Involving: Google plays around with a lap top, India influences gold, Singapore is legendary, and the Oscar bail-hearing brings you “THE WEEK THAT CHANGED THE WORLD OF NEWS-REPORTING”
Good morning
The headlines:
- Google launches another lap-top.
Link: wise?
Google has just released a touch-screen version of their Chromebook laptop.
And while it looks quite sexy and so on, I have to make an observation. Which is: since the advent of the tablet and the smartphone, I’ve never quite felt the uncontrollable urge to reach across my keyboard and play hand-ballet across my laptop screen. I have not longed for it.
Oh – I have longed for more RAM and better speed and the ability to reach through the screen and sample the pinewood-smoked-chocolate-fondant-with-burnt-sugar-foam that I see posted about on food blogs… And highspeed internet access from wherever I am without having to use an ISP or my credit card.
But not really touchscreens. Because, you know, it’s an awkward angle. And I might break something. And there’s an app that allows me to do it from my iPhone/iPad.
Google, it seems, knows me better. And their laptops are taking for granted that highspeed internet access, because a lot more seems to be going on in the Clouds. On the other hand – perhaps they’ve realised that a large part of what ties me to the Apple brand is the fact that I work, play and read on one or other Apple device. Google really just offers playtime.
Strategic play? Almost definitively. So when the stock price drops after initial disappointing sales – be sure to have some money saved to by Google stock.
- Singapore and their awesome GDP.
Link: a guide.
I keep coming back to Singapore, whose GDP rose 3.3% (annualised) in the first quarter of 2013, as a shining example of the way things ought to be done.
For example, Singapore has a “managed” exchange rate in that it “guides” the exchange rate to move within an unspecified value band against a indeterminate basket of unknown currencies – and the “guiding” has more to do with managing the pace of appreciation/depreciation rather than forcing it to stay at a certain rate.
Which to me sounds like the best kind of state intervention. Let the market have what it wants – but let that process be controlled.
And I’m going to ignore the social unrest that Singapore is experiencing. I’m going to blame that on leftist bastards who are riling up the masses. It has nothing to do with loose immigration policy. Obviously.
- India’s gold tax.
Link: why it’s important.
The gold price is falling. India is the world’s largest buyer of gold. An Indian import tax would not be helpful to that gold price.
- What the Oscar Pistorius trial means for the world.
Link: emblematic.
The Oscar Pistorius trial is not a business issue per se. I mean – I think that the film and book rights are going to be awesomely expensive. It has all the hallmarks of a-ha-mazing drama.
But the real reason that I’m bringing it up is because I think the trial is changing the face of news. I have not been reading/hearing about the trial on the news or in newspapers: I have been getting the updates live on twitter. I mean: the full blow-by-blow of the hearings on @BarryBateman’s twitter feed. And I’ve watched his follower count leap from 26k on Tuesday to over 130k this morning.
And lest we forget, the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld was the first news outlet to report the story. And they did it with a tweet.
Twitter may yet take over the world. In fact, I think Malcom Gladwell might call this “the tipping point”.
And while we’re on this point – you know what else? Everyone is following Barry, not some news twitterbot. Probably because it feels like you’re getting smses from a friend who is in the middle of the drama. Tastes like gossip.
For fun twitter statistics, check this page out.
That’s all for now.
Have a good day.
