Greek Mortgages and Dot-Com Deja Vu

“It’s a scheme they have in America where the bank buys the house and you rent it from the bank.”

That was my father-in-law at a cocktail party in Athens, Greece, explaining the concept of a mortgage to group of older European guests. Until very recently, American-style mortgages were virtually unknown in Greece and many other […]

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CIQ Headlines for October 16, 2007

Dot-Deja-Vu?: (Business Week) Facebook valuied at $10 billion. RockYou $500 million. TechCrunch $100 Million. Total revenues for all of these sites combined is under $200 million. Silicon Valley is on a gradiose acquistion binge. CIQ: Some say the values will pan out this time. Online advertising, immature in 2000, is now a viable business model. Maybe right. […]

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CIQ Headlines for October 9, 2007

Hachette Plans Digital Books: (Yahoo!) Hachette Book Group USA is developing an program to make their books digitally browsable and searchable online. The books will also be accompanied by “widgets.”  CIQ: As publishing seems to be preparing for the eReader world, it would be nice if the gadget makers could provide a good one.
Portals are the New Networks: […]

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CIQ Headlines for October 8, 2007

Publisher’s Jitters in Frankfurt: Attendees at the Frankfurt Book Fair told surveyers what they thought were the biggest the challenges and threats facing the industry:
– Digitization (53 percent)
– Increasing globalization (24 percent)
– User-generated content (22 percent)
– Territorial rights battles (15 percent)
e-Books and Audiobooks lead the list of major areas of growth. CIQ: We are […]

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