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This is one of the tools that restaurants use to cool down huge pots of stock and other hot foods when they’re not going to be used right away. With all the soup we’ve been making lately, we’re thinking about picking one up for ourselves!

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An unmanned vehicle in the air monitoring forest conditions is the newest desire of Queensland University of Technology, Australia. This light weight vehicle uses solar energy to power itself up. It will be available in 24 months after flight tests are carried out. Known as the Green Falcon, this UAV is capable of providing round the clock service with the added benefits of zero emission and pollution. The vehicle is also suitable for use in coastal and border surveillance, forestry, atmospheric conditions etc. The Green Falcon has a wingspan of 2.5m and weighs around 4kg. The UAV is powered using 28 monocrystalline solar cells and a lithium ion battery. It also packs a maximum power point tracker and an energy management system making it efficient and practical for use.

The testing of this project will cost $45,000-75,000 for resources like wireless cameras and electronics. This innovation should help make surveillance a whole lot easier.

[Flightglobal]

Traveling around with a bag that charges your phone sounds incredible, right? Samsonite displayed this messenger bag that can charge up your BlackBerry Curve using energy from the sun. The back is equipped with a system that can charge the phone when exposed to direct sunlight for 4.5 hours. That may seem long, but remember, this bag is serious about saving energy. The bag can carry a notebook of 15.6 inches, though it cannot charge its battery. A 12V automotive charger adapter in the bag enables phones with a standard car charger to be attached and charged. The bag turns greener with the materials used to build it. The body of the bag is made out of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET). This cool bag that uses sunlight to charge up your mobile phone can be yours for under $100 when it shows up in the market this spring.

Via – [Newlaunches]

VMware is clearly moving up the stack with the recent acquisition of the Zimbra email suite from Yahoo, which was just announced after being rumored for a while. The company said it reached an agreement with Yahoo and will incorporate Zimbra’s services in its own, diversifying offerings. Yahoo has been looking to shed the white-label email provider for the pas… (read more)

If you happened to be in New York City on Sunday you might have noticed a lot of people walking around without their pants on. That’s because it was NYC’s ninth-annual No Pants Day.

Men and women sans pants descended upon the subway systems of New York and other major cities as part of the annual event organized by the group Improv Everywhere.

The group said the event went off without a hitch and that about 3,000 people participated. Riders met at points around the city and converged on Union Square. This all happened while the high temperature for the day was 28 degrees!

There were simultaneous No Pants rides in 43 other cities around the world in 16 countries.

While there isn’t video available yet from this year’s ride, here’s a vid from the No Pants ride in 2008 to give you a sense of what you missed:

photo credit: Katie Sokoler

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3. Best Cities for Guys: Chicago, Barcelona, San Francisco

This time last year it was not a problem to find a good dividend stock trading below its fair value. The question then was, ‘which of these do I buy?’ Unfortunately, now the questions is often, ‘am I willing to pay this much for that stock?’. If we look close enough, there are still a few dividend stocks trading below fair value.

Of the 139 dividend companies that I currently track, only 10 of them are trading below my calculated fair value. Of those 10, some are down because they are in declining industries and some have missed their last dividend increase. Removing those, here are the remaining five:

Raven Industries Inc. (RAVN) provides electronic precision-agriculture products, reinforced plastic sheeting, electronics manufacturing services, specialty aeronautics, and sewn products.
Fair Value: $31.75 | Recent Price: $31.54 | Yield: 1.74%

Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BDX) provides a wide range of medical devices and diagnostic products used in hospitals, doctors’ offices, research labs, and other settings.
Fair Value: $82.99 | Recent Price: $77.91 | Yield: 1.90% | [Analysis]

Harleysville Group Inc. (HGIC) is a regional holding company for property and casualty insurance companies that operates in 32 states, primarily in the eastern half of the U.S.
Fair Value: $34.88 | Recent Price: $31.49 | Yield: 3.97% | [Analysis]

McDonald’s Corporation (MCD) is the largest fast-food restaurant company in the world. Its restaurants serve a varied, yet limited, value-priced menu in more than 100 countries around the world.
Fair Value: $68.79 | Recent Price: $61.84 | Yield: 3.32% | [Analysis]

Cincinnati Financial Corp. (CINF) markets primarily property and casualty coverage; it also conducts life insurance and asset management operations.
Fair Value: $30.77 | Recent Price: $26.58 | Yield: 5.91% | [Analysis]

Needless to say, a winning investment strategy involves more that just looking at price. It is just one aspect we need to consider at before making a purchase. When a stock appears to be under-valued it could mean the market has lost confidence in it. If the market is wrong and we are not too fearful to buy, a handsome reward is likely to come our way.

Full Disclosure: Long MCD, HGIC. See a list of all my income holdings here.

(Photo: Steve Woods)

Related Posts:

• 7 Low-Debt High-Rated Dividend Stocks
• 8 Dividend Stocks Covering Their Dividend
• 10 Dividend Stocks With Above Target Returns
• Harleysville Group Inc. (HGIC) Dividend Stock Analysis
• Best Stocks For 2010

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Don’t accuse Reed Hastings of tipping his hand. At least not all the way.

Last Friday, at an onstage interview I conducted with the Netflix CEO, I asked him when his company might start offer streaming video for Nintendo’s Wii game console, as it does for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (MSFT) and Sony’s Playstation3 (SNE).

The chances were “excellent”, Hastings said. “These things have a natural rhythm, and these are things that I think will work out over time.”

Another way Hastings could have answered the question, if he wanted to be a little more forthright: “It’s a done deal”.

Netflix and Nintendo are formally announcing the pact today, and Wii owners will be able to stream movies to their TV sets via the console sometime this spring, the companies say.

It’s an obvious move for both parties, but it’s particularly good one for Netflix (NFLX), since it offers the company a chance to introduce itself to some 26 million Wii owners — more than double the company’s 11 million subscriber base.

Netflix is slowly transforming itself from a company that mails DVDs to customers to one that streams video directly to their homes. Hasting says that 50 percent of its customers have tried its streaming service option, and game console owners have been particularly receptive.

If you want to scour Hastings’ comments for clues into other deals that may be in the offing, be my guest. Here’s all 36 minutes of our chat, which took place during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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Chip makers Globalfoundries and Chartered have combined operations to form a semiconductor contract manufacturing powerhouse.

The combination is a culmination of the companies’ ambition to create globaly foundry, or a contract manufacturing firm that makes chips which are designed by other companies. The combined company will compete against market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., not to mention companies with their own in-house factories such as Intel.

A series of events paved the way for the combination. First, in 2008, the government of Abu Dhabi bought a majority stake in the chip manufacturing business of Advanced Micro Devices. AMD became a chip design firm, while the manufacturing operation was renamed Globalfoundries. Then, last September, the Abu Dhabi entity, Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC), agreed to buy Singapore’s Chartered for $3.9 billion.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Globalfoundries will now have 10,000 employees across 12 locations in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The company will have about $2.75 billion in revenues in 2009, and its 150 customers include many of the world’s biggest chip making and chip design firms.

The company will have leading edge manufacturing from the AMD side of the house, and it will be making advanced chips for AMD. The Chartered side of the house will serve customers with more mature factories, said Kevin Meyer, vice president of marketing and alliances, in an interview. Investors have pledged to put more than $10 billion into the combined companies, which need the capital to build chip factories in places such as New York, Singapore, and Dresden, Germany. The company has three big factories, which can make chips on wafers that are 300 mm in diameter, either in the works or under construction. And it has six more older factories.

In Saratoga County, N.Y., the company has broken ground on a factory that could require a $4.6 billion investment when it is fully built out. That factory is expected to create 1,400 jobs. Full told, the factories will be able to produce 425 million wafers a month by 2015, said Tom Sonderman, vice president of manufacturing systems. A wafer is sliced into many different chips, and so the factory capacity could be in the billions of chips per month.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES Finalizes Integration, Emerges as World’s First Truly Global Foundry

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Chartered combine under one brand to compete for market leadership as a full-service foundry company

Sunnyvale, Calif. – January 13, 2010 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced it has officially integrated operations with Chartered Semiconductor and started functioning as one company under the GLOBALFOUNDRIES brand. The announcement marks the emergence of the new GLOBALFOUNDRIES—the world’s first full-service semiconductor foundry with a truly global manufacturing and technology footprint across Asia, Europe and the United States.

“As the world’s leading chip design companies face increasing pressure to push the boundaries of innovation, they need a full-service foundry partner with the ability to invest and sustain an aggressive leading-edge technology roadmap while offering a full breadth of services,” said Doug Grose, chief executive officer of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “Thanks to the vision of our investors and months of dedicated work by teams across the globe, we have now created a new global company that leads the foundry market in advanced technology with unparalleled proximity to our customers and access to the world’s best talent.”

The combined company employs approximately 10,000 people around the world, anchored by headquarters in Silicon Valley and advanced manufacturing operations in Singapore; Dresden, Germany; and a new leading-edge fab under construction in Saratoga County, New York. These sites are supported by a global network of R&D, design enablement, and customer support in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The new GLOBALFOUNDRIES immediately takes its position as one of the top semiconductor foundries in the world, with 2009 revenues to date for GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Chartered in excess of $2 billion. GLOBALFOUNDRIES launches with more than 150 customers across the semiconductor ecosystem, with plans to deepen existing relationships and to aggressively pursue new customers. Current customers include many of the world’s top fabless and fab-lite companies, such as AMD, Qualcomm, STMicro, IBM, and Toshiba.

“The entire premise of the foundry business is changing,” said Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research. “Foundry customers have made it clear that they are looking for deep collaboration with their foundry partners as opposed to a contract manufacturing service. With its history as part of a top Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) operating at the leading edge of technology, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is well positioned to drive fundamental transformation in the foundry business model.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES currently has five 200 mm fabs and one 300 mm fab in Singapore, as well as one leading-edge 300 mm fab complex in Dresden, Germany. To meet the demands of a growing customer base, the company has an aggressive capacity build-out plan, including expansion of Fab 1 in Dresden and Fab 7 in Singapore, as well as construction of a new leading-edge 300mm facility in Saratoga County, New York. The New York facility, which will be renamed as Fab 8, is on track to begin ramping initial production in 2012.

With these plans in place, global leading-edge capacity is expected to expand to 1.6 million 300mm wafers annually by 2014. This will be supplemented by 2.2 million 200mm wafers annually, offering customers the full spectrum of foundry technology from mainstream to the leading edge, for a total of 5.8 million 200mm equivalents.

“Until now, the world’s largest fabless, fablite and integrated manufacturers have had no real alternative for an end-to-end manufacturing partner,” said Chia Song Hwee, chief operating officer of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “This new company has an incredible opportunity in front of us to not just offer an alternative, but become the preferred supplier for many of the world’s top chip design companies.

With advanced technology leadership, an aggressive capacity roadmap and a robust set of mainstream technologies and foundry services we are well equipped to compete and win against any other foundry in the industry.”

The new GLOBALFOUNDRIES brings a broad array of leading edge technology capabilities and services to market. The company is the foundry industry leader in time-to-volume on 40/45nm technology and expects to repeat this accomplishment with 32nm and “Gate First” High-K Metal Gate technology. The company embraces a collaborative R&D approach that also extends to packaging, IP solutions, and design enablement, built on what the company calls its “Virtual IDM” approach.

ABOUT GLOBALFOUNDRIES

GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the world’s first full-service semiconductor foundry with a truly global manufacturing and technology footprint. Launched in March 2009 through a partnership between AMD [NYSE: AMD] and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), GLOBALFOUNDRIES provides a unique combination of advanced technology, manufacturing excellence and global operations. With the integration of Chartered Semiconductor in January 2010, GLOBALFOUNDRIES significantly expanded its capacity and ability to provide best-in-class foundry services from mainstream to the leading edge. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is headquartered in Silicon Valley with manufacturing operations in Singapore, Germany, and a new leading-edge fab under construction in Saratoga County, New York. These sites are supported by a global network of R&D, design enablement, and customer support in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

For more information on GLOBALFOUNDRIES, visit www.globalfoundries.com

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This is why concern about the euro is becoming so mainstream.

Even the healthy powerhouses of Europe — we’re not talking Greece and Ireland here — are showing signs of instability, or at least weakness.

New numbers out of Germany do not look good.

Despite strong Q3 growth, total 2009 output plunged 5% in 2009, which means implicitly that Q4 came in worse than expected, according to The New York Times.

The statistics agency did not release a figure for the fourth quarter, but economists said the greater-than-expected full-year decline implied that growth had slowed from the third quarter, when output rose 0.7 percent compared to the previous quarter. The exact figure is impossible to calculate now because economists don’t know if government statisticians will revise figures from earlier quarters.

If earlier figures stand, then fourth-quarter growth was almost stagnant. But economists said growth probably continued in the latter part of the year, though possibly at a slower pace. “We expect the German economy to have posted substantial growth in the fourth quarter — even if it does not quite match the excellent third quarter,” Commerzbank economists said in a note to investors.

The bottom line is that there’s precious little right now to suggest a solid v-shaped recovery anywhere in the world.

There are good numbers we get from time to time, and then there are numbers like this, the last Case-Shiller, and last week’s jobs data, which point to a world that isn’t rebounding on a straight line.

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See Also:

• BARCLAYS: The Chance Of A New Crisis In 2010 Is Growing
• David Rosenberg: "Uh-Oh" It’s A Double Dip In Housing
• Paul Krugman: "Reasonably High Chance" Of Double Dip Coming Next Year

Many a mind might’ve strayed from all the CES crazy-talk about future tech and wondered as to what exactly is going on in the war against bad graphics on otherwise totally sweet laptops. The answer from NVIDIA is, disappointingly, not much. The green giant of GPUs quietly snuck out its 300M mobile GPUs over the turn of the year, and there was good reason for the lack of fuss — the top tier GeForce GTS 360M sports the same number of processing cores as its 260M predecessor, accompanied by the same 2GHz memory clock and identical 128-bit memory interface. But don’t despair yet, sailor! There’s the stark omission of any GeForce GTX models among the new 300Ms, which should fuel hopes that this gap in what NVIDIA calls the enthusiast market will be filled by Fermi-shaped chips come March of this year.

NVIDIA outs 300M mobile graphics series, causes little excitement originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feds take tougher look at ethanol productionCollingwood Enterprise BulletinIn the summer of 2007, the government allocated $1.5 billion over nine years to boost biofuel production. The Environment Canada document notes there have …Canada to analyse e…

Obama is coming to a stage near you!

Hope, a musical based Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, is heating up the stage in Germany with power ballads by Obama, a rock chorus from John McCain, and a solo from Sarah Palin and a bevy of scantily-clad backup dancers.

The lyrics for the songs are taken from actual political speeches, while the plot focuses on residents of an apartment building who become affected and united by Obama’s campaign message of change and hope.

Michigan-based Saleen Performance Vehicles is currently displaying two of its latest contraptions at the 2010 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit. The visitors at the SPV’s booth will therefore get to take a closer look at the Saleen 435S and the Saleen S281, both based on the 2010 Ford Mustang.

The Saleen 435S was the first vehicle launched under Saleen’s new ownership, following the purchase of Saleen Inc. in 2009, debuting as part of the Special Vehicle Team Owners As… (read more)

Heritage Key (Malcolm Jack)

“There is no other site like it,” states the introductory paragraph on the website of the Amarna Project – the body which, since 2005, has been responsible for excavations and research at Tell el-Amarna, the short-lived capital city of the “heretic pharaoh” Akhenaten (King Tut’s dad) in the 14th century BC. As a living site, Tell el-Amarna is perhaps unparalleled in all of Egypt in terms of scale, ready accessibility and quality of preservation.

Professor Barry Kemp – of the University of Cambridge – is the director of the Amarna Project, and also the chairman of the Amarna Trust, a UK registered charity which provides most of the funding for the project. Kemp has directed excavation and archaeological survey at Amarna for the Egypt Exploration Society since 1977, and is one of the world’s leading authorities on the ill-fated ancient Egyptian city.

It in a wide-ranging interview with Heritage Key, Kemp explains what makes Amarna so important, and details the history of excavations there. He also reveals the latest news on the construction of a brand new visitor centre at Amarna, and gives us a heads-up on plans for future investigations and study at the site.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

One can say a lot of things about Italian driver Giancarlo Fisichella, but no one could argue that his desire to race Formula One cars has remained unchanged throughout the years. Although he was the second oldest driver in the Formula One roster until recently, the Roman driver insisted that he hasn’t said his last word in the series just yet.

Midway through last season, Fisico signed a deal with Ferrari for the upcoming 10 years, but only as a test and reserve driver. He went on to replace … (read more)

"Our product range includes: Areca palm leaf plates, sugarcane fibre (bagasse) tableware, GM-free starch cutlery, plantation timber cutlery, PLA Bioplastic cups and containers, PLA coated coffee cups, paper straws, recycled napkins and lots more…" 

"Green Pack caters for a wide range of customers. From wholesalers, hospitality, general business users to schools, hospitals, airlines and the general public. We also specialise in green event supply from the small private event to the supply of large organised public events."

Via: greenpack LINK