Copenhagen has admitted
Danish warships were responsible for the sinking of the Russian
frigate Czar Putin in the Arctic Sea. The commander of the Danish
Destroyer Prince
Frederik declared the vessel was in Danish territorial waters
off the coast of Greenland and had ignored multiple warnings.
The Danish press release also stated it regretted the sinking of
the ship and the loss of the Russian crew and that first shots were
meant as deterrence only. Once the Russians started returning fire
there was no other option than to target the ship itself, concluded
the press release. Russian warships of the Northern
Fleet are steaming up towards the area from bases all over
Russia while the US is doing the same to come the aid of their
Danish ally. (cont.)
Cellular phones continue to follow Moore’s law and
technologically grow in power each year. Inventive individuals
continue to fund new ways to harness this power into other
industries such as movie making, music broadcasting, and now real
estate.
According to a
Cincinnati real estate blog, cellular phones are becoming a
useful real estate tool. The smart phone and txt enabled phones can
send short codes found on real estate signs to gain basic
information on the price, square footage, and other basics. Going
forward smart phones will be able to download virtual tours and
potentially schematics on homes yet to be built.
I would look to fashion as the next major venue to pick up the
smart phone as an outlet. The ability to capture style in an image
and then have garments found or custom made could drive fashion
sales. Look to houses such as Zara and H&M to be quick adopters of this model
since their factory is already designed for fast turn around.
With crude oil hovering at an all-time high of $130/gallon
people all over the globe are feeling the pain and starting to
react in different ways.
Some are finally choosing to drive less frequently.
CNNreports
that “compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an
estimated 4.3 percent less—that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the
DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said
Monday, calling it ‘the sharpest yearly drop for any month in
FHWA history.’”
Others are increasingly making the
switch to higher-mileage and hybrid vehicles.
In Europe, where environmental taxes roughly double the cost of
gas, groups of French and British workers are demanding public
assistance by
staging protests .
A few particularly pinched and pro-active folks in rural regions
are shifting around their work week and travel schedule. According
to the
Wall Street Journal “a handful of small towns and community
colleges are switching to four-day workweeks in an effort to help
employees cope with the rising gasoline prices, and could soon be
joined by some larger local governments.”
With the
rapid rise of the iPhone and Microsoft’s
announcement that it will back the One Laptop per Child initiative, a massive
battle for the African computer market may be shaping up sooner
than expected.
The
AP reports a new deal between Apple and cell provider
Orange that
will bring the iPhone to “Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic,
Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland
and African markets later this year.”
Though the iPhone presently costs more than a OLPC PC, $399 vs. $100, that price is due to sharply
drop (perhaps to the $100 -$200 range) with the imminent release of
the new 3G iPhone, which itself may be priced at just $199 if
rumors
about a hefty AT&T subsidy prove correct.
While lack of comm infrastructure and politics will certainly
remain the primary barriers to diffusion, it looks as though these
low-cost yet high-value products, driven by large companies getting
accustomed to rapidly exploding markets in which first-mover
advantage is critical, may catalyze a perfect storm for
connectivity in under-developed nations, most notably African
countries. (cont.)
Google Inc, the uncontested leader in Internet services
announced it has shipped its 5 millionth “free” computer, only 14
months after starting up the “Free Computer Program”. The Google
Product Manager, Pierre Lindsely, stated he is overwhelmed by the
success of his project and they are trying very hard to keep up
with demand.
People now have to wait more than three weeks to get their
“G-Tops”, as they have become known as, instead of the three days
when the program started. Pierre Lindsely: “People will wait for
anything if it’s free, so I am not worried that this will impact
the enthusiasm for this product. We are attracting some new
suppliers and we will see the waiting time decrease gradually.” The
free Google computers come with a free broadband connection that
connects only to Google WI-FI hubs (aka as G-Spots). (cont.)
Futurist Patrick Dixon predicts that
widespread emotional pressure will fuel a $40 trillion industry
dedicated to the reduction of carbon emissions.
“We will see a 10x or even a 100x increase in the emotional
pressure on governments to take action on every aspect of global
warming,” says Dixon, “It will affect the decisions consumers make.
It will affect the opinions that they hold. It will affect the
image of multi-nationals, and I’m not just talking about oil
companies – I’m talking about banks … shipping companies …
airlines. Every company in the world will be called on to justify
its carbon footprint.”
If the near-term future validates Dixon’s opinions then we’re
bound to witness great economic disruption that sucks a great deal
of market cap from established companies and infuses it into the
entities that can provide the most cost-effective solutions.
Depending on the timing and pacing of such a shift, and the
efficacy of the new technologies and methods that hit the market,
it seems we could experience anything ranging from a depression to
a boom.
Maybe it’s time to start hording those precious solar cells,
bury your money in a pit, or just live it up!
Breaking News – 9.35 AM NASDAQ Trading
house web service is down due to a non-confirm cyber attack. Stay
tunned for more details.
Breaking News – 9.55 AM A cyber attack
has been confirmed on NASDAQ trading
house. FBI will hold a press conference
at 10.30 AM
Breaking News – 10.15 AM Worst fears of cyber attack confirmed.
Billion of untraceable dollars feared missing.
The $1.5 billion scam was confirmed today by the FBI Director Malcolm Casey. He stated that in the
early hours of the morning, the carbon trading wing of the
NASDAQ was hijacked and billions of
dollars worth of transactions have been made on behalf of fake
energy companies. The attack lasted for less than 10 minutes when
the web security team picked up the intrusion. While more then a
billion dollars have been recovered in reverse transactions, more
then $250 million have been lost.
Director Casey has also stated that the notorious hacker
community claimed responsibility for this latest attack, warning
them that responsible parties will be found and brought to justice.
Shortly after his speech a chain email circulated the globe with
the simple message – “Crime Pays”.
Futurist Patrick Dixon compellingly argues
that the global economic environment is ripe for Chinese investment
in bargain priced banks and U.S. property holdings:
Dixon asserts that it is in U.S. interests to allow direct
Chinese investment, lest the rising economy allocate its money
elsewhere.
He also expects sovereign wealth fund managers representing
other powerhouse economies to diversify into technology,
pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, mining and oil industry if prices
continue to fall.
Futurist Patrick Dixon argues that the
current sub-prime mortgage crisis is likely to further discourage
the UK from joining the European Union currency bloc any time
soon:
Fostering the development of leading edge innovations is
becoming harder than ever. Paradigms such as Moore’s Law, the law
that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles
every two years, have become increasingly harder to achieve.
Even the greatest tech giants such as Intel and IBM have found that there resources are tapped, and
that r&d efforts are becoming increasingly difficult to carry
out alone. This presented a problem for corporations engaged in
tech innovation, since collaboration involves sharing knowledge and
even valuable trade secrets. Companies such as IBM took the plunge however, joining with other
companies and universities in an effort to enhance their r&d
capabilities. Did companies such as IBM
lose their competitive advantage through collaboration? In fact
what they found was that it was greatly increased. (IBM now turns
out more patents a day than any other corporation on the
planet.)
Collaboration centers, syndicates that bring together a wide
variety of public and private institutions under one roof, have
become the platforms for the type of innovation described above.
Often located in and around universities, these centers are growing
at an astounding rate, and attracting billions of dollars in
investment.
This Future Fiction piece was cross-posted from the
blogFuture Feeds.
TechnoTraveller, the Tokyo company that was making furor on the
stock markets for the last months has recalled all of its 12
million Electro-suits after a teenager was found dead in a Tokyo
park. The unfortunate youngster’s solar electro-suit, while powering his
laptop, cell phone, iZune and Thermo-sweater malfunctioned and
directed all the sun-powered energy to the Thermo-sweater. Built-in
feedback systems that should have prevented such an event did not
work appropriately and the Thermo-sweater function will from now on
be disabled in the product, a TechnoTraveller spokesperson declared
in a company press bulletin.
The company’s hot selling item was the driving force behind
TechnoTraveller’s dethroning of Google as Wall Street’s darling
finding a need for cheap power on the road to fuel all electronic
portable devices and warming people in cold climates by using
high-efficient solar fuel cells weaved into a suit. TechnoTraveller
stocks plummeted by more than 55%. The press bulletin further
stated that although the recall will decrease profits and losing
the Thermo-sweater feature will impact sales, there is no need for
panic by shareholders and the future of solar clothing is still
looking bright. The Tokyo coroner performing the autopsy is still
trying to establish whether the cause of death was sixth-degree
burns or electrocution.
In this recent hand-held video, Futurist David Orban asks Nobel Prize
winning economist and game theorist Robert Aumann how
society needs to adjust to accelerating technology change. Aumann
generally responds that because technological choices are so
complex we need figure out how best to constrain our options
because people have neither the time nor the desire to be experts
in all areas.
youngster’s solar electro-suit, while powering his
laptop, cell phone, iZune and Thermo-sweater malfunctioned and
directed all the sun-powered energy to the Thermo-sweater. Built-in
feedback systems that should have prevented such an event did not
work appropriately and the Thermo-sweater function will from now on
be disabled in the product, a TechnoTraveller spokesperson declared
in a company press bulletin.