The iPhone finance section is heating up now that CNNMoney has stepped into the market.  The CNNMoney application is currently one of the top free Finance applications on the iTunes App Store, competing against companies such as Bloomberg, Associated Press, and The New York Times.

The CNNMoney application is a portal with a built in stock search engine, market index tracking tool, company and economic news, video highlights, and sharing feature.  There is a tool called My Stocks to add the stocks that you want to track.

News about real estate, small business, technology, autos, jobs, and personal finance can be added to the homepage of the application.  Additional headlines can be added from Fortune and Money Magazine as well.

Personally I believe that the application looks a bit generic and could use something to make it stand out from every other finance news application, but that is just my opinion.  Some people are comfortable looking at generic finance news applications.  The operating system required for the application is iPhone OS 2.1 or greater.

Shared Memory Graphics LLC is a small firm based in Newport Beach, California that designs microprocessors.  The company has two patents that describe how microprocessors have the ability to fine-tune the graphics by balancing a flow of data from different sources.  Now they are using these patents to file an infringement lawsuit against Apple over the iPod and iPod Touch, Nintendo over the Wii controller, and Sony for their PSP and PS2 consoles.

The patents originally belonged to Alliance Semiconductor Corporation.  Alliance started in 1985 and had 144 employees with millions in revenue at one point, but eventually became a holding company in 2005.  Alliance ended up selling the patents to Shared Memory.  The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court in Arkansas and Shared Memory is demanding monteray damages.

[via WSJ]

TweetDeck gave us a platform where we can track the tweets from the people we follow and the statuses of our Facebook friends.  Now AOL LLC is getting on board with building a platform that aggregates IMs from AOL Instant Messenger, tweets from Twitter, and statuses from Facebook.  Yesterday AOL launched a beta version of AIM 7, AIM for Mac 2.0, and a new mobile version.

More interestingly, AOL also launched a service called AIM Lifestream.  AIM Lifestream is built in to AIM 7, AIM for Mac 2.0, and the web version of AIM.  Lifestream also has the ability to share YouTube videos and Delicious links.  There is a Lifestream and separate Buddies tab built in to the software.  The buddies tab allows you to have private conversations with your friends.

AOL acquired Socialthing last year whose technology they are using to power the new lifestream service.  Socialthing lifestreams was built in to AOL owned social network Bebo last year too.

[via TechCrunch]

I believe that criminals are getting more creative every day.  Last month I wrote about two criminals in Alabama trying to steal an ATM using a stolen backhoe, a trailer, and a truck.  This time three criminals in Spain attempted to use a remote-controlled Zeppelin to sneak over the Las Palmas prison wall on the Canary Islands.

A Zeppelin is similar to a blimp except that it is rigid.  During World War I, the Germans had high hopes to use Zeppelins for dropping bombs but they were vulnerable

The remote-controlled zeppelin was 13 feet long and would flight over the wall overnight.  The blimp would then deliver vision goggles, camouflage paint, and climbing gear to an Italian drug lord being held in the prison.  The Italian inmate was identified as Giulio B, who would use the delivered goods to climb the wall and run to a car that would be hiding for him.  And then he would be taken to another country with a fake identity to carry out further drug operations.

About 2,000 feet away from the prison, the three owners of the blimp were conducting their mission in a camouflaged tent.  They spent weeks there conspiring how to get around the different security measures.  They used advanced binoculars and cameras in order to plan the escape.  To make sure they would not be caught themselves, the trio set up motion sensors around their campground.

Why was the Italian drug lord put in jail?  He was caught flying a sea-plane that contained 440 lbs. of cocaine from Mauritania to Spain.

[via Telegraph]

If you don’t have an iPhone to remind you about the tasks you have to do, then maybe you should consider a whiteboard clock.  The official title for this design is “The Trace of Time clock” and it was put together by Sam Hecht, Durrell Bishop, and Andre Klauser.

[via Gizmodo]

Chief Yahoo and Yahoo! co-founder David Filo announced last week that he met with New York Governor David Paterson and Senator Chuck Schumer.  Yahoo! announced plans to build one of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world.  Data centers are the top source of energy consumption at Yahoo! so the announcement is very significant.

The data center will be powered by hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls. About 90% of the energy will be used to power servers.  The industry average is 50%.  The new data center will be based in Lockport, New York.  The company aims to have an annual average power usage effectiveness at 1.1 or better.  The design of the building will be based on the Yahoo! Computing Coop since it looks similar to a chicken coop.

About two years ago, Yahoo! started building their own data centers.  Their facility in Washington is powered by zero-carbon wind and other hydroelectric sources.  Yahoo! is even aiming to reduce carbon intensity of their data centers by at least 40% by 2014.

[via Yodel Anecdotal]

Last month Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have been able to raise $300 million in funding for their new venture capital firm called Andreessen Horowitz.  Yesterday Marc announced the launch of the VC firm on his personal blog.

The VC firm will have the ability to invest between $50,000 and $50 million in a company depending on the stage and opportunity.  The firm plans to aggressively invest in startups that will often times involve thousands of dollars.  Ben and Marc will be General Partners in the firm starting out.  In investments that involve $5 million or more, Ben or Marc will most likely join the Board of Directors.

Marc and Ben believe that the CEO of a company should be one of the founders.  The firm also believes that the product should be the heart of any technology company.  Most companies get built around the product.  The firm will focus on investments centered around consumer Internet, business Internet, mobile software, application software, networking, storage, etc.  The company will unlikely be involved in green and clean tech, space elevators, electric cars, or movie production studios.

In November 2009, Sir John Sawers will become the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agency in London.  The SIS is famous for being the agency that James Bond is portrayed to work for.  Considering that Sawer will be the head of the intelligence agency in London, you would think it would be best for him to keep a low profile at all times.  But his wife Lady Shelley Sawers made a mistake in keeping a low profile after uploading compromising photos on Facebook.

The photos were available for anyone in the “London” network to see.  Photos included pictures of their friends and family.  Sawers is currently the Britain Ambassador to the U.N. and will be code-named as C when joining the spy agency.  About 19 photos were uploaded including one where Sawers was in his swimsuit on vacation.  There were even a couple of photos that revealed the location of a flat that is used by the Sawers family.

There were some messages on Lady Sawers’ wall that gave away the fact that the new agency head will be known as C.  “Congrats on the new job, already dubbed Sir Uncle ‘C’ by nephews in the know!” wrote one of Sawers’ relatives.  The DailyMail has some of the pictures that were taken from the social network, but edited out what they believe to be extremely confidential.  After the Daily Mail informed authorities about the account’s lack of security, the pictures were quickly blocked.