Global 2011: Missing iPhone prototype

Image via CrunchBase
San Francisco police have assisted Apple in the search for a prototype of the latest iPhone that went astray in a bar in a repeat of an embarrassing loss that took place last year.

An Apple employee lost a yet-to-be-released iPhone 5 in a tequila bar in San Francisco's Mission District in July, technology news site CNET reported this week.

After the device was electronically tracked using GPS technology to a San Francisco house, four police officers and two Apple employees visited the home, the San Francisco police said in a statement distributed to news outlets.

"Apple employees called Mission police station directly, wanting assistance in tracking down a lost item," the press release said.

"The two Apple employees met with the resident and then went into the house to look for the lost item," it said. "The Apple employees did not find the lost item and left the house."

The statement did not identify the item being searched for but the title of the document carried a tantalizing hint: iPhone5.doc.

A resident of the home, Sergio Calderon, 22, told SF Weekly that he has visited the bar where the phone was reportedly lost but he did not have the device. He said the search of his house took place in July.

http://news.yahoo.com/police-help-apple-hunt-missing-iphone-prototype-013611061.html

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• Bizarre case of the "missing" iPhone 5 takes another twist (sfgate.com)
• Apple employee may have lost iPhone 5 prototype in a bar (geek.com)

Global 2011: IPOs Boost Demand for Silicon Valley Mansions

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A surge in wealth from technology stock sales and initial public offerings is spilling into the Silicon Valley real estate market as newly rich workers bid up home values in suburban cities south of San Francisco.

The median price of single-family houses sold in Palo Alto, home of Facebook Inc., climbed 20 percent in May from a year earlier to $1.63 million, the biggest jump since 2008, according to preliminary figures from research company DataQuick. In Mountain View, the base of LinkedIn Corp., prices rose 3.1 percent to $957,500, the ninth year-over-year gain in 12 months.

The advances are defying a U.S. housing slump that has sent national values to an eight-year low. Share sales such as the IPO of LinkedIn — which doubled on its first day of trading — and an expected offering from Facebook will fuel a boom in some Silicon Valley cities into 2013, said Kenneth Rosen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

"It's just the beginning of the story and I suspect we'll see an explosion in the next couple years," Rosen, chairman of the school's Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, said in a telephone interview. "You've got young people with real money, and it's not surprising they want to have a house."

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/112941/ipos-boost-demand-silicon-valley-mansions-bloomberg

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Global 2011: 5 things you never knew about Pac-Man

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Having been a part of the pop-culture landscape for over 30 years now, Pac-Man is a pretty familiar character.

He has adorned cereal boxes, been the star of a Saturday morning cartoon program and appeared on virtually every gaming platform to have ever been released.

That's not just systems from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It also includes essentially every cell phone that has a screen, long-dead portable systems and plug-and-play devices for your TV. Along the way, the little pellet-muncher has built an empire that has allowed publisher Namco-Bandai to survive the worst the economy could throw at it.

But even the most well known icons have their secrets. This week, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Toru Iwatani, creator of the game, offered a postmortem on the industry's biggest franchise-and told a few tales most fans have probably never heard.

Here are the five most surprising:

1. The point of the game was to attract girls
2. Each ghost had specific orders
3. What, exactly, does Pac-Man mean?
4. The missing puzzle piece
5. The ghosts were almost just one color

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• The birth of Pac-Man - more details (gonintendo.com)
• A Behavioral Analysis of the Pac-Man Ghosts [Arcade] (kotaku.com)

Global 2011: Ronald McDonald Fades as Chain Touts Lattes

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As McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD - News) morphs into a more upscale chain, there's one person you won't see munching salads, sipping a cappuccino and surfing the Web: Ronald McDonald, age 48.

While Ronald still plays an ambassador role, he isn't tied to the menu, says spokeswoman Danya Proud. Even as mascots like Burger King's King shill on TV and the Web, Ronald has ceded the limelight to budding singers and dancers who sell mochas and frappes -- not Happy Meals.

"We haven't been seeing a lot of Ronald McDonald," said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. "They're beginning to appeal to much more sophisticated individuals."

Amid intensifying concern over surging obesity rates, the chain has distanced itself from its fast-food origins, adding cafe-friendly items such as fruit smoothies and dolling up restaurants with free WiFi and padded seats. While the shift helped to revive sales growth last year -- McDonald's has credited McCafe coffee for revenue growth in six of the past seven quarters -- the new adults-only ambiance leaves little room for Ronald.

"He kind of represents the old McDonald's, with the high- fat content foods that are kind of falling out of favor," said Bob Dorfman, the executive creative director at Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco. "It's clear that McDonald's is advertising coffee, they're not advertising burgers."

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112237/ronald-mcdonald-fades-as-chain-changes?mod=family-kids_parents

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• Ronald McDonald Sidelined as Chain Touts Lattes (businessweek.com)

Global 2011: 10 Cities with the Worst Commutes

Image by Getty Images via @daylife
What does sitting in traffic cost you? About $808 on average, according to the latest Urban Mobility Report, conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute. But the cost is dramatically higher if you live in Chicago, where the cost per commuter hit a whopping $1,738.

In fact, commuters in large urban areas spend roughly 40% more on average, wasting some $1,166 per year twiddling their thumbs in traffic.

Where does traffic cost the most, according to the study?

1. Chicago: $1,738 (70 hours/52 gallons)
2. Washington, D.C. : $1,555 (70 hours/57 gallons)
3. Los Angeles/Long Beach: $1,464 (63 hours/50 gallons)
4. Houston: $1,322 (58 hours/52 gallons)
5. Baltimore: $1,218 (50 hours/43 gallons)
6. San Francisco: $1,112 (49 hours/39 gallons)
7. Boston: $1,112 (48 hours/36 gallons
8. Dallas/Ft. Worth: $1,077 (48 hours/38 gallons)
9. Denver: $1,057 (47 hours/38 gallons)
10. Seattle: $1,056 (44 hours/35 gallons)

The study looked at 101 cities. Want to see the data about your city, including whether it’s getting more or less congested?

http://shine.yahoo.com/event/financiallyfit/traffic-pain-10-cities-with-the-worst-commutes-2444341/

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• Urban Traffic Causes People to Fill an Extra 3.9 Gallons of Fuel (greenpacks.org)
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• Motorists Wasted 3.9 Billion Gallons of Fuel Due to Traffic in 2009 (inhabitat.com)
• The True Cost of Rush Hour (triplepundit.com)

Global 2010: Buffett and Osberg's Like a Marriage, Only More Enduring

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Twenty years ago, Warren Buffett invited Sharon Osberg to Omaha to play cards. It was a game that changed their lives. Now best friends, the pair chat about their relationship and the rigors of low-stakes, high-pressure bridge.

Here's how the second-richest man in America introduced himself to Sharon Osberg:

He invited her into his office, got her down on hands and knees, and had her play him in a fixed-dice game.

At the time, Osberg was an executive at Wells Fargo and a world-champion bridge player. She had briefly met Warren Buffett, an avid amateur, at a game in New York City, and the Berkshire Hathaway CEO had invited her to his Omaha headquarters.

"His theory was, this is how he would break the ice," Osberg says. "They were nontransitive dice [a sort of party trick for statistics geeks]. There I was, in my dress, on my hands and knees, rolling dice on Warren Buffett's floor, in a situation where I couldn't win. He thought it was hilarious." After Buffett finished laughing, the two went out for steak, then played bridge at his local club. The game was "terrible," Buffett recalls. "Humiliating," says Osberg. "But we had a really good time."

That was 20 years ago, and the two have been bridge partners and friends ever since. They play together an average of four times a week. It's a long-distance, platonic relationship that was founded on the card game but has evolved. Osberg lives in Marin County, outside of San Francisco, and communicates with Buffett a couple of times a day by phone, and then again via the computer, where the two chat as they play online.

"She's a very good friend now, even though we don't see each other that often," says Buffett. Osberg agrees. "He's just my best friend. He's changed my life. I'm the luckiest human being in the world."

Beyond their passion for the game, the pair relate in other ways—like the dry humor they share. Even their differences are complementary. Osberg is a professional technologist who ran Wells Fargo's online banking group, and Buffett famously steers clear of anything with a chip.

"At least two or three times a month, he'll call me and say, 'This is on my screen, what do I do?'" she says. But serving as a billionaire technophobe's IT director is relatively easy work, Osberg allows: "Whenever there's any kind of a problem with his computer, he just goes out and buys another one."

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/111491/like-a-marriage-only-more-enduring?mod=career-leadership

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