Why Google’s latest acquisition could be good for the whole online ad industry

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Why Google’s latest acquisition could be good for the whole online ad industry

By Leo Mirani @lmirani February 21, 2014

Half the ads on the internet are never seen by anybody, according to ComScore, a web traffic measurement company. And of those ads that are seen, it’s not clear how many are seen by human beings. Last year, the London-based start-upSpider.io, which tracks ad fraud, revealed a network of 120,000 infected computers (paywall) that together “viewed” ads billions of times, meaning that advertisers were paying millions of dollars for fake views. Today, Google announcedthat it had acquired Spider.io for an undisclosed amount. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Gucci is selling too much to the wrong people

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Gucci is selling too much to the wrong people

By Jason Karaian @jkaraian February 21, 2014

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The numbers: Not so shiny. Profits at Kering, the parent company of Gucci, Balenciaga, Stella McCartney and other luxury labels collapsed in 2013, to €50 million ($68 million) from more than €1 billion ($1.3 billion) the year before. Read more of this post

Filed under Innovation

What the Netherlands’ complete dominance in speed skating says about success; Success can come from being in the right place at the right time. But it usually takes years spent building a culture, facilitating talent, making investment

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

What the Netherlands’ complete dominance in speed skating says about success

By Max Nisen @MaxNisen February 21, 2014

Part of the beauty of the Olympics is that despite its size, one country can dominate an entire sport. At Sochi, the biggest winner in that regard has been the Netherlands, a country with less than a fifth as many Olympic athletes as the US, that has won 21 medals (soon to be 22) so far in long track speed skating.

It’s a record for a single country in an Olympics, and a reminder that the greatest success comes from monopolizing on your advantage and putting serious resources behind it. Luck can win a solitary medal, but not 21 of them. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

Billionaires invest $29m in plant-based chicken eggs

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Billionaires invest $29m in plant-based chicken eggs

Friday, Feb 21, 2014

Hemananthani Sivanandam

Winnie Yeoh

and A. Raman

The Star/Asia News Network

Asia’s richest man Li Ka-Shing and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang have invested US$23million (S$29 million) in a California-based company that produces artificial chicken eggs, Sin Chew Daily reported.

The company, Hampton Creek Foods, is producing the artificial eggs using ingredients from 12 types of plants. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

Bhutan, world’s last TV holdout, now at tech vanguard: PM

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Bhutan, world’s last TV holdout, now at tech vanguard: PM

Saturday, February 22, 2014 – 14:35

AFP

THIMPHU, Bhutan – It was the world’s last hold-out against television and is regarded by travellers as a Himalayan Shangri-La.

But Bhutan’s decision to make itself the poster boy for electric transport is further proof of its willingness to embrace technology as part of its unique Gross National Happiness development model, says its prime minister. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

D-Day for foreigners eyeing Johor property; Foreign buyers of residential property in Malaysia’s Johor state have until April 30 if they want to dodge new property measures there such as higher levies

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

D-Day for foreigners eyeing Johor property

Saturday, Feb 22, 2014

Anita Gabriel

The Straits Times

Foreign buyers of residential property in Malaysia’s Johor state have until April 30 if they want to dodge new property measures there such as higher levies.

The cut-off date – April 30 – is contained in a Feb 10 circular from Johor’s Land and Mineral Office obtained by The Straits Times. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

The spider-like nature of property market

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

The spider-like nature of property market

Saturday, Feb 22, 2014

Dennis Chan

The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – At a recent lunch, the conversation turned to crabs.

No, the popular dining crustacean wasn’t on the menu. But that didn’t stop my host, who is a developer, from comparing the state of the residential property market to a trussedup crab that has had all its eight legs bound up. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Chinese cities outstripping whole countries in infrastructure debt

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Chinese cities outstripping whole countries in infrastructure debt

Staff Reporter

2014-02-22

Spending by the city of Wuhan on infrastructure construction alone is equivalent to the UK’s expenses for updating and enhancing the infrastructure of the entire country, according to British media. The city is part of a countrywide, multi-trillion dollar infrastructure upgrade. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Chinese entrepreneur advice clubs ‘more useful from EMBA’

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Chinese entrepreneur advice clubs ‘more useful from EMBA’

Staff Reporter

2014-02-22

In order to improve corporate governance, growing numbers of Chinese entrepreneurs are resorting to EMBA programs and private coaching from their peers in the form of corporate clubs, according to Chinese-language China Entrepreneur magazine. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Ever wished you could yell at your appliances? Get ready for Siri for the Internet of Things

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Ever wished you could yell at your appliances? Get ready for Siri for the Internet of Things.

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON FEBRUARY 21, 2014

I’m sitting in a cafe on Market Street in San Francisco with Duy Huynh, looking on his laptop at a live feed from a webcam set up in his New York apartment. It’s not part of the demonstration, but a woman comes through the front door. We both laugh, awkwardly. He hands me his phone, with the app he’s spent the last four months in San Francisco creating turned on. I repeat the prompt he’s just instructed me to say. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Google shows some leadership, buys the company that’s been pointing out how dubious online ad traffic can be

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Google shows some leadership, buys the company that’s been pointing out how dubious online ad traffic can be

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON FEBRUARY 21, 2014

Late in 2013, spider.io, a UK-based company dedicated to fighting advertising fraud, posted a video to its website. It shows a computer desktop with no programs running on it visibly, but which is infected by TDSS malware that is running 23 hidden windows, with fake cursor activity darting all over the page and clicking on ads at random. It is like watching a robot use a computer that only likes ads. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

WhatsApp Deal Bets on a Few Fewer ‘Friends’; Is Facebook’s WhatsApp deal a sign of a tech bubble?

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

WhatsApp Deal Bets on a Few Fewer ‘Friends’

By JENNA WORTHAMFEB. 21, 2014

The address book is making a billion-dollar comeback.

Weary of noisy social networks filled with mundane updates from the most remote acquaintances, millions of people have turned to their smartphone address books — and the diverse array of messaging services that rely on them, like Snapchat, Secret, Kik and WhatsApp — for more intimate social connections. Now the stampede toward those messaging services has Silicon Valley’s giants scrambling to catch up. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Why Rational People Can’t Succeed as Economic Forecasters

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Why Rational People Can’t Succeed as Economic Forecasters

by Justin Fox  |   10:35 AM February 21, 2014

We’re all used to economic forecasts. We’re also used to them being wrong. But there was a time when forecasts were new and exciting, and people were genuinely surprised when they didn’t pan out. This was during the first decades of the previous century, an era that Harvard Business School historian Walter Friedman chronicles in his new book Fortune Tellers: The Story of America’s First Economic Forecasters. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

To Create Healthy Urgency, Focus on a Big Opportunity

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

To Create Healthy Urgency, Focus on a Big Opportunity

by John P. Kotter  |   12:00 PM February 21, 2014

There are two basic kinds of energy in organizations. One, triggered by a big opportunity, can create momentum in the right direction and sustain it over time. The other, based on fear or anxiety, might overcome complacency for a time, but it does not build any momentum or maintain it. Instead it can create a panic, with all the obvious negative consequences — stressing people out and eventually draining an organization of the very energy leaders wanted to generate. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

Are property clubs the problems in Malaysia/Asia? YES; Hopefully, the greed that brought speculators together to form such property clubs will cause the end of their existence

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Updated: Saturday February 22, 2014 MYT 9:21:12 AM

Are property clubs the problems? YES

BY JAGDEV SINGH SIDHU

WHEN it comes to buying and selling shares on Bursa Malaysia, there are laws that prohibit the use of inside information to execute a trade. Investors will get the book thrown at them if proven they are creating a false market, which is essentially manipulating a particular counter. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

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