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Monday, March 7, 2011
Rupert Murdoch at 80
Some critics may wish he would retire, but others believe the media mogul is at his most powerful
Rupert Murdoch turns 80 on Friday, which has prompted this MediaGuardian special looking back at the mogul's career and, in the case of this piece, looking forward into the future for News Corporation, the behemoth he built along the way. Yet while critics may wish the Australian-turned?American would simply retire, in truth the business he runs has never been more powerful than it is now, as he stands on the threshold of completing his biggest ever transaction, the �8bn or so buyout of BSkyB's other shareholders.
Those who work for Murdoch talk about a man reluctant to discuss his age ? although one long-serving London-based executive was advised to mention diets as a way of making conversation with a man careful to maintain his health despite a punishing travel schedule.
Even the suggestion he might be slowing up is dismissed internally. When this writer, while working at the Times, was advised by sources at HQ that Murdoch would "travel less" after it was announced that his son James would join the business to run News Corp Europe and Asia in 2007, the phrase was struck out by those more senior.
On the face of it, his recent moves could be argued as forming part of a tidying-up which prepares the company for whenever Murdoch does choose to retire. Not only is BSkyB ? the business previously run by his heir apparent and youngest son James Murdoch ? being brought into the fold, but there is now a company role for daughter Elisabeth following the agreed �415m purchase of her production company Shine. Both sit on the board ? as does brother Lachlan, the middle child from Rupert's second marriage, but he remains for the moment outside the business, building up media investments in Australia.
However, as News Corp's infernally complex capital structure ? and family interests ? have gradually been simplified there is little sign of Rupert losing his way. "I had lunch with him recently," says Kelvin MacKenzie, who edited the Sun through most of the 1980s. "He was going on about the iPad this and internet that. I think he's 80 going on 18." And while that may be something of an exaggeration , there is no obvious sign of the man's power diminishing.
Murdoch's great skill has ? again, and again ? been in deploying profits from one business to invest in growth elsewhere, creating the Sun, the Fox television network, and Sky. While other newspaper owners have been mesmerised by that business, Murdoch has simply scooped up papers and moved on. Back in 1987, after the Wapping restructuring, News International in the UK earned �150m ? which compares with �107.3m in 2008 and �27.3m in 2009 as the recession hit. So while the newspaper business has barely grown, and remains a drag on Wall Street's perception of the business, News Corp has diversified into TV so successfully that once the company completes the buyout of BSkyB it will generate at least $4bn of cash after tax a year.
"The question will rapidly become," says Rich Greenfield, a New York analyst with BTIG Research, "what will Rupert do with the cash?" News Corp has tended to trade at a discount to other integrated media groups, the likes of Disney and Time Warner, because of a "Murdoch discount" in which investors fear that the company's leader only reluctantly offers share buybacks or high dividends in preference to acquisitions. "He scares investors because he disregards near-term considerations."
There may remain no shortage of near-term controversies. The News of the World phone-hacking stink threatens to worsen in coming weeks, as more lawsuits emerge, and even Roger Ailes, the Fox News boss, has been hit by allegations that he encouraged a former colleague to lie to federal investigators. But News Corp's newspapers are rounding errors in a company on track to generate 75% of its $7.2bn operating profits from US cable channels and satellite broadcasters around the world next year.
On this prospectus it does not matter that Murdoch has consistently failed to get to grips with the internet, with the failure of MySpace the most obvious recent example. While businesses like the company's Fox film studio ? the Avatar blockbuster apart ? may be operating in a mature market, there is plenty of growth coming from subscription television, not just in the US, or with Sky in the UK, but with the earlier stage Sky operations in Italy or Germany. And it is James Murdoch's job to cast around for more countries to populate with more Skys to come.
Even the US Fox television network ? supposedly a mature business also ? is now targeting $1bn of profit (twice this year's anticipated level), partly because News Corp is hoping that it can run two $800m reality television hits in a year: American Idol where Simon Cowell used to judge, which has held up better than expected in the first year after his absence, and the new US X Factor, which comes to screens this autumn, and whose importance to Cowell and Fox is so great that it may see the impresario disappear from ITV.
Fast forward to 2015, and News Corp is predicted by BTIG Research to have worldwide revenues of about $44bn, with BSkyB included, and pre-tax profits of $8.7bn. When MacKenzie says that News Corporation is "in the best shape I can remember" his words are not those of a Murdoch-booster, but an accurate assessment of a remarkable 20-year recovery for a company that was once a phone call away from going under as the losses from the infant Sky soared.
It is, in short, an astonishingly bountiful inheritance, for a business that Murdoch has always intended to be run by his children, as his former deputy Peter Chernin told Steve Hewlett for a BBC radio documentary. Those who believe ? or hope ? that there is a strong sibling rivalry among the next generation are sorely mistaken, but the hard part will be keeping together the Murdoch Family Trust that owns nearly 40% of the voting shares when each of his six children by three marriages share an economic interest.
Yet, even that is some way in the future. Rupert Murdoch's battle to get the BSkyB deal through is unlikely to be his last significant act.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-80-biggest-deal
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superbikes phillip island 2011 Live online
Super bike World Championships Phillip Island
The SBK World Championships – Season 2008!
GP Philip Island, Australia
Superpole :: SBK 2011
Phillip Island, Australia
Event Introduction
Superbike racing is all about showcasing the latest generation of high-performance four-stroke street bikes, with seven manufacturers set to battle it out for the 2011 world championship – Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki, Ducati, BMW and Aprilia.
WATCH NOW
Much more than prototype-based grand prix racing, superbikes have a greater connection to the general public, because people can see the bikes they own being punted around on some of the finest race tracks in the world, including Australia’s very own Phillip Island.
The spectacular Phillip Island has one of the highest average speeds of any circuit in the world, and in the 2010 round Italian Max Biaggi (the eventual world champion) reached 319.8km/h down the main straight on his Aprilia V-four. That’s seriously potent performance.
WATCH NOW
The championship regulations allow four-cylinder bikes of up to 1000cc, or twins up to 1200cc. At the moment, Ducati is the only marque which is using a twin-cylinder configuration.
In 2011, the minimum weight for both twin-cylinder and four-cylinder bikes will be 165kg.
A superbike must remain in many aspects the same as the bike that can be bought in any dealership, including the body design. To be allowed to enter the world superbike title every manufacturer must produce a minimum quantity of a bike that must also be commercially available to the general public.
The championship also has a control slick race tyre, produced by Pirelli, giving all teams access to the same specification rubber to create closer and more exciting racing than ever before.
WATCH NOW
Source: http://www.zimbio.com/MotoGP/articles/ompjJcIxGAR/superbikes+phillip+island+2011+Live+online
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Boehner: House Will Defend DOMA; Courts, Not Obama, Should Decide
Speaker Boehner said President Obama focused on social issues instead of jobs, as voters wanted. That charge led a gay rights group, Human Rights Campaign, to accuse Boehner of hypocrisy for doing what he accused the president of.
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Sunday, March 6, 2011
Ireland ETF Unmoved by Elections
All the focus these days seem to be on the Middle East, but the Irish elections have drawn attention back to Ireland, though the Shares MSCI Ireland (NYSEArca: EIRL) exchange traded fund (ETF) has been lackluster since...
Source:
http://article.wn.com/view/2011/03/06/Ireland_ETF_Unmoved_by_Elections/
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Michael Bloomberg's Bubble Bursts
Fred Siegel & Sol Stern, New York Post
By FRED SIEGEL and SOL STERNLast Updated: 5:02 AM, March 6, 2011Posted: 11:45 PM, March 5, 2011In the narrative crafted by Michael Bloomberg’s public-relations team throughout the first nine years of his mayoralty, he was the fabulously successful businessman who saved New York’s economy after the 9/11 attacks and then went on to master urban governance without breaking a sweat. Along the way, we have been told relentlessly, Bloomberg became the nation’s leading education reformer, responsible for reducing by half the black-white achievement gap, while also...
By FRED SIEGEL and SOL STERNLast Updated: 5:02 AM, March 6, 2011Posted: 11:45 PM, March 5, 2011In the narrative crafted by Michael Bloomberg’s public-relations team throughout the first nine years of his mayoralty, he was the fabulously successful businessman who saved New York’s economy after the 9/11 attacks and then went on to master urban governance without breaking a sweat. Along the way, we have been told relentlessly, Bloomberg became the nation’s leading education reformer, responsible for reducing by half the black-white achievement gap, while also...
Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/03/06/michael_bloomberg039s_bubble_bursts_251560.html
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A Messaging System for All Smartphones
Tyler McIntyre got an iPhone in 2009. It didn't change everything, but it did frustrate the University of Miami freshman. He found himself waiting for somebody to implement Blackberry Messenger on the iPhone. He said to himself, "Y'know what, I'll just go ahead and do it."
It wasn't an outlandish claim. McIntyre, 19, became a Microsoft certified professional at age 16; by the end of high school, he had already created and sold two start-ups: a VoIP telecom service called Vigor Tel, and a Web hosting company called TMcProHost.
"I was always interested in this field of work," McIntyre says about growing up in New Jersey. "I really like technology and computers, and I kind of have a knack for how they connect and flow together."
To fund his new project, Tyler dug into his own pockets. He took the money he made from Vigor Tel and TMcProHost and used it to buy his own servers and hook up his network. Then, with his friend Sam Stern, he brainstormed names.
"Lucid came up, and we were like, 'That's a great name,'" McIntyre says. "It's easy to use, clear, and transparent."
McIntyre entered and won the University of Miami's Elevator Pitch Contest and about $40,000 worth of prizes and services for his company. McIntyre opted for $10,000 worth of legal work, as well as some Web development, Web design, and logo design from several local companies.
One month later, McIntyre launched Lucid Messenger—a cross-platform messaging application for Blackberry, iPhone, and Android—with four employees. Responsibilities were clear: Each employee was developing Tyler's software for a different phone platform.
Now, thanks to an inexpensive network overhead and the fact that Tyler owns all his own servers, Lucid is taking off. The company has about 20 employees—all working virtually from the Punjab region of India—developing various projects, including one to help students make schedules, a game for the iPad, and intelligent voice-recognition software that allows users to make restaurant reservations.
Balancing his company, his ambitions and his schoolwork—Tyler is triple-majoring in entrepreneurship, marketing and finance—has been no easy task.
"If you talk to people who know me," McIntyre says, "I'm a very good time-manager, so I always make time for myself, time for work, and time for school."
While McIntyre admits his schoolwork always comes first, he says is satisfied about the state of his business. In fact, McIntyre just recently started two other venture-backed companies.
About a quarter of a million people around the world use Lucid software. "We are pretty successful," says McIntyre. "We are probably going to be in the six-figure range this year, in 2011."
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/inc/headlines/~3/Cf3nIPXsgII/lucid-messenger.html
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ebooks on borrowed time
HarperCollins says US libraries can lend its ebooks only 26 times as print books have to be replaced after that
Ebooks were supposed to be indestructible. Where you had disk-space, you had literature ? in perpetuity. Which is bad news for publishers now deprived of that extra round of sales revenue engendered by books being dropped in baths.
HarperCollins has got wise to this: it has announced that US libraries will be allowed to lend ebooks only up to 26 times. Its sales president, Josh Marwell, believes that's only fair: 26, he claims, is the average number of loans a print book would survive before having to be replaced. HarperCollins UK won't rule out applying this ebook strategy to British libraries - and should it do so, it can expect a frustrated reaction. "Clearly, printed books last a lot longer than 26 loans," says Philip Bradley, vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
His claim seems to stand up: in a YouTube video, two librarians from Oklahoma took a random selection of five HarperCollins bestsellers from their shelves and showed they were all in perfectly readable condition. A pristine copy of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, borrowed 48 times, would have been needlessly re-bought, while Stuart Woods's Swimming to Catalina, still going at 120 loans, would be on its fifth, pointless reincarnation.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/06/ebooks-on-borrowed-time
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Dead browser walking: Microsoft launches official IE6 extinction coutdown
Forward-thinking, progressive Scandinavia leads the way, with all its nations reporting less than 2% share for IE6. China and South Korea laughs at your pleas, reporting an amazingly high 34.5% and 24.6%, respectively.
The site even suggests some ways you can help accelerate the process -- such as helping your friends update and plastering banners on your own website. We're holding out for the "Uncle Steve wants YOU to upgrade!" posters.
Dead browser walking: Microsoft launches official IE6 extinction coutdown originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Architects do matter, Mr Gove
The education secretary claims architects have 'creamed off' money that could have gone to teachers. It's time he opened his eyes to the far-reaching benefits of a beautifully designed school
If Michael Gove were a building, he would leak. He would crack and crumble on faulty foundations. He would be windy, but also overheat. Behind a pretentious facade, he would be shoddy in design and execution.
So far, the secretary of state for education has had to apologise for the hasty and inaccurate way he announced the cancellation of school building projects, and been told by a judge that his failure to consult was "so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power". He keeps giving not-quite-true information to Parliament, for example that a college in Doncaster, a pilot project of the government, took an impressively short 10 weeks to procure. It actually took 22 weeks.
On 14 February he told the House of Commons that "it's a scandal? millions of pounds were spent on consultants" on the design of new schools. "One individual, in one year, made more than �1m as a result of his endeavours." This might be an impressive fact, were it not that he is referring to a case in Birmingham in which the sum was �700,000, was paid over four years and covered the work of five advisers at different times, as part of a programme of more than 80 schools, costing more than �1 billion.
Yet Gove presses on, seemingly untroubled by evidence, common sense or decency, with his campaign to lower the quality of the buildings in which the nation's children are taught. He has repeatedly attacked architects for "creaming off" money that could be better spent on teaching. He recently smirked to a conference that "we won't be getting any award-winning architects" to design new schools, "because no one in this room is here to make architects richer". The message is that a well-designed environment is an irrelevance: teaching is all that matters.
There has been talk that schools can be churned out in bulk, the way Tesco builds its supermarket or McDonald's its outlets. To dot the country with standardised McSchools is not obviously consistent with the government's localism agenda, or its interest in a "happiness index", but never mind. One contractor, Willmott Dixon, has punted some suggestions as to what such schools might look like. These look plausible, if drab, on unencumbered, level sites. But, like Daleks encountering a staircase, they need help when they hit a slope, or a constrained urban site, or the individual needs of particular schools. Standardisation has its uses, but it needs design to do well.
To Gove's rejection of design, Phil Blinston, executive head of the Minster School in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, says: "It's bizarre. I just don't get it. Why wouldn't we want to factor in everything architects have learned from other buildings? Youngsters are growing up visually articulate. Why would they not expect to see that in school? Why would you expect them to lower their standards?"
The Minster School has been using an award-winning building for four years, designed by architects Penoyre & Prasad. Blinston says: "Our results were good and continued to rise with the new building. Our behaviour has improved." It has good acoustics and natural light, which "have a profound effect on the emotional state of children, which helps their learning".
Its circulation works smoothly, without "one-way systems, keep left signs or massive numbers of rules". Hidden spaces "where vulnerable kids fear to tread" are designed out, so you don't need "people standing guard". It is designed so that locals can use the building in evenings and school holidays, so this public asset is used to the full.
"I'm not talking about fancy architecture," he says ? and a limited budget means the school has a simple-going-on-basic look ? "but it's about enabling people to feel good. Good design produces a relaxed community. If we say education is important, we can demonstrate that by putting children in decent environments." Buildings cannot do a teacher's job, in other words, but they can make good teaching better and bad teaching less so.
To which it might be added that, if environment were irrelevant to learning, then Eton College, the alma mater of many of the present government, would sell its agreeable slab of Berkshire real estate and move to low-cost units in a business park in Slough.
Gove is very much right about one thing, which is that the last government's �55bn Building Schools for the Future programme, which aimed to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in the country, was a monstrously wasteful and cumbersome process, which often led to very poorly designed schools. The "creaming off", however, was not being done by architects, who were, instead, among the first to point out the faults of the programme.
The main beneficiaries were the financial institutions and their advisers who funded the programme, who will earn handsome returns and bonuses for years to come at the taxpayers' expense. They are followed by the big construction companies, several of which were fined in 2008 by the Office of Fair Trading for breach of competition law ? ie price-fixing ? on a range of project types. They were, to coin a phrase, creaming off the funds of clients, including local authorities.
This unfortunate blemish has not impeded the same companies from securing huge education contracts, and it would be stretching credulity to think that price-fixing never now happens in school building. Yet there has been no ministerial slap. Rather, Gove's architect-free vision of the future places ever-greater reliance on the men with the hard hats, the handshakes and the plausible paperwork.
There are also the lawyers who expensively write and rewrite the byzantine contracts, at hourly rates several times greater than architects', and project managers, who do less, and less useful work than architects for a similar total cost. Worst of all was the waste inherent in BSF's processes: it cost contractors up to �3m to bid for a package of schools. They would expect to win one in three, meaning that they would want to recover �9m from successful bids just to cover their bidding costs.
Gove's department is unable to produce the figures on which he makes his assertions, saying that "detailed data on individual projects was held locally to minimise the regulatory burden on projects and project reporting". It is, however, possible to find out that architects' fees have been between 2.5% and 5% of construction cost. If capital costs other than construction are included, this can drop to well under 2% of the total. If, as happened under BSF, future running costs are included in the contract, architects' fees become a tiny proportion. Most architects working on schools will tell you that it pays less well than almost any other kind of work and is sometimes loss-making. One says that schools work "is threatening to put us out of business".
In other words, in the torrents of waste surrounding school building, good architects are value for money. If budgets get tighter, we will need their skills to make the most of them. If, as seems likely, future work is more about refurbishment rather than glamorous new buildings, architects' adaptability will help. If there is more standardisation of new buildings, it needs design intelligence to do it well. Gove seems to think that architects are all bow-tied ponces longing only to inflict their fantasies on the public. They could be his greatest allies.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/mar/06/michael-gove-architecture-in-schools
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'We're always being called dirty Jews'
Antisemitic comments allegedly made by the designer John Galliano come as no surprise in the Marais quarter of Paris
Like most Paris schools, the Ecole des Hospitali�res-Saint-Gervais bears a sombre plaque. It reads: "165 Jewish children from this school, deported to Germany during the second world war, were exterminated in the Nazi camps. Do not forget."
In this district, known as the Marais, the heart of Paris's oldest Jewish quarter, gay bars rub shoulders with falafel caf�s, kosher restaurants, synagogues and prayer rooms. Its labyrinthine streets have been home to Jews on and off since the 13th century. Ten days ago, however, it also played host to John Galliano.
The alleged infamous outburst of the Dior designer, who has now been sacked, in which he is said to have abused a Jewish woman and her Asian boyfriend, was offensive on many levels ? not only because of what he allegedly said, but because of where he said it. It was in a bar just a few paces from the Hospitali�res-Saint-Gervais that the couturier, who is British but has lived in the French capital for two decades, was arrested. And it was also where, last year, he was filmed telling two women he believed to be Jewish that he loved Hitler.
His reported behaviour has shocked France and the fashion world. Yet in what locals call the pletzl ? "little place" in Yiddish ? it provoked little surprise. Local residents and traders say that the insult "sale juif" (dirty Jew) is a fact of daily life; asking a local if they have suffered abuse provokes a quizzical stare as if you are trying to be funny. "Bien s�r" ("of course") is the most common reply.
"It's stating the obvious," says one kippah-wearing youngster in the Rue des Rosiers, the Jewish quarter's main street. "We hear what Galliano said, or versions of it, every day, sometimes several times every day." Like many I speak to, he prefers not to be named.
Standing in the doorway of a grocery shop, Dan points to his wide-brimmed black hat. "My 80-year-old neighbour told me that when she was growing up they used to say we Jews wore these hats to hide our horns, and long black coats to hide our tails," he says, laughing.
"She would tell me not to let my boys wear their [skull] caps in case 'they' come back. More than 50 years after the war, she still thought it could happen again."
At the Sacha Finkelsztajn pastry shop, famous for its apple strudel and cheesecake, two women shrug when Galliano's alleged antisemitic diatribe is mentioned. Over the road in the Panzer, a grocery store, the shop assistant refuses to talk about Galliano. "We're always being called 'dirty Jews'; there's always been antisemitism here and there always will be. It upsets me, but it doesn't shock me." Galliano was filmed telling the two women he thought were Jewish that their relatives would have been "fucking gassed".
In La Perle, the trendy bar where the designer ? who denies being antisemitic ? was arrested after another alleged outburst, J�r�me says: "France invented the term 'antisemitism'."
He says he would like to write a book on "happy" events in Jewish history, but adds that he would need time to research some. "I find it depressing that whenever I talk to my son about Jewish history it's just one long list of terrible events."
Like a sore that never completely heals, antisemitism erupts in France, which has the biggest Jewish community in Europe, with depressing regularity. Toni Kamins, the American author of The Complete Jewish Guide to France, observes that since Roman times Jews have been subject to vilification and humiliation. It is a history scarred with mass expulsions, forced conversions to Christianity, crippling taxation, segregation and "both systematic and random physical violence and murder".
The French revolution and the early 19th century saw the country's Jewish citizens emancipated. But the undercurrent of hatred persisted, culminating in the Dreyfus affair in 1894, with the trial and false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer of Jewish descent, which is often described as one of the most influential events in the modern history of French Jewry. Dreyfus became a byword for antisemitism.
At the time of Nazi occupation in 1940, as many as 9,000 Jews lived in the Marais. Many of them were among the estimated 76,000 French Jews who were deported between 1942 and 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most were exterminated on arrival.
In 1982, after a terrorist bomb planted outside the Copernic synagogue in Paris killed four people ? only one of them Jewish ? the then prime minister, Raymond Barre, spoke of "a heinous act" that had struck "innocent French people". When a British-born rabbi, Michael Williams, tried to visit the injured in hospital, he says he was told: "Get the hell out of here. You're responsible for this."
Then, in 2006, a 23-year-old mobile-phone salesman was kidnapped and horrifically tortured for three weeks before being left for dead because he was Jewish and his Muslim attackers assumed his family had money.
Until recently the extreme-right Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen was the political face of antisemitism in France. Since his daughter, Marine, became leader, it has moved away from historical revisionism and has its sights on France's Muslim population.
In the Marais, many Jews now blame antisemitism on immigrants from France's former north African colonies, and on the country's traditional special relationship with Arab countries.
The Jewish community's Protection Service documented 466 reported antisemitic incidents in 2010 ? down from a 10-year peak of 974 in 2004 ? but says many more go unreported. It says most attacks can be linked to Muslim fundamentalists.
Politically, the "Jewish question" is often a scratch from the surface in France. A fortnight ago Le Monde reported that French internet surfers searching for information on politicians typed a name followed by "Juif" ("Jew") more frequently than in any other nation. Olivier Ertzscheid, an internet specialist at Nantes University, said this could "reveal the mentality" of the country.
A French newspaper website recently asked: "Is France ready for a Jewish president?" Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and a potential candidate in next year's presidential elections, was recently described by an opponent as "cosmopolitan" and "not the image of rural France", both well-known French euphemisms for being Jewish.
J�r�me believes the idea of the "enemy within" ? epitomised by the Dreyfus case ? is a cause of antisemitism that is unique to France. "I think it makes some people angry that Jewish people are so well integrated that, while they know we are here, they don't know who we are."
He describes a Gallic attitude to its Jewish population that is two-faced: "The Jews who were deported and died during the second world war were mostly denounced by French people, but those French Jews who remained in France and lived were saved by French people."
It is 4.30pm, and across the other side of the Marais from La Perle the bell rings at the Jewish school. Pupils do not stream out of the door. Instead, a nervous-looking man with a walkie-talkie propels them into waiting cars.
In his grocery store, not far from Goldenbergs, the restaurant that was targeted by terrorists in 1982 and is now a men's clothing shop, Dan says that local people live in fear of attack. But he adds: "It's a peaceful place on the whole. We have a Jewish saying: you can tell what's in the heart of a man by how he behaves when he's drunk, when he's angry and when he has money. I think we have seen what's in the heart of Galliano."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/06/john-galliano-antisemitism-marais
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Michael Bloomberg's Bubble Bursts
Fred Siegel & Sol Stern, New York Post
By FRED SIEGEL and SOL STERNLast Updated: 5:02 AM, March 6, 2011Posted: 11:45 PM, March 5, 2011In the narrative crafted by Michael Bloomberg’s public-relations team throughout the first nine years of his mayoralty, he was the fabulously successful businessman who saved New York’s economy after the 9/11 attacks and then went on to master urban governance without breaking a sweat. Along the way, we have been told relentlessly, Bloomberg became the nation’s leading education reformer, responsible for reducing by half the black-white achievement gap, while also...
By FRED SIEGEL and SOL STERNLast Updated: 5:02 AM, March 6, 2011Posted: 11:45 PM, March 5, 2011In the narrative crafted by Michael Bloomberg’s public-relations team throughout the first nine years of his mayoralty, he was the fabulously successful businessman who saved New York’s economy after the 9/11 attacks and then went on to master urban governance without breaking a sweat. Along the way, we have been told relentlessly, Bloomberg became the nation’s leading education reformer, responsible for reducing by half the black-white achievement gap, while also...
Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/03/06/michael_bloomberg039s_bubble_bursts_251560.html
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Finding Students the Cheapest Textbooks
College professors offer little notice on buying class textbooks, so typically, students have little choice but to buy the books on campus.
"[University bookstores] are good at making it easy and being right there," says Richard Mondello, a junior computer science major at Tufts University. "What they're not good at is giving students good prices."
In Mondello's first semester at Tufts University in 2008, he spent $190 on a single physics textbook at the campus bookstore. The same book was $90, new, on Amazon.
"Students don't know better, and they think their bookstore's looking out for them, but unfortunately, they're not always," Mondello says. "At some schools, it's egregious."
A year later, Mondello was working on a final project for his Web programming course with his friend Michael White, along with Michael Walker, a Bard student visiting Tufts for two semesters. Upon the project's completion, White approached his two partners with an idea to put together a textbook-comparison-shopping website that would combine the convenience of the bookstore with the best prices on the Internet.
"After that Web programming class and that group project, it dawned on us that we could build something real now," Mondello says. "We can build something that helps people."
While most students returned home for the winter holidays, once the fall semester ended, Mondello, Walker, and White got to work on their new project, which they called "GetchaBooks." Their idea for the interface was extremely simple.
"All the student does is go to GetchaBooks, put in their courses—not their books, they just tell us the courses—and we'll look up all the books for them, and then shop around," Mondello explains.
Two-and-a-half weeks later, winter break was over, and the first version of GetchaBooks was ready. The trio marketed the new service with posters and plugs on the Tufts students' Web portal, "and it spread virally from there," Mondello says. "Within that first week back to campus, we made money."
That summer, Mondello, Walker, and White had internships in New York, California, and Massachusetts, respectively. but despite the distance, all three continued developing GetchaBooks. After getting home from their day jobs, all three GetchaBooks founders would work remotely on the project, revamping the look and tweaking the interface until it became what you see today.
Two years later, despite a gradual increase in users, the GetchaBooks team remains small. And GetchaBooks is just where the core team wants to be.
"We want to keep the product pretty pure," Mondello says. "It does one thing, and it solves the problem of buying your text books. We're pretty happy with the breadth of what we do."
While the majority of the work falls on these three students, luckily for the founders, working on GetchaBooks seldom gets in the way of classes.
"We're busy twice a year—when people come back to campus in September, and when people come back to campus in January," Mondello says. "We do what we have to do to keep the business running over the semester, but we really dig our feet into it when the summer comes or when winter break comes because the semester is over to really work on the product. It's a seasonal business, and the season is convenient for us, as students."
The service, which originally supported only 30 schools, now supports more than 500 schools. The tricky part is getting the product in front of more people. Nonetheless, the goal remains the same, Mondello says: "Our goal for GetchaBooks is to save as many students as much money on their textbooks."
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/inc/headlines/~3/vbpS6fIZPhc/getchabooks.html
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Stocks slide despite encouraging jobs report
It should have been a banner day for U.S. stocks Friday as the Labor Department released its best jobs report since May 2010, when a temporary spike of federal census hiring pushed job creation above 400,000.
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Superbike World Championship 2011 - Phillip Island
Super bike World Championships Phillip Island
The SBK World Championships – Season 2008!
GP Philip Island, Australia
Superpole :: SBK 2011
Phillip Island, Australia
Event Introduction
Superbike racing is all about showcasing the latest generation of high-performance four-stroke street bikes, with seven manufacturers set to battle it out for the 2011 world championship – Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki, Ducati, BMW and Aprilia.
WATCH NOW
Much more than prototype-based grand prix racing, superbikes have a greater connection to the general public, because people can see the bikes they own being punted around on some of the finest race tracks in the world, including Australia’s very own Phillip Island.
The spectacular Phillip Island has one of the highest average speeds of any circuit in the world, and in the 2010 round Italian Max Biaggi (the eventual world champion) reached 319.8km/h down the main straight on his Aprilia V-four. That’s seriously potent performance.
WATCH NOW
The championship regulations allow four-cylinder bikes of up to 1000cc, or twins up to 1200cc. At the moment, Ducati is the only marque which is using a twin-cylinder configuration.
In 2011, the minimum weight for both twin-cylinder and four-cylinder bikes will be 165kg.
A superbike must remain in many aspects the same as the bike that can be bought in any dealership, including the body design. To be allowed to enter the world superbike title every manufacturer must produce a minimum quantity of a bike that must also be commercially available to the general public.
The championship also has a control slick race tyre, produced by Pirelli, giving all teams access to the same specification rubber to create closer and more exciting racing than ever before.
WATCH NOW
Source: http://www.zimbio.com/MotoGP/articles/ECeI8YkAhm6/Superbike+World+Championship+2011+Phillip
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Saturday, March 5, 2011
Some Antarctic ice forms from the bottom up
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Some of Antarctica's ice sheet is formed by water re-freezing from below not just by snow falling on top as was traditionally thought, findings showed on Thursday that will help scientists project effects of climate change. Experts are seeking to understand the frozen continent since even a small thaw could swamp low-lying coastal areas and cities. Antarctica contains enough ice to raise world sea levels by about 57 meters (187 ft) if it ever all melted....
Source:
http://article.wn.com/view/2011/03/03/Some_Antarctic_ice_forms_from_the_bottom_up_6/
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Australian Grand Prix Live Online
Super bike World Championships Phillip Island
The SBK World Championships – Season 2008!
GP Philip Island, Australia
Superpole :: SBK 2011
Phillip Island, Australia
Event Introduction
Superbike racing is all about showcasing the latest generation of high-performance four-stroke street bikes, with seven manufacturers set to battle it out for the 2011 world championship – Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki, Ducati, BMW and Aprilia.
WATCH NOW
Much more than prototype-based grand prix racing, superbikes have a greater connection to the general public, because people can see the bikes they own being punted around on some of the finest race tracks in the world, including Australia’s very own Phillip Island.
The spectacular Phillip Island has one of the highest average speeds of any circuit in the world, and in the 2010 round Italian Max Biaggi (the eventual world champion) reached 319.8km/h down the main straight on his Aprilia V-four. That’s seriously potent performance.
WATCH NOW
The championship regulations allow four-cylinder bikes of up to 1000cc, or twins up to 1200cc. At the moment, Ducati is the only marque which is using a twin-cylinder configuration.
In 2011, the minimum weight for both twin-cylinder and four-cylinder bikes will be 165kg.
A superbike must remain in many aspects the same as the bike that can be bought in any dealership, including the body design. To be allowed to enter the world superbike title every manufacturer must produce a minimum quantity of a bike that must also be commercially available to the general public.
The championship also has a control slick race tyre, produced by Pirelli, giving all teams access to the same specification rubber to create closer and more exciting racing than ever before.
WATCH NOW
Source: http://www.zimbio.com/MotoGP/articles/RrZ2aD4qdmS/Australian+Grand+Prix+Live+Online
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Bringing Fixed-gear Bikes to the Masses
There was no business plan. There was no market research. For Jonathan Shriftman and Jake Medwell, their business just seemed logical; they wanted a product they couldn't afford, so they found a cheaper way to make it. But then a dreamy thing happened: Everyone else wanted one too.
At the University of Southern California, where the two business partners met (Jake is still enrolled; Jonathan graduated in 2010), most students get around on mountain bikes, beach cruisers, or skateboards. But Shriftman and Medwell started noticing a new type of bicycle appear around campus: a fixed-gear bicycle, or as it's commonly called, a "fixie."
"They were the ones chasing down buses and doing all the cool track stands and skids," says Schriftman. "Jake and I were like, 'that's what we want to ride!'"
Over lunch one afternoon on campus, Shriftman and Medwell talked about their mutual affection for these bikes. This conversation ultimately spawned Solé Bicycles, the one-stop-online-shop for inexpensive fixies.
According to the Shriftman, the bottom-of-the-line fixed gear bikes retail from $800 to $1,000—putting them largely out of the price reach for most college students. So Shriftman and Medwell contacted manufacturers all over the world, searching for the cheapest offer. They ended up securing a deal with a manufacturer in China.
After working with the designer and manufacturer to perfect the prototype, the co-founders scraped together cash from family and friends to purchase 150 bikes. Without a functional website, the bikes sold out within a few days. Word of their inexpensive fixies, which retail for $310, spread fast. The pair connected with Gilt Group, the online flash retailer, and the stock they offered sold out in seven minutes. Their next order of 1,000 bikes sold out in a month.
The two fraternity brothers speak with a laid-back, chilled-out Southern California vernacular. They are not business partners who wear suits to meetings; they say things like "rad" and "gnarley" without a tinge of irony. When asked if they plan to get a traditional business loan, Medwell scoffs. "No," he says. "We don't do things the traditional way."
Just when their cool, surfer exteriors seem directly at odds with their aggressive entrepreneurial exploits, it becomes clear the two have been hustling for years. Through college they were adept at both organizing neighborhood car washes or importing Air Force One sneakers from China to sell directly to friends.
So are they savvy businessmen or L.A. hipsters? Perhaps just a bit of both.
While they work ot expand Solé Bicyles, the pair says they haven't touched a cent of their revenue. "Every dollar we make, we put towards our next order," says Medwell, and adds that they are actively looking for investors.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/inc/headlines/~3/bXj_DZZc17E/sole-bicycles.html
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N64oid for Android completes the retro Nintendo emulator trinity
Yongzh, the same developer behind NESoid, SNESoid, GameBoid, Ataroid, and more (!), has finally released the last and most important Android retro emulator: N64oid.
N64oid looks and feels like Yongzh's other emulators, and like NESoid it has the option of using hardware keys (if you have them!) or an on-screen gamepad. We won't lie: gaming with an on-screen controller is nothing like the real thing; it works, but pulling off combos, like those required in fighting games, is not easy.
There's an option to use your Android device's accelerometer as the N64's analog stick, however, which could make RPGs like Zelda a lot easier to play. Also, all told, Yongzh's emulators have been downloaded around 5 million times, so the on-screen gamepad is obviously not that bad.
Game compatibility is apparently very good, and if you have a high-end device like the Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy or Droid, games should run very smoothly. As far as finding games to play with N64oid, if you still have your old N64 cartridges in a cupboard somewhere (who doesn't?), you can find ROM backups with a quick Google search.
We'll hopefully have a hands-on review of N64oid later today, so we'll be able to tell you first-hand just how good (or bad) it is.
Read our hands-on review of N64oid.
N64oid on the Android Market - $5.99
N64oid for Android completes the retro Nintendo emulator trinity originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 06:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Some Antarctic ice forms from the bottom up
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Some of Antarctica's ice sheet is formed by water re-freezing from below not just by snow falling on top as was traditionally thought, findings showed on Thursday that will help scientists project effects of climate change. Experts are seeking to understand the frozen continent since even a small thaw could swamp low-lying coastal areas and cities. Antarctica contains enough ice to raise world sea levels by about 57 meters (187 ft) if it ever all melted....
Source:
http://article.wn.com/view/2011/03/03/Some_Antarctic_ice_forms_from_the_bottom_up_6/
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Zacks Releases Four Powerful 'Buy' Stocks: Brush Engineered Materials, LINN Energy LLC, Cliffs Natural Resources and Westlake Chemical
You are already following Personalize your news | Follow the latest news about the companies. ADD BW | CLF | WLK | LINE Hide Download image...
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Triple Eight Engineering History
HI
Wondering if anyone can help me with researching the History of triple8 race engineering.Any information would be a great help.
Like when...
Wondering if anyone can help me with researching the History of triple8 race engineering.Any information would be a great help.
Like when...
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Anger at Shahbaz Bhatti funeral
Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani leads mourners but few believe he can bring Christian minister's killers to justice
The flag-draped coffin holding the bullet-pocked body of Shahbaz Bhatti lurched violently as anguished mourners shouldered it from the Catholic church in Islamabad, chanting angry slogans.
"How many Bhattis will they kill?" they shouted, in a twist on a slogan usually reserved for the Bhutto clan. "A Bhatti will rise from every household," came the reply.
Bishop Andrew Francis watched from the church door. In life Bhatti, Pakistan's minister for minorities, promoted dialogue between faiths, he said. But in death that sense of tolerance had evaporated. "At the moment, it's zero," Bishop Francis said.
The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, led mourners at a tightly guarded funeral service for Bhatti on Friday , a few miles from the street where he was shot by Taliban assassins.
Bhatti's death was a black day for Pakistan, Gilani said, promising that his government would "do the utmost to bring the culprits to justice".
Few Christians believe that will happen, and reminders of the fragile security situation surrounded the funeral. Police sealed off the church as ministers and diplomats arrived in armoured, black-tinted vehicles, watched by police snipers on nearby rooftops. Inside bulky suited bodyguards wearing earpieces and carrying weapons watched over the congregation.
The security contrasted with the lax protection afforded to Bhatti, 42, Pakistan's only Christian minister, who was alone with his driver when the killers struck. The interior minister, Rehman Malik, on Thursday said Bhatti was partly responsible for his own death because he had failed to ask for a police escort. "I think it was his mistake," he said. "It was his own decision."
But other top officials have admitted that Bhatti, the recipient of numerous death threats, had requested a bulletproof car and more secure house; the Express Tribune newspaper reported that two cabinet ministers had threatened to quit in protest at his death.
The killing comes almost two months after the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer was gunned down in Islamabad. Taseer also espoused changes to Pakistan's blasphemy laws, which are used to discriminate against minorities. In the weeks after Taseer's death, lawyers flung rose petals on his killer, Mumtaz Qadri, and celebrated him at street rallies. Now Pakistan's Christian community, estimated to number three million, is scrambling to reassess its position in society.
The presence of Gilani at the funeral was a sign of "profound hope", said Bishop Francis. "It means that God never fails his promises, and will never fail us."
Outside church, Christians were worried. "We have been orphaned," said Sunila Javaid, a teacher from Lahore. "Who will raise our voice now?"
One man pointed out that the two-minute silence in parliament for Bhatti days earlier had been a compromise, because no politician dared lead a prayer for a man killed on account of blasphemy.
Javaid said the law against blasphemy, which is punishable by death, had become a psychological sword hanging over Pakistan's minorities. "You have to be careful what you think, what you say, who is listening. It's like Big Brother over your shoulder," she said.
The government has all but abandoned any reform. Bowing to pressure from conservative religious groups ? and perhaps fearful for their lives ? senior ministers say that they will not touch the law.
They are also grappling with economic crisis and resurgent militancy. As Gilani spoke in Islamabad a bomb ripped through a Sufi shrine at Nowshera, 70 miles to the west, killing at least eight people and injuring 30.
After the ceremony in Islamabad a helicopter flew Bhatti's body to his home village in central Punjab, where thousands of mourners waited for a burial tinged with palpable anger.
Women with black flags called for Bhatti's assassins to be caught and hanged. "Bhatti, your blood will bring revolution," shouted mourners as his body was taken to the burial site in an ambulance.
"These terrorists must be hanged publicly to stop them from committing such brutal crimes," Hina Gill, a member of the Christian Minority Alliance, told Reuters. "These terrorists are wearing the mask of religion to defame religion."
Finally, Bhatti's body was lowered into a grave. The softly spoken politician's message, a priest said by the grave, had been "to purge Pakistan of killers and hatred". With his death there are fewer signs that message is being heard.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/shahbaz-bhatti-funeral
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A working life: The app developer
Programs for mobiles and iPads are big business, but taking them from concept to reality isn't easy. Justin James tells Mark King how it's done
Many of those familiar with the world of smartphones and other handheld computers will have daydreamed of inventing a killer app, one of the simple and often brilliantly useful little programs that run on touchscreen phones and tablet computers like the iPad. Perhaps we imagine our idea will become part of the zeitgeist, be downloaded millions of times and generate unfathomable profits, spawning lucrative toys, T-shirts and other merchandise.
As I stroll along Oxford Street to the head offices of Grapple Mobile, I think of a couple of my own money-spinning ideas: a football stadium app telling you where in the ground your seat is, local amenities and the ability to message other fans. Or how about an app that could tell you the real-time gender mix in a bar or club? But it doesn't take much time chatting to Justin James, head of development at Grapple, for me to realise I have no chance of turning my app fantasies into reality.
Although they are often minimalist in design and function, apps have become big business ? according to research firm Gartner, global sales will reach 17.7bn downloads in 2011, worth around �5.8bn. Angry Birds ? in which players catapult small fowl at pigs, and which is one of the most successful apps ever, having sold over 10m copies ? was created by three Helsinki technology graduates already highly experienced in mobile game development. On the other hand, I am a journalist with no IT skills and less idea how apps are made.
Though he is far from an archetypal IT nerd, James is one such experienced app builder. He works in a trendy office in the West End of London, dresses smartly and enjoys travel and fine dining with his partner. The fact that he can rattle off a Star Trek reference is perhaps the only outward pointer to a life immersed in computing.
An Australian by birth, James began a management and finance degree at the University of Perth in 2000 but lasted only two years before deciding it wasn't exciting enough. He "bailed out" and began playing around with computers while working in a cinema. "I had always messed about with them," he says, "but it was at this point that I finally realised I could make a job out of my love of computers."
That epiphany came at a fortuitous time. While studying for a computer science degree, also in Perth, he did a module on software programming for mobile phones and realised he could become part of a new wave of technology. "While I was growing up, computers took off in popularity, then later the web exploded and now mobiles are too. The rolling stone is gathering moss and it's exciting to be a part of it."
Armed with this knowledge, James set about creating a future for himself. He knew he had to leave Perth to pursue his dream of working in the mobile tech sector, but like many residents of one of the world's most isolated cities, he had lifestyle reasons for leaving, too. "I'd never seen snow in my life," he laughs.
He went travelling before arriving in the UK, taking in jobs as a laboratory assistant at a school in Neasden, at a ski resort in Meribel and as a chef. He took trips all over Europe ? even to Eurodisney, specifically to ride a rollercoaster. "I went on Space Mountain," he says, his eyes lighting up. "I love rollercoasters."
With the travel bug temporarily sated, James got a job with Apple computers in London before joining Grapple in August 2010 ? the fledgling company had only launched seven months earlier. James started as a multi-platform developer (building apps that work on different types of phone) and instantly enjoyed his work. "As well as building the app a client wants, there is so much scope for experimentation," he marvels. "You can just grab an iPad and reinvent LCARS, the computer operating system from Star Trek. And I get to play with all the latest devices."
James impressed the Grapple bosses enough to become head of development after just four and a half months, having worked on successful launches such as a multi-platform app for wine magazine Decanter, as well as client pitches. "We often get asked to build something speculatively for a client and it's great fun to let your imagination run wild, especially if the app ends up being given the green light," he explains.
It is the experimentation that James clearly savours. He also enjoys working on apps that can run on iPhones and BlackBerries as well as Nokia phones and devices running the Android operating system. Indeed, much of Grapple's success has been because it allows programmers to use standard HTML coding (used by website designers) to produce mobile apps, allowing it to recruit from a larger, more talented pool than that offered by mobile-only developers.
Grapple is based on Great Marlborough Street, close to Carnaby Street's fashion boutiques and the flagship Apple store on Regent Street. Inside, things are equally lively. The office is decorated in fluorescent purple, orange and green and the workforce looks young, inspired and global. At a developers' meeting, James is bombarded with questions and comments from his team ? accents are flung at him from across Europe, the US, and even Brazil.
During the meeting, James seems very keen on ensuring a couple of new developers are getting along OK, and implores everyone to help them out, especially "if they are looking blank". There is much chatter about anyone being able to pick up someone else's work and continue where they left off and I sense a collegiate, collaborative atmosphere that is rare among large groups of staff.
The number of people in the room (I count at least 30) belies Grapple's humble origins. The firm began with three people but now, only a year later, there are almost 60 staff.
In total the firm has created over 70 apps across five different mobile platforms in less than a year of trading, going from an initial two apps a month to 35-40 per month.
Watching James at work, I note him moving tiny replicas of iPhones and BlackBerries around on his computer screen as he tests an app in development. But I am equally distracted by his colleagues' screens, noting apps under construction for a major sportswear manufacturer, a popular global fashion house, a vehicle rental agency and even a rival newspaper group that has contracted Grapple to build it a Royal Wedding app.
James tells me what his job is all about. "It often involves taking large chunks of data and making it work for the user. It's about coming up with different solutions to the same problems. You're building on stuff all the time, taking what has worked with something else and applying it to a new app."
Most often, a corporate client will approach Grapple with what they want from an app, Grapple will take that idea, cost it out, produce wireframes (walkthroughs of how the app will work) and a design aesthetic (if needed) and build the app for as many different types of mobile platform as the client needs. Grapple has completed fistfuls of popular, recognisable app including BT's Phone Book and the XBox Kingmaker ? an innovative geo-location-based social gaming experience.
James's job is to take a brief from the client, create the app and deliver it on time and on budget. It is easier said than done: "It can be straightforward or it can be difficult. With the Decanter wine app, we had a huge database of wines and regions that the user had to be able to access. We had to find a way of displaying that information quickly and we decided to force the app to access the internet to do it. Even then, that's a large chunk of data for a mobile phone to process so we had to find ways to slow the user down and stop them getting angry if it took too long to find what they wanted."
James calls the solution to these problems "the twist", as in: "The client owns the app, but we bring the twist." And clients pay handsomely for it, too. Apps can cost a corporate client around �30,000, even more for a quick turnaround ? at one point I note James asking: "Is the end-date critical, like the Britain's Got Talent app?"
So while some apps can be built in days, others can take a fortnight or up to a month. It depends on the level of complexity; Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps and even email integration will take longer. Grapple has in-house testers to ensure the finished product ticks all the boxes and, most importantly, is exactly what the client wanted.
This is mobile app development in 2011; it is no longer the domain of IT nerds knocking up games in their bedrooms, but an industry worth billions of pounds and employing hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. It's nothing short of a revolution, offering new revenue streams to all sorts of industries (including the Guardian).
I leave James with his colleagues as they discuss their work schedules for the week and as I saunter along Oxford Street once again, my head quickly becomes full of more app possibilities. It's not long before I've got another cracking idea ? the one that could make me a fortune. All I need is �30,000 and someone like James to build it for me.
Curriculum vitae
Pay Junior developers get around �20,000 pa, with James one step up from there.
Hours 9am-6pm most days.
Work-life balance Fine. "I got into computers because I was working with them in my spare time anyway. You could say my hobby is my job."
Best thing "Getting to play with the whole range of mobile devices out there and be part of the new explosion in technology."
Worst thing Judging when to stop. "I don't have forever to build an app, so I have to stop myself from running wild. It means I have to stop myself from over-complicating things. But it sucks, as the potential for creativity and how far you can go is endless."
Overtime
Justin is a big travel fan and loves visiting rollercoasters. "My next trip will be to the Six Flags Great Adventure park in New Jersey to ride Kingda Ka ? the tallest coaster in the world and the fastest in North America." Justin also loves cooking and attends "most of the food fairs" in London, including the Taste of Summer and Real Food Fair. "My favourite restaurant ever is Herb Farm, just outside Seattle, which serves incredible food ? we had a seven-course meal there and there were five different wine glasses on the table to go with it.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/mar/05/working-life-app-developer
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