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The United States is destined to become the next Greece, unless we act fast to cut government spending, according to a video released by Bankruptingamerica.org.

It is a little limited in its criticism, refusing to acknowledge the realities of what superior growth potential can mean for paying down government debt, but is still a catchy explanation of how serious the U.S. debt problem is, and what it has in common with Greece’s.

Now Check Out Niall Ferguson’s Complete Explanation Of Our Sovereign Debt Crisis >

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Explaining adult themed movies to kids is a difficult task. Sometimes the most pivotal moments in the film are the ones you’d probably don’t want to explain to a child. Illustrator Josh Cooley takes these moments and gives them the kids story book treatment by drawing popular movie scenes with quotes as if they were from a page of a children’s book. Films such as Aliens, The Godfather, The Professional, and Terminator all get their place in Cooley’s book and are a lot of fun to look at. As Cooley states on his blog, the book will be available soon at Comic-Con and on his site. For more info visit his blog at www.cooleycooley.blogspot.com

Continue reading for more images.

Today, the Center for Public Integrity has a good survey of how the financial regulatory reform bill got lobbied. More than 850 banks, financial firms, hedge funds and others deployed more than 3,000 lobbyists to the Hill to argue against strong consumer financial protections and other provisions blunting risk-taking and profit-making at financial firms. The total amount spent on lobbying against Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) bill is not clear, but it might reach into the hundreds of millions, the Center said.

In the financial services industry, some 175 companies and groups — ranging from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to CME Group Inc. to the Private Equity Council — hired lobbyists to try to weaken or eliminate reform proposals aimed at banks and the capital markets. A distant second was the energy and utilities sector, with 91 companies and organizations, followed by manufacturing with 66 firms.

The companies and groups that lobbied on financial reform spent a total of $1.3 billion in 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 on their overall lobbying efforts, the data showed. The exact dollar amount they devoted to financial regulation reform remains unclear because lobbyists are not required to itemize how much money in a given contract is spent on a specific issue. But if only 10 percent of that spending was targeted at financial regulation bills, lobbyists would have received $133 million.

The American Bankers Association lobbyist quoted in the story notes that banks succeeded in influencing a few provisions — keeping the Federal Reserve as the regulator of state banks and killing a $50 billion resolution authority fund in the Senate bill, for instance. But those are relatively minor measures, underscoring just how strong the bill could be.

How quickly time flies — just like that, a whole year has gone by and we’re once again in the homestretch of preparations for our web infrastructure and cloud computing conference, Structure. In this third year of the event, we have expanded it to two days in order to accommodate an even more diverse range of topics. What he have not changed is the location — the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco is where we’ll meet on June 23rd and 24th. (To buy tickets, click here.)

We’re going to be hosting an all star line-up to talk about, among other things, the future of cloud computing, the changing role of virutalization, the new new networks, the growing importance of big data and most importantly, how it all impacts business. As always, we strive to curate an editorial event that’s focused on some of the issues we believe will become industry talking points over the next few years. In order to do that, we invite the best and the brightest to share their insights.

This year will see keynotes delivered by Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware; Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon; and Erich Clementi, head of IBM’s cloud efforts. Dr. Donald Ferguson, CTO of CA Techologies, is going to discuss its transformation into a cloud company and where it’s headed next. And Harel Kodesh, president of EMC’s cloud infrastructure business, will talk about the impact that company’s moves will have on cloud storage.

And then there is the indomitable Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, who returns this year to talk about how he believes the software market will evolve in this new cloud-centric world. And last but not the least, we will be joined by Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai, who will discuss the future of application delivery in the cloud.

But that’s not all — we continue to add more speakers each week. Check out the complete list of speakers and the conference schedule, and go here to get your tickets before they sell out.

Hope to see you all in June!

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ZabaSearch is a people finder service offering public domain telephone number and postal address information. Like Google, Zaba Search is a search engine, not a database and does not house, create or manage the information in the search results.

The web page contains two search categories, you can eighter look for someone by his name, or telephone number from 50 U.S. states. Telephone numbers and addresses are revealed for free, no registration is required, and you get instant results.

ZabaSearch have three times more residential listings than the White Pages Phone directory.

If you want to look for a common name, you can do an advanced search, by first name, middle name, last name, birth date, City/Town or state.

Related posts:

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2. Investigation in Time Square: Search warrants executed
3. The Music city marathon

thinkorswim has been consistently rated as a top trading platform for a few years now and with good reason.

It’s incredibly robust and offers both amateur and professional traders comprehensive details on every type of security out there, along with some excellent tools.

But did you know they offer an iPhone app called iSwim that emulates most of the features of its desktop counterpart?

They do, and it means that this summer, you can trade from the beach.

Trade stocks, options, and futures from the palm of your hand

Complementing its sophisticated desktop client, the iSwim iPhone app allows you to easily trade equities, options, and futures from your phone. Just tap “Orders” and enter the ticker. Thinkorswim will bring up the current prices, displayed live. Enter your order and the exchange you want to buy/sell on and hit “Send Order” – you’re good to go.

Now let’s get trading!

Alright, so you want to buy some shares of GameStop (GME). Login and tape the quick quote bar at the top.

Type in your ticker and hit “Go”

In this case, we’ll use GameStop’s ticker – GME.

It’s all in the details

You’ll be presented with a screen showing every last detail of the security you picked. Look it all over and make your decision to go long or short.

Editing your order

Now, look at the bid and ask and last price. What do you want to do? Buy or sell? Whats the quantity you want? Is it a limit order or a market order? If it is a limit, when do you want it to trigger? Lots of options are available here. Choose your exchange and after everything is set, hit “Send Order.”

Confirm your order

Or edit it if you messed up.

Boom! It’s sent!

A pop up bubble confirms the order was sent along with your account number and details of the trade.

You’ll now be on your order list

Here you can view your trades. Let’s check out our GameStop trade by touching it.

Your positions come in loud and clear

After you hit the “Positions” button, you’ll now have this screen. As you can see, the positions screen is quite robust and gives you a comprehensive breakdown of your book in an organized, clean fashion. We see our P&L, BP effect, and ticker symbols, along with the amount of cash we’ve invested at the bottom.

Everything we need to know is here

The date and time of the trade, whether it was filled or not, order number, price, quantity and company are all here. Now tap “Positions” on the bottom menu to see your open positions.

Now let’s tap GME

And we’ll close out our position.

Select the positions to close

In this case, our 100 shares of GME. Tap it and hit “Close Selected” in the top right corner.

Back to the order editor

Confirm and hit send. You’ve been through this before. Now you’re just closing out your position.

Voila! You’re done

Another pop up bubble will confirm your trade went through.

Tap the small yellow, moving piece of paper in the middle of the screen

This will bring up the message center. It shows a history of all your orders and confirmations.

Customize your own alerts if you’re on the go by hitting the “Alerts” key

Need to go to a meeting but want to be alerted if, say, a stock reaches a particular price point so you can make a move? No problem. Hit “Alerts,” tap “Alert Editor,” and enter your ticker symbol. Here you can fully customize the alert, changing settings on everything from the exchange to the trigger to the threshold. Buttons at the button quickly let you access your positions in that particular security.

A crystal clear account overview

It may sound like a basic feature but it’s a really important one. By tapping “Positions,” you can quickly access your account statement, which includes:

• Your account number
• Net liquidating value
• Stock buying power
• YTD commissions
• Option buying power

This is key for when you’ve got an idea and need to quickly check your account to see if you’ve got the scratch to make it happen. You can also see your current profits and losses, ordered by security.

Plenty of options

Derivatives traders will find all the information they get on the desktop version of Thinkorswim right on their iPhone with the iSwim app. To get every gritty detail on, in this example, and equity option for Goldman Sachs (GS), you simply hit “Quotes” and type in the ticker. Then hit the “Options” button next to the “Chart” and “News” buttons for a full array of information. All contracts will be shown, including expiration, strike, live bid and ask, and a ton of other useful data.

Radio, radio

Who ever said trading had to involve quickly punching keys and watching numbers fly by? Thinkorswim provides a group of audio channels for listening, including two NPR stations (Boston and NYC), a classical music station, and the ShadowTrader Live feed. Great for your morning commute.

Can’t afford a Bloomberg Terminal? Build your own!

How To Create Your Own Bloomberg-Killer For Under $1,000 ->

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See here! There’s the Bump contact-sharing Android application. And it’s just like it sounds: Bump your phone against another with the app, and it shares the info. Oh, and see that iPhone cowering in the corner? It’s there for a reason. You can now Bump from one platform to another, which has to be some crime against nature, right? Check it out after the break.

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[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Friday in Al Maqaleh v. Gates that detainees held at Bagram Air Force Base [official website; JURIST news archive] in Afghanistan cannot bring habeas corpus challenges in US courts. The circuit court reversed the district court’s ruling, which allowed habeas corpus challenges [JURIST report] by three Bagram detainees pursuant to the Supreme Court’s test in Boumediene v. Bush [opinion, PDF; JURIST report]. Chief Judge Sentelle, delivering the opinion of the three-judge panel, stated that the district court underestimated the significance of Bagram being located in an area of armed conflict, which differentiates the defendants’ jurisdictional status from those detained at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. The court held that the current case was more comparable to Johnson v. Eisentrager [opinion text], where the Supreme Court held that US courts had no jurisdiction over war criminals held in a US-administered German prison. Irrespective of where the petitioner was captured, jurisdiction is decided by the level of control the US maintains over the detention facility:

While it is true that the United States holds a leasehold interest in Bagram, and held a leasehold interest in Guantanamo, the surrounding circumstances are hardly the same. The United States has maintained its total control of Guantanamo Bay for over a century, even in the face of a hostile government maintaining de jure sovereignty over the property. In Bagram, while the United States has options as to duration of the lease agreement, there is no indication of any intent to occupy the base with permanence, nor is there hostility on the part of the country. Therefore, the notion that de facto sovereignty extends to Bagram is no more real than would have been the same claim with respect to Landsberg in the Eisentrager case. While it is certainly realistic to assert that the United States has de facto sovereignty over Guantanamo, the same simply is not true with respect to Bagram. Though the site of detention analysis weighs in favor of the United States and against the petitioners, it is not determinative.

The circuit court acknowledged that prohibiting jurisdiction on these grounds may lead to military officials manipulating the system by transferring detainees to Bagram who would otherwise be placed in alternative facilities, but stated that there was no evidence of purposeful manipulation in the cases of the three defendants. This statement would seemingly allow additional suits to be filed if evidence of jurisdictional tampering is apparent.

Last June, Judge John Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] granted a government motion [JURIST reports] to certify and suspend his earlier ruling, which allowed the challenges to proceed in the Maqaleh case. The certification allowed the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to seek interlocutory appeal from the DC Circuit. The DC district court has been the venue for many habeas challenges, especially for Guantanamo detainees suspected of involvement with terrorism. In April, Judge Thomas Hogan dismissed as moot [JURIST report] 105 habeas corpus petitions of non-citizen former Guantanamo Bay detainees no longer in US custody. Hogan wrote that in deciding the case, the court was answering one of the questions left open by Boumediene: “what happens to a Guantanamo detainee’s habeas claim once he is transferred or released.” In March, a judge ordered the release [JURIST report] of a Guantanamo detainee who had been accused of planning the 9/11 [JURIST news archive] terrorist attacks. Mohamedou Ould Slahi [NYT materials], a Mauritanian who has been in US custody for over seven years, brought a habeas corpus petition, claiming that he had been tortured in prison and had made confessions under duress.

For those of you wanting to learn iPhone development, there are a number of resources available. Besides blogs (like ours) there are a number of books that can help pull things together for new and budding developers.

New Stuff to Learn

There’s been a lot of press lately about Apple development tools and the programming language, which is Objective-C. While folks that come from a C and C++ background feel quite at home with Objective-C, there are various developer groups feeling left out of the iPhone app gold rush. Specifically, I am speaking to the legions of .NET and Flash developers who have spent many years mastering their craft and are now being asked to learn a new set of tools, programming language and SDK.

As someone who went through that transition I thought I would document the books that helped along the way. While I did learn Mac development in a classroom setting, the books I’ll recommend were instrumental to it all making sense. My recommendations are listed in suggested reading order.

The Basics

The first book that can help orient new Mac developers is Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Apress. While the book doesn’t specifically focus on the iPhone SDK it does provide fundamental answers to beginner programming questions. This includes how to program Objective-C properties, methods, classes, variables and OO design. It also introduces important concepts such as NSDictionary and NSPredicate which become useful when learning database development using Core Data.

Build On What You’ve Learned

Once you get your bearings you can build on the fundamentals by reading Beginning iPhone Development by Apress. This book introduces the basic aspects of the iPhone SDK. As you may know, learning Objective-C doesn’t necessarily make you an iPhone expert. You will also need to learn how to apply the iPhone SDK using Objective-C which is the focus of this book.

Create User Interfaces

I’ve heard a lot of people comment about their experience with Interface Builder (IB). Granted, IB may not be what most existing developers are used to, I do find working with it to be fun and different. There’s a lot you can do with IB, but working with XIB files (pronounced “nib”) IBOulets and IBActions can be complex. In the book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, he provides almost all of his code examples in an illustrated step-by-step approach. Readers also get exposed to additional concepts such as Key-Value-Coding, which is used in Mac desktop development.

Fill In the Gaps

At this stage you’ll certainly understand most, if not all of the language syntax and SDK fundamentals. However, you may not understand why some things work they way they do. This may include items such as memory management, synthesizing properties, calling delegates and handling notifications. One of the best books to help fill in the gaps is Head First – iPhone Development by O’Reilly. It provides one of the best introductions to Core Data that I’ve seen. One cruise through this book and you’ll be a happy camper.

Build Something Cool

By now you should have the knowledge to put your development ideas into action. Add to your new found expertise by reading More iPhone Development by Apress. This book skips the preliminaries and gets right into the good stuff such as Core Location, GameKit and the MediaPlayer Framework. I’ve been surprised by how many times I go back to this book as a reference for new and existing projects.

Have a Reference

Finally, the last resource that I recommend is the online reference material provided by Apple. This is not to say that its documentation is not good. On the contrary, it’s a great resource, but almost to a fault. Due to the complexity of its documentation I find it most useful as a reference and not for learning new concepts. I feel many new developers rush to the iPhone Developers Reference documentation as their first information source only to be discouraged when none of it makes sense.

Conclusion

Learning iPhone Development is indeed challenging but is not impossible with the right resources. As you continue to build your skills in app development we’ll be here to help take your ideas from concept to the App Store. In meantime these books should ease the learning curve.

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Filed under: Concept Cars, Audi

From the front, high three-quarter angle, Daniel Garcia’s Audi A9 concept is a little too reminiscent of BMW’s Vision EfficientDynamics Concept. Yet, as is the case with so many geniune Audis, get to know it a bit more and you discover its beautiful and original secrets. As a concept, it’s full of features like self-repairing panels and a pushbutton that changes the exterior color, but we have to admit we’re digging those electroluminescent, spoked wheels.

Better yet is the exterior, with its inviting proportions, conceivable enough that if someone told us this will be the 2016 A7 Sportback we’d give them the benefit of the doubt. Have a better look at it in the gallery of high-res photos below, and we’ll hope that one of Audi’s coming software apps includes running a program that turns your A8 into this.

[Source: Jon Sibal]

Rendered Speculation: Audi A9 concept originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 21 May 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This year has already proven to be the most unpredictable in Connecticut politics in the past four decades with a never-ending pattern of twists and turns.

There has not been a time at least since 1970 when so many positions were open and so many incumbents were retiring from high-profile positions.

That roller coaster ride will continue today with the state party conventions, which will both be held in Hartford – turning the capital city into ground zero for state politics.

The seats that are up for grabs this year are U.S. Senator, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of the state, and comptroller. Those who are not running for re-election this year include U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Gov. M. Jodi Rell,  Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, and Comptroller Nancy Wyman.

Fedele is running for governor, while Blumenthal is running for U.S. Senate. Wyman is running for lieutenant governor on a ticket with former Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy. They are facing the team of Greenwich cable TV entrepreneur Ned Lamont and Simsbury First Selectman Mary Glassman in the nominations for governor and lieutenant governor.

All the changes have set off a major scramble as virtually anyone with political ambitions has been maneuvering and trying to get into a seat that rarely comes open.

Pac-man 30^th Anniversary is being commemorated today. “Google Pacman”  is what will be seen when you browse Google website. An amazing playable logo will appear on your internet browser… a Google Pacman. From here you will be able to play the Pac-Man game.

Pac-man 30^th Anniversary is celebrated today, May 22. How Pac-man 30^th Anniversary came into reality? Pacman is an arcade game created by Namco and licensed for distribution in the U.S. by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immeasurably accepted in the United States from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is said to be as one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, and an icon of the 1980s popular culture.

Try Google Pacman! Let’s celebrate the Pac-man 30^th Anniversary!

Related posts:

1. Pac-Man 30th Anniversary: Play Pacman Free Online in “Google Pacman”
2. Celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man
3. Pac-Man Celebrating its 30th Anniversary

An exciting thing happened to people who actually visit the Google homepage (rather than just using their Web browser’s built-in search box) today. They found Pac-Man, celebrating his 30th anniversary! The Penny-Arcade guys must be freaking out.

Update – Guess what? It works on the iPad.

You click “Insert Coin” and are thrown into a classic game of Pac-Man. I beat the first level and decided that was enough for me.

I do love the careful balance Google maintains between stomping all over your reasonable expectations of privacy and offering up electronic tiddlywinks.

UPDATE – I was curious as to whether this doodle would work on mobile browsers so I fired it up in the iPad. It sat there for a moment but when the Javascript loaded it started up and I was able to play the game by sliding my finger up, down, left, and right on the screen. Pretty fun.

Though many have said the Nexus One as a whole was a failure, those that purchased the device might tell you otherwise.  The advantages to having purchased an Android device with a carrier-subsidy are rather obvious, but there’s one thing Nexus One owners will always seem to have over their peers – they’re always the first to get updated to the newest iteration of Android OS.  Why?  Because once the update is ready, Google can send it directly to the N1 without any issues, while in every other case there are middlemen such as carriers and custom UIs to deal with.

Yesterday Google officially announced Android 2.2 at the Google I/O developers conference, which we have known for some time now as Froyo.  Not long after the announcement was made, the Google I/O Twitter account updated their status to say: “Froyo on Nexus One soon! (next few weeks).”  So, while there are those who will continue to scoff at Google’s attempt to change the way business was done in the  wireless telecom industry, Nexus One owners will continuously be laughing themselves all the way to faster updates, more features, and greater efficiency.

If you own a Nexus One, do you feel you can safely say “Who’s laughing now?”  Sound off below!

Via PhoneScoop   

After the Google I/O event and news of Froyo and Google TV in the past couple of days, the big G seems to be on everyone’s mind.  A search provider we don’t hear from as much, Yahoo, may be ready to make take a piece of that mindshare on Monday with a press conference where they are reportedly going to announce a partnership with phone manufacturer Nokia codenamed “Project Nike.”  Kara Swisher of All Things D has announced the new partnership that aims to help Yahoo compete with Google and Bing.  Yahoo, who doesn’t have a mobile existence like Google with Android or Bing with Windows Phone 7, could increase their presence in the mobile space with Nokia. 

Although Nokia doesn’t have a huge piece of the U.S. market, they are a big part of the mobile phone sector worldwide.  However, Nokia is known more for their feature phones than high-end smartphones.  With both companies struggling to stay relevant in the mobile space, a deal like this may be necessary to compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

Do you think a partnership between Yahoo and Nokia makes sense? Tell us your thoughts!

Via All Things D

We learn that a New York-based project finance banker has exited the energy financing group at German bank HSH Nordbank. He’s joining anoter European project finance bank.

Gregory Hutton, a v.p. with HSH Nordbank’s energy project finance group, is leaving the bank to join the another Euopean bank, an industry source tells us, who declined to name the bank. He’s expected to start in his new position next month.

Hutton joined HSH Nordbank two years ago from French bank Dexia, where he was an assistant  v.p. for origination. We’ve reached out to HSH Nordbank in New York and will post with any updates.

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

The latest organization to spring fully formed from the brow of San Diego’s Life Sciences community was not Athena, but the San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange, which Denise profiled in March when the SDEE was preparing to hold its first meeting.

I’d guess close to 140 people turned out earlier this week for the group’s second meeting, which was organized around a case study presentation and discussion among local biotech entrepreneurs who were successful in winning Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health. These are small grants. David Larocca, the founder, CEO, and principle scientist of Mandala Biosciences, says a Phase I SBIR “proof of principle” grant is usually limited to $150,000, while a Phase II “commercialization” grant is typically limited to $1.2 million.

But even the smaller figure might be enough to help an early stage biotech survive. Although SDEE’s focus was on SBIRs awarded through the NIH, the Pentagon also awards a big chunk of SBIR grants. (Some local tech entrepreneurs previously talked about their experience here.) SDEE founder and Orphagen CEO Scott Thacher says he founded the SDEE for biotech entrepreneurs like himself who are unlikely to get venture capital funding for their early stage startups. “We try to attract entrepreneurs or people who have lost their jobs or who are trying to get their company to the next level,” Thacher says.

John Finn, the chief scientific officer of Trius Therapeutics, says life sciences startups can’t live by SBIRs alone. In his case study presentation about the early years of Trius, Finn says he potentially saved millions of dollars by acquiring …Next Page »

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

The WSJ reports that for the first time, tickets to a movie have reached the $20 threshold. People are apparently paying $20 per adult ticket to see the IMAX version of “Shrek Forever After.”

The theaters showing $20 movies include “the AMC theater in Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood, AMC Loews 34, AMC Loews Lincoln Square and AMC Empire 42nd Street.”

It’s only been a few weeks since the last price increase — when theater operators hiked ticket prices as much as 26% in late March.

There is, of course, some concern that the $20 mark is a price point that psychologically, consumers will find hard to overcome — but there does appear to be a large appetite for 3D and IMAX movies.

The WSJ says that overall box office revenues are up 6% for the year, despite the fact that attendance is down slightly.

Movie Tickets Reach the $20 Mark [WSJ]