Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/19/real_estate/foreclosure_by_the_state/?postversion=2007072012

Most ruthless foreclosure states Laws vary widely from state to state. Do you know what kind of mortgage you have? By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer July 23 2007: 1:58 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In Alabama, late-paying homeowners can lose their properties to foreclosure at breathtaking speed - as little as 30 days after a delinquency notice is published. In New York State, the process can drag on for well more than a year. With foreclosures spiking around the nation, homeowners should learn the foreclosure laws in their states - what you don't know can hurt you. "The foreclosure laws tend to be very parochial," said Lawrence Jacobson, a real estate attorney in Los Angeles. One major divide is whether the principal instrument securing the loan is a conventional mortgage or a "deed of trust." They are not the same even though everybody uses the term "mortgage" interchangeably. In fact, deeds of trust are the more common of the two, used in 34 states either mostly or exclusively. The difference is this: Mortgages involve two parties, borrowers and lenders, while deeds of trust have third parties, called trustees, who hold temporary title to the properties until borrowers pay off their loans. That difference can be crucial when a borrower falls behind in payments. With deeds of trust, the trustees don't have to go to court to initiate a foreclosure; with a mortgage, the lender almost always does, which slows down the process. In states where deeds of trust are an option, lenders almost always choose them over mortgages, because they are "non-judicial" - and quick. California, where foreclosure might come as soon as 120 days following the delinquency notice, is one of them. Said Jacobson: "I've been a real estate attorney nearly 40 years and I have yet to see a mortgage in California." In many states, the process can be even quicker. At 30 days, Alabama may be the speed champ but other states with deeds of trust are not far behind. In New Hampshire, Mississippi and others, it takes as little as 60 days. All these states use deeds of trust. (To see how long it generally takes in your home state, go to Foreclosures.com and click on a state.) In contrast, judicial foreclosure, which is the usual procedure when a mortgage is involved, can be slow. First a lawsuit must be filed. Then, there's a period of discovery and a court date must be set. And courts can grant delays to prepare cases. All told, it can take many months. States with long time frames include Vermont (210 days), Florida and Nebraska (180 days). New York, at 12 to 19 months, is the state with the longest typical time frame. Although home owners do lose their properties much quicker in most deed-in-trust states, they may enjoy one advantage: liberal "rights of redemption" are more common than in mortgage-only states. That means even if your home is foreclosed on and auctioned off, there is a time period when you can pay the debt and get the home back. The window is usually very brief, but can last for as long as a year after the property is sold at auction. According to Alexis McGee, author of "The Foreclosures.com Guide to Making Huge Profits Investing in Pre-Foreclosures Without Selling Your Soul," the right of redemption can be tough on foreclosure buyers. "The state gives the owner the right to buy back the property for the price [the auction bidder] paid for it," McGee said. Any additional expenses buyers paid, such as for repairs or maintenance, is lost. Foreclosures: Hardest hit zip codes. One more wrinkle for home owners to note is that simply because they've lost their properties to foreclosure, it does not always mean they're completely off the hook for their debts. If the auction sale brings less than the amount owed to the lender, it may still go after the borrower for the balance. That's called a "deficiency judgment," and it's a right that lenders do not enjoy in every state. As a practical matter, deficiency judgments rarely occur, but Jacobson knew of at least one case where it was invoked. A couple owned a home that was totally destroyed in an earthquake. Its value to the lender fell to near zero and the owners had no insurance. The lender asked for a deficiency judgment - and won.

Reuters: Young keep it simple in high-tech world: survey

Young keep it simple in high-tech world: survey

Tue Jul 24, 8:22 AM ET

While young people embrace the Web with real or virtual friends and their cell phone is never far away, relatively few like technology and those that do tend to be in Brazil, India and China, according to a survey.

Only a handful think of technology as a concept, and just 16 percent use terms like "social networking," said two combined surveys covering 8- to 24-year-olds published on Tuesday by Microsoft and Viacom units MTV Networks and Nickelodeon.

"Young people don't see "tech" as a separate entity - it's an organic part of their lives," said Andrew Davidson, vice president of MTV's VBS International Insight unit.

"Talking to them about the role of technology in their lifestyle would be like talking to kids in the 1980s about the role the park swing or the telephone played in their social lives -- it's invisible."

The surveys involved 18,000 young people in 16 countries including the UK, U.S., China, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

Terms most frequently used by the young when talking about technology related to accessing content for free, notably "download and "burn."

The surveyors found the average Chinese computer user has 37 online friends they have never met, Indian youth are most likely to see cell phones as a status symbol, while one-in-three UK and U.S. teenagers say they cannot live without games consoles.

"The way each technology is adopted and adapted throughout the world depends as much on local cultural and social factors as on the technology itself," said Davidson.

For example, the key digital device for Japan's young is the cell phone because of the privacy and portability it offers those who live in small homes with limited privacy.

They found Japanese children aged eight to 14 have only one online friend they have not met, compared to a global average of five. Some 93 percent of Chinese computer users aged 8-14 have more than one friend online they have never met.

Davidson said this was encouraging those aged 8-14 in China to select online over television -- a trend not seen in any other market in that age group.

The changes in how the youth market engages with technology is keenly followed by advertisers and content firms.

"Traditional youth marketing considered opinion formers and influencers to be a small elite, but these days the elite has become much larger," said Davidson.

For parents worried about what their children are getting up to amid the wave of gadgets, little has changed in a generation.

The surveyors found the most popular activities the under-14s enjoy were watching TV, listening to music and being with friends. The rankings for those older was similar although listening to music was top.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/tc_nm/technology_teens_dc_4&printer=1;_ylt=AtQw80yN0mEq_v.lJTqYfRlU.3QA

Reuters: "Casual" the new video game buzzword

"Casual" the new video game buzzword

By Scott Hillis Fri Jul 13, 5:28 PM ET

Video game companies are hungrily eyeing the millions of people for whom mowing down alien invaders or battling ninjas holds limited appeal.

The video game industry's annual expo is always a showcase for testosterone-filled fighting and driving titles, but this year the word on the lips of many executives is 'casual.'

Driven by the runaway success of Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s (7974.OS) motion-controlled Wii console, makers are pumping out games to play for a few minutes or on the run, such as puzzles and virtual card games -- to the extent that some analysts worry the industry may be spreading itself too thinly.

"There may be a 'casual' glut by 2008," UBS analyst Ben Schachter wrote in a note to clients.

Kathy Vrabeck, head of the newly formed casual games unit at top publisher Electronic Arts Inc. (Nasdaq:ERTS - news), said in an interview that "it's a very difficult business model," given a variety of platforms, from cell phones to consoles, for instance.

But EA devoted almost its entire media briefing at the E3 expo in Santa Monica, California this week to showing off new casual games such as Wii rhythm title "Boogie."

"We believe it's going to be the fastest-growing area within all of gaming," Vrabeck said.

UbiSoft, Europe's biggest publisher known for its slate of realistic military games, also lingered on the casual theme, showing off titles meant to appeal to women, such as "My Life Coach" for Nintendo's DS handheld.

The company expects casual games to account for 20 percent of its revenue this year, double last year's figure.

"It's not the better graphics, it's not the fancy controllers. What we're talking about is widening the nets, bringing more people into our industry," said Tony Key, UbiSoft's vice president of U.S. marketing.

The industry, whose global revenue topped $30 billion last year, has tried for years to shake the stereotype that its consumers consist chiefly of teen-age boys with too few social skills and too much leisure time.

Yet the Entertainment Software Association puts the age of the average game player at 33 years, and says 24 percent of players are over the age of 50. That's almost as much as the portion under the age of 18 -- 28 percent.

The surge of interest in casual games is partly the result of shifting economics that have pressured the bottom lines of many firms.

An A-list title for new gaming consoles from Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and Sony Corp. (6758.T) can now take four years to make and cost $30 million, two to three times the cost of games for the previous generation of machines.

Yet retail prices have only risen 20 percent, to $60 for a newly released top title.

Moreover, publishers' hopes that gamers would rush to adopt new hardware were dashed by the high cost of the consoles. Fewer consoles in homes meant a smaller base of potential game buyers, and thus weaker sales of those costly new games.

By contrast, casual games, with their simpler graphics and controls, can cost well under $1 million and take just a few months to make. Although they might sell for as little as $5 to $30, they appeal to a broader audience.

Casual games also have their own set of challenges. While much of the focus has been on the Wii and DS due to their popularity, mobile phone and online games strongly appeal to women and older players.

A single mobile phone game may need to be tweaked to run on up to 300 different handset models, and unlike hard-core gamers who don't blink at spending hundreds of dollars a year on the newest games, the casual audience may not become repeat customers.

"Nintendo seems to be the one company that's expanding the gaming market, but there's some cause for concern there because who they're attracting is the casual gamer," said Van Baker, an analyst with research firm Gartner.

"That's something that someone picks up and does for 15 to 20 minutes and then they put it aside. The question is, in three months or six months, is the Wii going to be sitting in the corner forgotten?"

The Good and Bad of Tagalong Technology

I thought this was topical given our last discussion about IT. -Jerry

BusinessWeek Online
The Good and Bad of Tagalong Technology
Monday July 16, 8:08 am ET
By Rachael King

American Airlines employees sporting iPhones may be disappointed when they bring the slick new gadgets to work. The airline recently updated its list of mobile devices allowed to synch with the company's IT systems, and the Apple (NasdaqGS:AAPL - News) device didn't make the cut. "We'll only let certain things connect to our network," says American Airlines (NYSE:AMR - News) Chief Information Officer Monte Ford. His main concern is ensuring outside electronics don't undermine the company's data security.

That preoccupation is widespread among Ford's peers. IT departments at companies as varied as Qwest Communications International (NYSE:Q - News), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC - News), and BusinessWeek parent The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE:MHP - News) aren't supporting the iPhone. And worries over consumer tech span a raft of technology -- from iPods to USB drives, to Google (NasdaqGS:GOOG - News) Gmail, even to gaming consoles such as Nintendo's Wii -- wending their way into the workplace.

While many consumer gadgets and software applications can benefit a company -- for instance, by helping employees get their jobs done more efficiently -- the security implications are legion, says Ken Silva, chief security officer at VeriSign (NasdaqGS:VRSN - News), which specializes in network security software. "When we bolt those things onto corporate networks, we open up holes in the environment."

Ban the Interlopers?

Drugmaker Pfizer (NYSE:PFE - News) found this out the hard way. An employee's spouse loaded file-sharing software onto her Pfizer laptop at home, creating a security hole that appears to have compromised the names and Social Security numbers of 17,000 current and former Pfizer employees, according to a letter Pfizer sent to state attorneys general on May 30. Pfizer's investigation showed that 15,700 of those employees actually had their data accessed and copied.

So why not curb the encroachment by banning outside software and hardware altogether? The fact is, much technology aimed at consumers is more innovative and cheaper than products made for companies and just makes good business sense, says Douglas Neal, a research fellow at Computer Sciences' (NYSE:CSC - News) Leading Edge Forum Executive Program. Some workers have a difficult time understanding why they've got a 100-megabyte limit on their corporate e-mail account when they can get 2.5 gigabytes with Gmail, says Steve Prentice, chief of research at Gartner (NYSE:IT - News).

"With few exceptions, people don't do it because they want to be awkward or break security or be a pain in the backside," he says of the tendency to use consumer tech at work. "They do it because of frustration, or a problem or limitation with the IT services provided by the organization."

Airline Goes with Google

In a recent study conducted by the Financial Times newspaper and researchers at the Leading Edge Forum, which brings together researchers and executives to explore IT-related subjects, two-thirds of surveyed U.S. and British FT subscribers said they had equipment at home that was as good as or better than the equipment they had at work.

KLM (NYSE:AKH - News) knows those shortcomings all too well. When the airline wanted to put a search function on its corporate intranet, it spent much time and money testing a costly conventional corporate tool that simply didn't work well. The answer finally came in the form of the Google Mini search appliance that cost all of 2,995 ($4,128).

KLM is one of several companies that have formed the Consumerization Working Group to find ways to use consumer technologies more securely in the workplace. Other participants include DuPont (NYSE:DD - News), Dow (NYSE:DOW - News), Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY - News), and BP (NYSE:BP - News). "There is a huge set of opportunities here," says Neal, who also heads the Consumerization Working Group.

Much More Comfortable

Those opportunities are created by an increasingly tech-savvy workforce whose personal and professional lives are more intertwined than ever. "Sunday morning and Tuesday afternoon are becoming completely the same," says KLM Chief Information Officer Boet Kreiken. At the same time, employees throughout organizations are becoming much more comfortable with a range of technologies.

In years past, employees might have had only a PC at home, notes Prentice at Gartner. Today they may juggle a network linking several PCs, printers, and backup devices connected to a high-speed Internet connection -- in addition to a set-top box, gaming console, high-definition TV, and all manner of other Web-based services such as YouTube and News Corp.'s (NYSE:NWS - News) MySpace.

Research by Gartner shows that employees' personal devices have already made inroads into corporate networks. The trend shows no sign of abating. As of September, 2005, 29% of employees and 24% of contractors were using noncompany-owned equipment on company networks, according to a Gartner survey of 404 IT managers in the U.S. and four European countries. Those managers expected use of noncompany-owned hardware to grow to 42% of employees and 32% of contractors by 2008.

Creative Risk Avoidance

Rather than fight the trend, some companies are experimenting with giving employees more choice regarding the technology they use -- so long as they accept more responsibility for it. In 2005, BP began a pilot project that gives employees about $1,000 to spend on productivity-enhancing tools in addition to standard-issue equipment, according to an April report by the Leading Edge Forum's Neal. But before they can participate, employees need to pass the International Computer Driver License test, designed to test a person's computer literacy skills. BP declined to comment on the program.

The company takes other steps to give employees free rein while mitigating risk. BP cordons off its network by letting employees link to the Internet via consumer connections, from outside the firewall, in the case of its 18,000 laptops. At the same time it beefs up security on those machines. This lets employees safely experiment with software such as Amazon's on-demand computing and storage services.

Moving employees outside the firewall is an example of de-perimeterization, a growing movement to change the way corporations address technology security. In a business world where many employees are off-site, or on the road, or where businesses increasingly must collaborate with partners and customers, some say it's not practical to rely on a hardened perimeter of firewalls. Instead, proponents of de-perimeterization say companies should focus on beefing up security in end-user devices and an organization's critical information assets.

Freedom Breeds Inspiration

So a group of companies got together to figure out how to redesign corporate security to accommodate more fluid boundaries and officially formed the Jericho Forum in 2004. Members include Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG - News), Boeing (NYSE:BA - News), and Dresdner Kleinwort.

The hope among many companies is that a little bit of technological freedom will inspire employees to innovate and find new ways of becoming more productive. Already, employees are experimenting with new Web technologies such as wikis, without the explicit permission of the IT department. In 2005, for instance, Intel engineer Josh Bancroft started a wiki because he thought it would be a good idea to have a central place to share information. That wiki, called Intelpedia, has caught on throughout the company and now has more than 5,000 pages of content (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/12/07, "No Rest for the Wiki").

Bottom Up

And even though Monte Ford at American Airlines isn't letting the iPhone into his network, he still wants to foster an environment where innovation can occur without compromising security. His employees came up with the idea of putting the company's instant-messaging system on customized laptops for employees who have to complete a checklist at each plane before each takeoff.

Previously, the mechanics had to go back and forth between the plane and a computer room to look up information about systems and parts or to communicate with pilots. Now all that can be done at the plane. "You have to be willing to reward those things that bubble up from the bottom and expect people to come up with ideas," Ford says. "We're much better off as a company if very few things come from the top, other than direction."