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For the past couple of years, the International Monetary Fund has been thumping its chest that it has changed and is ready to take the lead on global economic issues.

A report by the IMF’s independent evaluation office, which is charged with critiquing the institution, suggests the IMF still has a long way to go. Only a minority of officials in the richest, most powerful countries, found the IMF’s analyses “compelling,” the evaluation group found.

IMF staffers working on rich countries were also frustrated. When analyses were critical, the rich countries “discouraged” IMF staffers from talking to the press, according to the evaluation group. “A desire (reinforced by [IMF] management) to avoid displeasing the authorities, was a fact of life for staff working on the advanced countries, and a challenge to the independence of their analysis,” the reports said.

Government officials of some the world’s poorest countries had a higher opinion of the IMF’s work, meanwhile, with at least 70% of the officials surveyed rated their interactions with the IMF as “effective or very effective,” the report said.

But in the poorest countries, the legacy of heavy-handed IMF loan programs, when the IMF pushed borrowers to privatize and slash spending, continued to tar the Fund’s reputation. Government officials in some of those countries complained that the IMF continued to be inflexible and had “bitter complaints about Fund interactions, many of which related to major program interruptions” or delays in debt relief, the evaluation group said.

The report was based on surveys sent to government officials and social- action groups in 30 wealthy countries, including the U.S., Germany, Japan, Britain, and 77 poor nations, including Bolivia, Nigeria and Vietnam. IMF staffers working on these countries were also sampled

The surveys, along with some interviewing, largely took place between November 2008 and April 2009, the evaluation group said, and covered IMF programs and advice made between 2001 and 2008, with “special attention” on 2007 and 2008

Since the interviews were completed the IMF was assigned to analyze whether the economic policies of the Group of 20 wealthy and large developing nations would produce sustainable global growth. Given the IMF’s weakness in handling big wealthy countries, that could be a problem. John Hicklin, a spokesman for the evaluation group, said that the lesson for the IMF is that it must “rise to the occasion” and “upgrade the international dimension of its work.”

In a statement, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that “promoting candor in [IMF] staff’s assessments is critical.”

With the poor countries, the IMF is making headway, the reports found. Officials from two countries said the IMF had been aided them in renegotiating debt, while a third said the IMF had been “extremely helpful” in getting nations to resume aid, the evaluation group reported.

About half of the officials surveyed in the poor nations said the IMF’s willingness to consider different approaches had improved over the past two years. Most of the specific complaints, said the evaluation group, involved IMF loan programs or policies between 2002 and 2004.

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Nissan

Perhaps going green doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have any fun. Evidence of this fact can once again be seen as the performance and tuning communities continue to look at ethanol for increased performance for a relatively low outlay of cash.

Ethanol, which is an alcohol fuel commonly distilled from corn here in the United States, mixed with 15-percent gasoline carries an octane rating of about 105, compared to the low 90s for the best freely available pump gas. This fact means that engines, when tuned properly and especially when using forced induction, can make more horsepower on E85 than pump gas – and sometimes nearly as much as pure race gasoline.

Cobb Tuning claims to be the first company to outfit a Nissan GT-R for use with E85 fuel and is displaying a dyno graph that indicates very high levels of performance is available when Godzilla is tuned properly for ethanol fuels. How much power? Currently with Cobb’s catless midpipe, prototype cat-back exhaust, stock intake, twin Walbro 255 fuel pumps and 800cc Deatschwerks fuel injectors, the GT-R is putting down 574 ponies and 585 pound-feet of torque. After some additional fiddling, Cobb expects to see 600 horsepower at the wheels.

Sounds great, right? Well, hold on to those drunk alcohol-hungry horses for a minute. Ethanol, especially when derived from corn, isn’t necessarily the pinnacle of green motoring, and modifications (including high-flow fuel injectors in the case of the GT-R) and required to run an engine with high concentrations of alcohol fuel. Still, something tells us that the promise of cheap and easy horsepower will keep ethanol in the greenlight limelight for the foreseeable future.

[Source: Cobb Tuning]

Cobb Tuning GT-R expects 600 HP at the wheels running on E85 with stock turbos originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flash an exotic prototype, then—Presto!—get people to buy your more boring stuff. That kind of thinking still rules at most electronics companies. Apple under Steve Jobs only shows off actual products. The difference? Apple’s arcane secret to success.

A specter harrows the consumer electronics industry: malaise. Like washed-up Catskill magicians unable to let go of old routines while a brash upstart steals their audience, nearly every maker of consumer electronics in the world clings to a quaint song-and-dance about prototypes.

“Here is your possible future,” they bark, flourishing the latest conceptual product from the lab. “Now watch us make it disappear!”

Apple’s chief magician knows better, pulling solid objects out of the aether; products you can actually buy.

If this sounds like a minor complaint about most of the industry’s lack of imagination in marketing, you’re misunderstanding the whole act. The fact that Apple does not reveal prototypes but shipping products is the fundamental difference between their entire business strategy and that of the rest of the industry. It evokes a feeling of trust between Apple and consumers—that when Apple actually reveals a product, it’s something that they’re confident enough to support for years to come.

For the better part of the last century—starting arbitrarily with the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair and its stark, Randian slogan: “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms”—the producers of consumer goods have stuck to a basic formula: Show off a prototype; gauge public response; then release a commercial product that is less ambitious, if released at all.

It worked in part because it told a compelling story. “Here is what the future looks like; and here’s an intermediate step towards that future that you can buy today.” Electronics’ sister industries followed the same tack. Car shows were populated with prismatic concept cars hewn with non-Euclidean angles rotating on raised daises. Videogame tech demos showed graphics too impossible to believe, but entrancing enough to betray our better judgment.

But in Jobs’ encore performance, Apple has changed the routine.

Outwardly Apple’s showmanship is competent, workmanlike. Jobs-as-performer wears an understated uniform that does not distract from the act. His humor, when it exists, is subtle. The closest an Apple keynote gets to pomp are pie charts that look like wooden logs.

Yet when Jobs reveals the company’s next product, there’s a critical difference: It exists. When possible, it is available for retail purchase the same day. There are few maybes or eventuallys tempering the presentation: “Here is the tiny miracle we’ve created. We want to sell it to you today.”

As a counter-example, let me pick on Lenovo for a moment: At CES this year, they showed off the Ideapad U1 prototype, a netbook with a screen that could be decoupled from the keyboard to operate as a multitouch tablet. Clever idea, seemingly well considered and brain-bendingly not available for purchase today.

Do you see the story that Lenovo is spoiling for themselves? First, they’ve deprecated the imagined utility of every other laptop they sell without the flashy removable tablet screen. Yet they’ve also whispered a nervous apology to potential customers: “We could make something this cool, but we’re not so confident in our plans to fully commit to them. Maybe you could tell us if you think you’d like this trick?”

Lenovo might make the U1. They might sell a few units. But simply by revealing it before it was a living, breathing SKU on retail shelves, they’ve relegated it to a quirky sideshow.

See also: The Chevy Volt, announced so long ago that GM has gone through a bankruptcy and shotgun CEO transition without actually being available for sale. Bet those will be flying off the lots.

Some of Apple’s peers understand the need to manage expectations. Have you ever seen RIM show off a BlackBerry prototype? What about Nintendo? They don’t pull a Microsoft-like move of showing very early-stage products to reporters and potential customers. They simply pull out a Wii or a DS and say, “This is it. Give it a try.”

Everybody loves a prototype. Engineers get a chance to strut their stuff. If you’ve got a 40-inch OLED TV in a lab somewhere, bring it to your trade show. Executives take pride in their company’s technical prowess. Marketers get an excuse to throw an even fancier party. And customers and press get idyll fodder for a daydream.

None of those things equal units sold. None of those things turn a customer into an ardent fan.

That an industry exists around rumors and leaks for unreleased products may be useful to Apple, but it is a side-effect of their product strategy, not the basis of their marketing. Consider that when Apple finally does release a product, the marketing tends to showcase the device itself in clear, comprehensible ways. Apple isn’t shy to make claims about the grandiose, epiphanal nature of its products because—whether they pull it off or not—they have built a culture in which every product they make is designed to be world class.

Instead of prototypes, Apple makes patents. Although I’m certain Apple would keep these patents behind the curtain if they legally could, their existence proves something amazingly pedestrian: Behind the scenes, Apple is essentially the same sort of company as every other electronics star in the world.

They’re developing prototypes. They’re trying new tricks, seeing what works. They know experimentation is the lifeblood of innovation.

But like the consummate showmen they are, they temper the wooly process of building the future with something missing from nearly every other technology company: restraint. Apple may come off at times as a bit soulless, but at least they’ve got class. And when that class allows them to sell more products that make happier customers, I’ll take class over flash every time.

That the Consumer Electronics Show is held in Vegas is no accident. It’s a derelict spectacle meant to cater to mid-level buyers, gilt with the threadbare trappings of Innovation and Progress, but sending most of its audience home with nothing but a hangover and a t-shirt.

When Apple pulls a tablet out of its hat next week, it’s likely that we won’t be able to purchase it for a couple of months, but rest assured that’s only because of regulatory pitfalls. And besides, there will be no doubt that when Jobs shows us his vision of the future, Apple will be doing everything they can do to get them into our hands.

That’s the trick of it. Consumer audiences have grown wary of nearly a century of predictable sleight-of-hand. We’ve seen too many companies promise us the future, then fail to deliver it.

I believe that there are dozens of companies out there with the talent to pull the future toward us along some retail tesseract. But until they conquer their stage fright, leave aside the vaudevillian antics that savvy, jaded audiences no longer find compelling, and embrace a more honest and practical sort of conjuration, Apple will continue to be the defining technology performance of our age.

It’s no secret that Nintendo hasn’t been proliferating the online sales front, and for some of the developers on WiiWare, the company just isn’t making enough effort to promote the service. As a result, many games on

The characters of Gossip Girl are known as much for their dramatic storylines as they are for their head-turning style selections — and the remainder of Season 3 promises plenty of both.

According to Entertainment Weekly, a blast from the past is on its way to the hit primetime soap as Serena van der Woodsen prepares to meet her long-lost father, William van der Woodsen. We hear Dirty Sexy Money alum Billy Baldwin will portray the elusive pop of Everyone’s Favorite Uptown Girl in at least three episodes airing in April.

Gossip Girl airs Wednesday nights on The CW.

The absolutely ridiculous contrast ratios you see on most display refer to their dynamic contrast ratio, a virtually meaningless spec. But Samsung’s F2380MX and F2370H have the world’s highest static contrast ratio for an LCD monitor.

The reason dynamic contrast ratio is meaningless is that it just measures that lightest and darkest a display is capable of producing, so it doesn’t say a whole lot. Static contrast ratio actually says something, because it’s the ratio between the lightest and darkest a display can show at the same time.

The 23-inch F2380MX and F2370H have a static contrast ratio of 3000:1 (which Samsung says equates to 150,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio). They’re Korea-only for now, but hopefully they make their way over here (and manufacturers start talking about static contrast ratio, instead of confusing people with overblown dynamic numbers). [Samsung via Slashgear]

Over the years we’ve shown many examples of times when it makes much more business sense not to enforce your intellectual property rights, but reader Jerry Leichter sends in another example. It discusses how Apple is benefiting from not going after those who copy its iPhone UI, suggesting that Apple’s aggressiveness in such lawsuits with PCs helped Microsoft win the personal computer war in the 80s and 90s:

The more different competitors Apple faces in smartphones, the better it fares. One major reason why Apple lost its pioneering position in graphical desktop PCs to Microsoft in the 90s was related to the company’s efforts to stamp out rivals in “look and feel” lawsuits during the late 80s that shut down windowing products from HP and GEM, leaving Microsoft free rein to consolidate a competitive-free monopoly juggernaut around its own Windows product.

In this decade, Apple has conspicuously refrained from attacking rivals on copyright or patent infringement issues in both the iPod and iPhone markets, outside of defensive measures it has taken against patent challenges from Creative and more recently Nokia. Competing in the market has historically worked out much more successfully for Apple than trying to compete in court.

I think it’s a good point — and accurate that Apple is better off not enforcing its IP, and that Microsoft was helped by Apple’s mistake last time around, but I doubt that’s why Apple isn’t doing it this time around. My guess is that the reason it didn’t bother this time was because it lost so badly when it tried to go after Microsoft for copying the “Windows” look and feel. Still, it is a good example where sometimes it really does help to have more people recognize your user interface — even if sometimes they’re using it from someone else.

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Retour de la Fiat 500 dans une de ses déclinaisons les plus hype; la 500 « by Diesel ». Au menu, nouveau colori et changements mécaniques.

 –> Retrouvez toutes le infos de Fiat et de ses marques, en continu, sur les Fils News Alfa Romeo – Chrysler/Lancia – Fiat.

–> Vous aimez la petite italienne et vous souhaitez oublier au plus vite la série « Pink », que nous vous avons présenté hier. La nouvelle 500 by Diesel, deuxième du nom, est faite pour vous.

-Au menu de la série, un nouveau colori bleu avec reflets baptisé « Midnight indigo » et évoquant le jean’s, une des spécialités de Diesel. Cette peinture a été travaillée avec un vernis spécial, comme le vert et le noir déjà présentés sur la série, pour offrir un effet « 3D » au regard.

-Elle reçoit également des jantes de 16 pouces, ainsi que tout l’attirail spécifique de la série (voir photos).

-Par ailleurs, la puce turinoise ainsi parée reçoit en avant-première le nouveau 1.3 Multijet de 95cv., aux normes euro5 et bénéficiant d’un stop&start. De quoi donner du pep’s à la 500 Diesel en diesel… 

-Le 75cv. est également disponible, tout comme les essence 1.2l. de 69cv. et 1.4l.16S de 100cv.

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

Motorola and Windows Mobile has had a stormy on again, off again relationship in the last 12 months, but until now we had all believed Windows Mobile 7, like a baby had just to prevent a divorce, would fix everything.

Unfortunately it appears that was overly optimistic.  CNET Asia spoke to  Spiros Nikolakopoulos, vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific and International Distribution for Motorola’s Mobile Devices business, to find out more about the company’s plans.

When asked about the smartphones Motorola intended to release in 2010, Spiros said:

“There will be between 20 and 30 smartphones globally and, at this moment, all of them will run Android. Naturally, not all will be available everywhere as it depends on the company’s partnership with the various telco operators in each country. For non-smartphone models, they will run either Brew or the Motorola’s own operating system.”

With Windows Mobile 7 handsets strongly expected to arrive this year, it appears clear Motorola will not be a launch partner, and after having placed all bets on Android, may never make a Windows Mobile handset again.

Of course the company is only aiming for 5% of the global handset market, and clearly see a role of complete irrelevance for itself soon.

Good luck Motorola.

Read more here.

A Haitian girl rests after receiving treatment at an ad hoc medical clinic

Many of our faculty, staff and students are involved in efforts to support Haiti as the nation struggles to recover from the catastrophic earthquake that hit last week. This page will serve as a clearinghouse for the information we receive about these efforts; however, please be aware that this is secondhand information.

Many of the events listed here are not sponsored by the university, so we cannot ensure their legitimacy. We encourage you to investigate involvement opportunities thoroughly. We will keep this page updated as more local and regional efforts are shared.

• Red Cross club fundraiser, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20, in the University Center.
• Delta Sigma Theta sorority fundraiser, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Jan. 22, on the Pedestrian Walkway.
• College of Nursing fundraisers throughout February. For more information, e-mail [email protected].
• Haiti Outreach Program’s “Fierce and Fancy Formals” fashion show and dress sale. Staffed by UT students with proceeds going to Haiti relief. Saturday, Feb. 27, 2 p.m. at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street. For more information, call (865) 323-6441.
• Members of the college group from Calvary Baptist Church will be passing around tins in their classes, at work, etc. The tins will say “Relief for Haiti.” Funds raised will be sent to Haiti through the Samaritan’s Purse organization.
• Sacred Heart Cathedral has a longstanding Haitian outreach program. For more information about upcoming fundraising events, visit the organization’s Web site at http://www.givehaitihope.org.
• One Vision International is based in Knoxville and runs an orphanage in Haiti that was badly damaged. They will be sending relief trips beginning Jan. 24 and are collecting medical supplies and financial contributions. More information is available at http://www.onevisionintl.org.
• The UT Muslim Student Association is planning fundraising efforts within the coming weeks. The national Islamic Relief organization is hoping to raise $1 million. More information can be found at http://www.islamic-relief.com.

Exxon Mobil is in Abu Dhabi this week at the World Future Energy Summit, preaching its ” in a green world, carbon is king” gospel.

The Arlington, Texas company — and its competitors — have long argued that a green, carbon-free world is an elusive pipe dream. Energy demand from key developing nations like China and India, they say, is too big to rely on carbon-free fuels alone.

That’s the message Exxon’s Emil Jacobs, vice president of research and development, had for the delegates at the World Future Energy Summit.

He said:

Meeting our many energy challenges requires a multidimensional approach. We need to put in place programs and policies that help us find new energy supplies, increase energy efficiency, and discover the innovations that can reduce the environmental impact of greater energy use.

Jacobs’s call to find “new energy supplies” is a loose term that means several different things. It includes not only investments in renewable biofuels, but also in traditional oil and gas exploration and production.

Of note: At Exxon, Jacobs oversees the company’s ongoing $600 million investment in algae-based biofuel developer Synthetic Genomics.

On algae-based biofuel, Jacobs said that significant work and years of research and development remain before production goes commercial,  giving oil and gas production plenty of room to grow.

Underscoring this pro-carbon stance was Exxon’s acquisition in December of natural gas exploration and production company XTO Energy in an all-stock deal valued at $31 billion.

Exxon is not alone in propping up its hydrocarbon business. At BP, CEO Tony Hayward has cut his company’s investments in renewable energy, using all available cash to prop-up its core oil and gas business.  “Our industry must continue to find and develop new sources of oil and gas,” Hayward said in a speech last year.

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.

• Budget Panel Jackie Calmes writes in the New York Times that history suggests a proposed commission on the budget should be viewed with skepticism. “Washington’s shelves are full of unheeded commission reports gathering dust. Yet after more than a quarter-century, the supposed success of the 1982-83 Greenspan Commission to save Social Security continues to inspire calls for bipartisan panels. But just in time for the latest debate, the unpublished posthumous memoir of a central figure on the Greenspan panel, Robert M. Ball, a former Social Security commissioner, has emerged to challenge the conventional wisdom about its achievement. In a sprightly account promoted by former staff members from both parties, Mr. Ball calls the Greenspan Commission a failure. As he tells it, only a willingness to compromise by the two principal antagonists of the time — Ronald Reagan, the Republican president, and Representative Thomas P. O’Neill, the Democratic House speaker — made it possible for Mr. Ball and a few others to salvage from the deadlocked panel a deal that raised payroll taxes and trimmed benefits enough to keep Social Security solvent.”
• Inflation Concerns: On Econbrowser, Jim Hamiltion talks about long-term inflation fears. “I think the separation between monetary and fiscal policy has become increasingly blurred. I maintain that the keys to preventing a resurgence of inflation in the U.S. are (1) credible and responsible commitment from Congress that it is not going to allow the debt-to-GDP ratio to continue to balloon over the next decade, and (2) a return of the Federal Reserve to a primary focus on controlling the money supply rather than trying to target particular yield spreads.”
• Greek Tragedy: Martin Wolf of the Financial Times looks at the complications from Greece’s struggles. “Given the horrendous difficulty of all alternatives, I am sure the effort will be made to tough it out for as long as possible. That will also be the case elsewhere. All will be forced to accept lengthy recessions. But in the absence of either strong demand elsewhere in the eurozone or a weaker exchange rate, both of which depend on decisions by the European Central Bank, the competitive disinflation route to prosperity seems highly likely to fail. Some countries may find themselves stuck in long-term stagnation. Meanwhile, the eurozone as a whole, having lost its erstwhile internal demand engines, must now hope for faster growth of net exports. So do countries hit by the financial shock, such as the U.K. and U.S.. So, too, does recession-hit Japan. So, not least, does China. Either the rest of the world has a spending binge, or these countries — which make up 70 per cent of the world economy — are going to be disappointed.”

Compiled by Phil Izzo

Federal scientists say AstraZeneca’s cholesterol pill Crestor lowers the risk of heart attack, death and stroke in patients without a history of heart disease, though some safety concerns remain.

In documents posted online Friday, the Food and Drug Administration cites the findings of AstraZeneca’s study released last November. The study showed that patients with lower cholesterol and few heart risks could still benefit from taking Crestor, setting the stage for a dramatic expansion in use of the drug that already exceeds $1 billion in annual sales.

The British drugmaker wants the FDA to broaden Crestor’s labeling based on those results.

But the FDA’s review also cites several safety concerns, including a higher rate of diabetes in patients taking Crestor.

About 2.8 percent of patients taking Crestor in the 17,000-patient Jupiter study developed diabetes, compared with 2.3 percent of patients taking a dummy pill. The difference was statistically significant, according to the FDA. Read more…

We’re skeptical of aggregate price numbers compiled by the government. Inflation rarely begins with smooth increases in general prices. Instead, it pops up in bubbles and distortions in the economy, only leading to a more general rise in prices once it is really out of control.

But you cannot ignore the government numbers because the central bankers watch them closely. So here’s the skinny on today’s PPI.

• Core inflation is still low.
• Low energy prices kept the overall index down.
• Food prices rose for the third month in a row.

The big jump in food prices, which rose 1.4 percent in December, means that the lives of cash strapped Americans facing the prospects of losing their job or continuing unemployment just got even more difficult.

Here’s the full write up from the Associated Press:

Inflation pressures at the wholesale level eased in December as a drop in energy prices offset a big jump in food costs.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that wholesale prices edged up 0.2 percent last month, much slower than the 1.8 percent surge in November. Energy prices, which had been up for two months, fell in December.

The price performance at the wholesale level combined with last week’s benign reading on consumer prices supported the view that inflation is not a problem.

That gives the Federal Reserve room to keep interest rates low to boost the country out of a deep recession.

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes and apartments fell 4 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 557,000 units as bad weather hit much of the country.

But applications for new housing projects shot up 11 percent to an annual rate of 653,000, a better-than-expected performance indicating that builders are ready to ramp up production in 2010.

The 0.2 percent overall increase in wholesale prices was slightly higher than the flat reading economists had expected while the unchanged reading on core prices was lower than the 0.1 percent advance analysts had forecast.

Energy costs fell by 0.4 percent in December as the price of gasoline dropped by 3.2 percent, the biggest one-month decline since September. Natural gas prices fell by 1.9 percent, the biggest decline since last May.

Food costs rose by 1.4 percent, the third straight month of higher food costs. The December jump was led by a 9.4 percent rise in pork prices, the biggest increase in a decade, and a 3.7 percent increase in the cost of dairy products, the largest advance in more than two years.

The rise in food costs accounted for one-fifth of December’s overall 0.2 percent rise in wholesale inflation.

The flat reading for core prices, which excludes food and energy, was helped by a 1.2 percent fall in the cost of light trucks, a category that includes sport utility vehicles.

For the 12 months ending in December, prices at the wholesale level were up 4.4 percent compared to a 0.9 percent drop in wholesale prices in 2008. That big swing reflected a rise in energy costs in 2009.

Core inflation at the wholesale level was much better behaved last year, rising by 0.9 percent after having surged by 4.5 percent in 2008.

Last Friday, the government reported that consumer prices edged up a slight 0.1 percent in December with core prices up the same amount. That finished off a year in which consumer prices rose by 2.7 percent, reflecting higher energy costs during the year. Excluding food and energy, core consumer prices were up 1.8 percent, matching the rise in 2008.

Many economists are looking for inflation pressures to moderate even more in 2010 as the worst recession since the 1930s keeps exerting downward pressure on prices.

The low inflation has allowed Federal Reserve officials to push a key interest rate to its lowest level on record. The Fed’s target for banks’ overnight lending rate has been at 0 to 0.25 percent for more than a year now. Many analysts believe the Fed will keep rates low for much of 2010 because of their belief that the economy will not be growing fast enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising.

The jobless rate currently stands at 10 percent and many forecasters believe it will keep climbing and hit 10.5 percent by the middle of this year before starting to decline.

Join the conversation about this story »

The White House iPhone app is mostly a pretty package of feeds and photos, but the actually interesting part is that it streams live video of White House events, starting with the State of the Union address next week.

Of course, most of us will be pre-occupied with a different keynote speech on Wednesday. A mobile version of WhiteHouse.gov for other, non-iPhone phones is supposedly on the way, if you’re feeling slighted. [White House, iTunes]