Recycle Your Cell Phone To Save A Gorilla

There are many good reasons to recycle old cellphones, but one of the best is to save the Eastern Lowland Mountain Gorilla in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

How is it that what you do with a cell phone affects gorillas in Africa? It has to do with our fragile and tightly coupled ecosystem. Here’s what happens. Cellphones are constructed from various electronic components. One of these is a tantalum capacitor. Tantalum is a rare and valuable metal that enables once physically large capacitors to be made small enough to squeeze into those slim cell phone cases. You get tantalum from columbite tantalite, a metallic ore called Coltan for short. Eighty percent of the world’s Coltan reserves are found in Africa, with the majority of the deposits located within the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ah, you are starting to see the connection. Here’s how the gorillas get involved. It’s illegal to mine for Coltan in the Congo, but with the material going for as much as $400 a kilogram, such mining continues on a large scale. Forests are cleared to make way for the mining and paved roads are installed. The gorillas become exposed and easy targets for bush meat hunters who sell the meat to feed miners and rebel armies in control of the area. More than half of the mountain gorilla population has been lost in just the last five years. It’s also thought that an entire population of elephants has also been wiped out in this activity.

So what we have is a situation where demand for a rare mineral has mushroomed to support the hundreds of millions of cell phones manufactured for use worldwide. High prices for Coltan have promoted the destruction of wild habitat and the killing of endangered gorillas and elephants who once enjoyed a protected environment. Is this just the price we have to pay for technology or can something be done?

Something is being done. The Jane Goodall Institute and Melbourne Zoo in Australia have joined forces to create a mobile phone recycling program called “They’re Calling on You.”You can visit the zoo to collect a postage paid recycling satchel or download and print a postage paid label to send your phone in. They’ve even got a program for corporations to donate fleets of old mobile phones. If your school would like to help, you can integrate the program into your curriculum.

They’re indeed calling on you and, if you live in Australia, you have the unique honor of being able to answer this call. But what about the rest of the world? Is there anything we can do?

Absolutely, there is. In the United States, Gazelle offers a cell phone and electronic gadgets recycling program that also includes a free mailer. This one goes beyond mobile phones to include electronic games, computers and even photography gear. They will even pay you for recent vintage equipment in good working order.

Elsewhere around the world, look for local or large scale recycling programs. But whatever you do, don’t toss that cell phone in the trash. That only compounds the problem. In addition to the damage done by creating the product in the first place, electronic components degrade in the environment and leach out toxic chemicals that can pollute the soil and water table.

The recycling programs offer a double benefit. They not only prevent damage from decaying products, they also reduce the need for mining and manufacturing by refurbishing the old phones for use in disadvantaged communities. Devices too old or not functional can be ground up by reclaimers to recycle the minerals to make new phones.

Listen! They’re really calling you... and it’s a very important call!

Note: Photo of gorilla courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

‘Objective’ journalism is over. Let’s move on.

It’s time to retire the difficult-to-achieve and impossible-to-defend conceit that journalists are now, or ever were, objective.Let’s replace this threadbare notion with a realistic and credible standard of transparency that requires journalists to forthrightly declare their personal predilections, financial entanglements and political allegiances so the public can evaluate the quality of the

Advantage of Colocation Services

Businesses are often faced with make or buy decisions. Do you create a product or service in-house or go outside to a vendor who specializes in that field? The same question arises related to telephone and computer services. So, what’s the right answer?

Like most everything, technical services decisions are very specific to your particular situation at any given time. That’s why you should revisit these issues on a regular basis - say yearly. You know what the advantages are to buying and managing your telephone and computer systems in-house. What are the advantages to going outside?

I’m going to focus on a very specific set of services you can buy, called colocation. Colocation is not quite the same as going to the “cloud,” but there are some similarities. What colocation really means is moving your telephone and/or computing resources into another facility called a colocation center or carrier hotel.

As you might suspect, there are various degrees of colocation involvement. The one that generally comes to mind is packing up your data center equipment and shipping it to a colocation facility. Within this facility, you or the facility staff re-install your equipment in a locked caged area that is not accessible to other customers of the colocation center.

What’s the point of that? It’s an economy of scale in several areas. You’ll only save on real estate if you are pressed for space now or are paying a premium per square foot in a high rent building. But it’s not just the physical footprint that’s important. The “colo” center provides equipment racks, electrical power, cooling air and physical security. They have all the power you can possibly use and the HVAC equipment to carry away the heat from high performance servers and switches. They also have backup systems in place so that you don’t need to worry about power outages. That can be important if you are located in an area subject to storm outages or questionable power lines.

Many companies move to colocation centers simply for access to unlimited amounts of cheap bandwidth. Cheap is relative, but bandwidth costs per Mbps at colocation centers are probably better than you can get at your facility. There are multiple carriers located in the same building who establish points of presence for their fiber optic networks. Construction costs are minimal, if anything, because it’s just a matter of getting a drop from a carrier’s cage to yours. If you are in a location where you are bandwidth limited, with no fiber options or sky-high construction costs, simply relocating to a colocation center can solve the problem. You still communicate with your remote facilities using T1 lines or other available bandwidth.

In addition to facilities, colocation centers are staffed around the clock. This is a real boon to smaller companies that can’t afford a 24/7 tech staff. Even larger companies may benefit from having server experts literally a few feet away from their equipment at all times. You can maintain your own equipment, of course, or hire the center personnel to perform upgrades and patches.

You also have the option to rent equipment rather than supply your own at many colocation centers. Why come up with the capital expense for new servers every few years (or few months) when you can rent fully managed servers dedicated for your use only? This approach can also make sense for telephone equipment. Why have an expensive PBX phone system on your premises and the staff to keep it running, when you can use a remote PBX that an expert provider buys and maintains?

These questions are the heart of make-buy decisions. More and more, companies are finding it makes more sense to rent from a large facilities provider than maintain equivalent systems in-house. How about your business? Could you do better at a colo center? Find out by getting colocation services prices and availability that you can compare with your own costs to make an informed decision.

High Yield American Stock Exchange Stocks

The American Stock Exchange, also known as the AMEX, was founded in 1842 as the New York Curb Exchange. It got that name since stock traders and brokers used to stand out on the street by the curb and trade stocks back in the early 1800's. On October 1, 2008, NYSE Euronext (NYX) took over the American Stock Exchange. The AMEX is now known as NYSE Amex Equities.

Although the AMEX is now a division of the NYSE, over 500 stocks are still traded on the exchange, and according to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, there are over 20 AmEx stocks with yields above 2.5%. Many of these stocks are closed end funds, real estate investment trusts also known as REITs, and oil and natural gas income partnerships. But there are a few gems that are regular corporations.

British American Tobacco (BTI), which produces Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, Viceroy, Kool, and Benson & Hedges cigarettes, generates a yield of 2.8%. The stock has forward price to earnings ratio of 12.6.

National Healthcare Corp. (NHC) operates health care centers, assisted living centers, and retirement centers. The yield is 2.7% and the forward PE is 15.3.

Park National Corp. (PRK), a bank holding company, has paid quarterly dividends since December 1996 and has raised their dividend every year. The stock yields 5.5%. The company which has a market cap of almost $1 billion, has a forward PE of 13.7.

For a free Excel list of high yielding American Stock Exchange stocks, over ten of which yield more than 7%, go to wsnn.com. The list can be downloaded, sorted, updated, and added to.

Author owns NYX.

By Stockerblog.com

All That Glitters IS Gold

All That Glitters IS Gold
Guest Article

With the recent turn of events in the global economy since late 2008, a number of investors who have relied on stock trading to make their fortunes have now turned to the precious metals market as a hedge against inflation and to help secure their financial portfolios. Investors have long been aware of the fact that gold and silver can be excellent investment vehicles, especially when stock trading markets become as unstable and volatile as they have in the past couple of years.

How Gold and Silver has Reached an All-time High Value in Recent Years

In the past couple of years since the U.S. stock market suffered during the 4th quarter of 2008, the price of both gold and silver has increased dramatically. The performance of gold and silver as investment vehicles can often be compared to stock trading because of their fundamental differences. However, to understand the effect of how investing in precious metals affects the stock markets, you have to understand how a stock market crash affects the price of the metals. Typically, the fears that are generated by a major market decline affect the price of gold and silver in a positive fashion.

You have to remember that the price of gold and silver is driven by supply and demand as well as pure speculation like most stock trading commodities. Conversely, and unlike other commodities, the disposal or hoarding of precious metals plays more of a significant role in how the price decreases or increases than what the actual consumption of them does. Most of the mined gold that is still available is found in the form of either bullion or jewellery.

By the end of 2004, about 19% of the world’s global reserves of gold were being held by the central banks and other official organisations. Additionally, there are other factors that come into play where the price of gold and silver are concerned. In the past, political tensions and the trade deficit have devalued certain currencies, especially the U.S. dollar. When this happens, people will shift their investments to precious metals to give them an advantage over what the economy and the stock markets are doing.

Gold Investment Options

Where gold and silver are concerned, there are a number of investment vehicles that an individual can consider. The primary ones are bars, coins and ETF’s or Exchange Traded Funds. The most traditional form of purchasing gold is in the form of bars. These are easily purchased at the major banks and typically carry a lower premium than gold coins, hence their popularity. On the other hand, gold coins are the most common way of owning gold.

These are priced according to what is referred to as their “fine” weight. They are influenced by supply and demand factors as well. Gold ETF’s are investment products that are traded much like stocks but with considerably less investment risk attached to them. ETF shares can be sold by the investor to other investors or the investor can sell the shares or units back to the ETF.

The Internet, it’s a Copyright Feature, Not a Bug

Looked at in terms of copyright, the Digital World was perceived as a bug. The ease of copying led to rampant infringement that harmed creators. In contrast, again looked at in terms of copyright, I submit that the Networked World should be embraced as a feature.  ~ Tom Rubin, Chief Counsel for IP Strategy at Microsoft

It seems like a point that ought to be obvious, the internet is a good thing.  But, Mr. Rubin is talking about the internet solely through the eyes of copyright law, and here, it is hard to argue that the internet has been treated as a problem.  The Digital World doesn’t fit neatly into existing copyright law and, for the past two decades the most common approach has been to try to jam it in forcefully, hammering the new round peg into the old square hole.

Mr. Rubin explored this issue as part of the Intellectual Property in the International Arena: WIPO Comes to Stanford conference hosted at Stanford Law School last month.  As part of the panel “Copyright in a Networked World,”  Mr. Rubin discussed two main needs for a working copyright system in the digital world.  First: speed and scalability.  Content users need to be able to find and license works quickly.  Second, and related to the first: working information sources and databases.  Content users need to be able to find out who owns the rights to a work quickly and easily. 

Mr. Rubin’s full recount of his participation on the Copyright in a Networked World panel is available at the Stanford CIS blog.  Full reading of this short and interesting piece is encouraged.

Top Yielding Stocks Selling Below Book Value

Imagine that you own shares of a company that has a million shares that are trading for $10 per share. This would give the company a market capitalization of $10 million. Now further imagine that if you add up all the assets of the company, such as bank accounts, inventory, equipment, and real estate, it comes to $15 million, then adding all the liabilities such as debt and short term loans amounts to $3 million. When you subtract the liabilities from the assets, it gives the company a net worth of $12 million. Divide that number by the million shares and you end up with a $12 per share book value, in very simple terms. What that means is, also in very simple terms, if you buy the stock today and the company goes out of business today, you would end up with a $2 or 20% increase in your investment.

Many stocks sell below book value for numerous reasons. The industry or sector could fall out of favor, tax selling, and a bearish stock market are just a few examples. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has turned up a list of over 25 stocks selling at or below book value, most of which have yields above 3.5%. One example is Telecom Italia S.p.A. (TI), the large Italian telecom company which provides fixed-line and mobile telecommunications, Internet, and media services throughout the country. The Italian government may be suffering but Italians are still making phone calls. The stock is trading at two thirds of book value and pays a yield of 3.5%. Earnings for the latest quarter were up over 207% on flat revenues. The stock trades at 15 times forward earnings.

Great Plains Energy Incorporated (GXP) is another discounted stock. This electric utility, which serves Missouri and Kansas, is selling at 87% of book value and sports a yield of 4.3%. Earnings for the latest quarter were up 67% on a 24% revenue increase. It sports a forward price to earnings ratio of 12.

The shares of Brandywine Realty Trust (BDN) are trading at 77% of book and yield 5.5%. This REIT owns office and industrial properties. The stock trades at 8.5 times forward earnings.

To see the complete list of the major high yield stocks trading below book value, which can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. Fourteen of the stocks have yields above 5% and four provide yields over 7%.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.


By Stockerblog.com