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Mortgage-backed securities are back! Sort of. Bloomberg reports that Citigroup is offering the first non-government backed private label MBS deal in over two years. This is a market that has been largely expected to remain frozen for some time. Is it beginning to thaw? Not exactly.

Calculated Risk has a great brief analysis of why Citi’s Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2010-H1 isn’t just any old MBS deal. It says the collateral is about as safe an MBS as an investor could possibly dream up. Here are some of the characteristics of the deal that show why this MBS will actually sell:

• The weighted FICO score is 768. This means the borrowers have pristine credit histories.
• The average loan-to-value ratio is 56%. This means, even if the mortgages have a whopping 44% loss rate, no investor will lose a penny of principal. (AAA investors have an additional 6.5% of cushion.)
• These are very rich borrowers. The average loan balance is $932,699. And despite their lofty mortgages, the average borrower’s debt-to-income ratio is only 27%.
• All but two of the 255 borrowers have income of at least $10,000 per month. 22 earn more than $100,000 per month.
• All but 16 of the borrowers have assets worth over $100,000. 76 own assets worth more than $1.05 million.
• Income and assets were verified for 100% of the borrowers.
• All but eight of the homes are primary residences.

This deal is very small at $222 million. Most MBS transactions during the boom were in the billions of dollars. It’s not likely that many squeaky-clean deals like this one can be originated at this time. So for the MBS market to really open back up, lower quality mortgages will have to be included. That, however, will likely continue to frighten investors in the near-term. So while this Citi deal is an important first step, it doesn’t indicate that there’s a lot more private-label MBS to come to market soon.

From the Forums is a great way for you, our readers, to see the hottest topics being discussed. But you must be a registered member and becoming a member is a simple process. So if you have not already already done so, head on over and register now!

• Did you receive your HTC Droid Incredible early? If so, stop by this thread and write your own review!
• Make your voice heard in this poll thread – HTC EVO vs other phones – Incredible, Nexus One, iPhone, etc…
• We are giving away two Droid Incredibles! For your chance to win visit this thread right here, or this one right here.
• Verizon’s not going to get the Nexus One. Discuss this topic here and let us know what you think!

See you in the forums!

Do your summer plans include more than just soaking up some sun or sleeping till noon? Do you plan to take part in a volunteer project or other community service? “Volunteers Rock the World!” — part of the Ready for the World Initiative — is looking for members of the UT Knoxville family who are lending a hand at home or in communities around the globe. If your summer plans include volunteer work, and you’re willing to share your story, please contact Amy Blakely at [email protected].

Aardvark, by some measures — accumulating many active users or making lots of money, for example — did not succeed. But hey, it did get acquired by Google for a cool $50 million, so it’s worth hearing a little more about how the social search startup succeeded on that front. The real secret, according to Aardvark co-founders Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz, who were speaking at the Startup Lessons Learned conference in San Francisco on Friday, was acute awareness of how close they were to failure.

Aardvark co-founders Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz

“I’m probably going to fail, so how can I increase my chances of success but — more importantly — use that failure and make it less painful and minimize the risk of the catastrophic fail, when you’ve run out of money and you actually have to change jobs,” was how Ventilla described their thought process.

“Once you’ve sold your startup, it feels very much fated. I don’t think we felt that,” Ventilla said. That’s despite the fact that he had formerly worked at Google and Horowitz had founded multiple acquired startups. But the truth is that the Aardvark founders had no idea what their product would be or if they’d be able to build it.

Aardvark's abandoned product ideas

In order to find out, they got users to test-drive their ideas. For the first six months Aardvark prototyped ideas, gave them to 100-200 people, and if they saw they weren’t taking off, abandoned them (a slide of five abandoned ideas is pictured on the left). Once they figured out that social Q&A was the ticket, they didn’t pull back on user testing, bringing in 6-12 users a week over the 30-month span of the startup.

But Aardvark didn’t actually build products right away. The service connects people with questions to those in their broader social network with corresponding answers, but for nine months, a human being was involved in every single interaction — a kind of “Wizard of Oz” that classified the query and otherwise managed the conversation from behind the scenes.

In the meantime, Aardvark recruited its core team and raised $7.5 million. In fact, Ventilla said was easier to convince investors and prospective employees that Aardvark could figure out how to automate something that people were already using than to get people to use something new.

Aardvark's long path to product automation

Once Aardvark felt it was on the right track, its next goal was to improve its ability to learn and engineer faster, said Ventilla. The entire company — 30 people at the time of acquisition — reviewed user testing, feedback and metrics, and split testing for new features on a weekly basis. “As long as you don’t run out of money, if your second derivative is good you’ll leave everyone else in the dust,” he argued. Aardvark also made sure that users and advisers alike knew their opinions were being heard and implemented. “Part of your job as an entrepreneur is to be barraged by opposing viewpoints,” said Horowitz. “If you’re not prepared to be grateful, than you shouldn’t do a startup.”

“This is a sinking ship from day one, and that’s why we’re going to do lots of things and be totally uncompromising about when we abandon one ship and try to get on another leaky boat,” said Ventilla of the startup experience. Or as Horowitz put it, “Assume you are wrong, and then at least you’ll be correct in that assumption, if nothing else.”

A video of the talk is embedded below:

Watch live video from Startup Lessons Learned on Justin.tv

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Google’s Social Scheme Hinges on Fears, Not Fortunes

2011 Honda CR-Z Review by Fifth Gear

The folks at Fifth Gear are back and today they give us their take on the new 2011 Honda CR-Z hybrid hatchback. Check out their review of Honda’s latest hybrid model.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 Honda Insight Hybrid.

Click here for more news on the Honda CR-Z.

Refresher: The 2011 Honda CR-Z is powered by a 1.5L i-VTEC mated to Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist hybrid system. It produces a total of 122-hp and a maximum torque of 128 lb-ft when mated to manual transmission (123 lb-ft for CVT models). Fuel-economy is estimated at 31/37 mpg (city/highway) for the manual model and 36/38 mpg for the CVT model. Sales begin in the second half of 2010.

2011 Honda CR-Z:

2011 Honda CR-Z:

– By: Kap Shah

Iraq represents a significant opportunity for the oil services industry. We believe the success of the recent Iraqi oil auctions has created a multi-billion dollar opportunity for major oil services firms such as  Schlumberger (SLB),  Baker Hughes (BHI),  Weatherford (WFT), and  Halliburton (HAL). The winning oil and gas companies have committed to boosting production capacity in Iraq to around 12 million barrels per day in six to seven years, from just 2.5 million barrels per day today. If this goal is achieved, it would mark one of the greatest capacity increases in the industry’s history.

We have our doubts that Iraq can reach this level of production by 2016.  At this time, we do not have enough data to make an informed estimate of achievable production levels in such a short time frame. However, if we assume that Iraq oil production reaches 8 million barrels per day by 2016, which reflects 75% of the committed targets, we expect there could be up to $40 billion in services contracts available from 2010 to 2016 for the industry’s drilling and services expertise.

Even if one third to one half of the awards go to local Iraqi firms for nationalistic reasons, we believe all four major services firms will benefit from this unprecedented opportunity. Currently, Weatherford has the early lead in the region, with several rigs drilling under contract. The company also shared along with Schlumberger in  BP’s (BP) $500 million award for services work in Iraq’s Rumaila field. The other major services firms are behind for now, but rapidly building out their infrastructure, and hiring workers in the country. We expect that Iraq-related revenue for each of the major players could cross $1 billion annually by 2013. We think Schlumberger will regain its traditional position as the industry leader, thanks to its experience and comprehensive product portfolio. The merger with  Smith (SII) could strengthen Schlumberger’s position in the region, provided that there are no integration or divestiture issues.

Iraq’s Oil Production May Explode
The history of oil production in Iraq has been challenging. Iraqi oil production topped 3 million barrels per day in 1979. Saddam Hussein’s subsequent rise to power led to decades of rocky production and overall industry stagnation. Iraq’s current oil production, around 2.5 million barrels per day with reserves of about 115 billion barrels, is the third-largest amount of proven reserves after Saudi Arabia and Iran. Industry estimates suggest that Iraq could contain over 200 billion barrels in reserves, and potentially as much as 400 billion barrels. Despite these massive hydrocarbon riches, the oil industry was at one time once convinced that persistent war and civil unrest would permanently deny it access to Iraq’s sprawling oil and gas fields.

However, this all changed in the middle of 2009. At that time, the Iraqi government offered technical services contracts to develop some of Iraq’s largest fields to international and national oil companies. The first auction was widely viewed as a failure, as the majority of the fields offered failed to obtain bids. This was largely due to the onerous bidding terms set by the Iraqi government. Only one consortium, BP/CNPC, successfully bid for the Rumaila field, although several other deals were completed later under revised terms. The second auction, held in November 2009, was a stunning success. Numerous industry consortiums bid successfully for contracts which, when added together, suggest that Iraq’s oil production capacity could reach 12 million barrels per day in six to seven years. Actual oil output will be based on market demand, and there is language in the contracts to compensate the oil and gas companies if oil production is reduced. A significant near-term hurdle is the passage of a comprehensive oil law that justifies the legal framework for the auctions.

Infrastructure Issues Loom Large
Infrastructure challenges present one of the biggest short-term constraints. Iraq produces 2.5 million barrels per day, and exports 1.9 million barrels per day. The country has indicated that it is working on a new plan to build pipelines and export terminals. The amount of cash being spent on the issue is immense, as Iraq is expected to receive about $200 billion annually from the development contracts, and the oil and gas companies have indicated plans to spend about $100 billion developing the fields. Two floating oil terminals are already under construction, and the country plans to build two more, bringing its oil handling capabilities to about 3.6 million barrels per day.  Foster Wheeler (FWLT) has been awarded a contract to assist with the engineering for some new oil export facilities which would bring Iraq’s exporting capabilities to 4.5 million barrels per day. Water constraints are also being addressed, with  ExxonMobil (XOM)  and Iraq working on plans to use seawater for pumping operations.

Though infrastructure is a challenge, we believe that the initial wells will not be technically difficult. Oil and gas companies indicated that they plan to target easy-to-drill wells to boost the fields’ initial production rates by 10%, which will trigger the cost-recovery portion of the contracts. After the first year, the drilling will graduate to more technically challenging wells. Therefore, we expect that the services firms will be able to generate above-average margins drilling easy wells for the first year, and Iraq oil production should move towards 2.6 million barrels per day by the end of 2010.

Schlumberger and Weatherford Are Early Leaders
The scale and success of the production increases in Iraq are uncertain. However, we think the winners are easier to identify. The Western oil services companies such as Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, and Weatherford will all play key roles in Iraq’s oil production plans. The firms are valuable because they bring needed services expertise and numerous Western services technologies that will help the country fully exploit its long-neglected reserve base. The short timeline of the production ramp-up suggests that the industry should generate healthy operating margins in the 15% to 20% range.

If we assume that Iraq oil production reaches 8 million barrels per day, we think Iraq-related services revenue will start to ramp up in 2011, and cross $1 billion in revenue for each of the major services firms in 2013. By 2016, we estimate potential annual revenue will top $3 billion per firm. At that time, we assume over 400 rigs will be working, and the number of wells drilled will run between 1,500 and 2,000 annually. We believe about $40 billion in services contracts will be awarded to Western and Iraqi oil services firms over the next six to seven years for the necessary drilling and needed services expertise to develop the core Iraq oil fields. In 2016, we’re forecasting a potential annual market size between $18 billion and $20 billion. For comparison, we estimate the global oil services market was worth about $83 billion at the end of 2008.

In this case, we think Iraq poses the greatest opportunity for Weatherford, especially given its status as the smallest of the four major services firms. The firm has won a number of early contracts in the region over the past few years, while its competitors are still trying to build out their presence in the country. However, we expect the capital investment required in Iraq will be extensive, and Weatherford’s constant reliance on the markets for cash may prevent it from taking full advantage of its Iraq opportunities. The need for additional capital could make a merger with industry peer Halliburton, which has very healthy balance sheet, a strong possibility in 2011 or 2012.

The impact of Iraq on industry leader Schlumberger will be diluted, thanks to its wide-ranging international operations. The reduced contribution is despite the fact that we believe Schlumberger is positioned to earn above-average market share some of the industry’s highest margins, thanks to its wide-ranging portfolio of services. However, our estimates could be revised higher after the merger with Smith is completed, if Schlumberger can successfully establish more of its product lines in the region. We also think the company has best-in-class experience at executing integrated-project-management (IPM) contracts. In our view, the IPM contract framework is the most likely way Iraq will choose to hand out the services contracts. The difficult operating environment could make quarterly profitability lumpy for the services firms, as we believe the contract framework depends on a stable drilling environment to earn the greatest profits.

If Iraqi oil production turns out to be around 5 million barrels per day in 2016, we assume a much-reduced level of Iraqi services expenditures. We estimate the annual market size would be about $10 billion in 2016, and it would take about $20 billion in services contracts from 2010 to 2016 to drill the needed wells in the auctioned-off fields. We assume it will take until 2015 for Iraqi revenue to cross $1 billion for each of the major services firms. The number of wells drilled annually will only be between 800 and 1,000, and about 200 rigs will be operating in the country. Understandably, the opportunities and profits for Weatherford, Schlumberger, and others will be greatly reduced from an 8 million barrel-a-day production scenario.

If everything goes very well for Iraq and the services firms, production could reach 11 million barrels per day in 2016. In this case, infrastructure, security, and political concerns are all mostly resolved, and the country becomes quite stable. The annual market size could approach $30 billion in 2016, and services contract awards could total $60 billion from 2010 to 2016 in this optimistic case. We believe Iraqi-related revenue for each of the major services firms could cross $1 billion annually in 2012. We expect over 600 rigs to be operating in the country by 2016, and the number of annual wells drilled to be between 2,500 and 3,000. This scenario would be an extremely positive one for the services firms, and the industry would benefit from sharply higher revenue and profits.

Overall, we think it is clear that there are large opportunities for the services industry in Iraq, but the country must overcome numerous hurdles for the industry to obtain any measure of success. If Iraq manages to add just 3 million barrels a day to its production during the next decade, the achievement would still rank among the industry’s greatest accomplishments. Thus, adding 10 million barrels a day in production is a huge undertaking. Still, if Iraq can come close to realizing its potential, we think the services industry is extremely well-positioned to earn considerable profits.

Don’t miss: 10 Oil Powers Of The Distant Future

Join the conversation about this story »

Article Tags: Film & TV

The actress says she is concerned with the growing skepticism surrounding global warming.

The subject of global warming has become a hotly debated topic over recent years, with many questioning whether it is an issue worthy of serious concern or whether it’s simply a marketing term concocted by “green” companies to boost their profile and revenue.

But one person who is concerned about the skepticism against global warming is Hollywood actress, Brooke Shields.

“It all upsets me because I feel like we keep losing sight of simpler, smaller things,” Shields told Pop Tarts. “I don’t know what is true or not, I only know what I can do on a daily basis because I believe in it. Whether I am turning the water off in between brushing my teeth, which my little daughter is the police of, or I am recycling, or switching my products or using an energy saving washing machine…. I just have to do the best that I can do and keep doing more.”

Shields stars alongside Brendan Fraser in the new family comedy “Furry Vengeance” which is centered around a real estate developer who has to go up against a clique of angry animals when his new housing subdivision encroaches on their habitat. Led by a raccoon, the woodland critters seek revenge to stop the construction and teach the developer about the environmental consequences of humankind invading nature.

“There’s an eco message but it is not something that we’re preaching,” Shields explained. “We hope it spurs conversation with our kids about Mother Nature, the environment and the animals and how they can respect that.”

Click source to read more, and……and….wow she is still very good looking.

Source: foxnews.com

Read in full with comments »   

Hey, Android handset owners! Tired of your iPhone-toting friends bragging about how they can tune into SiriusXM radio on the go, while you can’t? Me too. (Don’t have any friends who happen to have both SiriusXM accounts and an iPhone? Me neither. We’re pretending, okay?)

Fret no longer! Your time in the shadows of inadequacy is nearing its end, friend: SiriusXM is officially coming to Android.

While Sirius isn’t giving any specific dates, a sign-up page that went live recently promises that it will be “available soon”. The application itself will be free, though you’ll need a monthly SiriusXM subscription to keep the tunes pumping after your 7-day trial is up.

And before you Stern fans get too excited about listening to ol’ Curly on the go: just like with the iPhone app, Howard Stern (along with MLB Play-by-Play, NFL Play-by-Play, and SIRIUS NASCAR Radio) won’t be making an appearance here due to “contractual rights things“.

Indonesia’s 17,000 islands are home to hundreds of volcanoes and approximately 40 percent of the earth’s geothermal energy potential and the nation’s government is ready to harness that hot, clean energy.

The country has set a goal of bringing online 4GW of geothermal capacity by 2014, which will almost quadruple the current capacity of 1,189 MW.  If you think that sounds ambitious, you’re right.  It generally takes three to five years just to complete field exploration and then another three years to actually build a geothermal plant.

And then there’s the cost of the project — $12 billion to be exact. The country is looking to the World Bank, private investors and developed countries like Japan and the U.S. for help raising the money.  But once the plants are up and running, they’re basically tapping into endless, clean energy with little overhead required.

Plus, this plan will go a long way towards reaching the Indonesian president’s goals of cutting emissions to 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and adding 10GW of clean energy capacity by 2014.

via AFP

Jesse James was spotted out and about today sans his wedding band – check out all the latest details over @ PEOPLE.com!

Is this really a surprise? He turned his back on the vows attached to that ring a long time ago.

James, 40, checked into an Arizona treatment center for sex addiction as a tabloid-driven sex scandal linking the star to a litany of other women left his marriage to Oscar winner Sandra Bullock crumbling at his feet. Just last week Bullock, 45, emerged from obscurity and was photographed hiking in Northern California, also not wearing her wedding ring.

We’re very happy to have a guest post from Malcolm MacIver. See if you can keep this straight: Malcolm is a professor in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern, with undergraduate degrees in philosophy and computer science, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience. He’s also one of the only people I know who has a doctorate but no high school diploma.

With this varied background, Malcolm studies connections between biomechanics and neuroscience — how do brains and bodies interact? This unique expertise helped land him a gig as the science advisor on Caprica, the SyFy Channel’s prequel show to Battlestar Galactica. He also blogs at Northwestern’s Science and Society blog. It’s a pleasure to welcome him to Cosmic Variance, where he’ll tell us about robots, artificial intelligence, and war.

———————————————————

It’s a pleasure to guest blog for CV and Sean Carroll, a friend of some years now. In my last posting back at Northwestern University’s Science and Society Blog, I introduced some issues at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and morality. While I’ve long been interested in this nexus, the most immediate impetus for the posting was meeting Peter Singer, author of the excellent book ‘Wired for War’ about the rise of unmanned warfare, while simultaneously working for the TV show Caprica and a U.S. military research agency that funds some of the work in my laboratory on bio-inspired robotics. Caprica, for those who don’t know it, is a show about a time when humans invent sentient robotic warriors. Caprica is a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, and as we know from that show, these warriors rise up against humans and nearly drive them to extinction.

Here, I’d like to push the idea that as interesting as the technical challenges in making sentient robots like those on Caprica are, an equally interesting area is the moral challenges of making such machines. But “interesting” is too dispassionate—I believe that we need to begin the conversation on these moral challenges. Roboticist Ron Arkin has been making this point for some time, and has written a book on how we may integrate ethical decision making into autonomous robots.

Given that we are hardly at the threshold of building sentient robots, it may seem overly dramatic to characterize this as an urgent concern, but new developments in the way we wage war should make you think otherwise. I heard a telling sign of how things are changing when I recently tuned in to the live feed of the most popular radio station in Washington DC, WTOP. The station had commercial after commercial from iRobot (of Roomba fame), a leading builder of unmanned military robots, clearly targeting military listeners. These commercials reflect how the use of unmanned robots in the military has gone from close to zero in 2001 to over ten thousand now, with the pace of acquisition still accelerating. For more details on this, see Peter Singer’s ‘Wired for War’, or the March 23 2010 congressional hearing on The Rise of the Drones here.

While we are all aware of these trends to some extent, it’s hardly become a significant issue of concern. We are comforted by the knowledge that the final kill decision is still made by a human. But is this comfort warranted? The importance of such a decision changes as the way in which war is conducted, and the highly processed information supporting the decision, becomes mediated by unmanned military robots. Some of these trends have been helpful to our security. For example, the drones have been effective against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda because they can do long-duration monitoring and attacks of sparsely distributed non-state actors. However, in a military context, unmanned robots are clearly the gateway technology to autonomous robots, where machines can eventually be in the position to make decisions that have moral weight.

“But wait!” many will say, “Isn’t this the business-as-usual-robotics-and-AI-are-just-around-the-corner argument we’ve heard for decades?” Robotics and AI have long been criticized as promising more than they could deliver. Are there signs that this could be changing? While an enormous amount could be said about the reasons for the past difficulties of AI, it is clear that some of its past difficulties stem from having too narrow a conception of what constitutes intelligence, a topic I’ve touched on for the recent Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition. This narrow conception revolved around what might loosely be described as cognitive processing or reasoning. Newer types of AI and robotics, such as embodied AI and probabilistic robotics, tries to integrate some of the aspects of what being more than a symbol processor involves: for example, sensing the outside world and dealing with the uncertainty in those signals in order to be highly responsive, and emotional processing. Advanced multi-sensory signal processing techniques such as Bayesian filtering were in fact integral to the success of Stanley, the autonomous robot that won DARPA’s Grand Challenge to drive without human intervention across a challenging desert course.

As these prior technical problems are overcome, autonomous decision making will become more common. Eventually, this will raise moral challenges. One area of challenge will be how we should behave towards artifacts, be they virtual or robotic, which are endowed with such a level of AI that how we treat them becomes an issue. On the other side, how they treat us becomes a problem, most especially in military or police contexts. What happens when an autonomous or semi-autonomous war robot makes an error and kills an innocent? Do we place responsibility on the designers of the decision making systems, the military strategists who placed machines with known limitations into contexts they were not designed for, or some other entity?

Both of these challenges are about morality and ethics. But it is not clear whether our current moral framework, which is a hodgepodge of religious values, moral philosophies, and secular humanist values, is up to responding to these challenges. It is for this reason that the future of AI and robotics will be as much a moral challenge as a technical challenge. But while we have many smart people working on the technical challenges, very few are working on the moral challenges.

How do we meet the moral challenge? One possibility is to look toward science for guidance. In my next posting I’ll discuss some of the efforts in this direction, pushed most recently by a new activist form of atheism which holds that it is incorrect to think that we need religion to ground morality, and even dangerous. We can instead, they claim, look to the new sciences of happiness, empathy, and cooperation for guiding our value system.

A equipe Lamborghini Cimed conquistou neste domingo – 25 de abril – em Curitiba, Paraná, a 1ª vitória no GT Brasil. Chico Longo e Daniel Serra com a ‘Lambo’ numeral 19 largou na 6ª colocação e depois de muita disputa cruzaram a linha de chegada em primeiro com mais de 11s de vantagem para uma outra Lamborhini pilotada por Bruno Garfinkel e Ricardo Mauricio.

A prova teve um momento de emoção redobrada na metade final, quando a chuva chegou e os pilotos foram obrigados a realizar uma parada para a troca de pneus. Neste momento a equipe Lamborghini Cimed realizou um ótimo trabalho de pit stop e colocou Daniel Serra na liderança. A vitória da equipe teve transmissão ao vivo para todo Brasil pelo canal Rede TV! Chico Longo elogiou o trabalho de todos do time. “O Daniel pilotou muito, principalmente na chuva. Não posso deixar de elogiar o trabalho da equipe. Eles foram muito rápidos na troca de pneus. Na minha ‘tocada’ consegui ficar próximos dos lideres e entregar o carro em 5º. Foi um bom trabalho de todos”, disse. Daniel Serra também foi só elogios a todos da equipe. “Foi uma corrida complicada por causa da chuva na parte final. Mas o trabalho de pit stop foi fundamental para me dar tranqüilidade na liderança da prova. O Longo me entregar o carro entre os primeiros também foi muito importante. Estamos muito satisfeitos com esta vitória”, disse.

Na primeira corrida deste domingo, onde Longo/Serra largavam na pole, o time não foi para a pista com um problema de amortecedor. Foi necessário a troca da peça para a corrida 2 onde o time venceu.

Fonte: Impress

Earlier this year, we noted that with Avatar still being popular in theaters, it looked as though the DVD release would occur while the movie was still available in a bunch of theaters, and wondered what if it would actually boost sales at the box office. For years, of course, movie theaters owners have whined that they can’t possibly compete against home theaters, and have boycotted movies that tried to do a “day and date” release, where they offer the DVDs at the same time the movie is in the theater. This seems to ignore the fact that the theatrical experience is about the social experience of going out — which is not the same as staying in to watch a movie at home (no matter how good your home theater system is). But most theater owners don’t seem to believe this, and insist that if DVDs are out at the same time as the movie is in the theater, it will harm box office sales.

Avatar seems to suggest that’s not true.

btrussell points us to the news of the record-breaking sales of Avatar DVDs this weekend. His point, in submitting it, is noting that the sales were so strong even though the movie has been widely downloadable and widely downloaded for months. So, despite the claims that file sharing is destroying the DVD market, it looks like people are still quite willing to buy.

But a more interesting point is the impact on the box office. Last weekend, April 16 – 18th, Avatar averaged $2,006 at the box office per theater. On April 22nd, the DVD was released. This past weekend (April 23 – 25th)? Avatar averaged $2,257 at the box office per theater. That’s an increase of 12.5% over the week. That doesn’t seem to fit with the theater owners’ claims, now, does it?

Admittedly, a bunch of theaters stopped showing the movie this past week, probably falsely believing that with the DVD out, it would harm sales. But… the week before, a bunch of theaters added Avatar back into their lineup. If we go back two weeks, we have a much more apples to apples comparison. The weekend of April 9 – 11, Avatar showed in 454 theaters, with an average take of $1,860 per theater for a grand total of $844,651. Yet, again, this past weekend, when the movie was showing in fewer theaters, 421, it brought in both a higher average take per theater at $2,257 and a higher grand total at $950,000. So if we compare those two weeks, with fewer theaters, there was a bump of 21.3% in box office sales after the DVD was released

As we predicted, it sure looks like the DVD release while the movie was still in the theaters actually may have driven more people to the theater, rather than taken them away from the theater.

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There’s probably only one thing more terrifying than Nazi soldiers: Nazi soldiers with jet packs—and Nazi UFOs piloted by nefarious hamsters. The difference is that, while the UFOs never existed, the Nazi jet pack did: Behold, the Himmelstürmer. More »

When we last reported on the Deepwater Horizon, the oil rig had sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, but at least the Coast Guard saw no new oil leakage happening. Over the weekend, though, things went from bad to worse as response teams began to see crude oil leaking into the Gulf. Now, the Coast Guard says, 42,000 gallons per day are leaking into the sea, and it may be 45 to 90 days before the leak can be stopped.

Deepwater Horizon, under lease by BP, had been drilling into an oil reserve 5,000 feet below the surface of the water. When the burning rig sank, its 5,000-foot pipeline crumbled like a giant broken straw. The biggest leak has been found at the first crook. The well valve is holding for now but there’s at least one more leak [ABC News]. The Coast Guard couldn’t see the oil so deep under sea right away, which is why the initial assessment wasn’t this bad.

Cleanup teams have now deployed undersea robots to try to stem the oil spill. The best hope is that the remote-operated submarines—at least four are deployed at the scene–would be able to activate a huge device on the sea floor called a “blow-out protector,” a series of valves meant to control pressure in the well. “This is a highly complex operation,” said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP’s exploration and production division. “And it may not be successful” [National Geographic]. If that doesn’t work, the next option would be to drill a relief well to ease the pressure. BP has brought in ships for such an operation, but it would require months to complete.

As we noted on Friday, the spill occurred dangerously close to the United States’ Gulf Coast—within 50 miles. The Coast Guard said the oil spill was expected to stay 30 miles off the coast for the next several days [CBS News]. But as of yesterday, the surface spill had already spread to cover 600 square miles. Whether it gets closer to U.S. shores depends on how the weather changes. Louisiana is already taking precautions, deploying containment booms around particularly sensitive areas along its coast. The oil spill is reportedly edging closer to the Chandeleur Islands, which are part of a wildlife refuge for pelicans and other seabirds; the fish and shrimp that live in Louisiana’s rich coastal ecosystems could also be threatened.

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Forget Cristiano Ronaldo, there’s a new leading man in Kim Kardashian’s life: None other than her adorable baby nephew Mason Dash Disick.

The newly-single reality star uploaded some heart-melting images of her special bonding time with little Mason to her personal blog on Monday– who was born to Kim’s big sis Kourtney and her boyfriend Scott Disick last Dec. 14.

“Mason is the happiest baby! There are no words to describe how much I love my little Mason! Isn’t he gorgeous?” the proud aunt exclaimed.

Kim and Khloe Kardashian threw a belated 31st birthday party for Mason’s mommy Kourtney at MGM Grand’s Wet Republic pool in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Jon of Tehkseven rounds up all of the big cellular news PhoneDog highlighted the week of April 18-24, 2010.  This week Jon recaps Android updates as well as special PhoneDog giveaways we had.  Watch his fast-paced exciting video of the week.

If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer that was waiting on the Nexus One‘s arrival before upgrading, looks like you’ll have to make a slight change of plans. Google has just made it known that, despite announcing that the Nexus One would hit Verizon soon, it is now dead. Instead, they recommend that you go with the Droid Incredible instead. At first glance, that may come across as lame, but the fact is that the Droid Incredible is a better phone than the Nexus One, so we have to give kudos to Google for recognizing the work that was put into the phone by HTC. We will have more on the Droid Incredible later today, as we are currently playing around with one in the Gear Live Review Labs.

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[JURIST] The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in two cases. In Hardt v. Reliance Standard Life Insurance Co., the court heard arguments on whether whether § 502(g)(1) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) provides a district court discretion to award reasonable attorney’s fees only to a prevailing party, and whether a party is entitled to attorney’s fees when she persuades a district court that a violation of ERISA has occurred, successfully secures a judicially-ordered remand requiring a redetermination of entitlement to benefits, and subsequently receives the benefits sought on remand. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that § 502(g)(1) provides a district court discretion to award reasonable attorney’s fees only to a prevailing party. Counsel for petitioner argued that she “is eligible for a fee award under section 502(g)(1) of ERISA by proper application of this Court’s established fee standards under any test this Court has previously established.” Counsel for the US government argued as amicus curiae on behalf of petitioner. Counsel for the respondent argued that “the Petitioner must demonstrate some success on the merits, and under Rule 54 she must specify the judgment entitling her to an award.”
In Rent-A-Center v. Jackson, the court heard arguments on whether a district court is required in all cases to determine claims that an arbitration agreement subject to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) is unconscionable, even when the parties to the contract have clearly and unmistakably assigned this “gateway” issue to the arbitrator for decision. The Ninth Circuit held that that the district court was required to determine whether the arbitration agreement was unconscionable. Counsel for the petitioner argued:The agreement between Antonio Jackson and Rent-A-Center should be enforced as written. There is no statutory impediment to the enforcement of the clear and unmistakable agreement that gives the arbitrator exclusive authority to decide Jackson’s challenge to enforceability, nor is there any language in the Federal Arbitration Act that would prohibit the court from making the determination – prohibit the arbitrator from making the determination of Jackson’s challenge to unconscionability.Counsel for the respondent argued that “Petitioner would have the Court adopt a rule whereby agreements to arbitrate are presumed enforceable before their validity has been determined by a court under section 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act.”

SolarBridge Technologies, the Austin, Texas-based microinverter developer has raised $15 million in a series B funding led by new investor Rho Ventures.

Returning investor included Battery Ventures, which led the company’s Series A financing. With this latest financing the company has raised $27 million.

SolarBridge will use the funding to finalize testing and certification and ramp up production and expand sales and marketing — see full press release.

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