Hock gets haute








Looking for a quick $1 million?

Help is here for Big Apple high rollers: a new breed of upscale pawn shops is willing to trade cash for pricey personal items like jewelry, antique cars and fine wine.

The city’s first high-end pawnbroker, Borro.com, has loaned out millions to more than 15,000 well-heeled clients in its initial year, using their extravagant toys and valuables as collateral.

“We even have a Grammy in our vaults,” said Paul Aitken, the CEO and founder of Borro.com, who declined to identify the artist.

“A lot of our clients are young sports and entertainment people who are just starting their contracts and have some early liquidity problems until their big money comes in,” he added.




Bad economic times and skittish traditional lenders such as banks have left fertile ground for several high-end pawn brokers including iPawn.com. It typically hands out loans of around $100,000 to cash-crunched businesses or professionals.

Both pawn shops say they’ve won followings in their first year in New York because of the city’s abundance of luxury items, coupled with the Big Apple’s appetite for risk and sophistication about leverage.

The outfits — which operate in the privacy of referrals from financial planners and others — offer securitized loans at about half the cost of roadside hock shops where goods wind up on display and the loans are hardly enough to fund a Caribbean weekend.

“We can keep our interest [rates] incredibly low because we lend out more cash we’d otherwise pay in overhead,” said Ben De-Kall, the founder of iPawn.com and a former Lehman Bros. investment banker .

De-Kall, a Columbia MBA, said he knows the humiliation of having few places to turn after his lifestyle letdown following Lehman’s collapse.

“We’re working largely with business people who can’t get the financing they need,” said De-Kall.

He said one client, a doctor, got turned down by his banker for a quick loan to expand his practice. Within hours, iPawn.com wired $40,000 for his deal, backed by the doctor’s briefcase full of family heirlooms, diamonds and luxury timepieces.

Expanding across the US from its headquarters in Texas, iPawn holds banking licenses.

Appraisal of collateral — such as gems, precious metals and artworks — starts online through photos and videos. If a client is interested, he ships the valuables to Texas for a final valuation before cash worth up to 70 percent of the item’s value is wired to the borrower.

About 85 percent of the clients accept the appraisals. Cars and houses are too big to pledge, De-Kall noted.

Borrowers seeking bigger bucks — loans up to $1 million — can turn to Borro.com, which in turn requires substantial collateral such as antique cars, beach homes, a corporate helicopter and even a Babe Ruth baseball bat, said Borro.com founder Aitkin.

“We take on a lot of Warhols valued in the $300,000 to $500,000 range,” said Aitken, a former technology entrepreneur who sold his phone app company to help bankroll the UK-based Borro.com.

A typical recent loan for $24,000 was backed by a case of 1989 Chateau Petrus valued at about $38,000. It’s safe in climate-controlled vaults, where unclaimed treasures are rare, Aitken said.

tharp@nypost.com










Read More..

Miami: We’re still busiest cruise port




















Florida’s ports are steaming bow-to-bow in the race to be the world’s businest cruise ship port.

Though some publications have reported Port Canaveral in the lead with 3,761,056 million for its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, PortMiami officials Monday said they had hosted 3,774,452 passengers during the same period, putting it slightly ahead. Fort Lauderdale’s PortEverglades reported 3,689,000 passengers for the period, putting it slightly behind the others in third place.

“We’re all very close,’’ said Paula Musto, PortMiami spokeswoman.





PortMiami has slipped below its previous high of 4 million plus passengers because of changing ship deployments, she said. That number is expected to again cruise past 4 million in 2013 as several new ships homeport in Miami.

Jane Wooldridge





Read More..

New generation of judges serving on federal bench in South Florida




















For a fleeting moment this fall, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. declared in jest that he wished he were “king of the world.”

If he had such power, Scola said from the bench, he would deny a defense lawyer’s request to travel to Pakistan to question a group of defendants charged in a Miami terrorism case along with two Muslim clerics. Since the missing defendants weren’t present, the judge considered them “fugitives.’’

But the judge let the defense team make the upcoming trip against fierce opposition from prosecutors, because case law allows such extraordinary depositions, he found.





Scola, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor and state circuit court judge, relishes his role as one of three new members on South Florida’s federal bench, which is experiencing a generational sea change as the result of several retirements and presidential appointments.

“I knew I wanted to be a judge when I was 10 years old; my father was a judge in Massachusetts,” Scola said, during a brief December interview wedged between verdicts in the South Beach “bar-girls” trial and the sentencing of a mental-health clinic director convicted of Medicare fraud.

Over the past few years, the federal court in the Southern District of Florida has seen the departure of four judges — Daniel T.K. Hurley, Paul C. Huck, Alan S. Gold and Patricia A. Seitz — who have gone on “senior” status, meaning they handle lighter caseloads. Another federal judge, Adalberto Jordan, was confirmed this year as a member of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Those five vacancies, in one of the busiest federal districts for criminal and civil cases in the country, accounted for about one-third of all the positions on the federal bench in South Florida.

The retirements have generated coveted openings that have been filled by Scola, 57; Kathleen M. Williams, 56, a former Miami federal public defender; and Robin S. Rosenbaum, 46, a former Fort Lauderdale federal magistrate judge. Rosenbaum, also a one-time federal prosecutor, was sworn in as a new U.S. district judge Dec. 13.

“It’s pretty obvious that Robin is never going to make a decent living,” 11th Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus, for whom Rosenbaum once clerked, quipped about her public-service career during her investiture in Fort Lauderdale federal court.

But then Marcus struck a more serious note, describing federal district judges as the “crucible of justice” in the U.S. court system. “I have to say, Robin, this is work you were born to do,” he said.

Another recent nominee: Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William L. Thomas, a former assistant public defender in both the state and federal system. Thomas is scheduled for confirmation as a federal judge in 2013. If confirmed, he would become the first openly gay black man appointed to a federal judgeship in the nation.

Michael Caruso, the Miami federal public defender who replaced Williams in August, said the appointment of federal judges is in many ways a “president’s most enduring legacy.”

“All presidents strive to appoint smart, fair and hardworking lawyers,” Caruso said, commenting on the four nominated by President Barack Obama in South Florida. “President Obama, in addition to choosing women and men who share these traits, has chosen those who’ve been trial lawyers in the criminal justice system and who have devoted a significant portion of their career to public service.”





Read More..

Instagram furor triggers first class action lawsuit






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook‘s Instagram photo sharing service has been hit with what appears to be the first civil lawsuit to result from changed service terms that prompted howls of protest last week.


In a proposed class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday, a California Instagram user leveled breach of contract and other claims against the company.






“We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail.


Instagram, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet, was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $ 715 million.


In announcing revised terms of service last week, Instagram spurred suspicions that it would sell user photos without compensation. It also announced a mandatory arbitration clause, forcing users to waive their rights to participate in a class action lawsuit except under very limited circumstances.


The current terms of service, in effect through mid-January, contain no such liability shield.


The backlash prompted Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to retreat partially a few days later, deleting language about displaying photos without compensation.


However, Instagram kept language that gave it the ability to place ads in conjunction with user content, and saying “that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.” It also kept the mandatory arbitration clause.


The lawsuit, filed by San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, says customers who do not agree with Instagram’s terms can cancel their profile but then forfeit rights to photos they had previously shared on the service.


“In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us,’” the lawsuit says.


Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who had criticized Instagram, said he was pleased that the company rolled back some of the advertising terms and agreed to better explain their plans in the future.


However, he said the new terms no longer contain language which had explicitly promised that private photos would remain private. Facebook had engendered criticism in the past, Opsahl said, for changing settings so that the ability to keep some information private was no longer available.


“Hopefully, Instagram will learn from that experience and refrain from removing privacy settings,” Opsahl said.


The civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Lucy Funes, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated vs. Instagram Inc., 12-cv-6482.


(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Dan Grebler)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Instagram furor triggers first class action lawsuit
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

ET Exclusive: Jamie Foxx Opens His Home & Heart

Jamie Foxx may be the most eligible bachelor in Hollywood, and our own Nancy O'Dell is exclusively with the Oscar winner at his Santa Monica, CA home to talk about his career, his family and how he handles the media when there's a woman in his life.

The star of the upcoming Django Unchained says the worst thing that can happen in a relationship is to go public with it: "I like to stay quiet with anyone that dating; that I'm really, really dating, "he says. "If there's somebody that you're dating, the worst thing that you can do is let that [camera] touch you. Because once the camera touches you, [it's out]."

Video: Jamie & Kerry Party 'Django' Style

Watch the video to get a tour of Jamie's amazing home that he shares with his whole family, set on 40 acres with a stunning pool, a recording studio and an avocado grove!

One thing you won't find at Jamie's home, however, is his Best Actor Oscar statuette that he won for his performance in Ray.

Pics: Jamie & Leo Smolder in 'Django'

"I never wanted to keep it at the house -- I never wanted to get stuck," says Jamie, whose pal and former manager Jamie King holds onto the statuette for him. "It changes you. … I just wanted to go back to being funny."

Watch the video for more of Jamie's interview, including his reaction to the current Oscar buzz for Django Unchained!

Read More..

Merry movieland








For Hollywood, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

The major movie studios are counting on a blockbuster Christmas Day — which traditionally kicks off one of their most lucrative weeks at the box office — to propel them to a record year.

An unusually high number of Christmas openings this week — eight versus five on the last year that Christmas Day fell on a Tuesday — along with enough variety to appeal to just about any moviegoer, is expected to pack theaters.

In particular, today’s two big movie openings for “Les Misérables” and “Django Unchained” have people eager to trade their turkey for buttered popcorn.




“I don’t think we’ve had a Christmas like this one with so many movies coming out on Christmas Day,” said Fandango spokesman Harry Medved.

Some New Yorkers had a tough time yesterday getting tickets for Universal’s “Les Misérables,” a musical starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway.

It was the No. 1 advance ticket-seller among all Christmas Day releases and could surpass the previous record-holder, 2009’s “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” according to Fandango.

“This film has fired up a lot of people,” Medved said. “The play is several decades old, but it’s going really well around the country.”

Added Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com’s Box Office division: “This thing is tracking like it will blow the doors off and could wind up with the second-biggest Christmas Day debut, with a gross in the high teens.”

Warner Bros.’ “Sherlock Holmes,” which took in $24.6 million in 2009, and Fox’s “Marley and Me,” with $14.4 million in 2008, are the previous record-holders for biggest Christmas Day openings. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” took in $11.9 million, also in 2008.

Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino is penciling in “Les Misérables” with a four-day, post-Christmas weekend of $26 million, while Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” from the Weinstein Co., could bag a similar amount.

Dergarabedian added that Twentieth Century Fox’s “Parental Guidance “should do well with its PG rating and its appeal to the family crowd after opening the gifts on Christmas morning.” (Fox, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.)

December got off to a roaring start with “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which took in $84.5 million during its opening weekend, making it the biggest December opening on record.

Box office trackers are saving their year-end predictions until they see how the coming weekend plays out, but it looks like this year will outpace the record set in 2009, when Hollywood took in $10.6 billion.

Boxofficemojo.com has Tinseltown taking in $10.4 billion year-to-date, up 6 percent over last year. This year’s crop of films, topped by “The Avengers,” has already beat last year’s $10.1 billion, when “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was the top flick.

“It’s certainly going to be a strong weekend and will put a cap on a phenomenal year,” said Boxoffice.com’s Contrino. “The high note is, 2012 will be up over 2011 and will top 2009, which is the highest to this point in terms of pure dollars.”

catkinson@nypost.com










Read More..

Miami: We’re still busiest cruise port




















Florida’s ports are steaming bow-to-bow in the race to be the world’s businest cruise ship port.

Though some publications have reported Port Canaveral in the lead with 3,761,056 million for its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, PortMiami officials Monday said they had hosted 3,774,452 passengers during the same period, putting it slightly ahead. Fort Lauderdale’s PortEverglades reported 3,689,000 passengers for the period, putting it slightly behind the others in third place.

“We’re all very close,’’ said Paula Musto, PortMiami spokeswoman.





PortMiami has slipped below its previous high of 4 million plus passengers because of changing ship deployments, she said. That number is expected to again cruise past 4 million in 2013 as several new ships homeport in Miami.

Jane Wooldridge





Read More..

Police: 16-year-old shot and killed while riding bicycle in Miami




















A 16-year-old boy was shot and killed while riding his bicycle in Miami over the weekend, and on Monday his family will ask for help finding the killer.

Bryan Herrera was riding his bike Saturday afternoon, going to a friend’s house, when he was shot, according to Miami police. He was struck once, near Northwest 11th Avenue and 39th Street in Allapattah, police said.

Officers found him a few minutes after 11 a.m., after receiving a call to 911 saying a person had been shot and appeared to be lifeless on the ground.





Bryan was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center, police said, where he died. Sunday night, police said they had very little information describing the shooter.

Bryan’s family is scheduled to speak to reporters Monday at Miami police headquarters.

Investigators asked anyone with information to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers, anonymously, at 305-471-8477.





Read More..

How to Get Free Last-Minute Shipping






First, the bad news: the cut off for free shipping on most online sites was Tuesday, Dec 18th. But the good news – we’ve got some sneaky ways to finagle free rush shipping and a list of sites still offering free shipping guaranteed to arrive before December 25th.


Free Rush Shipping
Some of the biggest online retailers are still offering free last minute shipping:






  • Barnes & Noble – free shipping on Nook HD through Dec. 22

  • MacMall – free 2-day shipping on orders over $ 299 and under 25lbs – through 6 p.m. PST Dec. 22.

  • Macy’s – free shipping on orders over $ 99. Place order 11:59 p.m. EST Dec. 20.

  • The Northface – free 2-day shipping on everything through 11:59 p.m. Dec. 19.

  • Walmart.com has extended free shipping through December 19th on some items (check product page for eligibility)

  • Overstock.com – free shipping on select gifts. Place order by Dec. 22 to receive by Christmas.

  • Newegg   Free 2-Day shipping on over 200 items

  • Target – free shipping on Daily Deals

  • Victoria’s Secret – free shipping on orders over $ 100 using code “SHIP12.” Order by 5 p.m. EST on Dec. 20.

  • Zappos – free shipping for all items with guaranteed Christmas delivery if ordered by 11:59 p.m. PST Dec. 22.

And the biggest of the big online retailers, Amazon, has a limited set of items available for free expedited shipping. These include jewelry, watches, clothing, video games, laptops, headphones, and kitchen items.


[Related: Great Gifts for Under $ 25]


But since many of the above deals are limited to select items, take a look at…


How to Get Free 2-Day Shipping on Just About Everything
Amazon Prime is a yearly subscription service. In exchange for a $ 79 fee, you get free 2 day shipping all year long. And yes, that also applies at Christmas (must order by 3 p.m. EST Dec. 22 to receive on time). Best deal is that you can get a free 6-month trial.a1b8f  free shipping fp How to Get Free Last Minute Shipping


And here’s the real sneaky surprise: Do you have a family member who already belongs to Prime? They can nominate up to four people for the same free shipping benefits. Prime members nominate someone by going to their account, clicking “Settings” and “Manage Prime Membership.”


Also, Amazon Student is a free 6-month membership to Prime with all the benefits, providing you have an email address that ends in .edu.


But you don’t have to limit yourself to Amazon. Shoprunner.com also offers free 2-day shipping, though the membership service costs $ 8.95 a month – so not entirely free, but if you have numerous items still to buy, you could save a bundle.  And Shoprunner has tons of participating online retailers like Toys R Us, Sports Authority, Claire’s, PetSmart and EMS. Say you want to buy something from PetSmart.com, if you sign in with Shoprunner, many of the items on the site will be eligible for free 2-day shipping. One more thing to try: I was able to sign up for a free 1-year membership to Shoprunner using the promo code RUNNER. The site implied I had to be an American Express member, but it never asked for my details about the credit card, and now I have a membership. Good luck.


Ship to Store
Finally, the best last-minute option for many is to ship to store. You peruse all the options from home, pay online, and then pick up your selection at your local store. Tons of big retailers offer this service, and it guarantees your item will be in stock and waiting for you at customer service. Major retailers offering free Ship to Store include:


  • Best Buy

  • Target

  • Toys R Us

  • Walmart

  • Sears

[Related: Best E-Reader for Under $ 100]


Brad Marshland contributed to this story.


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: How to Get Free Last-Minute Shipping
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Bethenny Frankel Separates From Husband of 2 Years

After two years of marriage, TV personality Bethenny Frankel and husband Jason Hoppy are separating.

"'It brings me great sadness to say that Jason and I are separating. This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family. We have love and respect for one another and will continue to amicably co-parent our daughter who is and will always remain our first priority. This is an immensely painful and heartbreaking time for us," the former Real Housewives of New York City star's rep said in a statement.

Frankel, 42, also tweeted: "I am heartbroken. I am sad. We will work through this as a family."

In 2010, the couple were married and had their daughter, Bryn. Frankel and Hoppy's relationship was then documented in two reality TV shows, Bethenny Getting Married? and Bethenny Ever After...

Read More..