LAX is just like the US, once brilliant and modern; now faded and cramped – NY Times, Krugman

Starting Over at 55 – NY Times

What are the Hedge Funds Doing? Interesting to note that the top 10 positions owned among hedge funds include many in  our Alpha portfolio: Apple, Direct TV, Pfizer, Microsoft, and Wells Fargo. (not a solicitation– see disclosures at bottom of this page).

6 time wasters and what to do about them

Better Working Tip: Reclaim the morning

See How the Titans Match Up. From Bits

Hat Tip to Drew Olanoff for this gem.  Video of Apple’s vision for the tablet in 1995!  Amazingly advanced then, and really exciting today.  Definitely worth a view.

The First 20 people to use code: GDPfriend will attend for free!  Don’t miss your Chance!

Apple will hold a special even on January 27th to unveil its “latest creation”, per invites sent out yesterday.

Invite here.

From 9to5Mac:

It seems Apple’s laptop sales are exploding. Digitimes informs, “Apple’s monthly order volume to Quanta has also grown from only 300,000-400,000 units in the first half of 2009 to one million units in the fourth quarter of 2009, the sources noted.”

Apple orders for one million notebooks are expected to be made this month (January), the report adds.

That’s colossal growth. The report tells us Apple shipped “about seven million” notebooks in 2009, a sale rate in the region of 13 Mac portables each and every minute of last year.

Disclosure: We are long Apple in our model portfolio.  This is not a solitication to buy/sell or advice.

Despite the headline that grabbed your attention, Google is about to march decisively forward with moving you to the Cloud computing revolution.  In the coming days, Google will be offering 250MB of storage online for free through its Google Docs portal.  This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.  It’s typical Google: Free, Timely, & Online.

With the likes of Apple and Amazon pushing the cloud computing frontier and Microsoft not far behind (but behind nonetheless, as usual) expect to see your whole life online and accessible in the next couple of years.  You already see Mozy offering backups of your computer for unbelievably low prices.  So, like online shopping; the adoption rate of Mr. and Mrs. Joe American will take time, but it will happen…oh, yes, it will happen.

Here’s some of the Google Highlights:

Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You’ll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don’t convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year. This makes it easy to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics and raw photos to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for those files that are too big to send over email.

Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs. For example, if you are in a club or PTA working on large graphic files for posters or a newsletter, you can upload them to a shared folder for collaborators to view, download, and print.

Interested?   Read more here.  Or sign up for your Google Docs account today.

What is Cloud Computing exactly?

Disclosure: We are Long Google in our Portfolios.  This is not a solicitation to buy/sell, nor is this advice.

From Tech Crunch:

Survey results published by Harris Interactive suggest that adult Internet users are now spending an average of 13 hours a week online. About 14% spends 24 or more hours a week online, while 20% of adult Internet users are online for only two hours or less a week.

To put things in perspective: Harris surveyed 2,029 adults by telephone for an entire week in July and October 2009, and has been doing these types of polls since 1995.

Harris concludes that the average hours spent online have increased from 7 hours from 1999 to 2002, to between 8 and 9 hours in 2003 to 2006, and surged after that….

Click to Enlarge

To Read More….

Click to Enlarge (ht: Reformed Broker)

Presented by Online Education

Computational Legal Studies is at is again; this time visualizing bank failures.  Past work sited here, untangling the web.

Three Takeaways

Acceleration: There were four failures in the first six months of 2008, followed by another 22 failures in the next six months.  By January of 2009, there were 21 failures in the first three months of the year, followed by 138 from April to last Friday.

Magnitude: Failures in the past two years have cost the Depositors Insurance Fund an estimated $57B.  The IndyMac failure of July 2008 accounted for $10B alone, followed by BankUnited at $4.9B and Guaranty Banks at $3B.

Spatial Correlation: There is a significant amount of spatial correlation in California, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Illinois.  These states account for 77% of the total costs to the Depositors Insurance Fund.  Furthermore, most of the losses in California and Georgia were concentrated highly around a few urban centers.

Visualizing Bank Failures ( 2008-2009 ) from Michael J Bommarito II on Vimeo.