Today’s links.

Everything about what I’m doing right now—and everyday—is influenced by Steve Jobs: hammering on a stainless keyboard, watching the crisp words appear on a Cinema Display, powered by a MacBook Pro with an iPhone tethered, writing the latest installment of bTunes, my blog’s music tag blatantly named after yet another Jobs creation. The man was [...]

Just read this Fortune magazine cover story on Steve Jobs’ Real Legacy. Turns out it was originally published September 8, but I missed it. Good read though. Learned an authorized Jobs biography is coming out in November, and that he’s working on this super-cool headquarters building.

As financial markets froze this very week in 2007, the real-time media market was catching fire. So instead of summarizing it all with a 140 character Tweet, below we offer some broader perspective by bringing everyone’s favorite obsessions together: mortgage rates, Twitter, and iPhones. Stat-filled timeline and rate chart are included. Home prices started falling [...]

The folks at Dictionary.com aren’t always topical on their word of the day choices, and I’m not even sure that’s their goal, but they certainly nailed it today with the word panjandrum. It means an important personage or pretentious official, and today was jam packed with panjandrums. In fact, I didn’t even get a chance [...]

After Apple head Steve Jobs announced he will be on medical leave until June, investors sold Apple stock and media talking heads went even more nuts. Most notable was a battle between CNBC’s Silicon Valley bureau chief Jim Goldman and Newsweek’s technology columnist Dan Lyons in which Lyons said Goldman was a lapdog who believed [...]

Good piece on iPhone app craze. Intro below and here’s link to list of apps. Our favorite is the Drunk Dialer, which prevents you from being able to dial the phone if you can’t hold the phone steady. Although it’s only been open for six months or so, Apple’s App Store has already become home [...]

The health of Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been a concern since he battled cancer in 2004, and his recent weight loss and giving up his MacWorld keynote address caused lots of speculation about his health and lots of worry about his company’s viability. Turns out he has a treatable hormone imbalance and should be [...]

This holiday-shortened trading week, fixed and ARM rates are up slightly over last week after better than expected December retail sales. The strong retail report plus a surge in gift card sales during the holidays caused a bond sell off (which causes rates to rise). Bond traders were also betting January will be another strong [...]