Where is my killer Rhapsody Widget?

I use Rhapsody all day at work, and I am constantly jumping between applications to manage my music experience. What I need is a killer Rhapsody widget (built on Yahoo's or Google's engine) that will sit on top of other applications and make it simple for me to manage my music experience. Here is a simple set of features I would need:

- Skip a song
- Add a song to my library
- Switch channels or playlists
- Jump into my library to switch albums

So... come on Rhapsody, where are we at here. There was a widget created a long time ago for Yahoo! but it hasn't been updated in years... hook me up!

Gov't Bail Outs in Housing?

I am trying not to turn this into a "housing market blog", since my intent is to focus on technology, having said that, there is just too much here to keep my mouth shut. The State of California is considering getting involved an bailing out consumers who are in danger of entering foreclosure. The government should step aside and let the market deal with this issue.

Foreclosure data

This is the outcome of the dynamic I just posted about:

Housing Data

So I have long held the belief that the housing market is way over priced. My thinking is shaped by the rate at which home buyers were using "exotic" mortgages (read interest only / negative amortization, etc.) to buy the homes they wanted. I also believed that most people didn't fully understand what they were doing when they entered into these mortgages, which is why I think there will be a rash of foreclosures at all price points in the housing market.

Having said all that... why is that the data the press and government talks about is around median home prices and volume of houses sold? This is really meaningless data. What really matters, in my opinion, is the "income" (I am using income here as an approximation of the buyers ability to pay their monthly mortgage) of the buyer compared to the size of the mortgage taken. The housing bubble was fueled by "volume" and "median price" watchers, but if anyone analyzed the "income" of buyers compared to the mortgages they took out, it would have been CRYSTAL clear early on that is was a giant house of cards, the same way the stock market was a house of cards in the late 90's.

If anyone knows of a firm that analyzes data around buyer "income" and mortgage amount and structure, please let me know.

Microsoft

Paul Graham wrote a post called "Microsoft is Dead"... I was midway through reading the post when I had to go help my daughter with something, and I was thinking as I walked back to my computer... "This is *really* old news"... funny enough he ends the post saying that there will be two reactions... one where people say "don't underestimate Microsoft", and the other "this is old news"... great anticipation!

Housing again...

Silicon Valley seems to be in a housing bubble that just won't pop easily... but for all of you who think that SV housing is immune, please check out the following graph:


The above chart is for housing across the country, but I would love to see the same data for housing in Silicon Valley. I bet the index would be off the charts... literally.