estatecreate blog

Image via CrunchBase

I have just tried out Google’s new social bar (you can read their blog post about it here). It allows you to easily integrate Google Friend Connect into your website, so that users can login using either their Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account, comment and have conversations about content on your site.

You can try it out on this site: http://www.ossamples.com/socialmussie/

It looks very easy to implement, so expect to see it on estatecreate.com soon.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Make Your Site More Social With Google Friend Connect’s Social Bar (mashable.com)
• Are you using Google Friend Connect? (activerain.com)
• Google Launches Social Web Blog (thenextweb.com)

Thanks to Marc Davison over at 1000Watt.

Great post from Robert Peston on yesterday’s apologies from the bank bosses. You can read it here. The key for me is where he says “Apologies carry weight when they are accompanied by a clear explanation by the miscreants of what they did wrong and why.”

No sign of a “why” yesterday. Mr Peston generously suggests it may be too early for them to fully understand the motivations behind their actions. Maybe it is too early for them to face up to the reality under the harsh light of the cameras.

Image via CrunchBase

Why would you do that?

Well, Mark Cuban has just asked people to do just that here. It is his “Open Source Funding” plan to help kick start the US economy by creating jobs.  He says “Rather than trying to be a Venture Capitalist, I was looking for an idea that hopefully could inspire people to create businesses that could quickly become self funding. Businesses that just needed a jump start to get the ball rolling and create jobs. I’m a big believer that entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. I just needed a way to help.”

To qualify, businesses need to be cash flow break even within 60 days and be profitable within 90 days. So what sort of business could that be? How about a UK start up with a product ready to be shipped and a business model that could work in the US? Why wouldn’t you want Mark Cuban to help you launch in the US? Did I post our business plan on his blog? Of course I did.

UPDATE (15th Feb): 1,300 comments and counting!

Related articles by Zemanta

• cuban will open source fund u if u have email + profitability in 90 days (benbarren.com)
• Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess (vator.tv)

Image via Wikipedia

Great clip from the Today programme this morning comparing two very different reactions to “stressful” situations. The pilot of the airbus, which landed safely in New York’s Hudson River compared with Christian Bale‘s outburst on a film set. You can listen to it here (Bale’s rant has been sensored – you can hear the full outburst here. Poor thing, he must have been very stressed out).

Related articles by Zemanta

• Air Traffic Tapes of Hudson Plane Crash Released (takepart.com)
• ‘We may end up in the Hudson’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Air traffic tapes of Hudson plane crash released – CNN.com (tsurch.com)
• Eat My Grape Dust, Christian Bale! | (tsurch.com)

Image via Wikipedia

In a speech to the Demos think-tank in London yesterday David Cameron suggested that the UK will have to go begging to the IMF because of Gordon Brown‘s borrowing. “If we continue on Labour’s path of fiscal irresponsibility, at some point – and it could be very soon – the money will simply run out.”

Gordon Brown countered on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning that the current crisis was “totally different” to anything seen before, because it was not driven by high inflation and wages.

So, who to believe?

As I said in my previous post at the beginning of the week, the danger is in the ballooning government debt and the eventual risk that the UK can not raise adequate additional funds in the bond market as international markets loose faith in sterling.

The UK may have a much lower national debt as a % of GDP than many other countries, however, the figures exclude the liabilities relating to the government bank guarantees and the fact that the government has effectively stated that it will not let any of the banks go bust. Their liabilities are therefore effectively the government’s liabilities. Much of UK bank debt is international. The falling pound therefore exacerbate the situation.

Gordon Brown says that the situation is very different to 1976 – we are not facing a scenario where high inflation and rising wages cripple the economy. Does that mean everything is OK then?

There is more than one way to run out of money. Having a banking crisis at a time when government finances are already stretched, committing to bail out the banks and losing the confidence of the international financial community is surely another way of ending up at the door of the IMF.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cameron: Britain may have to seek IMF bail-out
• David Cameron blames Gordon Brown and big government for recession

Image via Wikipedia

Since the start of the credit crunch I have continually noticed the similarity, albeit on a much smaller scale, of the crisis that faced Lloyd’s of London in the early 90s.

Lloyd’s syndicates believed that they had found a risk free way of doing business by passing on the risks they took on to other insurers. Reinsurance policies became increasingly complex, and premiums dropped as the market expanded and everyone piled in to this new risk free environment where it was easy to underwrite anything and then pass on the risk to the next player. Eventually, a big loss came along in the guise of Hurricane Hugo – it soon became evident that there was no new model, as the reinsurance spiral unwound like a deck of cards.

There is a remarkable similarity in the way banks have taken up securitization over the past decade. The collapse of the US property market was their Hurricane Hugo.

Lloyd’s had additional problems to the insurance spiral – many syndicates were facing huge and ongoing losses from asbestos claims stretching back over 50 years. The combination of the two problems pushed Lloyd’s to the edge of extinction. Nobody would inject new capital into the system as there was no way of valuing the existing businesses as they could not reliably forecast future losses coming from their past liabilities.

The solution they came up with was to setup Equitas – Lloyd’s version of a bad or septic bank. Equitas took on all liabilities from before 1989 in return for a fixed reserve of cash from each syndicate in Lloyd’s. All these losses were ring fenced from Lloyd’s syndicates existing operations giving investors confidence to come back ino the market. If Equitas failed, and the aggregate reserves they took on to cover the liabiliies eventually proved to be too little, this would have come back to haunt Lloyd’s. However, this never happened – Berkshire Hathaway eventually acquired Equitas in 2007 and paid £50m back to the Lloyd’s market.

Surely there are some lessons here for setting up a toxic bank to take on the UK and US banks’ liabilities.

Image via Wikipedia

This morning it looks like the extension to Heathrow will go ahead. The economic argument has won over the potential environmental impact. Hardly surprising in the current economic climate.

However, have Londoners fully appreciated the potential effect this will have on the capital? The biggest direct impact on London will be noise pollution. If you have been down to Kew gardens recently you will have noticed that the times that the flight path is in a Easterly direction it is not a very relaxing place to hang out. Planes fly over at what seems like one/minute.

So, with an additional runway situated to the North of the current runways, what will be the effect of new flight paths on noise over London? According to HACAN Clear Skies, this will mean an additional 500 flights over London per day. They have written a consultation paper outlining the potential impact on London – you can read it here. Here is an excerpt from the report:

4. New flight paths
The Government has not provided exact details of the new flight paths in the consultation. But, because planes need to line up with the runway several miles from touchdown, it is clear the new landing flight path will be over:

• Holland Park and High St Kensington;

• the northern parts of Earls Court, Hammersmith and Chiswick;

• Heston.

• To the west, the flight path is likely to be over Maidenhead and Slough.

• There will be new take-off routes over Harrow, Northolt and Paddington

5.  Loss of West London’s half day’s peace and quiet
The ending of runway alternation – where planes landing over West London switch runways at 3pm – will take away the valued half day’s peace and quiet enjoyed by residents in these areas.  This will include removing the half day’s peace and quiet at the National Trust’s property in Osterley.

So, by 2015, there could be large parts of West London directly under the new flight path. Holland Park may not be quite the peaceful place it is today.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Gordon Brown poised to back third runway at Heathrow
• Brown poised to face down Heathrow opposition

Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever thought about investing in property but have not had the cash to invest? Well you can now become the “beneficial owner” of part of a plot of land and not pay a penny. To boot, you will be sharing ownership with the likes of Emma Thompson and Alistair McGowan.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, you’re right – but it is partially true. If you read the front page of The Guardian this morning, you will have seen that Greenpeace UK have bought a plot of land on the edge of the village of Sipson to try and stop BAA building a third runway at Heathrow. The land, which you can see here, is now legally owned by Emma Thompson, Alistair McGowan, Zac Goldsmith and Greenpeace UK. The second stage of their campaign is to get as many people as possible to sign up to have a “beneficial interest” in the land. All you have to do is click here and enter your name and email address.

Image via Wikipedia

I have been reading about Boxee on Fred Wilson‘s blog but thought it would be focusing solely on the US market. Yesterday I read that it worked with the iPlayer, so I took it for a spin last night.

Boxee is essentially a digital media entertainment hub. It allows you to aggregate all of your digital media from your computer and channels you like on the web in one place. You can then play back through your telly or watch on your computer.

I am a big fan of the iPlayer – I don’t love TV enough to record stuff, but it is great to be able to find something you want to watch when that telly moment comes. Boxee takes this one step further, offering a service which will eventually allow you to watch anything on demand from one place. This feels like the first time that the bridge between the internet and the TV has been built effectively. It will be interesting to see if Boxee ends up being the EPG for the digitally converged living room.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Boxee Goes Public, Adds MTV, Joost, and iPlayer Support [Media Center]
• Boxee plugs into Joost, MTV Music, Apple TV
• Boxee gets BBC iPlayer, Joost and MTV Music Support!
• Boxee plugs into Joost, MTV Music, Apple TV
• Boxee – One of the big “aha moments” for me in the past … (Fred Wilson/Union Square Ventures)
• Boxee Opens Alpha to non-Windows Users, Adds Joost to Library