RSS Feeds

...(more)...

9th September 2010: BigTick has announced that it has released version 1.0 of Zen, the free universal VSTi presets manager, initially for Windows. Big Tick has also updated Rhino to v2.09. Zen is a Universal Presets M...

9th September 2010: DDMF has updated its tracking equalizer IIEQPro to version 2.1. With this new update it is now equipped with a high-precision frequency analyzer. The analyzer can be switched on or off by the user;...

An anonymous reader pointed us to an article talking about Google TV and AppleTV challenging the major networks and taking their place in your living room. It'll be a tough battle, amusingly waged on cable company wires in many major markets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

9th September 2010: Sonnox has announced the introduction of two unique Oxford plug-in collections geared towards the broadcast and post-production sectors. Company Sales and Marketing Manager Nathan Eames reports Son...

From homo sapiens to WALL-E, evolution meets Moore's Law.

Monitoring of e-currency exchangers. By means of it you can quickly find profitable exchange rates PayPal, WebMoney, C-Gold, EuroGoldCash, Solid Trust Pay, Yandex Money, Pecunix, Liberty Reserve, Perfect Money and other electronic currencies.

Searches used to be easy to count. You would wait for someone to type words into a search box and then hit enter. Call that a search. That made it easy for outside analysts like ComScore to know how to figure out which search engine was tops. All of that got a lot more confusing with the introduction of Google’s 'Instant Search,' which starts showing you search results as soon as you type the first letter into its search box.

Woah, who saw this coming? Apple has changed its super-controversial stance on third party developer tools for iOS apps, now allowing any and all comers, "as long as the resulting apps do not download any code." We're guessing this is mostly a nod to game developers, who use ported engines like Unreal and interpreters like Lua, but it also apparently covers apps developed in Adobe Flash CS5. In addition, the rules on mobile advertising have changed, so AdMob ads are seemingly back in, and Apple's also publishing its App Store Review Guidelines at long last, which will give developers a better idea of how their apps are going to be scrutinized by Apple before they submit them. We're sure we'll be hearing plenty in the coming weeks as developers and arm chair analysts rifle through Apple's so-far-secretive guidelines, but mostly we're just excited to see what sort of innovation and development accessibility we've been missing out on while these third party tools have been off the market. The full (and brief) release can be found after the break.

Update: Google's responded to the newly-relaxed restrictions, saying "Apple's new terms will keep in-app advertising on the iPhone open to many different mobile ad competitors and enable advertising solutions that operate across a wide range of platforms."

Update 2: Our friend John Paczkowski at All Things Digital has Adobe's statement: "We are encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices."

Meanwhile, it seems like it's time for a little recap:

• Apple's iPhone lockdown: apps must be written in one of three languages, Adobe in the hurt locker
• Adobe says iPhone / iPad adoption and 'alternative technologies' (cough, HTML5) could harm its business
• Steve Jobs responds directly to developer over new iPhone SDK rules, cites blog for explanation
• Steve Jobs publishes some 'thoughts on Flash'... many, many thoughts on Flash
• Adobe's CEO: Jobs' Flash letter is a 'smokescreen' for 'cumbersome' restrictions (update: video)
• Adobe decries Apple's 'walled garden,' yet pledges 'best tools' for HTML5
• Adobe targets Apple in ad campaign launched today, publishes open letter from founders
• Steve Jobs' D8 interview: the video highlights (updated)
• Adobe's CEO: 'we've moved on' from Apple's argument, and Flash still rules

Continue reading Apple backpedaling on some iOS development restrictions, will allow third party tools and ad services

Apple backpedaling on some iOS development restrictions, will allow third party tools and ad services originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The key to the next generation of TV is likely to be search, and the biggest drag on search is going to be text entry. If Google TV is really going to be the 'one screen to rule them all,' it has to solve that problem.

Tootech writes "In a case of "physician, heal thyself," the agency — which forms the operational arm of DHS's National Cyber Security Division, or NCSD — failed to keep its own systems up to date with the latest software patches. Auditors working for the DHS inspector general ran a sweep of US-CERT using the vulnerability scanner Nessus and turned up 1,085 instances of 202 high-risk security holes. "The majority of the high-risk vulnerabilities involved application and operating system and security software patches that had not been deployed on computer systems located in Virginia," reads the report from assistant inspector general Frank Deffer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "In response to a complaint, Rackspace has shut down the websites of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small 50-member church which has received national and international criticism for a planned book burning of the Quran on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. The center 'violated the hate-speech provision of our acceptable-use policy,' explained Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame. 'This is not a constitutional issue. This is a contract issue,' said Goodgame, who added he did not know how long it had hosted the church's sites. Not quite the same thing, but would Kurt Westergaard's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad also violate Rackspace's AUP? How about Christopher Hitchens' Slate articles? Could articles from one-time Rackspace poster child The Onion pass muster?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Initial Jobless Claims were much better than expected at 451k vs the forecast of 470k and down from 478k last week (revised up by 6k). Labor Day weekend may have had an impact on the seasonal adjustment but we’ll have to see next week to what extent. Either way though, the market will take a downward move to the lowest since early July in light of the worrisome rise over the past month. Continuing Claims were above expectations but little changed with the prior week while Extended Benefits were up a net 30k. Also giving a boost to the futures was the less than expected July Trade Deficit of $42.8b vs the est of $47b which may lead to a boost to economists Q3 GDP estimate of as much as .4 of a % point as exports rose 1.8% while imports fell by 2.1%. In contrast, trade was a big drag on Q2 GDP.

9th September 2010: Sonoma Wire Works recently launched the HigginsPack DrummerPack for DrumCore. Terence Higgins, drummer for The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, brings DrumCore users unique New Orleans marching style drum l...

Some of you have intimated that I have become too chipper lately, and that lowering our cash position from ~86% to ~50% can only be the work of a madman, a rampaging perma-bull.

Well then, its time to run some counter-programming to that perception. Hence, I thought that David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff would help balance out my short term bullish leanings.

I love when David and I disagree, as I am always trying to find people whose approach and methodology I respect, but have reached very different conclusions from me.

Enjoy.

~~~

This is what a depression is all about — an economy that 33 months after a recession begins, with zero policy rates, a stuffed central bank sheet, and a 10% deficit-to-GDP ratio, is still in need of government help for its sustenance. We had this nutty debate on Friday on Bloomberg Radio (Tom Keene is a class act, by the way) and another economist was on — the architect of the ECRI I think, who was claiming that there was no evidence of any indicator pointing to renewed economic contraction. And yet, that very day, the ECRI leading economic index comes in at a recessionary -10.1% print for last week. Go figure. The market for denial remains a lucrative one we would have to assume.

A depression usually involved a liquidity trap. In other words, expunging the debt excesses of the previous cycle leads to an ongoing contraction of credit where the demand and supply of loan-able funds is basically non-existent. This is why Libor (three-month interbank) rates are down to five-month lows of under 0.3%.

With President Obama’s approval rating all the way down to 43%, the Democrats are about to embark on a series of confidence-bolstering announcements.

Banks continue to sit with over $1 trillion of cash on their balance sheets and despite survey evidence suggesting a big thaw in once-tight lending guidelines, there is no indication that the Fed’s attempt to restart the credit engines is working. Companies are sitting on tons of cash themselves so they don’t need the money from the banks and households don’t seem ready or willing to take on major credit-sensitive spending commitments. Perhaps with one-quarter of Americans with a sub-650 FICO score, the typical U.S. bank loan officer doesn’t want to get fired for making the same mistake that got us into this mess in the last cycle and is actually requesting some documentation and proof of income (surely you jest).

Finally, you know it’s a depression when, 33 months after the onset of recession…

• Wages & Salaries are still down 3.7% from the prior peak
• Corporate profits are still down 20% from the peak
• Real GDP is still down 1.3% from the peak
• Industrial production is still down 7.2% from the peak
• Employment is still down 5.5% from the peak
• Retail sales are still down 4.5% from the peak
• Manufacturing orders are still down 22.1% from the peak
• Manufacturing shipments are still down 12.5% from the peak
• Exports are still down 9.2% from the peak
• Housing starts are still down 63.5% from the peak
• New home sales are still down 68.9% from the peak
• Existing home sales are still down 41.2% from the peak
• Non-residential construction is still down 35.7% from the peak

Folks, in a normal recession-recovery cycle, practically all these indicators are making new highs at this juncture of the business cycle.

Invictus here. Been a while.  Been a bit busy and, frankly, not much to say of late.

As a general rule, I’d say that folks should refrain from posting on things they know nothing about.  The old saying (Abraham Lincoln, I believe, Mark Twain, according to commenters’ citations, attribution in dispute) comes to mind, “Better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool than open it and remove all doubt.”

Erick Erickson should not write about the economy, as he has demonstrated yet again that his knowledge of things economic is, to put it politely, somewhat lacking.

Just a while back, Mr. Erickson incorrectly claimed that  “after the 2003 tax cuts, the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since World War II. Let me repeat that:  the Bush economic program created the lowest unemployment level ever.”  Of course, the rate had been lower in just the last decade, under Bill Clinton.  And that fact was quite easily ascertainable via mouse click at BLS.gov or the St. Louis Fed.  I mean, really, we’re talking unemployment rate here, not some esoteric metric no one’s ever heard of and can’t research.  I don’t believe a correction has yet been posted on that particular item, nor am I holding my breath.

Not quite outdoing that egregious error, but giving it his best shot, Mr. Erickson came up with this gem regarding last week’s nonfarm payroll report:

The number Mr. Obama will want us to pay attention to is private sector job growth. According to the government, private sector jobs went up and the growth of unemployment is attributed to those census workers leaving their jobs.

At least National Review got it right:

The unemployment rate climbed to 9.6 percent as a result of many new entrants into the labor market (about half a million workers).

That the unemployment rate went up was a function, as NRO pointed out, of new entrants into the work force.  This is captured in the Household Survey, from which the unemployment rate is calculated.  It had nothing, zero, zilch, nada to do with “census workers leaving their jobs.”  Those losses were captured in the Establishment Survey.  And I would challenge Mr. Erickson to point to the government attributing the rise in the unemployment rate to jobless census workers.

Undaunted, he ventures on:

When unemployment was going down, it did so because of the hiring of the 500,000 census workers and Mr. Obama and his band of merry socialists were cheering the numbers as a sign of good news.

No, the unemployment rate did not go down because of census worker hiring.  Again, that was captured in the Establishment Survey.  The unemployment rate is derived from the Household Survey.  It had gone down for the opposite reason that it just went up — people had been leaving the labor market.  This concept of two surveys and which one captures what is really not all that challenging.  Or at least I didn’t think it was.

Live by the temporary census worker jobs.  Die by the temporary census worker jobs.

Except it simply did not go down that way.

Mr. Erickson should endeavor to write about topics on which he is a bit more knowledgeable, though I haven’t the foggiest as to what that might be.

9th September 2010: Mildon Studios has released Vocal Spread, a new free VST effect plug-in for Windows that spreads out the signal across the stereo track, which can help the vocals steer clear of the muddy areas (like...

9th September 2010: H.E. Audio has released version 1.0 of Poetic Guitar-Landscape (PGL). It is part of H.E. Audio's Poetic Guitar series of three acoustic guitar plug-ins - PGL is the one of the Nylon guitars. Featur...

The Greek 2 yr note yield is below 10% for the 1st time since mid Aug after a story that Norway continues to buy Greek debt along with that of Spain, Portugal and Italy. Also talking its position is the Greek Finance Minister who said on their deficit, “we feel confident that given where we are at the moment there won’t be any problem in hitting the target.” Another Greek official in an interview said with respect to the market’s belief of an inevitable debt restructuring, “no one is even contemplating or thinking about” that. If one believes this and trusts the EU backstop, a 2 yr yield around 10% is certainly alluring. As expected, the BoE left rates unchanged while the BoKorea surprisingly did not raise rates because of what they said is rising uncertainty in the outlook for global growth. Australia delivered a better than expected jobs report for Aug and the AUD is rallying to a 4 month high.

9th September 2010: Imperfect Samples has announced the release of the Imperfect Samples Player, a universal VST / AU player for all Imperfect Samples libraries. Users are no longer restricted to EXS24 or Kontakt, and c...