Daily Inbox

With the holidays still in full swing, the last thing on most people's minds is shopping for a new home, much less selling one. Many people are deterred by cold weather and poor driving conditions, or distracted by holiday vacation plans. But according to data released this week by online realty brokerage firm Redfin, winter is when the housing market really comes alive. Redfin compiled home listing data, sales prices and time-on-the-market data from Oct. 2010 to Oct. 2014 and came up with some surprising results. Not only is winter the best time to sell a home for more than the asking price, it's also the best time to list a home and sell it fast. Redfin determined that homes listed in December, January, February and March have a higher chance at selling above the asking price than home...

As new areas of information technology continue to emerge and demand more attention from skilled workers, colleges and universities across the country are soon to find themselves in greater competition with the corporate world for IT professionals. While small schools will have the most trouble recruiting IT grads, colleges and universities across the board will have to ramp up their recruitment efforts if they want to attract skilled workers to meet their IT needs. “We have found that many IT departments are buying "off the shelf" modules rather than recreate the wheel,” says Rick Friedman, President, ScholarlyHires.com. “Many opportunities are implementation or support personnel, as opposed to programmers, in order to combat the lack of available talent. The one exception to this seems...

It seems that every day brings another story of exciting applications of 3D printing technology. As recently as Dec. 17, a Princeton University team announced it had printed a contact lens with an embedded LED capable of projecting light. But despite this constant stream of innovation, some printers are turning to older techniques in order to satisfy a growing demand for handmade or artisanal products. “It is a safe bet that at least one Christmas card you receive this year will be printed in the old-fashioned manner, by letterpress,” reads an Economist article from Dec. 18. “You'll recognise it by the way the letters are pounded deep into the paper, like some kind of reverse braille. The point, for a new wave of hobbyists around the globe, is the ostentatious tactility.” Why this desir...

For many advertisers, mobile games may still seem like a passing fad. But according to experts, mobile game advertising may be set to outpace traditional advertising much sooner than expected. In fact, it may even be taking money away from traditional advertising methods. In a discussion at the Global Mobile Internet Conference early this month, Dave Madden, senior vice president of global media solutions at the mobile games division of Electronic Arts, said that mobile games are sucking so much money out of other forms of media advertising that he believes it will soon be the largest advertising platform in the world. In the past, mobile games have been used primarily to appeal to a gaming crowd that subsists on Doritos and Mountain Dew, but that image is no longer representative of the...