The worldwide economy is going through a fundamental shift from local markets to a global market. Technology of all kinds is driving it, from production to distribution, and especially in advertising.
Advertising revenue on the internet will grow from a little under 5% of all advertising dollars to over 10% in the next 4 years.
"The firm now expects the global online ad market to grow at a 25 percent clip annually for the next five years, up from a previous forecast in the low 20 percent range.
In the next year the Wall Street firm expects the online ad market to grow to $26.4 billion worldwide and to $33.2 billion in 2007.
Forrester Research, meanwhile, said that those who have the Internet are spending more than 30 percent of their media time nowadays online, a metric that prompted JMP to increase its market share expectations for Internet advertising in the U.S.
JMP now expects online advertising at $13.2 billion in the United States this year, or 4.7 percent of total advertising revenue, to soar to $35.9 billion in 2010, when the Internet will command 11.1 percent of all ad dollars spent."
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
US Immigrations statistics
"Nearly 7.9 million immigrants - about half of them believed to be illegal - settled in the United States between January 2000 and 2005, boosting the total number of immigrants in the nation to 35.2 million, the study said.
About 1.8 million immigrants during that period entered California, more than any other state, according to the study by the D.C.-based think tank that favors immigration control and analyzed Census Bureau data.
'The 35.2 million immigrants living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded - 2 1/2 times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910,' said Steven Camarota, the center's director of research."
About 1.8 million immigrants during that period entered California, more than any other state, according to the study by the D.C.-based think tank that favors immigration control and analyzed Census Bureau data.
'The 35.2 million immigrants living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded - 2 1/2 times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910,' said Steven Camarota, the center's director of research."
Monday, December 12, 2005
The Open Source Office
Distribution of power in the marketplace can lead to multiplication of power for the leader instead of dilution of power. In today's open-information world, is there any other option? It seems to me the issue for leaders is how to motivate the hearts and minds of employees as collaborators rather than how to direct them as workers.
"In the old gray-flannel organization, the executive suite was where the action was. In what’s now known as the open-source workplace, power is distributed. The ceo is no longer omnipotent --and the truly effective ones don’t want to be. The best ideas may evolve from the bottom up and sometimes from the outside in. New technologies such as private workplace wikis and blogs are disrupting command-and-control corporate structures. Any employee can create, edit, refine, comment on, or fix an idea. What some used to dismiss as a recipe for chaos is more likely a path to greater productivity.
The workplace becomes more transparent as power and information are instant-ly shared.
"Companies are even reaching outside their ranks to the virtual commons. Online fan clubs help lego Group design toy kits, so they sell out fast with no marketing. Procter & Gamble executives tap the wisdom of online crowds at InnoCentive, a Web network of 80,000 scientists, to find solutions for problems that stump their own staff. Such “peer production,” as some call it, creates value out of social behavior. In the new office, products, business plans, and even meeting agendas are created collectively instead of individually. "
"In the old gray-flannel organization, the executive suite was where the action was. In what’s now known as the open-source workplace, power is distributed. The ceo is no longer omnipotent --and the truly effective ones don’t want to be. The best ideas may evolve from the bottom up and sometimes from the outside in. New technologies such as private workplace wikis and blogs are disrupting command-and-control corporate structures. Any employee can create, edit, refine, comment on, or fix an idea. What some used to dismiss as a recipe for chaos is more likely a path to greater productivity.
The workplace becomes more transparent as power and information are instant-ly shared.
"Companies are even reaching outside their ranks to the virtual commons. Online fan clubs help lego Group design toy kits, so they sell out fast with no marketing. Procter & Gamble executives tap the wisdom of online crowds at InnoCentive, a Web network of 80,000 scientists, to find solutions for problems that stump their own staff. Such “peer production,” as some call it, creates value out of social behavior. In the new office, products, business plans, and even meeting agendas are created collectively instead of individually. "
Best Ideas of 2005 - limits of geography
While physical separation is becoming less important with the universal implementation of communication technology, cultural distance becomes more and more significant as we increasingly work together with people of different backgrounds. Bridging those differences will become more and more crucial to success economically, socially, and politically.
"While the post-geographic world has made it possible for far-flung workers to collaborate like neighbors, there are challenges. Your Shanghai team members may be waking up just as the Chicago-based folks are going home--and London may need you online at 3 a.m. The result is a day that could conceivably span 24 hours, if the limits of human biology didn’t kick in. People must learn to work to the ebb and flow of their own schedule--and reach out in new ways. Though geography may have become less relevant, the need for community never goes away."
"While the post-geographic world has made it possible for far-flung workers to collaborate like neighbors, there are challenges. Your Shanghai team members may be waking up just as the Chicago-based folks are going home--and London may need you online at 3 a.m. The result is a day that could conceivably span 24 hours, if the limits of human biology didn’t kick in. People must learn to work to the ebb and flow of their own schedule--and reach out in new ways. Though geography may have become less relevant, the need for community never goes away."
Best Ideas of 2005 - Innovation
Concise and insightful commentary that can give leaders direction for the future:
"The Knowledge Economy is giving way to the Creative Economy. Information has become a commodity like coal or corn. People once thought that superiority in technology and information would ease the economic pain of outsourcing manufacturing to Asia. But it turns out that a good deal of knowhow--software writing, accounting, legal work, engineering--can be outsourced to places like India, China, and Eastern Europe, too.
"The solution: Focus on innovation and design as the new corporate core competencies. To prosper, companies have to constantly change the game in their industries by creating products and services that satisfy needs consumers don’t even know they have yet. That’s how loyalty is built. Mastering new design methods and learning new innovation metrics are the keys to corporate success, if not survival. Smart companies now have a senior-level executive charged with driving innovation or sparking creativity. Perhaps it’s even the CEO."
"The Knowledge Economy is giving way to the Creative Economy. Information has become a commodity like coal or corn. People once thought that superiority in technology and information would ease the economic pain of outsourcing manufacturing to Asia. But it turns out that a good deal of knowhow--software writing, accounting, legal work, engineering--can be outsourced to places like India, China, and Eastern Europe, too.
"The solution: Focus on innovation and design as the new corporate core competencies. To prosper, companies have to constantly change the game in their industries by creating products and services that satisfy needs consumers don’t even know they have yet. That’s how loyalty is built. Mastering new design methods and learning new innovation metrics are the keys to corporate success, if not survival. Smart companies now have a senior-level executive charged with driving innovation or sparking creativity. Perhaps it’s even the CEO."
Sunday, December 11, 2005
A New Idea in Outsourcing
This cracks me up! Today I read that gamers around the world can hire Chinese to play their games online for them in order to win points. What a concept - outsourcing your entertainment!
"'For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters,' said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. 'I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day.'
He and his comrades have created yet another new business out of cheap Chinese labor. They are tapping into the fast-growing world of 'massively multiplayer online games,' which involve role playing and often revolve around fantasy or warfare in medieval kingdoms or distant galaxies."
"'For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters,' said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. 'I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day.'
He and his comrades have created yet another new business out of cheap Chinese labor. They are tapping into the fast-growing world of 'massively multiplayer online games,' which involve role playing and often revolve around fantasy or warfare in medieval kingdoms or distant galaxies."
Reports of protests in China
There are now over 50,000 protests a year in China. Many different reasons, but the striking thing to me is the freedom people feel to protest, and the fact that the protests are reported. With today's communication technologies, events cannot be covered up even if the government wanted to.
"The state-run Xinhua News Agency said police opened fire on villagers in Dongzhou, a village in Guangdong province, after a mob formed a blockade on the road and began throwing explosives at officers. Three villagers were killed and eight were wounded, Xinhua said, quoting the Information Office of the neighboring city of Shanwei.
However, residents told The Associated Press that as many as 20 people were killed when police opened fire on a crowd of thousands protesting against inadequate compensation offered by the government for land to be used for the new power plant. Villagers said dozens of people were missing."
"The state-run Xinhua News Agency said police opened fire on villagers in Dongzhou, a village in Guangdong province, after a mob formed a blockade on the road and began throwing explosives at officers. Three villagers were killed and eight were wounded, Xinhua said, quoting the Information Office of the neighboring city of Shanwei.
However, residents told The Associated Press that as many as 20 people were killed when police opened fire on a crowd of thousands protesting against inadequate compensation offered by the government for land to be used for the new power plant. Villagers said dozens of people were missing."
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Satellite facts
Interesting to know how many satellites are up there, and where they come from. As much as we hear about the Chinese catching up in the space race, right now the numbers are pretty lopsided.
It will continue to change, though. I remember talking with a satellite tracker 25 years ago, and asking him how to know where the satellites come from. His answer? There's only 2 guys up there.
"The United States has 413 satellites in space snooping for the government, checking on the weather and relaying the latest pop music, a new database says. That's more than the 382 the rest of the world has spinning above the Earth."
It will continue to change, though. I remember talking with a satellite tracker 25 years ago, and asking him how to know where the satellites come from. His answer? There's only 2 guys up there.
"The United States has 413 satellites in space snooping for the government, checking on the weather and relaying the latest pop music, a new database says. That's more than the 382 the rest of the world has spinning above the Earth."
When Laws Collide
5 Protesters in Singapore were bringing a lawsuit for having their protest broken up by the police. While they were a lawful assembly, the fact that they mentioned the case of a scandal of a charity in Singapore as cause for transparency in government agencies, was considered insulting and abusive, which, according to the judge, takes higher priority than the freedom of assembly.
He called their actions "tantamount to an insinuation of mismanagement and financial impropriety".
"The thrust of the protesters' case, argued by lawyer M Ravi, is that the Constitutional right of freedom of speech, assembly and association (Article 14) allows fewer than five persons to protest peacefully.
.
Justice Rajah's decision, however, hinges on the sections in the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act that deal with causing harassment, alarm or distress. Under this law, anyone who uses abusive or insulting words with the intent to harass can be found guilty of an offence."
He called their actions "tantamount to an insinuation of mismanagement and financial impropriety".
"The thrust of the protesters' case, argued by lawyer M Ravi, is that the Constitutional right of freedom of speech, assembly and association (Article 14) allows fewer than five persons to protest peacefully.
.
Justice Rajah's decision, however, hinges on the sections in the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act that deal with causing harassment, alarm or distress. Under this law, anyone who uses abusive or insulting words with the intent to harass can be found guilty of an offence."
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Another View from Down Under
Last week Singapore hung a convicted drug smuggler from Australia. Leading up to the execution, there was a lot of attention in the news to the pleas by various Australian officials for leniency in his case.
Today the front page of a local Singapore paper ran a different story - an editorial by an Australian bemoaning the tragic effects of lenient sentencing in their country and asking if that really protrays a higher view of the sanctity of life than does a society that takes justice more seriously.
Western liberal societies have to seriously grapple with these questions of values. Whether or not their civil liberties are worth the cost of high crime and other social costs. And whether they can really sustain the freedom of those civil liberties, when the undergirding system of moral values based on Judeo-Christian teaching (which resulted in moral restraint from personal religious convictions and group religious pressure) have been largely stripped away.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the liberal civil liberty movements that wanted to bring freedom from religion and its strict moral codes to modern society, ended up being responsible for the move toward more severe authoritarian governments out of a need to provide more protection to citizens from the runaway expression of immoral behavior?
"The results of our moral relativism and revolving-door justice can be seen everywhere — bars on windows, security doors, a general loss of trust, an often demoralised police force, an entrenched heroin sub-culture dominated at the bottom by glassy-eyed cretins and at the top by double-talking ideologues."
Today the front page of a local Singapore paper ran a different story - an editorial by an Australian bemoaning the tragic effects of lenient sentencing in their country and asking if that really protrays a higher view of the sanctity of life than does a society that takes justice more seriously.
Western liberal societies have to seriously grapple with these questions of values. Whether or not their civil liberties are worth the cost of high crime and other social costs. And whether they can really sustain the freedom of those civil liberties, when the undergirding system of moral values based on Judeo-Christian teaching (which resulted in moral restraint from personal religious convictions and group religious pressure) have been largely stripped away.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the liberal civil liberty movements that wanted to bring freedom from religion and its strict moral codes to modern society, ended up being responsible for the move toward more severe authoritarian governments out of a need to provide more protection to citizens from the runaway expression of immoral behavior?
"The results of our moral relativism and revolving-door justice can be seen everywhere — bars on windows, security doors, a general loss of trust, an often demoralised police force, an entrenched heroin sub-culture dominated at the bottom by glassy-eyed cretins and at the top by double-talking ideologues."
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