DealBook: An Enigma in the Mortgage Market That Elevates Rates

Imagine a 30-year mortgage on which you only pay 2.8 percent in interest a year.

Such a mortgage could already exist, but something in the banking system is holding it back. And right now, few agree on what that "something" is.

Getting to the bottom of this enigma could help determine whether mortgage lenders are dysfunctional, greedy or simply trying to do their job in a sensible way.

Right now, borrowers are paying around 3.55 percent for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage that qualifies for a government guarantee of repayment. That's down from 4.1 percent a year ago, and 5.06 percent three years ago.

Mortgage rates have declined as the Federal Reserve has bought trillions of dollars of bonds, a policy that aims to stimulate the economy. Last week, the Fed said it would make new purchases, focusing on bonds backed by mortgages.

The big question is whether those purchases lead to even lower mortgage rates, as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, hopes.

But mortgage rates may not decline substantially from here. Something weird has happened. Pricing in the mortgage market appears to have gotten stuck. This can be seen in a crucial mortgage metric.

Banks make mortgages, but since the 2008 crisis, they have sold most of them into the bond market, attaching a government guarantee of repayment in the process.

The metric effectively encapsulates the size of the gain that banks make on those sales. In September 2011, banks were making mortgages with an interest rate of 4.1 percent. They were then selling those mortgages into the market in bonds that were trading with an interest rate, or yield, of 3.36 percent, according to a Bloomberg index.

The metric captures the difference between the bond and mortgage rates; in this case it was 0.74 percentage points. The bigger the "spread," the bigger the financial gain for the banks selling the mortgages. That 0.74 percentage point "spread" was close to the 0.77 percentage point average since the end of 2007. Banks were taking roughly the same cut on the sales as they were in previous years.

But something strange has happened over the last 12 months. That spread has widened significantly, and is now more than 1.4 percentage points. The cause: bond yields have fallen a lot more than the mortgage rates banks are charging borrowers.

Put another way, the banks aren't fully passing on the low rates in the bond market to borrowers. Instead, they are taking bigger gains, and increasing the size of their cut.

So where might mortgage rates be if the old spread were maintained? At 2.83 percent – that's the current bond yield plus the 0.75 percentage point spread that existed a year ago.

It's important to examine why the tight relationship between bond yields and mortgage rates becomes unglued.

One explanation, mentioned in a Financial Times story on Sunday, is that the banks are overwhelmed by the demand for new mortgages and their pipeline has become backlogged. When demand outstrips supply for a product, it's less likely that its price — in this case, the mortgage's interest rate — will fall. There are in fact different versions of this theory.

One holds that bank mortgage operations are still poorly run, and therefore it's no surprise they can't handle an inundation of new applications. Another says banks deliberately keep rates from falling further as a way of controlling the flow of mortgage applications into their pipeline. If mortgages were offered at 2.8 percent, they wouldn't be able to handle the business, so they ration through price, according to this theory.

Another backlog camp likes to point the finger at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled entities that actually guarantee the mortgages. The theory is that these two are demanding that borrowers fulfill overly strict conditions to get mortgages. Banks fear that if they don't ensure compliance with these requirements, they'll have to take mortgages back once they've sold them, a move that can saddle them with losses.

As a result, the banks have every incentive to slow things down to make sure mortgages are in full compliance, which can add to the backlog. Once this so-called put-back threat is decreased, or the banks get better at meeting requirements, supply should ease.

But there is a weakness to the backlog theories.

The banks have handled two huge waves of mortgage refinancing since the 2008 financial crisis. During those, the spread between mortgage and bond rates did increase. But not anywhere near as much as it has recently. And the spread has stayed wide for much longer this time around.

For instance, $1.84 trillion of mortgages were originated in 2009, a big year for refinancing, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. In that year, the average spread between bonds and loans was 0.89 percentage points. And the banking sector was in a far worse state, which would in theory make the backlog problem worse.

Today, the sector is in better shape, with more mortgage lenders back on their feet. But the spread between loans and bonds is considerably wider. In the last 12 months, when mortgage origination has been close to 2009 levels, it has averaged 1.1 percentage points. This suggests that it's more than just a backlog problem

Some mortgage banks seem to be having little trouble adapting to the higher demand. U.S. Bancorp originated $21.7 billion of mortgages in the second quarter of this year, 168 percent more than in the second quarter of last year.

Wells Fargo is currently the nation's biggest mortgage lender, originating 31 percent of all mortgages in the 12 months through the end of June. In a conference call with analysts in July, the bank's executives seemed unfazed about the challenge of meeting mounting customer demand.

"We've ramped up our team members in mortgage to be able to move the pipeline through as quickly as possible," said Timothy J. Sloan, Wells Fargo's chief financial officer. He also said that the bank had increased its full time employees in consumer real estate by 19 percent in the prior 12 months. Not exactly the picture of a bank struggling to expand capacity.

But if banks are readily adding capacity, why aren't mortgage rates falling further, closing the spread between bond yields? Perhaps a new equilibrium has descended on the market that favors the banks' bottom lines.

The drop in rates draws in many more borrowers. The banks add more origination capacity, but not quite enough to bring the spread between bonds and loans back to its recent average.

The banks don't care because mortgage revenue is ballooning. But it all means that the 2.8 percent mortgage may never materialize.

By NICK WINGFIELD 19 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/an-enigma-in-the-mortgage-market-that-elevates-rates/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Keystrokes in Google Bare Shocking Rumors About Bettina Wulff

BERLIN — In an earlier, more innocent era, the shocking rumors about the past of a former first lady of Germany would have stayed put in the drawing rooms of the political elite. Nowadays, they appear unbidden on Google.

Say a schoolchild writing a homework assignment about Bettina Wulff entered her name into the search engine. "Bettina Wulff prostitute," Google's autocomplete function would helpfully but perhaps slanderously suggest. "Bettina Wulff escort" would pop up for good measure.

"I was stunned," Ms. Wulff, who vehemently denied the accusations, told the weekly newsmagazine Stern, one of several publications to feature her on the cover in recent weeks. "I felt powerless and cried a lot."

As a result, Ms. Wulff, whose husband resigned as president in February in the midst of a scandal over favors from wealthy friends, is now the leading player in a latter-day fable mixing gossip, sharp-elbowed politics and new technology. Taking an aggressive tack against the rumors, she filed a lawsuit against Google in a Hamburg court.

Her suit signals the latest effort to force the Internet giant to play the role of online referee, following close behind Google's decision to block an inflammatory anti-Muslim video from YouTube in certain countries.

In Ms. Wulff's case, Google has countered that it is not to blame for her troubles. "All of the queries shown in Autocomplete have been typed previously by other Google users," Kay Oberbeck, a spokesman for the company, said in a statement that suggested that it was the curiosity of the many, and not the assessment of the company, that was causing the offending terms to pop up.

Not content with litigation, Ms. Wulff has started a campaign to clear her name. Her newly published memoir, a tell-all with chapters titled "The Men" and "The Tattoo," became the best-selling nonfiction book in Germany this week.

The nightmare started out more like a fairy tale. Bettina Körner married Christian Wulff, then the state premier in Lower Saxony, in 2008. They left the state capital, Hanover, for big-time politics in Berlin in 2010, when Mr. Wulff was chosen for the important but largely ceremonial job of Germany's president.

Mr. Wulff was the president, but his young wife, just 36 when he was elected by special assembly at the Reichstag, became the star. She was celebrated in the press for her looks and her glamour, her height and her elegance. The tabloid media never tired of repeating that she had a tattoo, as if it were a badge of youth and hipness.

But she was followed to the presidential palace, Bellevue, by one of the most pernicious and persistent rumors in German politics: that she had worked as an escort. "My pseudonym was supposedly Lady Viktoria, and my domain was supposed to be an establishment by the name of Château Osnabrück," Ms. Wulff wrote in her book, rebutting the rumors.

The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung has reported that the rumors date from 2006, when she first met her future husband, and that they were circulated not by the opposition but by members of his own party. "She was the glamour girl from the beginning," said Lutz Hachmeister, director of the Institute for Media and Communication Policy in Berlin. "He was the Catholic, conservative provincial politician."

When the rumors spread on the Internet, Ms. Wulff kept quiet while her husband dealt with revelations that he had received a questionable personal loan when he was state premier, as well as the use of a car, a mobile phone and other favors from wealthy friends. Mr. Wulff resigned, but the gossip about his wife did not go away.

Her publicity offensive may have done a better job of selling books than extinguishing the prostitution story. A representative survey by the polling group Emnid for the newspaper Bild am Sonntag found that 81 percent of Germans had never heard the rumors before she started her campaign to stop them.

Victor Homola contributed reporting.

By RICHARD LARDNER | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 19 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/world/europe/keystrokes-in-google-bare-shocking-rumors-about-bettina-wulff.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Digital Domain: Smartphone Ads and Their Drawbacks — Digital Domain

AT two inches wide and one-third of an inch tall, a display ad shown on a smartphone isn't much of a canvas for a creative marketer seeking to promote a product or service.

That's one reason smartphones are not working well as a medium for many advertisers. The evidence is telling: advertisers are willing to pay much more to reach a thousand pairs of eyes gazing upon a computer or tablet than a thousand pairs looking at a smartphone screen.

"Size absolutely does matter," says Christine Chen, director of communication strategy at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, an ad agency in San Francisco. "If you look at the real estate available on a smartphone, it's really sad compared to not just banner ads on the Web, but also to TV, print and outdoor advertising."

Size isn't the only problem. Advertisers are also limited by what they can find out about smartphone users. It's not technically possible to use cookies with smartphone apps the way it is with a browser. On the Web, publishers typically record users' actions so that advertisers can make an educated guess about a user's identity and interests.

"What makes Web ads so attractive to advertisers is the ability to track actions and optimize accordingly," Ms. Chen says. Because a smartphone cannot use the same technology, she says, "your ability to track and optimize is much more blunt, or in some cases nonexistent."

These limitations depress demand for smartphone ads and lead to low prices. A banner ad on a Web page that costs $3 to $5 for every thousand impressions may cost only 75 cents or $1 for a thousand impressions on a smartphone, Ms. Chen says.

Another reason advertisers don't value smartphone ads highly is that users tend to lack a receptive mind-set when using their phones. "It's an activity you do for a short burst of time," Ms. Chen says. "It's very functional." That is not a good time to try to make users stop what they are doing and give their attention to an advertiser's message.

Ms. Chen says she tells her firm's clients not to bother advertising on smartphones.

Jeff Lanctot, global chief media officer at Razorfish, says context is much more important on smartphones than on larger devices. "Requesting a marketing-related action while looking at wedding photos would be considered intrusive," he says, "but while playing a game, it might feel very natural."

Mark Himmelsbach, director of digital strategy at BBDO North America, sees some potential uses for cell phones as an advertising medium, but he says most marketers take care to limit the size of ads on phones "so as not to irritate people."

"Mobile ads are relegated to a tiny portion of the screen and are often invisible or ignored by consumers," Mr. Himmelsbach says.

Phones do have some benefits, like the ability to serve up ads based on location or to integrate advertising into apps that are used for something else, he says. But of all the possible options, he says, "mobile display ads give us the least amount of creative opportunity."

Location-based mobile advertising, known as geofencing, is directed only at nearby prospects, and it has proved to work well, says Doug Ray, president of Carat North America, a media planning and buying firm. "Knowing where you are geographically and delivering a contextually relevant offer has been effective in driving conversions and sales," he says. "Geofencing is not possible with a desktop PC."

Consumers, however, don't necessarily want to be reminded that their phones are location-tracking devices for advertisers. "A mobile device is one of the most personal forms of technology we have," Ms. Chen says. Location tracking is perfectly legal but apps ask users' permission during installation.

Using the Web on a desktop, laptop, or even a tablet, isn't likely to feel as tightly bound to our personal selves. Much Web content is mass media, broad in reach, and that's good for the advertising business because users do not treat the accompanying ads as an intrusion into their personal space.

"Media consumption is less personal than, say, a Facebook page, a text message or a phone conversation," says Mr. Lanctot of Razorfish, "and so historically is better suited to be ad-supported."

MR. LANCTOT mentions three companies that are doing well with mobile advertising: Pandora, Twitter and Foursquare. But each of these is fortunate to be in a business where it doesn't have to contend with "banner blindness" among users.

Pandora inserts audio commercials into its music stream, Twitter puts sponsored ads into tweet streams and Foursquare lets advertisers try out geofencing.

"The advertising on all three is a very natural part of the user experience," Mr. Lanctot says. "It's not intrusive."

What doesn't make his list is the smartphone's minuscule display ad. Digital advertisers working with smartphones must somehow make their ads large enough to be noticed, but not so large as to be an interruption. And they must be chosen to match a user's interests, but not so closely as to induce a shiver.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

By JEFF SOMMER 19 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/technology/smartphone-ads-and-their-drawbacks-digital-domain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Joseph Lhota, M.T.A. Chief, Tweets to His Delight

It began inconspicuously enough — a Ronald Reagan quote here, a whiff of harmless promotion there — the mark of a seasoned city official wading cautiously into social media.

In midsummer, a slight shift was perceptible, hastened perhaps by an ill-advised mix of Yankees baseball, Twitter and "too much wine."

And by the end of August, it happened: Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, that staid and stodgy emblem of local bureaucracy, had weighed in on the cancellation of "Jersey Shore." Twice.

"The fact that the show was canceled, to me, was a great thing for society," Mr. Lhota said during a recent interview in his Midtown office. "And I thought it should be celebrated."

In a city of many prominent officials, meddlesome reporters and vigilant public relations officers charged with preventing the first group from speaking out of turn to the second, Mr. Lhota's Twitter account stands apart.

He likes the New York Jets, readers learn, and does not appear to care for the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli. He is a staunch defender of cheese and seems to enjoy the comedy of an account called @DRUNKHULK.

He has mistyped a Yankees score and blamed the error on an evening of drinking. ("It was sauvignon blanc," he clarified this week. "I find chardonnay too heavy.") He has shared with followers a tabloid cartoon depicting Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg painting a "breast feeding lane" beside a bike lane on a New York City street.

Once, apparently, he was duped into clicking a link he should not have. "SpamAlert," he wrote on Sept. 3. "DIRECT MESSAGES FROM ME ARE BOGUS."

Capital letters are a common feature of @JoeLhota, as if the author's booming voice has been embedded into the iPad from which he writes.

After actively using the Web site for a few months, Mr. Lhota, 57, a former deputy mayor under Rudolph W. Giuliani, has deemed himself "generationally too old to really be on Twitter."

Of course, there are many public officials on Twitter, eager to trumpet their own proposals and remain as visible as possible to constituents. Some politicians, from the famous to the virtually anonymous, have even inspired parody accounts.

But rarely has a figure rendered satire so superfluous. Surely no doppelgänger of Mr. Lhota's would have thought to relay the Drudge Report message about a driver who swerved to avoid a moose, only to crash into a bear.

Nor would a faker have found occasion to consider the sale of cans of Paris air ("GEEZ, are we this gullible?"), an article linking financial stress to weight gain in men ("that explains everything") and another detailing a man who started a fire after microwaving his underwear.

"SOME PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS," Mr. Lhota wrote on that occasion.

Mr. Lhota said he first created an account to follow journalists and news organizations, not to write messages. He unwittingly posted his first message in August 2011, when he "hit the wrong button" and republished a reference to an ABC News segment on George W. Bush.

After that, the account went dark until July 5, when Mr. Lhota said he was moved to comment on the anniversary of the free transfer between subways and buses in New York.

And so it began.

"People think of the M.T.A. as a nameless, faceless bureaucracy and a huge organization that no one really has their arms around," Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for the mayor and the proprietor of his office's Twitter account, @NYCMayorsOffice, said. "Here is the guy who does have his arms around it, and he turns out to be this funny, interesting person."

The account has supplied a glimpse into Mr. Lhota's personal and political history. In his biography section, Mr. Lhota calls himself a "9/11 cancer survivor," a reference to a lymphoma diagnosis six years ago. He said he wanted to make a point of his outrage at any opposition to health coverage for first responders to the 2001 attacks.

The biography section used to include, "unabashed libertarian," but this was removed.

"It requires restraint," Mr. Lhota said of Twitter, noting that he had removed the phrase because he did not want to appear overly partisan in his current job.

But even restrained, Mr. Lhota's entries have contributed to occasional anxiety for transportation authority officials.

"I want him out there talking," Adam Lisberg, the authority's chief spokesman, said. "But generally before we put out a message, we talk about what it will be first. Joe is Joe, unfiltered."

Often, Mr. Lhota said, Twitter users write to him about their commutes, carping about a wayward bus or a station without a countdown clock. He does not respond, he said, and he plans to add a disclaimer in his biography that the account is a personal one. (Questions related to the transportation authority should be directed to the customer information page on its Web site, the agency said.)

Still, Mr. Lhota appears to revel in at least some of the attention he receives on Twitter.

"I had 36 mentions," he said gleefully after speaking recently at a forum at the Plaza Hotel. He asked a reporter if she had written anything about him on Twitter while he was speaking. She had, she said, and a short while later, Mr. Lhota reposted the message.

Mr. Lhota's following remains modest, at roughly 370 people through Monday. He said he would like to keep it that way.

He paused, groping for the name of the guy with all the followers.

"It's Ashton Kutcher, or whatever," he said finally. Then he questioned his foray into a younger man's game.

"Is that Facebook or Twitter?"

By JOHN MARKOFF 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/nyregion/joseph-lhota-mta-chief-tweets-to-his-delight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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DealBook: Lenovo to Buy Cloud Computing Company

Lenovo, the personal computer maker, said on Tuesday that it would buy Stoneware, a maker of cloud-computing software, as the frenzy for cloud-based technologies continues.

Cloud-based computing, which allow users to access software and other services via the Web, has been a hot area for deal-making in recent years.

In May, SAP, the German software company, bought Ariba for $4.5 billion. Oracle agreed to buy Taleo, which makers human resources software, for $1.9 billion in February, after paying $1.43 billion for RightNow Technologies last year. In 2010, Dell bought Boomi, a cloud computing start-up.

With Stoneware, Lenovo will add education and government related-services, with products like webNetwork and LanSchool.

"Adding Stoneware cloud computing into the Lenovo line up presents a significant opportunity to leverage their success, and enhance our PC Plus offerings, all to the benefit of our customers," Peter Hortensius, a senior vice president at Lenovo, said in a statement. "We have a history of innovation and embracing new technologies, and the talented team at Stoneware will fit in perfectly with our long-term strategy."

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Lenovo expects to complete the acquisition by the end of the year.

By BILL CARTER 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/lenovo-to-buy-cloud-computing-company/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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A Robot With a Delicate Touch

Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

Rodney A. Brooks with Baxter, a robot he developed with an array of safety mechanisms and sensors. 

BOSTON — If you grab the hand of a two-armed robot named Baxter, it will turn its head and a pair of cartoon eyes — displayed on a tablet-size computer-screen "face" — will peer at you with interest.

The sensation that Baxter conveys is not creepy, but benign, perhaps even disarmingly friendly. And that is intentional.

Baxter, the first product of Rethink Robotics, an ambitious start-up company in a revived manufacturing district here, is a significant bet that robots in the future will work directly with humans in the workplace.

That is a marked shift from today's machines, which are kept safely isolated from humans, either inside glass cages or behind laser-controlled "light curtains," because they move with Terminator-like speed and accuracy and could flatten any human they encountered.

By contrast, Baxter, which comes encased in plastic and has a nine-foot "wingspan," is relatively slow and imprecise in the way it moves. And it has an elaborate array of safety mechanisms and sensors to protect the human workers it assists.

Here in a brick factory that was once one of the first electrified manufacturing sites in New England, Rodney A. Brooks, the legendary roboticist who is Rethink's founder, proves its safety by placing his head in the path of Baxter's arm while it moves objects on an assembly line.

The arm senses his head and abruptly stops moving with a soft clunk. Dr. Brooks, unfazed, points out that the arm is what roboticists call "compliant": intended to sense unexpected obstacles and adjust itself accordingly.

The $22,000 robot that Rethink will begin selling in October is the clearest evidence yet that robotics is more than a laboratory curiosity or a tool only for large companies with vast amounts of capital. The company is betting it can broaden the market for robots by selling an inexpensive machine that can collaborate with human workers, the way the computer industry took off in the 1980s when the prices of PCs fell sharply and people without programming experience could start using them right out of the box.

"It feels like a true Macintosh moment for the robot world," said Tony Fadell, the former Apple executive who oversaw the development of the iPod and the iPhone.

Baxter will come equipped with a library of simple tasks, or behaviors — for example, a "common sense" capability to recognize it must have an object in its hand before it can move and release it.

Although it will be possible to program Baxter, the Rethink designers avoid the term. Instead they talk about "training by demonstration." For example, to pick up an object and move it, a human will instruct the robot by physically moving its arm and making it grab the object.

The robot's redundant layers of safety mechanisms include a crown of sonar sensors ringing its head that automatically slows its movements whenever a human approaches. Its computer-screen face turns red to let workers know that it is aware of their presence.

And each robot has a large red "e-stop" button, causing immediate shutdown, even though Dr. Brooks says it is about as necessary as the Locomotive Acts, the 19th-century British laws requiring that early automobiles be preceded by a walker waving a red flag.

Soon, Dr. Brooks predicts, robots will be mingling with humans, routinely and safely. "With the current standards, we have to have it," he said of the e-stop button. "But at some point we have to get over it."

What kind of work will Baxter and its ilk perform? Rethink, which is manufacturing Baxter in New Hampshire, has secretly tested prototypes at a handful of small companies around the country where manufacturing and assembly involve repetitive tasks. It estimates that the robots can work for the equivalent of about $4 an hour.

"It fit in with our stable of equipment and augmented the robots we already have," said Chris Budnick, president of Vanguard Plastics, a 30-person company in Southington, Conn., that makes custom-molded components.

Employees whose menial tasks are done by robots are not being laid off, he said, but assigned to jobs that require higher-level skills — including training the robots to work on manufacturing lines with short production runs where the tasks change frequently.

"Our folks loved it and they felt very comfortable with it," Mr. Budnick said. "Even the older folks didn't perceive it as a threat."

Other efforts are under way to design robots that interact safely with human workers. Universal Robots, a Danish firm, has introduced a robot arm that does not need to be put in a glass cage — though the system requires a skilled programmer to operate.

And late last year Javier Movellan, director of the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, where he took videos of workers in factories where jobs have been outsourced from the United States.

By JOHN MARKOFF 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/a-robot-with-a-delicate-touch.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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For Young Jews, a Service Says, ‘Please, Do Text’

MIAMI BEACH — Settling into their seats for Rosh Hashana service, the twentysomethings instinctively reached for their cellphones to turn them off, anticipating an admonition they hear often at synagogue.

Then they looked up at the white screen behind the rabbi: Pray. Write. Text.

And text they did for nearly 90 minutes, sending out regrets, goals, musings and blissful thoughts, all anonymously for everyone to see.

"Let's see some texting, guys," Rabbi Amy L. Morrison told the group. "Take those phones out." What do you need to let go of, she asked the congregants, in order to be "fully present"?

Hunched over their phones, they let loose their words and watched them scroll into view: Past mistakes. Shyness. Anger. Fear of failure. Self-pity. Ego. Doubt. Control.

At an offbeat service on Sunday night at the Jewish Museum of Florida, organizers were trying an innovation that few if any rabbis have embraced: using the language of the tech generation instead of the Torah to keep the crowd of 20- to 30-year-olds, mostly unmarried and transient, connected to their Jewish roots and to one another.

It is the age cluster least likely to attend synagogue. "For young Jews in America, we are a demographic different from our parents and our grandparents," said Rabbi Jessica Zimmerman, the director of congregational engagement for Synagogue 3000, an organization that seeks to re-energize synagogue life and re-engage young professionals. "We're more educated, we move many more times and live further away from our family of origin, and we are single much longer, for years after college, which was never the case before."

Enter Rabbi Morrison, 33, an ebullient, unconventional cleric at Temple Beth Sholom, a Reform synagogue in Miami Beach, who is as comfortable belting Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" as she is reciting Mi Chamocha, a Jewish prayer of redemption. She is also a lesbian, something that she revealed to the group in an attempt to foster openness and honesty at the gathering.

"For my generation, the generation that the service is for, prayer is not something you can find in your own life until someone helps you wrestle with it," said Rabbi Morrison, who works with the Tribe, the group that organized the event and tries to find novel ways to reach the younger generation. As a rabbi, she added, she is committed "to making prayer as accessible as possible."

So, "I recommended texting," she said. Semantics were important, too. The Tribe billed the event as "an experience," not as a service.

At a lectern, her phone within easy reach, Rabbi Morrison told the 150 or so young people arrayed before her that "texting will give you a voice in the service."

She spoke to them about acceptance, loving themselves so they can love others and giving themselves a pat on the back when they deserve it.

What is one thing you wish you had done differently this past year? she asked.

The messages popped up: Be a better friend. I wish I was less stressed. Procrastinate less. Listened to my gut feeling. Be a better listener. Worry less, enjoy life more. Less materialistic.

And, because who can resist a little texting levity, "I wish I spent less time on FB" — for Facebook — prompting laughter and a round of nods. Except for a bit of glibness ("I lived this on 'Glee,' " one prankster texted), the uncensored remarks were inoffensive, a relief to the organizers.

There were also flashes of seriousness. During the Mi Shebeirach, or healing prayers, Rabbi Morrison asked congregants to text the names of ailing loved ones who needed prayer, a solemn ritual that many people shy away from sharing publicly.

But in this collection of like-minded people, the names popped on the screen: Bernice. Craig going through chemo. Haiti. Abuelo ... and on it went.

"We can no longer assume that young people will join the Jewish community," said Rabbi Gary A. Glickstein, Temple Beth Sholom's spiritual leader. "They need to be helped on that journey."

After the service, as the young congregants sipped wine and nibbled on food in an adjoining room, most said the evening was "refreshing" and "fun," not a word they typically attach to High Holy Day services. Some were recent out-of-state transplants to Miami Beach; others said the high cost of synagogue membership, usually structured for families, could be prohibitive for young single people. This was free, and cellphone-friendly.

"It felt like a community, which is what it should be in the New Year," said Sarah Silver, 26, a violinist for the New World Symphony who recently moved from Pittsburgh. "It was great to share. I am not a super-strict practicing Jew, and it was nice to feel like other people are human, too."

Her synagogue back home is Conservative, she said, and would have scoffed at the notion of a texting Rosh Hashana service. But Judaism has to stay relevant, she said. "Services there aren't as thought-provoking or honest or sharing, which is what I liked here."

Hannah Citrin, 25, an actress from Miami Beach, who could not resist posting a joke, said she had stayed "alert," which seldom happens during services.

"I paid attention the whole time; that's a problem with me, tuning it out," she said. And, she added, "in the end, everyone gets through life with laughter."

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/us/for-young-jews-a-service-says-please-do-text.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Success of Crowdfunding Puts Pressure on Entrepreneurs

Leah Nash for The New York Times

Kickstarter's booth at the XOXO tech conference. Kickstarter has helped about 30,000 projects raise money.

PORTLAND, Ore. — An effort to build a sleek aluminum charging dock for the iPhone generated fervor online when it was announced last December. The project's creators raised close to $1.5 million through Kickstarter, a crowdfunding Web site, and promised to start shipping their Elevation Dock in April to those who had backed the project.

Leah Nash for The New York Times

The XOXO tech conference ended Sunday. The challenge of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter was a popular topic at the event.

But last week Apple announced a redesigned iPhone that is not compatible with the dock — and because of manufacturing delays, some of the project's original backers were still waiting to receive theirs. The designers are now scrambling to make an adapter and update the product.

"I'm just hoping to get mine before the iPhone 6 ships at this point," one backer wrote on Kickstarter.

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGogo are letting designers and other creative people connect with audiences who want to finance their dreams, and they are becoming increasingly popular. Nearly three million people have helped a total of 30,000 projects meet their fund-raising goals on Kickstarter, the largest such site, to the tune of $300 million in pledges.

But for the creators of these projects, getting the money is sometimes the easy part. They then have to turn their dreams into reality, with a crowd keeping an eye on their progress.

This new model comes with a host of potential pitfalls that are often difficult for project creators to anticipate, and hard for the armchair philanthropists who back them to grasp. Backers are essentially putting their trust in the project creators, giving them cash in return for the promise of a future reward.

Those who give a few dollars to a moviemaking project may get their names in the credits, while someone who puts up $100 to support development of a smart wristwatch might be promised one of the finished items.

Much of the time this works out. But some projects, including several prominent and in-demand ones, have run into missteps and lengthy delays. The permits for a new food truck might not come through. Or a gadget like the Elevation Dock might be harder than expected to manufacture and ship.

The rise of crowdfunding came up often over the weekend here at the debut of the XOXO Festival, a conference that focused on new models and outlets for creativity on the Internet. The conference was co-founded by an early Kickstarter employee, Andy Baio, who sold $400 tickets on Kickstarter itself to gauge interest in the event and raise money for it.

The relationship between creators and backers on crowdfunding sites is still being worked out. The backers play the role of philanthropists, investors, customers — or all of the above. And when promised rewards are slow to materialize, eager backers can get cranky.

"It's definitely a lot of pressure," said Eric Migicovsky, whose Kickstarter project to create a line of "Pebble" wristwatches with innovative displays raised more than $10 million — more than 10 times what he had hoped to get. "There are 65,000 people who have preordered a watch that doesn't yet exist."

Mr. Migicovsky hired someone to help manage his in-box — nearly 9,000 people have e-mailed him about the project — and to post updates. He originally hoped to start shipping the watches in September, a date that he has had to push back, although he declined to say by how much.

A study by Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, found that 75 percent of design- and technology-related projects on Kickstarter, most of which involve physical products, failed to meet their promised deadlines. In general, project backers seem to be understanding of hiccups and willing to wait as long as they are kept informed.

"The honeymoon period that we are experiencing around crowdfunding is beginning to come to a close," said Wil Schroeter, co-founder and chief executive of Fundable, a company that is applying crowdfunding to the venture capital process. "People realize there is real risk involved in investing in anything early-stage, whether it's an idea, a charity or a product, and they're starting to understand they aren't buying off of Amazon."

Kickstarter says it is not responsible for making sure a project is completed on time, or at all. It says project creators are legally obligated to fulfill their promises, but if they do not, Kickstarter has no mechanism for refunding the money that was pledged. Sometimes project creators can be overwhelmed by the success of a crowdfunding campaign.

The four college students behind Diaspora, a project that aimed to build an open alternative to Facebook, began with the modest goal of $10,000. They raised $200,000 from around 6,500 people. But after three years, they still did not have a version to release publicly and turned the code over to anyone who might want to keep working on it. (One member of the team committed suicide last year.)

By JENNA WORTHAM 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/technology/success-of-crowdfunding-puts-pressure-on-entrepreneurs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Microsoft Battles the Botnets

WASHINGTON — A customer in Shenzhen, China, took a brand new laptop out of its box and turned it on for the first time. But as the screen lit up, the computer began taking on a life of its own. The machine, directed by a virus hidden in its hard drive, started searching the Internet for another computer.

The laptop, supposedly in pristine, direct-from-the-factory condition, had instantly become part of an illegal global network capable of attacking Web sites, looting bank accounts and stealing personal data.

For years, online investigators have warned consumers about the dangers of opening or downloading files sent by e-mail from unknown or suspicious sources. Now, they say, malicious software and computer code could be lurking on computers before the bubble wrap even comes off.

The shopper in this case was part of a team of Microsoft researchers in China investigating the sale of counterfeit software. They suddenly had been introduced to malware called Nitol. The incident was described in court documents unsealed Thursday in a U.S. court in Virginia. The records describe a new front in a legal campaign against cybercrime being waged by Microsoft, the maker of the Windows operating system, which is the biggest target for viruses.

The documents are part of a computer fraud lawsuit filed by Microsoft against a Web domain registered to a Chinese businessman named Peng Yong. The company says that domain is a focal point for illicit Internet activity. It is home base for Nitol and more than 500 other types of malware, making it the largest single repository of infected software that Microsoft executives have ever encountered.

Mr. Peng, the owner of an Internet services company, said he was not aware of the Microsoft lawsuit and denied the allegations, saying his company did not tolerate improper conduct on the domain, 3322.org. Three other unidentified individuals accused by Microsoft of establishing and operating the Nitol network are also named in the suit.

What emerges most vividly from the court records and interviews with Microsoft officials is a disturbing picture of how vulnerable Internet users have become, in part because of weaknesses in computer supply chains. To increase their profit margins, some computer manufacturers and retailers may use counterfeit copies of popular software products to build machines more cheaply. Plugging the holes is nearly impossible, especially in less regulated markets like China, and that creates opportunities for cybercriminals.

"They're really changing the ways they try to attack you," said Richard Boscovich, a former U.S. government prosecutor and a senior attorney in Microsoft's digital crimes unit.

And distance does not confer safety. Nitol, for example, is an aggressive virus found on computers in China, the United States, Russia, Australia and Germany. Microsoft has even identified servers in the Cayman Islands controlling Nitol- infected machines. All these compromised computers become part of a botnet — a collection of compromised computers — which is one of the most invasive and persistent tools of cybercrime.

Nitol, meanwhile, appears poised to strike. Infection rates have peaked, according to Patrick Stratton, a senior manager in Microsoft's digital crimes unit who filed a document in the court case explaining Nitol and its connection to the 3322.org domain.

For Microsoft, pursuing cybercriminals is a smart business. Its Windows operating system runs most of the computers connected to the Internet. Victims of malware are likely to believe their problems stem from Windows instead of a virus they are unaware of, and that damages the company's brand and reputation.

But more than Microsoft's image is at stake when counterfeit products are tainted by rapidly spreading malware, Mr. Boscovich said. "It's more than simply a traditional intellectual property issue," he said. "It's now become a security issue."

The investigation by Microsoft's digital crimes unit began in August 2011 as a study into the sale and distribution of counterfeit versions of Windows. Microsoft employees in China bought 20 new computers from retailers and took them back to a home with an Internet connection.

They found forged versions of Windows on all the machines and malware preinstalled on four. The one with Nitol, however, was the most alarming because the malware was active.

"As soon as we powered on this particular computer, of its own accord without any instruction from us, it began reaching out across the Internet, attempting to contact a computer unfamiliar to us," Mr. Stratton said in the document filed with the court.

Mr. Stratton and his colleagues also found Nitol to be highly contagious. They inserted a thumb drive into the computer and the virus immediately copied itself onto it. When the drive was inserted into a separate machine, Nitol quickly copied itself onto it.

Microsoft examined thousands of samples of Nitol, which has several variants, and all of them connected to command-and-control servers associated with the 3322.org domain, according to the court records.

"In short, 3322.org is a major hub of illegal Internet activity, used by criminals every minute of every day to pump malware and instructions to the computers of innocent people worldwide," Microsoft said in its lawsuit.

Mr. Peng, the registered owner of 3322.org, said he had "zero tolerance" for the misuse of domain names and worked with Chinese law enforcement whenever there were complaints. Still, he said, his huge customer base made policing difficult.

"Our policy unequivocally opposes the use of any of our domain names for malicious purposes," Mr. Peng said in a private chat via Sina Weibo, a service like Twitter that is popular in China. "We currently have 2.85 million domain names and cannot exclude that individual users might be using domain names for malicious purposes."

But past warnings by other online security firms have been ignored by Mr. Peng, Mr. Boscovich said. The 3322.org domain accounted for more than 17 percent of malicious Web transactions worldwide in 2009, according to Zscaler, a computer security firm in San Jose, California. In 2008, the Russian security company Kaspersky Lab reported that 40 percent of all malware programs linked, at one point or another, to 3322.org.

Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of U.S. District Court, who is presiding in the case, granted a request from Microsoft to begin steering Internet traffic that has been infected by Nitol and other malware away from 3322.org to a special site called a sinkhole. From there, Microsoft can alert affected computer users to update their anti-virus protection and remove Nitol from their machines.

Since Judge Lee issued the order, more than 37 million malware connections have been blocked from 3322.org, according to Microsoft.

By RICHARD LARDNER | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/technology/17iht-virus17.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Internet Archive Amasses All TV News Since 2009

Inspired by a pillar of antiquity, the Library of Alexandria, Brewster Kahle has a grand vision for the Internet Archive, the giant aggregator and digitizer of data, which he founded and leads.

"We want to collect all the books, music and video that has ever been produced by humans," Mr. Kahle said.

 As of Tuesday, the archive's online collection will include every morsel of news produced in the last three years by 20 different channels, encompassing more than 1,000 news series that have generated more than 350,000 separate programs devoted to news.

The latest ambitious effort by the archive, which has already digitized millions of books and tried to collect everything published on every Web page for the last 15 years (that adds up to over 150 billion Web pages,) is intended not only for researchers, Mr. Kahle said, but also for average citizens who make up some of the site's estimated two million visitors each day.  "The focus is to help the American voter to better be able to examine candidates and issues," Mr. Kahle said. "If you want to know exactly what Mitt Romney said about health care in 2009, you'll be able to find it."

 Of course, if you want to discredit or satirize a politician based on a clip showing some reversal of a position, that will be made easier as well. Or, as Mr. Kahle put it, "Let a thousand Jon Stewarts bloom."

 Many conventional news outlets will be available, including CNN, Fox News, NBC News, PBS, and every purveyor of eyewitness news on local television stations. And Mr. Stewart's program, "The Daily Show" is one of those 1,000 series that is part of the new news archive.

"Absolutely," Mr. Kahle said. "We think of it as news."

The Internet Archive has been quietly recording the news material from all these outlets, which means, Mr. Kahle said, capturing not only every edition of "60 Minutes" on CBS but also every minute of every day on CNN.

All of this will be available, free, to those willing to dive into the archive starting Tuesday. Mr. Kahle said the method for the search for information would be the closed-captioned words that have accompanied the news programs. The user simply plugs in the words of the search, along with some kind of time frame, and matches of news clips will appear.

Mr. Kahle predicted there would often be hundreds of matches, but he said the system had an interface that would make it easy to browse quickly through 30-second clips in search of the right one. If a researcher wants a copy of the entire program, a DVD will be sent on loan.

The inspiration of the Library of Alexandria, the archive of the knowledge in ancient world in Egypt, was not frivolous. Mr. Kahle said that early effort to assemble the collected works of civilization was in his mind when he conceived the idea to use the almost infinite capacity of the Web to pursue the modern equivalent.

 "You could turn all the books in the Library of Congress into a stack of disks that would fit in one shopping cart in Best Buy," Mr. Kahle said. He estimates that the Internet Archive now contains about 9,000 terabytes of data; by contrast, the digital collection of the Library of Congress is a little more than 300 terabytes, according to an estimate earlier this year.

Mr. Kahle calls himself a technologist and says he moved to the archive project after previously founding and selling off two data-mining companies, one to AOL, the other to Amazon.

The TV news project, like his other archive projects, is financed mainly through outside grants, though Mr. Kahle did put up some of his own money to start. He said grants from the National Archives, the Library of Congress and other government agencies and foundations made up the bulk of the financing for the project. He set the annual budget at $12 million, and said about 150 people were working on the project.

The act of copying all this news material is protected under a federal copyright agreement signed in 1976. That was in reaction to a challenge to a news assembly project started by Vanderbilt University in 1968.

The archive has no intention of replacing or competing with the Web outlets owned by the news organizations. Mr. Kahle said new material would not be added until 24 hours after it was first broadcast. "We don't expect this to replace CNN.com," he said.

As enormous as the news collection is, it is only the beginning, Mr. Kahle said. The plan is to "go back" year by year, and slowly add news video going back to the start of television. That will require some new and perhaps more challenging methodology because the common use of closed-captioning only started around 2002.

Mr. Kahle said some new technique, perhaps involving word recognition, would be necessary. "We need some interface that is good enough and doesn't interrupt commerce enough that they get upset with us."

But the goals for the news service remain as ambitious as all the other services the Internet Archive has embarked upon.

"Yes, we want eventually to be able to make coverage of, say, the 1956 political conventions available," Mr. Kahle said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 17, 2012

An earlier version of the headline with this article misstated the status of Internet Archive.  It was founded in 1996 and is not a start-up.

By RICHARD LARDNER | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/business/media/internet-archive-amasses-all-tv-news-since-2009.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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