Insights into why iOS apps are so dominant

Scoble on iOS’s Domination in Mobile Apps
[Via Daring Fireball]

Terrific companion piece to my piece on the profound difference between today’s Android and iOS app markets. These “datapoints” from Scoble are exactly the sort of things that I’m talking about.

[More]

The question is whether app developers even need the tech press and reviews anymore. But not for the reasons one might expect.

The biggest hits for the apps is to be featured that the iTunes store. And how do they get featured by Apple? Iy may be because Apple looks at the tech press to get ideas. The media is not acting as a filter to the consumer but as a filter for the distributor.

Apple wants to be the best broker of games – it wants the apps with the best potential to be popular to be seen. If they get popular, Apple makes money. So it wants to make it easier for people to discover new games/apps. That is where the tech press comes in, helping identify new apps.

When SNL actually successfully makes fun of you, you should quit

by Wonderlane

SNL is not always the top of satire as it used to be but sometimes it hits the mark pretty well.

The only thing better would have been having a male ‘guest’ wearing a kilt choosing which agent he wanted to perform a search.

Jeez, I wonder what the procedure is for the TSA when a gut going commando wears a kilt?

Remember how mortgages worked in It’s a Wonderful Life?

Who owns your mortgage, the mind-croggling flowchart edition
[Via Boing Boing]

This insanely complex chart represents securitization auditor Dan Edstrom’s best attempt to figure out who actually owns his mortgage: “The following flow chart reverse engineers the mortgage on the Ekstrom family residence. It took Dan over one year to take it this far and it clearly demonstrates what happens when there are too many lawyers being manufactured.”

Just When You Thought You Knew Something About Mortgage Securitizations(Thanks, Mr. Tough!)

[More]

We are in this mess because a lot of ‘smart’ guys figured out how to make a mortgage into a three card monty scheme. No more having the bank hold the mortgage and title while they provide money.

Now everyone has a hand in the pile and after taking their cut and moving it around,it looks like there may have been a lot of fraud involved also.

But, they hold the economy hostage with their fraud so they take us al down also if we go after their crimes.

They will not stop until brought to heel. Put them in jail.

‘Dirty” courts dealing with fraud

Florida’s dirty “rocket docket” courts are a gift to fraudulent lenders
[Via Boing Boing]

Writing in next week’s Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi is incandescent on the fraud-riddled, corrupt, closed-door “Rocket Docket” courts set up in Florida to expedite the process of dirtbag lenders kicking people out of their homes without having to provide any real evidence that the banks own the note or that the homeowners are delinquent. Taibbi smuggles himself into the court and documents in ghastly, clinical detail the dirty process by which banks use (badly) forged documents and judges who don’t give a damn about justice to steal peoples’ houses, all the while making indignant noises about “people who don’t pay their mortgages shouldn’t be in those houses.”

Now, months after its first pass at foreclosure was dismissed, the bank has refiled the case — and what do you know, it suddenly found the note. And this time, somehow, the note has the proper stamps. “There’s a stamp that did not appear on the note that was originally filed,” Kowalski tells the judge. (This business about the stamps is hilarious. “You can get them very cheap online,” says Chip Parker, an attorney who defends homeowners in Jacksonville.)

The bank’s new set of papers also traces ownership of the loan from the original lender, Novastar, to JP Morgan and then to Bank of New York. The bank, in other words, is trying to push through a completely new set of documents in its attempts to foreclose on Kowalski’s clients.

There’s only one problem: The dates of the transfers are completely fucked. According to the documents, JP Morgan transferred the mortgage to Bank of New York on December 9th, 2008. But according to the same documents, JP Morgan didn’t even receive the mortgage from Novastar until February 2nd, 2009 — two months after it had supposedly passed the note along to Bank of New York. Such rank incompetence at doctoring legal paperwork is typical of foreclosure actions, where the fraud is laid out in ink in ways that make it impossible for anyone but an overburdened, half-asleep judge to miss. “That’s my point about all of this,” Kowalski tells me later. “If you’re going to lie to me, at least lie well.”

The dates aren’t the only thing screwy about the new documents submitted by Bank of New York. Having failed in its earlier attempt to claim that it actually had the mortgage note, the bank now tries an all-of-the-above tactic. “Plaintiff owns and holds the note,” it claims, “or is a person entitled to enforce the note.”

Soud sighs. For Kessler, the plaintiff’s lawyer, to come before him with such sloppy documents and make this preposterous argument — that his client either is or is not the note-holder — well, that puts His Honor in a tough spot. The entire concept is a legal absurdity, and he can’t sign off on it. With an expression of something very like regret, the judge tells Kessler, “I’m going to have to go ahead and accept [Kowalski's] argument.”

[More]

These financial guys aren’t even trying to lie in a believable way. The only reason to do this is because they do not think they will have any consequences for fraud.

And so far that seems to be the case. MAybe if a few CEOs ended up behind bars these lies would stop.