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Moonlight Fragrance

Earns $60 Weekly for Agents

Women buy this new and beautiful product on sight—nothing like it— brings the breath of spring flowers Into every room—freshens and rejuvenates. Moonlight fragrance is not a perfume but the magical product of modern science. Sells wherever electric lights are used—repeats automatically. Retails at only $1—sells as fast as a ten-cent item. Extra profits to high-grade agents who write NOW.

Illidela Corporation, Dept. 20, 2407 N. Crawford Ave., Chicago, III.

Hair Drier Blast from Vacuum Cleaner

FOR a cost of less than $1.00, a very satisfactory hair-drying attachment may be constructed for use in the home. Results obtained from the device are very commendable and entirely worth he cost and effort of construction.

The following materials are needed: a tin can (put together with seams) at least 5 in. high and 3 in. in diameter with a press-in cover; two small tin pie plates 6 in. in diameter; a porcelain bushing with 3/8″ hole; a porcelain screw ring sign receptacle; separable cord plug cap; C feet of No. 16 heater cord; 660-watt cone type heater element; one piece of iron tubing 1-1/4″ in diameter and 10″ long; eight No. 4-40 R. H. machine screws 5/16″ long and three No. 4-40 R. H. machine screws 3/8″ long. Proceed with construction details as shown in diagrams above. A coat of gilt or aluminum radiator paint will give the completed article a nice appearance.

To use the device, disconnect the dust bag from the sweeper and in its stead connect the flexible attachment hose furnished with the cleaner to the blower. Attach the drier to the other end of the hose by pushing the tube into the hose. Connect drier and sweeper to the circuit. The cold air from the sweeper blower will pass along the hot coils of the heating element where it is heated, resulting in a hot blast excellent for drying purposes. To cut down on the noise and to control the blast, the sweeper is set on a cushion with one end of the intake projecting over the edge of the cushion in such a position as to obtain the desired strength of blast.

The Transistor that smashed a frequency barrier

A new transistor invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories can provide broadband, high-frequency amplification never before possible with transistors. The big leap in frequency is made possible by a diffusion process that earlier enabled Laboratories scientists to create the Bell Solar Battery.

This transistor is a 3-laver semi-conductor “sandwich.” High-frequency operation is obtained by making the central layer exceedingly thin. This was difficult to do economically by any known method.

The new diffusion process, however, easily produces microscopic layers of controllable thickness. Thus it opens the way to the broad application of high-frequency transistors for use in telephony, FM, TV, guided missiles, electronic brains and computers.

The new transistor shows once again how Bell Laboratories creates significant advances and then develops them into ever more useful tools for telephony and the nation.

BELL TELEPHONE LABORATORIES

My dogs have tried Holistic Select dog food before with favorable results, now it’s our 124-pound puppy’s turn to review “beyond natural, beyond holistic” food.

Holistic Select Nourish Puppy Health-Anchovy, Sardine & Chicken Meals Recipe was gobbled right up by our puppy. He actually had just eaten his regular breakfast and had a full belly, but when I poured Holistic Select into his bowl, he couldn’t resist chowing down.  He loved it!

Ingredients:
Anchovy & Sardine Meal, Ground Brown Rice, Ground White Rice, Chicken Fat (Preserved with Natural Mixed Tocopherols), Chicken Meal, Pork Meal, Oatmeal, Dried Beet Pulp, Flaxseed, Dried Egg Product, Menhaden Fish Oil, Carrots, Sun-Cured Alfalfa, Peas, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Organic Quinoa, Apples, Blueberries, Cranberries, Dried Kelp, Yucca Schidigera Extract, DL-Methionine, Vitamins [Beta-Carotene, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Niacin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Mononitrate, Folic Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Biotin], Minerals [Polysaccharide Complexes of Zinc, Iron, Manganese and Copper, Cobalt Carbonate, Potassium Iodate, Sodium Selenite], Choline Chloride, Lecithin, Rosemary Extract, Inulin, L-Carnitine, Dried Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Enterococcus faecium, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus licheniformis, Aspergillus oryzae and Aspergillus niger Fermentation Products, Mixed Tocopherols (a natural preservative).

What’s in your puppy’s food? I bet you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients. It’s actually really gross what is put in pet food, and many of the ingredients are toxic. You don’t have to worry about Holistic Select ingredients, and the puppy food also comes in a canned version.

Disclosure: I was sent free samples of these products to review. No
prior assurances were given as to whether the review be positive or
negative.

Secrets of the Mail Order Experts

By Edmund Cordon

IF you thought the legendary salesman who sold ice boxes to Eskimos was a sharp character, step up and meet his master. This fellow actually sold imitation shrunken heads to the countries where the real things are made!

He’s E. Joseph Cossman of Hollywood, Calif., who conceived the idea of packaging imitation Sanforized noggins, the kind made for real by South American Jivaro head-hunters, and selling them via mail order as souvenirs.

Joe also threw in a straight-faced set of instructions on how to shrink a head, including such pertinent information as: “The refrigerator is the best place to keep a fresh head.” He printed this gay warning on the cartons: “Fragile. Handle with care. Shrunken head.”

Joe’s gagging ingenuity brought more than half a million orders—including a huge demand from Jivaro country, Ecuador, Peru and Guatemala!

The fabulous mail order business erupted after World War II and is still giving off golden sparks. There are many others beside Joe Cossman proving that money can be made in one of the few remaining major businesses in which a fellow can make a strike with limited capital.

What’s new in this intriguing business? What are the red-hot items these days? Who goes broke and who hits the jackpot? And why?

I put these and many other questions to leading mail order experts in many parts of the country. Here are some of the know-how secrets revealed by these top mail order experts.

What are the most popular mail order items being sold today?

The best-selling items today are unusual automobile accessories, industrial equipment, giftware and novelty items, reports Irvin Graham, one of the top mail order specialists.

Which of these items is the best?

Nobody can definitely predict a hit but the best sellers today are the offbeats, the novelties.

Joe Cossman’s imitation shrunken head is a good example of an offbeat item. A Long Island manufacturer offers left-handed scissors! A New Yorker is marketing a gold toothpick. For sunbathing girls, a Chicago outfit has come up with a beautifully jewelled nose guard.

Are there any “sleeper” fields for mail order selling?

Yes. It’s food. The secret lies in providing deluxe items, gourmet foods and specialties that folks cannot get in local food markets.

What’s being sold? Specialties ranging from Grandma’s gefulte fish to escargots a la francaise (snails). Customers clamor for such tidbits as pickled artichoke nubs, cucumber marmalade, wild pheasant, curried walnuts, almond paste pretzels, a hundred exotic cheeses, canned fried grasshoppers and caviar.

How big is the mail order business and how much has it grown in the last few years?

It’s a fantastically large enterprise. Economic reports reveal that the sell-by-mail business is rapidly creeping up on de- partment stores sales. Total mail order sales for the last recorded year was $1,407,000,000, one-eighth of all department store sales throughout the country.

What have successful mail order men discovered about the price of items?

Although cheaper items (between $1 and $5) are the safest bet, higher priced goods are finding excellent markets.

Four years ago, for example, Charles Schonbrun of New York decided to try selling by mail. Charles was a beginner, so he didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know, for instance, that you weren’t supposed to sell anything costing more than a few dollars. He struck it rich when he decided to sell fine cutlery, ranging up to $26 a set.

Charles’ experience is by no means unique. Mail order businessmen are selling boat kits costing hundreds of dollars, tractors, costly telescopes and binoculars, floor saws, entire electrical plants, lawn-mower sharpeners, plows, even put-it-together-yourself houses costing many thousands!

Are there any new markets to tap in mail order today?

Yes. The GI market. Many experts in the field are convinced that this is a potential billion-dollar market. A few smart chaps have already discovered that they can actually sell new model cars to American soldiers stationed overseas, and deliver the cars when the men are shipped back to this country!

Where can beginners get sound advice on how to start, do’s and don’ts, etc., of the mail order business?

Highly recommended is How To Sell Through Mail Order, published by McGraw-Hill of New York. Other good books are: Help Yourself To Better Mail Order, Printers’ Ink, N. Y.; How To Start Your Own Mail Order Business, Stravon, N. Y.; How To Win Success In The Mail Business, Arco, N. Y.

Are there any final words of advice?

The Department of Commerce points out that experience has shown it’s advisable for beginners to start a part-time business and to operate from their homes. Bear in mind that casualties run high in this line but the jackpot is there. It has been claimed time and again by the quick and alert. It can be claimed by you, too! •

Poor ol’ Alan…

We almost felt sorry for him…

“Maestro mauled…” said the headline in The Financial Times. We wanted to maul him many times. But now that others were doing it…it made us feel sympathetic to the old scalawag.

Didn’t the Alan Greenspan Fed’s failure to curb subprime lending deserve to go into the ‘oops’ category, demanded chief tormentor Phil Angelides.

Mr. Greenspan defended his legacy. He was right 70% of the time, he said. The other 30% of the time he was wrong.

Hey, that’s not bad. Pity it’s not true. Greenspan was wrong 90% of the time – at least.

He thought those fancy derivatives actually spread the risk of failure…and made the system more stable.

He thought those subprime loans helped people of modest incomes realize the goal of home ownership.

He saw no risk in keeping the key rate at an ’emergency’ low level…years after the emergency had passed.

But he hit one of those magic moments last week…when he was finally right about something. He declared that the yield on the 10-year note was “the canary in the coal mine.” This week, the canary wobbled…but stayed on his feet. He’s still standing…but looking a little peaked. More below…

While the former Fed chief was in the spotlight at The Financial Times yesterday, the present Fed chief was front-page news over at The Washington Post. Alan Greenspan is a scoundrel, no doubt about that. But he was, in some ways, a better Fed chief than Bernanke.

The trouble with Bernanke is that he doesn’t know his limitations. He actually believes the Fed can look at the possible outcomes going forward and improve them before they come out.

“Fed chief sounds a deficit warning,” is the headline. He said Americans faced a “difficult choice.” It’s between higher taxes and fewer entitlement services, he said.

This doesn’t seem like a difficult choice to us. We’d gladly accept fewer “services” from the feds if they’d lay off on the taxes. But that’s because we’re in the half of the US households that actually pays taxes.

No kidding; the report was in yesterday’s news:

“Almost one half of US households pay no federal income tax.”

So, welcome to the beginning of the end. If half the citizens get bread and circuses without paying for them, you can bet that the whole shebang is headed for destruction. The math doesn’t work. Half the people have no interest in curbing taxes or spending. Obviously, those people would prefer to raise taxes – on us – rather than give up their free pills and retirement benefits. Even among the half that does pay taxes, most pay very little – less than they get back in ‘services.’

Meanwhile, the ‘rich’ get socked hard. According to the reports we’re seeing on scurrilous blogs and from our usually unreliable sources, the tax burden on the rich is set to rise over 60% of income – thanks to the health care charges they will have to bear.

By the way…the whole thing is a fraud. The services, that is…

Here’s how it works. In 2007, the private sector finally blew itself up – thanks largely to all that debt offered by Wall Street and encouraged by the Alan Greenspan/Ben Bernanke Fed.

So then…in comes the Fed again…and the US government…wearing white hats and pretending to save the situation. How? By bringing more of the economy under their control!

As far as we can tell, the last successful government program was WWII. And that was only successful because the competitors’ programs were also run by government. But that doesn’t stop them…

Does anyone seriously think the feds can do a better job? These are the people who run the Post Office…and Amtrak, for Pete’s sake. Even with monopolies, they can’t make money. Now they’re the majority owners of auto companies, insurance giants and mortgage firms. Hardly anyone buys a house in America anymore without the help of a government-owned mortgage business. And soon, you won’t be able to get a doctor to take your temperature – assuming they still do that – without getting a bureaucrat’s approval.

In theory, the feds take charge of more of the economy, and spend more money, so they are able to keep the GDP from going down. The feds have been pumping about $4 billion per day of deficit spending (money they didn’t collect in taxes) into the economy. The bankers say ‘thank you very much’ for the business and pay themselves big bonuses. But this money doesn’t stimulate the private economy…it replaces it.

But it replaces it with zombie ‘growth.’ The government-driven part of the economy is largely brain-dead. It is a waste. What real, positive boost to prosperity comes from someone filling out health care forms for the feds? What benefit do we get from tax accountants? How about from the ambulance-chasing lawyers?

(Yesterday, driving to work, we saw an ad in Baltimore’s inner city: “Birth injury? Malpractice? Workplace injuries? You need a lawyer!”)

How about from any of these multitudes of mid-level bureaucrats…lobbyists…handlers…interveners…meddlers…?

The feds spend money. But the money is like warm water to a boat hull. It just stimulates the barnacles. Gradually, the boat slows…and sinks.

What can you do? Haul it out and scrape the barnacles off! That’s what Ben Bernanke is proposing. But wait…the barnacles vote!

And they make campaign contributions…

But here is Ben Bernanke talking tough. ‘If you don’t straighten up,’ he seemed to say, ‘you’re going to end up like Greece.’

Wait…this has a familiar ring to it. This is the same Ben Bernanke who is holding rates near zero to make it easier for the feds NOT to straighten up. Like those of his predecessor, Bernanke’s centrally- controlled lending rates are sending out just the wrong signal at just the wrong time.

And like Greenspan, he can get away with it…for now.

But maybe not for long. On Monday, US T-note yields ran over 4%. “The fun’s over,” said old-timer Richard Russell. It looked like the end had come for the long bull market in bonds. Bond yields have been going down since ’81. But they seemed to hit bottom near the end of 2008. What we’re seeing now – possibly – is the beginning of the long march in the other direction.

This seemed even more likely because at the end of March the Bernanke Fed lost one of its pumps. It can no longer buy up the toxic mortgage- backed bonds of Wall Street, thereby giving the banks money to buy US Treasury debt.

Still, on Wednesday, threats of more trouble from Greece sent investors towards US bonds for safety.

“Greece Rescue Not Going According to Plan,” was the headline at Bloomberg.

“Demand strong in US 10-year Treasury debt sale,” reported The Financial Times.

But by yesterday, it looked like the plan for US debt was not going well either.

“Treasuries decline after $13 billion auction of 30-year bonds,” said another Bloomberg report.

Jobless claims unexpectedly rose last week. What do you expect? This is a Great Correction. Learn to love it.

“China offers high-speed rail to California,” says The New York Times. Get used to that too. Who’s got the money? Who’s got the new technology? Who’s got the engineers…the people who actually know how to do something.

Hey China…let’s make a trade. We’ll give you 1 million lawyers for 100,000 engineers. Or, how about 20,000 lobbyists for one good metallurgist? Heck…we’ll throw in 535 members of Congress.

Hold the Congressmen? Okay…guess we’re stuck with them.

Regards,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

Similar Posts:

• The Stinging Reproach of a Former Fed Chairman
• Alan Greenspan Bears Blame for Intensity of Financial Crisis
• Gold Standard Doubles as the Greenspan Fed Makes Real Interest Rates Negative
• Alan Greenspan Says “the Seeds of a Bottoming” Becoming Visible
• Greenspan and His Demented Federal Reserve Chairmanship

Robert Bowling debuts as his cartoon self on this evening’s Family Guy episode. Here, the Modern Warfare 2 boss pokes fun at himself, going all n00bish, much to the dismay of Peter Griffin.
 
 
 
 

In a continued effort to cool banks’ lending growth this year, and cool China’s property market, China’s banking regulator will require banks to present risk reports detailing their exposure to the property industry by the end of June.

The regulator will then make inspections during the third quarter and force banks to increase their provisions where ever asset (property loan value) downgrades are made.

iMarket News:

“We’ve found that banks’ risk exposure to the property market is pretty big,” China Banking Regulatory Commission director Liu Mingkang told the Boao Forum.

He said banks are required to tighten up their oversight of loans to local governments for land development projects, loans to property developers as well as mortgage lending.

“We’re requiring that banks follow up each government land auction to make sure the money from the auction goes to the right bank account,” he said.

Even if they’re just half as successful as they expect/are supposed to be in rooting out problematic lending, one can imagine that these efforts will discover some serious losses in Q3. So while many might criticize the effectiveness of such regulatory efforts, you can’t write them off completely.

Join the conversation about this story »

Filed under: Minivan/Van, Truck, Crossover, Ford

This Tuesday, Ford’s VP of global powertrain development, Barb Samardzich, will be addressing the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit, and Ecoboost technology will again be at the top of her agenda. Samardzich will confirm that before the end of this year three more Ecoboost engines will be in production at Ford, including the 1.6-liter inline-four due to be built at the Bridgend plant in Wales and debut in the new C-Max people mover.

At the Chicago Auto Show it was announced that the new 2.0-liter inline-four will go into the 2011 Edge and during Tuesday’s address Samardzich will also confirm that turbo’d four-pot will find its way into the new unibody Explorer as well. That installation should come as no surprise since just such a combination was listed as a powertrain for the Explorer America concept that debuted at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show when Ecoboost was originally announced.

The final announcement (and one of the worst kept secrets in the industry) will be the confirmation that the 2011 F150 will be available with a 3.5-liter V6 Ecoboost. This will be the first rear-drive Ecoboost application, and brings the total number of announced Ecoboosted vehicles to eight (nine if you count C-Max and Grand C-Max). However, Ford is saying there will be 11 Ecoboost vehicles this year, with the Lincoln MKX one likely candidate for the 2.0-liter and the Mondeo may get one of the four cylinder units as well.

Samardzich will also announce that Ford has upped its Ecoboost production target from 1.3 million to 1.5 million by 2013 – not bad when you consider when Ecoboost was first announced Ford was targeting 750,000 units.

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading SAE 2010: Ford confirms Explorer, F-150 EcoBoost, ups production target to 1.5M

SAE 2010: Ford confirms Explorer, F-150 EcoBoost, ups production target to 1.5M originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Robin Williams — Alcohol and Marijuana (live at the Met)

and Viagra.

What’s on your mind?

 

	Amtrak could set ridership record in 2010 Up 4.3 percent so far.		Better Place will test first ever commercial battery swap later this month Here goes nothing…
	It’s Friday: Prisoners forced to pedal to watch TV, could we charge-up electric cars this way? [w/video] We think this is real.	Other news: Report: Ford to build battery packs in Ypsilanti, MI Roaming Times names Earthbound RV the “Green RV of the Year” Volkswagen Squareback resurrected with electricity [w/VIDEO]

AutoblogGreen for 04.12.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you are anything like me, you are a fanatic about tracking the mileage you get with your vehicle. In the old days, this meant keeping a pad, pencil, and calculator in my glovebox. That was a tedious process, especially if I didn’t fill the tank to full each time.

Along comes Mileage. Mileage is an app for tracking the Miles Per Gallon (MPG) (or kilometers per litre) that you are getting between fill ups. That alone makes the app valuable to me, but there is so much more to Mileage.

To use Mileage you simply enter the price per gallon, gallons filled, and your odometer reading each time you fill up. Mileage will automatically keep track of that data for you to review. You can view a history of all your fill-ups and some nifty statistics about your fuel consumption. You can even view charts to get a visual representation of the different statistics.

The amount of statistics Mileage provides is staggering. It keeps track of things like amount of fuel per fill up, average cost per mile, and a whole host of other interesting information. One of its greatest features is that it allows you to export this data as a .csv file (comma separated values). That data can than be imported into spreadsheet software and manipulated to your hearts content.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Free
• Tons of data and statistics
• Ability to export data
• Intuitive UI

Needs Improvement

• If screen sleeps while viewing data, the data will not show when screen is activated again. (switch tabs in the app instantly shows data again)
• Would be nice if there were some predefined service reminders with the suggested mileage between servicing.

Final Verdict
Mileage is a great tool for those who like to track their fuel consumption and cost. It will also allow you to enter service reminders for things like changing oil, rotating tires, etc. If you are someone with a car, this app is definitely worth checking out.

Note: This review was submitted by Andrew Frost as part of our app review contest.

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“She broke wind without breaking stride. And that’s when I knew something funny was going on in Washington, DC.” That’s one of the lines your editor used to describe his disillusionment with public policy solving all the world’s ills. But first, the markets!

In case you missed it late last week, Australian’s are re-leveraging. While most other households in the Western world are dialling back credit-financed personal consumption, the opposite seems to be happening here. This conforms to almost exactly the same pattern we saw in American in 2006. But first the facts.

The Big Four Aussie banks used the financial crisis – during which their non-traditional lending saw their securistisation model fail – to expand their control over the Aussie mortgage market from 65% to 75%, according to JPMorgan analyst Scott Manning, via Richard Gluyas in last Friday’s Australian. The banks actually grew their loan book in residential housing by $75 billion in the last 18 months.

Does this leave the Big Four exposed to just one incredibly important asset class? Well at least two of the Big Four might lose some sleep over it at night. Commonwealth Bank has 65% of its loan book tied up in household mortgages, according to Eric Johnston in the Age. Westpac/St. George comes in second with 62% of its assets in the local housing market.

Because Australian house prices always and only ever go up, this is probably not a problem. But were house prices to go up less fast, or, gasp, even go down, well then it might be a problem. To keep it from becoming a problem, the housing industry must attract a constant stream of buyers and the banks must continue offering them credit. If not, look out below.

But let’s go to the way back machine and recall how it played out in America. The Greenspan Fed panicked in 2001 and lowered the Fed Funds rate 13 times in the next three year until it was just 1% in 2003. These dirt cheap rates triggered the first wave of the U.S. housing bubble: the extension of credit to the most marginal of borrowers in the economy (the subprime and ARM vintage loans that blew up the system in 2007).

However, as you can see from the chart below, the predatory luring of bad borrowing risks into the market (begun by the Fed, blessed by the banks, and bankrolled by the GSEs) was just the first wave of the boom in mortgage originations in 2004-2006. The second wave was refinancing. You can see that low rates attracted a huge boom in refinancing from existing owners to lock in low rates while they lasted.

Now comes double-barrelled perplexing news. Just over 37% of March mortgage lending was for refinancing purposes, according to housing statistics firm AFG. The last time it reached that level in Australia was in December of 2008 – another moment when Aussies feared spiking interest rates. The AFG data also show that the Big Four reduced mortgage lending by 82% in March while non-traditional lenders doubled their lending.

Hmm. What do you reckon is going on here? First the government gooses the market with the first home buyer’s grants. The marginal borrower is “brought forward” into the market to keep it going. Then, refi reinforcements are brought into fill the breach as the first buyer’s grant expires. Finally, the non-traditional lenders use the securistisation scheme at the AOFM to sell even more mortgages and keep the boom rolling.

Does this have all the elements of the conditions that led to the peak in U.S. home prices and their eventual collapse? Yes it does! Of course, the banks would never dial back lending would they? Even if their cost of capital is increasing, they wouldn’t dare pass that on to Aussie variable rate borrowers, would they?

Why bother with housing when the market is threatening to bust out over 5,000? Its double bubble, toil and trouble. We think markets are running out of credit and sentiment to make new highs. And any external shock makes the next few months highly susceptible to a big correction.

The libertarian show in Perth was great. Your editor explained that he first knew something was amiss in Washington when, after giving a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, a future cabinet member in the Bush administration bustled past him, breaking wind without breaking stride. Right there on the floor of the House chamber.

We knew then even as a 16-year old that something was wrong. You’ll get a full report tomorrow. There are free thinkers in Australia and they understand that ideas matter. More on those ideas soon. Until then!

Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

Similar Posts:

• Aussie Banks Addicted to Foreign Borrowing
• House Prices Down and Aussie Market Enters Second Wave of Rebound Rally
• Aussie Housing Market Actually Leads the U.S. by Three Years
• Another Big Wave of Foreclosures
• A National Mortgage Bubble

U.S. rail traffic just slipped, with year over year growth slowing. Weaker traffic in coal, grain, construction materials, vehicles, and metal products were to blame.

Journal of Commerce:

For just the largest U.S.-owned railroads, new intermodal shipments fell to 196,257 loads last week from 210,914 a week earlier and were the lowest since Feb. 13.

Rail freight traffic has maintained most of its recent strength, especially in carloads of bulk materials and equipment. Yet carloadings also slowed some for the North American majors, to 372,270 units in the April 3 week from 383,109 in the week ending March 27. The latest carloads are the lowest since Feb. 20.

Despite the sequential declines, traffic remains well ahead of last year. Total North American carloads last week were up 11.2 percent from the same week of the 2009 recession year, while intermodal was up 6 percent. But the latest intermodal volume fell behind its year-to-date growth pace, while carloads continued to increase their year-to-year gains.

Perhaps this is an example of the kind of slowing rebound we’ll see from the U.S. as we progress through Q2.

Join the conversation about this story »

Shigeru Miyamoto doesn’t intend to stop making games any time soon. In fact, the Mario and Zelda mastermind thinks his best is yet to come.

While we can’t say we’re completely surprised, we are still surprised. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has long advocated that Palm’s plan is to go it alone and that they had a path to return to profitability, but Bloomberg is now reporting Palm is putting itself up for sale. According to “three people familiar with the situation,” Palm is working with Goldman Sachs and Qatalyst Partners to find a proper suitor. Bids are expected to come in as early as this week. According to those sources, both HTC and Lenovo are keenly interested in acquiring Palm, and Dell had expressed interest, but has since decided against making an offer. As we would expect, all parties rumored to be involved have declined to comment, but if Bloomberg’s sources are to be believed, Palm’s days as an independent company might be over very soon.

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

We’ve been reporting for about a week now on a couple of rumors indicating that various companies are circling around Palm with possible intent to buy, and it looks like it all might be coming to a head.

Bloomberg is reporting that Palm has officially put it self up for sale, with their sources confirming the previous rumors that both HTC and Lenovo are considering making the buy. Another name mentioned: Dell — but according to the same sources, Dell has already backed out.

This next week should be mighty interesting for the folks in Sunnyvale. Stay tuned for more as we hear it.

The growth in the number of broadband users and mobile Internet subscribers along with increased file sizes has been pushing the amount of data on the Internet for past few years. Today, one company which has a network that is spread across the world gave us a clue as to how much.

Akamai, a Cambridge, Mass.-based content delivery network today said that at peak it was sending 3.45 terabits per second of data on Friday. This is the highest amount of data they have sent over the Akamai network ever. The traffic peak of 3.45 Tbps is roughly equivalent to the capacity needed to download the entire printed contents of the U.S. Library of Congress in less than a minute.

That is not all. Akamai network hit a brand new peak for video streaming on Friday — thanks in large part to a big surge in demand for professional golf and baseball video streams. Over the course of the day, Akamai logged over 500 billion requests for content, a sum equal to serving content to every human once every 20 minutes.

At peak, Akamai supported over 12 million requests per second – a rate roughly equivalent to serving content to the entire population of the United States every 30 seconds, the company said.

“This new peak demand demonstrates the Internet’s emergence as a primary channel for communications, entertainment, and commerce,” Paul Sagan, Akamai’s President and CEO said in a statement.