Sony recalls batteries

Still recovering from it's $400 million recall just two years ago, Sony has issued a recall for 100,000 units of lithium-ion batteries for laptops. Users complained of overheating in many cases sometimes even smoking or even flaming. These batteries were made by the same subsidary of Sony as the last batch to be recalled, based in Tochiji, Japan. 

The company most effected by this recall is HP with over 72,000 of the 100,000 existing in their laptops. Sony claims that the effected batteries were produced in 2004 and 2005, before both the reforms of the production technique and even the previous recalled batteries. HP, Dell and Lenovo have offered to replace batteries free of charge. This recall came at one of the worst possible times for Sony who reported very low earnings for September and October and had to lower their projected profit for the year. 

Texting from Gmail

Gmail has just introduced a new feature on their site that allows a person to enter a phone number as a contact. When the contact goes offline if you have their number saved an option comes up allowing you to send an SMS format message to their phone. This technology is not new but what is unique about it is that google automatically issues you a number when you first use this service and sends that number with your message every time unlike other services which send a random code with each message. This may not seem important but it allows the reciever of the messages to then add you to their contacts and send reply messages. Upon testing the service only takes about 3 seconds to put the message through, incredibly fast for computer to phone messaging.

London's new trashcans

With all of the terrorist attacks going on in the last twenty years the leaders in the city of London decided, way back in 1980 that they were going to take trashcans out of crowded streets and subway platforms much to the dismay of travelers. They did this to prevent bombs being thrown in them and who knows how well this worked since there were still bombings in the subways just a few years back.

About five years ago the English government started work on new bomb proof trashcans that can absorb heat, stop shrapnel spread and extinguish fireballs. They have been thuroughly tested and proven to stand up to the job. What is interesting about the trashcans is they have an LCD touchscreen on the side that show travel info, maps, and recent news which will be a nice addition to the subway. 

Iraqis prefer McCain

The French Press Agency traveled to Iraq this week to ask locals what they thought of the president elects. Their response was surprising in that they actually wanted McCain to win. They feel that McCain and his plans for the Middle East promise stability in the region by continuing to offer American support. They fear the rapid pullout plan that Obama has suggested claiming that their army is still far too weak and will cave to the Iranians and Turks once the Americans are gone. They are also worried that when the Iranians get nuclear weapons, Obama will not be able to control them, that they will take over the area.

Many of the people there prefer the republican party, they feel that they are more reliable, better suited for the job. I am not sure if this view is felt anywhere else but of the people they interviewed they seemed to feel that America's job was to spread democracy through the world which they do not feel democrats are suited to do. They also however disagree with the methods we use, although they like that republicans spread democracy they do not like the idea of open war.

The Bailout Fallout

The day for the vote on the bailout has come and passed. The vote went to a slight majority against the bill and the bailout was not carried out. Weather or not this is a positive thing is yet to be seen. The sudden shock of the bailout being turned down kicked up some very high ripples and the effects of it may yet be seen far into the future. The bailout was not as much a boost to the economy as much as a boost of hope to many investors that the large down trend may be reversed. This hope was nurtured by promises of a renewed economy causing many investors to.. invest. This slight balance and leveling and even small uptrend was a relief for a scared public, distraught by their portfolios. With the no vote on this bill, the people realized that there would be no uptrend and began to sell.. extremely quickly. Within 6 minutes of the failed bill the Dow index dropped over 260 points, and continued to drop to over 750 points in a single day. The largest ever single day market value drop in the history of the United States. All 3 major indexes lost over 7% of their total value totaling up to over $1.1 trillion in loss across the boards. The impact of this no vote also triggered rather quickly a reconsideration of the bill, a similar one of which is currently in debate. This reconsideration, and the record low levels of the stocks after yesterday has sparked another large reaction in the opposite direction. With hope renewed and record low prices, investors made today a record day as well gaining over 60% of the loss back with an increase of almost 500 points, the third biggest gain in US history. This huge bump will hopefully cause more people to look at this and maybe get more focus on this by the government, allowing them time to make a decision rather than jumping on, or off, the bandwagon. The next quick decision might not make such a rapid recovery. 

The Proposed Bailout

Recently in the news talks have begun to come up about an extremely large government payout to help boost the US stock exchange. The check valued at over $700 billion dollars would allow the government to buy up failing companies that are essential to keep US markets afloat. The idea behind this is to raise the value of these companies, boost their stock price, and artificially raise the overall stock market hoping that the raise in big name stocks will get people to start buying again. The people proposing this idea are Treasury Secretary Paulson and long time Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke. Both of these men are very intelligent and well versed in economics but their plan, if it fails, could not only drag the stock market down further, but could completely destroy the value of the dollar. The stocks they are proposing investing in are known by analysts as "toxic waste" stocks meaning that if invested in, they have absolutely no way to honor their contracts and pay that money back. The last time we allowed these two people to act without keeping them in check they were only given $29 billion to help keep JP Morgan afloat and succeeded in destroying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are the Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation respectively. They also destroyed AIG, the American International Group which at the time was the biggest insurance company in the US. Although their plan may save us, with the amount of money we are lending them this time, the result could be much worse.

The Presidential Debate

The debate between the presidential nominees is scheduled for tonight. There was worry that McCain, who claimed to be putting his campaign on hold would not show up but he announced today that he would be there. With just over a month until the presidential election, this debate is a very important one for both candidates. A large focus of the debate will probably be the state of the economy and the very recent, very large, stock market bailout that is in under discussion in Washington. This is a very important meeting not only because of the time, but because of the level playing field. Most of what has been seen of the candidates so far has been in the conventions or in ads specifically designed to promote the candidate. Another big topic of the debates might be that of national security and foreign policy both of which are strong differences and talking points between the candidates and parties. It is predicted that this will be one of, if not the most watched debate ever with how close the race is. This is the first of three major debates between the candidates and winning these debates may just get the respective candidate the win.