Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/oUg7lciToJY/
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Saturday, February 4, 2012
Why Desktop Apps Would Be Bad News for Windows 8 Tablets
How will ARM-based Windows 8 tablets mitigate the heavy payloads of traditional desktop apps? A new report suggests desktop application support will be limited but still present, contradicting an earlier statement by Windows lead Steven Sinofsky.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Investing in Secondary Markets
by Mike Kapsch, Investment U Research
Thursday, February 2, 2012
As Facebook joins the roughly 5,100 public companies trading on major exchanges in the United States, only a week ago shares were swapping hands on a completely different market? the secondary market.
And, for a growing number of investors and institutions, this alternative marketplace is quickly becoming a hot spot to potentially cash in on a number of firms before they go public.
In fact, you might even be eligible to participate? and not even know it.
The Truth About Secondary Markets
According to aonetwork.com, secondary market exchanges serve to facilitate the purchase and sale of illiquid, restricted and alternative assets, such as private company stock and restricted public equity.
Facebook, Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA) and LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) all sold on secondary market exchanges before they filed to go public.
Today, well-known firms such as Twitter, Bloom Energy, e-Harmony and Foursquare can all be found on these exchanges, as well.
And many other companies, tech start-ups especially, are finding secondary markets as nice alternatives to IPOs.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner explains, ?Historically when companies had established a certain level of performance and maturity, the IPO was a natural next step. The reason for that was to generate liquidity? to get access to currency? capital? and [for] credibility. The secondary market can help check the box for a few of those objectives.?
So, could secondary markets ever replace the IPO?
Not a chance. Private companies aren?t required to disclose their financial information to investors like publicly traded firms. That?s one of the major risks in this market.
But as Reuters points out, ?While the amount of information that would-be investors have is surely lower than if there were a formal SEC-registered prospectus, the rise of the internet has made it much easier to do reasonably good due diligence on how much a company might be worth.?
That?s a big reason the amount of capital flowing in the private-share trading business has more than doubled in value, to $7 billion, in just the past two years.
Even more, Congress is looking to pass laws that could push even more liquidity to this market by doubling the amount of shareholders, to 1,000, that private companies are allowed before needing to publicly disclose their finances.
This is very promising news for companies, like SecondMarket and SharesPost, involved in the secondary market?
Introducing SecondMarket and SharesPost
Founded in 2004, SecondMarket offers a number of asset-backed investments ? including auction-rate securities, bankruptcy claims, private company stocks and fixed income products. Meanwhile, SharesPost specializes only in the selling of private company stock.
All of the companies mentioned above (Twitter, Bloom Energy, etc.) either trade on SharesPost, SecondMarket, or both. These two companies currently dominate the secondary market space.
The main purpose of these firms is to connect buyers and sellers to trade the various assets they offer. In a way, they are sort of like e-Harmony or LinkedIn, but for investors and institutions.
For example, SecondMarket uses a proprietary matching algorithm to search through its 75,000-customer base and find good matches between buyers with sellers. After a trade is complete, the companies then take a cut of the total transaction, roughly 3%. This business model has made SecondMarket worth about $200 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
And now a slew of new competitors are catching on?
For example, Crain?s New York Business reports financial services firm Knight Capital Group (NYSE: KCG) just established its own private-share trading business in December. And LiquidNet, an institutional brokerage firm, also entered this space last year.
As I eluded earlier, not all investors are eligible to enter this market. It?s only open to financial institutions and accredited investors. In other words, you need to be a hedge fund, investment bank, or have a net worth of $1 million and an annual income of $200,000, or a joint income of $300,000 with your spouse, to start investing.
Plus, it?s worth mentioning many of these firms have minimum transaction requirements. For instance, SecondMarket has a minimum transaction amount of $100,000. So you need to have a good amount of cash to get involved.
The Bottom Line
Of course, before entering any investment, it?s important to do your homework first and know what you?re getting into. The secondary markets are certainly not for everyone, but it is a very interesting development and is helping reshape the way companies prepare for their IPO.
Good investing,
Mike Kapsch
Any investment contains risk. Please see our disclaimerRelated Investment U Articles: **By submitting your comment you agree to adhere to our Comment Policy and Privacy Policy.
Source: http://www.investmentu.com/2012/February/secondary-markets.html
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Dubai Real-estate Easy Article Marketing Triumph ? All This Clients ...
- February 2nd, 2012
Every website or blog needs traffic to survive. Without good exposure, you?re going to lose your web property. You can?t think you?ll be successful when nobody can find your website. Thankfully, you have all sorts of great and effective and cost free methods for achieving that goal. Dubai Property Article marketing is one of those. Dubai Property Article marketers don?t just send traffic to their own websites, they also build fantastic and incredible brands. If you can use Dubai Property Article marketing correctly, nothing else will compare to it. So exactly what goes into carrying one of these out? If you want to increase your Dubai Property Article marketing success, the tips we?ll share in this Dubai Property Article will help you. For additional info on Properties Dubai, Property Dubai or perhaps Accommodation Dubai let us know immediately.
Dubai Property Article marketing cannot exist without relevancy. This means that you shouldn?t bother promoting any Dubai Property Articles that aren?t relevant. If you run a dog training tips website do you think it?s a good idea to compose Dubai Property Articles about martial arts? Definitely not. If content is the king here, relevancy is the queen. Search engines are far more appreciative of Dubai Property Articles that are both relevant and that link to relevant websites. So, then, you have to figure out how you can tailor your Dubai Property Articles to your current marketing goals. This, then, gives you the exposure that you need in the targeted way that you crave.
There is so much for you to learn about Dubai Accommodation, and we definitely can help you in this area. Take a look at what is occurring on your end, and that may help you to perfect what you need. There are always some things that will have more of an influence than others. You understand that you are ultimately the one who knows which will have the highest impact. The latter half of our talk will center on a few highly pertinent issues as they concern your possible circumstances.
Do not ?beat around the bush? when you write your Dubai Property Article. You?re writing an Dubai Property Article for Dubai Property Article marketing here, you aren?t trying to write a thesis. You have to see to it that your approach is targeted and you get to the point as soon as possible. Give your Dubai Property Article readers something to chew on right after they start reading. Make sure that the purpose of the Dubai Property Article is clear before the first paragraph is done. It?s important that your Dubai Property Article marketing Dubai Property Articles be as clear as they can possibly be. It?s important to avoid letting things be confusing or overly fluffy. Never forget that the goal of Dubai Property Article marketing is to offer your readers instant gratification.
If you want to create an easy to read Dubai Property Article that gets massive attention, then consider creating a ?steps based? Dubai Property Article. People love to read lists and instructions so these Dubai Property Articles always get a huge amount of traffic. They are always trying to find these sorts of Dubai Property Articles and you can be the writer to offer them. By nature, these Dubai Property Articles are instructive. People like being instructed and shown the path. They do not typically want to come up with a solution on their own. So why not create a few steps based Dubai Property Articles that you can put in your marketing campaign?
Every single step that you take to make your Dubai Property Article marketing campaign successful matters. What matters most, believe it or not is not your end result. What is actually the most important thing is the amount of action that you want to take. When you keep your commitment levels high there is no stopping what you can achieve through your Dubai Property Article marketing efforts. Even better, why not simply over-deliver and over-commit? When you want to set yourself apart from your competition, you should keep that in mind. Go ahead and start acting on the information that we have talked about here and you will see immediately what kind of results are actually possible.
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Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Android A to Z: What is a QR code?
What is a QR code? These things are everywhere nowadays. Little square barcode-looking things. They're on website, they're on pictures, they're on advertisements -- they're everywhere. So what's a QR code and what do you do with it?
In a nutshell, a Quick Response Code is used to tell your phone to do something. Invented by Toyota in the mid-1990s, they "store" more information than traditional UPC barcodes and work better with languages more complicated than English. (Which is to say, most of them, especially in Asia.)
The way it works is this: Using a scanning app (there's Google's own Goggles app, or plenty of others in the Android Market), your phone's camera scans the code and then interprets it. There are different versions of QR codes, which can contain different amounts of information.
Most often, QR codes are used to link to a website or video or some other online content. Your scanning app should preview the link for you as a safety feature so that you can't be automatically redirected to a malicious (or otherwise untoward) website or video.
Here at Android Central, you'll regularly find QR codes to quickly link to applications in the Android Market.
Previously on Android A to Z: What is a PRL?; Find more in the Android Dictionary
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/7Z--pCE1Hro/story01.htm
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Magnitude 4.9 earthquake rattles Crete (AP)
ATHENS, Greece ? Greek authorities say an earthquake with preliminary 4.9-magnitude has shaken the country's southern Aegean islands, including Crete. No injuries or damage were immediately reported in the quake, which was the third in three days in the area.
The Athens Geodynamic Institute says the undersea earthquake occurred at 12:50 p.m. (1050 GMT) Saturday about 243 kilometers from the Greek capital, Athens, between the islands of Santorini and Crete. It says the earthquake occurred at a depth of 31 kilometers.
Earthquakes of magnitude 5.3 and 5.2 occurred in the same area on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
Greece is in one of the world's seismically active areas, with hundreds of quakes occurring each year.
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Overgrazed grasslands tied to locust outbreaks
ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? While residents of the United States and much of Europe think of locust plagues as biblical references, locust swarms still have devastating effects on agriculture today, especially in developing countries in Asia and Africa. In a study to be released in the journal Science on Jan. 27, scientists from Arizona State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences show that insect nutrition and agricultural land management practices may partially explain modern day locust outbreaks.
During an outbreak year, locusts can populate over 20 percent of Earth's land surface, negatively affecting more than 60 countries and the livelihood of one out of every 10 people. In this study undertaken at the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station in China, researchers examined Oedaleus asiaticus, one of the two swarming locusts of Asia. A closely related species, Oedaleus senegalensis, is a major pest in Africa.
Led by Arianne Cease, a doctoral student, in concert with scientists Jon Harrison and James Elser, and undergraduate student Colleen Ford from the School of Life Sciences in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the collaborative team also included Chinese researchers Shuguang Hao and Le Kang. Funding for their work was provided by the National Science Foundation.
The team's initial experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that locusts form swarms partly to escape deteriorating conditions or to seek out better food sources. Most herbivores, including insects, are thought to be limited by obtaining sufficient protein. The researchers began, therefore, by fertilizing grassland plots with nitrogen. Their expectation was that the added nitrogen would raise the plants' protein levels, enhance locusts' survival and growth and stop locusts from swarming.
They couldn't have been more wrong. Locusts fed on nitrogen-fertilized plots either died or grew more slowly. Puzzled, the scientists took a step back, examining which host plants these locusts preferred. The results showed that these locusts ate plants lower in nitrogen; not higher.
It had been known for some time that overgrazing in Inner Mongolia caused soil erosion, leading to nitrogen depletion from the soil, and reductions in the protein levels in plants. The team's surveys had showed that heavily grazed plots were populated by much higher numbers of locusts, so the scientists compared the preferences and performances of locusts for plants from grazed versus ungrazed plots. Remarkably, the locusts preferred to consume the low-nitrogen plants from the heavily grazed plots.
Moving the study into the laboratory and using chemically-defined diets, the scientists next tested the effect of different protein and carbohydrate levels on the locusts' growth rates. These experiments confirmed their field studies: Oedaleus locusts strongly preferred low protein, high carbohydrate diets. This ratio was about one part protein to two parts carbohydrate -- lower than any grasshopper previously studied. "These experiments confirmed that consuming foods with too much protein is deleterious for this locust, explaining why heavy grazing promotes populations of Oedaleus," said Harrison.
"Our results fit with an emerging paradigm that animal species can vary dramatically in their nutritional responses," said Cease. "The particularly low protein: carbohydrate preference of Oedaleus may explain their success in a heavily-grazed world."
Besides revealing new understanding about an age-old plaguing question, the authors' findings offer new possibilities for improving land management strategies. "Our study also showed that nitrogen fertilizer may be an inexpensive, environmentally less-damaging alternative pest control solution for this species," noted Cease, with a sidenote from Elser, who added, "Who knows? With the large global increases in atmospheric nitrogen from air pollution, we might find, at least in this limited way, some 'good news.' That is, that the airborne nitrogen deposited on grasslands may interfere with future locust outbreaks."
The scientist's work on the grasslands was also groundbreaking in one other way. Ford, Cease's undergraduate co-author, who is now a Phoenix Teaching Fellow at Yuma High School, said of her experience: "Being in the field surrounded by nothing but hoppers, grass, and fellow scientists made me realize the amount of patience, dedication, and passion research pulled out of me. At the end of the experiment, when questions became answers that led to further research, the days in the sun and rain were worth it. Not only did I enjoy the field research, but the collaboration between Chinese and U.S. citizens made me more deeply understand the ability of individuals to work together towards one goal that may have the potential to bring about 'real world' impacts throughout the globe."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Arizona State University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- A. J. Cease, J. J. Elser, C. F. Ford, S. Hao, L. Kang, J. F. Harrison. Heavy Livestock Grazing Promotes Locust Outbreaks by Lowering Plant Nitrogen Content. Science, 2012; 335 (6067): 467 DOI: 10.1126/science.1214433
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120126152127.htm
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