Opinions/Commentary

Google recently announced to developers the source code is now available for its Wave project/platform. The Wave is essentially a web-based platform which will allow developers to create applications incorporating email, maps, blogs, documents, photographs and project management functions. Users are able to share with anyone else using a Wave browser platform. It also can be embedded in any web page for sharing information.

The Wave could enable Google to gain more corporate users who currently rely on Microsoft applications, and it could have a significant impact on Adobe sharing software such as Acrobat.

One feature of Wave is the "email" application with a playback loop that allows a replay of any "conversation" so a third party doesn't have to read through a long list of copied email replies.

Bettendorf City Council members should end the practice of meeting secretly in small groups to discuss controversial issues.

According to the city's administrator, the practice has been ongoing for more than a decade and grew out of concern by alderman they didn't wish to be "surprised" by issues/topics which came up at council meetings. (See article below)

The secret meetings certainly eliminate any "surprises" to aldermen, but they leave the public in the dark when important decisions are being formulated by city staff and the council.

By the time the issue arrives for a "public" discussion, aldermen have often, if not always, reached a consensus on the matter. The public hearings where citizens can comment on these issues are mere formalities to be held before the council holds an "official" vote.

I read your "letter to readers" in this morning's (2/20) Quad City Times and was surprised at how your newspaper management views its own economic situation.

Your "update on the financial health of our parent company (Lee Enterprises)" comes at least a year too late for most investors and readers. The lack of any substantive coverage of the newspaper chain's stock decline and economic peril over the past year has not been lost on us Quad City Times readers. We've had to rely on annual report, SEC filings and online articles by the Associated Press, Forbes and other business publications rather than any coverage of Lee in the Times.

It’s been nearly two years since my father passed away, but his office (adjacent to mine) has remained more or less the way he left it. Only real work undertaken in there over the last 20 months has been the administration of his estate. I used his desk for that effort and all sorts of statements, letters, appraisals, and other assorted documents have lain strewn atop it.

Several weeks ago the notice came from Uncle Sam that everything seemed to be in order and I decided it was time to straighten things up. I first looked through the old roll top desk (that was first my grandfather’s) behind his main work space. Found two bank books from erstwhile institutions that didn’t make it through the thirties. The last entry in the American Commercial and Savings Bank book was for a deposit of $883.36 on September 22, 1931. I checked and that bank failed before the end of that year. Hope Grandpa got his money out.

By bgierke
December 29, 2008

Balzac wrote: “Behind every great fortune lies a forgotten crime.” Combine that thought with Buffet’s" only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked” and you a great take of the current financial landscape.

And while not quite completely systemic (thanks Mr. Buffet!) corruption and bad practice are, of course, rife. The headlines have never before been filled with such a torrent of tales of Ponzi schemes, corruption, bribery, self delusion, and disingenuity. Well maybe not never. Paul Krugman and others have compared this state of affairs with the collapse of the gilded age.