Daring Fireball: The iPad Big Picture

But: everyone I spoke to in the press room was raving first and foremost about the speed. None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast. (And our next thought: What happens if Apple has figured out a way to make a CPU like A4 that fits in an iPhone? If they pull that off for this year’s new iPhone, look out.)

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Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren’t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn’t just own and control a mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world. Software aside (which is a huge thing to put aside), it may well be that no other company could make a device today matching the price, size, and performance of the iPad. They’re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they’re getting into it to kick ass.

The Boom and Bust Rap

via Marginal Revolution by Alex Tabarrok on 1/25/10

The Keynes-Hayek rap video is finally here and it's brilliant. The lyrics cover Keynesian economics and Austrian business cycle theory very well but what I liked best were the many ways in which the visuals, the story and the music subtly and sometimes not so subtly (!) parallel the economics--e.g. note what happens to Keynes after the big party!

It's clear that a lot of thought went into integrating the music, the story and the lyrics in order to make the most of this medium and I give my colleague Russ Roberts and John Papola much props.

Scandal: Albert Edwards Alleges Central Banks Were Complicit In Robbing The Middle Classes | zero hedge

Hence, while governments preside over economic policies which make the very rich even richer, national consumption needs to be boosted in some way to avoid underconsumption ending in outright deflation. In addition, the middle classes also need to be thrown a sop to disguise the fact they are not benefiting at all from economic growth. This is where central banks have played their pernicious part.

I recalled seeing another article from John Plender on this topic back in April 2008. His explanation for why there had been so little backlash from the stagnation of ordinary people?s income at a time when the rich did so well was simple: ?"Rising asset prices, especially in the housing market, created a sense of increasing wealth regardless of income. Remortgaging homes over a long period of declining interest rates provided a convenient source of funds via equity withdrawal to finance increased consumption” link.

še malo Edwardsa... important stuff

Project Syndicate - Engineering Financial Stability

The group calls their version of contingent capital “regulatory hybrid securities.” The idea is simple: banks should be pressured to issue a new kind of debt that automatically converts into equity if the regulators determine that there is a systemic national financial crisis, and if the bank is simultaneously in violation of capital-adequacy covenants in the hybrid-security contract.

The regulatory hybrid securities would have all the advantages of debt in normal times. But in bad times, when it is important to keep banks lending, bank capital would automatically be increased by the debt-to-equity conversion. The regulatory hybrid securities are thus designed to deal with the very source of systemic instability that the current crisis highlighted.

zagotovo vas je Matej že informiral o tem, ampak vseeno. bo pa zabava bo tole vrednotit...

Nokia Fires Back at Google With Free GPS - NYTimes.com

me zanima, ce so imeli v nacrtu ponuditi mapping zastonj, ko so dve leti nazaj porabili $8B za NavTeq :)

Nokia Fires Back at Google With Free GPS on 10 Phones

Published: January 21, 2010

Nokia began giving away professional GPS navigation software on 10 of its smartphones on Thursday, matching a competitive move byGoogle. The move deals a blow to the leaders in the market for specialized navigation devices, Garmin and TomTom.

Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

A German journalist tested Nokia's GPS on Thursday.

GPS mapping software has been one of the most popular applications for mobile phones. Nokia’s decision to turn it into a giveaway may complicate its own efforts to generate revenue from mobile services and to recoup the $8.1 billion it spent in October 2007 to buy NavTeq, a maker of digital mapping data in Chicago.

Nokia, the global leader in cellphone handsets, said it had made available through its Web site a new, free version of its Ovi Maps software which includes turn-by-turn instructions for 74 countries, with vocal prompts in 46 languages, and maps for an additional 106 countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/technology/companies/22nokia.html?src=sch

Nokia tries to reinvent itself: Bears at the door | The Economist

But this time the problems go deeper. In more than one way, Nokia has to become a different company, says Jay Galbraith, a management expert. Until now, it has excelled in making and distributing hardware. This has trained the organisation to focus on planning and logistics. Deadlines are often set 18 months in advance. Teams developing a new device also work in relative isolation and even competitively, to make each product more original. And although Nokia has always done a lot of market research and built phones for every conceivable type of customer, it sells most of its wares to telecoms operators and designs its products to meet their demands.

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15213843