Black day for BlackBerry

Shares of BlackBerry plunged yesterday on news that its $4.7 million buyout was off and that its chief executive was out — leaving an opening for Microsoft to fill behind Google and Apple in the race for smartphone stardom.

BlackBerry's stock tumbled by more than 16 percent to $6.49 on the Nasdaq stock exchange after the announcement that a preliminary deal with Fairfax Financial Holdings had fallen through and that Chief Executive Thorsten Heins was being replaced by John S. Chen, former CEO of Sybase Inc., until BlackBerry finds a permanent replacement.

Fairfax will now lead a $1 billion investment in the embattled Canadian company, but analysts are not optimistic about its future.

"I see this as the beginning of the end of Blackberry," said N. Venkat Venkatraman, professor of management at Boston University. "It tried multiple options, including possible interest from Facebook. Finally no one stepped up ... and that itself says something profound: No one saw any value that could be unlocked easily either through financial engineering or a longer term strategic road map to revive BlackBerry."

BlackBerry had been locked in an intense competition for third place behind Google and Apple in the smartphone wars.

"But they've been a day late and a dollar short in every innovation," said Max Wolff, chief economist and strategist for ZT Wealth in New York. "Their bungling has allowed Google and Apple to own the space, and the No. 3 role has gone to Microsoft's Windows phone."

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The Ticker

MGM Springfield, 
Six Flags ink deal

MGM Springfield and Six Flags New England have signed an exclusive, multiyear joint-marketing agreement that designates MGM Springfield as the official resort casino partner of Six Flags New England, MGM Resorts International announced yesterday.

Apple opening new U.S. plant

Apple Inc. said it's opening a new plant in Mesa, Ariz., that will create 2,000 jobs to make components for its products, part of a push by the world's most valuable company to boost manufacturing in the United States.

Apple struck a deal to pay $578 million to GT Advanced Technologies Inc. to supply equipment for the facility, GT Advanced said in a statement. The machines make materials out of sapphire, which is increasingly used in smartphones to cover camera lenses and home buttons.

Valve to release own computer

Hoping to break fresh ground in its industry, Bellevue, Wash. game developer Valve, best known for its "Half-Life" franchise and Steam online software sales portal, will release a prototype Steam Machine computer of its own design, complete with an operating system and a game controller the company also developed in-house.

Today

  Institute for Supply Management releases its service sector index for October.

  Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee hearing on the aviation industry.

   T-Mobile/Deutsch Telekom AG, HTC Corp., and Caremark Corp. report quarterly financial results before the market opens.

TOMORROW

 Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifies before the Senate Finance Committee about the health care law.

 Toyota reports fiscal third quarter earnings.

 Time Warner Inc. reports quarterly financial results before the market opens.

 CBS Corp. and Whole Foods Market Inc. report quarterly financial results after the market closes.

 Legacy Real Estate Ventures has recently announced that it has hired Ben Schultz, left, as an asset manager. Schultz will oversee the day to day operations of the Legacy portfolio, as well as assist in marketing requirements and new deal due diligence.

 Tufts Medical Center has named Terry Hudson-Jinks, RN, MSN as its chief nursing officer. Hudson-Jinks has a long history of leading quality and cost improvement initiatives that have improved patient safety and satisfaction, the hospital said.

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Hub startup musters $5M in venture capital

A year after a Boston startup began testing the military equivalent of LinkedIn, the firm has raised $5 million in venture capital to officially launch its fast-growing website in time for Veterans Day.

The investment, which brings RallyPoint's total funding to $6.6 million, was led by Silicon Valley-based DBL Investors to help redefine the way corporate hiring managers connect with and recruit military talent, said Yinon Weiss. Weiss served 10 years of military duty before founding RallyPoint with fellow Iraq War veteran and Harvard Business School alumnus 
Aaron Kletzing.

"We've gone from a standing start last year to very quickly growing the site" to include 125,000 members — both active duty and veterans — and pages for more than 400,000 companies doing business in the United States, he said.

Nearly one in 10 members of the active-duty Army alone — the military's largest branch — already use RallyPoint for free from bases around the world, he said. Starting Veterans Day, members' spouses, who often share similar employment challenges, can use the website, too.

The same day, 400,000 companies on RallyPoint will be able to post jobs for $99-$5,000. And early next year companies will be able to upgrade their offerings.

John Silva, a 32-year-old former Marine who is now a partner at Cambridge Bookstore, recently discovered RallyPoint through a friend and agreed to help test it to connect with other veterans and recruit employees. In the few weeks since he signed on, he's already conducted two interviews by phone and one in person. And although the latter decided to take a job in western Massachusetts to be closer to home, Silva is confident he'll find the right person on RallyPoint soon.

"As an e-commerce business, we need people who have a high attention to detail, and because we're a small business, a strong sense of teamwork," Silva said. "And veterans have both."

As a Massachusetts employer, he has even more reason now to hire people with military backgrounds. Last month the state more than doubled cash grants for employers who hire Massachusetts veterans. Firms can now apply for training grants of $5,000 for each vet they hire, up to a total of $75,000 per calendar year. Raising the amounts, Weiss said, provides a greater incentive for employers to hire veterans, who have an average unemployment rate of 9.9 percent, compared to 7.2 percent for civilians.

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Holiday season war of tablets

The iPad Air is the best 10-inch tablet ever, but it faces stiff competition as we enter the first-ever holiday season of the tablet. The war is being waged on three fronts: battery life, value and productivity.

It seems like nearly everyone — from HTC to Nokia to Sony — is making serious forays into the tablet arena, not the least of which is Lenovo's new Yoga tablet. This Android beast boasts 18 hours of battery life, eight more than the iPad Air's advertised 10 hours. The 8-inch, 16GB Yoga will cost just $249, and the 10-inch, 16GB version is $299.

So not only does it beat the iPad Air on battery life, it's 40 percent of the price.

That's right — though the size and weight of iPad Air are slimmed down, the same can't be said of the cost, which ranges from $499 to a whopping $929 for the 128GB WiFi + Cellular version.

Though you'll sacrifice screen quality if you go with the Yoga, Google's Nexus 10 also operates with Android and has a higher pixel count than the iPad Air. Rumor has it that a new version is coming out this holiday season with a starting price of $399.

At $100 less than that, the Dell Venue 8 Pro, a Windows-based tablet, delivers the same listed battery life as the iPad Air and is seemingly a match for those who rely on the Microsoft Office productivity suite, as is the Surface 2, which starts at $449.

And then there's the competition that the iPad Air faces at home. The iPad mini, due out later this month, has the same so-called Retina display as well as identical specs as the iPad Air in an 8-inch frame for $100 less.

So while there are reasons for some to look elsewhere, the iPad still retains its first-place standing for those of us who do light productivity work and enjoy apps on a portable touchscreen device. I was reminded of the iPad's primary appeal this weekend as I watched my toddler play around with the Air. If you ever want to have your mind blown, give an iPad to a 2-year-old. As my son navigated to the virtual drums featured in the GarageBand app and found a numbers game to play with Elmo, I realized: No tablet is easier to use, prettier to look at and simpler to carry around than the iPad Air.

That said, the battery life on the 16GB WiFi model I tested did not live up to its advertised 10 hours. In fact, the device barely made it to eight hours after heavy use of various apps for 60 minutes and then being left to drain with the screen on for the remaining seven hours.

The new iPad contains the same super-fast A7 processing chip as the iPhone 5S. With any luck, developers will take advantage of the new speed and power with updated and improved mobile apps. If they do, the iPad Air should remain a favorite until Apple releases another generation iPad and it becomes instantly antiquated. I'm hoping we make it to a year.

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Site repair: Hold that online health application

WASHINGTON — The application page of the troubled health insurance website is offline until Sunday morning.

The Health and Human Services Department says a technology team will be working on HealthCare.gov, so people won't be able to apply or enroll through the site.

That part of the site will be down from about 9 p.m. Saturday to about 9 a.m. Sunday.

The government says people can apply for coverage through the health marketplace call center — 1-800-318-2596. That's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The federal website locked up the day it went live, Oct. 1, and has been cranky since. It's been taken down for maintenance before — usually for a few overnight hours.

The administration has said it's aiming to have HealthCare.gov humming along by month's end.

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Food pantries fear EBT cuts

Local charities are bracing for a boost in requests for help now that almost half a million households in the Bay State that rely on government assistance to feed their families are getting less money thanks to the end of a federal stimulus program.

"Demand will go up," said Jarrett Barrios, CEO of the American Red Cross of Massachusetts, which runs food pantries in Boston and New Bedford. "There's no two ways about it."

About 480,000 Massachusetts households — and 47 million around the country — that receive food stamps via EBT cards saw their benefits cut by about 5 percent after a temporary boost in the federal SNAP program's funding that was part of a 2009 economic stimulus package expired Friday. Even as the unemployment rate has dropped and the economy seems to be slowly rebounding, the number of SNAP recipients has continued to rise, including in Massachusetts.

"We are not in a better place yet," said Barrios. "Lines are already really long."

Melissa Sanchez, 32, of Dorchester, was at the Red Cross' Boston food pantry yesterday, and said the food she gets there helps stretch her monthly benefits. She said her benefits were cut before, and the new cuts only add to her worries.

"It's going to affect a lot of people," said Sanchez. "It's going to affect the economy. There's going to be less jobs, less customers because families can't afford to buy as much."

Benefits, which are distributed throughout the first two weeks of the month, dropped by $36 a month for a family of four.

Barrios said the cut may not seem like much, but it matters a great deal to the families that rely on the benefits. For families, "taking those $40 away means 'do I go without breakfast a couple days a week?'" Barrios said.

Lucinda Rodrigues, 43, of Dorchester, said she just started coming to the food pantry last month.

"I have two kids and what I was receiving before wasn't enough to support my family on a monthly basis," said Rodrigues. "Now the cuts are going to be worse, so I have to come to the charities to put more food on the table."

Anti-poverty agency ABCD also is worried about the cuts' effect on the families it serves.

"They're taking away from people who really can't afford to be taken away from," said John Drew, president and CEO of ABCD.

To make matters worse, winter is fast approaching, and with it comes the need for heat, holiday presents and new coats or boots.

"These cuts going into effect right before Thanksgiving couldn't come at a worse time," Barrios said.

There are continued talks in Congress about additional cuts to the food stamp program, which has more than doubled in cost since 2008 to almost $80 billion a year. Both the House and Senate have passed different versions of a farm bill that includes cuts — $4 billion in the GOP-controlled House bill and a tenth of that in the Democratic Senate's bill.

Colneth Smiley Jr. contributed to this report.

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Henry pays $38M for Globe HQ

John Henry paid $38.4 million for The Boston Globe's headquarters on Morrissey Boulevard as part of the 
$70 million deal last month to acquire the New England Media Group from The New York Times, according to newly filed records at the Suffolk County Registry of Deeds.

"That's interesting as a metric because as I talk to newspaper brokers over the years what they've said is on average, the price of newspaper properties is half-covered by real estate," said analyst Ken Doctor of Newsonomics. "That would fit that principle really well. The brand, the good will, the cash flow ... amounts to only half the sales price, the other half is the hard real estate."

Experts have speculated the sprawling Dorchester property — with its proximity to the Southeast Expressway and UMass Boston — could be a hot commercial property if redeveloped, even though parts of it are contaminated.

Henry also paid $7.8 million for the property containing the Worcester Telegram & Gazette's printing presses in Millbury and $277,400 for the Clinton office of Coulter Press, which publishes The Item and The Banner, according to Worcester County Registry of Deeds documents.

Secretary of State William Galvin officially certified Henry's corporation papers for the newly created The Boston Globe Newspaper Co. LLC Thursday night, according to state records.

Henry and Globe controller Karen Bray are the only names listed in the corporation filings — Henry organized the Globe LLC in Delaware. Henry declined to comment through a spokesman yesterday.

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Kia’s luxury Cadenza sings

Kia, the Korean car company better known for its dancing hamster commercials, has expanded into the luxury family sedan segment with the 2014 Cadenza.

The automaker's flagship sedan has a $35,100 base price and is well-equipped with a handful of standard features, including dual-zone climate control, an 8-inch display screen combined with a rear camera, and leather seats.

Kia offers two versions of the Cadenza, premium and limited. Our test model arrived decked out with the limited trim package that steps Cadenza's sticker up to $42,400, which had me asking, wait a minute, this is a Kia? But the Cadenza's top-shelf features such as blind-spot warning system, adaptive cruise control, and lane departure warning system make the sedan appealing, especially when one considers that it usually takes another $20,000 to find these features on other cars.

The sleek and refined limited edition had Nappa leather-trimmed seats that were ventilated up front and heated throughout. A panoramic sunroof and a power rear window sunshade rounded out the Cadenza's list of over-the-top features.

Both Cadenza offerings share the same powertrain — a 3.3 liter, V6 engine that produces 293 horsepower combined with a 6-speed automatic transmission that gave the sedan a performance edge. The Cadenza provided a smooth ride over the rough stuff while staying sharp through the corners. The sedan returns 22 miles per gallon in the city and 28 mpg on the highway. While not great fuel economy numbers, they balance out when considering the Cadenza's roominess.

The sedan was comfortable to drive, with a telescoping steering column and 10-way power adjustable seat. I really enjoyed the extendable seat cushion. The section of seat moved forward to provide additional thigh support that prevented my legs from falling asleep on long commutes home. Sitting in the back seats was equally comfortable with plenty of foot and headroom.

Both Cadenza models share an Infinity 550 watt surround sound audio system with no fewer than 12 speakers. The system was controlled via an easy-to-reach center console or with steering wheel-mounted buttons. An analog clock mounted in the middle of the center stack was a nice touch.

I enjoyed driving the well-built Cadenza and I was impressed with the luxury details throughout the cabin. I consider the Kia Cadenza Limited edition a bit underpriced at $42,000, but I also understand that people might have a hard time writing a check to Kia and its dancing hamsters for that amount. However, I sense that Kia's market share and prominence will increase as the carmaker continues to expand its lineup.

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Here’s why homes don’t sell

If your house isn't selling, don't despair — try jazzing it up online.

Inventory in the Metro Boston region is down 
62 percent from a year ago while prices are up 9 percent, so there's hope. But buyers are first turning to real estate websites before they head out the door. That's where your attention should be, at least at first.

Let's look at the most common reasons why your home is still on the market:

PRICE: This is by far the top reason why properties languish. Remember, pricing properties isn't an exact science. Some agents will overprice listings during the initial bidding process in hopes of winning the listing. Others will over-price simply due to ignorance. Regardless, the market will dictate your price. If your home isn't getting showings by other real estate agents and you've had no offers within the first 14 days, particularly in a hot market, then the price should be adjusted.

PHOTOGRAPHY: I've said it before, first impressions are very important. The way your home is presented could be the difference between having market buzz or fizzling out. Prices vary, but typically $150 to $300 is enough to hire a professional photographer to set you up with a few good photos.

CLUTTER: Remember the wagon-wheel scene in the movie "When Harry Met Sally"? Get rid of those things that you've held onto for years. I've always gone by the belief that if you lost everything in a fire, what are the things you would truly miss? Then start with those items and work backward. Less is always more.

MARKETING: Is your real estate agent promoting your property in the best light? This includes weekly print advertising, sphere of influence mailings, mailings to neighbors of the listed property, links to all national websites including realtor.com, trulia.com, zillow.com and others. Does your agent promote properties via social media?

INSPECTIONAL ISSUES: Does your home have a number of issues to be fixed? A coat of new paint? A professional cleaning? Light bulbs that need replacing? While these are relatively easy fixes ranging in price to practically nothing to quite a bit, in the end they can make the difference between your home being a consideration vs. a "pass." If you really want to know what a home inspection will uncover, then hire an inspector of your own and have your property "pre-inspected." This might run you a few hundred dollars on the low end to $500 to $600 depending on the size of your home.

It's all worth the trouble if you really want to make the next move.

Charlie Abrahams is a licensed real estate agent in Boston who works with buyers and sellers and can be reached for any additional information at: Bostonrealestate@charlieabrahams.com.

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Asia stocks muted on prospect Fed to trim stimulus

MUMBAI, India — Asian stocks markets were muted Friday as investors continued to fret that the U.S. Federal Reserve bank will begin cutting its stimulus as soon as January.

Japan's Nikkei 225, the regional heavyweight, fell 1.2 percent to 14,155.81, weighed down by Sony Corp. stocks losing 12 percent after the electronics and entertainment giant reported a 19.3 billion yen ($196 million) quarterly loss.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.1 percent at 23,190.05 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.2 percent to 5,418.10. Markets in Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia also fell. Seoul's Kospi added 0.3 percent to 2,035.95.

India's Sensex index reached an all-time high of 21,234.35, up 0.3 percent, led by information technology, auto and pharmaceutical stocks.

Worries about future moves in U.S. monetary policy tamped down most Asian stock markets Friday. The Fed's announcement this week that it would maintain its $85 billion monthly bond purchasing scheme was widely expected.

But the bank's economic outlook was rosier than anticipated and could indicate that it will begin to reduce those purchases soon, which have been aimed at keeping interest rates low to support economic recovery. The U.S. central bank's cheap money policy has underpinned stock markets worldwide for several years

The Fed no longer expressed concern, as it did in September, that higher mortgage rates could hold back hiring and economic growth. And its statement made no reference to the 16-day government shutdown, which economists say slowed growth this quarter. Some analysts said that suggests reduction of the stimulus could begin early next year.

On Wall Street, The Dow lost 73.01 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 15,545.75. The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 6.77 points, 0.4 percent, to 1,756.54.

The Nasdaq composite dropped 10.91 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,919.71.

Benchmark U.S. crude for December delivery was down 2 cents at $96.36 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract dropped 39 cents to close $96.38 on Thursday.

In currency trading, the euro was down at $1.3555 from $1.3586 late Thursday. The dollar fell to 97.92 yen from 98.31 yen.

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