Clipmarks | HansWobbe's clips

(Britain's) Pre-Budget report sees Darling raise National Insurance

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:49:44 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: This is likely to be a delicate balancing act that weighs political needs against economic and social needs.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Pre-Budget report sees Darling raise National Insurance

National Insurance will go up by 0.5% more than previously planned from 2011 and public sector workers face a 1% pay cap, Alistair Darling has announced.

He said he wanted to promote growth without "wrecking" recovery.

But the Conservatives accused him of putting off tough decisions on spending because of the coming election.

Startup that links online, offline worlds impressing investors

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:48:59 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: It appears that someone is finally making this "good idea" work.

Clip Source: www.siliconvalley.com

Harris: Startup that links online, offline worlds impressing investors

Milo bills itself as a bridge between online and offline commerce, which is hardly an original concept. Krillion, NearbyNow and ShopLocal are among the competitors. There are also sites dedicated to products. Retrevo, for example, is a vertical search engine that specializes in electronic goods and points users to both online and offline deals.

Since launching its public beta last December, Milo says it has grown by an average monthly increase of 70 percent and is now approaching "an expected" 1 million users a month. The startup says it has indexed more than 42,000 stores in thousands of communities nationwide and enables users to peruse "a real-time inventory" of more than 1.5 million products and growing by an average of 185,000 items per month.

The looming crisis in human genetics

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:34:00 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: It will be interesting to see the politically correct "spins" this gets given the current "ClimateGate" views.

Clip Source: www.economist.com

The looming crisis in human genetics

Nov 13th 2009
From The World in 2010 print edition
By Geoffrey Miller

Human geneticists have reached a private crisis of conscience, and it will become public knowledge in 2010. The crisis has depressing health implications and alarming political ones. In a nutshell: the new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races.

Yahoo launches ad privacy tool; Here's what it has on you

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:57:44 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: Finally, a bit of insight into their "insights"... Hopefully this will pressure others like "google" into also disclosing the data they've been harvesting.

Clip Source: blogs.zdnet.com

Yahoo launches ad privacy tool; Here's what it has on you

Yahoo released a beta of a tool, Ad Interest Manager, designed to be a transparent user dashboard for privacy. It works. Yahoo has everything from your surfing habits to your operating system to your screen resolution.

Online spending in America is rising

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:32:25 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: These small graphs provide a quick comparison of one economic metric. It will be interesting to compare the relative numbers for [a] "online" and "offline" (traditional) shopping [b] consumer and business spending (since historically consumer spending is 2/3rds of the relative economic activity).

Clip Source: www.economist.com

Happier shoppers

Online spending in America is rising

AFTER a poor year in 2008, retail spending is picking up again as heavy discounts and promotions are enticing shoppers to open their wallets. Online spending rose to $3.2 billion for the week ending on Sunday November 29th, over 6% more than during the same period last year, according to comScore, an online market-research firm. Internet shoppers splashed out $318m on Thanksgiving Day, over 10% higher than in 2008. Sales also rose by 11% to $595m on Black Friday, the start of the Christmas shopping season for bricks-and-mortar retailers but an increasingly important online shopping day too. Consumers continued to spend on “cyber Monday” November 30th. On Wednesday December 2nd new data showed that sales rose from $846m to $887m, the largest daily spend on record. But the signs of recovery offline are less clear. Shops rang up $10.7 billion in sales on Black Friday, a meagre 0.5% rise on 2008, reckons ShopperTrak, a retail consultancy.

Online privacy talks heat up

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:35:40 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: Like all "technology" uses, the Privacy issues stem from the equal potential for "acceptable" and "unacceptable" uses that have both beneficial and harmful consequences.
Countless examples of "extreme" uses exist on both sides of these issues, with the result that the only certainty is that those most likely to engage most vocally in the debate(s) are those that will have the greatest vested (and generally "undisclosed") interests.

Clip Source: thehill.com

Online privacy talks heat up

The Federal Trade Commission is holding its first and long-awaited privacy round-table Monday. The Federal Communications Commission has to address the issue in its national broadband recommendations due to Congress in February.

“The gap between innovation and privacy safeguards is growing,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Why haven’t we seen more attention paid to these critical issues?”

Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:34:55 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: words fail...

Clip Source: www.vanityfair.com

Scandal

Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

What Went Wrong?

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:29:27 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: A review of the economic mess that has the potential to be quite enlightening.

Clip Source: bigthink.com

Special Series

What Went Wrong?

The economics editor of the "Wall Street Journal" on Bernanke’s performance, AIG’s bailout, and the ironic position of J.P. Morgan in the crisis.

Part 1 of 5

What directors ... should—and should not—worry about

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:14:43 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: Quite a few of this articles points merit careful consideration by anyone interested in changing "corporate governance". after all, knowing what some of the issues and pressures are, makes it easier to anticipate what may happen. It also makes it easier to compare and contrast the approaches of different Boards (and their members).

Clip Source: www.economist.com

Misery in the boardroom

What directors of American firms should—and should not—worry about

The other danger, which the paper makes all too clear, is that the sheer volume of reforms will overwhelm boards. A particular threat is that valuable time will be spent ticking boxes. Is, for example, the emphasis on directors being “independent” preventing boards from having enough people with experience of the industry in which a firm operates? (Surely one of the lessons of Wall Street’s recent failure is that too few bank directors could spot the difference between a CDO and a CDS?) As the report puts it, “The irony is that in seeking...independent directors who will hold management more accountable, the result has been to promote directors who are more wholly dependent on management to inform their views of the company and its business.”

Let’s just call it Consumption Month and be done with it

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:19:10 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: It will be interesting to track the data to see if this "consumption" will abate a bit (given the economic problems) or if it's a "green shoots" (of emerging growth) indicator.

Clip Source: blogs.siliconvalley.com

Let’s just call it Consumption Month and be done with it

Last year at this time, as some marketing group was trying to push the concept of Mobile Tuesday into the ranks of titled shopping days occupied by Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I thought we were caught in an inexorable trend (see “Retailers announce plan to rename every day in December“). This year, however, I sense the beginning of a reversal, with the impact of Black Friday and Cyber Monday starting to be diluted in a move to a seamless, monthlong blur of bargain-driven buying.

Tags: economy model

"Dry Lands" ... Rebecca Solnit (presents some interesting facts)

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:32:03 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: Regardless of how these facts may be interpreted, there are at least some quantified data in this material.

Clip Source: www.lrb.co.uk

Dry Lands

Rebecca Solnit

BuyDead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming and the Future of Water in the West by James Lawrence Powell
California, 283 pp, £19.95, January 2010, ISBN 978 0 520 25477 0

'Apps' that transform software into gold

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:13:13 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: "Open Source" is definitely gaining momentum (as is "Client Side").

Clip Source: www.siliconvalley.com

'Apps' that transform software into gold

They crowd the lobby of Google's Building 43 one evening a month, waiting to climb the wide stairway under a mock-up of the world's first private spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, prepared to delve deep into the Internet giant's brain.

Over the next two hours, they will get a lecture about Google software, along with a free, catered dinner in this sanctum sanctorum of the Web. But the 30 to 100 software programmers who regularly attend the Google Technology Users Group don't even work for Google — at least, not directly.

using "light" to "hear"...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:05:24 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: Today's anniversary of Edison's 1877 demonstration of the phonograph took me to this interesting example of "technological change"... effectively photographing a phonograph record to digitize it !

Clip Source: www.npr.org

But this turntable doesn't spin like a normal record player. And there's no needle hovering over the record. Instead, there's a camera linked to a computer. It snaps detailed images of the groove cut into the disc, and uses the images to reconstruct the sound without ever touching the record.

Banks: The world is weary of the past, but boy, was it exciting!

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:29:04 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: I find it quite "educational" to compare the various (and often quite different) perspectives from "foreign" sources.

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Banks: The world is weary of the past, but boy, was it exciting!

The historian is concerned with finished facts, a journalist has to be concerned not just with real-time information but with the near future. So all these secrets are getting a bit distracting.

The revelation yesterday of what they actually did - unleash a £61.7bn secret loan to HBOS and RBS - is a reminder that even for journalists, what happened in the past may be the most important question.

Information: Have you ever paid for it?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:18:13 GMT

clipped by: HansWobbe
clipper's remarks: An interesting perspective...

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Information: Have you ever paid for it?

Right now loads of media execs, from Rupert Murdoch to Alan Rusbridger, are trying to answer three basic questions: a) which readers will pay for online content; b) which content; c) how will they charge them? There is a fourth question which I will ignore for now, which is, how does the print business survive once questions a-c are answered.