President Obama reelection bid

President Obama is already starting his campaing for the 2010 election with a video that he made telling supporters that he will run for another bid and trying to gain more support.He says that the primary focuses of his 2010 campaign will be to improve the nation's healthcare system, fix Wall Street, and to get the U.S. economy moving again. His campaign won't be easy though. Because many of the economic decisions that he has made have upset many Republicans, they believe that he has held the recovery back. His campaign will have to address the national debt in order to gain any popularity. He also has to persuade the people that he is going to compromise some sort of plan in order to save the economy. He plans to jump start a massive fund-raising drive to raise money for his campaign by filing his legal paperwork in advance.

Facebook Kicking off 20,000 Users a Day

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/03/23/facebook.underage.users/index.html?iref=NS1

Facebook is booting over 20,000 underage users a day. To be on Facebook you must be at least 13 years old, and over half of the 12 year olds out there are using a social networking site. If Facebook is losing only a tiny fraction of their 600 million users, then what is happening to the company from this loss and why are they booting off users?
Facebook treats every user on their site like an adult, they give them their own choices as to what they want the public to see or not to see. If something explicit happens to a child on Facebook or from Facebook, then Facebook could probably get sued. 13 year olds don't make the brightest choices, but they have a little bit more of a grip on what to post online than a 10 year old does. I think Facebook is trying to prevent something bad from happening to a younger kid.
Another thought that crossed my mind was that 20,000 people less a day will be seeing the advertisements on Facebook and that might effect other companies besides Facebook. Will other companies lose potential money from this?
As age increases, it is shown that more people are involved with a social networking site. With all the younger kids getting kicked off Facebook will that make it more or less popular when they are of age? I would expect that it would make some kids want to be on Facebook more since they would have to wait to get on it, but I can also imagine kids being against it since they weren't originally allowed on or they were kicked off. Another possibility is that maybe the younger generations are finding other social networking sites to be on. If this is so, then Facebook will have a competitor because those kids might not want to switch sites if all their friends are using a different site other than Facebook.
I think Facebook is definitely number one when it comes to social networking sites, but to the younger generations it might not be. They might think something else is the 'cool thing'.

Americans Cancel Trips to Japan Due to the Earthquake

Due to the earthquake and the following tsunami in Japan, Americans are advised by the US government to postpone or cancel their planned trips to Japan for either leisure or business visits. Japanese travel organizations have described themselves as "swamped" with phone calls after this disaster.

Peggy Goodman informs us, "trips will resume before the end of May or beginning of June." Goodman is the president of Friendly Planet Travel in Pennsylvania who has yearly plans of tours going on in Japan. 727,000 visitors in Japan came from America last year, according to the tourism organization.

After the disaster occurred, the State Department sent warnings to the Americans to keep people from traveling to Japan since there was a shortage of water and food beginning to happen. Although the alerts end April 1, there are still many risk factors that may keep people from traveling. Many businesses are not operating in Japan right now because they're in recovery. Japan has many resources that we need every day and affects many major corporations we have. Japan has greatly impacted the entire world more than with just the economy. Japan moved 8 feet with this earthquake, it also moved the Earth 4 inches on it's axis. Although it may not seem like much, it has had a big affect. One life was lost in California and many people have been affected by either losing relatives in Japan or their jobs. It won't be long until we all see dramatic changes in our life involving money, oil prices and jobs.


http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-03-14/business/28690659_1_travel-plans-tour-operators-and-travel-tokyo-s-haneda

The iPhone 5 Surprise: No Intel Inside

In this article, Ross of Fiscal Times discusses the much awaited arrival of the iPhone 5. This new innovative device will be released in the summer of this year which is Apple's prime time of sales. The iPhone is already making waves because of its sleek design and news of new software. All iPhones produced last fall came equipped with software from Intel. The only downfall of this software was that in order to make the jump to Verizon in February, Intel had to create a brand new chip that would support the data in the Verizon iPhones that was different than the data in the AT&T iPhones. The new iPhone 5's will come standard with new chipsets from Qualcomm which is able to support both Verizon and AT&T's data networks. This loss for Intel was one of great magnitude and drove the sale of those iPhones down. But for Qualcomm it was a great benefit. The predicted sales will be very high for the new iPhone being released this summer. Also, the new iPad 2's being released will also contain this new Qualcomm chip and they have already seen great sales. With the release of the new iPhone 5, earlier generations of the iPhone will see a drop in price as they already have.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/03/07/The-iPhone-5-Surprise-No-Intel-Inside.aspx

Drilling is not The Source of Parker County Water Contamination

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/03/07/2902435/state-regulators-say-driller-not.html

Texas Railroad Commision hearing examiners declared that two Barnett Shale natural gas wells were not the soure of methane gas contamination of residential water wells in Parker County. These examiners believe that the source of the contamination is from a much shallower gas-bearing formation than the Barnett Shale, which is located more than a mile below ground level. The Railroad Commissioners are trying to find wells that are not contaminated so they can focus on other wells that are more dangerous. All these contaminations deal with methane, the primary ingredient in natural gas. All researchers hired by the EPA found the same results as the examiners. This result was that the contamination of the water wells was caused by methane. Since there is a scarce amount of uncontaminated water in these wells, the supply of clean water will decrease, therefore, the price of the water is going to increase as well as the demand. Clean water is a necessity in everyday life. We use water for showers, nutrition, hydration, etc. which creates a high demand for this product. Without this product, a catastrophe will evolve and slow down our economy well by well.

iPad 2

The iPad has now been outdated. This was very quick considering the original came out not too long ago. The iPad 2 has many more advances. But what does this mean to the price and the expectations to the new iPad? The original had shocked people with the capabilities it had and now there are more with the iPad 2. The price is the same as the first and there could be many reasons why. One reason could be the degredation of the dollar within just the past year. The economy has gone into a recession and that is the backing of the American dollar.

It is kind of shocking that the iPad 2 is the same price as the original iPad because of the recent raise in gas prices. It is a common trend for other prices to rise as gas does but this is not the case. The question now is simply, why? Everything else right now in the economy is inflated except for this technological advance. Maybe this is a sign for a turn around in the economy since technology is one of the main drives for a successful economy.


http://http//www.apple.com/ipad/

Times Square Alliance Presents a Major Public art Exhibition at the Crossroads of the World

http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=45402

The Times Square Alliance is showcasing different artists with a public art exhibit at the Crossroads in Times Square. The Times Square Show 2011 has four very interesting sculptures shown out in one of the busiest areas. Thousands of people are walking around Times Square every day which means thousands of people will be seeing these sculptures that aren't normally there. These out of place sculptures will be noticed since they are normally not there. I think these sculptures will draw tons of attention. With all this attention, these artists will be gaining the interest of people who normally wouldn't see their work or go to a museum. They will be exposed to something that they aren't use to and might like the sculptures. There are tons of people being exposed to the art in Times Square, so these artists will become so much more popular than they once were. Not only will people like them but they will be interested and want more. This will help not only the artists, but also museums. People who don't normally go to museums might start going now. Putting this in the public opens many doors to the artists and different businesses and museums for them to make more money and to have more interest.

Back to Land Lines? Cell Phones May Be Dead by 2015

"What do a cell phone, a laptop, and an electric car have in common?"

All three devices depend on batteries that contain a very scarce natural metal called lithium. The price of lithium has drastically increased due to its scarcity. This price increase has many technology companies rethinking the use of a lithium battery because the budget calls for a much lesser equivalent. Also to make matters worse for lithium, studies have shown that the contents in the lithium battery negatively affect brain activity. Lithium is very hard to find and its scarce amounts have predicated its price increase. Countries that have an abundance of the metal have the ability to price it at whatever they would like. With the demand of the lithium battery going up, producers of these devices have no choice but to pay those outrageous prices if they want to keep business booming. This in turn causes those lithium driven devices' prices to be increased by the manufacturers because of the increase in the price to produce the product. Many products that require the lithium battery are beginning to explore other alternatives to the long lasting battery. Suppliers of lithium are under much pressure from the demand of this scarce product. These factors will continue to decrease the popularity of the cell phone.