South Africa: Why they booed him; A watchdog says an improperly lavish sum was spent on the president’s home

South Africa: Why they booed him; A watchdog says an improperly lavish sum was spent on the president’s home
Mar 22nd 2014 | JOHANNESBURG | From the print edition

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MANY a homebuyer is tempted by a down-at-heel residence that might be profitably resold after redecorating. Often they misjudge the scale of the work needed and end up out of pocket. The president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, made a different sort of error. His is proving costly not because he overpaid for rebuilding but because the taxpayer did. Read more of this post

Germany’s Kion Group aims to become world leader of industrial trucks

Germany’s Kion Group aims to become world leader of industrial trucks
FRANKFURT, March 20 (Xinhua) — Kion Group, one of the world leading truck firms, on Thursday released financial results for the year 2013 and announced it aimed to become world leader of industrial trucks.
The Kion Group based in the city of Wiesbaden in Germany, reported consolidated revenue of 4.495 billion euros (6.193 billion U.S. dollars), slightly down from 4.56 billion euros in 2012. Read more of this post

German precedent gives Korea jitter; South Koreans came to consider unification as a kind of monster that would destroy the national economy, not a key to future prosperity

German precedent gives Korea jitter
Mar 22,2014

President Park Chung Hee, the father of incumbent President Park Geun-hye, visited the Berlin Wall on Dec. 11, 1964. Looking at the barbed-wire fence, he commented, “I saw North Korea through the Berlin Wall.” Provided by the Blue House
Early this year, President Park Geun-hye put the issue of unification on her agenda. She pledged to “build up the groundwork for an era of unification on the Korean Peninsula in order to reduce social friction and cost due to division.” Read more of this post

“When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.”

Why you should hustle every day (and how Jerry Seinfeld did it)
HERBERT LUI
5 days ago
Herbert Lui does marketing for clients such as Pivotal Labs, Busy Building Things, and Renegades. This post originally appeared on the Busy Building Things blog and was edited by Robleh Jama. Read more of this post

5 Things Super Lucky People Do

5 Things Super Lucky People Do
BY KEVIN DAUM
Do you feel lucky? Here’s a clear-cut approach for improving your luck today.
“The Luck of the Irish” is an American phrase that comes from the days of the gold rush in the 1800s. Intolerant Americans figured the Irish people weren’t smart enough to find gold, and blamed their success on being lucky rather than skilled. In reality, America’s early immigrants have time and again proven themselves to be hardworking and smart enoughto generate their own good fortune consistently. Read more of this post

Doing Business on WeChat isn’t so Easy

Doing Business on WeChat isn’t so Easy
by Tracey Xiang – Mar 18, 2014
Zaocanjia — nice breakfast in Chinese, is a deliver to home breakfast service and only available through WeChat. Zaocanjia team make and deliver breakfast every morning to subscribers to its WeChat subscription account. A third-party company developed a system with WeChat API to collect and manage orders. Read more of this post

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup
BY ADAM L. PENENBERG
ON MARCH 21, 2014
Lean Startup Machine), has a bleak– but simple — prescription for big companies: Act more like a startup or enjoy a long slide into irrelevance and creative destruction. Read more of this post

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company
By Max Nisen @MaxNisen March 20, 2014
Even for the volatile tech industry, the implosion of Canadian telecom giant Nortel was spectacular. In 2000, it was the 9th most valuable corporation in the world with a market cap of $283 billion. A decade later, it was bankrupt and ceasing operations.

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Why Apple can’t match Google’s all-seeing new smartwatches


Why Apple can’t match Google’s all-seeing new smartwatches
By Christopher Mims @mims an hour ago
Apple is a fantastic hardware company. And when the rumored iWatch (probably) arrives, it will no doubt be a thing of beauty. But there’s good reason to think that the key to a successful smartwatch won’t be its hardware, but its operating system. Read more of this post

How Goldman Sachs became a household name; In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years

How Goldman Sachs became a household name
March 21, 2014: 8:00 AM ET
In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years.
By Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large
FORTUNE — Becoming a household name has not been a good thing for Goldman Sachs (GS). Not long ago, few people outside Wall Street and the top tier of corporate America paid much attention to Goldman, other than to note how many former Goldmanites seemed to be concentrated in the upper echelons of the federal government and other seats of power. Then came the worldwide financial meltdown, and almost overnight, Goldman came to be invoked as a symbol of everything that had gone wrong. Read more of this post

Bill Clinton on leadership

Bill Clinton on leadership
March 20, 2014: 7:49 AM ET
The former President distills his wisdom for Fortune.
What does leadership mean to you?
Leadership means bringing people together in pursuit of a common cause, developing a plan to achieve it, and staying with it until the goal is achieved. If the leader holds a public or private position with other defined responsibilities, leadership also requires the ability to carry out those tasks and to respond to unforeseen problems and opportunities when they arise. It is helpful to be able to clearly articulate a vision of where you want to go, develop a realistic strategy to get there, and attract talented, committed people with a wide variety of knowledge, perspectives, and skills to do what needs to be done. In the modern world, I believe lasting positive results are more likely to occur when leaders practice inclusion and cooperation rather than authoritarian unilateralism. Even those who lead the way don’t have all the answers. Read more of this post

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?
by Quy Huy and Timo Vuori | Mar 21, 2014
Nokia lost the smartphone battle despite having half of the global market share in 2007. Some argue that it was down to software, others that it was complacency. We argue that collective emotions within the company were a big part of the story
Leaders who are able to identify and manage patterns of emotions in a collective are better able to make their ambitious strategies a reality. Our argument centres around the idea that the emotions felt by a large number of people within an organisation can determine the success of strategy implementation even when these feelings go unexpressed. Read more of this post

A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop


A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop
AMANDA MACIAS ADVERTISING MAR. 21, 2014, 6:59 AM
Pepsi Max kicked off its ‘Unbelievable’ campaign by pranking commuters sitting inside a typical London bus stop.
A stop on New Oxford Street was rigged with hidden digital technology that tricks unsuspecting passengers into thinking they are steps away from hovering alien ships, a loose tiger, and a giant robot with laser beam eyes.
Rachel Holmes, senior marketing manager at PepsiCo UK said, “It truly lives up to Pepsi Max’s Unbelievable proposition from the innovative media planning through to the fantastic creative,”reports the Drum.

In Just 2 Years, Google And Facebook Have Come To Control 75% Of All Mobile Advertising

http://www.statista.com/chart/2048/mobile-ad-revenue-2014/

In Just 2 Years, Google And Facebook Have Come To Control 75% Of All Mobile Advertising
JIM EDWARDS TECH MAR. 21, 2014, 5:29 AM
In the last two years, Facebook and Google have gone from a position of merely being two big, fast-growing players in mobile advertising to dominating it completely. Combined, they have cornered 75.2% of the entire mobile market in 2013, according to new data by eMarketer. Read more of this post

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996
LISA EADICICCO TECH MAR. 21, 2014, 9:18 PM
Google co-founder Sergey Brin may be one of the biggest names in today’s tech industry, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, like many of us, his resume looked fairly plain and basic back in the early 1990s.
This old version of Brin’s resume, which was last updated in 1996, is making the rounds on Hacker News today.
The resume details some of Brin’s earliest projects, including one titled “Movie Ratings” that sounds a lot like the recommendation engine built into today’s entertainment apps such as Netflix. Read more of this post

Sting reminds us all that sometimes you have to gaze back into the past in order to move forward; The events of childhood are like the Hebrew alphabet; the vowels are missing, and the older self has to make sense of them

Going Home Again
MARCH 20, 2014
David Brooks
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The TED conference is dedicated to innovation. Most of the people who give TED talks are working on some creative project: to invent new bionic limbs for amputees, new telescopes, new fusion reactors or new protest movements to reduce the power of money in politics. Read more of this post

The Timidity Trap: Policy makers have good ideas in principle for tackling terrible economic conditions, yet they consistently go for half-measures in practice and kill all hope

The Timidity Trap
MARCH 20, 2014
Paul Krugman
There don’t seem to be any major economic crises underway right this moment, and policy makers in many places are patting themselves on the back. In Europe, for example, they’re crowing about Spain’s recovery: the country seems set to grow at least twice as fast this year as previously forecast. Read more of this post

Why Android Wear Is the Beginning of the Wearable Devices Era

MARCH 21, 2014, 7:00 AM
Why Android Wear Is the Beginning of the Wearable Devices Era
By MOLLY WOOD
Any nascent technology needs a platform in order to be successful. This week, Google gave wearable devices that platform.
With the announcement of Android Wear, Google has officially kicked off the wearables era. The availability of an operating system for wearables will lead to an almost immediate boom in device development. Read more of this post

The Family That Talks Money Together, Stays Together

The Family That Talks Money Together, Stays Together
MARCH 21, 2014
By PAUL SULLIVAN
Marvin Blum, a lawyer from Fort Worth, flew to New York last week to visit his daughter, son-in-law and young grandson. Staying close to his family is crucial to him. The same goes for seeing his son, who lives in Austin. Read more of this post

The UK is transforming from a nation of shopkeepers into a country full of kitchen table entrepreneurs. Technology enables wave of British kitchen table start-ups

March 21, 2014 2:59 pm
Technology enables wave of British kitchen table start-ups
By Jonathan Moules, Enterprise Correspondent
The UK is transforming from a nation of shopkeepers into a country full of kitchen table entrepreneurs.
Research by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has calculated that 2.9m businesses operate from homes around the country, equivalent to one in every 10 households. Read more of this post

The failure to share Big Data threatens finance; Early warning system is beyond reach because countries do not trust each other

March 20, 2014 6:34 pm
The failure to share Big Data threatens finance
By Gillian Tett
Early warning system is beyond reach because countries do not trust each other
Once upon a time, the antics of US spies in cyber space was of interest only to other spooks and to internet geeks. No longer.
Last year Edward Snowden stirred political outrage with revelations that the US National Security Agency was spying on American citizens and European officials. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, has created more furore by accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of snooping on Senate officials. Read more of this post

Innovation: Floor Tiles That Can Monitor the Health of the Elderly

Innovation: Floor Tiles That Can Monitor the Health of the Elderly
By Patrick Clark March 20, 2014
Innovators: Charles Hendee, 34, and Ken Perlin, 55
Chief technology officer and chief scientific adviser, respectively, of six-employee Tactonic Technologies in New York.
Form and function: A strip of pressure-sensitive floor tiles made of plastic evaluates a walker’s health based on footstep patterns. The tile system’s cloud-based analytics can provide health updates via smartphone and assist caretakers for the elderly. Read more of this post

Oprah gives Starbucks tea push a celebrity shot with chai drink

Oprah gives Starbucks tea push a celebrity shot with chai drink

Howard Schultz announces the new Teavana Oprah Chai Tea with Oprah Winfrey during the company's annual shareholders meeting in Seattle

Wed, Mar 19 2014
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp will add a celebrity blend to its big tea push when it debuts “Oprah Chai,” a tea-based drink created by media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Read more of this post

Thailand in limbo after election annulled; economy suffering

Thailand in limbo after election annulled; economy suffering
8:42am EDT
By Amy Sawitta Lefevre
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Friday annulled last month’s general election, leaving the country in political limbo without a full government and further undermining a prime minister faced with impeachment over a failed rice subsidy scheme. Read more of this post

How Sony Learned That Product Features Don’t Matter; How Empathy and Evolution Worked Side-by-Side

HOW SONY LEARNED THAT PRODUCT FEATURES DON’T MATTER
SONY’S FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF BRAND AND STRATEGY DENISE LEE YOHN WRITES ABOUT HOW EMPATHY AND EVOLUTION WORKED SIDE-BY-SIDE AS THE COMPANY CHANGED WITH THE TIMES–AND WITH CONSUMER’S NEEDS.
BY DENISE LEE YOHN
By putting you in close contact with the private lives of your customers, empathic research helps you see your product through the eyes of someone with values, concerns, and emotional triggers that are different from your own. Read more of this post

A Pre-Fab Bamboo Bicycle, Grown from the Ground in Bike Shape

A PRE-FAB BAMBOO BICYCLE, GROWN FROM THE GROUND IN BIKE SHAPE
THE AJIRO–A CONCEPT FROM AUSTRALIA–WOULD COME FROM THE EARTH FULLY FORMED. IS THIS THE FIRST STEP FOR A SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING ECONOMY?
BY MATTHEW BATTLES

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Another bamboo bicycle? Yes–but the vehicle devised by Alexander Vittouris departs from the funky, tiki-bar-friendly lines made from this sustainable, globally ubiquitous grass. A design student at Australia’s Monash University, Vittouris envisions a bicycle that isn’t built, but grown–the bamboo stalks of the frame being trained into shape while the plant is growing. Inspired by arborsculpture, in which tree branches are fixed in expressive shapes that they take as the plant grows, Vittouris wants to develop a reusable framework that would shape bamboo into nearly finished bicycles. Read more of this post

New Owner Gives Wings to Pilgrim’s Pride Turnaround; Brazil’s JBS Plucks Record Profit Just Four Years After Bankruptcy

New Owner Gives Wings to Pilgrim’s Pride Turnaround
Brazil’s JBS Plucks Record Profit Just Four Years After Bankruptcy
DAVID KESMODEL
March 20, 2014 5:34 p.m. ET

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ATHENS, Ga.—A system of rotating metal blades slicing into chicken legs at Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.’s sprawling plant here helps illustrate why the company is carving out record profits four years after emerging from bankruptcy. Read more of this post

Latest Insider-Trading Case Highlights Law Firms’ Risks

Latest Insider-Trading Case Highlights Law Firms’ Risks
JENNIFER SMITH
March 20, 2014 8:23 p.m. ET
Clients rely on big law firms to safeguard all manner of secrets, from intellectual property to confidential information about big-ticket mergers. Read more of this post

Medical Device Recalls Nearly Doubled in a Decade; Sharp Increase Where Defective Product Carried Reasonable Probability of Death, FDA Says

Medical Device Recalls Nearly Doubled in a Decade
Sharp Increase Where Defective Product Carried Reasonable Probability of Death, FDA Says
THOMAS M. BURTON
March 21, 2014 12:06 a.m. ET
Recalls of defective medical devices nearly doubled in the decade from 2003 through 2012, according to a Food and Drug Administration report due Friday. Read more of this post

Hard Choices in Pursuit of Rare-Disease Cures; Patients Urge More Data Gathering as Tighter Federal Budget Crimps Research

Hard Choices in Pursuit of Rare-Disease Cures
Patients Urge More Data Gathering as Tighter Federal Budget Crimps Research
AMY DOCKSER MARCUS
March 20, 2014 7:28 p.m. ET
BETHESDA, Md.—Last month, at the National Institutes of Health clinical center here, Sarah Kucharski and Fran Saplis set up a table at a Rare Disease Day event. The plan was to hand out pens and brochures about fibromuscular dysplasia, which affects the arteries and can cause complications such as high blood pressure and aneurysms. Read more of this post

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