More precious than oil

Notice all the attention the past few years on oil as a key strategic asset in the world economy. But has anyone projected what would happen if the world supply of computers just stopped overnight? I was very surprised to read this statistic:

83% of notebooks sold in 2005 are made in Taiwan

Unlike oil, we keep no inventory of computers. What would happen if a freak event occured in which a conflict in Taiwan destroyed its capacity to produce computers? I wonder if the US would actually defend Taiwan more ferociously than it did Kuwait in 1990-91? Is this Taiwan's insurance policy against being invaded, to be a near-monopoly producer of an essential global economic "raw material"? Can I call this the "Kuwait Strategy" of sovereign self-preservation? Has anybody researched this already? Link: � 83% of notebooks sold in 2005 are made in Taiwan | IT Facts — Your Daily Research Synopsis | ZDNet.com.

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Apple, welcome to the world of telecoms!

The amazing people at PaidContent.org dig up info on what is likely to be the iTunes phone launch next week. So it turns out that the phone is likely to be restricted to 25 songs, which is pretty pathetic. Apparently, this restriction is by design, as the phone is capable of holding many more songs than this. *If* this rumour is true, then it has Telco fingerprints all over it. Nobody at Motorola or Apple would be so stupid as to cripple a device this way.

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Why bother going to the Middle East…

...when Americans can get their fill of religious extremism right at home!

I know this is just a tiny group of crazy people, but it makes the whole of religious America look bad.

Hat tip to David Galbraith for spotting these loonies:

"ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government... The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina."

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Rents in European Cities

A new study by a Spanish property association (FMAIM) shows that, not surprisingly, London has the most expensive rent among major European cities. More surpising, is that Madrid now has the 5th most expensive rent in Europe! The top cities are: 1. London (35 Euros/m2/month - ouch!!) 2. Rome (21.7) 3. Paris (19.8) 4. Geneva (19.4) 5. Madrid (16) Then there's the 10-15 Euros/m2/month bracket: - Barcelona, Amsterdam, Zurich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich And the under 10 Euros/m2/month bracket: - Stockholm, Amsterdam, Brussels. I think this list leaves out many cities- would be interesting to get a much more detailed view, also with some sense of tendency over time. But I'm surprised by the rent levels in Madrid being so high, particularly when you know what average salary levels are like there. Link: Noticias detalladas.

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Gahbunga!

A riff on the Dodgeball and Hot or Not concepts, Gahbunga is a new SMS service that works like this: go on a date, take a cameraphone picture of your date and send it to Gahbunga, who in turn send it to all your friends for them to rate your date. Before the date is over you get back a message with the summary of your friends' opinions.

Will this work? I don't know. I have to admit, when I was in NY late last year and first heard about Dodgeball, I didn't "get it" (until Google acquired them, that is!).

But I'm not sure I'd want to be the guy taking a picture of his date, I don't think I'd really care to get real-time pictures of my friends' dates to give feedback, and I'm not sure about having my picture taken by a date, knowing I was going to be rated by all her friends right then and there...

Link: Gahbunga!.

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Lessons from an IT hell-week

Last week, a "perfect storm" of IT irritations/failures led me to have to buy a new PC and assorted accessories. I now see light at the end of the tunnel, and if all goes well, I should be able to get back to work.

Rather than review the gory details of everything that went wrong, here are some of the lessons learned:

  • Google rocks. Maybe stating the obvious, but one can really learn a lot by tapping into the experience of others that is available online. If you've had a computer problem, chances are someone else has also had it and had it solved, and the whole conversation has been indexed by Google.
  • Acer is bad. I bought an Acer PC in Spain and found it impossible to upgrade to an english version of XP; everything crashed nonstop, the documentation in the box and online was laughably bad, and online forums seemed full of people complaining about Acer problems. I spent 10 hours trying to get around these problems before simply giving up and returning the machine. Acer customer support was open only in restricted business hours, too. It was annoying, because the Acer value for money was pretty good and I liked the look and noise level of the box. Oh, well.
  • Media Markt is great! Value for money was insanely good when buying a PC made under their own brand "microstar". The box won't win any design awards, but the components are first-rate and everything worked perfectly from the start (including my upgrade to XP in english and reinstallation of drivers). The reference instructions in the box were great, and even the way files were organized on the hard drive were super logical and easy to follow. Excellent service guarantees and money-back policies. Respect to Germany!
  • PC City is ok. They get my respect for offering a very easy return policy, but the salemanship isn't very good, and the quality of the products fairly dubious. Lot's of crummy low-spec accessories and PCs on offer.
  • Don't ever buy IT equipment from a Spanish, or worse- Catalan, owned business. I'm not sure why this is, but the state of retail marketing in Spain is about 20-30 years behind the US/UK, particularly in money-back guarantees and return policies. I've returned goods that were defective and had to argue about it, been made to feel like I was cheating the store, and literally scolded on my attitude for thinking I could dare to return items. I have in the past had almost hilarious converstations with local shop owners in Barcelona who simply don't believe me when I tell them the kind of return policies that are normal in the US/UK. Whatever...I don't even bother anymore- I simply buy from other places, which in Spain means buying from foreign-owned chains like PC City or Media Markt.

Link: Media Markt Europe.

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Shareholder society

This table says a lot about the state of development of Europe's capital markets. It's rather sad to see just how parochial some of the core European countries still are, particularly in Germany and France. The numbers: http://www.vernimmen.com/letter/charts/letter_8-3.gif Source: “The ultimate ownership of Western European corporations”, M. Faccio, L.Lang; Journal of Financial Economics; 2002. Study based on 5232 listed companies in 13 countries Link: Vernimmen - THE VERNIMMEN.COM LETTER.

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Clever way to silence dissent!

From the cover story of today's Sunday Times:

MEMBERS of Britain’s elite have been selected as priority cases to receive scarce pills and vaccinations at the taxpayers’ expense if the country is hit by a deadly bird flu outbreak.

Although senior government ministers would be among the high-priority cases, the department said this weekend that it had not decided whether to include opposition politicians.

Is this a joke?

Can you imagine the Bush administration announcing that only Republicans could get Bird Flu vaccine?

Link:  Britain's elite get pills to survive bird flu - Sunday Times - Times Online.

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Barcelona for Offshoring

In the latest BusinessWeek, a pretty detailed article on  the growth of offshoring services in Barcelona.

A number of people I've met in the last few months have been doing call center work. It seems to suit the lifestyle desired here, as you can get 20-hour work weeks, leaving lots of time for the partying/beachgoing/etc. that attracts people here in the first place.

The figures cited are the first I've seen that concretely size the market and key players here, and they are pretty impressive.

The article mentions rising wages as a threat to the boom. But the wages aren't really rising that fast, at least from what I hear, because there is an endless supply of people coming to Spain to try to make a living. The real threat is in the skyrocketing cost of living, particularly in housing, that basically makes call center work a guarantee of poverty living. This is fine for 20-somethings coming to party for a couple years, but it's definitely not sustainable for career-building.

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