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Download this calculator to see how the accounting department can benefit from improved data quality. For example, accurate data can prevent delays in invoices reaching customers and reduce bad debt sent to collections due to delayed payments. Data Quality Cost Analysis - Receivables Collection

The E for All Expo in Los Angeles allows gamers to test drive top video game titles. The AP’s Steve Fluty takes us inside the first-of-its-kind trade show. (Oct. 19) Gamers Get Down With Top Titles at E for All

Astronomers have photographed a far-off galaxy - forming just 13 billion years ago - putting it among the earliest and most distant cosmic objects ever seen. (Feb. 13) Telescopes Spot One of Earliest Galaxies

The Daily Loper - April 2, 2008

I Couldn’t Hit It Sideways Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Monkey News
  Ricky Gervais is harassing Karl Pilkington again. Apparently, Karl is reluctant to do any more podcasts, so Ricky’s blogging about annoying Karl enough so that he will do more. ‘"We discussed the fact that with 2 fish and five loaves of bread the fish sandwiches would be very bready, but a miracle none the less.Then Karl said, ‘weren’t the disciples fishermen? Why only two fish? And where did all the bread come from. Who was the baker?’"
• The Velvet Underground Live at the Gymnasium (1967)
  Recently unearthed five-song Velvets boot that the scuttlebutt says has not only the first live version of "Sister Ray," but is also John Cale’s last performance with the original group! Maybe, but what is undisputable is yet another awesome arrangement of "I’m Waiting For The Man," and oh yeah, an BRAND NEW VELVET UNDERGROUND SONG!! ("brand new" being relative, of course). It’s called "I’m Not A Young Man Anymore," and do you even have to ask if it’s awesome?
• WARNING !!! Ted Mosby is a Jerk!!
  It’s stuff like this that makes us love "How I Met Your Mother" oh so very much. Remember how Lili Taylor’s character in "Say Anything" wrote 65 songs about one guy? This site has a single 20-minute song that is pretty what you imagined all 65 of those songs would sound like if they were rolled into a single, obsessive rant.
• NBC Upfronts: Office Spins Off; Scrubs Scrubbed
  Second Office series coming to a television near you. In 2009.
• Rumors Of 3G IPhones As Older Versions Disappear From US Stores
  Oh hell. Oh yeah!
• Life Without the Print Edition
  Not to sound all one-uppy or anything, but stay tuned for the Medialoper feature "Life Without The Print Edition AND Cable: Or, how we survived three months without a DVR."
• Hulu Traffic: Strong Start, Quick Drop
  Granted, it’s only been a few weeks, but the trend is, well, not good. Makes you wonder what marketing piece the braintrust behind Hulu aren’t getting right. Okay, doesn’t really make you wonder — it’s pretty easy to figure out.
• A top Google techie joins EMI
  Didn’t lope this last night because I was sure it was an April Fools stunt. Apparently it’s for real. The headline should probably read "multi-millionaire techie looking for a real challenge, has nothing to lose".
• U2’s concert deal illustrates new face of music industry
  Funny quote: "The contracts indicate the direction in which the music industry is heading. As income from CD sales declines and pirate downloads eat up profits, artists are starting to realise that the money lies in touring and merchandising." Starting to realize? Uh, pretty much every band on the planet knows this.
• Senate seeks to counter FCC
  Those media ownership rules that nobody liked except big media? The Senate’s trying to restore sanity and, yes, diversity into the marketplace.
• Castro reforms: DVDs, farms for Cubans
  Next up, Zunes for every Cuban citizen.
• TargetCast: Network TV’s Prime-time Spot Cost Drops 12%
  Who didn’t see that one coming?

Five Cheap Date Ideas

My wife and I are recent newlyweds. While we tried to be responsible with the costs of a wedding, at 200 people, we knew the costs were going to add up. It only made sense to try to save as much money as possible in anticipation of those wedding bills. We found we could save a great sum of money by going out on frugal dates.

I thought I’d share five of our favorite cheap date ideas:

• Picnic in the Park - Instead of paying restaurant prices for brunch, you pay grocery store prices. Instead of paying $20 and up for wine, you look for cheaper options under $10. If you have a radio, that can certainly add to the romance.
• Tour a Factory - In Northern California we have Jelly Belly and a Budweiser factories. When we lived near Boston we had options of Sam Adams and Yankee Candle. I recommend the book Watch It Made in the USA, which should be available from your local library.
• Movie Night - Red Box and DVD Play each have the latest DVDs available for about a dollar. Add a cozy blanket, microwave popcorn, and your favorite beverage… fun.
• Camping or Hiking - My wife loves the outdoors so this is one of her favorites. I don’t mind the outdoors, I just think that every tree should be Internet-enabled. I’m building up into liking this date more and more. In a year or two, I might be there.
• Minor League Sporting Events - Here’s a slightly more expensive option. My wife and I went to a Modesto Nuts baseball game last year. Tickets are around $7-10. Food was reasonably priced and the team gave away shirts and souvenirs in between innings. Even though we didn’t know any of the players, we still had fun inventing nicknames for them. We still associate any clutch performance with Jose Chavez, a player who got a huge hit in the game.

A good general rule of thumb is to opt for outside activities. If your wallet is looking a little thin, you might want to trade in your standard Saturday night restaurant date for one of the above options.

—

Lazy Man has been a lender at Prosper since February 2006. He is the author of the personal finance blog, Lazy Man and Money and the health and fitness blog, Lazy Man and Health.

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The Future of P2P Lending - Dusting Off My Crystal Ball

Remember the good old days of 1998? The Internet was going to change everything. Analysts predicted that we were going to buy our books, music, pet supplies, and groceries over the Internet. It’s ten years later and the analysts were right about the first two and wrong about the last two. (Sure you can buy pet supplies and groceries over the Internet, but do you know anyone who actually does?) Over the last two years, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has taken off. I’ve written extensively about Prosper and Lending Club. Though I initially wrote about Zopa, its product is similar to a certificate of deposit. How is the P2P industry going to look 3-5 years from now? That’s what I aim to find out.

Before we go into the specifics of P2P companies, let’s look at a bit of history. In many industries, you see two leaders battle it out - usually with one brand being consistently ahead - see Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonald’s vs. Burger King. There’s an occasional RC Cola or Wendy’s. They run solid profitable businesses, but they aren’t leaders in their industry. I see P2P lending companies following a similar formula. Let’s break it down by individual company:

• Prosper - The first mover is also the biggest player in the P2P industry. Prosper has an Ebay-like bidding process. In some ways it’s similar to a stock market maker like Nasdaq - it sets up a system and let’s buyers and sellers best determine fair pricing. I love this model and I see them in the role as Coke or McDonald’s - the leader with about 50-60% market share in the long term.
• Lending Club - Lending Club is the frisky challenger. With them you lend to people at fixed rates determined by their credit rating. You aren’t going to get a 15% return from a borrower with perfect credit, but you aren’t going to get stuck with 10% from a borrower with poor credit. It’s a little like Amazon, you see a price you like and you buy it. Lending Club has stricter guidelines for it’s borrowers and though it’s still early, their default rates are significantly lower than Prosper. Lending Club is growing rapidly and I can see them commanding 35-45% of the P2P marketplace.
• The Rest - This is where I’d include Zopa, Virgin Money US, and Loanio. As I mentioned earlier, Zopa is more of a CD - I’d rather invest at my local bank and help my own town. Virgin Money is focused on family and friends - a subset of what Prosper and Lending Club already do quite well. Details on Loanio - other than it being in perpetual vaporware-mode - are extremely hard to come by. Their challenge is to offer some new twist on P2P lending - otherwise the majority will stick to the more proven Prosper and Lending Club. In the end, I see these sites adding up to 10% of the industry.

Some people predict the fall of P2P Lending. I personally feel that eliminating the banks as a middleman is an extremely viable and potentially lucrative business plan. I could be wrong and all these companies could turn up like the next Webvan and Pets.com. I’m not expecting that as their overhead is very minimal.

Where do you see P2P Lending five years from now? Take a guess in the comments below (and then come back in five years to see how you did).

Further reading:

• Borrow Money & Lend Money at Prosper
• Introducing Lending Club

Image Credit: Griraffes

Recommended by Lazy Man: Lending Club - Make money by lending money it to others

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Wallpaper from Disney World's Polynesian resort

Mister Jalopy sez, "Auction for banana leaf wallpaper that was destined for the Polynesian Hotel at Walt Disney World. When Cory builds the True Fan Enchanted Tiki Room, this will be perfect for the powder room!" Link (Thanks, Mister Jalopy!)

Comment on Land Registry surcharge could fund free OS data surprisingly cheaply by Sam Kuper

@V Yates: because making that data free to use by entrepreneurs is likely to improve both the national economic situation and quality of life by encouraging innovation. What kind of innovation? The kind of innovation that give Google and Yahoo such massive market share, except that this time the companies might be British ones. The kind of innovation that leads to accessible tools for charting social problems and proposing solutions to them, like everyblock.com and openplans.org

You know, it might be possible to use the data to create tools that would make the housing market so much more efficient that you’d save way more than £6.61 next time you move. Or perhaps in the future you’d buy a property that’s worth more than £6.61 more to you (because of the environmental surroundings, for instance, as revealed by pollution maps or crime maps). You might find that with the data, someone creates a tool that you use daily or weekly, and that saves you minutes of grief each time compared with the tools you were using previously. That’s got to be worth £6.61 over the course of, say, a year (and I doubt you move house more than once a year).

All these options sound to me like they’re worth spending an extra %0.004 of the cost of my next (first!) house on upfront.

Leadership

LEADERSHIP....Barack Obama says, "We can't just tell people what they want to hear, we need to tell them what they need to hear." But does Obama actually do that? Alexander Russo isn't so sure after taking a look at a late-90s controversy in Chicago over who should have the authority to fire school principals: local councils or reformist superintendent Paul Vallas?

Obama was uniquely well-placed to take the lead in mediating this battle. He had a relatively strong background in community and education issues. He was friends and pickup-basketball buddies with Arne Duncan, who was then in charge of magnet schools (and has since taken over Vallas' job). Obama also knew Vallas, who liked him. Then, as now, he was considered a politician who could unify people and resolve challenging conflicts.

....For several months, Obama didn't indicate clearly where his sympathies lay. He didn't join with protesters and other legislators who swarmed public events denouncing the Vallas proposal. He didn't talk to the press about the importance of community engagement for schools or the unfairness of diminishing the influence of the 5,500 elected LSC members. Obama kept tabs on the negotiations through his staff, met occasionally with local-control advocates, and, according to those who were involved, sometimes provided ideas and advice in private. But that was about it. Some local advocates weren't even sure whether he would ultimately be on their side or not. And many worried that without someone like Obama to stop it, the Vallas juggernaut would overrun any opposition.

....Only after [support for Vallas had collapsed] did Obama come out publicly in support of local school councils, making a brief speech (PDF) on the Senate floor to codify the final agreement preserving local councils' authority....In being so late to the debate, however, Obama didn't really have to stand up to anyone — not the groups he was affiliated with, not Vallas, not Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.

This is only a tidbit, not an indictment. Maybe it just wasn't an issue Obama considered important enough to spend political capital on. Maybe he knew Vallas's effort to wrest control from the local councils was doomed from the start and saw no point in getting involved. Who knows? But it's still an interesting tidbit.

Leading Popular Culture Web Site Launches New Magazine on Amazon Kindle eBook Platform (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)

Health tips by the Doctors Messer (ABC11 Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville)Local married medical doctors offer their insights and expertise.

Wright Medical Group steps to forefront in foot, ankle device field (Memphis Commercial Appeal)For many firms in the medical device world, feet just aren’t very exciting.

XM and QuickPlay Announce First Universally Available XM Radio Mobile Service for BlackBerry Smartphones (Broadcast Newsroom)LAS VEGAS , BUSINESS WIRE — XM (NASDAQ: XMSR), the nation’s leading provider of satellite radio with more than 9 million subscribers, and QuickPlay Media, the leader in mobile TV and video solutions, today announced that XM Radio Mobile has selected QuickPlay’s OpenVideo(TM) as the first media management platform to make XM Radio Mobile universally available on select BlackBerry (R) smartphones .

[link][more] Performances from Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers from the Disney Parade Special