| Betfair scores 100 per cent uptime Down Under
When UK-based online trading site Betfair was granted a licence to operate in Australia this January, it built a new data centre and flew the entire set-up from the UK to Tasmania on two chartered aeroplanes. In the first three weeks of going live, the company has achieved 100 per cent uptime. Betfair is an online trading exchange and according to the company's director of infrastructure Paul Moss, the challenges of keeping such a system available are similar to - and sometimes more demanding than - a stock exchange. Moss said: "The site always has to be available. Unlike the stock exchange, which shuts down at 17:00 for storage upgrades and firmware upgrades, Betfair can't stop. It is just like a stock exchange but 24/7. .
London Stock Exchange (LSE) system failure stops trading
Technical problems with the London Stock Exchange's Infolect data delivery system interrupted trading yesterday for 40 minutes, just before the market closed. The timing was highly unfortunate, as it coincided with US stock markets having one of their worst days of the year. From the Times Online: Furious traders were left twiddling their thumbs for the last 40 minutes of trading yesterday after the London Stock Exchange's IT system collapsed. The LSE emphasized that the trading system itself was not down but only the Infolect system that disseminates data to the market. However, the effect was that traders would have to wait until this morning to ask clients whether they want to settle trades, since stock prices were uncertain. And from another Times Online article: The LSE promised to recalculate the FTSE indices once the closing auction ended but last night it was unclear whether this had been done.
Microfinance Boosts the Poor
There is a misperception that the "high" interest rates of microfinance gouge the recipients. To the contrary, borrowers benefit significantly despite "high" interest rates. Why? Returns on investment for microenterprises are extremely high. Studies—including those by my own organization—have estimated returns from microenterprises fall in the range of 50% to 100%. When a borrower is earning such high returns, paying interest rates in the range of 26% (what SKS charges), or even higher, is perfectly acceptable to a borrower. Such high returns exist in microenterprises because microentrepreneurs in the developing world run businesses (1) that primarily use family labor, which is more productive than hiring outsiders, (2) that have low infrastructure costs (e.g., village groceries are often home-front stores), (3) that are in the informal sector so there are no taxes and legal costs, and (4) where financial capital is a small percentage of the overall inputs, which are primarily labor.
Redecorate on a dime
With the real estate market stagnating, more owners are choosing to stay put and make small updates to their homes, changes that can make a room jump from 1987 to 2008 in an instant. Homebuyers seem to be making more modest revisions as well, saving their remodeling dollars for a rainy day.Trading out polished-brass doorknobs for oil-rubbed bronze handles, replacing square stainless steel faucets with curved brushed nickel ones and similar changes make a big difference without costing a ton of money.Lynn and David Moler moved into their 1,200-square-foot Antioch, Tenn., home in August. They're using their modest renovation budget to change the little details first. "The house was built in the '70s, and I don't think anything's been done to it since then," Lynn says. "Everything was dark or shiny brass.
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