Reuters - Freddie Mac won approval
from regulators on Friday to sell the stock needed to overcome
mounting losses, and the Wall Street Journal said the mortgage
finance company may seek $10 billion.
Ford to retool U.S. plants for European cars: report
(Reuters)
Reuters - Car maker Ford Motor Co is
drawing up plans to retool American plants to make small,
fuel-efficient passenger cars that it mainly makes and sells in
Europe, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Reuters - The government is considering bringing
further criminal charges in the case involving two former Bear
Stearns executives indicted last month related to the collapse
of two hedge funds they oversaw, a federal prosecutor said on
Friday.
EU wants co-operation with SEC on rating agencies: report
(Reuters)
Reuters - The European Commission wants to
cooperate closely with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) on the planned regulation of credit rating
agencies, the German financial weekly Euro am Sonntag reported.
AFP - US President George W. Bush assured Americans Saturday that the battered US economy will "pull through" despite continuing housing woes and a spike in inflation.
Groovy software three-pack for music aficionados.
Music Trio, as the name indicates, is "essentialware" for a real music fan. It consists of three independent modules. One of Music Trio users called it "the Holy Trinity of digital music software" and that is probably the best short description for the product one could possible come up with.
The first Music Trio component is AudioConverter Studio and it's basically an audio CD grabber and music file converter combined.
AudioConverter Studio offers a one-click grabbing option, and can rip and convert an audio CD to MP3, WMA, FLAC and OGG files in well under 10 minutes even on the older and slower PCs. The conversion goes both ways for mp3, wma, ogg and wav files. CDPLAYER.INI and M3U and PLS playlists are supported.
To edit MP3 tags, one can use the second component called mp3Tag. This MP3 tag editor is capable not only of editing tags for MP3, wma and other music files, but actually can automatically fill the missing tags by accessing FreeDB and Amazon.com. Internet access and one mouse click, and the program returns track1, track2, track3 files with their appropriate names.
Other handy functions include batch renaming/editing, lyrics/pictures support, "unused" MP3 file deletion option and other perks.
Media Catalog Studio is the name of the third component. It's a multimedia organizer that systematizes and categorizes all audio and video files stored on your hard-drive, CDs, DVDs, tapes and any other types of storage media. This media organizer is especially helpful for folks who have hundreds or thousands of media files stored on multiple CDs, DVDs and other storage devices, and need a fast way to locate a file of interest.
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You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz
(InfoWorld)
InfoWorld - It's been an educational week. We learned what happens when everyone tries try to activate their iPhones at the same time, what people will pay for free software, and what can go wrong when you tick off your IT folks.
Reuters - U.S. sales of video game hardware
and software rose 53 percent in June from a year ago, with
Konami Corp's "Metal Gear Solid 4" helping to fuel a dramatic
increase in the number of Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 units sold,
market researcher NPD reported on Thursday.
AP - With a Yahoo Inc. search deal uncertain at best, Microsoft Corp. plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more than expected in the next year to whip its unprofitable online operations into shape.