Blog

Filed under: Crossover, Nissan

By this point in the year it’s not as easy to find worthy entries for Understatement of the Year – there is just so much competition – but a comment made about the Nissan Qazana certainly qualifies: a Nissan insider told UK-based Autocar that the gelatinous crossover “will split opinion.”

And not only will you get your chance to buy one in 2012, statements by Nissan indicate that you’ll have your chance to buy other cars that also look like it. Nissan’s customer research appears to have also given the company every reason for believing “it will be a success,” and that this will give the brand “a more attractive and emotional appeal in the future.”

Nissan hasn’t said what Qazana design features might be seen on other cars, and we don’t know if we’re ready to even think about that possibility. Europeans have three years to get ready for it, and we in the States have that time to prepare for an Altima that looks like Admiral Ackbar.

Photos copyright (C)2009 Chris Paukert / Weblogs, Inc.
[Source: Autocar]

Production Nissan Qazana will bring new era of design, love it or hate it reaction originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

What happens after governments go trillions into debt to rescue their banking systems? The governments themselves collapse. It’s what Niall Ferguson has been warning about. It’s the lesson that Roubini sees in Dubai.

And now Morgan Stanley, in a new report about the upcoming slog, reminds us of some history.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Niall Ferguson: Even Krugman Admits The Deficit Is Unsustainable
• Niall Ferguson: Roubini Is Okay, But He’s Not As Good As Me
• Dubai Stock Exchange Plummets 7%, As Government Confirms It Won’t Pick Up The Tab

You don’t need to be an economist or sociologist to understand that the world, and our piece of it, has changed. The evidence is all around us.

We have gone from an old economy built around manufacturing to a new one built around technology, from an old economy where advanced skills were not essential ingredients of the good life to a new one where millions could be left behind and left out.

Our world, and our piece of it, has changed. In fact, it is changing at such a rapid pace that it is difficult to keep up with it all. Any of us trying to master the functions on a phone or the buttons on a television remote control understand the challenge.

And that change is going to continue. In fact, the unsettling pace will only accelerate.

We heard one report the other day that new technology is replacing old technology so fast that by the time a baccalaureate student completes four years of college, half of what he or she learned will be outdated.

Imagine that. Think about the implications.

Is it any wonder that the world, and our piece of it, is on edge?

It is easy to be intimidated by that change. It is tempting to throw up your hands and give up.

One man who doesn’t is Kenneth L. Ender, the new president of Harper College in Palatine. Spend an hour, as we did recently, listening to Ender talk about the challenge of this blistering change and you’ll come away impressed by the magnitude of the challenge but also inspired that solutions are possible if we roll up our sleeves.

Harper College plays an important role in this as a prominent educational institution in the suburbs. But as the catalyst that he hopes to be, Ender understands in a refreshing way that Harper does not play the only role. The community college cannot do it alone.

“The college,” he says, “has to be a partner.”

Earlier this month, the college began planting the seeds of community collaboration. It held a series of discussions on preparing the global work force and building a partnership for student success.

In doing so, Ender reached out to educational institutions and community leaders from around the suburbs. Clearly, Ender understands that to meet the challenges of the 21st century, collaboration is needed between K-12 schools, community colleges, four-year institutions, adult education programs and work force systems.

Ender’s aim is daunting yet simple: Build community through student success.

Count us in.

By Mary Jekielek Insprucker, Special to the Tribune

When Nooria Bibi’s husband decided to run for president of their native Afghanistan, she didn’t hesitate to leave their home in Hoffman Estates and campaign for him, despite the threats of violence.

Mutasim Billah Mazhabi finished far behind Hamid Karzai, the winner in the disputed August election, but Bibi has no regrets. She says she is proud that she had a chance to speak up for women’s rights in a country where she said it’s unusual for a woman to say anything in public.

“Every day, the women die a bit when their children have no clothes and no food, and they have to live with the corrupt government,” said Bibi. “It is they who have to encourage young men” not to commit suicide.

Bibi, 37, is a now a student at Harper College, where she is studying international politics. Her husband, she said, lives part time in Afghanistan, where he oversees the family car dealership and rugmaking business.

The couple met in Afghanistan and lived in Pakistan before moving to the United States about a decade ago with their five children.

Helay Salehzai, 40, of Westmont, said she volunteered with Bibi and her husband at a health clinic they helped establish in Pakistan for Afghan refugees

“She knew the people’s pain and sacrificed what she had for them,” Salehzai said. “Those she helped, as done in our culture, raised and cupped their hands in prayer for her.”

Eric Bohman, the English-as-second-language coordinator at Harper, invited Bibi to speak on campus at a recent event that focused on international education.

“Her story was topical and she had strong convictions on what her family was doing to help her country,” he said. Those who attended “wanted to learn more about women’s issues in the Middle East and the complexities of [political] campaigns in Afghanistan.”

Bohman said he watched an online clip of one of the rallies Bibi spoke at during her husband’s campaign. He said he was impressed with her message to the women in the audience, assuring them that they had a voice in the election.

“If change is to come, it will come from someone like Nooria and her husband, because they are genuine in their beliefs in what will make Afghanistan better,” he said.

Alice Schroeder, former Wall Street analyst and author, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (5 min.):

• How does Warren Buffett really make his investment decisions?  Is it as stupidly simple as it seems in his annual letters?
• Answer: Of course not.
• Buffett has a very efficient screening process and 50 years of experience
• What do the other 11 people at Berkshire Hathaway do?
• Why no MBA students are working for Warren Buffett for free
• Read excerpts of The Snowball here >

Produced By: Kamelia Angelova & William Wei

More Alice Schroeder:
– Warren Buffett’s Secrets To Success
 – The Truth About Warren Buffett: He’s “Almost Like A Kid”

More Video: TBI Calendar Click HERE >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Warren Buffett’s Secrets To Success
• It’s Hard To Make A Legal Living On Wall Street

Things are moving fast online and having an online presence doesn’t just mean building a website like in the olden days and calling it quits. Not so long ago, MySpace was a must for any artist trying to ‘connect’ with his/her fans. Now though, Facebook is where it’s at and having a Facebook Page isn’t ‘looking ahead,’ it’s already a must. But just having a Facebook Page doesn’t guarantee that people will actually visit it and a new, rather thorough, study from social media consultancy firm Sysomos has found that most pages aren’t that popular with a full 77 percent of them having less than 1,000 fans.

The researchers looked at about 600,000 Facebook Pages to see how popular they were with the users. They only counted the number of fans, pretty much the only accurate stat available to third-parties. Their findings show that a big number of pages are little more than place holders with less than 10 fans, 5 percent of them or 30,000 pages. Of course the vast majority of pages are a bit more popular, but the number drops off very quickly. 65 percent of pages have more than 100 fans while only 23 percent (123,000 fan pages) have more than 1,000 fans.

After this, the numbers really start to dwindle and only 4 percent (24,000) of the pages analyzed have more than 10,000 fans. Moving on, only 0.76 percent of Fa… (read more)

Filed under: Chrysler, Ford, GM

Remember this past spring and summer’s super speedy General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies? If the billions in government loans and White House strong-arming is starting to slip into the recesses of your memory, your mind will likely be refreshed sometime in the future, at least according to Fitch Ratings. Fitch says that high fixed costs, perpetual over capacity and weak sales will lead to more bankruptcies that will mirror the misery of the airline industry.

Fitch gives plenty of reasons that the auto industry is far from out of the woods, chief among them is the continuation of weak sales. The ratings agency predicts 2010 car sales will rise by 7.8% to 11.1 million units, an improvement that is still far shy of the industry’s peak sales of 17 million units. Another chief concern is GM and Chrysler’s inability to access the credit markets for the foreseeable future. Credit markets are tight enough already, and Fitch doesn’t see any bank lining up to loan money to any company fresh out of bankruptcy and still in restructuring mode. And if suppliers don’t become more healthy or if gas prices spike again, Fitch sees the potential for more stress and ultimately more bankruptcies. And the Detroit 3 still have to contend with a high dollar union workforce and retiree obligations. Of the Detroit automakers, Fitch unsurprisingly sees the most stability at Ford. The Blue Oval still has access to bank loans and Fitch feels it has the strongest product lineup as well.

While we certainly agree that the auto industry is anything but out of the woods, we’re also a bit skeptical of Fitch Ratings’ foggy crystal ball. After all, Fitch didn’t foresee much of the banking collapse that brought this country to its largest recession in decades until the collapse was painfully obvious, giving AA ratings to banks like Lehman Bros. only one year before that financial institution’s dive into Chapter 11 protection.

[Source: Reuters | Photo by David Goldman/Getty]

REPORT: Fitch Ratings says U.S. auto industry headed for airline-style cyclical bankruptcies originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

It looks as if cash-strapped consumers rushed for bargains like never before, but spent less (because they likely feel less wealthy these days). A National Retail Federation (NRF) survey reported that shoppers’ average spending fell 8%

NRF: In order to nab the best holiday items, more shoppers headed out for bargains while it was still dark outside. According to the survey, nearly one-third of shoppers (31.2%) were at the stores by 5 a.m., compared with 23.3 percent who were at stores by that time last year.

“During a more robust economy, people may be inclined to hit the “snooze” button on Black Friday, but high unemployment and a focus on price caused shoppers to visit stores early in anticipation of the best deals,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch.

Still, we continue to recommend the ultimate Christmas bargain shopping — after Christmas. It all goes massively on sale every year like clock work. Just shift your family tradition by a week and arbitrage the Christmas traditionalists.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Retail Sales, Monthly Change
• CHART OF THE DAY: Look, Retail Sales Actually Grew From Last Year
• Retail Sales Already HOT In November

It seems the LG Monaco is going to be the handset with many names.  The smartphone will be called the LG IQ on the Telus network, but the Snapdragon powered QWERTY slider will be coming to AT&T very soon under the guise of the LG eXpo, with pico-projector in situ for all your dubious presentation needs.

According to Phonescoop the pico-projector uses Texas Instrument’s DLP technology, and is of course removable. It also comes equipped with a fingerprint reader for extra corporate security.

This smartphone, despite its specs, seems not to be evoking much excitement in the Windows Mobile community, but I believe for the business user this may still be the device to chose ahead of the HTC HD2, simply due to the presence of the hardware keyboard.

Do our readers agree or disagree?  Let us know in the comments.

Read more at PhoneScoop here.

The scare in Dubai isn’t making China feel any better about its gigantic pile of greenbacks:

Marketwatch: China should use the shockwaves created by the Dubai crisis as an opportunity to buy gold and oil, a senior Chinese official who helps oversee some of the nation’s biggest enterprises was quoted as saying Monday.

Ji Xiaonan, chairman of the supervisory board for large firms at State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), said the purchases could be funded by China’s foreign exchange reserves, although it wasn’t clear how much prices for these commodities would be affected by the crisis.

Read the whole thing >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• China: The Stimulus Will Stay Through 2010
• Dubai Stock Exchange Plummets 7%, As Government Confirms It Won’t Pick Up The Tab
• Dubai Plans Appeal to Bondholders

If there is one thing Windows Mobile is not short of is phones with advanced networking capabilities.

As if to illustrate this Samsung has just launched another handset on the KT network in Korea that seems to feature every networking acronym in the book

The SPH M8400 features a 3.7” AMOLED WVGA touchscreen, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera , T-DBM Digital Mobile TV, WCDMA, WiFi, Bluetooth and Wibro (Wimax).

The smartphone in additions spots Samsung’s TouchWiz interface which should improve the finger-friendliness of the device.

Read more at Akiharabanews here.

Apparently, Dubai World’s debt trouble hasn’t stalled the opening of Las Vegas’s new CityCenter, which is owned by Dubai World and MGM Mirage.

CityCenter opens on Tuesday, and some fear it could destroy Vegas hotel room rates given that it adds a 4,004 room Aria hotel and casino to the market.

This amounts to a 4% increase in Vegas’s room supply, all in one go.

This new facility is oddly a huge bet on a weak market, given that it cost $8.5 billion. Yet given that it is already built, Dubai World and MGM Mirage probably have no other choice.

Thus everyone’s just hoping for a Vegas rebound.

AP: “We’re in a 12-round fight. The first six rounds, you guys got beat up,” Tony Alamo of the Nevada Gaming Commission told CityCenter owners MGM Mirage and Dubai World when Aria’s license was approved.

“We’re putting all our eggs in the `grow-the-market’ basket. I would be lying to you if I wasn’t concerned — that’s a reality,” he said. “This is not just the company, it’s the state.”

When The Mirage opened in 1989, it launched two decades of expansion that more than doubled the number of rooms in Las Vegas to some 141,000 today. A record 39.2 million visitors came to Sin City in 2007, but that dropped to 37.5 million last year as the recession kept many people away.

This better be one heck of a Vegas rebound. In addition to CityCenter’s 4,004 new rooms, another three competing hotels are under construction and will add another 9,390. Basically, we’ll get a ~15% jump in room supply within about two years. For the sake of existing hotels, hopefully these projects go bankrupt before completion. Read the full article here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Dubai Stock Exchange Plummets 7%, As Government Confirms It Won’t Pick Up The Tab
• Here’s What Dubai Will Look Like If It Gets REALLY Bad
• Sunday London Times BANNED In Dubai After Unflattering Portrayal Of Ruling Sheikh

Here’s video of the inside of one Wal-Mart (WMT) during Black Friday. We have to wonder: where is all the security?

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Startling Jump In eCommerce Spending On Cyber Monday
• Wal-Mart Marketing Blamed For Trampling Death
• NY Police Issue Crowd-Control Recommendations For Future Black Fridays

Filed under: Etc., Bentley, Specialty

Luke, a London Routemaster bus retrofitted by Bentley for St Luke’s hospice – Click above for high-res image gallery

We haven’t met anyone who works in the Bentley factory. (At least, this writer hasn’t.) But we like them already. Because while workers at other assembly plants go on strike or to Eminem concerts when they’ve got no more work, the crew from Crewe puts their energy and considerable talents into charitable endeavors. A couple of weeks ago we brought you a collection of artwork created by Bentley craftsmen, scheduled to be auctioned off to benefit cancer research. Now they’ve completed work on a bus for a hospice.

The decommissioned London Routemaster double-decker city bus affectionately named Luke was acquired by St Luke’s hospice – a care facility for the terminally ill in Winsford, Cheshire – earlier this year. The goal was to use it as a sort of “community charity bus” to be used for fundraising, public awareness and as a “traveling shop” for college campuses. We don’t know exactly what that entails, but the results, billed as the world’s most luxurious charity bus, are impressive.

Very different in nature from rival Aston Martin’s bus project, 59 Bentley workers from the woodshop, tool-room and maintenance departments volunteered some 2,000 man-hours to transform Luke from a mode of public transportation into what looks like an impeccably well-crafted vehicle for charitable work. See for yourself in the gallery below, and follow the jump for the full press release.

[Source: Bentley]

Continue reading Bentley does a double-decker bus for charity

Bentley does a double-decker bus for charity originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

After trying the barley flour chocolate cake I was confident that barley flour would be good in brownies too. I decided to use barley flour in the oat flour-beet brownies recipe which I had tried earlier. This time I wanted to make it vegan too, so I used unsweetened chocolate instead of semi-sweet chocolate and increased the quantity of sugar. If you don’t want to make it vegan simply follow that recipe but use barley flour instead of oat flour and pumpkin puree instead of beet puree or use beet puree itself.

After the first article on the GenApple site – which promotes itself as the first information brokerage, Shortinfosec secured an interview with the founder of GenApple – Mr. Mark Hanson.

In a summary, the service will need polishing, and GenApple will need to tweak procedures and operating rules as they go along.

There may be security and privacy concerns – we are sure that the law enforcement agencies will be very interested to peek into the information being traded, as well as who is trading it. Also, on the other side of the coin – the information brokerage may be a place where illegal information is traded, so GenApple will have to be very careful to walk the thin line between trading of illegal material and the pressure of law enforcement to know everything.

Read the full interview with Mark Hanson – GenApple’s founder. For Shortinfosec, the interview was done by Bozidar Spirovski

Bozidar: Let’s start with the person behind the idea – As I saw from your linkedin profile, you are just 4 years out of university. Is this your first venture?
Mark John Hanson: Yes. This is my first start-up venture. But I had the idea for this site about a year and a half ago, and have been developing it since then. We’re very excited about it: The team has been working very hard and we hope to deliver a quality service that people can use, enjoy and learn.

Bozidar: Could you describe the concept a bit more, of course in layman’s terms – at first glance it sounds like e-bay but for bits and bytes
Mark John Hanson: Sure: what we aspire to be is a place where people simply can buy and sell information and knowledge. At first glance, why would people pay for information or knowledge? The Internet is filled with free information, from search engines, to answer portals, to e-learning portals. However, something is missing – every person throughout their years acquire a lot of knowledge, some of it has little to no value. But every person has knowledge that they possess that another person may want—in real life to gain this knowledge there might have to be a personal relation. But with our site; we seek to create a marketplace where people for the first time can sell knowledge and information that another party may want and pay for.

Bozidar: So what you are promoting is compensation for knowledge that someone has and others require?
Mark John Hanson: exactly—right now there’s lots of knowledge that is not being disclosed on the Internet because people feel it has value. For instance, there are things you are willing to blog about for free—you write about security issues. However, you’re a businessman and there are many other things that you have acquired over the course of your life that you know that has real value. We seek a place where you can sell such knowledge, both privately, if you want and securely.
Yes there are many answer site, forums, etc and for many many questions, a free answer forum is good enough. However, we’re not just an answer forum, we hope to be a place where a broad amount of knowledge is shared

Bozidar: You touch an excellent subject with the forums – There are commercial forums that offer some form of expert knowledge when you subscribe. These are usually quite technical and with specific target groups in mind. What is your target group?
Mark John Hanson: at the end—we hope to be the destination for any or all type of knowledge; however, starting out, we’ll focus on three verticals and expand from there

• (1) stock tips and financial knowledge, we want to have a monetary focus when we start so people who have knowledge or advice about investment strategies can share. Because of US securities regulation, we’ll active monitor these listings to make sure that inside information is not disclosed or sold
• (2) news freelance — because of the nature of journalism in the US there are many reporters who are currently unemployed or underemployed. What we want is for people who are journalists, citizen journalists and so on to have a place where they can sell news stories that they’ll write and the news organ
• (3) celebrity gossip and information—we wanted to have a fun and interesting vertical so people will check our site out and follow what is being disclosed on our launch.

Bozidar: The exchange of information will go through GenApple. I’ll try to summarize the process as I understood it:

1. The seller offers a commodity (information) on the exchange
2. The seller deposits the commodity in the information vault
3. The buyer and seller agree on a price and transfer funds
4. The buyer pulls the commodity out of the vault
5. The buyer receives the funds after a cool down period for disputes

Mark John Hanson: Exactly: there’s obviously more detail and I’ll be happy to provide you with our animation intro that explains this, users can also view our “how it works” area. You are concerned with security, and this is utterly important for a business like this. Thus our website has been developed that each information vault is protected from hackers and people with bad intent. We are certified by McAfee—we also use a SSL certificate from Verisign, so immediately when people are on our site, all transactions, from a simple search are secure.
We feel that as an “information brokerage” we should treat our customers as if they’re dealing with a bank or financial institution—information and knowledge is valuable. Moreover, when people sell information, they want to keep their identity private because of the nature of transaction—to us privacy is a form of security. We want people to know that if they use this site, their identity is kept safe and will not be disclose to anyone, period.

Bozidar: You use a very strong statement there “protected from hackers”. In the world in which I live, something hasn’t been hacked only because a hacker still hasn’t found the vulnerability to exploit or the interest in exploiting it. So for argument’s sake, let’s say that a hacker manages to break in and he/she/they steal information or redirect funds. Do you accept any responsibility for the damages caused to the parties involved?
Mark John Hanson: I do have confidence in our site’s security and McAfee secure—we will do our utmost to protect the information that people have disclosed from us—as to your question, our user agreement discloses precisely what responsibilities each party undertakes.
Bozidar: So on this particular site it is very wise to read the agreement, not just click the I Agree button?
Mark John Hanson: What we want is for every use to read the user agreement and privacy policy before they sign up—we have links to these agreements in the registration page. The reason for this is that the user knows what to expect from us and also what we expect from every user. This marketplace depends on GenApple to create a safe, easy, secure place to do a transaction.

Bozidar: In your first target group vertical you mention US regulation. On my attempt to register I saw that the registration address can only be a US address. Does this mean that every user of GenApple needs to be under US jurisdiction?
Mark John Hanson: For right now we’re limiting it to the United States; however probably very soon we’ll open it up to many different countries—this is party based on how we pay – we have two payment methods to pay sellers (1) PayPal and (2) a bank check mailed directly to a user’s home. PayPal is not available to every country and a bank check is limited to North America.

Bozidar: Not quite – google mails checks all over the planet
Mark John Hanson: Google as a business does this—I’m not aware of a payment service that they have; however we prefer to use a Bank so our users are confident that the check they receive will be cashed. In the future—we could mail checks to users around the globe—if we reach that point, we’ll be happy to provide that service

Bozidar: Let’s talk a bit about the actual commodity – information what type of physical information can be stored in the data vault – text files, excel spreadsheets, images, encrypted files etc..is there a limitation? and of course, to what size?
Mark John Hanson: No limitation as to the type of files—we are looking at limitation right now—we also provide a textual entry area for people to disclose their information if it’s just a short sentence. So we’re still trying to set a balance and when we launch, we’ll note file size limitation within the information vault.

Bozidar: Well, since basically the actual information can be any type of file, you may be faced with a very unpleasant situation – the buyer agrees with the seller, transfers the funds and receives nothing useful so he disputes – or a far worse scenario: the buyer got what he requested, but he/she still wants to cheat and disputes nevertheless. How are you planning on coping with ‘fraudsters’ on both the selling and the buying side
Mark John Hanson: Very good point—hence our business model: as we note up front, we are an “information brokerage” — we are dealing with the intangible unlike eBay or many site that sell tangible products—it’s much harder to police fraud when dealing with the intangible. The buyer wants to know that he or she is getting what he or she is paying for and the seller want to know they’re getting paid. Hence as a brokerage, we assist in every transaction, as the user agreement says, we are not a part of a transaction, but we do the following:

• (1) in every listing, potential buyers can ask the seller questions directly before they buy
• 2) the buyer can look at the seller’s feedback rating and take that into consideration–with more positive feedback being good
• (3) besides the summary, there is the veracity statement, which is where the seller can state how he or she came to acquire such information or knowledge

Mark John Hanson: So up front, we want to give the buyer as many opportunities as possible to make an informed purchase. However, we go to your point–what if the seller’s information is bad or the buyer unfairly disputes a transaction, hence our dispute system, which is noted in our user agreement—we take a look at the positions of the buyer and seller—and we make the final decision for them. This is a high standard, which we use to discourage buyer who unfairly file disputes. We want to protect our buyer’s as much as possible, and if it seems that fraud exists, then we’ll issue a full refund. Each dispute is a case by case basis—but each party agrees not to appeal GenApple’s final decision.

Bozidar: A bit more on the content of information – if it is encrypted, then you may be facilitating transactions involving exchange of illegal information: like access passwords, or industrial secrets, plans to make bombs.
Mark John Hanson: yes—all valid points—this goes into our privacy policy, You certainly know the concept of a safety deposit box. We treat every information vault as a safety deposit box. If we as a service look into those vaults, then seller’s may feel insecure from the get go, when people deposit into a safety deposit box, they want privacy. To combat possible illegal activities our best courage of action is thus to be diligent—any listing that we see that’s suspicious (sp) will be deleted. We have on every listing page a report listing function, which any user can immediately file a report if such listing looks bad. If there is a dispute or an illegal transaction, as per the user agreement, we’ll comply with governmental authorities

Bozidar: So I’ll speak the lingering question on every body’s mind on your launch: Will the law enforcement and intelligence agencies get full access to all information vaults? I know that your policy states that you’ll supply law enforcement with information in case of investigation; But what about the broad view?
Mark John Hanson: What we’re trying to do a strike a balance, which could change as the site matures. As per our user agreement, all vault are secure from us and the public unless there is a dispute or request from a law enforcement agency. We will not under any circumstance turn over private information or information vault unless forced to do so—we can only promise to take each instance as a case, and that’s all I can say at this point that’s not already disclosed in our user agreement, but you have a balance, seller’s must be confident in a privacy transaction.

Bozidar: You gave a good argument that you as an information broker actually cannot know what all transactions are – thus you are not responsible for any wrongdoing of the users. But still, the similar argument applied to Napster and the Pirate Bay – and yet, they got sued for facilitating illegal exchange of information.
Mark John Hanson: We’ll in our user agreement, if someone does do something illegal, they are liable for our defence costs. But you are correct, there might be people who do illegal things. We’ll do our very best to create the best marketplace possible.

Bozidar: Are you actually worried that it may come to GenApple being sued for situations similar to Pirate Bay? They did claim plausible deniability but are now in prison.
Mark John Hanson: All I can say is that we drafted our user agreement with your question(s) in mind, but I cannot speculate what’ll happen in the future—no one knows

Bozidar: Mark, i want to thank you for all the information we got on this interview. One last question – what does GenApple stand for?
Mark John Hanson: Yes–hehe–every Internet company needs a name that’s short and memorable–the root “Apple” comes from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I was looking for adjectives because obviously Apple is taken. I did find the “gen” is British slang for information, hence the word genapple.

Do you like this product? What security concerns might you have on GenApple? Please add your 2 cents in the comments.

Related posts
GenApple – First Glance at the First Information Brokerage