Mobile Phones are Vulnerable

Recently Epsilon got hacked causing a ton of fake emails to be sent out to people all over the place. The problem is that people are giving away personal information because they have been fooled into doing so by emails that say something like "Your account has been compromised please enter your password to verify your account." This is a technique called phishing and can cause all sorts of problems for anyone who falls victim.

The most immediate threat is the possibility for people's identities to be stolen on a massive scale and have them all end up accumulating a lot of false charges. This means that there would have to be an investigation into each account that was tampered with and the person whose account it is would have no access to it for roughly a week. This would hurt the economy because people would all of a sudden have to be extremely careful with their money, especially if they have all of their money in one account. The other problem is going to be for any company that deals with online security because people will start to have their doubts about even the most secure companies after such a large breach. This corporations could end up using smaller security companies less, causing them to go bankrupt. This wouldn't be any good because it would mean that there was less competition. With less competition in the online security section of the market then prices could rise. This could end up causing a rise in prices on everything that the company sells because they would have to pay for a more expensive security system and that would be bad for the consumer. Overall this is just a bad situation that will probably have a large amount of consequences.

Business Booming in Silicon Valley

When Marty Hu graduates from Stanford University's computer science program in June, he'll enter the hottest Silicon Valley job market for software engineers since the dot.com crash a decade ago.

In fact, times are so good that Hu, 21, turned down interview requests from several blue-chip companies, including Google and Microsoft.

"At this point, I've sort of taken it [the interest from tech firms] for granted," Hu said.

Instead of joining an established company, Hu, who still gets weekly invitations for interviews from would-be employers, has opted to launch his own company.

According to an article on cnn.com Silicon Valley is experiencing job growth at an alarming rate. With the national unemployment at 8.8%, Silicon Valley is adding jobs to many of its major company's. These company's include Google and social networking giant Facebook. The software programming sector is where the most growth can be seen as many of the nations brightest new programmers are being hired right out of college. So why is software programing getting so big? Is it because of the most recent expansions of company's like Facebook into the mobile market? I think that coupled with the fact that the gaming market is still one of the strongest in the country are the reasons. So will this trend continue or will we see it begin to decline gradually?

Tech Companies Undergo Rapid Expansion

Recently two major names in the tech industry have made massive acquisitions, both GameStop and Texas Instruments bought out competitors. TI purchased National Semiconductor for $6.5 billion in an all cash transaction. This purchase was made to increase the output of the analog products that TI produces, these sales are expected to be 50% of their overall income over the next year. This is because TI will now sell over 12,000 analog products ranging from calculators to microchips in cellphones. With this buyout TI will further cement its place as the leader in its current market.

 In the news for GameStop, is the acquisition of Spawn Labs and Impulse. Spawn labs, a streaming technology company, and Impulse, a digital distribution company/program (an alternative to Steam). These major additions to GameStop now mean that not only will GameStop be selling and shipping games, they will be hosting just as many digital downloads and even producing some games. This will drastically increase GameStop's total income for the rest of the companies existence. With the dawn of the digital age this is a great move, by putting the company not only in one market, but three simply overnight.

Over the weekend hackers gained access to email address information that a Dallas Based company called Epsilon had access to. They provide an email service for such companies as: Chase, Citi, Best Buy, Walgreens, Kroger and many others.

The email addresses will most likely be used to try and solicit personal information from the receiver. Information like login passwords so that the sender can gain access to the real account.

The economic ramifications from this could be tremendous. First the cost of internal investigations within each company, the investigations that will be done by law enforcement, then if people really give out their information and people gain access to bank accounts and social security numbers, the identity theft percentage will skyrocket.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the estimated losses for domestic companies affected by cyber crime is $67.2 billion annually. The targeted firms also suffer in the stock market days after an attack with shareholder losses of 1 percent to 5 percent. Percentages like these might seem small, but for the average company on the New York Stock Exchange, it can translate to $50 to $200 million in shareholder losses. This is where company losses begin to affect the consumer, causing a bleed-through effect to all levels of the economy.

IBM Nanoparticle used for Medicine

According to CNET, technology has made advances to the point where nanotechnology or rather nanoparticles can be used to destroy bacterias that end up killing thousands of people each year. But the final product is not ready for real widespread application as of right now, but the ability to do so is definitely a possibility.

IBM is leading these kinds of studies on technology and the human body. There is a "superbug" called MRSA, a super infectious bacteria, that kills thousands each year. Modern medicine has had a hard time combating this bacteria. According to them their biodegradable nanoparticle can search out and destroy alien cells such as MRSA bacteria. For sure this will create more jobs for people if nanotechnology can truly take off like this. There is probably many ways to use nanotechnology through medicine. I'm not truly sure how nanotechnology is produced but I'm sure there is production and programming involved. Which will in turn create more jobs for people. That's one of the big things we need right now to help get this recovery going which is more jobs.