Banking

CNET Audiophiliac Steve Guttenberg joins The 404 for an extra long and extra random episode that includes an exciting contest--listen to hear your chance to win a pair of Monster Turbine Pro In-Ear Speakers!

We're never entirely sure what will happen when CNET Audiophiliac Steven Guttenberg gets on the mic, but Lil Saint Steve always brings toys when he comes to town, and today he drops knowledge on vacuum-tube amplifiers and how a certain Panasonic Blu-ray player uses a Digital Tube Sound Simulator to enhance its audio qualities.

All this home theater talk gives us the perfect outlet for our rage against NBC's tape-delay of the 2010 Olympics. In our digital age of Twitter, Facebook, smartphones, and a million other gadgets that quench our thirst for instant gratification, everyone already knows the Olympic results before the network finally airs them on television! As a result, the sports tickers on ESPN continue to spoil ratings for browsers who just want to find out what time the events are on, which does not make Jeff a happy guy. Could Twitter, aka the world's collective unconscious, be the source to blame?

Steve is also on the show to give us a preview of a new contest in collaboration with The 404! It won't officially start until next week, but The Audiophillie Music Awards For Excellence In Recorded Sound will ask for high-quality demo recordings of you or your unsigned band, which Steve will judge and choose six winners based on what he thinks sounds the best from a technical standpoint.

Each winner will receive a pair of high-end Monster Turbine Pro In-Ear Speakers valued at $300-$400! Keep in mind that this won't be a judgment on the songwriting or composition, but rather an analysis of the recording itself. Check out more details after the break, and we'll officially announce the contest a week from today with all the information on how you can enter--so stay tuned!

iCash bills itself as a simple program, a financial management tool for people who don't know anything about accounting. Unfortunately, the program did not seem to bring either intuitiveness or outstanding features to the table, making it a pretty mediocre choice among similar programs.

iCash's interface looks nice enough, with attractive buttons and tabs that organize its main features. However, the way that the program attempts to organize things--both accounts and transactions--doesn't always make sense. The program comes with a 13-page Word document Help file, and it does seem that with careful studying a user could figure … Read more

Bank of America was investigating an outage on Friday that affected an unknown number of customers but had ruled out a cyberattack, a representative said.

"Our online-banking service is available," spokeswoman Anne Pace said in a telephone interview on Friday afternoon. "We ruled out a cyberattack, but are working with partners to determine the root cause."

Checks by CNET found the site down during the morning and afternoon, as late as 2:50 p.m. PST. Several readers reported the outage to CNET, and Business Insider reported that the site was down most of the morning. … Read more

Offshore wind capacity in Europe is expected to grow from 1.3 megawatts in 2008 to 18.8 megawatts by 2015, according to estimates from research group Frost & Sullivan.

The change will come from an increased interest from the banking industry in offshore wind project investment.

Previously, there was a high risk associated with offshore wind farms because of a relatively untested permitting process, the expensive initial layout for turbines and equipment, and the difficulty of installing offshore wind farms in comparison to onshore wind farms.

But as the U.K. and German governments began offering more support to … Read more

Gazing into the future with Gartner, what can we expect in the world of tech?

The research firm recently revealed its forecast for 2010 and beyond, envisioning a world where more of us live and breathe online and more often through our smartphones than our PCs.

Although the predictions target Gartner's corporate clients, most will certainly affect smaller businesses and consumers too.

"As organizations make plans to navigate the economic recovery and prepare for the return to growth, our predictions for 2010 focus on the impact of critical changes in the balance of control and power in IT,&… Read more

Technology can improve the customer experience. This usually translates into more money for the company doing the improving.

So-called self-service retail is a great example of this. For most purposes, I'm much happier using Expedia and similar services online than I was going to a travel agent's office in the old days. The recommendation engine, customer reviews, streamlined ordering system, and sheer scale of Amazon.com present for many things a vast improvement over traditional brick-and-mortar shopping.

This isn't always the case, of course. I find it stupefying that Lowes and Home Depot are the two chains … Read more

The next time you search Google for life expectancies or number of Internet users in the U.S., you'll find the specific figures plus an interactive chart letting you compare the U.S. with other countries.

Since Wednesday, Google has been tapping into data from the World Bank to provide key details and interactive charts on specific topics along with its own search results. The goal is to better help you search for and compare certain types of public data.

The World Bank is providing Google with facts and figures on 17 key indicators, including population growth, fertility rate, gross national product, and energy use.

Enter one of the 17 indicators into a Google search. You can phrase it as the specific indicator, for example, "population world," or type it as a natural question: "What is the population of the world?"

At the top of the search results, you'll find a thumbnail chart along with the latest statistics. (According to the World Bank, 72.4 percent of the U.S. population is on the Internet as of 2008.) Click on the chart or accompanying link, and up pops a larger interactive graph where you can visually compare the U.S. with other countries by clicking on their check boxes.

You can embed the chart's HTML in your own blog or Web page and opt for the data to be updated automatically anytime the World Bank's information changes. Finally, a link for more info brings you directly to the World Bank's Web site where you can dig further into the results of your search.

This latest partnership with World Bank is part of Google's effort to offer data beyond that which it can grab from your average Web page. Back in April, the search giant started integrating stats and charts from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the World Bank is the first source to provide global data for Google. The World Bank's figures come from its World Development Indicators (WDI), a collection of data derived from its own research and that of 30 other sources. The global data includes statistics on social, financial, and environmental areas encompassing more than 100 different countries.… Read more

Criminals have tried to steal an estimated $100 million from corporate bank accounts using targeted malware and money mules, the FBI said on Tuesday.

"Within the last several months, the FBI has seen a significant increase in fraud involving the exploitation of valid online banking credentials belonging to small and medium businesses, municipal governments, and school districts," the agency said in a statement.

The FBI is seeing, on average, several new victim complaints and cases every week, according to a report prepared by the Internet Crime Complaint Center and linked to in the FBI release.

Brian Krebs reported … Read more

Let's face it, Nascar driver Jimmie Johnson is a winner. This guy is never far from the top of the points rankings and damn near always a top finisher in NASCAR events, especially in races that count the most such as those that take place at the end of the Nascar season, the Chase for the Sprint Cup series. Roughly a week ago, Johnson finished in first place and ranked first in the Pepsi 500 race in California, and this past Saturday, Jimmie continued his winning ways for the second week in a row by claiming yet another victory. … Read more