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Members of the Obama administration have been regularly talking in Google+ Hangouts in recent weeks, and this week, President Obama himself will participate in one.

The hangout will come two days after Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Tuesday, when he will discuss the agenda for his second term in office.

Recently, Vice President Joe Biden participated in a Hangout, discussing gun violence. More recently, Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz discussed immigration reform.

“Much like the Fireside Hangouts held by Vice President Biden and Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz over the past few weeks, the President’s Fireside Hangout will include a group of people who regularly discuss important issues of the day online,” explains Google+ Politics’ Ramya Raghavan. “During the conversation, the selected participants will ask the President their own questions—but we’d also like to hear from you before the Hangout.”

Submit questions here.

The State of the Union address will be streamed live on YouTube, as will the Republican response from Senator Marco Rubio.

Last weekend, as snowstorm Nemo hit Boston and the snow was falling at record levels, I recalled an informal — admittedly unscientific — poll I conducted a few years ago among friends on the touchy subject of fairness in pricing.

Here’s the question I asked: “Suppose you own a hardware store. There’s been a heavy snowfall throughout the night and you know the moment your store opens at 8 AM, the limited supply of snow shovels will sell out. Should you raise price?”

To be clear, this is not an issue of how to set prices in a life-threatening situation (e.g., bottled water after a disaster). That’s an entirely different and far more complex discussion. In this case, if someone can’t afford a shovel due to a price hike, they have the option to borrow one from a neighbor or hire the local entrepreneurial kid to clear their driveway.

This simple exercise raises an array of fairness questions. For instance, if price is held steady, is it fair that those who show up right when the store opens get to purchase at less than the market clearing price? What about those who can’t arrive at 8 AM because they are working or tending to children? Or should the storeowner follow the mantra of economists to raise price until the market clears? In other words, allocate the limited supply of shovels to those who value them the most (i.e., are willing to pay a high price).

This pricing dilemma weighs heavily on the storeowner too. Is it worth it to potentially alienate customers for a quick profit windfall? Or, to take another view of the situation, if storeowners take the risk of purchasing a large inventory of shovels for the winter season, don’t they deserve to profit? After all, what if they purchase too many shovels and have to liquidate inventory at the end of the season at a money-losing price? If that happens, how many customers will say, “I’ll pay you more than the clearance price because I appreciate that you had shovels ready in case of a blizzard?” Nada. Is it fair to store owners to take all of the risk but not fully profit from their investment?

I was surprised at the responses to my survey question. Most felt it was okay to raise prices, not necessarily to the market clearing price, but enough to earn a tidy extra profit. I had predicted that my mostly non-business related friends would be adamant about maintaining price and selling on a first come, first served basis.

Here’s where it got really fascinating. I then followed-up by asking survey-takers how they’d feel if “two guys” set up shop in a parking lot and sold shovels at a high market-clearing price. Many had no problem with the sky high prices. In fact, some even expressed gratitude to the two guys for providing an essential service!

On the surface, these results don’t appear to synch with those reported by Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler in their 1986 article titled “Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market.” In a Canadian telephone survey, Kahneman et al. asked respondents how they felt if a hardware store raised prices on shovels from $15 to $20 after a snow storm. 82% of respondents judged this action to be “unfair.”

There are many potential explanations for these seemingly contradictory results, including different time periods (1986 vs. 2010), geographies (Canada vs. U.S.), and perspective (they asked from the consumer’s perspective, I from the seller’s). But most likely it’s the interpretation of the pricing implications. I wouldn’t expect consumers to judge a price increase that purely enriches a seller (i.e., not simply passing along a cost increase) to be fair. Few of us are willing to say, “Sure, charge me more so you can fatten your bank account.” That said, a price hike judged to be unfair may not affect a purchasing decision. After all, I am not too pleased about the jacked up Valentine prices for flowers and “special menus” at restaurants this week. But I’ll pay the premiums and won’t hold a grudge against the sellers, because I understand it’s just supply and demand at work.

The way you set prices is part of your relationship with customers, and part of your brand. Sure, it’s a safe and easy default to keep prices low in times of high demand. But there are likely to be enhanced profit opportunities by revisiting and challenging your company’s pricing norms. Consumers may be more accepting of price increases than you’d expect.

In automobile design, there is a trade-off between efficiency, horsepower and mass (safety) that manufacturers must deal with in coming up with their new car designs each year. The Obama Administration, however, has seized decision-making from auto manufacturers and their consumers when it chose to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, about twice its current level. The problem with this huge increase in CAFE is that we can only go so far in achieving this increase without affecting driver and passenger safety due to weight reductions.

The Process to Increase Automobile Efficiency

Automobile manufacturers employ various engine technologies to obtain improved efficiency, including direct-injection combustion, variable valve timing, sophisticated air management including turbo-charging, and fine-tuning engines with sophisticated sensors and algorithms. All of these processes are used by the industry to meet current CAFE standards. Automobile manufacturers also evaluate transmission processes to help save fuel by allowing the engine to run at lower revolutions per minute (rpm). Some of today’s vehicles employ as many as 8 gears that automatically maintain engine rpm within a certain range; far from the original 2-gear automatic transmissions.

However, engine and transmission modifications cannot achieve a 54.5 mile per gallon average vehicle efficiency without reducing car weight significantly.[i] Obviously, it takes less energy to propel a lighter car at a particular speed than a heavier car. In the past, automobile manufacturers reduced weight by removing the spare tire, making thinner glass components such as windshields and employing plastic in vehicle design.

But weight reduction also can mean less safety. For instance, a Dodge Ram pick-up in a head-on collision with a Ford Focus would surely be the winner, i.e. the Dodge Ram owner would walk away with minor injuries while the Ford Focus driver may not survive the crash. Bigger and heavier is better when it comes to car accidents as many a soccer Mom knows since they choose SUVs to haul their children to and from school functions.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) ran a series of tests in which it pitted a smaller vehicle against the next size larger vehicle from the same manufacturer. Specifically, they ran a Honda Fit into a Honda Accord, a Toyota Yaris into a Toyota Camry, and a Mercedes C Class into a Smart Fortwo (owned by Mercedes). In 40 mph offset-collision tests, the small cars were basically obliterated by the larger models.

Of course, the industry has improved safety by installing air bags, using high-tech materials like carbon fiber, and employing seat belts. But these initiatives can only do so much. While traffic fatalities had reached the lowest level in more than six decades in 2011, in the first nine months of 2012, traffic deaths increased 7.1 percent compared to last year’s figures, which is the largest increase for that calendar period since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began keeping records in 1975.[ii] And, in fact, it reversed a downward trend that had continued for 6 years.[iii] The historical six-year decline in the fatality rate is believed to be due to improvements like safer vehicles and roads; more effective laws such as graduated driver licensing laws that govern teenage driving; better technology such as  electronic stability control; and awareness efforts that, among other things, have led to increased use of seat belts.

Technological innovations such as electronic stability control, anti-lock brakes, and air bags may have reduced the number of fatalities. But, none the less, it is clear that smaller vehicles forced on the public by the federal government to increase efficiency cannot compete against larger vehicles in crashes.  Mass is key to safety, all things being equal.

Horse Power, Vehicle Weight and the American Public

It is no surprise to automobile manufacturers that the American public has historically preferred greater horse power and more weight than increased efficiency in its vehicle purchases. To evaluate this, Christopher Knittel, a professor of applied economics at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, determined that if weight, horsepower and torque were held to their 1980 levels, and efficiency-boosting technologies were employed, fuel economy for both passenger cars and light trucks would have increased by almost 60 percent from 1980 to 2006. That means, instead of an average fuel economy of 23 miles per gallon across the fleet, fuel economy would have reached about 37 miles per gallon. The actual fuel economy gain during that period, however, was only 15 percent.[iv]

According to Mr. Knittel, the addition of robust safety equipment to vehicles caused some of the weight gain, but changing preferences among consumers was a greater contributor to the lower increase in fuel economy. For example, in 1980, 18 percent of new cars sold in the United States were light trucks, but by 2004, the percentage of those vehicles freely chosen by consumers was 60 percent. As a result, horse power doubled and weight increased by 30 percent over that time period.

Conclusion

The Obama Administration has determined that the average new car fuel efficiency must meet 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, regardless of what that means to horse power, vehicle weight and mass, and passenger safety. While we do not have the data that indicates the number of fatalities that have occurred because of the push for lighter and more environmentally friendly cars, we do know that the public has chosen performance and weight (and likely safety) over fuel economy in the past. Plus, now we see that the number of automobile fatalities grew in 2012. The federal government, however, has decided that the preferences of the American public are no longer relevant and that a doubling of new car fuel economy must occur by 2025. The total cost of that decision for drivers and their passengers is unknown.

Carrie Underwood wowed everyone on the red carpet before she even took the stage at the Grammy awards last night, and it had a little something to do with the $31 million necklace she was rocking.

The country star paired the jewels with a black strapless Roberto Cavalli dress and admitted it was on her mind the entire night.

“It’s heavy on my soul,” Underwood said. “I’m afraid someone is going to tackle me and steal it … It’s worth more than me.”

The necklace consisted of 381 carats worth of dazzling white diamonds. Later, Underwood owned the stage during her performance of “Blown Away” and “Two Black Cadillacs”, wearing a full ball gown which featured images projected on it that changed from butterflies to a galaxy.

“It took a lot of precision,” she said of the projections. “They can do a lot of amazing things with projectors these days. We had a dress especially made. I said I should take that home and we can watch movies on it.”

Underwood ended up taking home a Grammy for her hit “Blown Away”.

“I love making country music that I feel like anybody can get into, no matter what genre you listen to. I just want to make good songs, sing good songs, write good songs,” she said.

As a culture, we are fascinated by celebrities, death, and the death of celebrities. I’m sure you already knew that, but some interesting new stats from the world of Wikipedia prove it.

Wikipedia user West.andrew.g has been looking at the popularity trends of Wikipedia articles over the past few years and has just published those findings in The Signpost, Wikipedia’s community newspaper. He breaks “popular” articles into two categories: isolated popularity and consistent popularity. The latter are articles that simply receive the most traffic, at all times. The top articles on this list include Facebook, United States, YouTube, Google, Sex, Justin Bieber – no big surprises there.

But it’s the isolated popularity of certain Wikipedia articles that’s truly interesting.

If you want your Wikipedia article to experience a surge in traffic, you have to die or play at the Super Bowl.

Five of the top eight biggest spikes (measured in an influx of traffic in a one-hour period) occured due to celebrity deaths – Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Osama bin Laden, and Ryan Dunn. Two of the spikes were for Super Bowl halftime shows – Madonna and The Who.

Whitney Houston’s Wikipedia page saw 425.6 views per second during an hour-long period on February 12th, 2012.

Other than deaths and the Super Bowl, other things that can drive traffic spikes to Wikipedia articles are being featured as the subject of a Google Doodle, being a TV show with a concerted “second-screen” effort, and being linked to on a site like reddit (Today I learned…).

[The Signpost via The Verge]

Justin Bieber was the host of “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, and like any good host, he didn’t pull any punches when it came time to make fun of himself.

The 18-year old appeared in full nerd-gear in a sketch called “The Miley Cyrus Show”–where he was head of her fan club–and addressed some of the more negative things that have been said about him while in character.

“He looks like a lesbian… I heard he still has his baby teeth,” he said during the sketch, in which he expressed disbelief that Miley Cyrus was friends with that “douche” Justin Bieber.

He also took a moment to address the controversy surrounding those photos of him that turned up last month which allegedly show him smoking pot at a party.

“I also heard he got busted for smoking weed and he’s really sorry about it and people make mistakes and he’s never gonna do it again,” his character said.

Bieber has had a rough few months after a breakup with longtime girlfriend Selena Gomez and the death of a photographer who was killed while crossing a busy highway while trying to snap a shot of Bieber’s car. The singer wasn’t in the vehicle at the time.

After months of careful planning and tests, Mars rover Curiosity has finally used its hammering drill to collect a bedrock sample on Mars. The event marks the first time any rover has drilled into a rock on the red planet.

Curiosity left a hole 0.63 inches (1.6 cm) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) deep in a flat, veiny rock named “John Klein.” As the rover drilled into the rock, rock powder traveled up flutes on the drill bit, which has holding chambers for the powder. The sample obtained by the rover should help researchers determine whether the rock was ever underwater.

“The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America.”

Over the next few days, the rock powder will be processed and tested to determine its mineral make-up and chemical composition.

“We’ll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly,” said Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Then we’ll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample.”

The successful drilling marks another milestone for the rover itself. All of Curiosity’s instruments have now been tested on Mars, and the rover has been deemed fully operational.

“Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program,” said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity’s sample system at JPL. “To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth.”

Google hosted its Solve for X Event last week, and has now released the presentations.

Solve for X is a gathering of scientists, entrepreneurs, and innovators, who come together to present “moonshot” proposals, as Google calls them. These are ideas aimed at solving big problems in the world. It’s kind of TED Talks-esque.

Last year’s presentations discussed drug delivery, imaging the mind’s eye, collaborative science, resource reclamation, etc. You can view some of those here.

Here are some of the new ones on topics like replacing plastics, sustainable meat, inflatable robots, economic energy storage, space exploration, malaria eradication, and Alzheimer’s diagnostics:

“One of the reasons we created Solve for X was to provide a collaborative forum to celebrate and help innovators who are in the process of attempting to bring radically innovative solutions to reality—attempting moonshots,” say Solve for X creators/co-hosts Megan Smith and Astro Teller. “Moonshots aim to make something 10x better, not just 10 percent. We need many more of us to take on and support moonshots if we are to solve the seemingly intractable problems we face in the world. To do that, we need to better celebrate the audacity of the attempt itself—at the start and in process.”

Google has updated some features on SolveForX.com, including the ability to submit moonshots, “join and declare your X” and watch more ideas from other partners.

The Surface RT’s ad campaign was defined by one thing – synchronized dancing. It was a little strange considering the ad didn’t even tell the consumer what Surface was or what it could do. It just showed a lot of hip youngsters (and a sweet, old couple) getting down with their new tablet/PC hybrid. People must have liked the ad though as it’s back again in the new Surface Pro advertisement.

The new Surface Pro ad features a similar dance routine as before, but now it’s set in an office environment. The new setting raises a whole host of new questions. Will the Surface Pro lead to spontaneous flash mobs during the quarterly meeting? Will it inspire the vice president of the company to take up beatboxing? Microsoft seemingly confirms all of these scenarios to be the case.

Now, this latest ad may have you running off to pick up a Surface Pro, but I feel that I must temper your expectations. A report from CNET says that the 128 GB Surface Pro is sold out nearly everywhere. Microsoft may have intentionally understocked the Surface Pro after seeing the Surface RT’s weak retail performance. That seems to have not been the case, however, and now the company is “working with [its] retail partners” to get more 128GB models into the hands of consumers.

If you can find one, let us know if it causes spontaneous office dance offs.

During my first year at Harvard Business School, I decided to start a new business. I set up a team, choose a name, secured a URL, and Zoosa was born. My theory was that by leveraging the collective expertise of skilled professionals, we could have a significant impact on the social sector. Zoosa was intended to be a platform where volunteers shared their activities and connected with others, creating a positive feedback loop. The idea was that this would encourage some people to deepen their efforts and others to become new volunteers. Unfortunately, I had never worked for an early-stage business or in the social enterprise space. The result? My business failed.

My story is not unique. Though we don’t often talk about failure in the social sector, I’ve seen numerous entrepreneurs waste countless hours working late into the nights and stubbornly plugging away throughout weekends. Even worse, many forfeit the opportunity to have a full time job in order to “follow their passion” as a first-time entrepreneur. They watch their social lives melt away at the same rate as their savings.

That’s what I did. And it took me 2 years to put a bullet in Zoosa. I pivoted from a skills-based volunteering website to a platform for corporate social responsibility to a third concept — you’d use Facebook for your personal social network, Linkedin for your professional social network, and Zoosa for your social impact network. Ultimately, I didn’t have the industry knowledge or the professional expertise to realize the vision. Eventually, I did two things that every social entrepreneur should do: set aside my ego and went back to step one — getting smart.

Here’s my advice for any social entrepreneur who’s decided she’s got the next big idea:

Put your ego away. How often have you heard an entrepreneur — or a want-to-be entrepreneur — say they want to run their own business? It’s almost as if they’re starting with the end point and working backwards. They want to run a business and so they look for an “idea”. Sometimes they’re clever enough to at least look for a real problem to solve — but not always. Instead of focusing on what you want to be or what you want to achieve, think about what it is that someone else truly needs. You and your ego should be beside the point.

Get smart first. Entrepreneurs-in-the-making are often convinced they have the next big idea for an app or product or service. Do they know anything about building an app? Well, no. But they want to run a business. So they dive in. They’ve heard from others that entrepreneurship is about persistence in the face of adversity. So they persevere, even when the market is giving them negative feedback. This feedback is especially tough to hear for social entrepreneurs. Failure may be doubly hard when the market is saying no, but the social need still exists. Getting smart requires you spend time in the field you want to run a business in. Volunteer or get a job working in the industry or with the clients you want to serve. Enduring adversity is important but without the right experience and exposure to the field, you’re unlikely to succeed.

Failure is not necessarily a bad thing but it has consequences. Consider how many nonprofits offer duplicative services or solutions, or early on learn that their original hypothesis is flawed. In all of those cases, the wasted time, effort, and capital only hurt the stakeholders — the folks the entrepreneur wants to help in the first place. Ego wins and stakeholders lose.

In the three years since I let Zoosa finally die, I’ve become an expert in building sales, marketing, and business development teams for early stage ventures. I’ve worked closely with several very successful entrepreneurs and investors and they’ve taught me a lot about everything from leadership to fundraising to recruiting. They’re helping me get smart.

I plan to go back into social enterprise, and maybe even run my own business. But for now I’m content to focus on my passion: helping entrepreneurs build their businesses.

Before you don the social entrepreneur title and dive into building your enterprise consider if you need more experience to realize your idea. If you do, set down your entrepreneur ego and find a job. You need to get smart to make a difference.

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Rising health care costs are a central fiscal challenge confronting the United States. National spending on health care currently accounts for 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), but is anticipated to increase to 25 percent of GDP by 2037. The Bipartisan Policy Center argues that “this rapid growth in health expenditures creates an unsustainable burden on America’s economy, with far-reaching consequences”. These consequences include crowding out many national priorities, including investments in education, infrastructure, and research; stagnation of employee wages; and decreased international competitiveness.In spite of health care costs that far exceed those of other countries, health outcomes in the United States are not considerably better.

With the goal of ensuring that patients have access to high-quality, affordable cancer care, the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) National Cancer Policy Forum convened a public workshop, Delivering Affordable Cancer Care in the 21st Century, October 8-9, 2012, in Washington, DC. Delivering Affordable Cancer Care in the 21st Century summarizes the workshop.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Health and Medicine

Faith Hill has become more popular than ever in recent years, due in part to the fact that she’s taken to flaunting her gams during the opening for Sunday night football. But the country star flaunted something else on the red carpet at last night’s Grammy Awards: braces.

The 45-year old looked elegant and classic in a LBD with a loose updo, but her teeth were the object of everyone’s attention. Hill says she wore braces as a kid and often forgot to wear her retainer, requiring some maintenance later in life.

“Kids, wear your retainer!” she said.

Hill and husband Tim McGraw took the stage together at the awards show to present. McGraw recently opened up in an interview about his decision to cut alcohol out of his life altogether, saying it gave him more energy onstage and left him feeling like a better role model for the couple’s children. The country crooner just released a new album and says he feels he’s moving in a new direction.

“I really feel like this new album is not a culmination of the things I’ve done, it’s a new beginning of the things I am going to do. I want to enjoy my career and having my family. I have a busy life, but it is a fulfilling life,” he said.

I read job ads in my spare time. People send me especially ridiculous ones just to make me laugh. The other day I read one that began promisingly enough with, “If you’re ready to work hard on a top-drawer team of hard-chargers, keep reading” and then went on to list twenty-two tedious, “Essential Job Qualifications” that could only serve to eliminate any actual top-drawer candidates who bothered to apply. After the hard-charger opening, that job ad fell right back into the usual territory (“are you good enough for us?“) without bothering to give the reader any good reason to consider the available job worth his or her time or interest.

The recruiting process is broken, and if we need evidence we only have to look at any job listing.

Here’s how a typical recruiting ad begins: “Acme Explosives has an immediate need for…” Really — Acme has a need? My husband, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, loves to say, “People in Hell need ice water.” The company has a need. So what? Is that supposed to make a top-drawer hard-charging job-seeker’s heart beat faster?

If we want to hire sharp people in our organizations, we need to market to them. We can’t assume they’ll happily crawl over whatever piles of broken glass we put in front of them (online honesty tests, writing tests, three-week Radio Silence zones, terse auto-responders, and the like) in order to work for us. We have to be willing to woo as well as vet them. And we have to put a human voice into our horribly bureaucratic, robotic job listings.

Here’s another one: “The Selected Candidate will possess nine years of experience in tax accounting.” The Selected Candidate will possess? Now we’re marketing to the talent community by talking right past them. This ad all but says “Yeah, the Selected Candidate will have this and we’ll interview that guy — not YOUR sorry ass.” It’s insulting to address job-seekers this way. Who’s ever seen commercial that describes its customers in the third person, as though the viewer couldn’t possibly be in the target audience? This is the opposite of marketing.

Unfortunately, too many HR chiefs and hiring managers labor under the delusion that sharp and switched-on people are dying to apply for their jobs, even when they’re not. Every day, a CEO tells me that it’s hard to find talent. They say that the only people they see in interviews are non-creative thinkers and yes-men (and -women). These executives don’t see their role in the dysfunctional-recruitment soap opera, which is keeping the smartest and sparkiest people away.

In the e-commerce world, marketers pay close attention to the abandonment rate for online shopping carts. When you start to make a purchase online and then drop out before the deal is done, that’s an abandoned cart. Corporate leaders should be paying just as close attention to the abandonment of applications on the company’s ATS (applicant tracking system) portal. When job-seekers start the process and then drop out, that’s a failure for the employer. If we knew how badly our employer branding (the kind that prospective job applicants see) was hurting us in the talent acquisition arena, we might spend more time and energy writing genuine, human job ads in plain English and rethinking the whole red-tape-laden hiring process.

Until we do that, we can keep kvetching about how hard it is to find talent, but we can only delude ourselves for so long. Eventually, we’re going to have to look in the mirror and see that we’ve created the talent shortages we complain about, by driving the best candidates — the ones with the most options in the talent marketplace, that is — away with a stick. There’s time to bring them back, if we act fast. Is your organization up to it?

Towards the end of January, United States Vice President Joe Biden participated in a “Fireside Hangout” on Google+ to talk about reducing gun violence. A week later it was the turn of Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz who used Google’s social network to discuss immigration reform.

And next up it will be US President Obama himself taking part in the 21st century equivalent of FDR’s famous radio addresses.

Days after delivering the State of the Union to Congress, and just as he did in 2012, the President will be answering a selection of top-voted questions in a live-streamed interview.

Selected participants will ask their own questions, but if you have something to say you can head to the White House YouTube channel and submit a video or text question there.

You can submit or vote on topics you’d like to hear the President address until 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, February 13. The hangout itself will be on Thursday at 4:50 p.m. ET.

So do you plan on getting involved and what questions would you like the President to answer?

Photo Credit: Pete Souza/The White House

With cloud services like MediaFire and Mega offering generous free storage straight off the bat, the spotlight slowly fades away from other players and their abysmal free space offers. Box, however, has decided if you can’t beat them, join them and is currently providing the same mind-boggling 50GB of free cloud storage, courtesy of Dell.

The offer has been available for a couple of days and comes with no expiration date on the storage limit. Even though it’s associated with Dell there is no limitation requiring you to sign up using a Dell device, such as computer or tablet. Any user can take advantage of the 50GB of free cloud storage just by providing the first name, last name, email address, password and phone number.

For those who embrace a mobile lifestyle, Box is a better match than MediaFire and Mega as it offers apps for Android, iOS, Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone. The service is also available on the newly-launched BlackBerry 10, courtesy of BlackBerry which develops the app.

Photo Credit: Sergej Khakimullin/Shutterstock

The Windows HOSTS file is based on a simple idea — it just redirects specific domain names to your preferred IP address — but this has some very useful applications. If you want to block access to a particular website, for instance, just add its domain name to HOSTS, point it to an IP address representing your local system (127.0.0.1, usually), and you won’t be able to reach the site in any browser.

But that’s just the start. You could also use HOSTS to block advertising servers, and known malicious sites. And sometimes malware will tweak your HOSTS file to gain control over your internet access. If you want to review all this then you could just open HOSTS in Notepad, but HostsMan could be a much better option — it’s a compact, portable and free HOSTS file manager with a stack of features.

Launch HostsMan as an administrator and you might start by viewing your own HOSTS file. Click Editor, the file will appear, and you can browse it to see what entries (if any) it contains.

There are plenty of editing options here. Right-click and you’ll find options to create, edit, disable or delete entries, copy them to and from the clipboard, and add comments. An Edit > Find option contains a powerful search feature, with regular expression support, to help you locate particular entries. And useful management features include options to delete the empty lines in a file, the comments, and more.

And better still, if you’re worried about malware then you can ask the program to look for possible hijacked HOSTS entries, or just display any which have been created or modified recently.

HostsMan has another very useful security function elsewhere, though in its Hosts Updater. This provides built-in access to seven popular HOSTS files which can help to block ad servers, known malicious sites, and so on. You can add more sources if necessary, then import these to update your own HOSTS file.

It’s worth keeping in mind that an incorrectly updated HOSTS file can cause problems, perhaps blocking access to sites you’d like to reach (especially relevant as this is a beta version, and bugs are to be expected). Fortunately HostsMan also includes a backup tool where you can save your current HOSTS file, and restore it later if necessary. Click Tools > Backup Manager, then Create Backup to save your current HOSTS. Or, if you want to return to the default Windows HOSTS setup with no redirections at all, click “* Original Hosts *” > Restore Backup.

And just in case this isn’t enough, HostsMan also contains several time-saving shortcuts. If a HOSTS file change doesn’t work right away, for instance, it could be because Windows has cached the previous IP address; click Tools > Flush DNS Cache to try again. Or, if you want to update or access the file yourself, there’s no need to manually browse to it: just click Tools > Open Hosts Folder, and there are menu entries to open it in Explorer, a command window or PowerShell.

There are plenty of powerful functions here, and as HostsMan 4 is also in beta right now it’s probably not a good choice for networking beginners.

If you’re already used to exploring your HOSTS file, though, the program should prove an excellent assistant which will make the management process very much easier.

Photo Credit Konstantinos Kokkinis/Shutterstock

With Tuesday's State of the Union address only 39 hours away (9:00 p.m. ET), we're putting the final touches on a week that's jam-packed with opportunities to respond to the speech, get answers to your questions and join an online video-chat with the President.

In addition to some things that have been really popular for past "SOTU" Addresses, we've got some exciting new features to introduce. Here's the rundown:

When the President addresses the nation, the White House will provide something you can't find anywhere else: an enhanced version of the speech that offers charts, facts and other info as the President speaks (check out last year's here). You can watch live on WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU, through the White House mobile apps for iPhone, Android and iPad, and also on the official White House presences on YouTube, Google+, Hulu, Facebook, and Ustream. And if you'd like, you can embed the stream on your own site.

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The Year of the Snake is considered one of the less auspicious in the 12-year Chinese zodiac cycle. And 2013 is the year of the Black Water Snake, which comes around once every 60 years and is seen as the least fortuitous. How China’s stock markets turn out after years of poor performance remains to be seen but the snake is providing banks and asset managers with plenty of food for thought. Many of them have been gazing into the crystal ball to see what 2013 may hold for Chinese markets.

Fidelity Worldwide investments highlights the ‘Snakes and Ladders’ that could influence Chinese equities this year. (They have a great accompanying illustration)

Fidelity’s Raymond Ma reckons  there are six ‘R’s’ that could act as ‘ladders’ to buoy Chinese equity markets this year: recovery, reverse, reform, reflation, re-rating and rally. Under snakes he names inflation, a continued depreciation of the Japanese yen, excessive corporate debt/equity issuance,  a prolonged euro zone crisis and an earlier-than-expected end to quantitative easing in the United States.

But past snake years  have been the worst of the cycle for world markets, analysts at CMC Markets point out. Their analysis shows that  the S&P 500 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng have generally posted losses, while UK returns have been below average. The Hang Seng has fared particularly poorly (down four snake years in a row with average losses of 16.7 percent) So, will the curse hold this year, CMC ask:

Will the year of the snake bite equities in 2013?

Agnes Deng, Head of HK China Equity at Baring Asset Management, is more optimistic. Water snakes have a reputation for transformation, in the same way that China’s economy is undergoing change. Moreover, Chinese zodiac snakes are female or yin, Deng says, contrasting the Snake with the “moody, broody, male yang energy” of the Dragon last year.  (Incidentally the supposedly auspicious Year of the Dragon, 2012, provided little cheer for Chinese equities). Deng says:

If the Black Water Snake holds true to form, it is our belief that the behaviour of the Chinese equity market in 2013 should be more suited to many investors than the unpredictability generally experienced last year under the gaze of the Dragon – a creature characterised by its dramatic and often volatile nature…..Like the Black Water Snake, the Chinese economy can be flexible, dynamic and is hard-working as it looks to achieve superior growth supported by what we see as strong fundamentals in the consumer sector, underpinned by rising domestic demand and a growing middle class.

She adds:

Like the Black Water Snake’s preference for having carefully thought-out tactics, we expect our bottom-up stock selection process to be of benefit, especially in the consumer and industrial sectors.

A lot may depend on the birth year of the investor however. Stephen Jen at SLJ Macro Partners:

In the Year of the Snake, there should be great fortune for those who are intuitive and cunning – the two traits of a snake.