Late Thursday, Hurricane Earl will be within striking distance of North Carolina.  Earl is expected to turn northwards right before the coast and not make landfall, but that remains to be seen.   When predicted to make the turn, any delays in as little as a six hour time window will determine if the Hurricane will cross onto land or not, and at what force.

Earl had been classified as a Category 4 hurricane, but is now Category 3.  However, despite being downgraded, it is still a major storm.  Hurricane warnings are in effect in North Carolina, with tropical storm warnings up the coast.

Airlines have made announcements preparing travelers to expect delays or cancellations.  Continental Airlines in particular is offering penalty-free changes to itineraries affected up to and through September 5th.

Evacuation orders have been issued for islands along the eastern seaboard.  Coastal residents in general need to prepare for Earl, as even without landfall the hurricane’s effects will reach the mainland.

A fully charged cell phone is a necessity, and a smartphone can have multiple emergency uses.  It can be used to stay informed of Earl’s progress through weather websites with up-to-the-minute tracking.  Two-way, push-to-talk radios and cell phones are good to have as communications alternatives.  And some smartphone models even have a flashlight app.

Have an evacuation plan ready for the family, including rally points, and communication contingencies.  A Google Groups or similar collaboration site is perfect for emergency family planning and communication, and in case of separation can be used anywhere with internet access.

Loopt Star is an iPhone app that gives you local and immediate rewards when you “check in” at certain locations.  For example, if you were to check in at a Starbucks, you might have a 10% discount waiting at the counter.  For today, if you check in at select locations in San Francisco or Los Angeles, you will receive a two-for-one plane ticket deal from Virgin America Airlines to Mexico.  Not only that, but you can get two tacos for $1 as well!

Checkins and check in rewards are fast becoming available in many places.  It was only recently that checking in at a location would simply get you in-game points or rewards.  But now businesses are realizing the potential of people with smartphones in their shops.  Using actual real-world rewards to encourage people to stay and buy, or return again is the natural and powerful next step.

Loopt Star is the real-world rewards version of Loopt, a previous iPhone app that used GPS positioning for users to check in and get points usable only within the app itself. Loopt Star is also one of the first apps to base itself on the new Facebook Places location sharing program.

Other GPS-location sharing, checkin apps not far behind with real-world rewards and discounts for their players are Foursquare and Gowalla.

It’s been reported today that many people have gotten their iTunes account hacked.  While this in itself would be a minor--and puzzling--bit of thievery, it can have much larger implications.  Most people have their iTunes account linked with PayPal.com for purchases of songs and videos.  And many of those same people have their PayPal accounts linked to their bank account.

After hacking into an iTunes account, multiple transactions are made through PayPal purchasing iTunes products.  The PayPal account is quickly drained then, if linked to a bank account, the charges are passed on to be paid by the bank.

It is important for everyone to check their iTunes and PayPal.com accounts to see if there are any unauthorized transactions.  Afterwards, change your password on not only the iTunes account, but PayPal and even the bank account.  Choose a password that has no meaning, mixes letters and numbers, and even uses misspelled words.  Ideally, a password should look like this:  sd9ow8vlwr89n.  But that would be hard to remember.

Signs of a hacked iTunes account include a great number of identical purchases, and of course, any downloaded songs of the band, ABBA.

A final piece of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 legislation went into effect, shielding credit card users from "unreasonable late payment and other penalty fees".

It’s a two-part benefit for credit consumers.  First, it puts a limit of $25 for late charges and other fees except in extreme circumstances.  Those circumstances include repeat offenders, and where it can be shown the costs of recouping exceeds the $25 limit. 

Another restriction now in place is that a late or overdraft fee cannot be higher than the charge in question.  Also, consumers cannot be charged more than one fee per infraction.

The second benefit to this legislation it it also encourages credit card companies to reconsider rate increases from January 1st, 2009.  While it doesn’t appear to be mandatory, the banking industry holds that it has already been modifying rates in accordance, especially since many rate increases were based on large fees that now do not exist.

However, credit card companies now may not raise interest rates on customers who pay their bills on time.  They must also give at least 45 days notice before any rate hikes or fee changes.

Through the wonders of modern technology and a little social media network known as Facebook, it was possible for to “friend” North Korea for about a day.  Since it’s creation on Thursday, the profile for the country gained 65 friends.  But as of right now, the profile has been blocked.

Zagat, Foursquare, and Foodspotting have several things in common.  They are all about restaurants and food, they are fueled by consumer interaction, they each have a smartphone app, and now they are combined together in the newly released iPhone app, ‘Zagat to Go’.

Zagat is known for its reviews and ratings of restaurants, and the new app is a mobile, up to date version for iPhone users.  With the integration for Foursquare, users can now “check in” to Zagat to Go when they eat somewhere.  The app keeps track of the checkins, as well as any user submitted opinions.

Along with professional reviews and user comments, Zagat to Go is integrated with Foodspotting, an app that includes pictures of thousands of restaurant’s menus.  Foodspotting--and now Zagat to Go--allows users to take pictures of the food they order to share on the app.

The Zagat app follows a trend of integrating smartphones and mobile apps with user locations and GPS coordinates, with the hopes of providing as much information about a place as possible without having actually been there yet. 

Intel has announced it will expand its Digital Home Group with Texas Instrument’s Cable Modem manufacturing division in a buyout during the fourth quarter of 2010. Intel’s wants to further develop its “system-on-chip” line of products, and the acquisition of TI’s Puma technology gets it closer to that goal.

Earlier this year Intel entered the “living room market” with Google TV, a screen that blends TV and the internet--and was developed around Intel’s Atom processor. The Atom is a low-cost, low-power chip normally found in mobile computers.

After Google TV and the Texas Instruments cable modems, Intel will look to putting its Atom chips into other consumer electronic devices such as set-top boxes, blu-ray players, companion boxes, and residential gateways.

But Intel plans don’t stop in the living room. The Atom processor was designed for smartphones and TVs, but also for future emerging devices, even cars. Basically, to have “microprocessors where there weren’t before.”

On Facebook, when you “friend” someone and can then see their network of friends, there’s a patent for that.  Friendster, the forerunner of online social networks like Facebook, has sold and transferred eighteen of their patents on a broad range of features and capabilities we take for granted in social networking.  The total cost to Facebook for all patents in the deal was $40 million dollars.

Beginning in 2006 when they controlled the social networking market, Friendster began taking patents out on their coding and systems.  These patents range from how a network chooses who it thinks you’ll want to meet, to general and sweeping descriptions of online social networks.

It might be confusing then, if Friendster had these patents then why weren’t there lawsuits against every other online social networking site, including Facebook?  The simple fact is, to Friendster, it wasn’t worth the time, legal fees, bad press, and subsequent scrutiny of Anti-Trust legislation.

This is part of the explanation why the rights of ownership for the building blocks of present day social networking had such a relatively inexpensive price tag.  The other part lies in Facebook’s future.  While a date hasn’t been set, Facebook has been clear that soon they will offer an IPO.

In the past, Friendster never sued over use-without-permission of one of their patents, but who knows what they would have decided to do later on.  So it seems Facebook now owns the rights to the things it’s been using to make it number one.  And with the upcoming IPO, that’s just good due diligence.

As phones and wireless device become faster and more powerful, so increases the demand for networks and infrastructure to support them. The main telecom companies are expanding as best they can, but small privately-backed network companies like LightSquared have found opportunities to grab large amounts of the wireless network market.

Networks up to this point have been consolidated among the main providers, with seemingly insurmountable barriers to entry for new, less established companies. However, with the new 4G networks, infrastructure building is still on-going, leaving the market full of opportunity and potential.

LightSquared is taking advantage of 4G by offering a new choice for super-fast wireless internet--in select areas now, and with 95% coverage by 2015. With $7 billion in start-up cash from Harbinger Capital Partners, and Nokia Siemens to build the network, it looks realistic that they could do it.

Though such a large bankroll is uncommon with most of the ambitious new network providers, it’s LightSquared’s business model that really sets them apart. For starters, they won’t be offering 4G service to consumers.

Instead, LightSquared will be providing bandwidth to companies to offer 4G services to consumers. This allows them to reach a lot more people at once, leading to faster expansion. Offerings from LightSquared include white-label network branding--“Wal-Mart 4G wireless internet”--extra bandwidth to smaller telecoms like T-Mobile, and alternative internet sources for companies with wireless products such as the Nook from Barnes & Noble.

While this business model will not directly compete with the main network providers, it will still shake up the American wireless business structure. But LightSquared seesthis as a good thing, fostering more innovation and progress.

In a move guaranteed to shake the halls of finance, smart phones like the Android Apple’s iPhone will soon be able to make credit purchases in lieu of plastic cards. For the consumers, this will give another, more convenient option for shopping, but for Credit Monoliths like Visa or MasterCard, it could mean a loss of billions in transaction fees.

Consumers use their smart phones often to make online purchases or app purchases, so it seems a natural progression to buy with their phone at face-to-face transaction points. In the works are apps to manage multiple cards, live spending reports, and even “buy and tip” style purchasing for restaurants and the like.

Where smart phones are changing the game is in the long-established credit networks, responsible for handling over 50% of sales transactions in the last year alone. Normally, as with a plastic or “dumb” card, there are transaction fees amounting to 1-2% of the sale that the seller must pay. Last year, these “interchange” fees totaled to around $44 billion. When smart phone transactions are introduced, they will take a significant cut of this from the credit card companies.

Smart phone transactions must still have a credit company behind the sale, and currently Discover is working with AT&T and Verizon to do credit transactions through their networks. T-Mobile will be joining as well in a minority-share capacity.

As far as costs go, the wireless chip will add $10-15 dollars to the manufacturing cost of each phone, as well as $200 to vendors for a smart-phone-reading unit. There is room to wonder though, why the additional costs wouldn’t be absorbed by credit card companies as operating costs, instead of passing it on to consumers and vendors, then charging again for the privilege of using the new equipment.

However, with smart phones just now entering the picture, it will be some time before we see how the landscape will look when it’s all said and done.