Oddly Relevant Dec-12-2012

Wallflowers of Silicon Valley Get Asked to Dance: and that’s after the social platforms’ heat start sizzling out: (1) mobile security that wraps around employees’ personal iPhones and Android devices; (2) new storage methods such as flash memories; (3) large scale data mining analytics; (4) digital wallets and (5) mobile concierge that allows user to do whatever at their fingertips. [Note: ultimately it’s the organic and rational demands that make companies money]…Source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/wallflowers-of-silicon-valley-get-asked-to-dance/

Income inequality in 16 charts: Income growth in middle classes stalled in 2000 and started falling in 2007, as compensation lags improvements in productivity. Most of the gain goes to the top 1% (nearly 40% of total income) all amidst unionization rate drops. [Note: I don’t see the problem as long as productivity keeps rising—stagnating income is one thing, the improvement of standard of living is another]…Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/a-giant-statistical-round-up-of-the-income-inequality-crisis-in-16-charts/266074/

How Arab’s financial sector is evolving: as Western banks scale back under pressure, the Arab Spring sees (1) monumental shift towards local and Asian banks and government finance, (2) more mergers to achieve economy of scale, (3) inexorable widening of the so-called New Silk Road, (4) potential opportunities in infrastructure investing. The most bullish estimates suggest that trade between China and the UAE alone could more than treble to about $100bn over the next three years. [Note: This is quite a surprise to me; I thought the Chinese had little business in Arabian countries.]…Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/057df690-42cf-11e2-a4e4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EtnGpEsZ

Google Fiber is NOT an experiment, it’s a business: so Schmidt says: Just in case you missed the Kansas debut, it’s 100x faster, only costs $70, and very easy to install. Schmidt hinted at expansions but dodged all important questions. Goldman estimates that it’d take $70 bn to bring the service to 50 million homes (half of US), while Google currently has $45 million on hand. [Note: it’s not if, it’s when. A much-faster internet infrastructure is definitely happening, and I’m all for Google doing it]…Source: http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/google-fiber-not-just-kansas-city/

$100,000 price by GE to ease the airline problem: flight delay/cancellation is not only a common and frustrating problem for passengers, but apparently it costs the airline industry $22 bn annually too. GE is trying to find an algorithm to deliver real-time flight plan intelligence to pilots—via crowd-sourcing in Kaggle. [Note: the website is worth checking out, essentially a host of competitions for best statistic solutions to real problems]…Source : http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/12/crowdsourcing-airline-delays/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Interesting