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The mobile space has quickly become a two-horse race between Google and Apple ‐ and one of those giants significantly widened its lead last quarter. Google's Android surged to a whopping 68% share of the global smartphone market last quarter. That's four times more than the 17% market share held by Apple, according to a Wednesday report from research firm IDC. (CNN/Money)
Visit http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/08/technology/smartphone-market-share/index.html?iid=Lead to view the full article online.
Last Friday evening, a hacker got into Mat Honan’s Apple account, remotely erased the data on his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, deleted his Google account, commandeered his Twitter account, and then posted a string of nasty stuff under Honan’s name. Until recently, Honan, who’s a writer at Wired and one of my favorite tech journalists, worked at Gizmodo, and his Twitter account was still linked to the tech blog’s main Twitter page – so for about 15 minutes, the hacker was able to post a bunch of foul-mouthed, racist stuff there, too. (Slate)
Visit http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/08/mat_honan_the_four_things_you_need_to_do_right_now_to_avoid_getting_hacked_.html to view the full article online.
Career
Despite a full-time job as a mechanical engineer, Sean Whitney is carving out hours to pursue the new Johns Hopkins MBA/MA in "Design Leadership." Whitney believes the program, a collaboration of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and the Maryland Institute College of Art, will teach him management skills while he learns to think more creatively. (Reuters)
Visit http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/08/moneypack-backtoschool-courses-idINL2E8J33VC20120808 to view the full article online.
Diversity in the Workplace
International
During the Olympics, the ad ran constantly: A red Cadillac ATS speeds through hairpin turns in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains as a wide-eyed wingman yells, "We’ve been going as fast as you possibly can without taking this thing off the side of a cliff!" The disc brakes that make this stunt possible are from Brembo (BRE), a company in the Lombardy region of northern Italy. Brembo is not what you picture when you hear people tossing around phrases about Italy like "profligate" and "basket case." It’s an elite export powerhouse, with €703 million ($871 million) in revenue in the first six months of 2012, up 11 percent from a year earlier. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Visit http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-08/parts-of-europe-have-quietly-become-competitive to view the full article online.
Here’s how it works: You’re building a Web service in the U.S. or Western Europe, but you realize Silicon Valley, New York, and London are terribly expensive places to hire programming talent. So you hire staff in a developing economy, perhaps Eastern Europe. And why not? Skilled programmers outside the West are cheaper and whip-smart, helping you save money and improve your product. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Visit http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-09/portugal-shows-how-euro-crisis-is-shuffling-the-tech-order to view the full article online.
When Kellogg stamped Gabby Douglas’s hard-to-forget smile on a box of corn flakes, the company kicked off a string of endorsement deals that will likely make her millions. But even without sponsors, the 16-year-old gymnast will leave London with $50,000, which is what pair of gold medals is worth in her home country. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
Visit http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-08/the-payoff-from-winning-an-olympic-medal#r=read to view the full article online.
Education
During the M.B.A. gold rush of the past three decades, the Yale School of Management accomplished the unthinkable. As the number of prospective business-school candidates shot up to more than 750,000 a year and tuition payments cleared $100,000, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and other schools hired star faculty members, built gleaming buildings, established themselves as global brands and brought in tens (and sometimes hundreds) of millions in profits to their universities each year. Meanwhile, Yale somehow lost money. (The New York Times)
Visit http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/is-michigan-state-really-better-than-yale.html?hpw to view the full article online.
With its leafy avenues and Gothic buildings, the University of Chicago seems a sober, solid sort of place. John D. Rockefeller, whose money built it, said it was the "best investment I ever made". Yet Chicago and other not-for-profit American universities have been piling on the debt as if they were high-tech start-ups. (The Economist)
Visit http://www.economist.com/node/21559936 to view the full article online.
NBMBAA
Got a business idea and up for a challenge? If so, register to compete in NBMBAA's Innovation Whiteboard Challenge®. The Innovation Whiteboard Challenge gives you the chance to pitch your great business idea with just a marker and a whiteboard. Take the chance and sell the concept you've been thinking off to a panel of distinguished judges at the 34th Annual Conference and Exposition in Indianapolis this September.
The winner will walk away with $10,000! Registration has been extended to August 20. Getting started is easy. Simply sign up by submitting a 60-second video showing your unique idea through our website. Don’t miss this great chance to advance your entrepreneurial dreams. Sign up today!
Entrepreneurship
Consultant John B. Webster has an unusual way of introducing himself to prospective clients: He tells them he did time in four federal prisons. Mr. Webster is a former criminal defense lawyer who served a 13-month sentence for lying to a law-enforcement agency in an effort to help a client. He says he freely advised fellow inmates on sentencing issues while serving his time. Prevented from practicing law, he turned this experience into a business, starting his three-employee Brentwood, Tenn., consulting firm, National Prison and Sentencing Consultants, after he got out of prison in 2002. (Wall Street Journal)
Visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443792604577575053287730474.html to view the full article online.
The Economy
The drought that's drying up the Heartland isn't just an American problem. It's causing food prices to surge worldwide. And it could get worse. "This is not some gentle monthly wake-up call, it's the same global alarm that's been screaming at us since 2008," said Colin Roche of Oxfam, noting that the drought could lead to food shortages for millions of people worldwide. (CNN/Money)
Visit http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news/economy/food-prices-index/index.htm?hpt=ibu_c1 to view the full article online.
Corporate America
We’ve all seen the smiling faces of company owners and executives as they ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to mark the start of public trading of their shares. In fact, this week was the biggest week for IPOs since Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) went public in May. Many outsiders assume that the ultimate goal of entrepreneurs is to ring that bell. After all, why wouldn’t it be? (Upstart Business Journal)
Visit http://upstart.bizjournals.com/resources/executive-forum/2012/08/09/brian-hamilton-on-should-you-go-ipo.html to view the full article online.
In major cities around the world, people are revolting against big business. Occupy Wall Street grew to be a global phenomena, but has yet to create any real change. But unlike Wall Street, there is one street where everyday people can create a revolution. A revolution that will have a profound impact on the health of the planet and people around the globe. That street is Madison Avenue, the literal and figurative center of the advertising industry. (Fast Company)
Visit http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680322/for-a-real-revolution-occupy-madison-avenue to view the full article online.
Government
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has acknowledged that he had money in a Swiss bank account until 2010. Romney says he wasn't trying to hide the money, since he reported the account to the government. Even so, he closed the account at a time when the federal government was in the middle of a major crackdown on offshore tax havens – a crackdown that has made it harder for Americans to hide their money overseas. (NPR)
Visit http://www.npr.org/2012/08/08/158441566/tax-evaders-beware-moneys-getting-harder-to-hide to view the full article online.
Leadership
Do you find it odd that when a company announces a profit of $8.4 billion in a single quarter, the performance is reported as "disappointing"? Or $5.7 billion as "dreadful"? Fact is, these were the terms used to describe the results produced by Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell after their second quarter earnings release. (Harvard Business Review)
Visit http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2012/08/thinking-long-term-in-a-short-.html to view the full article online.
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