Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

MyStrands.tv is sort of like Pandora or Last.fm for music videos. All you do is enter an artist or genre and MyStrands will start playing music videos it thinks you’ll like. What makes MyStrands different from those other services is that MyStrands content comes entirely from YouTube.

As such, it’s not clear whether all of the videos are 100% legal. In fact, we’re going to go out on a limb and assume that some of the content has been ilegally uploaded by users, but after playing around with MyStrands for a while we have yet to get an error message telling us a video has been removed, so hopefully there’s a system in place to skip over removed videos.

As with similar music discovery services, you can give music videos a thumbs up or down to let MyStrands more easily find music that meets your tastes. If you sign up for an account you can save and share your custom channels.

[via SolSie]

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Filed under: Internet, OS Updates, Utilities, E-mail, Social Software, BlackBerry

Research in Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry smartphone, announced many highly anticipated features recently at Lotusphere 2008 for BlackBerry Enterprise Server. What can die-hard BlackBerry users anticipate in the near future? Many features making it easier it easier to message your co-workers and collaborate including:

• Download and edit Microsoft Office documents: BlackBerry users have been able to download and view Office documents, thanks to the Documents to Go suite, but soon BlackBerry users will be able to edit these attachments as well.
• Free-busy calendar lookup: want to know if Sally is available for a conference call at 3:00 tomorrow? Simply fire up this new utility and find out, before sending a meeting request, that is
• HTML and Rich Text Email rendering: Rich text emails will now maintain their formatting on the smartphone, including bold, italic, tables, bullets, or whatever formatting your co-workers throw at you.
• Integration with corporate IM and Presence applications: By utilizing Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Live Communications Server, you can use the “click to call” feature to engage with co-workers and IM Session “convert to call” automatically takes an IM conversation and makes it a voice one.

We’re excited to see RIM taking these steps to make their mobile phones more seamless in the corporate environment. Our Windows Mobile counterparts have been able to edit Office documents for a while, and the other new features are a great step forward as well, especially the integration with the corporate IM services.

Looks like RIM is going to have an impressive 2008.

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Filed under: Debt, Real Estate

The rate of foreclosures in California during the last quarter of 2007 is double the rate of the last record quarter. There were 31,676 foreclosures during the fourth quarter, about double that of the previous record set in 1996. In comparison, the lowest rate of foreclosure occurred in the second quarter of 2005 - there were only 637 foreclosures in California then.

Experts are blaming the high rate of foreclosures on adjustable rate mortgages that reset at rates homeowners couldn’t afford. Some say homeowners were simply buying houses they couldn’t afford with help from unusually low rates that many knew wouldn’t be around for long.

The median price for a home in California was $484,000 in March of 2007. That fell to $402,000 by the end of 2007. This drop has left many homeowners owing more on their houses than they’re worth. So some are voluntarily walking away from what they know is a battle they’ll lose. They see no point in hanging onto a property that isn’t even worth the mortgage balance.

Homeowners with money problems say they’re simply not able to sell their homes, so sometimes they end up in foreclosure because they’ve got no other option. But some homeowners do see a silver lining… they live in the home for free during the foreclosure and save their money for after they are kicked out.

The housing situation might get worse before it gets superior. Too bad so many wanna-be homeowners stretched beyond what they could truly afford for a home. The rest of the economy will likely pay the price for these defaults, and lenders will raise their rates across the board to cover their losses. Stay tuned… there’s much more to come in the housing market, and it doesn’t look good.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Record-keeping, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Online streaming service Last.fm is making a few major announcements this day. The good news is that you can listen to practically any song you like, even full albums for free. The bad news, is you can only listen to a track three times before a notice pops up suggesting that you sign up for Last.fm’s upcoming subscription based service.

The CBS-owned music discovery/online radio service has signed deals with all the major record labels, and also has a system in place to pay independent musicians as well. Last.fm will pay artists each time a song is streamed, with revenue coming from advertising and the upcoming subscription service. No word on how much subscriptions will cost.

Users in the US, UK, and Germany can access the full music library this day, and the company is working on expanding coverage. The site claims that it has the largest library of free streaming music on the internet, and we’re inclined to take their word for it.

[via Mashable]

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Filed under: Banks, Debt, Recession

Put three economists into a room and you’ll get five different opinions. For the past six months, the speaking heads of finance have been arguing about whether a recession is coming, and whether we can do anything, anything at all, to prevent it.

In the last six months, the headlines have become more and more hysterical. Recession Coming! Recession Coming! OMG What can we do to prevent Recession?! Here’s a favorite from today: Three out of five indicators advocate we might already be in recession.

Recession is a normal part of the business cycle. But to hear the bleating of today’s headlines, you’d think they were speaking about the Black Death.

News from the rats on the ground guys: The big bad recession is here.

In this I respectfully disagree with my colleague Tracy Coenen, who writes in a post this morning that the situation isn’t as dire as all that, and that if we listen to the growing recession hype of the media, then we’ll indeed create for ourselves a recession. She’s not alone in her thinking, as this piece in the NY Times attests.

I tend to think that it’s not the media screaming about recession that causes a recession. It’s the hideous, unsightly numbers that are coming in from all the economic indicators. And on a smaller scale, it’s in our wallets. Or rather, what’s not in our wallets anymore.

Economists swear inflation is in check. But ask any working family if the cost of living has gone up. Groceries? Gasoline? Heating fuel? Insurance premiums? It’s all gone up and gone up dramatically. The only thing going down (in a death spiral) is housing, which, obviously, is also hurting families where they live (pun intended).

When two-thirds of your economy is based on the consumer, it’s just not a good sign when folks aren’t spending like they used to because they can’t afford to anymore.

The housing market is at a standstill. The banks are bleeding billions. Credit is very difficult to come by, no matter who you’re. (WSJ subscription required) The fed rate cut is a bandage for a correction that needs to happen, and will, sooner or later.

How can this not lead to economic downturn? I’m no economist. I ain’t got no PhD in finance. But sometimes you just smell a rat. All the more reason to bookmark Walletpop.com, for tips on how to save in the coming months. Stay tuned.

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