iandoh writes “Stanford researchers have found that voters are subconsciously swayed by candidates who share their facial features. In three experiments, researchers at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab worked with cheap, easy-to-use computer software to morph pictures of about 600 test subjects with photos of politicians. And they kept coming up with the same results: For the would-be voters who weren’t very familiar with the candidates or in perfect lockstep with their positions or political parties, the facial similarity was enough to clinch their votes.”

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Filed under: Products and services, Google (GOOG)

Even Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is feeling the economic pinch. Actually, what started as a pinch has turned into a train wreck, and now even the world’s largest web search provider will be slowing hiring and turning down the heat on possible acquisitions. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Bloomberg Television that advertising budgets are “under stress.” I’d state that’s an understatement.

In all likelihood, this will be Google’s toughest test in its 10-year history. Its entire business revolves around advertising income. Even though the company does it better than anyone — and new media advertising is finally becoming mainstream — the company’s exposure to an ongoing slowdown could be cause for concern. Although the company may “do no evil,” it will certainly have some profit evil creeping up on its results in some form soon.

Schmidt added that, “All of us are vulnerable . . . it’s a race between a contraction in advertising, which would affect everybody, and a very positive shift from offline to online.” The question is this: can Google take more of the dollars that are shifting to on the internet advertising faster than the overall contraction in advertising spending over the next year or so (or longer)? Given Google’s history, it will nearly certainly continue to be successful, but it’s hard to see the company taking such large chunks of market share that the advertising slowdown won’t chip away at its results.

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Filed under: Bad news, Consumer experience, Market matters, Money and Finance Today, Housing, Financial Crisis

More bad news on the struggling housing market today, as the Mortgage Bankers Association announced that last week mortgage applications dropped to an eight year low. This is another sign that people are not ready to jump back into the housing market just yet.

As we all know, home prices have been falling steadily over the past year, and we are all waiting to see the point where buyers decide that the price is right to jump back into the market. So far, that’s just not happening. According to today’s report, mortgage volume was 44% lower last week than the same period last year.

Refinancing applications were down 23.5% last week, and more importantly, mortgage applications to buy new homes fell 10.9% from the previous week. The last time weekly volume was this low was all the way back in December 2000.

Continue reading Mortgage applications drop to eight year low

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coondoggie writes “Nine rocket-powered cars will compete for NASA’s $2 million, 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, Oct. 24-25. The goal is to accelerate development of commercial Lunar Landers capable of bringing payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. NASA of course would expect to use some of the technology developed at the Challenge. To win the prize, teams must demonstrate a rocket-propelled car and payload that takes off vertically, climbs to a defined altitude, flies for a pre-determined amount of time, and then land vertically on a target that’s a fixed distance from the launch pad. After landing, the car must take off again within a pre-determined time, fly for a certain amount of time and then land back on its original launch pad.” Details about the teams involved with the competition are available at the X-Prize website. The event will be broadcast live via webcast next weekend.

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TechDirt notes the publication of the New Jersey voting machine study, the attempted suppression of which we’ve been discussing for a while now. The paper that the Princeton and Lehigh University researchers are releasing, as permitted by the Court, is “the same as the Court’s redacted version, but with a few introductory paragraphs about the court case, Gusciora v. Corzine.” What’s new is the release of a 90-minute evidentiary video — the researchers have asked the court for permission to release a shorter version that hits the high points, as the high-res video is about 1 GB in size. See TechDirt’s article for the report’s executive summary listing eight ways the AVC Advantage 9.00 voting machine can be subverted.

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Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Dell (DELL)

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) said yesterday that it will sell a 900-person customer support call center in El Salvador to an outsource company that handles support for huge global corporations. Stream Global Services, Inc. will take over the customer support center as Dell continues to find ways to slash costs as much as it can.

Stream Global indicated that it will enhance the center to handle upcoming support needs from emerging Latin American markets. My question is this: is Dell once again having an identity crisis about running its own support organization? After all, this is the company that outsourced some U.S.-based support to India a while back, an effort that fell flat on its face. Yes, there’s a difference between support centers in India that take care of U.S. customers and Latin American support centers taking care of Latin American customers.

Still, Dell should once and for all just outsource global support for its consumer product lines and call it a day. But wait a minute — isn’t the consumer market the one Dell has used in the last 18 months to claw its way back to growth after discovering consumer retail sales were a sales holy grail? Yes it is. And there are some heavy competitors in the commodity PC business these days, along with a market share-grabbing Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) to deal with. At this time, Dell, didn’t have any comment on the possible sale of other global call centers. The company probably does not know what it wants to do. It wouldn’t be the first time.

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AliasMarlowe writes “Stanley Miller performed the famous experiments in the 1950s showing that amino acids and other building blocks for biomolecules could be produced by passing lightning through a mix of easy hydrocarbons, water vapor, and ammonia (thought at the time to approximate the Earth’s early atmosphere). Other experiments approximated the environment around volcanic eruptions, but those results were not published. Following his death last year, a former student discovered the materials from those experiments, in labeled vials. Analysis of this material indicates that the conditions around volcanic eruptions (still thought to be representative of such events in the early Earth) resulted in a higher yield of amino acids than the simple lightning experiments, and resulted in a greater variety of amino acids.” Pharyngula has a discussion of the Science paper, including a graph of the amino acids produced.

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