addition to 17 or 18-inch wheels, both of which are a stunning improvement over the stock CC’s already clever set. The inside, which is already loaded to the gills in stock guise, includes a three-spoke leather-trimmed steering wheel and customizable aluminum tread plates. The CC will become the eighth model in VW’s stout lineup to receive the R-Line treatment, and like its brethren, responds quite well to a few tweaks.

Continue reading for more images.

Source: NetCarShow

A common concept in improvised scene work is that at the top of the scene, we should be trying to discover the first unusual thing about the situation or relationship and then use that to create a game for the scene. A few questions were recently posed on my message board about the first unusual thing and here was my response:

The first unusual thing has a lot to do with how our brain works. We remember and are delighted by novelty in general. Lets say you shook hands with 20 people today, and 19 of them shook your hand in a way you expect. If the 20th person shook your hand and then pulled you in close and licked your neck, you would remember it long after you forgot the other 19 people.

The best stories and songs and memories all have something unique and unusual about them. Some of these unusual things are just slightly out of the ordinary, some are huge strange things. I would go so far to say that all great theatre is about unusual things. Plays are not about the days where everything mirrors ordinary life exactly and everything happens just as we would expect. It’s about the days when things go wrong or unravel in unexpected ways or about characters whose ordinary days seem strange to us.

So perhaps we can agree that scenes should be about unusual characters or circumstances, but why does an improvised scene have to be about the first unusual thing? Well it should be about the first unusual thing because if you wait until there are two or three different unusual things, the scene can be too hard to manage. The scene will often lack clarity because the players will bounce from one thing to another each stressing different unusual things. I’ve seen advanced players juggle several unusual things and it can be done especially in longer scenes, but in most situations, one unusual thing in a scene is plenty.

Why can’t the scene be about the first thing or anything? Well, it can be about the first thing, but if nothing unusual happens, then the scene could likely be boring and it’s unlikely to be funny. Comedy depends especially on novelty and surprise. Given that, I think it’s fine to just let the scene be whatever it wants to be and not to push an unusual thing into it. The great thing is that small strange things happen all the time, it doesn’t have to be a big huge weird thing, it can be a subtle thing about how one of the characters behave or how the two characters interact. If you simply play the scene in a way that you would expect that situation to play out, novel things will happen. Your job is to notice them and use them.

Can the first line be the unusual thing if the characters act like it’s unusual? Yes of course. This happens all the time where the initiation contains the first unusual thing. Often the initiation also establishes some of the who, what and where too, and you usually need this. For instance, certain behavior is strange in some circumstances and not strange in others. Ballroom dancing is perfectly normal in a dance studio or a wedding reception. However if you are ballroom dancing during a job interview or in an army barracks, it’s novel behavior.

Also, the characters don’t have to treat it as unusual. This is REALLY important actually. Often, the characters should be treating the unusual thing as NORMAL and that is is part of what makes it unusual. Let’s use the ballroom dancing example. The scene might work best if neither character ever treats what they are doing as unusual. It might be very interesting for them to continue the job interview while dancing and never really mention that it’s strange for them to dance while doing the interview. If they were to call it out, it might actually break the spell. One way to think of this is that you shouldn’t be treating the first unusual thing as unusual, what’s fun is when you specifically treat the first unusual thing as a normal everyday occurrence for these characters. You keep doing the unusual thing, expand it and find variations. This is where the concept of “if this, then what else?” comes into play.

Let’s take the example of the person being licked during a handshake. If you get licked and then lick the other person’s neck back and then carry on as if this is your usual greeting and not strange at all, that becomes part of the unusual behavior. As the scene continues, you may exhibit similar strange behavior without ever calling it out. The fact that you treat it as normal is really what is strange, not that you are licking in the first place.

Can the scene just be two interesting characters doing and/or saying interesting stuff? Sure they can. But what is going to make the characters interesting? They become interesting when there is something about them that makes them unusual or unique. And it will it be a stronger scene if the character has 1 thing that makes them strange or 20? In most cases it’s best if the character has one unusual thing about them from which all their interesting behavior flows.

How does ‘the first unusual thing’ affect your performance and understanding of improv and how it works? For me it’s a critical core concept, but a very flexible and broad concept too. It also affects everything in our lives, not just improv scenes.

For instance, this past weekend I saw a concert and what am I going to remember about that concert years from now? I’ll remember all the things that made it unusual. I’ll remember the song that the lead singer played alone on stage with an acoustic guitar with no amplification at all (something I don’t remember ever seeing before in a venue that size). I’ll remember how he had one of the guys in his band play a song by himself on stage on violin. I’ll remember how they brought the opening act back during the encore, not for a duet, but for her to sing a song that almost no one in the audience knew and for the main act to simply back her up. I’ll remember the lead singer’s guitar because it’s an acoustic guitar with a hole worn into it from playing it for so many years.

We remember what is different, the things that are unusual. Those are the things that make us laugh and smile.

This is a revised and expanded version of a post I made in response to a question on the Improv Resource Center. Follow the link if you wish to see a the original discussion.

Two weeks ago, drawing on this presentation, we asked you whether we should eliminate our vacation policy.  Netflix and a few of you said yes.  Author Brian Carney said yes.  Most of you said no.  (We haven't made a formal decision yet).

Today, we'll ask you another question inspired by Netflix's presentation: Should we fire everyone at the company who is doing an "adequate" job? 

(Or, put another way, should we strive to find only "A" players and quickly release any "B" players to make room for more potential "A" players?)

Netflix does this. 

Importantly, Netflix believes in paying "top of market" for all of its A players.  In other words, it pays them as much or more than any of its competitors would pay them.  To its credit, Netflix also tries to pay its A players top dollar BEFORE they get an offer to leave.  So Netflix is using both carrots and sticks: If you can earn and keep your place as an "A" player, you'll be handsomely rewarded for it.  If you can't, then you'll be free to work somewhere else.

So, should we sack everyone who is just doing an "adequate" job?

I find Netflix's logic very persuasive (especially the part about being a team, not a family), but I do have some lingering doubts.  On the one hand, I absolutely want us to build the strongest team we can--one composed entirely of "A" players.  I want to reward the A players by making them feel appreciated and rewarded, and I don't want to demoralize them by having them feel like they're carrying the "B" players' dead weight. (We don't employ "C" players for long).

On the other hand, unless this policy is spelled out clearly ahead of time (which it certainly could be) it seems harsh to inform a dependable if uninspiring B player that they're doing an "adequate" job--and, therefore, that they're done.  We therefore try--probably for longer than we should--to help the "B" players become "A" players.  Unfortunately, as companies like GE and Goldman Sachs have long known, it doesn't always work. (GE and Goldman fire 5% of the workforce every year, just to keep strengthening themselves).

So, for now, where I come out on this is that if the policy is communicated clearly in advance, it would be better for our A players and help us build the strongest possible team.  And it would also cushion the blow for the soon-to-depart B players.

But I'd love to hear what you think.  So take a look through the Netflix slides, and then weigh in with some comments below.

Netflix's firing policy >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Should We Eliminate Our Vacation Policy?
• Yes, You Should Eliminate Your Vacation Policy
• How To Know You've Hired A Killer Team

If one good thing has come from this, it’s that button manufacturer stocks should go up, up, up!

The Mad Catz line of USB Cyborg mice feature adjustable ergonomics/weights, DPIs up to 5600 and prices that peak at $130. That said, I still have no clue what half of the bolts, buttons and plugs on the mice are for, but then again, I’m fairly certain that’s completely the point.

San Diego, January 06, 2010

Mad Catz® Interactive, Inc. (AMEX/TSX: MCZ), a leading worldwide third-party interactive entertainment accessory provider, today unveiled a new range of premium Cyborg gaming mice expected to begin shipping in Spring 2010.

“Cyborg is best known for ergonomic and fully adjustable flight sticks, gaming mice and keyboards. The new mouse range incorporates the same market leading design principles and applies them to gaming mice. For the first time ever on a mouse, the key points of contact between the gamer’s hand and the mouse are fully adjustable allowing it to be customized for any grip preference” commented, Darren Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz. “The Cyborg mouse range was developed entirely in house and I believe they are the most comfortable gaming mice you’ll ever use. Besides, they just look cool!”

Following-up Darren Richardson said, “The addition of this line of mice bolsters Cyborg’s strong gaming keyboard market presence and is a continuation of our strategy of developing products that evoke a passionate consumer response.”

For a complete feature matrix, see the table at the end of the announcement. The gaming mice expected to ship as part of the range includes:

• Cyborg R.A.T. 7 Gaming Mouse
o Features: Fully Adjustable; 5600dpi laser; Programmable; Weight System; USB powered
o MSRP: $99.99 / £79.99 / €99.99

• Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Gaming Mouse
o Features: Wireless, Fully Adjustable, 5600dpi laser; Programmable,; Weight System; Powered by Rechargeable Batteries
o MSRP: $129.99/ £99.99 / €129.99

• Cyborg R.A.T. 5 Gaming Mouse
o Features: Adjustable Length; 4000dpi laser, Programmable; Weight System; USB powered
o MSRP: $69.99/ £49.99 / €59.99

• Cyborg R.A.T. 3 Gaming Mouse
o Features: 3200dpi laser; USB powered
o MSRP: $49.99 / £34.99 / €49.99

Amongst the many tables at last night’s CES Unveiled mini-show, one device that caught my roving eye was the ZOMM. With an interesting name and very small product, I had to stop by to see what it was. Turns out that the ZOMM solves a potentially common problem — losing your phone. Although my phone is never more than an arm’s length away, I constantly see people walking away from their handset. That’s where ZOMM comes in.

The tiny device connects to your feature-phone or smartphone by Bluetooth and you keep it on your person. ZOMM fits on a key chain or can clip to a pocket, belt or anything else you’re wearing. When you walk away from your phone — or if your phone “walks” away from you — ZOMM lets you know. A cool solution, but then again, we’ve seen similar products in the past. Ah, but the ZOMM does more.

Built-in the small device is a microphone and speaker, so you can use ZOMM to actually take a call. It was way too noisy to test the speakerphone on last night’s crowded floor, but the ZOMM folks say that they all use the product as a speakerphone for work calls. If that function works well, the only downside I can see is that you don’t know who’s calling you — ZOMM doesn’t have a caller ID display, it only has a blue LED notification.

And in an homage to product pitch-man Billy Mays: “But, wait — there’s more!” ZOMM also acts like a personal alarm system. Press the center button for 10 seconds and an audible alarm sounds, alerting everyone around you that there’s an issue. Or it simply tells them that you wondered what would happen if you held the button for 10 seconds. Even better is if you hold the button longer. ZOMM will actually initiate an emergency call on your phone which, if your phone supports it, can provide authorities with your location. The ZOMM team expects the device to sell for $89 later this year and hopes you can walk into a local Best Buy to pick one up.

This page just went live over on AT&T’s site. While it doesn’t give a whole lot of specifics, it does confirm that we’ll be seeing no less than three (Update: make that five!) Android handsets hit AT&T’s shelves sometime in the first six months of this year.

The “unique form factor” Moto phone is undoubtedly the kinda-wonky Backflip, Dell’s probably throwing in something along the lines of the Mini 3i, and we might just see the HTC Lancaster that we expected last year. As for the other two? Your guess is as good as ours.

[Thanks Dave!]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Good grief…..In one of the oddest turn of events in the 27-year history of Wheel of Fortune, all of the contestants on Monday’s military-themed episode had difficulty pronouncing “Regis Philbin & Kelly Ripa” even after the entire puzzle had been revealed. This is better than the time the dim-witted Wolf Blitzer appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy! Check out the hilarious clip below!

Interactive Toy Concepts has followed up last year’s popular Duck Hunter infrared shooting game with a skeet version that fires off three plastic disks.

Since the prototype at CES was not in working condition, there is no way of telling how far or how high the launcher can fire, or how you will score a hit, but I’ll bet the game will be just as successful as its predecessor when it is finally released. [ITC via OhGizmo]

By Michael Corkery

• January 5, 2010, 12:30 PM ET

Warren Buffett has made it clear that he opposes Kraft Foods issuing new shares at the current price to finance an acquisition of U.K. confectioner Cadbury.

Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owns 9.4% of the U.S. food and beverage conglomerate, said he thinks Kraft’s shares are undervalued, making them an “expensive” currency to use for a bid.

In fact, Buffett has long been wary of using stock to acquire companies. Deal Journal dug up this passage from Roger Lowenstein’s 1996 biography, “ Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist,” in which the Oracle of Omaha sounds off on companies that used stock for acquisitions during a wave of M&A during the early 1980s.

Citing a 1982 letter to Berkshire’s shareholders, Lowenstein explains that Buffett thought CEOs ought to think of stock deals as their selling part of the company in order to acquire another. Here’s the relevant passage:

“With the issuance of new shares, each outgoing stockholder would up owning proportionally less of the company than before . The CEOs disguised this fact by using the language of a buyer: ‘Company A to Acquire Company B.’ However, ‘clearer thinking about the matter would result if a more awkward but more accurate description were used: ‘Part of A sold to Acquire B.

“Why was this disguise employed? Most stocks, including most acquirers stocks, were cheap. In such a case, an acquiring CEO was shopping with an unattractive currency, like an American in Paris when the dollar was undervalued. ….

“Buffett suggested that such managers and directors could ’sharpen their thinking’ by asking if they would be willing to sell all of their company on the same basis as they were selling part of it. And if not, why were they selling part of it.”

Fast forward to Buffett’s statement today on Kraft’s Cadbury bid. He thinks Kraft is undervalued considering where its shares were trading when the company did a big share buyback in 2007 :

“Kraft spent $3.6 billion to repurchase shares at about $33 per share, presumably because the directors and management thought the shares to be worth more,’’ according to Berkshire Hathaway. “Does the board now believe those purchases were a mistake and that Kraft’s true value is only the current price of $27 per share — and that it is therefore fine to structure a major acquisition based upon that price?”

Indeed, Kraft’s price to earnings ratio of 17.51 lags behind that of rivals PepsiCo (P/E of 18.60) and even that of the much smaller Hershey (P/E of 21.77), though Kraft has a higher P/E than consumer product conglomerate Proctor & Gamble’s 14.27.

Thus, if Kraft management had to answer Buffett’s 1981 question about whether it was a good time to sell the whole company, the answer would probably be no. Buffett says he isn’t opposed to a deal for Cadbury. Raising $3.7 billion in cash from the sale of its pizza business and lifting the cash component of its Cadbury offer may have helped alleviate some of Buffett’s concerns. Now Kraft just needs its share price to rise and help do the rest of the work of making the bid more attractive to Cadbury’s shareholders.

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