(Photo by Paul Fraughton | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Heard of a little app called Bubble Ball? Well, if you’re Robert Nay, you created it. Between gym class and dinner.
4,000 lines of code and 4 million downloads later, Bubble Ball has become the #1 free app on the iTunes store. Since the app is free, 14-year-old Mr. Nay is still just a relatively normal (if hyperintelligent) kid.
Way to go, dude!
“TOKYO — Kenichi Horie was a promising auto engineer, exactly the sort of youthful talent Japan needs to maintain its edge over hungry Korean and Chinese rivals. As a worker in his early 30s at a major carmaker, Mr. Horie won praise for his design work on advanced biofuel systems.
But like many young Japanese, he was a so-called irregular worker, kept on a temporary staff contract with little of the job security and half the salary of the “regular” employees, most of them workers in their late 40s or older. After more than a decade of trying to gain regular status, Mr. Horie finally quit — not just the temporary jobs, but Japan altogether.
He moved to Taiwan two years ago to study Chinese.”
“The trustee representing the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the owners of the Mets, alleging that they, as longtime and successful investors, knew or should have known Madoff was operating a fraud, according to two lawyers involved in the case.”
credit: Tom_El_Runi
The people have taken over the streets in Egypt and demanded change… but the change they’re getting is a military presence and a complete shutdown of Internet and mobile networks. What will all of this mean for the country’s economy?
Did you know there were so many American companies with offices in Egypt? Do you think businesses have an obligation to stick around in countries where they earn money?
Today at TILE we talked about possible signs of life in the economy. Is it time to be optimistic? Have you been hearing people around you talk about money with a sigh of relief rather than a grunt of disgust? Mixed messages are always around us, but the earnings reports and other economic numbers that came out in the last few weeks have shown some signs of life worth talking about.
So what are we seeing? Let’s take a closer look:
credit: _Fidelio_
(Is this some sort of sign from Zeus that our crazy American economy is chugging back to life?)
credit: _Fidelio_
(Is this some sort of sign from Zeus that our crazy American economy is chugging back to life?)
“Groupon Inc., which last month rejected a $6 billion takeover offer from Google Inc., isn’t convinced it will sell shares in an initial public offering anytime soon, said Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mason.
The biggest daily deal website’s commitment to proceeding with an IPO this year is ‘less than 100 percent, that’s for sure,’ Mason said in an interview at the Digital-Life-Design conference in Munich. ‘An IPO is something we are considering, but we’re just trying to learn more about the option at this point and understand the benefits and drawbacks.’ ”
Is Groupon missing an opportunity to dominate the market now that it’s turned down a $6 billion buyout from Google AND put off becoming a publicly-traded company? When was the last time you suffered from hesitating? Was hesitating ever the right thing to do?
“Taxpayers waiting on a refund from the Internal Revenue Service can now check on its status using a smartphone.
The application for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Google Inc.’s Android operating system also will give taxpayers daily tax tips during the filing season, the U.S. tax collection agency said today. Smartphone users may download the “IRS2Go” app for free, the IRS said.”
Would you use an app to check your tax refund status? What will be the next government-made mobile app??
Our Canadian friends at The Globe and Mail reveal the latest trend in financial education:
Making personal finance books pink. You know, so girls will read them.
Harlequin, publisher of such romance classics as Alaskan Heat and Surrender to an Irish Warrior*, has already put out one book (The Frugalista Files: How One Woman Got Out of Debt Without Giving Up the Fabulous Life) and plans to publish more in the future.
Okay, we know men and women spend differently and even think about money differently. But will coloring personal finance books pink and talking about shoes really make finance matter for the ladies?
What do you think?
*Trahern MacEgan—his body is honed for fighting, his soul is black and tortured. Women want to tame him, but he has loved once, and now is lost. – eharlequin.com