CNNMoney - Special Report Mortgage Meltdown, Last Updated: August 13, 2008: 5:27 PM EDT

Values have fallen so far in many cities that sale prices don’t cover what sellers originally paid. That means more hard times before markets recover.

By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — More homeowners than ever are selling at a loss, propelling the real estate market deeper into crisis.

In the 12 months that ended June 30, nearly 25% of all homes sold nationwide fetched less than sellers originally paid, according to real estate Web site Zillow.com.

While the nation’s double-digit decline in home prices has been well documented, the new report underscores the economic force of those price declines. Homeowners are walking away with much less in their pocket when they sell. And that affects more than the real estate market.

“It’s stunning what’s happening out there,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s vice president of data and analytics, who looked at statistics that date back to 1996. “The numbers are the worst we’ve seen and it’s not just the magnitude of the problem but the scope - so many markets are affected.”

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BUSINESSWEEK - Posted by: Ben Steverman on August 12

When people make predictions about this stock market, I don’t know whether to congratulate them for their boldness or question their sanity.

Still, Jeremy Siegel — the famous Wharton School professor — says stocks reached a “selling climax” on July 15, which he believes will be seen as the bottom for the current market.

Meanwhile, this WSJ article quotes Thomas Lee, an equity strategist at J.P. Morgan Securities making a similar prediction. He “thinks stocks have seen their lows, thanks partly to retreating commodity prices,” Tom Lauricella writes.
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IHT - WIRELESS, Published: August 13, 2008

By Eric Sylvers

COMO, Italy: Since its inception, the mobile phone has been usurping the roles of other electronic devices in a bid to become the universal, do-all gizmo.

First the fixed-line phone came under attack, followed by the watch, the radio, the MP3 player, the game console, the computer and, most recently, the GPS device. But while GPS-equipped mobile phones have become common, functionality has remained limited. And it has been difficult to get the data off the phone and onto a computer, where it can be easily charted and viewed.

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Sillicon Alley Insider - Henry Blodget | August 13, 2008 5:41 PM

Eric Schmidt has been very vocal about the promise of mobile ads. Never mind that mobile ads have been overhyped for more than a decade: This year’s the year, says Eric. In fact, Eric says, mobile ads will one day be a bigger opportunity for Google than the desktop.

Come again?

Really–that’s what Eric told Cramer this afternoon:
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International Herald Tribune - Published: August 13, 2008

By John Markoff

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites containing the message: “win+love+in+Rusia.”

Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers.

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Posted by John Foley, Aug 13, 2008 10:34 AM

I’ve already made the point that there’s no such thing as “private clouds.” It’s an oxymoron because cloud computing, by definition, happens when people plug into IT services offered from data centers that aren’t their own and that are shared by others. That said, cloud architectures will indeed be popular in corporate data centers, even if we disagree on what you call them.

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FORTUNE - Last Updated: August 13, 2008: 10:56 AM EDT

These three minis manage to combine maximum gas mileage with just enough zoom.

By Sue Zesiger Callaway, columnist

(Fortune) — Attention, horsepower-hungry: Fear not the exploding array of environmentally friendly alternative vehicles. They are a hopeful signal of the potentially mind-blowing stuff to come.

Ferrari is exploring adding electric motors, which deliver peak torque from takeoff to top speed, to each wheel to capture regenerative braking energy to boost acceleration. Audi just won Le Mans for the second year in a row with a diesel racecar. The last time the automotive world saw this level of innovation was at the turn of the last century. Steam, anyone?

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