The University of Wisconsin-Extension and St. Croix Valley Homebuilders Association are offering a workshop for contractors on federal and state funding programs for energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements for homes and small businesses …
Despite being rather conservative about its homepage, Google frequently features customized logos to mark special occasions and events. From sporting events to national holidays, from rather obscure celebrations to obvious choices like Christmas, Google isn’t missing too many occasions to treat its users to a new doodle. Google has been celebrating the first day of the new year for 10 years now and has come up with some pretty interesting designs over this period which also provide a small glimpse at its evolution from a promising startup in 2000 to the biggest company on the web in 2009.
The very first New Year’s doodle popped up on January 1st, 2000, and was one of the earliest doodles for Google, the eighth to be precise. Interestingly, Google is likely to do more doodles in a month these days than it did in its first two years. The 2000 doodle isn’t particularly good looking, but we have to remember that those were simpler times when Geocities was still going strong and the AOL – Time Warner seemed like a brilliant idea.
In 2001, Google returned with another New Year doodle featuring white teddy-bears, you can’t go wrong with cute furry animals, a theme that has carried on since then. The following years, Google continued with the animals theme and then in 2003 and 2004 as well. The doodles themselves… (read more)
One of the oldest, most popular bets — that the Japanese government would collapse under the weight of its debt — has a fresh round of adherents who believe that this time it’s going to work out.
Among them: Hayman Capital manager Kyle Bass, who made a fortune shorting subprime.
He tells the Journal a Japanese bond market collapse is merely a matter of when, not if.
Again though, this bet has been made for a long time, and bond yields have only gotten lower, while the Yen has only gotten stronger.
What’s different this time? Ostensibly it’s about demographics. Japan’s debt is self-financed by famously aggressive Japanese savers.
But…
Some predict that as Japan ages, more people retire and savings rates dip, some purchasers will start pulling back on buying or even turn into sellers. Japan’s public pension fund, the world’s largest, has said it could become a net seller of holdings in 2010. About three-quarters of the fund’s holdings have been in Japanese bonds.
“The biggest buyer is now a seller. That’s the biggest difference today,” said Mr. Bass of Hayman Advisors. To attract buyers, particularly from overseas, yields will have to rise significantly, the bears assert, making it painful for Japan to service its debt.
Indeed there’s some evidence of this happening. Japan recently opened its bond market wider to foreign participants, suggesting the unlimited well of domestic demand for debt may be reaching its end.
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This week, a eight-year double-blind study of the nutritional supplement ginkgo biloba finally reached the pages of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Many health food stores sell ginkgo supplements to people who are hoping to improve their wits and memory, and particularly to elderly people worried about cognitive decline and dementia. But the conclusion by lead researcher Steven DeKosky? Save your money.
In the GEM [Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory] study, participants aged 72-96 years with little or no cognitive impairment were recruited from four communities in the eastern United States and received either a twice-daily dose of 120-milligrams of extract of G biloba or an identical-looking placebo [AFP]. For the more than 3,000 study participants, researchers found no difference in age-related cognitive decline—including the incidence of dementia or Alzheimer’s—between ginkgo takers and placebo takers.
What about younger people taking ginkgo? The findings don’t necessarily apply to acute use of the extract — or to younger patients who are attempting to prevent disease many years in the future. Yet DeKosky noted that “there’s nothing about antioxidants that would make you think they’d help in the short-term” [ABC News].
For more, check out this post by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.
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Image: Wikimedia Commons / darkone
Happy New Year’s Eve!
Are you thinking about what resolution you will make this year? I know I am.
One of the most popular resolutions Americans make every year is that they will get in shape/lose weight/eat healthier. It’s why gyms tend to offer really great deals around this time of year and why if you’re a regular gym goer you know you’ll experience a packed gym for the first couple weeks of the year.
But then most people tend to slack off and the gym goes back to its normal level of activity again.
Why is it that most people lose steam on their fitness resolutions? New research suggests people who are overweight or obese, especially women, feel uncomfortable struggling through workouts in front of thinner, younger exercisers. So it’s not a lack of determination that causes people to fall off the wagon.
I understand that. The guys with biceps bigger than my thighs scare me too.
Maybe the solution to that problem is to work out in your own home with hand weights or workout DVDs, or you could take a walk with friends. There are lots of ways to get in exercise that don’t involve a gym.
You want to make sure you pick a resolution that you can stick with and keep it focused. For example, "I will exercise three times each week," rather than something more vague like, "I will lose weight."
My resolution is to cook at least one meal each week that uses fresh and organic (if affordable) ingredients.
What’s your resolution?
Our Chinese is a bit rusty and the details are sparse but it looks like Motorola may be brewing up another Android-powered handset. This handset, codenamed the Mirage or the Shadow, breaks the mold by sporting a 4.3 inch, 800×484 display instead of the now standard 3.7 inch display. It is also rumored to include an HDMI port, 8 megapixel camera, 1080p video playback and measures a mere 9.0mm in thickness. The rendering provided is crude but the handset appears to have the same angular design of the Motorola DROID and Milestone. That is all we have on this Mirage/Shadow as no other details are available. Anyone out there care to fill in the blanks?
Thanks, Bryan!Read
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Continue reading Stanley Torch Watch lights your path, highlights your odd aesthetic sensibilities
Stanley Torch Watch lights your path, highlights your odd aesthetic sensibilities originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tom Konrad has a look at some of his favoured clean energy companies for the upcoming year – Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2010. Its interesting that none of these companies generate power (or build equipment for generating power).
In late 2008, when I was putting together my list for 2009, I had a relatively easy time. Fear was rampant, and there were many great companies selling for single-digit multiples of earnings. Today, complacency and greed have returned to the markets, and good values are very hard to come by. The following 10 are mostly the result of culling through our Alternative Energy Stock lists for companies in my favored sectors that look ready for the premature end of the recovery: Companies with strong balance sheets, good cash flow and profitability at not-too-expensive multiples.
Electric Grid & Electricity Storage (30%)
* General Cable (BGC)
* MasTec (MTZ)
* C&D Technologies (CHP)-or-
* Smart Grid Infrastructure Index Fund (GRID)
Efficient/Clean Transportation (30%)
* New Flyer Industries (NFI-UN.TO, NFYIF.PK)
* Firstgroup PLC (FGP.L)
* Portec Rail Products (PRPX)-or-
* Powershares Global Progressive Transport ETF (PTRP)
Energy Efficiency (30%)
* Waterfurnace, Inc. (WFI.TO, WFFIF.PK)
* Linear Technology Corp (LLTC)
* Flir Systems, Inc. (FLIR)Biomass, Waste to Energy, Recycling – 10%
* Waste Management (WM)
We would have thought that with the App Catalog now out of beta and the app limit no longer in play that there would now be an explosion of apps as Rubinstein keeps promising. But it seems that our expectations were a bit off, as yesterday was another light day in the App Catalog. The list of newness follows.
New Apps:
Updated Apps:
With 2009 coming to an end, it is not surprising that everyone is making predictions about what 2010 has in store. So instead, four of us — Liz, Stacey, Sebastian and I — have put together a wish list of seven things we hope come true in 2010.
Facebook Goes Public – What Silicon Valley needs is the world’s largest social network to file for an initial public offering and go public at a fantastic valuation. The event will not only give Facebook ample money to continue its battle against Google, but will also give the company currency (stock) to buy some startups. More importantly, Facebook’s IPO could have a domino effect that would let companies such as Zynga ride its coat tails to the market. A couple of strong IPOs could then lead to more offerings (and there are many who are awaiting their turn) that will jump-start the investment cycle in Silicon Valley — and thus the startup ecosystem. — Om
50 Mbps For $50 – Comcast and many of its cable brethren currently charge between $80 and $200 a month for a 50 Mbps, depending on where you live. I hope they can actually bring the price down to a more affordable $50 a month. Same goes for Verizon and other phone companies that are providing fiber-based broadband in the U.S. In doing so, these companies will put U.S. consumers on somewhat of an equal footing with their European and Asian counterparts. More importantly, higher speeds at lower prices would also make new innovations possible. Remember — it was only four years ago that YouTube came about, due in part to the spread of 3 Mbps service. — Om
MySpace Builds an Awesome Music Service – MySpace has corporate orders to be an “entertainment portal” and what seems to be an open checkbook to buy up music assets like iLike and iMeem (though they’re not exactly selling at a premium these days). It also has the support (if you can call it that) of its equity holders at the four major music labels. So c’mon guys, let’s make something compelling! I don’t mind paying either, if it’s legitimately good. I want an easy interface between my own music and stuff I want to stream, offline access, great support for devices, Spotify-quality UI and speed (maybe time to open the checkbook again). And, while I’m on a roll here with the feature wish list, compatibility with my car stereo would be just super. Thanks. — Liz
Hulu Goes Premium – Hulu’s corporate parents are clearly fixated on the idea that the site could launch a subscription service that would push it toward profitability in a way that an unobtrusive number of ads has not. Well, if that’s what they want, maybe we consumers shouldn’t be so up in arms about it. If I would trust anyone to do paid video right, it would be Jason Kilar and the team at Hulu, who have already shown they can turn the ingredients for a rigid unappealing mess into a genuinely enjoyable user experience. For a second there, we’d thought “TV Everywhere” could be the answer, but a look at Comcast’s Xfinity reminds us that we were taking crazy pills when we thought the cable companies could get this one right. Here’s what we want: a simple subscription plan with no ads, full show libraries and living room access. It’s not like the cable companies and broadcasters are getting along these days (ahem, Fox, Time Warner); now’s the time to make a break for it. – Liz
Real National Broadband Map – We hope to get a national broadband map out of the National Broadband Plan or stimulus money that shows Washington and current and future ISPs where the competition is lagging for broadband access. The map would also show Congress should where it should allocate the money to bridge the gap between metro areas with fast service and rural areas where the carriers have already indicated that it’s not economical to put fiber lines in. It’s the first step to ultra-broadband for everyone. — Stacey
AT&T’s iPhone Exclusivity Ends – AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple as the U.S. carrier for the iPhone expires next year, and there are signs that the arrangement between the two companies will then end. Such a move would bode very well indeed for the entire Apple ecosystem, from iPhone users to application developers. As we noted here, Apple itself, despite the substantial kickbacks it gets from AT&T from service contract sales, stands to benefit the most. Ending the AT&T exclusivity would position Apple to best take advantage of something it already has: enthusiastic iPhone app developers, who would welcome more openness in Apple’s carrier strategy. Users, too, would get substantial flexibility from the multiple-carrier opportunity, and, in many cases, better service. — Sebastian
Chrome OS Shifts, Works With Local Apps Too – Google’s November unveiling of its Chrome OS, aimed at netbooks and due late next year, generated much excitement — for some good reasons. Very early tests of its open-source core show it to boot and shut down almost instantly, and its approach to security is so stringent that if malware is detected, the OS will wipe and reimage itself. In short, it could take away many of the headaches that Windows-based netbook users live with. We’ve noted before, though, that Google is taking some huge gambles with Chrome OS, the most glaring of which is that it will require users to work with data stored exclusively in the cloud. That’s just not flexible, and it will box people out of everything from using their favorite local software utilities to working with SaaS apps that have hybrid cloud/local features. It would be great to see Google shift its cloud-only strategy, as it moves into potentially promising but unfamiliar territory, boosting competition among operating systems. – Sebastian
In this space we normally look at companies that have recently raised their dividends. However, as the year draws to a close there were very few companies of note increasing their dividends this week. With that, I thought it would be interesting to see who might be the big dividend raisers in 2010. Here are seven companies for your consideration:
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) in April 2009 raised its dividend 10% to $0.44/share from $0.40/share. PG has increased its dividend for 53 consecutive years and I expect them to do so again next year. 2010’s increase may not be as strong since 2009’s free cash flow was down 8.5% from 2008. However, it is still strong and the trailing 12-months is above the 2008 level. Also, PG’s 2009 share count is down in and its cash balance is up. Given this, I project a 2010 increase of 6-8%. The stock is currently yielding 2.9%. [Analysis]
Colgate-Palmolive Co. (CL) in April 2009 also raised its dividend 10% to $0.44/share from $0.40/share. CL has increased its dividend for 46 consecutive years and I expect them to do so again next year. The 2010 increase should be higher then 2009’s since the company’s 12-month trailing free cash flow is up over 41% compared to 2008. The company’s most recet cash balance is up 52% and shares outstanding are down. I project a 2010 increase of 10-12%. The stock is currently yielding 2.1%.
W.W. Grainger Inc. (GWW) in May 2009 raised its dividend 15% to $0.46/share from $0.40/share. GWW has increased its dividend for 38 consecutive years and I expect them to do so again next year. The 2010 increase could be higher since the company’s 12-month trailing free cash flow is up over 62% compared to 2008 and its most recent cash balance is up nearly 70%. I project a 2010 increase of 15-17%. The stock is currently yielding 1.8%. [Analysis]
Abbott Laboratories (ABT) in April 2009 raised its dividend 11% to $0.40/share from $0.36/share. ABT has increased its dividend for 37 consecutive years and I expect them to do so again next year. The 2010 increase should be similar to the 2009 increase since the company’s 12-month trailing free cash flow is down slightly (2%) compared to 2008, but it is currently sitting on 18% more cash. I project a 2010 increase of 10%. The stock is currently yielding 2.9%. [Analysis]
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) in March 2009 raised its dividend 15% to $0.2725/share from $0.2375/share. WMT has increased its dividend for 35 consecutive years and I expect them to do so again next year. This cash generating machine continues to hum with a 10% increase (12-month trailing) in free cash flow compared to 2008. The more impressive statistic is the 12-month trailing cash flow is 2.4 time higher than the 2008 amount. I project a 2010 increase of 10%. The stock is currently yielding 2.0%. [Analysis]
Walgreen Company (WAG) in August 2009 raised its dividend 22% to $0.1375/share from $0.1125/share. WAG has increased its dividend for 34 consecutive years and I expect them to do so again next year. This is another cash generating machine that saw a 2009 free cash flow increase of 168% compared to 2008 and the 2009 ending cash balance is 4.7 time higher than 2008’s. I project a 2010 increase of 15-20%. The stock is currently yielding 1.5%. [Analysis]
AFLAC Inc. (AFL) in February 2009 raised its dividend 17% to $0.28/share from $0.24/share. AFL has increased its dividend for 27 consecutive years and I expect them to do so again next year. In spite of all the negative publicity aimed at the financial sector, AFL’s free cash flow has grew approximately 15% the last 12 months compared to 2008 and its most recent cash balance has nearly doubled from the 2008 level. I project a 2010 increase of 10%. The stock is currently yielding 2.4%. [Analysis]
Obviously, the above increases are pure speculation on my part. But in a world where cash is king, somehow great companies always find a way to increase their dividends each year.
Full Disclosure: Long ABT, AFL, PG, WMT. See a list of all my income holdings here.
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As 2009 draws to a close, did you also realize it’s the end of the decade and the start of a new one? So what should we call the upcoming period of 2010-2019? The Teenies? The Tenties? The Tenners? How about the Twenty Tens?
‘Twenty Tens’ was the most popular name for the upcoming decade, according to a survey of 5,000 Brits conducted by insurance comparison site Gocompare.com. Nearly a third of those surveyed said ‘Twenty Tens’ was the most catchy name.
So there you have it. Start throwing around the term ‘Twenty Tens’ and you’ll be ahead of the curve.
photo credit: Robbert van der Steeg
Related posts:
» The Apple tablet/ereader rumor now has a name. Or two, to be exact. Various companies with links to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) have registered the domain names and trademarks for iSlate and iGuide, which may even get used in combination as a device and service. [MacRumours.com]
» Mobile operator Orange is introducing a high-definition voice service in the U.K. in 2010 that will operate on a wider band than traditional mobile voice. Promising “crystal-clear” quality, the service will require special handsets, yet to be revealed. [Release]
» Microsoft is looking for developers to work on XBox LIVE for Windows Mobile, prompting lots of chatter about Microsoft’s ambitions in mobile gaming and a possible dedicated Windows gaming handset. [MobileTechWorld]
» More Nexus One leakage… The so-called Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Phone will be priced at $180 on a two-year T-Mobile plan, and $530 unlocked. Answers to questions of how it will be more “Google” than already-existing Android devices, however, may have to wait until the press conference Google has called for 5 January. [Gizmodo]
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Study: Plug-in cars are cleaner than gas, hydrogen cars could be worse But some hydrogen cars are as clean as EVs, say the study authors. |
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Gas To Electric, Santa Monica make up in PHEV conversion fight It’s kind of clear who has the last laugh, considering. |
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AutoblogGreen for 12.31.09 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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i have not been diagnosed but watch my FBS…i think i’m borderline
when i eat alot of peanuts within 12 hours of checkin my BS its high around 110-120
i read that peanuts are supposed to be good….does anyone else experience this?
We’ve always had a lot of fun with Indianapolis-based startup ChaCha. They launched in 2007 as a human powered search engine – meaning a human found you answers when you typed in a query. Pranksters, obviously, loved it. And we noted the high cost of hiring humans to basically do Google searches and return results to people.
The human powered web search never really worked out. But ChaCha evolved. In 2008 they launched a mobile version of the service that lets users ask questions via SMS. Putting a human into the mix makes sense with mobile, with poor (or no) data connectivity and hard to use keyboards. But all phones have SMS, and ChaCha had a hit on their hands (they also had the infamous Eiffel Tower incident).
And ChaCha also made another smart move. They started archiving questions and answers on their website in January 2009. 300 million of them are now published on their website – you can view and search them from the ChaCha home page. Those pages have lots of ads generating revenue, and the search engines tend to rank pages like these highly. The company serves just under a million page views to answer pages per day, they say.
CEO Scott Jones says the company has had “explosive growth” in usage of their mobile product. In fact, the company has had to take steps in the past to control that growth, by limiting the number of questions people can ask each month. Even so, people now ask ChaCha a million questions a day via SMS. They recently passed Google and ChaCha is the no. 1 SMS search service according to Nielsen Mobile.
Those mobile questions bring in revenue, too. I asked ChaCha tonight “When and where is Avatar IMAX playing in San Francisco?” The first response, less than a minute later, was an advertisement. The second message came a minute later with the correct information: “AMC Loews Metreon 16 101 4th St. San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 369-6201. Showtimes for 12/31/09. Avatar IMAX 9:45 am, 1:15, 4:45, 8:15, 11:45. ChaCha!” Even on a smartphone, and even dealing with the ad, it was far easier to use ChaCha than doing a mobile search via Google.
And while there are a number of easy-to-use movie apps for the iPhone and Android, ChaCha is a multi-purpose app. I can just as easily ask it for flight schedules. Or the first king of England (answer: “No one is universally recognized as the first King of England. Some historians start with Egbert, the king of Wessex”).
We’ve said all along, though, that the ChaCha mobile service was useful. But we questioned its scalability since it involves humans.
Jones says they’re scaling just fine, thanks to tens of thousands of part time guides who work from their homes for an average wage of $2.50/hour. It’s not much, but they do it voluntarily, so they must think it’s a reasonable deal. The cost of answering a question has dropped from $0.50 two years ago to just a few cents today, and Jones says they’ll get it to under a cent soon. They’re able to recycle a lot of answers, he says, and they’ve built tools to make it easier for guides to quickly answer most queries.
The company is now profitable per query, says Jones, meaning they are making more money from those SMS ads than they pay the guides. And when you add revenue from the archived website questions, the company is on path to profitability. Their current revenue run rate is $9 million or so. My guess is they need to roughly double that to become profitable as a business and support their 60 or so full time employees.
Jones says has raised $52 million, including a recent $7 million round from insiders. We’re tracking more than that on CrunchBase and have asked the company for clarification.
So ChaCha may just have a real business on its hands, despite the near constant criticism from us and others over the years. This is one time that I won’t mind at all being wrong.
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just like last year, and the year before that.
here’s the list of my top 10 movies & albums of 2009.
avatar / the september issue / district 9 / inglourious basterds / harry potter and the half-blood prince
up / drag me to hell / curious case of benjamin button / star trek / monsters vs aliens
haven’t got much time to watch on dvds and stuff, here is my top 5.
slumdog millionaire / låt den rätte komma in / vicky cristina barcelono
entre les murs / il y a longtemps que je t’aime
and lastly my top 10 albums of 2009.
just ballade (misia) / splendor in the grass (pink martini) / this is war (30 seconds to mars) / the boy who knew too much (mika) / my one and only thrill (melody gardot) / sacrificium (cecilia bartoli) / found songs (ólafur arnalds ) / the big machine (émilie simon) / caféine (christophe willem) / memoirs of an imperfect angel (mariah carey)
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E porque é Inverno deixo-vos uma nova versão do clássico Line Rider.
O jogo consiste em desenhar linhas de forma a conseguir que o trenó chegue ao seu destino. No jogo original é possível ainda desenhar os próprios níveis, o que o levou a tornar-se tão conhecido.
Em Snow Line não podemos desenhar níveis, mas beneficiamos de cenários bonitos e animados com o tema natalício.
Viewers who tuned into the Weather Channel Sunday night were treated to a tearjerker with a side of sunny skies as meteorologist Kim Perez got an on-air proposal from her longtime boyfriend, police sergeant Marty Cunningham. Kim had just predicted rainfall for Florida and the Southeast this New Year’s Eve when Marty stumbled onto the set.
“Hi!” said the mother of three.
“How are you?” Marty asked.
“Good!” Kim replied.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time, and I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. So I’m asking you today,” he started getting down on one knee, “Will you please marry me?”
“I will,” Kim said, smiling.
Don’t you just love a happy ending?
Kim has been obsessed with meteorology ever since she was a little girl.
“I first realized that gender may be an issue very young,” Kim wrote on The Weather Channel website. “When I told someone I wanted to be a meteorologist, they asked why a nice girl like me would want to study meteors! I didn’t understand the problem until I started looking though books and doing research, I couldn’t find any women meteorologists, not even on TV!”
A spokesperson for the Atlanta-based Weather Channel says the couple plan to have a small wedding with family and friends — likely on the 13th of whatever month they choose, since Marty’s lucky number is 13.
