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Tuesday, 15 October 2013

WillCall Adds Ticket Gifting To Grow Its “Live Music Logistics Company”

Today, WillCall is a concert ticket sales app aiming to grow by adding the option to gift tickets to friends. But founder Donnie Dinch's ambitions are more akin to that of Travis Kalanick. Dinch has been staffing up and raising money to transform WillCall into an Uber for nightlife -- one that makes everything from attending shows to buying drinks and merchandise much easier.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LlfdpI3F7wE/
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$100 million lost in W. Africa pirate attacks since 2010

Lagos (AFP) - Pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea have increasingly targeted international cargo tankers, with roughly $100 million (74 million euros) in product stolen since 2010, a risk analysis group said Thursday, revealing new details about regional unrest.

The nature of maritime crime off Nigeria, Togo and Benin has sparked debate in recent months, with some prominent organisations calling it an emerging piracy hub where attacks are on the rise.

But the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence challenged that claim, telling AFP that while the nature of the targets has changed, the number of attacks has actually gone down since an amnesty deal was struck in 2009 with rebels in Nigeria's oil-producing south.

"It has been declining since amnesty was imposed," said Dirk Steffen, head of maritime security at Risk Intelligence, which closely tracks the region.

What has changed, he said, is the type of ships being attacked, leading to a spike in the number of reported incidents.

"The difference now... is that there have been more targeted attacks against product-carrying tankers," Steffen told AFP.

"Most ships that are involved in international trade tend to report when they are attacked," he said.

In the past, pirates typically raided local or regional vessels, whose crews had various motivations, including political ones, to keep quiet after being robbed.

The International Maritime Bureau, which is funded by ship owners, said in July that armed robbery and kidnappings at sea had been surging off west Africa.

The IMB has over the last 18 months repeatedly cited a rise in attacks in the region.

While Risk Intelligence disputes that narrative, the Danish group said pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are making more money than ever.

A statement from the group described the coordinated attacks on large commercial tankers as "a relatively new type of crime" that has become "highly lucrative."

"An estimated 117,000 metric tons of product worth approximately $100 million (74 million euros) has been stolen since 2010," the statement said.

For Steffen, the solution to the scourge has to come from Nigeria's government.

"The backers and sponsors are Nigerians. The buyers and brokers of stolen cargo are Nigerians and the attack teams are Nigerians,” he said, noting that the pirates may get some "logistical help" from accomplices in Benin, Ghana and Togo.

Nigeria is Africa's top oil producer, generating some two million barrels per day from onshore and deepwater fields in the Niger Delta, which falls along the Gulf of Guinea.

Many of the targeted vessels have been laden with crude oil, destined for refineries around the world.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/100-million-lost-w-africa-pirate-attacks-since-214220750.html
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This Musical iPhone App Uses Your Phone's Camera to Remix Tunes

Until now, augmented reality has been mostly used as a way of giving you more information about the world around you, but a new iPhone app uses your surroundings to remix the music you're listening to.

Monday, 14 October 2013

As US Default Nears, Investors Shrug Off Threat

NEW YORK (AP) — Warren Buffett likens it to a nuclear attack. Economists warn that government spending on programs like Social Security would plunge. The Treasury says the economy would slide into a recession worse than the last.

Yet you wouldn't know that a U.S. debt default could amount to a nightmare from the way many companies and investors are preparing for it: They aren't. The assumption seems to be that in the end, Washington will find a way to avert a default.

"Doomsday is nigh, and everyone shrugs," said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at CovergEx Group, an investment brokerage in New York.

Brian Doe, a wealth adviser at Gratus Capital Management in Atlanta, has 35 clients who've entrusted him with $50 million for safekeeping. He isn't losing sleep over a potential default. Neither are his clients, apparently. Not one has called him about the issue, he said.

"I've not done anything," he said. He puts the odds of default very low. "People in Washington are stupid but not that stupid."

Marcello Ahn, a fund manager in Seoul, is more prepared, sort of. He doesn't think the U.S. will default. But if it does, the economically sensitive stocks of shipbuilders and chemical companies will get hit especially hard. So he's held off buying them.

But he hasn't sold a single stock or made any big moves to protect his portfolio.

"We are not taking actions based on the worst-case scenario," he said.

That worse case is inching closer. The Treasury says it will run out of money to pay its bills if Congress doesn't increase its borrowing authority by Thursday. That includes paying interest and principal on already issued U.S. Treasurys, considered the most secure financial bet in the world.

Treasurys are used as collateral in trillions of dollars of loans rolling over every day. They are also the standard against which the riskiness of stocks and bonds are measured. A default would cast doubt on the value of those assets and throw the global financial system into chaos.

Which is a key reason many seem unprepared for it: Why bother if you can't really protect yourself? Or, as an official response from France's Total oil company put it, "Nobody can imagine the consequences, so we don't have any plans."

Neither apparently does Sony Corp. "There isn't a whole lot that one company can actually do," CEO Kazuo Hirai said Friday at the company's Tokyo headquarters.

Still, the business world isn't entirely unprepared. Big U.S. companies have been hoarding cash since the financial crisis for fear of another credit crunch. And financial regulators, major banks and mutual funds have moved to shore up their defenses, too.

One area of concern is Treasury bills that mature shortly after Thursday. The fear is that owners of those bills may not get their money returned to them in case of a default.

As a result, the Hong Kong stock exchange is demanding that investors who use those bills as collateral in certain trades post more of them because they are riskier now. Funds that usually are filled with Treasury bills are scrambling to protect themselves, too. In a rare move, Fidelity Investments and JP Morgan Chase said last week they had purged their money market funds of all U.S. bills coming due soon after the default deadline.

Owners of U.S government bonds due later are less likely to get stiffed. But they're still vulnerable. In the event of a default, Standard and Poor's and other credit-rating agencies will consider those bonds higher risk and likely downgrade them. That could cause their prices to plummet, guaranteeing losses to sellers who can't wait until the bonds mature. But the specter of a downgrade has yet to scare many.

Insurer Allianz Group in Munich holds Treasurys in its portfolios to maturity, so a downgrade would have no effect on the company, spokesman Michael Matern said.

Another area of concern is what Wall Street calls "liquidity" — the ability to access cash quickly to pay lenders and suppliers. Many companies have assets they could sell to scare up money in a pinch. But any panic in markets after a U.S. default would make it difficult to find buyers just when they are needed most. Buyers fled after the collapse of Lehman Brothers five years ago, turning a bankruptcy into a financial crisis and plunging economies around the world into recession.

On Friday, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon sought to reassure investors that his bank was prepared. He noted in a conference call with reporters that it had $250 billion on deposit at central banks around the world. "We have enormous liquidity," Dimon said.

If other financial institutions are worried about liquidity or hits to their Treasury holdings, they're not showing it.

A statement from Singapore's DBS Bank, which has branches in many Southeast Asian countries, said it was not "unduly concerned" about a direct impact from a default. South Korea's Woori Bank doesn't believe South Korea would be hurt badly from a U.S. default. So it has made no contingency plans, said Jang Chung-sik, a spokesman.

The Philippine government thinks a default is unlikely but is moving to protect its economy anyway. At a news conference last week in the tiny nation of Brunei, the Philippine finance secretary said his country was taking steps to improve its "liquidity positions." But his boss, the Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, said at the same news conference that no step would guarantee protection.

"When the world's biggest economy turns belly-up, how can you actually protect yourself?" he said.

Protecting yourself during a U.S. default might not work in the chaos that ensues. In fact, the moves might backfire.

Stuart Speer, a financial advisor in Shawnee, Kan., learned that the hard way two years ago. In August 2011, the U.S. came close to defaulting and S&P downgraded Treasurys. Speer dumped Treasurys from his holdings, fearing many investors would do the same and prices would tumble. But others ended up buying Treasurys and prices rose sharply.

"That's not in the textbook," he said.

This time, Speer has placed "stop-losses" on his stock holdings, a computer order to sell if prices fall below a certain level. But aside from that, he's not doing much, saying little would help.

"There is no fail-safe," he said.

Except maybe cash. Spooked by the financial crisis, big U.S. companies in the S&P 500 stock index have piled up a record $1.1 trillion of cash. They've drawn criticism for not using it to expand or hire.

But the move may end up being wise. Many now have enough to pay their bills for several months in a pinch, letting them avoid the panicked lenders that refused them money in the financial crisis. The cash cushion may help explain why U.S. stocks haven't sold off more as default approaches.

"Investors know that for better or worse, most companies have become their own banks," said Colas, the ConvergEx's strategist. "In a way, we've been preparing for this (default) since the financial crisis."

___

Associated Press writers Steve Rothwell in New York, Sarah DiLorenzo in Paris, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong, Youkyung Lee in Seoul, Joe McDonald in Beijing, Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo and Jim Gomez in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=234118681&ft=1&f=
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Saturday, 12 October 2013

Loan repayment calculator | Money | theguardian.com

Enter your debts

To find out how much you could save:

Enter the original amount of your loan: £

Enter your interest rate (APR): %

Enter the length of your loan: (years)

Enter the number of payments you have already made (months):

(Calculations may take a minute.)

Your principal and interest payment is about: each month.

You will make payments that total about:

Your payments to date total about:

Your interest charges to date total about:

You still owe on the loan about:

You have paid toward the principal loan amount about:

You have yet to pay interest charges totalling about:

By paying an extra amount each month you could save thousands of pounds in interest and pay off your loan years earler.

Extra monthly payment	Interest saved	Fewer payments
£10
£25
£50
£75
£100
£150
£200
£250
£300
£350
£400
£450
£500

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/money/interactive/2013/oct/09/loan-repayment-calculator-overpaying-save-money
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Thursday, 10 October 2013

WNBA's All-Time Top Scorer Tina Thompson Retires

The WNBA's biggest star, Tina Thompson of the Seattle Storm, has just retired. She played in each of the league's 17 seasons. She won four championships and two Olympic gold medals. Steve Inskeep talks to Thompson, who never dreamed of becoming a professional basketball player.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We're going to hear next from a woman who has finished one of the most extraordinary careers in recent sports history. Tina Thompson, of pro basketball Seattle Storm, has retired. She played in every one of the WNBA's 17 seasons. The all-time top scorer, she won four championships, two Olympic gold medals. But she never dreamed of becoming a pro basketball player. That option once hardly existed for women.

In fact, she was sitting in a test prep class hoping to get into law school when she got a call. The brand-new Women's National Basketball Association had chosen her for their very first draft pick.

Was a hard decision to go to the WNBA at all?

TINA THOMPSON: It was, especially initially because I mean, from a financial standpoint, the money that they offered me was literally a couple of thousand dollars above the poverty line...

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: ...in California at the time.

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: So...

INSKEEP: To be the number one draft pick in an entire sport.

THOMPSON: So I was kind of like, all right. You have been wanting to be, you know, a judge, you know, almost your entire life. You studied hard, now you're studying to take the LSAT and it wasn't, you know, to hard of a decision to decline. But once negotiations and stuff like that started, they made it more, I guess, pleasing for me to be able to make a decision to play in the WNBA.

INSKEEP: What's the smallest crowd you ever played before in a pro basketball game?

THOMPSON: I would probably say a few thousand. I mean I've been very, you know, blessed to play for good teams that have a great fan base. I mean, in Houston our fan base was amazing. There were times we went on the road, I remember it was actually a television game when we played in Detroit, like one year. And you could probably, you know, count the amount of people that were in the stands at the time. But, you know, once the game starts, I once - I kind of step in between those lines, I have tunnel vision.

So that's not something that bothers me. But of course, I did notice it, like, in warm-ups and things like that. Because when you can actually hear individual voices, and totally understand what they're saying - and there's not the hum of, you know, just people kind of like talking and stuff like that, like drowning it out - you know that there's a very small group of people in the arena.

INSKEEP: Is there any one play, any one basket, any one score that goes through your head again, and again, and again and you can see it is if you're experiencing it again?

THOMPSON: There is actually one play that I see quite often and just, I think it's embedded into WNBA history. And it's not one that I've taken myself. It was one...

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: ...that was taken by a player by the name of Teresa Weatherspoon. And Teresa played for the New York Liberty. We were playing them in a championship, a three-game series, and we were up by two points. I actually think that I had made the basket before, to kind of put us up. And Teresa is taking the ball out of bounds. They don't have any timeout and we relaxed.

So, she kind of dribbles by a few of my teammates and I'm kind of like, in my mind, like: Are you guys just going to let her get a free look at the basket. And I run kind of asked her because I'm like, we should at least deter her. And she keeps the ball from our end of the court and it goes in.

INSKEEP: Ow.

THOMPSON: Yes. So they beat us by one point. And I am extremely livid. So we go to the locker room and everybody is kind of like, no big deal - we'll get them tomorrow. And I'm like: Are you kidding me.

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: Who wants to come back tomorrow?

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: Like, this should be over. I'm pissed.

INSKEEP: You should have one in the series.

THOMPSON: No one laughed. No one smiled. This is not OK.

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: Needless to say, we go back and we completely smash them in the third game. And, you know, we win our second championship. But yeah, I was heated.

INSKEEP: Has there been - forgive me for not knowing this - has there been any moment in which you have played against the men in any kind of setting - in a kind of Billie Jean King kind of setting?

THOMPSON: Well, like during the All-Star Game, like, quite a few of us consistently are invited to the NBA, like, All-Star. And we do, like, shooting events during, like, All-Star Saturday and things like that. Being from L.A., I have a lot of friends that play professionally and have played, so more so like in pickup games and stuff like that.

INSKEEP: When you've played against men in informal games or in other settings, have you noticed differences in the style of play, the way of play, the way that people think, their attitude on the court between men and women?

THOMPSON: Oh, for sure. Some guys, especially those that are not professional - because the professional guys actually have a bit more respect. But for men that actually aren't professionals and, you know, they are put in the situation...

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: ...where they're having to play against or with, or have to guard a female player, there's just kind of like his machismo that they have the sense that: No matter how talented this female player is, they believe because they're a guy that they're better. So they exert a lot more energy.

INSKEEP: Wait a minute. You said they use a lot more energy, meaning they're a little worried about you. They want to make sure...

THOMPSON: Yeah, like they're little or they feel like, you know, they might be embarrassed or something like that. And it's kind of like, yeah, like you just got crossed over by James Harden and it was no big deal, because he's a professional. But now, you're guarding, you know, Maya Moore, and you're being extremely physical with her because she's, like, a female. And it's just like, come on, dude - like, relax.

Like, no matter how you try, she's a professional. So you could try as hard as you want to - she's better.

(LAUGHTER)

INSKEEP: Your fans will know that you have an eight-year-old son, right?

THOMPSON: I do. I have an eight-year-old son. His name is Dylan. He spent most of his life as a - just a basketball kid.

INSKEEP: What was that like when he was two, say?

THOMPSON: It was great. I mean he immediately adapted to the lifestyle. You know, sometimes our hours are really weird and really awkward, especially when we were traveling with the Olympic team or USA Basketball. I mean sometimes we were getting up at like three, four o'clock in the morning but he would get up. And he wouldn't be fussy.

INSKEEP: What did he say when you told him you were going to retire?

THOMPSON: He wasn't happy about it. He's so much a part of our team and he has relationships with our players and coaches, and stuff like that. So it was really tough for him. He actually cried. And, you know, I felt just kind of heartbroken by it. But at the same time, it's like: Mom is 38 years old and this is her 17th season; like, she can only play, like, so much. You know?

And I just explained to him, like, he's going to be amazed at the difference in our life: Little League, and to play flag football and basketball, like consistently. You know, me retiring and not playing basketball anymore, will be a distant memory.

INSKEEP: Well, Tina Thompson, congratulations on the highs and lows of those 17 years.

THOMPSON: Thank you so much.

INSKEEP: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/08/230356321/wmbas-all-time-top-scorer-tina-thompson-retires?ft=1&f=1055
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