NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. financial stocks fell early Tuesday, as the Financial Choose Sector SPDR , an ETF that tracks the financial stocks in the S&P500, lost 1.2%, while the Amex Securities Broker/Dealer Index slipped 0.3%. Investors are closely eyeing financial firms as the third quarter begins, and are maintaining negative outlook as the credit crisis continues […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net
Archive for July 7th, 2008
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More new-media projects on the way for the ‘New York Times’Posted by: admin in Social Media and TechLast month, we reported that The New York Times would be expanding its online-media reach with TimesPeople, a sharing and bookmarking feature on the site. But that’s not all for the Gray Lady’s digital makeover, Silicon Alley Insider reported Wednesday. Also on the way is a set of … Summertime, and the grillin’ is simple. But is it clean? Which is a cleaner choice for grilling: gas or charcoal? The subject has been hotly debated, and seems unlikely to end this summer. From a culinary point of view, smoking wood gives grilled foods the best flavor. A sprinkling of water-soaked hickory or mesquite chips thrown onto the grill (gas or charcoal) will provide better grill flavor than any amount of briquettes or lump charcoal. The smoke that comes from dripping fat as it burns on hot coals gives acrid, unpleasant tastes. But that still doesn’t settle the gas vs. charcoal controversy. One scientist was cited in The New York Times Magazine as saying that, while burning charcoal produces more carbon emissions than natural gas or propane, the carbon was offset by the carbon-consuming properties of the tree used to make the charcoal during its lifetime. But by that logic, the green plants that existed millions of years ago, which are now being mined as fossil fuels, should offset the burning of petroleum. Charcoal and wood grills definitely put more carbon into the atmosphere during cooking than gas grills. Gas is certainly the cleaner choice. Charcoal devotees can still make a difference by choosing charcoal made from wood certified as sustainably-harvested by the Forest Stewardship Council, a forest protection organization (FSC). The FSC has also certified Char-Broil brand products, but they don’t seem to sell charcoal, so I’m at a loss as to what exactly the FSC is certifying. But the certified coal is guaranteed not to have come from the destruction of endangered rainforests and mangroves. Another way to make a difference is to skip the lighter fuel, a petroleum product that produces a great deal of pollution when it burns. Instead, use a chimney-type charcoal starter and a balled-up piece of newspaper, which lights the coals more quickly and evenly than fluid. You’ll be eliminating the waste associated with buying can after can of lighter fluid, and re-using spent newspaper at the same time. For the truly carbon-neutral believers out there, nothing can beat the zero-emissions rating of a solar grill. Since most outdoor grilling is done on sunny days, this is the perfect choice for barbecue aficionados who want to cook their food, not the atmosphere. LifeWire provides original and syndicated content to web publishers. Jay Weinstein, a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America, is a New York based food writer, editor, and cookbook author. His food articles and recipes have been featured in The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Newsday, Time Out New York, National Geographic Traveler, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Ethical Gourmet, focuses on ecologically sustainable fine foods. He’s currently working on a book about sustainable use of water.
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Five tips for borrowers whose home equity credit line is frozenPosted by: admin in Investment NewsFreeze tag Five tips for borrowers who find their HELOC has been reduced By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch Last Update: 6/29/2008 3:30:00 PM CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — When Denise Lopez bought two new tables, a floor lamp and a chair recently, her intent was to finance it with her home equity line of credit. But it wasn’t long before she discovered that wasn’t […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net  Electronic Arts, the video game giant that owns the rights to digital versions of the board game Scrabble, has announced that later this month, it will launch a Facebook application version of the game in conjunction with Hasbro. Unlike the last time we saw an announcement like this, it actually …
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Survey: Advertisers should acknowledge targeted ad concernsPosted by: admin in Social Media and TechMarketers ought to be aware that some consumers are suspicious about the phenomenon known as “behavioral targeting,” a new report from eMarketer says. Called “Behavioral Targeting Attitudes: The Privacy Issue,” the report released Friday explores the digital ad strategy, which collects consumer information and uses it to serve up ads …  (Credit: Apple.com)Are you a .Mac subscriber who’s been using the built-in bookmark syncing app? Come Sunday that service will no longer exist as part of the MobileMe transition, so if you want to do one last sync you’ve got to get it done this weekend. Shortly after the MobileMe announcement last month Apple sent out an e-mail to current .Mac subscribers detailing this change. Friday, the company extended the transfer deadline to July 6, along with providing a how-to guide to make sure you’ve got everything synced up one last time. You can get full instructions on how to do the sync here. The July 6 deadline, which is Sunday, leads me to believe that the MobileMe changeover might be dropping a day or two early from the expected July 11 release date.
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Survey: Advertisers should acknowledge targeted ad concernsPosted by: admin in Social Media and TechMarketers ought to be aware that some consumers are suspicious about the phenomenon known as “behavioral targeting,” a new report from eMarketer states. Called “Behavioral Targeting Attitudes: The Privacy Issue,” the report released Friday explores the digital ad strategy, which collects consumer information and uses it to serve up ads …  Swurl is a service for people who want to create a blog made from their activity on various social-media services. Like FriendFeed, SocialThing, or any other aggregator, you start building your Swurl blog by plugging in your usernames on each service. There are currently 19 to choose from, with all the usual suspects like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, and Yelp. What’s nice is that Swurl will retroactively seek out all your old posts and filter them in. Each post is set up by your day of activity, so if you didn’t add anything to any of these services there simply won’t be a post. You can also view your entire stream of activity in a big calendar, called a “timeline” that can be perused by year. (Check out mine here.) Besides aggregating your news feed, Swurl has a social component that lets you do the same with others. You can follow other users just like you would with Twitter or Tumblr, and their streams of information will show up in chronological order in the friends tab. You’re also able to see their friends list, and dig into their timelines to view their past activity. There’s already an active community of Swurlers using the service. Advanced users should also not shy away from what seems like a very simple tool; you can drop in custom CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), tweak the colors, and look and feel of your page to a very high degree. One thing missing is a way to create entirely new posts through Swurl, so it’s definitely not attempting to take over standard blogging platforms. FriendFeed, which essentially does the same thing as Swurl, will aggregate your business from all these networks and also manages to add its own publishing tool to boot. There’s no such system on Swurl at the moment, but there should be. [via Lifehacker] 
Swurl turns your social activity stream into both a blog and this handy timeline. Here you can see shared pictures on Twitter, links on Delicious, and Twitter tweets–all on the same page. (Credit: CNET Networks) |
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