Two consumer groups also sent a letter to the FTC asking them to block the acquisition because of privacy issues and anti-trust issues with Google taking over the cell phone ad market.
Here is the letter via TechCrunch:
Well, Basekit is the place for you. You can easily create design a website in Photoshop and then use the WYSIWYG editor to design the site. There are also a lot of other content and widgets you can incorporate into the website design. It is in Beta now and it may take a while for the invite to reach you, but anyone can sign up.
BaseKit from BaseKit Team on Vimeo.
via Feedmyapp
From the masters of pirating software, the Chinese comes a version that Ubuntu that is hacked to look exactly like Windows XP called Ylmf OS. The site is all in Chinese so I do not know what it says and if you download the iso it is also in Chinese, so if you want to use this, if it is going to be around for a little longer, you will need to know Chinese.
The last time this was tried the cloner of Xp was jailed for 4 years and fined $147,000. But China has very liberal idea of copyrights and lax laws on piracy. Even though this is not actually a pirate of Windows OS, they could sue for GUI copycatting, but we will see.
So if you know Chinese and do not want to actually pay for Windows XP, but like the look of XP, give it a try and tell me what you think. You can download it here. As for me I will use the Windows 7 evaluation build until I have to pay for it or switch over to another version of ububtu that is not copying Windows.
via Download Squad
This will make the G1s that are for sale on ebay a little bit more valuable.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls. All of your Android holiday wishes are coming true.
It has been confirmed that T-Mobile is releasing an Eclair update for the T-Mobile G1. The update will be at least Android 2.0 but more likely Android 2.0.1 as both versions have already been prepared as OTA updates. An anonymous source of ours has confirmed that both the Android 2.0 and the Android 2.0.1 are in the hands of some very fortunate people. Nothing can be released just yet due to Non Disclosure reasons.
You heard it here, first, on AndroidSPIN. Your No.1 source for Android news.
Happy Holidays to all. Android Spin
Here is a video via Mashable about Android 2.0 for developers:
via Android Central
Before we begin, note that banks and other financial institutions normally make their money by funding themselves in the short term market (deposits, very short-term borrowings) and lending or investing in longer-term markets, pocketing the difference in spreads.
The chart begins in the blissful summer days of 2007, with short term London Interbank Borrowing Rates (Libor) chugging along in the mid 5% range, fairly typical for a recovery.
Then came August 2007 and the advent of the hedge fund crisis. As major funds blew up, an event not widely followed at the time, it became clearer as time wore on that the system could not deal with its accumulated leverage. Particularly acute credit choke points are visible where the one month Libor rate passed the six month rate, indicating a scramble for short term funding in fearful environment. Banks began to retrench, shrinking credit and the demand for money. Short rates began to decline sharply. As credit declined, recessionary pressures began to be felt, accelerating the trend.
It looked like a pretty normal recession for a while. The “managed failure” of Bear Stearns caused only a minor downard ripple. A sense of illusory calm pervaded the street. Lehman assured the investment community that it would fix its liquidity problem. But as the scale of the leverage problem became clearer, Lehman quickly slipped down that slippery slope. And the poohbahs of the financial regulatory world miscalculated badly. Unlike the rather sweet deal they engineered for JP Morgan’s acquisition of Bear, they decided, in fit of virtuous concern over “moral hazard”, to let Lehman collapse. But they hugely underestimated the impact of Lehman’s enormous swap book, especially credit default swaps, would have on the system once Lehman became bankruptcy fodder.
The rest, as they say, is history. The sharp spike upwards in rates was rougly comparable to the danger posed by a surge in blood pressure for a stroke candidate. If financial institutions could not fund themselves in the short-term markets, they would go down- one by one, and quickly. So the feds had to engineer therapy in a hurry, including the infamous TARP program.
The enormous injection of liquidity was probably necessary to save the system. But, as usual, in crisis mode one tends to overpay. And the crisis was so severe that the monetary authorities appear quite content to have short rates that are essentially zero, trashing the dollar but allowing the remaining financial institutions to coin profits rapidly off of the now huge spread between where they borrow and where they invest.
It’s up to the financial historians now to decide: was this close enough for government work?
Since 1955 NORAD has been following Santa on Christmas eve and this year is not different. Now you can track Santa online.
Someone that knows more about Wave than I do made a video using Google wave to show the highlights of the year. Pretty cool and shows many of the applications that can be done on Wave.
I will try and get some more videos and reviews of Wave after the Holidays. Tis the season for being busy.
via Android Central
Now with Appify it will be easier to find local apps. It is in alpha mode right now and only has New York City apps, but there will be more cities in the future.
Appify: a preview
Local apps – apps that make our daily lives better and connect us to the things we care about – are increasingly everywhere around us. But in today’s chaotic app landscape, discovering them is practically impossible.
How do you find a local app? Google it? Bing it?
Most of the time, the answer is: you don’t find it.
Appify was created to solve that. Appify lets you easily discover the apps around you, promote the ones you like best, and see what great apps are in other cities, so you can bring them to your own.
The result is better access to local apps for you, better apps for your local area, and greater appification all around.
via Feedmyapp
