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App Smart: Nursing the Flu With Help From Apps

December 6, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

During this bout I was much better behaved because my smartphone, jammed with entertaining apps and Internet access, was a great sickbed companion. Apps can do more than keep you company; they can give you medical advice. And as the season of coughs and sneezes settles in, an app may even help you determine what’s wrong.

For a medical app that covers a plethora of icky illnesses, WebMD is probably your best bet (free for iPhone, iPad and Android). It’s jammed with data, and can present it to you in a number of ways. A hypochondriac’s dream, the app’s Symptom Checker first asks that you tap on the corresponding part of an image of the body and then, choosing from detailed lists, specify which symptom you have. Once you select a symptom, the app leads you through a short question-and-answer session to refine your input, like exactly what kind of cough you have. You can input a number of symptoms, perhaps adding sneezes, for example, and then press the “view possible conditions” button.

The app lists all the conditions your symptoms may match, so you need to read each one earnestly to see if it describes your situation. It’s written in plain language, and links help you find treatment or more information online. A tab takes you to pages describing symptoms in more detail, and another takes you to detailed articles about the condition.

This app also works well if you already know, or suspect, what’s wrong with you: you can simply consult its alphabetical index of illnesses. A section with drugs and treatments even has a “Pill ID” feature to help you identify a medication by its shape and color or the letters printed on it. Finally there’s a quick-access First Aid section for emergencies.

The WebMD app is powerful and full of detail. This is obviously handy, but you can get a little lost navigating its sub-menus. You also need to be online so it can acquire data to meet your requests.

An alternative app on iOS, also free, is iTriage. It too has a comprehensive list of illnesses, and a symptom-checker section where you tap on a body image to input each symptom you’re experiencing. But iTriage also provides information on a list of medical procedures. And you can record in a “my iTriage” section details of your insurance, health record, previous ailments and so on. The app is more graphical than WebMD, and is thus a little easier to use. A page on influenza, for example, has data carefully organized under a long list of headings. Some sections even have video links to help you, but again, you need an Internet connection to get the most benefit.

One way to avoid seasonal illnesses like the flu is to avoid being exposed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s official Influenza app (free on iOS or Android) is jam-packed with data, including graphs, maps and medical terminology. It is mainly intended for professionals, but ordinary users can use it to find out where the flu is prevalent in the United States. It also has useful information about vaccination and flu prevention. But its interface is old-fashioned, it’s easy to get lost in the various sections and data presentation is sometimes not the most accessible.

A much simpler and possibly more useful app, is called FluDefender (free on iOS). This app’s main attractions are detailed information about influenza, a built-in link to the CDC’s Twitter feed about flu and a map that shows how common flu infections are state by state.

While the apps have their uses, if you’re really sick, seek professional help. Doctors can recognize symptoms you can’t. And apps can’t write prescriptions.

Quick Calls

Robot fanatics young and old will love the new Robots for iPad app, $5 on iOS. It has information on 126 of the most advanced robots around the world and interactive 360-degree graphical views of them, alongside articles and video content. … Microsoft has brought its free Bing Translator app to the new Windows Phone 8 smartphone platform. The app provides speech-to-text translation and translates foreign text scanned by the phone’s camera.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/technology/personaltech/nursing-the-flu-with-help-from-apps.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: ipad, plain language, question and answer

Tool Kit: Apps and Accessories Help Make the iPad a Scaled-Down Darkroom

December 6, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

In the late 1990s, after college, I snapped so many photos that I ended up building a 5-by-6-foot darkroom in the corner of my living room in Brooklyn. There, standing amid long, dark strips of film under the glow of a dim red light, I spent countless hours mixing pungent chemicals and developing and printing photographs.

I have since retired most of my film cameras. Now, my camera bag is all digital, and my darkroom is 7 inches wide and 9.5 inches long: an Apple iPad.

The chemicals I once used have been replaced by a tiny, white USB connector that allows me to transfer my photos from any digital camera into the iPad in a matter of seconds.

What inspired me to jump from film to digital was immediacy — or impatience, depending on how you look at it. In the old days, I’d have to finish a roll of film, get home, develop it, wait, then wait some more. With digital, you snap a picture and there it is, like magic, on the back of your digital camera. With the iPad as a darkroom, it’s also editable immediately.

Editing your photos on an iPad instead of a conventional laptop also means you can carry one device fewer on your travels. Although most applications on the iPad will shrink the size and therefore the quality of your images when you import them, there are apps that can deal with full-size images. You can even connect wirelessly to printers intended to work with the iPad.

For older iPads with a 30-pin connection, Apple sells the $29 Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. It comes with two connectors that plug directly into the iPad’s base. One has a USB cable slot, which works with almost any camera, and the other has a slot for SD memory cards.

There are also many less expensive third-party connectors, including a 2-in-1 Camera Connection Kit ($10) available from Amazon.

The cables for newer iPads, with the lighting connector, are overpriced, with each connector costing $30.

To transfer the photos from your camera, you plug a connector into the base of your iPad, connect your camera with a USB cord, then turn the camera on. The iPad will detect that the device is connected and allow you to select which images you would like to import. It’s quicker than a Polaroid.

The immediacy of digital has pushed photographers to want to edit their photos and then share them right away. A number of applications allow you to do this, some free and some costing as much as $20.

SnapSeed ($5) is an app made specifically for multitouch photo-editing. Sliding your finger up and down on the screen will allow you to alter the image, changing the contrast, brightness or saturation. A feature called Selective Adjust allows you to drag little adjustable pointers all over a picture to tweak the lighting in specific areas.

Apple’s own iPhoto application ($5) for the iPad also has some advanced features. You can apply filters, turning a color photo into a sepia or “vintage” image. If you’re in a rush, “auto-enhance” will try to improve the image for you. There are also brushes that pop out from the bottom of the screen, making your iPad feel like a painter’s palette. These can be used to remove red-eye and soften or sharpen an image.

Adobe, the big maker of graphics and photoediting software, offers two photo-specific iPad applications. Photoshop Express, which is free, has some limited editing features, like adjusting tint, saturation and exposure, but it’s really for novices. Advanced users will want to try Photoshop Touch ($10). This application offers similar controls to Adobe software on a standard computer — layers, curves, the ability to add text, and other advanced features. But be warned: the app is somewhat confusing to navigate, and you will have to take some time with its tutorial before jumping in.

For photographers who want to take iPad editing to another level, there are more advanced — and expensive — options.

Jeff Carlson, author of the book “The iPad for Photographers,” sometimes bypasses the iPad camera connection kit in favor of an EyeFi SD card and an app called ShutterSnitch ($16). EyeFi cards, which range from $40 to $100 depending on speed and memory size, can connect directly with your iPad wirelessly. Mr. Carlson said that although EyeFi offers a free app, ShutterSnitch is much faster and has a more advanced interface.

Mr. Carlson said he sometimes captures RAW images with his digital cameras. These are uncompressed and large files, often used by professional photographers because they preserve more of the image quality than standard JPEG files. To handle these files he sometimes uses the apps piRAWnha or Photoraw, both $10. But his favored application is Photosmith ($20) an advanced tool that can wirelessly transfer pictures to your desktop computer for printing or editing later.

The only question remaining is which iPad to use. The newer iPads with retina displays are the best choice for editing, as the screen is phenomenally crisp. But they are also expensive. Of course the iPad Mini is lighter, and a fraction of the price, so it might be a better option for vacation snaps. But if you’re someone who really wants to get into your digital photos, you might be disappointed with the Mini’s screen resolution and prefer the big version.

Although digital cameras have changed the way most photographers shoot, I haven’t retired all of my film equipment just yet. There is one area of photography that most app makers and digital camera companies seem to have neglected: black and white.

All of the apps mentioned in this article can strip the color out of an image like a scene from the movie “Pleasantville,” but none have succeeded in recreating the authentic look of black and white photos. In most instances, shooting black and white on digital cameras can feel like making a pizza in a microwave: sure, it looks like a pizza, but it’s just not right.

So every once in a while I will still shoot a roll of 3200-speed black-and-white film on one of my old cameras. Then off I go to a darkroom to get it developed. Nowadays, while I sit waiting amid those pungent and familiar smells, I have my digital darkroom with me, and I edit photos on my iPad while the chemicals work their magic.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/technology/personaltech/apps-and-accessories-help-make-the-ipad-a-scaled-down-darkroom.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: apps, camera connection, darkroom

ENI Announces Major Gas Find Off Mozambique

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Four of the five largest oil and gas discoveries in the world this year have been made off Mozambique, including three earlier finds by Eni, according to the consultants Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh. These discoveries have the potential to put Mozambique, which previously had little oil and gas production, in the gas-exporting big leagues with countries like Qatar and Australia.

Although Eni is ranked only about eighth among Western oil companies in terms of output, with about 1.7 million barrels a day — about half the size of BP or Royal Dutch Shell — the company is a big natural gas player in Europe. And Eni is emerging as a leader in Mozambique exploration.

The newest finds, from the sixth and seventh wells that Eni has drilled there, add an additional six trillion cubic feet of gas to what the Italian company has already found. That is a large amount of gas but relatively incremental. It raises the total to 68 trillion cubic feet that Eni now says it has found in its Mozambique exploration concession, called Area 4, where Eni has a 70 percent shareholding.

Three other shareholders — Galp Energia of Portugal, Kogas of South Korea and ENH, Mozambique’s national oil company — each hold 10 percent.

The total amount discovered is equivalent to about 12 billion barrels of oil. A high proportion of the gas is likely to be recoverable, Eni said.

According to Eni’s estimates, its share of the Mozambique discoveries so far could be worth around $15 billion.

The Eni finds coincide with an effort by the company’s chief executive, Paolo Scaroni, to focus more on exploration and production, and less on transmission of natural gas in Italy. When you make a business of exploration and are successful, he said, “you make a huge amount of money.”

Eni first found gas in Mozambique last year, closely following a discovery by Anadarko Petroleum of the United States, which right now is Eni’s main competitor in the region.

The two companies are now negotiating with the government on a development plan.

The most profitable market for the Mozambique gas is likely to be exports to Asia as super-cooled liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., on special ships. The Web site of the Instituto Nacional de Petróleo, the country’s energy regulator, has a presentation that indicates that as many as 10 L.N.G. conversion plants could be built, which would make Mozambique a significant player in the world gas market.

Mr. Scaroni said there could also be a role for an offshore floating L.N.G. conversion plant, a technology that Royal Dutch Shell is now developing for use off western Australia. Shell recently tried to buy Cove Energy, which had a small position in the Mozambique discoveries, but was outbid by Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production.

Eni is not currently a major player in L.N.G. and may need help with the huge capital costs for developing the gas, which Mr. Scaroni put in the “tens of billions” of dollars.

Because Anadarko is not an L.N.G. specialist, either, it is widely thought in the industry that both companies will bring in partners.

Mr. Scaroni said he had been talking to potential partners “but we are fairly reluctant to strike a deal with anybody until we finish our exploration.”

A recent report by Bernstein Research says that Mozambique will be “Eni’s most significant project, although we do not expect production until 2019 at the earliest.”

The gas discoveries off Mozambique are contained in sandstone deposits in what were ancient river canyons, similar to those off West Africa and elsewhere.

What makes the Mozambique discoveries particularly rich is that the sandstone layers containing the gas are thick — as much as 300 meters, or nearly 1,000 feet — indicating sizable reserves.

“Mozambique is a very positive exploration story,” Mansur Mohammed, a Wood Mackenzie analyst, said. “We are talking about an unprecedented high exploration success rate that transformed the outlook for the region.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 5, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of ENI’s chief executive. He is Paolo Scaroni, not Paulo.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/business/energy-environment/eni-announces-major-gas-find-off-mozambique.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: national oil company, shareholding, south korea

Tesco Backing Away From U.S. Operations

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Tesco said that it was considering different options for the business and that it had in recent months been approached by several parties to buy all or parts of Fresh Easy. Tesco said it might also team up with other companies.

Tim Mason, Fresh Easy’s chief executive, will leave Tesco after more than 30 years with the company, it added.

Aldi Group, the German discount supermarket chain, could be among those interested in acquiring the business, while Wal-Mart Stores could bid for parts of it, analysts said.

“It is now clear that Fresh Easy will not deliver acceptable shareholder returns on an appropriate timeframe in its current form,” Tesco said.

The Tesco chief executive, Philip Clarke, said during a conference call Wednesday that it was “likely that our presence in America will come to an end.”

Mr. Clarke turned his focus on the company’s home market this year with a $1.6 billion investment program to reverse a drop in profit in Britain. The decline had alarmed some investors, who had criticized Tesco for falling behind rivals at home while plowing money into an expansion abroad, including into the United States, that failed to pay off.

“They’ve given it a good go in the U.S. but clearly it has proven to be more difficult than they believed it to be,” said Robert Talbut, chief investment officer at Royal London Asset Management.

Tesco started its Fresh Easy brand about five years ago, hoping to have discovered a market niche for smaller stores offering warm meals. But despite pouring as much money into in Fresh Easy as it invested in its British operations — £1 billion, or $1.6 billion — only a few U.S. stores made a profit.

Earlier this year, Mr. Clarke pushed back the target date for when the business would break even. He also said Tesco would slow new store openings in the United States and remodel the existing stores, with in-store bakeries and stands selling fresh flowers.

Analysts have repeatedly warned that the U.S. business would struggle to make a profit amid fierce competition and a difficult economic environment.

Tesco’s shares jumped 2.8 percent in London after the announcement Wednesday, illustrating some relief among investors that the company was limiting future losses in the United States. The shares ended 3.3 percent higher.

“Whilst the business has many positives, its journey to scale and acceptable returns will take too long relative to other opportunities,” Mr. Clarke said in a statement. “I have therefore decided to conduct a strategic review of Fresh Easy, with all options under consideration.”

Food retailers around the world are confronting the challenge of consumers becoming more cost-conscious as a result of the economic crisis. Many companies have cut prices to retain customers, while growth in Asia — once enough to offset sluggish business elsewhere — has started to dip as well.

Tesco is likely to incur some one-time costs by scaling back in the United States, but the withdrawal would allow Mr. Clarke to focus his attention on repairing the ailing British business and on operations in Asia.

Tesco has said it plans to open seven more stores in China in the next month.

In Britain, Tesco expanded its product range and added services to its online business. Despite that, sales, excluding gasoline, fell 0.7 percent in Britain in the third quarter from a year earlier, Tesco said Wednesday.

The company said it hired the advisory firm Greenhill to help review its options. It expects to give an update on its plan for Fresh Easy in April.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/business/global/06iht-tesco06.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: conference call, investment program, supermarket chain

Europe Fines Electronics Makers $1.92 Billion

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Senior managers at some of the world’s largest electronics companies often used those meetings, mostly in Asia, to fix the price of picture and display tubes for televisions and computer screens, the top European antitrust regulator said Wednesday.

Joaquín Almunia, the E.U. competition commissioner, said he would levy fines totaling almost €1.5 billion, or $1.96 billion, on seven companies involved in the two cartels, which operated for a decade until 2006. Combined, the fines amount to the largest single penalty for price fixing ever imposed by the commission.

The action follows a spate of similar cases in the glass and display sectors, where bulky cathode ray tubes have been supplanted by technologies like liquid crystal display and plasma that allow manufacturers to build far more compact monitors and screens.

Mr. Almunia imposed the strongest penalties on Philips Electronics of the Netherlands and LG Electronics of South Korea.

Mr. Almunia said at a news conference that the cartel activity began in the late 1990s, when the market was still strong for cathode ray tubes, and lasted until 2006 even as that market declined, allowing the conspirators to continue generating strong returns for a technology that was rapidly becoming outmoded.

“The companies were trying to manage through collusion the decline in the market for these kinds of tubes,” Mr. Almunia said. “The undue profits that the companies derived from the collusion may even have artificially slowed down the transition to the more modern products like LCD and plasma displays.”

Excerpts of minutes from meetings held by the cartel members obtained during the investigation showed the efforts they made to fix the market for the older technologies, according to commission officials.

“Producers need to avoid price competition through controlling their production capacity (of flat types in particular),” one excerpt read. Another noted that “mutual cooperation is required to deal with an expected economic downturn” in the second half of 2002.

One of the “greens meetings” took place at the Palm Garden Golf Club and was followed by a “Top Management” meeting in the Terengganu room of a Marriott Hotel, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who asked not to be named because of the legal sensitivity of the case.

The person gave no further details about the location or the meeting. But those details suggested that the conspirators played and ate during the day at a luxury golfing resort near the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur that is equipped with a driving range, infinity-edge swimming pool and tennis courts.

In addition to the “greens meetings,” there were “glass meetings” for lower-level managers, the name probably related to the glass structure of the cathode ray tubes, officials said. They were held in Asia and in European cities including Glasgow, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Budapest, commission officials said.

The cartels “feature all the worst kinds of anti-competitive behavior that are strictly forbidden to companies doing business in Europe,” Mr. Almunia said. There had been “serious harm” to producers in Europe and to consumers, he said, since the cathode ray tubes had accounted for up to 70 percent of the price of screens.

The commission’s antitrust division can fine offenders up to 10 percent of their annual worldwide sales, and the fine on Wednesday exceeded the previous record of almost €1.4 billion, which was imposed in 2008, for a car-glass cartel.

But unlike regulators in the United States, the commission has no criminal enforcement powers and cannot prosecute or seek to jail participants for anti-competitive offenses. Many lawyers say that remains a shortcoming of the European system.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/business/global/europe-fines-7-companies-for-picture-tube-price-fixing.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: commission officials, competition commissioner, liquid crystal display

DealBook: Citigroup to Cut 11,000 Jobs and Take $1 Billion Charge

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto AgencyA Citibank branch in Manhattan. The bank has been sharply reducing its expenses.

1:22 p.m. | Updated

Citigroup announced on Wednesday that it would cut 11,000 jobs, reducing its work force by roughly 4 percent in an effort to cut costs.

Under the reduction, 1,900 jobs will be eliminated in the institutional clients division. Another 6,200 positions will be removed from the bank’s consumer banking business, along with 2,600 jobs in the operations and technology group.

Since 2007, the bank has slashed its workforce by 33 percent, leaving it with about 250,000 employees today.

DealBook: 2 More Officials Plan to Leave the S.E.C.

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesRobert W. Cook, the S.E.C.’s director of trading and markets, at a Senate panel earlier this year.

The exodus at the Securities and Exchange Commission is continuing.

Two top S.E.C. officials — Mark D. Cahn, the general counsel, and Robert W. Cook, the director of trading and markets — plan to leave, the agency said on Wednesday. The two join Meredith Cross, the S.E.C’s director of corporate finance, whose departure was announced on Tuesday.

The departures come after Mary L. Schapiro announced her resignation as chairwoman last week, after four years leading the agency. Elisse B. Walter, a Democratic commissioner at the agency, will take the reins, but her successor is expected to be named in the near future.

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Under Mr. Cahn’s watch, the S.E.C. developed a program to reward whistle-blowers who provided useful information. Mr. Cahn, who has served in his position since February 2011, also advised on the rules that the agency had to write under the Dodd-Frank Act. He plans to leave at the end of the year and return to the private sector.

Mr. Cook, who has been the director of trading and markets since January 2010, oversaw the new rules for Wall Street stemming from Dodd-Frank and the JOBS Act. He also directed the agency’s response to the “flash crash” of May 6, 2010, leading an effort to strengthen circuit breakers and other controls.

“Robert provided extraordinary counsel and worked tirelessly as we put in place measures that have helped to bolster our markets,” Ms. Schapiro said in a statement.

Additional departures may follow after a new leader is named. Robert Khuzami, the S.E.C. enforcement director, is considered a long-shot contender to take over from Ms. Walter as chairman. Some agency officials expect him to leave if he is not named to the top post, according to people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The personnel changes come as the agency has regained some of its footing since the financial crisis, but is still enmeshed in its share of battles. While the S.E.C. has claimed some significant enforcement victories over the last few years, it is still criticized by consumer advocates as not being tough enough on Wall Street.

It also has plenty of work to do, as it completes new regulations and considers fresh challenges, like how to police the high-speed trading that dominates the stock market.

“It has been a unique privilege to have worked at the commission during such an extraordinary period of change in the financial and regulatory arena,” Mr. Cahn, the general counsel, said in a statement.

Ben Protess contributed reporting.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/2-more-officials-plan-to-leave-the-s-e-c/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: cahn, mark wilson, robert khuzami

For Fighting Foreclosures, a $100,000 Award

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

After 30 years of that, he retired and in 2008, during the Great Recession, he experienced a crisis of conscience and switched sides to work pro bono for people whose homes were being foreclosed on by banks.

In this case it took a banker to catch a banker. Mr. Cox very quickly realized that GMAC, the mortgage company he was suing in court to save Nicolle Bradbury’s $75,000 house, was mass-producing flawed paperwork to seize people’s homes illegally. This set off what would become known as the robo-mortgage scandal, leading to a $25 billion settlement that forced the nation’s largest banks to halt foreclosures.

For his work, Mr. Cox is one of five people to be awarded a $100,000 Purpose Prize, given to those 60 and over who have created fresh solutions to old problems. The prize, now in its seventh year, has become a sort of MacArthur genius award for people who develop a second career as social service entrepreneurs.

This year’s other $100,000 winners include:

Judy Cockerton, 61, of Easthampton, Mass., a former toy store owner, for creating innovative programs to support foster children.

Lorraine Decker, 64, of Houston, who had a lengthy career as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, for developing financial education programs aimed at low-income teenagers and adults.

Susan Burton, 61, of Los Angeles, an ex-con and former drug addict, for opening five transitional homes to support women who have been newly released from jail.

Bhagwati Agrawal, 68, of Fairfax, Va., an engineer, for his work in rural India developing systems that produce safe, low-cost drinking water.

The prizes are awarded by Encore.org, a nonprofit organization that develops programs aimed at encouraging retired and older workers to take on second careers in community service. Financing is provided by the John Templeton Foundation and the Atlantic Philanthropies.

This year’s 23 judges included Sherry Lansing, former chairman of Paramount Pictures, David Gergen, Jane Pauley and Sidney Poitier.

While the winners are free to use the $100,000 as they wish, several interviewed said they would use the money to expand their programs.

Mr. Cox, 68, said he plans to use most of his winnings to develop seminars that will train lawyers in Maine to perform consumer protection work.

“Maine is a state with a large rural population where a lot of the attorneys work solo or in two or three person practices,” he said. “Many are unfamiliar with the protections provided under the laws.”

Among other things, he wants to teach lawyers methods for having their legal fees paid by companies that they successfully sue. “A lot of these clients can’t pay much, but their lawyers can recover legal fees from the other side,” Mr. Cox said.

He hopes to bring national experts to Maine to educate the state’s lawyers in consumer protection law.

He also plans to set up a corps of retired lawyers from around the state who will mentor new lawyers and work with them in court.

“The prize money won’t cover the new programs,” he said, “but I’ll use it as seed money, hopefully to raise the $200,000 to $300,000 we’ll need.”

For the last four years he has paid for virtually all the foreclosure work out of his own pocket, he said. “The most I have received was $23,000 in counsel fees for the GMAC case,” he said.

Asked if he intended to use any of the prize money for himself, Mr. Cox said, he might set a little of it aside for a fishing trip.

Connect with Michael Winerip on Facebook.

You can follow Booming via RSS or visit nytimes.com/booming.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/booming/for-fighting-foreclosures-a-100000-award.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: easthampton, mortgage company, store owner

Bits Blog: Car Insurance by the Mile

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment
Andy Isaacson for The New York Times A road in Oregon, where an insurance company is selling auto insurance based on how much people drive.

We live in an age of information everywhere, and all that data is changing some of the most staid industries imaginable.

Yes, you’re reading about car insurance.

A company called MetroMile has started selling insurance to drivers in Oregon based on how many miles they drive. The business uses an in-car sensor that logs the miles, and sends a monthly bill, something like a utility meter. The company says that its ideal consumer, someone who drives 5,000 to 8,000 miles a year, can save 25 percent to 30 percent a year, compared with conventional auto insurance.

Other insurance companies already calculate rates in part on whether a vehicle carries a transponder, allowing it to be located or tracked. MetroMile seems to be taking a novel approach, however, in custom-building insurance based on individual behavior.

That is not all that MetroMile is after, however. The sensor, which is connected to cellphone networks, is also tied to a car’s on-board computer and can collect diagnostics data, emissions data, and other information about the condition and performance of an auto. Over time, the company plans to offer subscribers information about ways to drive more safely, get more miles to a gallon of gasoline, or judge better what is being fixed in their cars.

“By having people pay per mile, it also creates an incentive to drive less,” said Steve Pretre, the chief executive and cofounder of MetroMile, which is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. “We can help people make lifestyle decisions they want to make anyway.”

The company is marketing itself first in Portland partly because Oregon’s regulations are more open to new products, and partly because Portland is at the forefront of a general movement toward more dense urban living, more bicycling, and more walking. If the company can secure 10,000 clients, Mr. Pretre said, the insurance part of MetroMile’s business should become “relatively stable and predictable.”

The company will charge a base fee of $30 to $60 a month per vehicle, which covers things like auto theft and insurance when a customer is driving another car. The mileage charge is expected to be 3 cents to 6 cents a mile, depending on such things as age and driving record.

Compared with traditional insurance, “at about 10,000 miles or less, a transition happens” that makes MetroMile’s pricing more attractive, Mr. Pretre said. That is because people who drive a great deal are riskier bets, simply because they are more often on the road, potentially at hazard. This gives MetroMile a potentially large market, since a relatively few drivers, perhaps 30 percent, are responsible for half of the nation’s driven miles.

The company’s other cofounder, David Friedberg, is an early Google executive who then started Climate Corp., a crop insurance company that uses large amounts of data about rain and heat patterns, plus soil quality and root depths of various plants to sell custom farm insurance.

Mr. Friedberg said the data from the cars could also be used to go into the warranty business, which because of poor information about specific vehicles, “are priced asymmetrically.” He says, “We’ll have a better idea of what is going on.”

The company, which was formed about 18 months ago with $4 million in initial financing, has 15 employees. Mr. Pretre said MetroMile, which is building up its own team of data scientists, does not plan to share driver data with third parties.

Article source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/car-insurance-gets-personal/?partner=rss&emc=rss
Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: novel approach, urban living, utility meter

Bits Blog: Twitter Loses Ability to Properly Display Instagram Photos

December 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

7:15 a.m. | Updated Adding comment from Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive.

Welcome to the Photo Wars.

Instagram on Wednesday disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display Instagram photos on its Web site and in its applications. The move escalates tensions between the two companies, which were once friends in the battle against Facebook but have now become direct competitors.

In a status update on Twitter’s Web site, the company said Instagram had disabled its integration with Twitter cards, which are used to display images and content within Twitter messages.

“Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter,” the post said. “This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience.”

Speaking at the LeWeb technology conference, Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, confirmed that the company has removed the ability to send pictures to Twitter, and plans to completely cut off embedding pictures on the Twitter Web site.

“We’ve decided that right now, what makes sense, is to direct our users to the Instagram Web site,” Mr. Systrom said, noting that Instagram images will soon no longer be visible on Twitter. “Obviously things change as a company evolves.”

Mr. Systrom did not say when images will cesase to show up on the site.

Instagram users will still be able to generate a tweet on Twitter when they post a photo. But when someone clicks on the Instagram link in those tweets, they will be taken out of the Twitter site or app and directed to Instagram’s site to view it.

Until now, if someone posted a photo on Instagram and also shared it with their Twitter followers, a click on the “View Photo” link on Twitter’s site would summon it right on the same page.

Mr. Systrom said that photos posted through other sites and services, including Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare, will not be affected.

For now, Instagram photos appear incorrectly on Twitter, sometimes showing up cropped or off center. It is unclear if Instagram will completely disable the ability for Twitter to show pictures on its Web site.

Photo sharing continues to be a volatile battleground for social networking services, and given the potential advertising dollars at stake, the tensions will likely continue to grow.

Although Instagram and Twitter worked closely together during Instagram’s early days, relations between the two companies have soured since the Facebook acquisition.

Now the companies are competing on a number of fronts for consumer eyeballs. Last month Instagram, which had been almost entirely app-based, began rolling out its own Web-centric pages for its 100 million registered users. And Twitter is expected to introduce photo filters to its mobile applications, much like the ones Instagram offers.

When the Facebook acquisition of Instagram closed, Instagram said in a blog post that the deal “means we can now work together to evolve and build a better Instagram for everyone.”

It looks like “everyone” doesn’t include Twitter.

Article source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/twitter-loses-ability-to-properly-display-instagram-photos/?partner=rss&emc=rss
Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: images, leweb, tweets

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