In today’s global market companies and individuals alike must adapt quickly to changing environmental needs. One of the fastest growing segments in this realm is the use of online properties to market your company and gain customers. Unfortunately, with the growth of this industry too many individuals and companies now claim to effectively market online. From the traditional ad agencies to the graphic designers and even the web developers it seems everyone now plays in this space. So how do you distinguish who can effectively deliver from those who only partially understand the online portal? The simple answer, look for a certification; this is the quickest and easiest way to see if the company in question is serious about their online marketing. Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for August, 2008
US thrifts' lost $5.4B in 2Q, second largest ever
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. thrifts lost $5.4 billion in the second quarter and set aside a record amount to cover losses from bad mortgages and other loans.
Data from the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision released Wednesday show federally-insured savings and loan institutions posted their second-largest quarterly loss ever in the April-June period, after the $8.8 billion loss in the fourth quarter of last year. Heavily focused on mortgage lending, thrifts have been stung by mounting home-loan defaults.
How Much Can You Afford?
If you’re like many first-time homebuyers, chances are you’ve been spending your weekends driving around visiting open houses and new model homes. This is a great way to get a feel for what you want. The problem is that what you want isn’t always what you should get.
Before you start touring homes for sale, it’s important to start off with a budget so you know how much you can afford to spend. Knowing what mortgage payment you can handle will also help you narrow the field so you don’t waste precious time touring homes that are out of your reach.
117 troubled banks, highest level since 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of troubled U.S. banks leaped to the highest level in about five years and bank profits plunged by 86 percent in the second quarter, as slumps in the housing and credit markets continued. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data released Tuesday show 117 banks and thrifts were considered to be in trouble in the second quarter, up from 90 in the prior quarter and the biggest tally since mid-2003.
The FDIC also said that federally-insured banks and savings institutions earned $5 billion in the April-June period, down from $36.8 billion a year earlier. The roughly 8,500 banks and thrifts also set aside a record $50.2 billion to cover losses from soured mortgages and other loans in the second quarter.
Jamaica’s Bolt breaks 200 mark, gets sprint double
BEIJING (AP)—Usain Bolt of Jamaica broke the world record by winning the 200 meters in 19.30 seconds Wednesday night, becoming the first man since Carl Lewis in 1984 to sweep the 100 and 200 gold medals at an Olympics.
Bolt is the first man ever to break the world marks in both sprints at an Olympics. Not even Lewis or Jesse Owens managed that.
Showing what he can do when he runs at full speed all the way through the finish—something he hadn’t done yet in the Beijing Games—Bolt eclipsed the old record of 19.32 seconds set by Michael Johnson in Atlanta in 1996.
Wall Street pulls back as financials fall
NEW YORK – Wall Street retreated Monday after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell to their lowest levels in nearly 20 years on concerns that the government might need to bail out the mortgage financiers. Weakness in the overall financial sector sent the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 175 points.
Where did this financial turbulence come from?
How the subprime debacle got started and where it might end up. The most recent iteration of America’s economic system has its roots in a small meeting in Bretton Woods, NH, in 1944. The hope – and assumption – that developed during that meeting was that out of the victory of World War II, a single global trade and economic supremacy (potentially a nation state) would emerge, ending fascism and all other “isms”. In this meeting, there was an assent to certain financial dynamics, particularly an assent to the gold standard.
Fast forward to August, 1971. Facing many new economic hardships, the emergence of credible international technical and industrial competition, and unprecedented capital calls on the U.S. Treasury, the United Stated decided to supplant its previously established economic ground rules. Today, we have forgotten what happened in 1971.
Blue Cross of Idaho, Gold's Gym endorse Smokefree Boise
Idaho’s largest insurer and the biggest co-ed gym chain in the world are the latest supporters of an effort to ban smoking from Boise bars. Blue Cross of Idaho, which has 550,000 members, and Gold’s Gym, with more than 600 facilities in 42 states and 30 countries, have endorsed Smokefree Boise, adding to a growing list of high profile healthcare, fitness and business leaders backing the group.
Would You Judge A Real Estate Broker By His Blog?
The Washington Post reports that consumers are starting to judge real estate agents by their blogs. Almost 10% of real estate brokers are apparently blogging, a number that is likely to rise faster than that sketchy “up and coming” neighborhood you’ve heard about for years.
Microsoft's Midori — a future without Windows
According to a report, Microsoft isn’t just looking at the next version of Windows (no, not Mojave) for future OS possibilities, but is looking beyond the Windows architecture altogether with a project known as Midori. The new OS is still in the “incubation” phase (which puts it slightly closer to market than R&D projects), but Microsoft has admitted to its existence, and the Software Daily Times says at least one team in Redmond is actively working on the new architecture.
The basis for the platform centers around research related to Microsoft’s Singularity project, and envisions a distributed environment where applications, documents, and connectivity are blurred in a cloud-computing phantasmagoria which can be run natively or hosted across multiple systems. The researchers are working to create a concurrent / parallel distribution of resources, as well as a method of handling applications across separate machines — religiously-dubbed the Asynchronous Promise Architecture — which will set the stage for a backwards-compatible operating system built from the ground up, with networks of varying size in mind. Says the SD Times, “The Midori documents foresee applications running across a multitude of topologies, ranging from client-server and multi-tier deployments to peer-to-peer at the edge, and in the cloud data center. Those topologies form a heterogeneous mesh where capabilities can exist at separate places.” Like it technical? Hit the read link for an in-depth look at the possible shape of Microsoft’s future.
