Destroy the computer

I don't know what it is but nowadays, a lot of "funny" news is coming across my desk.

"UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships showed more than a third of men and a quarter of women have a drink to cope with stress."

The study intends to conclude that "modern annoyances of automated call centres, mobile phones and crashing computers" drives people to alcohol and cigarettes.

Okay - when my hard drive would crash, I wouldn't necessarily grap a bottle of whiskey and a cigarette to get over with it, hoping that all will be well, when I am sober again. Neither would I start smoking.

Stress might cause - and I say might! - health problems, but the reasons are not related to crashing computers, or constantly ringing phones. Health effects caused by stress has more to do with lack of control over what you do and lack of experience with the type of work - thus also lack of empowerment. If you know what you do, have the appropriate resources to manage the work or the task at hand, stress effects are greatly reduced. As simple as that. Thus, instead of drinking the whiskey or smoking the stick, just take your mobile phone and call the computer shop!

(By Asia Business Consulting)

The dead zone is the last resort

Another article on gadgets and the overwhelmed individual and their coping strategies. I said it before, it is a tough life if you are not able to create the space that you need to rejuvenate your private life, generate new energy to get going the next day. To be bad at time management in 24/7 can be a killer, if only it can destroy your family life.

Now, there is the iPod that is also involved in the discussion but I am not going into this direction.

But true enough, how often do you use excuses to avoid the call of the phone and let it ring? Well, with GPS, this is all over soon, because technology allows the caller to see were you are. Until then, you can say that you had been in the dead zone - no signal available. Or, as the interviewed person says: "Before the cell phone, we can always say, 'Oh, I was in the yard when you phoned. Now the last remaining excuse you have is, 'Oops, I'm in a dead zone.' This is the curse of digital slavery." Or, if all fails, eat your phone!

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Batteries powered by urine

Sure, we need longer battery life for our mobile phones - but is it really an idea to power mobile phones with urine?

Not yet there, but may be in the making.

"Physicists in Singapore have developed a battery that can be powered by human urine. The battery is aimed at disposable health-care kits for use in rural areas."

What other applications come to mind? What will Duracell say to this?

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Digital music enjoys a dream week

A report states that legal downloads exceeded targets in the end of last year and now everybody is happy.

"Before the week ending January 1, 2006, the record for the most downloads sold in seven days was 9.5 million tracks -- set just one week earlier.

- Sales of 20 million songs were almost three times the amount of digital tracks sold in the same seven-day span a year ago.

- Fifteen songs on the current Hot Digital Songs chart surpassed the one-week record for sales of a single track.

- Rap group D4L's "Laffy Taffy" took the top spot with 175,000 tracks sold, more than doubling the mark of 80,500 downloads Kanye West's "Gold Digger" set the week of September 17.

- Each of the top 11 titles on the Hot Digital Songs chart sold more than 100,000 downloads.

For the year, the digital track sales tally reached 352 million -- a 147% increase over 2004's total of 142.6 million."

Wonderful - but hey - there were plenty of MP3 players sold in those weeks before Christmas, nicely packed as presents and give by Santa Claus. Now, what do you think those people do? They go onto the web and start downloading from websites offering legal downloads.

Does this make the pee-to-peer group websites go away? Not likely and while those legal numbers grow, it will take a long, long time to overtake the number of downloads from the so-called illegal ones - currently estimated at 250 million per week.

(By Asia Business Consulting)

China's third wave of growth

China is already large, but when the government intents to entice consumers to losen their strings on their purses, expect further growth to come.

"Economists say China’s economy, which has grown at above 7% since 2000, is overly dependent on exports and foreign investments. Private consumption accounts for only 53% of China’s gross domestic product compared with the world average of 70%. In part because nearly 900 million poor, rural Chinese add little to total retail spending."

Now it is this gap that the government plans to tap into, even so retail sales already grow an astonishing 13% per year.

Who shall carry the growth wave? The youth of course. "BNP Paribas estimates this group numbers about 90 million now. And as those born in the ‘80s and ‘90s mature, the figure could well reach 320 million." A dream for any company that is able to position itself correctly and is able to connect with the potential customer.

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Fighting snatch thieves

A bit out of the usual but still newsworthy.

In China a citizen group called Forest has been formed to fight rising snatch thieve incidences. The members of the group met online first, in a chatroom and started to make an impact in cities. Following their success, other groups in other cities have been formed.

The persons involved are only part-timers in fighting crime. So what do they do?

Basically, they are checking out shopping malls and other public areas and either prevent snatch thieves from becomine active (they stare at them), or pouncing on snatch thieves when the robber wants to run away. The group operates in a way that two of them attempt to prevent the theft while others stand aside in case trouble looms.

It is not always easy.

In one case "they pounce on a thief trying to flee the mall after stealing a mobile phone from a woman's backpack, only to be threatened by three of the thief's knife-wielding partners in crime. The six safeguard members attack the assailants and wrestle the knives from their hands. "Please call [the police emergency number] 110 and fan out," Forest shouts to bystanders. Police arrive a few minutes later and Forest and his group wrap up the night at around 10.40pm after offering witness statements to the officers. "We fear being injured every time," says one member.

Something to learn about cooperation and teamwork?

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Comparison shopping with the mobile phone

Japan is ahead in mobile communications, so it is actually nothing new that they introduce the ability to do comparison shopping on the phone.

This is introduced despite their ability of mobile phones to function as cameras, game ports, phone books, calculators, radio/recorders, dictionaries, alarm clocks, schedulers, TV remote controllers, e-mail and voice mail terminals and e-money.

"The new service will cover products that consumers are particularly concerned about, including consumer electronics products, food, books, CDs, DVDs and cosmetics. Bar codes on about 400,000 products can be scanned."

Mobile phone companies and handset makers are desparate to move mobile phone users to higher end data services and they will look full of envy to Japan. Does the future of mobile phones start in Japan, still, or do Japanese also need to be educated on the use of mobile phones?

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Our CDs change, once again

Ah - how many of us still remember the good old vinyl records, those old black disks that scratched so easily.

Then came the CDs, and we all were sold on the idea that nothing can destroy them. Well, how foolish were we, when we tossed them here and there. How often did they hang in the recorders, because they got scratched.

Now, change is on its way: "Todd Kuchman, founder and chief executive of Scratch-Less Disc Industries, came up with a low-tech fix. He added a series of bumps around the edge of the disc, keeping the surface slightly raised."

But the question is - how important is that? Aren't discs on their way out, basically, replaced by memory sticks, online storage and well, pirated CDs as well, anyway?

I am not sure if this a great invention, but well, there is always space for innovation or incremental change in the industry. But this invention is not as revolutionary as it might look at first glance.

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Salaries rising in India

It's been a long time since I wrote about talent crunch and the talent market in India. Already then did I warn about growing salaries that might help other countries to compete with India. It is happening, as this is a natural cycle.

And costs for labour has gone up dramatically: "labour cost has gone up substantially in service sector industries where new employment has been generated (and where the employment market has been heated).

For example, the labour cost in the booming information technology sector moved up from 29.38 per cent of total cost in 2000-01 to 45.29 per cent in 2004-05.

In the banking and finance sector, which has seen a drive for greater productivity and improved bottom lines, the share of labour cost declined from 41.79 per cent in 2000-01 to 34.81 per cent in 2004-05." See the earlier article about Microsoft!

So while India's rise is clearly signalling competition for many companies, it also allows other countries to rise in the overall wave upwards. And that, once again, is the fun part of competition and globalisation.

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Web designs, oh web designs

It is happening all around us. More and more ads infiltrate formerly great web- and news pages and it also happens with blogs - here, we find the infiltration of Adsense by Google, sprinkled all across the pages, not just at the side.

The worse, and this is not just my opinion, are those webpages that are split. So in order to read on, you have to click the famous "continue" button only .... to find more ads. Where is the quality text? After all, did we "fight" so hard against pop-ups just to be swamped by more ads? Haven't advertisers learnt anything from the decline of advertisement on television or radio? Where is the content-specific ad? Where is the responsible blogger who puts ads where they belong? Out of the sight from the reader!

Or, as the Inquirer writes:

"The whole practice of two lines a page has to stop now. I know, you need your greedy ad dollars, but rather than put out good content, you make out lives hard. There are two major sites that just got taken off my reading list, not because of content, that has been pretty poor for a long time on both. In this case, it is 80 ads on a page with less content than a decent headline."

I fully agree!

(By Asia Business Consulting)

Are people able to handle mobile phones?

What a stupid question, right? Of course they are able to handle mobile phones, just not everybody.

Last week, I wrote about the woman who ate a mobile phone when she had an argument with her boyfriend.

Earlier, I described those who tried to threaten authorities via SMS or sell false domain names.

History will judge the thief who stole a mobile phone and then, when police called him, didn't hang up, when he called for a taxi. He cursed and sweared, when the taxi didn't arrive. Who arrived finally was the police and the destination, after the thief finally found a taxi. Makes you wonder. The only good news is that this is news that it is fun and easy to write about.

Happy New Year, even so it is belated.

(By Asia Business Consulting)