Archive for October 28th, 2008

gzipped_tar writes to tell us that The Codeweavers “Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge” has ended in surprise and free software all day Tuesday (October 28, 2008) at the Codeweavers site. A while back Codeweavers gave President Bush a challenge to meet one of several goals before he left office. One of these goals was to lower gas prices in the Twin Cities below $2.79 a gallon, which has since transpired. “How was I to know that President Bush would take my challenge so seriously? And, give the man credit, I didn’t think there was *any* way he could pull it off. But engineering a total market meltdown - wow - that was pure genius. I clearly underestimated the man. I’m ashamed that I goaded him into this and take full responsibility for the collapse of any savings you might have. Please accept our free software as my way of apologizing for the global calamity we now find ourselves embroiled in.”

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MarkWhittington writes “NASA has unveiled a new prototype lunar rover, called the Chariot, a production version of which is hoped to be operational on the lunar surface by 2019. NASA is now testing the Chariot lunar rover in Arizona, on terrain that resembles the lunar surface.” Perhaps Arizona’s an even closer match to the moon’s surface than is Texas, or Moses Lake, WA where NASA was testing the last time we mentioned Chariot. (Here’s a bit of video from the Texas round.)

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In business school, MBA students play a marketing strategy game where they launch imaginary electronics products, using phantom research & development dollars and marketing expenditures to position the products as high-end or low-end, to market to certain audiences, and then to change the price point to attract the maximum sales possible. It’s a delicate game meant to emphasize how consumers value products; and how some won’t purchase a product if it’s too inexpensive; the low price devalues the item. It’s a quest for the perfect price.

Smartphones have been on that quest, with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) in the lead. No company seems to more attentively strategize its price points than Apple, and the iPhone has a storied history, first launched for $599 and $499 for the 8GB and 4GB models, respectively, followed swiftly by a $200 price cut for both products. Now the new 8GB iPhone 3G is $199 if you purchase it with an AT&T phone plan (and $299 for the 16GB version).

In a research note yesterday, analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham Research stated he’d done the analysis and Apple could safely sell the 8GB version for $99, a price point that, with the subsidy from AT&T, would protect its margins at 42.3% (I need to see the numbers on this), and certainly convince holdouts like me (the refurb Blackberry I use was free with the contract subsidy) that the iPhone is the thing. At this price, surely the game would be a landslide in Apple’s favor. The iPhone is more beautiful, more useful, and has more geeky cred than the Blackberry; at $99, I agree that the market would be won and to the iPhone conqueror would be the spoils.

BloggingStocksiPhone at $99: Would that be the smartphone market conqueror? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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White House, Treasury press banks to use aid to lend more - AFP


AFP

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The decline in U.S. home values continues. Home prices in 20 top U.S. cities declined at the fastest pace ever, on a year-over-year basis, as foreclosures increased and banks sought to unload homes by selling at cut-rate prices.

Home prices in a 20-city sample plunged 16.6% in August, on a year-over-year basis in, according to the S&P / Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price survey (pdf). The index has fallen each month since January 2007. Further, prices in a 10-city survey plummeted a record 17.7% in August on a year-over-year basis.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected home prices in the 20-city Case-Shiller index to decline 15.9-17.1% in August on a year-over-year basis.

Huge price declines in western U.S.

The areas with the largest annual percentage declines were: Phoenix, -30-7%, Las Vegas, -30.6%, Miami, 28.1%, San Francisco, -27.3%, Los Angeles, -26.7%, San Diego, -25.8%.

Not one Top 20 metro area experienced a year-over-year increase in home values as of August and only two cities saw an increase in home prices in the month of August: Cleveland, 1.1% and Boston, 0.2%. Prices in Denver were flat in August.

Continue reading Home prices plunge 16.6% in the past year - finally approaching a bottom?

BloggingStocksHome prices plunge 16.6% in the past year - finally approaching a bottom? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pickens writes “University of Pennsylvania biologists have discovered a mutation in fruit flies aptly named the ‘couch potato’ gene that grants them to simply chill out — entering a mild state of quasi-hibernation known as diapause, when winter arrives. ‘It’s not like they’re bears sleeping in a cave,’ says Paul Schmidt. ‘They just look like they’re a little bit more sluggish.’ The couch potato gene, first discovered in the early 1990s, got its nickname because flies with mutations in the gene became really sluggish and behaved abnormally. Tiny is known about the underlying evolutionary genetic architecture, but in diapause, the slacking off is far less severe. The flies’ bodily functions slow down, and they’re superior able to tolerate stress. The fruit fly gene might have implications for human health, as it can help biologists study the function of the nervous system and diseases such as epilepsy, refuting a current statement by a political candidate that fruit fly research has ‘little or nothing to do with the public good.’”

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mattOzan writes “On the tenth anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [PDF], Wired Magazine posits that the DMCA should be praised for catalyzing the interactive ‘2.0′ Web that we enjoy this day. While acknowledging the troublesome ‘anti-circumvention’ provision of the act, they claim that any harm caused by that’s far outweighed by the act’s “notice-and-takedown” provision and the safe harbor that this provides to intermediary ISPs. Fritz Attaway, policy adviser for the MPAA weighed in saying ‘It’s not perfect. But it’s better than nothing.’”

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Market Chatter — Corporate finance press digest - Reuters


Boston Globe

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Zeb writes “Scientists are marveling over a small female bar-tailed godwit somewhere in New Zealand who has a world record for non-stop flying — an epic 11,200 kilometers. A major international study into the birds has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B and it offers an explanation as to why the godwits fly so far from Alaska to New Zealand in a single bound. The birds flew non-stop for up to and covered more than 11,200km. The flight path shows the birds didn’t feed en route and would be unlikely to sleep.” The linked Wikipedia entry claims an even longer trip record, of 11,570 kilometers.

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