GOLF JOURNAL
By JOHN PAUL NEWPORT
The Drive to Drive
Putting? Bah. Why Everyone Digs the Long Ball
May 10, 2008;
The advice from instructors is universal: To lower your scores, work on your short game. Two-thirds of all shots, they point out, inarguably, are from 100 yards and in. That's the scoring zone. Driving is important, yes, but only as a means of placing the ball safely into play and setting up your approach shots. Straining to boom extra-long drives is counterproductive, they say, if it's coupled with a falloff in accuracy. Those long 46-inch-plus shafts that come standard in modern drivers are two inches too long for most players; the extra length may generate more clubhead speed, and thus distance, but with an unacceptable loss of control.
All of this is true. True, true, true.
On the other hand, the heck with it. There's nothing in golf -- and very little in life generally -- as deeply thrilling as knocking the bejeebers out of a golf ball and watching it soar away, gravity-free, as things normally soar only in dreams.
To look at drives merely as a means of putting your ball in the fairway is like looking at food merely as a means of getting nutrition. Maybe that works for you if you're a strict ascetic, or a Tour player trying to earn a living. But most golfers live for the long ball. Who wouldn't happily exchange an arching 300-yard beauty off the tee, even if it leads to a double bogey, for a 210-yard squibbler leading to a par? Not many, I suspect, except perhaps reluctantly on the final hole of a big-money match.
We love big drives for at least a couple of reasons. The first is the sheer intoxicating pleasure of catching one pure. Even for someone whose long drive is only 200 yards, if that's 50 yards longer than normal, it's a kick. The power seems to come from nowhere. When all the levers of the swing fire in rare perfect sequence, the ball explodes off the clubface and seems to hang in the air forever. For most of us that sensation, when we first experienced it, marks the moment golf got us in its stranglehold.
And there's no question this feeling excites women as much as men. Jim McMahon, an instructor at the range I often go to north of New York City, said that more than one of his female students, when she first connected with a clean, perfect drive, used terms to describe it that, shall we say, made him blush.
We also love monster drives because, however courteously administered, they are violent, aggressive acts, and there's always satisfaction in that. To smash a drive with all your might is to dish some serious hurt. Watching John Daly wind up and crush ball after ball over the practice-range fence may not be the catharsis that some people find in watching a wrecking ball take down a building, but it's close. It's primal and awesome. And it makes us even happier when we're the one delivering the blow successfully and not John Daly.
For men in particular, and some women, there's also the silverback-ape appeal of hitting a tee ball farther than anybody else. Women tend to bond, I'm told, around sharing experiences and finding common ground, whereas for men the subtext of any encounter is usually determining relative status. On the golf course, high status accrues to the long hitter. The low handicapper also enjoys status, but frequently his skills are the function of a country-club upbringing, or wonkish practice regimes, which impose a discount. The long hitter's aura is animal and immutable, more like that of the former college athlete. A guy may now be a CEO or a brain surgeon, but if he played linebacker at Notre Dame, that's still going to be the first thing most guys think about him.
Golfers hell-bent on learning to hit the ball deep spend lots of time at the driving range, usually ignoring the golden rule of golf practice (that nonsense above about focusing on the short game). It can get pretty ugly: beefy guys lunging at the ball, all muscle and no timing; kids with helicopter backswings and out-their-socks finishes; the majority who, despite flailing and grunting for all they are worth, squander power by swinging mainly with their arms and finishing on their back foot instead of on the front. But everyone connects every once in a while, soaking up the Pavlovian reinforcement they need to carry on. It's a noble, comic battle.
I've had a chance over the years to talk to several long-hitting Tour pros about their skills. None of them claim any special technique. Most said simply that they were always able to hit the ball longer than their peers. "It's just a gift," said 2005 U.S. Open champion Michael Campbell.
That said, they all agree that the one non-negotiable key to distance is hitting the ball square in the center of the clubface, and that to accomplish that consistently they try to feel as if they are swinging at less than full speed. Mr. Campbell uses 80% of full tilt as his goal, and others are in the same range. When the time comes for an extra-long poke on a given hole, their swing thought is often to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n, especially during the transition between backswing and forward swing.
This is the kind of analysis that most of us don't want to hear. It's too sensible and thus hopeless. Arnold Palmer's standard advice to young golfers is more appealing: "Hit it hard," he says. This strikes me as just right, so that's what I'm going with.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Dubious economic data from China
Economics focus
An aberrant abacus
May 1st 2008
From The Economist print edition
Coming to terms with China's untrustworthy economic numbers
AS CHINA'S importance in the global economy increases, investors are paying more attention to its economic numbers. Yet the country's official statistics are notoriously ropy. Some commentators accuse China's government of overstating GDP growth for political reasons, others complain that the official inflation rate is fraudulently low. So which data can you trust?
One reason to be suspicious of GDP figures is that China is always one of the first countries to report them, usually only two weeks after the end of each quarter. Most developed economies take between four and six weeks to produce them.
Amazingly, most economists reckon that China has understated its growth in recent years. The country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has recently revised China's GDP growth up by half a percentage point for both 2006 and 2007, to 11.6% and 11.9% respectively, thanks to stronger growth in services, which government statisticians find harder to count than industry. Yet even these revised numbers may be conservative.
Chinese provinces independently report GDP, and a weighted average of their figures consistently gives higher rates of output and growth than those reported by the central government (see chart). True, local officials have an incentive to inflate growth numbers because promotion depends upon economic performance; however, experience suggests that number crunchers in local government are more accurate than Beijing's. For instance, the figures first published for 2004 showed that the sum of the provincial GDPs was 19% bigger than the reported national figure. Lo and behold, in 2005, after a national economic census picked up more services, the NBS revised its GDP up by 17%; it also lifted the annual growth rate over the previous decade.
Stephen Green, an economist at Standard Chartered, calculates that in 2007 the combined output of the provinces was 10% more than that reported by Beijing. Their average growth rate of 13.1% was also still 1.2 percentage points higher than the revised national growth rate, although the gap has narrowed from almost three points in 2005. Perhaps, suggests Mr Green, central NBS folk have decided that they should trust their local counterparts more. But just as local officials have an incentive to inflate numbers, so Beijing has had reason recently to understate them: it wants to slow the red-hot economy. China's true GDP growth may therefore be higher still—which may appear to add to fears of overheating.
Distrust of GDP has led many China-watchers to track alternative monthly measures of growth. Jonathan Anderson at UBS uses one based on production (eg, industry, electricity and construction) and another based on expenditure (retail sales, fixed investment and net exports). Neither gauge shows the same sharp acceleration since 2004-05 as does GDP. One explanation is that the reported jump in GDP growth may be an attempt to correct previously understated growth figures; if so, this could ease overheating concerns.
The government also smoothes quarterly GDP growth; other less politically sensitive indicators, such as industrial production, are much more volatile. For instance, despite severe snow storms and weaker net exports, first-quarter GDP growth slowed by less than expected and by much less than did industrial production. The government may well have made the figures look stronger to avoid criticism of its tighter credit policy.
What does—and does not—add up
The right-hand chart ranks the reliability of other Chinese statistics, based on an analysis by Goldman Sachs. The closely watched figures for fixed-asset investment are among the least reliable. They include purchases of land, which only reflect changes in ownership, not an increase in capacity or value added. Rising land prices in recent years have therefore led to a big overstatement of the level and the growth of investment. In contrast, consumer spending is almost certainly much higher and growing faster than official figures suggest. Retail sales are often used as a proxy for private consumption, but they exclude services, the fastest-growing slice of households' budgets.
China's true inflation rate is probably higher than the consumer-price index (CPI) reports. One problem is that the CPI appears to be based on the prices of state-provided health, transport and education while ignoring their increasingly important private counterparts. Data for 36 cities collected by the National Development and Reform Commission show that inflation for medical care and education has been running at 5-10% since 2001, well above the 1-2% reported in the CPI. However, even if the official measure understates inflation, the changes in it may still be a fair gauge over time. Goldman Sachs therefore ranks it relatively high in terms of reliability.
Foreign trade is perhaps the most accurate economic indicator. Critics accuse China of fiddling its trade figures, because the value of its exports as measured by the importing country is always much bigger than what the Chinese report. This discrepancy reflects the fact that China's bilateral trade figures exclude goods shipped to Hong Kong before being re-exported. But this should not affect total export figures and detailed Hong Kong data are available to adjust bilateral trade flows.
The prize for the dodgiest figures goes to the labour market. The quarterly urban unemployment rate is meaningless because it excludes workers laid off by state-owned firms as well as large numbers of migrant workers, who normally live in urban areas but are not registered. Wage figures are also lousy. There has recently been much concern about the faster pace of increase in average urban earnings. But this series does not cover private firms, which are where most jobs have been created in recent years.
Now that China is such an engine of global growth, it urgently needs to improve its economic data. Only a madman would drive a juggernaut at full speed with a faulty speedometer, a cracked rear-view mirror and a misty windscreen.
An aberrant abacus
May 1st 2008
From The Economist print edition
Coming to terms with China's untrustworthy economic numbers
AS CHINA'S importance in the global economy increases, investors are paying more attention to its economic numbers. Yet the country's official statistics are notoriously ropy. Some commentators accuse China's government of overstating GDP growth for political reasons, others complain that the official inflation rate is fraudulently low. So which data can you trust?
One reason to be suspicious of GDP figures is that China is always one of the first countries to report them, usually only two weeks after the end of each quarter. Most developed economies take between four and six weeks to produce them.
Amazingly, most economists reckon that China has understated its growth in recent years. The country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has recently revised China's GDP growth up by half a percentage point for both 2006 and 2007, to 11.6% and 11.9% respectively, thanks to stronger growth in services, which government statisticians find harder to count than industry. Yet even these revised numbers may be conservative.
Chinese provinces independently report GDP, and a weighted average of their figures consistently gives higher rates of output and growth than those reported by the central government (see chart). True, local officials have an incentive to inflate growth numbers because promotion depends upon economic performance; however, experience suggests that number crunchers in local government are more accurate than Beijing's. For instance, the figures first published for 2004 showed that the sum of the provincial GDPs was 19% bigger than the reported national figure. Lo and behold, in 2005, after a national economic census picked up more services, the NBS revised its GDP up by 17%; it also lifted the annual growth rate over the previous decade.
Stephen Green, an economist at Standard Chartered, calculates that in 2007 the combined output of the provinces was 10% more than that reported by Beijing. Their average growth rate of 13.1% was also still 1.2 percentage points higher than the revised national growth rate, although the gap has narrowed from almost three points in 2005. Perhaps, suggests Mr Green, central NBS folk have decided that they should trust their local counterparts more. But just as local officials have an incentive to inflate numbers, so Beijing has had reason recently to understate them: it wants to slow the red-hot economy. China's true GDP growth may therefore be higher still—which may appear to add to fears of overheating.
Distrust of GDP has led many China-watchers to track alternative monthly measures of growth. Jonathan Anderson at UBS uses one based on production (eg, industry, electricity and construction) and another based on expenditure (retail sales, fixed investment and net exports). Neither gauge shows the same sharp acceleration since 2004-05 as does GDP. One explanation is that the reported jump in GDP growth may be an attempt to correct previously understated growth figures; if so, this could ease overheating concerns.
The government also smoothes quarterly GDP growth; other less politically sensitive indicators, such as industrial production, are much more volatile. For instance, despite severe snow storms and weaker net exports, first-quarter GDP growth slowed by less than expected and by much less than did industrial production. The government may well have made the figures look stronger to avoid criticism of its tighter credit policy.
What does—and does not—add up
The right-hand chart ranks the reliability of other Chinese statistics, based on an analysis by Goldman Sachs. The closely watched figures for fixed-asset investment are among the least reliable. They include purchases of land, which only reflect changes in ownership, not an increase in capacity or value added. Rising land prices in recent years have therefore led to a big overstatement of the level and the growth of investment. In contrast, consumer spending is almost certainly much higher and growing faster than official figures suggest. Retail sales are often used as a proxy for private consumption, but they exclude services, the fastest-growing slice of households' budgets.
China's true inflation rate is probably higher than the consumer-price index (CPI) reports. One problem is that the CPI appears to be based on the prices of state-provided health, transport and education while ignoring their increasingly important private counterparts. Data for 36 cities collected by the National Development and Reform Commission show that inflation for medical care and education has been running at 5-10% since 2001, well above the 1-2% reported in the CPI. However, even if the official measure understates inflation, the changes in it may still be a fair gauge over time. Goldman Sachs therefore ranks it relatively high in terms of reliability.
Foreign trade is perhaps the most accurate economic indicator. Critics accuse China of fiddling its trade figures, because the value of its exports as measured by the importing country is always much bigger than what the Chinese report. This discrepancy reflects the fact that China's bilateral trade figures exclude goods shipped to Hong Kong before being re-exported. But this should not affect total export figures and detailed Hong Kong data are available to adjust bilateral trade flows.
The prize for the dodgiest figures goes to the labour market. The quarterly urban unemployment rate is meaningless because it excludes workers laid off by state-owned firms as well as large numbers of migrant workers, who normally live in urban areas but are not registered. Wage figures are also lousy. There has recently been much concern about the faster pace of increase in average urban earnings. But this series does not cover private firms, which are where most jobs have been created in recent years.
Now that China is such an engine of global growth, it urgently needs to improve its economic data. Only a madman would drive a juggernaut at full speed with a faulty speedometer, a cracked rear-view mirror and a misty windscreen.
Cool!
Innovation
Home invention
May 1st 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
An increasing number of tinkerers are building their own gadgets
THE standard sort of science fair can be a little bit stuffy. Precocious youngsters with a taste for laboratory notebooks spend years building experiments to compete for college scholarships. But what happens if you open the doors to a wider audience and add a bit of fun?
Such an event might look like the Maker Faire, a two-day festival which opens in San Mateo, California, on May 3rd. Like its more serious counterparts, it is a gathering of geeks, but with the addition of do-it-yourself enthusiasts, back-yard scientists, garage tinkerers, artists and crafts people. This year their eclectic projects will include fire-breathing robots, wearable computers, self-replicating three-dimensional printers (whatever they are) and giant motorised cupcakes. And everyone will be encouraged to get their hands dirty building their own electric circuits, creating their own fashion goods and launching their own rockets.
This is the third year for the Maker Faire. Last year, more than 40,000 people turned up and a further 20,000 attended a second event held for the first time that year in Austin, Texas.
The idea of playing around with technology in such a way might appear quirky, even superfluous. But nowadays it often drives innovation, says Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, a publishing company whose Make and Craft magazines sponsor the event. Mr O'Reilly is something of a technology guru himself and is widely credited with coining the term Web 2.0 to capture the trend towards greater creativity, information sharing and collaboration among internet users.
Naturally, this all goes down well in California, where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak began the personal-computer revolution in a garage, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page dreamed up Google's algorithms while in graduate school. But the idea is spreading. Mr O'Reilly points to several trends responsible for the rising popularity of do-it-yourself innovation. First, computers, sensors and other bits are cheaper than ever. This means high-tech gadgets soon become disposable. So they are often plundered to build new things. An obsolete digital camera can, for instance, be attached to a kite for aerial photography; or with few more things and the innards of a satellite-navigation system become a small unmanned aerial vehicle.
The second trend is that the internet is enabling people from all over the world to share information about their projects. Websites like Instructables.com and wikiHow.com have become popular virtual meeting places for inventors and others. They embrace the idea that you should freely share technological ideas—an approach known as “open source”. This began in computer software but is now going on with all sorts of technologies.
Addie Wagenknecht's project is typical. At the fair she is showing a multi-touch table which works like a computer screen. The device has some of the same features as a table-top device called Surface which is produced by Microsoft. But whereas that costs some $10,000, Ms Wagenknecht's version can be built with only $500 of bits (including a kit that she sells). And it has the potential to do much more, she says. Since both the hardware and the software are open-source, anyone can change things to suit their purpose, which like most things at the fair is bound to encourage even more innovation.
Home invention
May 1st 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
An increasing number of tinkerers are building their own gadgets
THE standard sort of science fair can be a little bit stuffy. Precocious youngsters with a taste for laboratory notebooks spend years building experiments to compete for college scholarships. But what happens if you open the doors to a wider audience and add a bit of fun?
Such an event might look like the Maker Faire, a two-day festival which opens in San Mateo, California, on May 3rd. Like its more serious counterparts, it is a gathering of geeks, but with the addition of do-it-yourself enthusiasts, back-yard scientists, garage tinkerers, artists and crafts people. This year their eclectic projects will include fire-breathing robots, wearable computers, self-replicating three-dimensional printers (whatever they are) and giant motorised cupcakes. And everyone will be encouraged to get their hands dirty building their own electric circuits, creating their own fashion goods and launching their own rockets.
This is the third year for the Maker Faire. Last year, more than 40,000 people turned up and a further 20,000 attended a second event held for the first time that year in Austin, Texas.
The idea of playing around with technology in such a way might appear quirky, even superfluous. But nowadays it often drives innovation, says Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, a publishing company whose Make and Craft magazines sponsor the event. Mr O'Reilly is something of a technology guru himself and is widely credited with coining the term Web 2.0 to capture the trend towards greater creativity, information sharing and collaboration among internet users.
Naturally, this all goes down well in California, where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak began the personal-computer revolution in a garage, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page dreamed up Google's algorithms while in graduate school. But the idea is spreading. Mr O'Reilly points to several trends responsible for the rising popularity of do-it-yourself innovation. First, computers, sensors and other bits are cheaper than ever. This means high-tech gadgets soon become disposable. So they are often plundered to build new things. An obsolete digital camera can, for instance, be attached to a kite for aerial photography; or with few more things and the innards of a satellite-navigation system become a small unmanned aerial vehicle.
The second trend is that the internet is enabling people from all over the world to share information about their projects. Websites like Instructables.com and wikiHow.com have become popular virtual meeting places for inventors and others. They embrace the idea that you should freely share technological ideas—an approach known as “open source”. This began in computer software but is now going on with all sorts of technologies.
Addie Wagenknecht's project is typical. At the fair she is showing a multi-touch table which works like a computer screen. The device has some of the same features as a table-top device called Surface which is produced by Microsoft. But whereas that costs some $10,000, Ms Wagenknecht's version can be built with only $500 of bits (including a kit that she sells). And it has the potential to do much more, she says. Since both the hardware and the software are open-source, anyone can change things to suit their purpose, which like most things at the fair is bound to encourage even more innovation.
More on electric cars, interesting...
Canada
Not on our roads
May 1st 2008 | MONTREAL
From The Economist print edition
Bureaucrats against electric cars, and progress
IN THESE times of high petrol prices and worries about climate change, you might think that any country would be proud to enjoy a lead in manufacturing electric cars. Not Canada, it seems. Two Canadian companies, ZENN Motor Company and Dynasty Electric Car, make small electric cars designed for city use; a third, which will use new battery technology developed by Exxon Mobil, plans to launch a model later this year.
But almost all these “low-speed vehicles” (or LSVs) are exported to the United States because Canada refuses to allow their use on public roads. Transport Canada, the regulatory agency, questions their safety. It doubts they would stand up in a collision with a delivery truck or a sport utility vehicle. Officials say they crash-tested one which didn't fare well, though they refuse to release the data. The agency wants LSVs confined to “controlled areas”, such as university campuses, military bases, parks and Canada's few gated communities. Its advice has carried weight with the provinces, which make the rules of the road.
It is true that the cars are made from lightweight metals and plastics. But the manufacturers allege political bias: Stephen Harper's conservative government has much support in oil-rich Alberta. Backed by thousands of would-be buyers, they are campaigning to reverse the agency's decision. “It's a ludicrous regulatory situation. All you can point to is oil and the big guys and think there's a conspiracy somewhere,” says Danny Epp of Dynasty.
Mr Epp reckons that his car should be allowed on urban streets with speed limits of around 50kph (30mph) or less. But Dynasty recently gave up the battle. In March it announced that it is being bought by a Pakistani firm, which will move production to Karachi and export to the United States from there.
ZENN—that stands for zero emission, no noise—promises to fight on. Ian Clifford, its boss, points out that there has not been a single death related to LSVs in the United States, where 44 states allow them and some 45,000 such cars are in use. And gas-guzzlers imperil public safety by polluting the air, he notes. But Mr Clifford is not expecting change soon. He claims that his campaign against Transport Canada has made him enemies. “Two senior, entrenched bureaucrats have told me personally that if it is the last thing they do, they'll keep LSVs off the road in Canada,” he says.
Not on our roads
May 1st 2008 | MONTREAL
From The Economist print edition
Bureaucrats against electric cars, and progress
IN THESE times of high petrol prices and worries about climate change, you might think that any country would be proud to enjoy a lead in manufacturing electric cars. Not Canada, it seems. Two Canadian companies, ZENN Motor Company and Dynasty Electric Car, make small electric cars designed for city use; a third, which will use new battery technology developed by Exxon Mobil, plans to launch a model later this year.
But almost all these “low-speed vehicles” (or LSVs) are exported to the United States because Canada refuses to allow their use on public roads. Transport Canada, the regulatory agency, questions their safety. It doubts they would stand up in a collision with a delivery truck or a sport utility vehicle. Officials say they crash-tested one which didn't fare well, though they refuse to release the data. The agency wants LSVs confined to “controlled areas”, such as university campuses, military bases, parks and Canada's few gated communities. Its advice has carried weight with the provinces, which make the rules of the road.
It is true that the cars are made from lightweight metals and plastics. But the manufacturers allege political bias: Stephen Harper's conservative government has much support in oil-rich Alberta. Backed by thousands of would-be buyers, they are campaigning to reverse the agency's decision. “It's a ludicrous regulatory situation. All you can point to is oil and the big guys and think there's a conspiracy somewhere,” says Danny Epp of Dynasty.
Mr Epp reckons that his car should be allowed on urban streets with speed limits of around 50kph (30mph) or less. But Dynasty recently gave up the battle. In March it announced that it is being bought by a Pakistani firm, which will move production to Karachi and export to the United States from there.
ZENN—that stands for zero emission, no noise—promises to fight on. Ian Clifford, its boss, points out that there has not been a single death related to LSVs in the United States, where 44 states allow them and some 45,000 such cars are in use. And gas-guzzlers imperil public safety by polluting the air, he notes. But Mr Clifford is not expecting change soon. He claims that his campaign against Transport Canada has made him enemies. “Two senior, entrenched bureaucrats have told me personally that if it is the last thing they do, they'll keep LSVs off the road in Canada,” he says.
Electric cars
Electric cars rely on electricity. Electricity relies on coal/oil/gas burning, and is priced according to fossil fuel prices. So running an electric car would cost less than running on fuel? Would it pollute less? I'm not convinced. In fact going by the inefficiency of the energy conversion cycle I would think maybe it pollutes more....
Electric Nissans Planned in U.S. by 2010
By EDWARD TAYLOR
May 2, 2008; Page B2
CASCAIS, Portugal -- Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said he is preparing to take advantage of a "mass market" in electric vehicles he expects to emerge by 2012.
Nissan, an alliance partner of Renault SA of France, will launch electric vehicles in the U.S. and Japan in 2010, and globally by 2012, Mr. Ghosn said at a Nissan event in Portugal. He said he expects the market for electric vehicles to grow strongly due to high oil prices, a new awareness of environmental issues and breakthroughs in battery technology.
Eventually, Nissan "will have a whole lineup of electric cars," he said. "The electric car is not a niche product for us."
Mr. Ghosn said battery-technology advances have given the electric car sufficient range to make it a viable mode of transport for the shorter journeys often made by commuters in big cities. Globally about 10 million vehicles are being used in this way, he said.
High oil prices and the willingness of governments to give tax incentives for so-called zero-emission vehicles can change the economics of owning an electric car and make it "cheaper than gasoline," Mr. Ghosn said.
Nissan and Renault are in talks with "companies, governments and cities," to see what kind of incentives can make the introduction of zero-emission vehicles more attractive, he said.
Mr. Ghosn expects new areas of business will open as electric vehicles become more widespread, including making the batteries and providing access to batteries and electricity. Moving beyond merely making cars could see "a change of the business model" in the auto industry.
"In some ways it could move more toward how a mobile-phone operator works, because there the handset is only one part of the business; the rest is providing services to customers," said Mr. Ghosn.
One drawback of electric vehicles has been battery capacity, limiting their range. Another is that recharging a battery traditionally takes hours, far longer than to refuel a car with gasoline. Nissan and Renault are looking at ways to fix that. Renault will use a battery provided by Nissan for an electric vehicle to be launched in Israel, Mr. Ghosn said.
Mr. Ghosn reiterated that Nissan is open to expanding its alliance with Renault to other car companies, but he said that would happen only if it created value for Renault and Nissan's stakeholders.
Electric Nissans Planned in U.S. by 2010
By EDWARD TAYLOR
May 2, 2008; Page B2
CASCAIS, Portugal -- Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said he is preparing to take advantage of a "mass market" in electric vehicles he expects to emerge by 2012.
Nissan, an alliance partner of Renault SA of France, will launch electric vehicles in the U.S. and Japan in 2010, and globally by 2012, Mr. Ghosn said at a Nissan event in Portugal. He said he expects the market for electric vehicles to grow strongly due to high oil prices, a new awareness of environmental issues and breakthroughs in battery technology.
Eventually, Nissan "will have a whole lineup of electric cars," he said. "The electric car is not a niche product for us."
Mr. Ghosn said battery-technology advances have given the electric car sufficient range to make it a viable mode of transport for the shorter journeys often made by commuters in big cities. Globally about 10 million vehicles are being used in this way, he said.
High oil prices and the willingness of governments to give tax incentives for so-called zero-emission vehicles can change the economics of owning an electric car and make it "cheaper than gasoline," Mr. Ghosn said.
Nissan and Renault are in talks with "companies, governments and cities," to see what kind of incentives can make the introduction of zero-emission vehicles more attractive, he said.
Mr. Ghosn expects new areas of business will open as electric vehicles become more widespread, including making the batteries and providing access to batteries and electricity. Moving beyond merely making cars could see "a change of the business model" in the auto industry.
"In some ways it could move more toward how a mobile-phone operator works, because there the handset is only one part of the business; the rest is providing services to customers," said Mr. Ghosn.
One drawback of electric vehicles has been battery capacity, limiting their range. Another is that recharging a battery traditionally takes hours, far longer than to refuel a car with gasoline. Nissan and Renault are looking at ways to fix that. Renault will use a battery provided by Nissan for an electric vehicle to be launched in Israel, Mr. Ghosn said.
Mr. Ghosn reiterated that Nissan is open to expanding its alliance with Renault to other car companies, but he said that would happen only if it created value for Renault and Nissan's stakeholders.
Monday, April 21, 2008
traffic lights
It's been a happy weekend. Well, at least if you discount the fact that some kid said i looked old (ouch)! Did it rain at all? No I don't think it did right? Except perhaps a small drizzle when I was at church. But if didn't see it, it didn't rain, so there.... :P
Almost 8 months now. Longer than I could imagine getting through at that time. Well, sun's up and its time to party. Or so I hope!
從小老師也加倍認真
來教導我步過紅綠燈
右與左必須清楚看真
那管一次做錯
也都可摧這生
何解我戀愛雙倍殘忍
從來是快樂過便不會僥倖
動作小簡單偏偏最深
我怎可以做個
最優秀路上行人
明明綠燈轉眼變成紅燈
假使相當勇敢怎可挽回自身
若要衝損傷怎可以不留痕
來又去要找的際遇未接近
明明綠燈轉眼變成紅燈
抬頭前望去對面馬路如此吸引
逐秒等心急總加倍的難行
難道我要必先壯烈地犧牲去換吻
如夜了我衣衫太薄便歸家靠路燈
誰想到走錯死裏逃生
才明白較沒有夢想更不幸
若誕生不好好開過心
也不可以被愛我不過是像泥塵
Almost 8 months now. Longer than I could imagine getting through at that time. Well, sun's up and its time to party. Or so I hope!
從小老師也加倍認真
來教導我步過紅綠燈
右與左必須清楚看真
那管一次做錯
也都可摧這生
何解我戀愛雙倍殘忍
從來是快樂過便不會僥倖
動作小簡單偏偏最深
我怎可以做個
最優秀路上行人
明明綠燈轉眼變成紅燈
假使相當勇敢怎可挽回自身
若要衝損傷怎可以不留痕
來又去要找的際遇未接近
明明綠燈轉眼變成紅燈
抬頭前望去對面馬路如此吸引
逐秒等心急總加倍的難行
難道我要必先壯烈地犧牲去換吻
如夜了我衣衫太薄便歸家靠路燈
誰想到走錯死裏逃生
才明白較沒有夢想更不幸
若誕生不好好開過心
也不可以被愛我不過是像泥塵
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Our sturdy golden bear
Our sturdy golden bear
Is watching from the skies
Looks down upon our colors fair
And guards us from his lair...
Our banner gold and blue
The symbol on it too
Means FIGHT for California
For California through and through!
I watched "The Bucket List" last night. Yeah I know its an old show from 2007 and its not really talked about much in the press, but its also a really moving show and I enjoyed it a lot. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, don't pray pray ok!
What did I learn from this movie? The Egyptians believe that they will ask you 2 questions at the pearly gates of heaven.
1) Have you had joy in your life?
2) Have you brought joy to someone else's life?
Well, I believe we should live our life's with this mantra too. Life is nothing without joy. I love the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Especially the third item, not many countries I know out there which strive for this.
Here in Singapore, we say happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation. But really I think many of us have forgotten about happiness. Just take a look at the sullen faces on the mrt (Both in the morning and in the evening). And those kids who are still happy, smiling and making a lot of noise, everybody just stares at them as if they should just shut up. I hope they don't lose their joy when they grow up.
Perhaps Singapore is too crowded, I don't know. Right here in Marine Parade its still ok, not too bad. But maybe after all the condos get en-bloc and replaced by 50 storey high behemoths (like HK) then we got a serious problem. Right now, as long as the crowds are not in my back yard its ok with me. East coast park isn't too crowded either. Okay, except for the mcdonalds area, but if you have wheels, it ain't gonna take you long to get out of there to some quieter parts! Especially that stretch that connects to changi coastal road, boy thats really lovely man! But it takes quite a while to get there, not everyone would be able to make it there and back.
What does it take to look good? Ya, I know today's blog is starting to get really random. Makes it more interesting I guess! I need to get more workout, that's for sure. My tummy is getting bigger and bigger. Hey this used to be the M1 who can eat all he wants and not train to pass IPPT! Guess what? I failed last november, by 10 seconds! Well my window closes in august but definitely IPPT is not something that i fail, otherwise its an indication that there's something really wrong with my fitness.
My daily lunch diet of disgustingly unhealthy and oily local hawker center food is not suitable if I cant keep myself in good shape. Even the noodles soup which the ladies like to eat, guess what, has more salt in it than recommended for daily consumption! That's why a lot of coworkers and friends are starting to get high cholestorol and high blood pressure by the age of 35. Does that mean we are all doomed? No. Our forefathers ate such food and still remained healthy. Why? Cos they worked out, in the docks, in the fields, tapping rubber trees etc. So I gotta work out too if I want to enjoy the unhealthy hawker food.
Yah that being said, I woke up too late to go rollerblading this morning though the weather was perfect! Shucks, I should slap myself heheh.....
Well, I'm late, got to convince kids to go to Cal. Go Bears! (That's why we started off with the fight song :P)
Is watching from the skies
Looks down upon our colors fair
And guards us from his lair...
Our banner gold and blue
The symbol on it too
Means FIGHT for California
For California through and through!
I watched "The Bucket List" last night. Yeah I know its an old show from 2007 and its not really talked about much in the press, but its also a really moving show and I enjoyed it a lot. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, don't pray pray ok!
What did I learn from this movie? The Egyptians believe that they will ask you 2 questions at the pearly gates of heaven.
1) Have you had joy in your life?
2) Have you brought joy to someone else's life?
Well, I believe we should live our life's with this mantra too. Life is nothing without joy. I love the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Especially the third item, not many countries I know out there which strive for this.
Here in Singapore, we say happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation. But really I think many of us have forgotten about happiness. Just take a look at the sullen faces on the mrt (Both in the morning and in the evening). And those kids who are still happy, smiling and making a lot of noise, everybody just stares at them as if they should just shut up. I hope they don't lose their joy when they grow up.
Perhaps Singapore is too crowded, I don't know. Right here in Marine Parade its still ok, not too bad. But maybe after all the condos get en-bloc and replaced by 50 storey high behemoths (like HK) then we got a serious problem. Right now, as long as the crowds are not in my back yard its ok with me. East coast park isn't too crowded either. Okay, except for the mcdonalds area, but if you have wheels, it ain't gonna take you long to get out of there to some quieter parts! Especially that stretch that connects to changi coastal road, boy thats really lovely man! But it takes quite a while to get there, not everyone would be able to make it there and back.
What does it take to look good? Ya, I know today's blog is starting to get really random. Makes it more interesting I guess! I need to get more workout, that's for sure. My tummy is getting bigger and bigger. Hey this used to be the M1 who can eat all he wants and not train to pass IPPT! Guess what? I failed last november, by 10 seconds! Well my window closes in august but definitely IPPT is not something that i fail, otherwise its an indication that there's something really wrong with my fitness.
My daily lunch diet of disgustingly unhealthy and oily local hawker center food is not suitable if I cant keep myself in good shape. Even the noodles soup which the ladies like to eat, guess what, has more salt in it than recommended for daily consumption! That's why a lot of coworkers and friends are starting to get high cholestorol and high blood pressure by the age of 35. Does that mean we are all doomed? No. Our forefathers ate such food and still remained healthy. Why? Cos they worked out, in the docks, in the fields, tapping rubber trees etc. So I gotta work out too if I want to enjoy the unhealthy hawker food.
Yah that being said, I woke up too late to go rollerblading this morning though the weather was perfect! Shucks, I should slap myself heheh.....
Well, I'm late, got to convince kids to go to Cal. Go Bears! (That's why we started off with the fight song :P)
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Silver: interesting
Nanotechnology
Silver tongues
Apr 17th 2008 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Regulators are looking more closely at nanotechnology claims
ANCIENT Phoenicians stored their drinking water in silver vessels, but not for aesthetic reasons. They discovered that by doing so they remained healthier. The reason for that is now understood: silver has antimicrobial properties.
In the 21st century people have realised that if you fortify Phoenician wisdom with a dash of nanotechnology, silver can be made into a far more potent bactericide. Companies have quickly seized on this idea to produce a wide variety of products, from clothes to soap and even chopsticks, containing silver nanoparticles. The claim is that they destroy germs.
But silver can also accumulate in the environment and, at certain levels, prove toxic. Nor is the general safety of nanoparticles fully understood, not least because they can react in novel ways. Some scientists think more research is needed and perhaps more regulation too. A move in that direction now seems to be under way.
Silver's natural germ-killing ability stems from its extremely slow release of silver ions (electrically charged atoms, or groups of atoms). When made into particles only a few nanometres big—a nanometre is a billionth of a metre—they shed a lot more ions and so become more potent.
America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is worried about a large number of products claiming antimicrobial abilities. One is “Silver Wash”, a washing machine made by Samsung, which claims to employ nanotechnology to release hundreds of billions of silver ions during a wash to sanitise fabrics.
The EPA has ruled that ion-generating devices that claim to kill germs must be registered as a pesticide and tested to show they pose no unreasonable risk. The EPA says its intention is to regulate ion-generating devices rather than nanotechnology itself. But it is hard to draw a distinction. Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, says functionality is an important part of the definition. Turning silver into tiny particles that behave in new ways (for example, by shedding more ions) and putting those particles into new places (such as fabrics) qualifies—or so he thinks.
One consequence of dividing a substance into nanoparticles is that the surface area of the material greatly expands. “Nanosilver is so tiny it can go right to the surface of an organism and essentially shoot ions into the organism,” says Sam Luoma, a research scientist at the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis. Although this makes silver nanoparticles an extremely effective antimicrobial agent, it also raises concerns about humans' ability to withstand relatively high exposures.
Despite the unknowns, Dr Luoma and others believe there is enormous potential for good from nanosilver. It can, for example, be used in small amounts to coat medical catheters to reduce the possibility of infection without causing environmental worries. “We need to separate out the truly beneficial uses,” he adds.
The EPA will not look at benefit or necessity, but is determined to make its registration stick. It has fined one company more than $200,000 for making unsubstantiated claims about unregistered nanosilver-coated computer mice and keyboards. Firms making claims about nanotechnology need to watch out.
Silver tongues
Apr 17th 2008 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Regulators are looking more closely at nanotechnology claims
ANCIENT Phoenicians stored their drinking water in silver vessels, but not for aesthetic reasons. They discovered that by doing so they remained healthier. The reason for that is now understood: silver has antimicrobial properties.
In the 21st century people have realised that if you fortify Phoenician wisdom with a dash of nanotechnology, silver can be made into a far more potent bactericide. Companies have quickly seized on this idea to produce a wide variety of products, from clothes to soap and even chopsticks, containing silver nanoparticles. The claim is that they destroy germs.
But silver can also accumulate in the environment and, at certain levels, prove toxic. Nor is the general safety of nanoparticles fully understood, not least because they can react in novel ways. Some scientists think more research is needed and perhaps more regulation too. A move in that direction now seems to be under way.
Silver's natural germ-killing ability stems from its extremely slow release of silver ions (electrically charged atoms, or groups of atoms). When made into particles only a few nanometres big—a nanometre is a billionth of a metre—they shed a lot more ions and so become more potent.
America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is worried about a large number of products claiming antimicrobial abilities. One is “Silver Wash”, a washing machine made by Samsung, which claims to employ nanotechnology to release hundreds of billions of silver ions during a wash to sanitise fabrics.
The EPA has ruled that ion-generating devices that claim to kill germs must be registered as a pesticide and tested to show they pose no unreasonable risk. The EPA says its intention is to regulate ion-generating devices rather than nanotechnology itself. But it is hard to draw a distinction. Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, says functionality is an important part of the definition. Turning silver into tiny particles that behave in new ways (for example, by shedding more ions) and putting those particles into new places (such as fabrics) qualifies—or so he thinks.
One consequence of dividing a substance into nanoparticles is that the surface area of the material greatly expands. “Nanosilver is so tiny it can go right to the surface of an organism and essentially shoot ions into the organism,” says Sam Luoma, a research scientist at the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis. Although this makes silver nanoparticles an extremely effective antimicrobial agent, it also raises concerns about humans' ability to withstand relatively high exposures.
Despite the unknowns, Dr Luoma and others believe there is enormous potential for good from nanosilver. It can, for example, be used in small amounts to coat medical catheters to reduce the possibility of infection without causing environmental worries. “We need to separate out the truly beneficial uses,” he adds.
The EPA will not look at benefit or necessity, but is determined to make its registration stick. It has fined one company more than $200,000 for making unsubstantiated claims about unregistered nanosilver-coated computer mice and keyboards. Firms making claims about nanotechnology need to watch out.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Clinton's done
DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN
While McCain Watches
April 18, 2008
On Tuesday at Washington's Convention Center, Hillary Clinton made the best speech of her campaign. She told the American Society of Newspaper Editors how she conceives "the power and promise of the presidency." She asserted that President Bush had been "unready" for the office, did not understand its "constitutional character," exhibited in his decisions an "ideological disdain." She said she hopes to "restore balance and purpose" to the presidency, and detailed specific actions she would take immediately on entering the White House.
It was an important speech, and someone, probably many someones, worked hard on it. It was highly partisan, even polar, but it was a more thoughtful critique of the administration, more densely woven and less bromidic, than she has offered in the past, and she used a higher vocabulary. So eager was she to be heard she actually noted at one point that what she'd just said was not "a soundbite."
And here's the thing. It didn't matter. Nobody noticed. A room full of journalists didn't notice this was something new and interesting. And they didn't notice because nobody is listening anymore.
Mrs. Clinton is transmitting, but people aren't receiving. She has been branded, tagged. She's been absorbed, understood and categorized. People have decided what they think, and it's not good.
It took George W. Bush five years to get to that point. It took her five intense months. Political historians will say her campaign sank with the mad Bosnia lie, but Bosnia broke through only because it expressed, crystallized, what people had already begun to think: too much mendacity there, too much manipulation.
Timing is everything. "Too late to get serious," I wrote in my notes. For before this, Mrs. Clinton's campaign was all dreary recitation of talking points, rote applause lines followed by rote applause.
The next day the Washington Post had its latest numbers. A "majority of voters now view her as dishonest," it said, bluntly. Six in 10 said she was "not honest or trustworthy." Which itself doesn't tell us, really, anything new, but concretizes, like the Bosnia story, what is already known.
This is what I think will happen. At some future point Mrs. Clinton will leave, and at a more distant one she will try to come back. But more than one cycle will have to pass before she does. She'll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008. And this is how you'll know she's making another bid for the presidency. She will wear skirts. Gone will be the pantsuits that made her look like a small blond man with breasts. It's the new me, I wear skirts! Her first impulse is to think cosmetically. A long and weary life in politics has left her thinking this is the way to think.
All of which sounds as if I foresee a Pennsylvania drubbing for her. I do not. I just think that whatever happens in Pennsylvania, the decision has been made, the die cast. Barack Obama's supporters will not be denied. He broke through, gained purchase, held his ground, the one thing Mrs. Clinton could not afford. When I speak to superdelegates, the vibration is there: It is the moment of Obama.
And now his problem emerges. It is two-headed. It is not that he is African-American, or half so, and it is not that he is liberal. Liberalism too, one senses, is having a moment.
It is his youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered, been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.
The other is elitism, a charge that clearly grates on him and unnerves his wife, who has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where "seems slightly drugged" is a positive job qualification. The key is to know you are not the drama, you do not draw the lightning, you are a background player who yet has deep, unseen power. (The "deep, unseen power" part keeps you serene and energized. The constant possibility of quiet revenge keeps one peppy.)
Sen. Obama seems honestly surprised by the furor his the-poor-cling-to-God-and-guns remarks elicited, and if one considers his background—intense marginalization followed by the establishment's embrace—this is understandable. He was only caught speaking the secret language of America's elite, and what he said was not meant as a putdown. It was an explanation aimed at ameliorating the elites' anger toward and impatience with normal people. It's a way of explaining them, of saying, "You have to remember they're not comfortable and educated like us, they're vulnerable and so we must try to understand them and feel sympathy for and solidarity with them." You could say this at any high-class dinner party in America and not cause a ruffle. But America is not a high-class dinner party.
Mrs. Obama said Tuesday that she is from the South Side of Chicago and a working-class home, and seemed to argue that no one from such humble beginnings could be an elitist. But America is full of people who started low, rose high and internalized what the right people think, which is another way of saying what the elites think. To rise in America is to turn left, unless you are very, very tough or protected by privilege of the financial or familial kind.
Can Mr. Obama survive this? Yes. But it made a bad impression, the kind it's hard to eradicate. Good news for him: the trope that blacks aren't snobs, they're patronized by snobs. Also, he doesn't seem haughty. He seems like a nice man. Also the person exploiting his gaffe is Mrs. Clinton.
* * *
Meanwhile, John McCain makes daily, small, incremental gains. He happily watches the Democrats fight and happily advances his cause. Did you see him on "Hardball" the other night with the college students of Villanova? They were beside themselves at the sight of him. It seems to me it would be a brilliant thing for him to announce he means to be a one-term president, that he means to have a clean, serious, one-term presidency in which he will do things those under pressure of re-election do not and cannot do. This would be received as a refreshment, a way out for the voters in a year they seem to want a way out. For many in the middle it would be a twofer. You get a good man, for only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He'll be better older.
The downside? Americans like knowing they can fire a president. It's how they keep them in line. And lame-duckness from day one would not be empowering.
If Mr. McCain went this route, how and when he said it would be everything. As with Mrs. Clinton, timing will be everything.
By PEGGY NOONAN
While McCain Watches
April 18, 2008
On Tuesday at Washington's Convention Center, Hillary Clinton made the best speech of her campaign. She told the American Society of Newspaper Editors how she conceives "the power and promise of the presidency." She asserted that President Bush had been "unready" for the office, did not understand its "constitutional character," exhibited in his decisions an "ideological disdain." She said she hopes to "restore balance and purpose" to the presidency, and detailed specific actions she would take immediately on entering the White House.
It was an important speech, and someone, probably many someones, worked hard on it. It was highly partisan, even polar, but it was a more thoughtful critique of the administration, more densely woven and less bromidic, than she has offered in the past, and she used a higher vocabulary. So eager was she to be heard she actually noted at one point that what she'd just said was not "a soundbite."
And here's the thing. It didn't matter. Nobody noticed. A room full of journalists didn't notice this was something new and interesting. And they didn't notice because nobody is listening anymore.
Mrs. Clinton is transmitting, but people aren't receiving. She has been branded, tagged. She's been absorbed, understood and categorized. People have decided what they think, and it's not good.
It took George W. Bush five years to get to that point. It took her five intense months. Political historians will say her campaign sank with the mad Bosnia lie, but Bosnia broke through only because it expressed, crystallized, what people had already begun to think: too much mendacity there, too much manipulation.
Timing is everything. "Too late to get serious," I wrote in my notes. For before this, Mrs. Clinton's campaign was all dreary recitation of talking points, rote applause lines followed by rote applause.
The next day the Washington Post had its latest numbers. A "majority of voters now view her as dishonest," it said, bluntly. Six in 10 said she was "not honest or trustworthy." Which itself doesn't tell us, really, anything new, but concretizes, like the Bosnia story, what is already known.
This is what I think will happen. At some future point Mrs. Clinton will leave, and at a more distant one she will try to come back. But more than one cycle will have to pass before she does. She'll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008. And this is how you'll know she's making another bid for the presidency. She will wear skirts. Gone will be the pantsuits that made her look like a small blond man with breasts. It's the new me, I wear skirts! Her first impulse is to think cosmetically. A long and weary life in politics has left her thinking this is the way to think.
All of which sounds as if I foresee a Pennsylvania drubbing for her. I do not. I just think that whatever happens in Pennsylvania, the decision has been made, the die cast. Barack Obama's supporters will not be denied. He broke through, gained purchase, held his ground, the one thing Mrs. Clinton could not afford. When I speak to superdelegates, the vibration is there: It is the moment of Obama.
And now his problem emerges. It is two-headed. It is not that he is African-American, or half so, and it is not that he is liberal. Liberalism too, one senses, is having a moment.
It is his youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered, been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.
The other is elitism, a charge that clearly grates on him and unnerves his wife, who has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where "seems slightly drugged" is a positive job qualification. The key is to know you are not the drama, you do not draw the lightning, you are a background player who yet has deep, unseen power. (The "deep, unseen power" part keeps you serene and energized. The constant possibility of quiet revenge keeps one peppy.)
Sen. Obama seems honestly surprised by the furor his the-poor-cling-to-God-and-guns remarks elicited, and if one considers his background—intense marginalization followed by the establishment's embrace—this is understandable. He was only caught speaking the secret language of America's elite, and what he said was not meant as a putdown. It was an explanation aimed at ameliorating the elites' anger toward and impatience with normal people. It's a way of explaining them, of saying, "You have to remember they're not comfortable and educated like us, they're vulnerable and so we must try to understand them and feel sympathy for and solidarity with them." You could say this at any high-class dinner party in America and not cause a ruffle. But America is not a high-class dinner party.
Mrs. Obama said Tuesday that she is from the South Side of Chicago and a working-class home, and seemed to argue that no one from such humble beginnings could be an elitist. But America is full of people who started low, rose high and internalized what the right people think, which is another way of saying what the elites think. To rise in America is to turn left, unless you are very, very tough or protected by privilege of the financial or familial kind.
Can Mr. Obama survive this? Yes. But it made a bad impression, the kind it's hard to eradicate. Good news for him: the trope that blacks aren't snobs, they're patronized by snobs. Also, he doesn't seem haughty. He seems like a nice man. Also the person exploiting his gaffe is Mrs. Clinton.
* * *
Meanwhile, John McCain makes daily, small, incremental gains. He happily watches the Democrats fight and happily advances his cause. Did you see him on "Hardball" the other night with the college students of Villanova? They were beside themselves at the sight of him. It seems to me it would be a brilliant thing for him to announce he means to be a one-term president, that he means to have a clean, serious, one-term presidency in which he will do things those under pressure of re-election do not and cannot do. This would be received as a refreshment, a way out for the voters in a year they seem to want a way out. For many in the middle it would be a twofer. You get a good man, for only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He'll be better older.
The downside? Americans like knowing they can fire a president. It's how they keep them in line. And lame-duckness from day one would not be empowering.
If Mr. McCain went this route, how and when he said it would be everything. As with Mrs. Clinton, timing will be everything.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Obama
Tuesday april 15:
Michelle Obama on the Colbert Report
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/index.jhtml
You gotta see this, its awesome!
Obama for president!
Michelle Obama on the Colbert Report
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/index.jhtml
You gotta see this, its awesome!
Obama for president!
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Carbon credits: Fraud?
U.N. Effort
To Curtail
Emissions
In Turmoil
By JEFFREY BALL
April 12, 2008
A multibillion-dollar experiment designed to curb global warming is stumbling as regulators question whether the program is doing enough environmental good.
The United Nations is the main global policeman in an effort by wealthy nations to reduce the impact of their own pollution by paying for cleanups in the developing world. The program, known as the Clean Development Mechanism, is one of the most important coordinated efforts to attack global warming.
In recent months, however, U.N. regulators who administer the program have objected to dozens of these developing-world projects, ranging from hydroelectric plants to wind farms, questioning whether the projects would produce a real environmental payoff.
U.N. regulators are also concerned that some independent auditors of these projects, who are responsible for vetting their environmental legitimacy, have been letting project developers push through ventures of questionable environmental value.
The crackdown challenges a plank of the world's campaign against climate change: that polluters can pay someone else to clean up the mess. If the approach were to be discredited, curbing emissions could cost companies and consumers significantly more.
At issue, says Kai-Uwe Barani Schmidt, the U.N. panel's top administrator, is a conflict between "private-sector ambitions and the environmental integrity of the system."
As companies world-wide face government pressure to pollute less, the U.N. program gives them a cheaper alternative to cutting their own emissions. Instead, they can pay for the right to pollute by buying "carbon credits," essentially permission slips to spew carbon dioxide. Sale of the credits is supposed to help fund clean-air projects in China and other developing countries that would otherwise be too costly to build.
Last month, the panel declined to authorize the sale of carbon credits from two wind farms in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Backers of the projects, which have a combined 22 turbines, said their economic success depended on revenue from the sale of carbon credits. The U.N. panel said it wasn't persuaded.
The U.N. has rejected numerous other proposals on similar grounds since last summer. Among them: A Brazilian corn-processing factory, two Indian sugar mills and two Malaysian palm-oil plants. All were designed to install equipment to generate energy from renewable materials like wood scraps, fruit bunches and other waste. That would reduce the need for fossil fuels.
Developing-world projects like these are part of the burgeoning global carbon trade. In total, the global carbon market last year was worth 40.4 billion euros , according to Point Carbon, a Norway-based industry consultant. Of that total, Western companies and governments invested six billion euros last year in credits from projects in the developing world, nearly double the prior year, Point Carbon says.
In 2004 and 2005, as projects began to trickle in, the lightly staffed office of the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism's executive board approved virtually all of them. But as the number of proposed projects soared, the panel hired more staff and late last year tightened standards. In 2007, it rejected 9% of proposed projects, and held up another 21% for further review, according to U.N. figures -- many of which required changes before getting the go-ahead. The U.N. demanded more financial data to prove many projects needed carbon-credit revenue to be feasible.
The U.N. says it isn't suggesting that most of the developing-word projects are illegitimate. Evaluating whether a project would have been built without carbon-credit revenue is a complex judgment call, says the U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt. It represents "one of the biggest challenges" of the current system.
The average developing-world carbon credit -- which grants permission to the buyer to emit a ton of carbon dioxide -- sells on the market for $16 to $24. The U.N. issued credits last year worth roughly $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion.
The carbon market was created by the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 global treaty underlying environmental rules already in effect for much of the world and now being considered by the U.S. Congress. Most buyers of developing-world credits are in Japan and Europe. U.S. companies aren't buying them in significant numbers, market analysts say.
The U.N. regulators are questioning the actions of two main players in the carbon market: Project developers, who put together projects in order to sell the credits to Western industrial buyers; and the auditing firms that inspect and certify to the U.N. that the projects are environmentally legitimate.
A dozen or so project developers, most based in Europe, dominate the business. Among the largest is EcoSecurities Ltd. of Oxford, England. The U.N. has rejected several of its projects, often contending they would have been financially viable without the revenue from credits.
Bruce Usher, the New York-based chief executive of EcoSecurities, says the company's projects are environmentally legitimate. Last November, largely in response to the U.N. crackdown, EcoSecurities said it was writing off a chunk of the carbon credits it had promised the market it would deliver. Since then, the company's shares, traded on the London Stock Exchange's AIM index, have fallen 67%.
Three auditors dominate the business. All three -- Det Norske Veritas, based in Norway; Tüv Süd AG, based in Germany; and SGS Group, based in Switzerland -- are major European consulting firms for whom the carbon market is a small but growing franchise.
The auditors argue that they're not to blame for the questionable quality of some proposed projects. In a presentation to U.N. officials last fall, the head of Tüv Süd's carbon business told U.N. officials that the quality of projects the auditors are receiving from carbon brokers is "going down," according to the U.N. panel's Mr. Schmidt, who was at the meeting.
In an interview, the Tüv Süd executive, Werner Betzenbichler, declined to discuss his comments in the U.N. meeting. But he confirmed the substance of his presentation.
"There is a high incentive" for companies to put together environmentally questionable carbon-credit projects, "because there is a lot of money that can be earned," he said. "People are getting more inventive, so it's getting harder to detect the black sheep."
Luc Larmuseau, global director of climate-change services for DNV, echoed those thoughts. "We've seen some examples where we've got serious doubt," he says. DNV and the other auditors have prepared a dossier of their rejections and have sent it to U.N. regulators as part of their defense.
The issue came to a head in December, at a meeting between U.N. officials and auditors during a U.N. conference on climate-change policy in Bali, Indonesia. A member of the U.N. board, Christiana Figueres, expressed concern that the system may be open to what she called "collusion" between auditors and project developers to push through environmentally dubious projects.
Ms. Figueres confirms that she used the term in the December meeting, but says she didn't intend to suggest that auditors are purposely recommending that the U.N. approve projects whose legitimacy the auditors doubt. Rather, she says, she was suggesting "a systemic collusion in which the [U.N.] board is being put in a position of having to do an in-depth review of these projects because [the auditors] are not doing it."
Ms. Figueres, a consultant living in Washington, D.C., left the U.N. board in January, when her term representing her native Costa Rica was up.
The U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt confirms that members of the U.N. panel "are aware of the clear and perceived risk of collusion" between auditors and companies putting together carbon-credit projects. One safeguard, he says, is the threat that the U.N. can revoke an auditor's accreditation if the U.N. finds that the auditor has done substandard work.
The auditors strongly deny they're acting improperly. In their defense, the major auditors, among them DNV, Tüv Süd and SGS, have produced statistics showing that they are rejecting significant numbers of projects before they're proposed to the U.N. Between the start of the market and the end of 2006, the auditors rejected 7.7% of the developing-world projects proposed to them, according to Robert Dornau, director of the climate-change program at SGS.
Deciding whether a proposed project needs carbon-credit money to to be viable "is not black and white," Mr. Dornau says. Auditors are intent on showing they're fastidious because, he says, "we don't want to lose people's trust" in the carbon trade.
To Curtail
Emissions
In Turmoil
By JEFFREY BALL
April 12, 2008
A multibillion-dollar experiment designed to curb global warming is stumbling as regulators question whether the program is doing enough environmental good.
The United Nations is the main global policeman in an effort by wealthy nations to reduce the impact of their own pollution by paying for cleanups in the developing world. The program, known as the Clean Development Mechanism, is one of the most important coordinated efforts to attack global warming.
In recent months, however, U.N. regulators who administer the program have objected to dozens of these developing-world projects, ranging from hydroelectric plants to wind farms, questioning whether the projects would produce a real environmental payoff.
U.N. regulators are also concerned that some independent auditors of these projects, who are responsible for vetting their environmental legitimacy, have been letting project developers push through ventures of questionable environmental value.
The crackdown challenges a plank of the world's campaign against climate change: that polluters can pay someone else to clean up the mess. If the approach were to be discredited, curbing emissions could cost companies and consumers significantly more.
At issue, says Kai-Uwe Barani Schmidt, the U.N. panel's top administrator, is a conflict between "private-sector ambitions and the environmental integrity of the system."
As companies world-wide face government pressure to pollute less, the U.N. program gives them a cheaper alternative to cutting their own emissions. Instead, they can pay for the right to pollute by buying "carbon credits," essentially permission slips to spew carbon dioxide. Sale of the credits is supposed to help fund clean-air projects in China and other developing countries that would otherwise be too costly to build.
Last month, the panel declined to authorize the sale of carbon credits from two wind farms in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Backers of the projects, which have a combined 22 turbines, said their economic success depended on revenue from the sale of carbon credits. The U.N. panel said it wasn't persuaded.
The U.N. has rejected numerous other proposals on similar grounds since last summer. Among them: A Brazilian corn-processing factory, two Indian sugar mills and two Malaysian palm-oil plants. All were designed to install equipment to generate energy from renewable materials like wood scraps, fruit bunches and other waste. That would reduce the need for fossil fuels.
Developing-world projects like these are part of the burgeoning global carbon trade. In total, the global carbon market last year was worth 40.4 billion euros , according to Point Carbon, a Norway-based industry consultant. Of that total, Western companies and governments invested six billion euros last year in credits from projects in the developing world, nearly double the prior year, Point Carbon says.
In 2004 and 2005, as projects began to trickle in, the lightly staffed office of the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism's executive board approved virtually all of them. But as the number of proposed projects soared, the panel hired more staff and late last year tightened standards. In 2007, it rejected 9% of proposed projects, and held up another 21% for further review, according to U.N. figures -- many of which required changes before getting the go-ahead. The U.N. demanded more financial data to prove many projects needed carbon-credit revenue to be feasible.
The U.N. says it isn't suggesting that most of the developing-word projects are illegitimate. Evaluating whether a project would have been built without carbon-credit revenue is a complex judgment call, says the U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt. It represents "one of the biggest challenges" of the current system.
The average developing-world carbon credit -- which grants permission to the buyer to emit a ton of carbon dioxide -- sells on the market for $16 to $24. The U.N. issued credits last year worth roughly $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion.
The carbon market was created by the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 global treaty underlying environmental rules already in effect for much of the world and now being considered by the U.S. Congress. Most buyers of developing-world credits are in Japan and Europe. U.S. companies aren't buying them in significant numbers, market analysts say.
The U.N. regulators are questioning the actions of two main players in the carbon market: Project developers, who put together projects in order to sell the credits to Western industrial buyers; and the auditing firms that inspect and certify to the U.N. that the projects are environmentally legitimate.
A dozen or so project developers, most based in Europe, dominate the business. Among the largest is EcoSecurities Ltd. of Oxford, England. The U.N. has rejected several of its projects, often contending they would have been financially viable without the revenue from credits.
Bruce Usher, the New York-based chief executive of EcoSecurities, says the company's projects are environmentally legitimate. Last November, largely in response to the U.N. crackdown, EcoSecurities said it was writing off a chunk of the carbon credits it had promised the market it would deliver. Since then, the company's shares, traded on the London Stock Exchange's AIM index, have fallen 67%.
Three auditors dominate the business. All three -- Det Norske Veritas, based in Norway; Tüv Süd AG, based in Germany; and SGS Group, based in Switzerland -- are major European consulting firms for whom the carbon market is a small but growing franchise.
The auditors argue that they're not to blame for the questionable quality of some proposed projects. In a presentation to U.N. officials last fall, the head of Tüv Süd's carbon business told U.N. officials that the quality of projects the auditors are receiving from carbon brokers is "going down," according to the U.N. panel's Mr. Schmidt, who was at the meeting.
In an interview, the Tüv Süd executive, Werner Betzenbichler, declined to discuss his comments in the U.N. meeting. But he confirmed the substance of his presentation.
"There is a high incentive" for companies to put together environmentally questionable carbon-credit projects, "because there is a lot of money that can be earned," he said. "People are getting more inventive, so it's getting harder to detect the black sheep."
Luc Larmuseau, global director of climate-change services for DNV, echoed those thoughts. "We've seen some examples where we've got serious doubt," he says. DNV and the other auditors have prepared a dossier of their rejections and have sent it to U.N. regulators as part of their defense.
The issue came to a head in December, at a meeting between U.N. officials and auditors during a U.N. conference on climate-change policy in Bali, Indonesia. A member of the U.N. board, Christiana Figueres, expressed concern that the system may be open to what she called "collusion" between auditors and project developers to push through environmentally dubious projects.
Ms. Figueres confirms that she used the term in the December meeting, but says she didn't intend to suggest that auditors are purposely recommending that the U.N. approve projects whose legitimacy the auditors doubt. Rather, she says, she was suggesting "a systemic collusion in which the [U.N.] board is being put in a position of having to do an in-depth review of these projects because [the auditors] are not doing it."
Ms. Figueres, a consultant living in Washington, D.C., left the U.N. board in January, when her term representing her native Costa Rica was up.
The U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt confirms that members of the U.N. panel "are aware of the clear and perceived risk of collusion" between auditors and companies putting together carbon-credit projects. One safeguard, he says, is the threat that the U.N. can revoke an auditor's accreditation if the U.N. finds that the auditor has done substandard work.
The auditors strongly deny they're acting improperly. In their defense, the major auditors, among them DNV, Tüv Süd and SGS, have produced statistics showing that they are rejecting significant numbers of projects before they're proposed to the U.N. Between the start of the market and the end of 2006, the auditors rejected 7.7% of the developing-world projects proposed to them, according to Robert Dornau, director of the climate-change program at SGS.
Deciding whether a proposed project needs carbon-credit money to to be viable "is not black and white," Mr. Dornau says. Auditors are intent on showing they're fastidious because, he says, "we don't want to lose people's trust" in the carbon trade.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Facebook's "Which country are you?"
You belong to Switzerland
Your room's a mess. Your house is a mess. Heck, your life is a mess. It all used to be really beautiful, and someone even compared you to Paris once, but that's all been replaced with heartache and struggle. You're small, have been influenced by outsiders for too long, and don't know what to think about religion. At least you smell rather pleasant!
Your room's a mess. Your house is a mess. Heck, your life is a mess. It all used to be really beautiful, and someone even compared you to Paris once, but that's all been replaced with heartache and struggle. You're small, have been influenced by outsiders for too long, and don't know what to think about religion. At least you smell rather pleasant!
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Asian dramas are depressing
You know, my mum has been watching all these korean and hongkong tv dramas on dvd every day and every night. And I just notice one thing. They are all so depressing! These TV families are full of family feuds, fighting, cheating, divorce, murder and every bad thing that you can ever imagine. Their lives are absolutely pathetic, depressing, but hell, asians like to watch them! What's wrong with Asian TV?
Can't we have hits like the Cosby Show? Sex and the city? Friends? Seinfeld? Okay those are comedies. Yeah action thriller 24 is kinda depressing. Prison Break and Heroes is kinda optimistic. Or at least the stars are working together towards a better tomorrow. CSI, Alias, ER, at least it looks as if there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Asians actually watch their pathetic depressing TV shows and laugh! That's the most amazing thing. I feel that work is depressing enough, I can't be watching depressing TV shows at night and laugh about it. My TV staple? You're talking bout SouthPark, Colbert Report or the Daily Show. Yah it's all online cos my parents are watching the stupid DVDs on the TV heh.
Well back to why people watch depressing shows and laugh. They laugh cos they feel their life is depressing and miserable too, but hey, there's somebody else more pathetic than them on TV, and hella stupid too! Perhaps its a reflection of reality, and the laughter is kinda in a sadistic way. Otherwise, even on local channel 8 I don't see why anybody would take pleasure in watching anything after 9pm.....
We in Asia need to lighten up. Yeah, cities are overcrowded and overpopulated everywhere, but we need to enjoy the sweet smell of leaves falling in the park and some crude jokes on Seinfeld. We need to laugh more on the train and smile when we get into the office in the morning. Otherwise our society will remain the sorry pathetic depressive state that it is currently in, where laughter appears sadistically only in the presence of depressing soap operas...
World class? Wait long long lah!
Can't we have hits like the Cosby Show? Sex and the city? Friends? Seinfeld? Okay those are comedies. Yeah action thriller 24 is kinda depressing. Prison Break and Heroes is kinda optimistic. Or at least the stars are working together towards a better tomorrow. CSI, Alias, ER, at least it looks as if there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Asians actually watch their pathetic depressing TV shows and laugh! That's the most amazing thing. I feel that work is depressing enough, I can't be watching depressing TV shows at night and laugh about it. My TV staple? You're talking bout SouthPark, Colbert Report or the Daily Show. Yah it's all online cos my parents are watching the stupid DVDs on the TV heh.
Well back to why people watch depressing shows and laugh. They laugh cos they feel their life is depressing and miserable too, but hey, there's somebody else more pathetic than them on TV, and hella stupid too! Perhaps its a reflection of reality, and the laughter is kinda in a sadistic way. Otherwise, even on local channel 8 I don't see why anybody would take pleasure in watching anything after 9pm.....
We in Asia need to lighten up. Yeah, cities are overcrowded and overpopulated everywhere, but we need to enjoy the sweet smell of leaves falling in the park and some crude jokes on Seinfeld. We need to laugh more on the train and smile when we get into the office in the morning. Otherwise our society will remain the sorry pathetic depressive state that it is currently in, where laughter appears sadistically only in the presence of depressing soap operas...
World class? Wait long long lah!
Friday, April 04, 2008
Quiet
It's kinda quiet in here huh? Well I've been spending late nights and eyes are usually tired by the end of the day. Guess my end of day routine ends up being watching the colbert report or the daily show rather than blogging.
So I was gonna volunteer at the museum by starting with their history lessons. Unfortunatly I procrastinated, and now the classes are all full so that's that. On hindsight this is probably better, I need more time to work out and time for myself on the weekends.
So what's the market outlook? My pick for this week is SBS transit. I think buses are doing well, and ridership will rise cos the government's giving more incentive for people to go scrap their cars. Yeah we really have way too many cars here. Too many people for that matter. It's so strange how it doesnt take me that long to get to work in the morning, but it takes hella long to get home. Maybe that's cos I don't start work that early. hmm....
I'll be on course for 3 wks starting monday. We have day off from course to go back to office on fridays, but I think that's just dumb. I'm not gonna lug my laptop around so I'll probably take leave and work from home on fridays.
Start of the new FY, somehow seems like not that much excitement. Some unexpected bonus was good, but it looks like other ministries had way more. Do I care? Hell, more money is always good!
Key words for today: Total Return strategy. Make money all the time every time, don't care about benchmarks!
So I was gonna volunteer at the museum by starting with their history lessons. Unfortunatly I procrastinated, and now the classes are all full so that's that. On hindsight this is probably better, I need more time to work out and time for myself on the weekends.
So what's the market outlook? My pick for this week is SBS transit. I think buses are doing well, and ridership will rise cos the government's giving more incentive for people to go scrap their cars. Yeah we really have way too many cars here. Too many people for that matter. It's so strange how it doesnt take me that long to get to work in the morning, but it takes hella long to get home. Maybe that's cos I don't start work that early. hmm....
I'll be on course for 3 wks starting monday. We have day off from course to go back to office on fridays, but I think that's just dumb. I'm not gonna lug my laptop around so I'll probably take leave and work from home on fridays.
Start of the new FY, somehow seems like not that much excitement. Some unexpected bonus was good, but it looks like other ministries had way more. Do I care? Hell, more money is always good!
Key words for today: Total Return strategy. Make money all the time every time, don't care about benchmarks!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Can facebook make money?
Online social networks
Everywhere and nowhere
Mar 19th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business
Illustration by David Simonds
A LARGE but long-in-the-tooth technology company hoping to become a bigger force in online advertising buys a small start-up in a sector that everybody agrees is the next big thing. A decade ago, this was Microsoft buying Hotmail—the firm that established web-based e-mail as a must-have service for internet users, and promised to drive up page views, and thus advertising inventory, on the software giant's websites. This month it was AOL, a struggling web portal that is part of Time Warner, an old-media giant, buying Bebo, a small but up-and-coming online social network, for $850m.
Both deals, in their respective decades, illustrate a great paradox of the internet in that the premise underlying them is precisely half right and half wrong. The correct half is that a next big thing—web-mail then, social networking now—can indeed quickly become something that consumers expect from their favourite web portal. The non sequitur is to assume that the new service will be a revenue-generating business in its own right.
Web-mail has certainly not become a business. Admittedly, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and other providers of web-mail accounts do place advertisements on their web-mail offerings, but this is small beer. They offer e-mail—and volumes of free archival storage unimaginable a decade ago—because the service, including its associated address book, calendar, and other features, is cheap to deliver and keeps consumers engaged with their brands and websites, making users more likely to visit affiliated pages where advertising is more effective.
Social networking appears to be similar in this regard. The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, recently admitted that Google's “social networking inventory as a whole” was proving problematic and that the “monetisation work we were doing there didn't pan out as well as we had hoped.” Google has a contractual agreement with News Corp to place advertisements on its network, MySpace, and also owns its own network, Orkut. Clearly, Google is not making money from either.
Facebook, now allied to Microsoft, has fared worse. Its grand attempt to redefine the advertising industry by pioneering a new approach to social marketing, called Beacon, failed completely. Facebook's idea was to inform a user's friends whenever he bought something at certain online retailers, by running a small announcement inside the friends' “news feeds”. In theory, this was to become a new recommendation economy, an algorithmic form of word of mouth. In practice, users rebelled and privacy watchdogs cried foul. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, admitted in December that “we simply did a bad job with this release” and apologised.
So it is entirely conceivable that social networking, like web-mail, will never make oodles of money. That, however, in no way detracts from its enormous utility. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, so that a thriving ecosystem of small programs can exploit this “social graph” to enable friends to interact via games, greetings, video clips and so on.
Coming up for air
But should users really have to visit a specific website to do this sort of thing? “We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.
The problem with today's social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks' lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users' information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.
Historically, online media tend to start this way. The early services, such as CompuServe, Prodigy or AOL, began as “walled gardens” before they opened up to become websites. The early e-mail services could send messages only within their own walls (rather as Facebook's messaging does today). Instant-messaging, too, started closed, but is gradually opening up. In social networking, this evolution is just beginning. Parts of the industry are collaborating in a “data portability workgroup” to let people move their friend lists and other information around the web. Others are pushing OpenID, a plan to create a single, federated sign-on system that people can use across many sites.
The opening of social networks may now accelerate thanks to that older next big thing, web-mail. As a technology, mail has come to seem rather old-fashioned. But Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and other firms are now discovering that they may already have the ideal infrastructure for social networking in the form of the address books, in-boxes and calendars of their users. “E-mail in the wider sense is the most important social network,” says David Ascher, who manages Thunderbird, a cutting-edge open-source e-mail application, for the Mozilla Foundation, which also oversees the popular Firefox web browser.
That is because the extended in-box contains invaluable and dynamically updated information about human connections. On Facebook, a social graph notoriously deteriorates after the initial thrill of finding old friends from school wears off. By contrast, an e-mail account has access to the entire address book and can infer information from the frequency and intensity of contact as it occurs. Joe gets e-mails from Jack and Jane, but opens only Jane's; Joe has Jane in his calendar tomorrow, and is instant-messaging with her right now; Joe tagged Jack “work only” in his address book. Perhaps Joe's party photos should be visible to Jane, but not Jack.
This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.
Everywhere and nowhere
Mar 19th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business
Illustration by David Simonds
A LARGE but long-in-the-tooth technology company hoping to become a bigger force in online advertising buys a small start-up in a sector that everybody agrees is the next big thing. A decade ago, this was Microsoft buying Hotmail—the firm that established web-based e-mail as a must-have service for internet users, and promised to drive up page views, and thus advertising inventory, on the software giant's websites. This month it was AOL, a struggling web portal that is part of Time Warner, an old-media giant, buying Bebo, a small but up-and-coming online social network, for $850m.
Both deals, in their respective decades, illustrate a great paradox of the internet in that the premise underlying them is precisely half right and half wrong. The correct half is that a next big thing—web-mail then, social networking now—can indeed quickly become something that consumers expect from their favourite web portal. The non sequitur is to assume that the new service will be a revenue-generating business in its own right.
Web-mail has certainly not become a business. Admittedly, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and other providers of web-mail accounts do place advertisements on their web-mail offerings, but this is small beer. They offer e-mail—and volumes of free archival storage unimaginable a decade ago—because the service, including its associated address book, calendar, and other features, is cheap to deliver and keeps consumers engaged with their brands and websites, making users more likely to visit affiliated pages where advertising is more effective.
Social networking appears to be similar in this regard. The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, recently admitted that Google's “social networking inventory as a whole” was proving problematic and that the “monetisation work we were doing there didn't pan out as well as we had hoped.” Google has a contractual agreement with News Corp to place advertisements on its network, MySpace, and also owns its own network, Orkut. Clearly, Google is not making money from either.
Facebook, now allied to Microsoft, has fared worse. Its grand attempt to redefine the advertising industry by pioneering a new approach to social marketing, called Beacon, failed completely. Facebook's idea was to inform a user's friends whenever he bought something at certain online retailers, by running a small announcement inside the friends' “news feeds”. In theory, this was to become a new recommendation economy, an algorithmic form of word of mouth. In practice, users rebelled and privacy watchdogs cried foul. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, admitted in December that “we simply did a bad job with this release” and apologised.
So it is entirely conceivable that social networking, like web-mail, will never make oodles of money. That, however, in no way detracts from its enormous utility. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, so that a thriving ecosystem of small programs can exploit this “social graph” to enable friends to interact via games, greetings, video clips and so on.
Coming up for air
But should users really have to visit a specific website to do this sort of thing? “We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.
The problem with today's social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks' lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users' information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.
Historically, online media tend to start this way. The early services, such as CompuServe, Prodigy or AOL, began as “walled gardens” before they opened up to become websites. The early e-mail services could send messages only within their own walls (rather as Facebook's messaging does today). Instant-messaging, too, started closed, but is gradually opening up. In social networking, this evolution is just beginning. Parts of the industry are collaborating in a “data portability workgroup” to let people move their friend lists and other information around the web. Others are pushing OpenID, a plan to create a single, federated sign-on system that people can use across many sites.
The opening of social networks may now accelerate thanks to that older next big thing, web-mail. As a technology, mail has come to seem rather old-fashioned. But Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and other firms are now discovering that they may already have the ideal infrastructure for social networking in the form of the address books, in-boxes and calendars of their users. “E-mail in the wider sense is the most important social network,” says David Ascher, who manages Thunderbird, a cutting-edge open-source e-mail application, for the Mozilla Foundation, which also oversees the popular Firefox web browser.
That is because the extended in-box contains invaluable and dynamically updated information about human connections. On Facebook, a social graph notoriously deteriorates after the initial thrill of finding old friends from school wears off. By contrast, an e-mail account has access to the entire address book and can infer information from the frequency and intensity of contact as it occurs. Joe gets e-mails from Jack and Jane, but opens only Jane's; Joe has Jane in his calendar tomorrow, and is instant-messaging with her right now; Joe tagged Jack “work only” in his address book. Perhaps Joe's party photos should be visible to Jane, but not Jack.
This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.
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