a few linkies

I rarely sit through 1hr 20m technology demonstration videos, but in this case, I made an exception for GoogleWave. (Link courtesy honormac. I'm not as blown away as she was - a lot of these individual components are all very familiar, starting back with ye olde Unix "talk" and Lotus Notes and Microsoft Mail eForms through mail and IM and a gazillion other things - but none of those individually are really the point. The point is a unification of concepts that at least in demo actually seems kinda coherent. That's a neat trick.

I don't know whether Microsoft's 3D video body-sensing technology is hugely awesome for gaming or not, but it is awfully cool technology. Ignore the painting part of the paint programme - what they're doing there doesn't impress me so much. What impresses me is the avatar. Watch the presenters incidental movements and those of the avatar outline. It doesn't look like they're scanning down to the resolution of individual fingers, just hand shape, but still - that's pretty neat.

Also, from zarq, this blog post by the executive producer of The Sarah Connor Chronicles on the cancellation and last days of the show is pretty awesome.

Finally, spazzkat totally lied about the hiatus; he already has a new comic up at Bacon for Birds. ^_^

"utter chaos"

I don't have time for much, I'm too busy getting ready for Boston. But the MBS (mortgage backed securities) market imploded again today, with the 30-year FNME benchmark price falling 32/32nds, or an entire point:

Across the Curve reports traders calling it "utter chaos" and adding:

As the spread has moved outside of some historic parameters dealers and others would bet on the move ending and to the extent that they guessed wrong they might be looking at a career changing event. Anyway the point is that there is blood in the streets somewhere.

Thanks again to tf:Zarathustra for the chart.

Mortgage filings are already dropping off sharply in response to last week's "Black Wednesday" event. This is a strongly negative indicator for anyone hoping that housing's current wave of foreclosure purchases indicated a bottom.