finance

Google, Apple, Microsoft top global brand survey

Google, Apple, and Microsoft are the three most valuable brands overall worldwide, according to Brand Finance, a London-based brand valuation consultancy firm.

The annual Brand Finance Global 100 ranks the most valuable brands in the world from a variety of industries based on the strength, risk, and future potential of a brand relative to its competitors while also accounting for major financial, political, and economic changes over the last six months.

Google retained its position on this list as world's most valuable brand, worth a staggering $48.2 billion. Apple emerged as the second most valuable brand in the … Read more

U.S. military to be largest rooftop solar customer

The Department of Energy today backed a deal to connect solar electric panels at 160,000 locations on military bases, a move which could double the number of residential solar installations in the U.S.

The DOE said it has provided a conditional commitment to guarantee a $344 million loan for the SolarStrong Project, which will help the military meet its renewable energy targets and bring solar power to a many states which now have little.

SolarCity, which specializes in residential solar installation and financing, has been tapped to install, own, and operate the panels in up to 124 military … Read more

Opera finances improve despite fierce competition

Arguably, Opera Software has tougher competition now than at any point since the scrappy Norwegian company released its first browser in 1995.

Microsoft is aggressively developing Internet Explorer again. Firefox and Safari are widely used, and Chrome is ascendant. iOS and Android smartphones come with their own mobile browsers.

Despite that, Opera yesterday reported financial results with a healthy dose of good news. The recipe of Lars Boilesen, who took over as chief executive in early 2010, seems to be working.

Revenue for the second quarter of 2011 increased 29 percent from $31 million a year ago to $40 million. … Read more

Scottrade Mobile lets you trade on the go

Scottrade Mobile puts all of the online brokerage's trading tools in the palm of your hand. It lets you conduct research on securities, manage your account, and place trade orders just as easily as you would on the full Web site.

From anywhere in the app, you can get stock readings by hitting the Get a Quote button on the bottom of the screen. Type in a ticker symbol or company name to bring up all of a stock's vitals, as well as options to find relevant news, set alerts, and add the stock to your Watch List. … Read more

Sungevity socks away cash for solar leasing

Sungevity has secured $50 million worth of solar leases and expects to have the financing to continue expanding into other states.

The company today announced a deal with Citigroup where the bank will provide financing for a "couple thousand" residential solar panel installations, according to Sungevity Chief Financial Officer Mac Irvin.

With a solar lease, a homeowner avoids the large upfront cost of buying solar panels and instead pays a monthly fee to Sungevity, which owns and maintains the panels. The leases are structured so the home owner's electricity bills will go down because of the electricity … Read more

Falling solar costs: Good for buyers, bad for makers

There's a paradox in the global solar industry: When manufacturers are suffering, things are looking up for consumers.

Lux Research yesterday released its latest industry analysis which projects fast growth in the amount of solar power installed, at 15.5 percent per year, but flat revenue until 2016. Reflecting the same dynamic of falling product prices, a report from Navigant Consulting yesterday found that the price of solar modules, or solar electric panels, is down almost 20 percent so far this year.

The reports put numbers on the brutal price competition among makers of solar photovoltaic panels where global … Read more

Econ 101: Solar panels increase home values

It stands to reason that adding an asset which cuts your electricity bills--solar panels--will bump up a home's value. Now an economic study attaches numbers to solar panels' real-estate value.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently released an analysis that found solar panels add between 3 percent and 4 percent to the value of a home. That result is consistent with a study released in April by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which found that solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have a "sizeable effect" on home prices.

The NBER study looked at prices in San Diego and … Read more

Portable personal finance freeware

USB money...now that's what we call a peripheral! While USBMoney is free software, not free money, using this personal finance manager might make you think you're finding free money if it helps you keep more of what you earn. USBMoney is a portable personal finance manager that is designed to keep all your financial details in one place, such as a USB drive, memory chip, or other devices or media. Since it's completely portable, it can run on any Windows machine. It imports and exports data as CSV/QIF files, so it's completely compatible with … Read more

Why there's no grown-up Quicken for OS X Lion

If you have a grown-up financial life, with money in investment vehicles, Intuit has an up-to-date version of Quicken to help you keep track of it all--on Windows. If you're on a Mac, though, you might think Intuit has abandoned you. There's Quicken 2007 for the Mac, but nothing serious after that. And if you upgraded to OS X Lion, Quicken 2007 will no longer work on your Mac. It's the most infamous of the applications that have been left behind by the latest version of the Mac operating system, which no longer runs apps written for the PowerPC architecture, as Quicken 2007 was. What's worse, if you upgrade to Lion, you won't be able to extricate your data from Quicken at all, as no other app can read its proprietary format.

How did Intuit end up screwing over loyal Mac Quicken users so thoroughly? We can take swipes at Apple for prematurely ceasing support of the Rosetta technology that supported PowerPC apps, but Intuit, along with every other Mac developer, saw the end looming for old PPC apps. The light at the end of the tunnel was a 10-million watt Klieg light on a big, loud train. It appears that Intuit simply chose to neglect a portion of its customer base.

It's not quite that simple, of course, and there is finally new leadership at the company that is at least acknowledging the situation. Whether or not Intuit will ever do right by Mac users, though, is still an open question.

Travel marketplace Airbnb raises $112 million

Airbnb, an online marketplace where travelers can find and book places to stay around the world, has picked up $112 million in financing, a move designed to help it grow in the U.S. and abroad.

The company will use the $112 million in Series B financing from investors Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, and General Catalyst to enhance its U.S. online community and expand and hire more people internationally. This latest round of capital adds to the $7.2 million raised on behalf of Sequoia Capital and Greylock in November, bringing the total investment to $119.8 million.

Airbnb … Read more