Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, sold one trillion RMB worth of goods in 2012, the company announced today. That’s $157 billion U.S. in gross merchandise volume (GMV), which easily surpasses U.S e-commerce giants Amazon and eBay combined.
Continue reading… “Alibaba, world’s biggest e-commerce company, reaches $157 billion in sales”
Vint Cerf, inventor of the Internet Protocol [IP] and Transmission Control Protocol [TCP].
One of the two or three people who can rightly claim to have invented the internet is Vint Cerf. He is now worried about its survival.
Cerf is specifically concerned about the World Conference on International Telecommunications, happening now through December 14 in Dubai. At this meeting, for the first time since 1988, the countries of the world will gather to try and update international agreements on how to handle data, voice, and other communications technologies. (Video)
Continue reading… “Internet inventor, Vint Cerf, worried about its survival”
Black swan
Self-confessed sceptic Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestseller The Black Swan ridicules the idea of predicting the future. Instead, he argues that the world is dominated by the impact of rare, unforeseen, random, highly improbable and yet influential events. These Black Swans, he says, happen abruptly, coming from outside the range of our vision.
85.5 million people access social networks via a smartphone or tablet app.
People are accessing the web more frequently and for longer periods, using smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and smart TVs both in the U.S. and globally. We’re still using PCs as well, but personal computer usage of social media is just about the only category that’s down: 4 percent fewer Americans connected to the Internet via a PC in 2012, while 82 percent more connected via the mobile web and 85 percent more connected via a mobile app.
Continue reading… “Nielsen releases 2012 Social Media Report”
Incubators and accelerators are churning out thousands of startups a year.
There has been a glut of tech incubators and accelerators and for over a year now we have been warned about them. With at least 100 such programs churning out thousands of startups a year and the expectation that 90 percent of them won’t return their money, the seeming launch of a new accelerator program each week is a valid concern.
Apple’s Newsstand
There is a pretty clear preference on the part of many publishers for creating an online or mobile experience that looks as much as possible like the physical magazine or newspaper it is intended to replace. This is something Apple reinforces with its Newsstand platform, which has virtual shelves with tiny virtual magazine covers and newspaper front pages. In many cases this approach is not surprising, but is it the best way to either publish or consume content. Which is why some of the most interesting experiments in online content are coming from those who are not just thinking outside of the box, but aren’t even willing to admit that there is a box.
Off the cob: Corny
We invested in dictionaries in 2012. Old dictionaries. Slang dictionaries, mostly, and often we didn’t have to invest much. What we spent at yard sales and used book stores was well worth it, and we’ve been shoehorning great terms like these into office conversations all year.
Continue reading… “25 new words and phrases we learned this year”
Top 18 fastest growing cities are in China.
The top 50 fastest-growing cities, by GDP per capita, are practically all in the developing Asian world. The top 18 are in China. The rest are in China, Indonesia (Jakarta), India (Chennai), and Australia (Perth).
Continue reading… “The world’s fastest growing (and shrinking) cities of 2012”
Rich beyond belief.
Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook are at each others throats. So this has become an epic story of warring factions in a strange and changing landscape, a tale of incursions and sieges, of plots and betrayals, of battlefield brilliance and of cunning with coin.
Continue reading… “Apple, Google, Amazon, And Facebook have declared World War 3”
Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy
Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, believes college should look very different from the typical four-year institution. The Khan Academy is a popular site that offers free online video lectures about a variety of subjects, lays out his thoughts on the future of education in his book, The One World School House: Education Reimagined, released last month. Though most of the work describes Mr. Khan’s experiences with Khan Academy and his suggestions for changing elementary- and secondary-school systems, he does devote a few chapters to higher education.
Continue reading… “New type of college proposed by Khan Academy founder”
Extended sitting slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood.
Health studies have always concluded that people should sit less, and get up and move around more. But the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. Recently two studies have reiterated that point, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.
Japan’s maglev train
Europe and Asia have proven that high speed rail is an efficient and environmentally friendly way to move people between urban areas. They use blisteringly fast magnetically levitating trains, like this new Japanese prototype.
Continue reading… “Japan unveils fastest commercial maglev train ever”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.