Lots of reporting on Microsoft's new dividend announcement, but today's WSJ.com - Ahead of the Tape: points to a paper last year from AQR Capital Management managing principal Cliff Asness and First Quadrant Chairman Robert Arnott who claim that that "earnings are stronger following periods when dividend yields for U.S. stocks are high than when the yields are low. "

Proof that economists will study just about anything that has numbers attached: The Independent Institute | A Brief Report on Economic Research on Obesity, by Alexander Tabarrok

This report summarizes economic literature on the causes of obesity, trying to show how it might related to income or food prices.

Hey check this out! The New York Times Link Generator lets you get around the NYTimes expiring archive problem. Normally if you link to the normal NY Times reference, a few weeks later that reference will expire and direct you instead to the paid archive, where the full text will cost you $3. This site creates a new link for you, one that won't expire.

Check out Oddpost , a fancy email site that was recently acquired by Yahoo!

The late Phil Goldman would have been all over this new interest in email sites spurred by Gmail and now the new plans for larger storage spaces at Yahoo and MSN.

I've known about HomePlug for a while, but an article by James Fallows in The New York Times (Your Money > Techno Files: Is Broadband Out of a Wall Socket the Next Big Thing?) reminds me that this might be the perfect way to pump video and sound into my home theatre. I was worrying that WiFi-G might have too much interference, but if HomePlug works well at high speeds, that would be the way to go...

MoneyChimp: learn Stock Investing, Index Funds, Valuation Models, and more. is an interesting site that teaches about investments.

VOIP changes everything in some non-obvious ways, and one of them reported in today's WSJ [subscription required] is the new ability to pick your own area code--regardless of location. Wouldn't it be nice to have a company located in the middle of nowhere, but with a Manhattan-sounding 212 area code? You can do that with Vonage's new VOIP service.

Apple Computer is running a contest where they give away an iPod to a certain number of people on the way to the 100 millionth song download on their iTunes service. My favorite Gadget site, Engadget.com, has a cheat sheet for how to enter the iTunes contest for free.

Instead of actually buying a song, you click on the "tell a friend" button and email to itunes100@apple.com.

More on what it takes to get a Hi Def signal over the air for your TV.

Sounds like it's not as easy as it looks.

Wired has an interesting story that tracks down the originator of that hoax email promising big bucks from Bill Gates if you forward it to a friend.

Daniel VanArsdale has compiled an archive of 500 chain letters dating from the turn of the century.

The hoax was ultimately traced to Bryan Mack, who was a student at Iowa State in 1997 when he created the email as a prank to his friends.

ExtremeTech has a review of that new ATI HDTV Wonder card for $199 that lets you get HDTV on your PC. They conclude that it's pretty good, with the cons mostly centering on its limitation as an over-the-air solution only. I'm looking for a video source for my new plasma TV--maybe this is it?

Be sure to check http://www.titantv.com for listings.

Microsoft's early efforts in TV are documented here:
http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/papers/mitv/tr-97-18.html

I worked many years in the WebTV/MSTV group, so it's strange that I didn't know many of the people written up in this paper. Of course a few names are familiar, but the overall lesson is that Microsoft, as a big company, can do big things, many of which never see the light of day. There were two main streams of people working on TV at Microsoft: the Tiger people and the WebTV people. The WebTV people eventually overtook the entire effort, as the center of the project moved to Silicon Valley. All the great work done on Tiger eventually simply faded into the rest of Microsoft, in the form of people who no longer work on TV at all.

Interesting business idea:
Zevez Corp., owned by Joe Graziano, an onion distributor in Oregon, helps businesses maximize the rewards they get from credit cards. He's earned 125 first-class plane tickets in the past decade doing this.WSJ.com - How Business Owners Convert Monthly Bills Into Free Plane Tickets

Harvard University runs a web site called the Moral Sense Test, where they ask thousands of volunteers to answer questions about morality, in order to detect similarities and differences across cultures.

The study's authors believe that moral sense is wired into us, and that culture or philosophical/religious reflection does not drive the differences between people.

Look at this newsmap, a real-time graphic visualization of the news currently reported on Google. A similar one, from Stamen, graphically shows the ebb and flow of newsmakers as they get reported on more and less each day.

Um, excuse me? Exactly what's the news in this NY Times The expose on high tech outsourcing? The claim is that Microsoft, gasp, sometimes hires smart people from India instead of just dumb people.

"Offshoring" is just another word for globalization of the work force, and between this and automation, just about every job is a target. If the CEO prefers to work at his home office in Bermuda, does that mean he outsourced the top job? As long as global networks make it easy for people to commute, then the workers will do the job at the most convenient location. What's wrong with that?

Of course it's scary, but it's also an opportunity: all labor is now portable across borders, and the only real sustaining talent you have is your ability to think of new ideas that people want to buy from you.

The New York Times summarizes arguments about why as some people think.

Watch great NASA photos of the 2004 Venus Transit /a>

Wharton professors comment on the power of social networking sites like Friendster and Orkut.

One way they can be monetized is by getting some of the money people are already spending on things like recruiting. Note that 50% of LinkedIn searchers are looking to hire someone.

How to hack a digital camera: Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel Tips and Tricks