الخميس، 31 أكتوبر 2013

General Motors Ramping Up The Cadillac Brand in China


Cadillac XTS; GM photo



General Motors aims to make Cadillac the next big status symbol in China, following up on the success of its Buick brand, which is a far bigger seller in China than the United States.


“We have talked in length about the plans with Cadillac in China,” said GM CFO Dan Ammann, in an Oct. 30 conference call for investors and analysts, to announce third-quarter results.


“We believe their market there is very much ready for Cadillac in a much bigger way than it’s been there on an import basis,” he said.


“We’ve started manufacturing locally,” Ammann said. GM started building the Cadillac XTS luxury sedan in China last fall, in conjunction with joint venture partner Shanghai General Motors.


In June of this year, Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson said GM expects China to be the world’s biggest market for luxury cars by 2020, with estimated annual sales of as many as 3 million luxury cars for all brands, out of 30 million total.


Akerson said Cadillac expects to add a new model in China every year through 2016, and to achieve a 10 percent share of the luxury car market in China by 2020. That would be 300,000 units, or roughly double the volume Cadillac sold in the United States in 2012.


GM already sells a lot more Buicks in China than the United States. Buick’s success in China was said to be a big argument for retaining Buick when GM dumped Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer in its 2009 bankruptcy restructuring.


In September, GM and its Chinese joint ventures sold a record 277,647 vehicles in China, an increase of about 14 percent from the same month in 2012, the company said. That included more than 70,000 Buicks, vs. Buick sales in the United States of fewer than 16,000.


Cadillac sales in China were about 4,500 in September. Ammann said this week Cadillac’s expansion in China is “still at the early stages of really getting the volume equation ramped up.”






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhenry/2013/10/31/general-motors-ramping-up-the-cadillac-brand-in-china/

Google Aims At Next Billion Smartphone Users With New Android, Nexus 5 Phone


Google's Nexus 5 smartphone



Google took aim at the next billion users worldwide with today’s introduction of the next version of its Android mobile software on a new flagship Nexus 5 smartphone.


Google said the new Android software, which it has nicknamed KitKat, will work on older smartphones as well, a key feature that Google hopes will solve a longstanding problem with Android phones. Although Android phones now vastly outnumber key rival Apple's iPhones around the world, older phones haven’t had enough memory to run the latest versions of Android. That has made it tough for software developers to create apps that work on all Android phones, so iPhones tend to offer a smoother, more consistent experience than Android phones.


What users will notice most is a more intuitive way to get information even before they ask for it, thanks to the search giant’s machine learning techniques and trademark big data. “The goal of Google is that regardless of where the information is, we bring it back to you,” said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome, and apps. “We want to bring that experience to the phone.”


Google also unveiled the worst-kept secret in tech lately, the Nexus 5 phone. Manufactured by LG, it’s smaller and slimmer than the current Nexus 4 model and features a fast processor chip, a five-inch high-definition screen, and a new camera that provides optical image stabilization using a tiny gyroscope.


Google is making the two models latest Nexus phone, which will sell starting today for $349 without a contract for the 16 GB model and $399 for the 32 GB model, available in more countries (10) and retailers and carriers (T-Mobile, Best Buy, Amazon, Sprint, and Radio Shack) than previous models. It won’t be available on Verizon, which uses different cellular frequencies than other carriers, but will work with AT&T.


However, Google’s intention is less to gain market share than to provide a reference model that will push the rest of the industry forward faster, Pichai said. Google’s flat shares in today’s trading may reflect that reality.


Perhaps most important for Google, KitKat was designed to require less memory to run, only 512 megabytes of RAM, which is common to many low-end smartphones. Google did that by reducing memory consumption needed by the software, by taking apps like maps and mail and making them use less memory, and exiting out of apps or processes automatically if they’re not being used. In addition, the software will give app developers way to recognize that a particular phone has only a small amount of memory, so they can do a different user interface to make it fit better.


“It’s a cutting-edge OS meant to operate on cutting-edge phones, but it can work all the way back on less sophisticated phones, in one version of the OS,” Pichai said. “That makes a big difference. We want to reach the next 1 billion people on one version of Android.”


Google aims less at making money on Android and smartphones than making sure that it has a ready outlet for its services unencumbered by other companies’ software or carrier restrictions. “We want to reach the next 1 billion people on one version of Android,” Pichai said. (Apparently it doesn’t care to reach some of the last billion, however, since the 18-month-old Samsung Galaxy, for instance, won’t be able to be upgraded to KitKat.)


The announcement, made at a small gathering of press at Google’s San Francisco headquarters, potentially gives Google more ammunition vs. Apple’s iPhone, new models of which were introduced in September.


The Nexus 5 phone features a number of advances, including the new camera, processor, a screen made of Gorilla Glass 3, and ceramic buttons. Google also added optical image stabilization by putting a small precise gyro into the lens, reducing blur.


Software called HDR+ allows you to take photos in very challenging environments, such as very low light. The software takes a burst of shots together and does post-processing to fuse those images together. It can also differentiate any motion from noise on the sensor. For example, taking a photo directly into sunlight, you can get best lighting on both the subject and the background without shadows or overexposure. Also, when you take shots of moving objects, like kids, the camera can detect parts of the image that are moving and select only the sharpest image among that burst of photos.


There also will be a wireless printing framework, so apps and printer manufacturers can enable physical printing. You see a list of printers on the network.


Google also has added a number of other service features, most prominently a 25% improvement in speech recognition, on top of a 20% improvement last year, and the ability carry on a dialogue through Google Now, its personal assistant service. An example Google provided: “Text Jennifer.” Answers “Which Jennifer?” “Jennifer Fitzgerald.” “Mobile or work?” “Work.” “What do you want to say?” And so on.


Moreover, the results Google brings up on a search can tap both the Web and apps that are installed on the phone. For instance, if you search for a restaurant and have OpenTable installed, the results will show the app and with a click bring up a screen to make a reservation there. Available in about two weeks, this is a pilot program for now with about 10 apps, including Trulia, IMDB, moviefone, Etsy, Expedia, OpenTable, and newegg.com. “We are beginning to bring apps and the Web together,” Pichai said. “Regardless of where the information is, we want to bring it together for you.”



The new Android 4.4 will be available on the Nexus 4 phone and Nexus 7 and 10 tablets, the Samsung Galaxy S4, and HTC One Google Play edition devices in a few weeks.


Here’s a video to check out the Nexus 5:






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/10/31/google-aims-at-next-billion-smartphone-users-with-new-android-nexus5/

People Are Moral In The Morning, Dishonest In The Afternoon


The wear and tear of an average day makes people more likely to fudge the truth in the afternoon.



If you’re the head of a sales team and you want your people to be honest with you about whether they have met their targets, it’s better to meet with them in the morning rather than the afternoon. Or if you’re negotiating the terms of a mortgage, do it before lunchtime if you can.


That’s the conclusion of a new study by two academics, Maryam Kouchaki, a Lab Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard and Isaac Smith, a PhD candidate at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Smith and Kouchaki, who study ethics, morality and organizational behavior, ran a series of four experiments where they tested the theory that most people, even if they have a strong moral compass, are more likely to lie, steal and cheat in the afternoon than in the morning.


Smith, 33, says he and Kouchaki were partly motivated by studies that show people who are sleep-deprived tend to exhibit less self-control. Though other studies have shown that self-control is like a muscle—the more you use it, the stronger it gets—in the short term, fatigue can deplete it. Studies have also shown that under-slept people are more likely to cheat and act unethically. Smith and Kouchaki wondered whether the stress and fatigue of just getting through the day can break down self-control enough that, as the day wears on, they become more likely to lie. The short answer: Yes.


To test their hypothesis, they ran four studies. In the first, they showed a group of 62 undergraduates a pattern of dots on a computer. The experiment displayed the dots inside a bifurcated square, and asked the participants to say whether there were more dots on one side of the square than the other. The participants got five cents each time they said there were more dots on the right side of the square. They got half a cent if they said there were more on the left. The study ran tests on students in the morning between 8:00am and noon and in the afternoon from noon until 6:00pm. Even though the financial incentive was tiny, they found that the afternoon participants were two-and-a-half times more likely than the morning participants to lie about the number of dots on the right side of the screen.


In a second study that seems a little whacky to me, Smith and Kouchaki had 65 undergraduates fill spaces in word fragments. One read _ _ RAL and the other, E_ _ _C_ L. In the morning, participants were more likely to fill in the words “moral” and “ethical, while in the afternoon, the students tended to form the words “coral” and “effects.


They ran another two studies using online volunteers they found through Amazon Mechanical Turk. I have to say this site is an eye-opener for me. People volunteer to do menial online “human intelligence tasks,” like ranking URLs and website information, for teensy bits of money, like 3 cents or 10 cents per task. Smith and Kouchaki found 130 participants through Amazon and asked them to send either a truthful message or a blatantly deceptive message to a virtual partner. If they sent the lying message, they earned 50 cents. The truthful message earned just 25 cents. In the afternoon, 65% of people sent lying messages while in the morning, just 43% did.


Where does all this leave us? “You can’t say that the fall of Enron was because more decisions were made in the afternoon than in the morning,” concedes Smith. “But for individuals who care about everyday morality and everyday decisions, there are implications.” If you’re headed into a negotiation with a potential business partner, for instance, you have greater reason to trust him in the morning if he says he won’t take a deal that’s lower than $50,000. In the afternoon, you should be more skeptical.


Smith says we should also think about what the study says about our own tendency to be honest. “There are subtle environmental factors that affect our decision-making,” he says. “People who want to make sure they make moral decisions should be aware of what makes them susceptible to lying.” Sometimes at the end of the day we feel too tired to make important calls. Smith and Kouchaki’s work shows that the wear and fatigue of an average day can also make it tough to be completely honest as the day wears on.


The study is being published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal put out by the Association for Psychological Science.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/10/31/people-are-moral-in-the-morning-dishonest-in-the-afternoon/

NetAppVoice: The CIO's New Role: The Business Of The Business

Cynthia Stoddard, NetApp CIO In 25 years of leading IT teams, I’ve had only two choices when it comes to solving technology challenges: We either build it ourselves or buy it from someone else.


But today, my role as CIO is changing. Now, brokering cloud services provides a third option, which dramatically changes the IT landscape—and the way that my team approaches issues. Here’s how…


The cloud—specifically hybrid cloud computing—is changing the focus from technology to service relationships. It isn’t necessarily what technology we’re using that’s important, but instead, on whom we are relying to deliver the solution.


In the past, IT would decide on a piece of software or hardware, build a solution around it, and then be locked in for a number of years—maximizing investment and minimizing obsolescence for as long as possible. From operating systems, to networks, to even telephone systems, IT’s role was to think as far ahead as possible and make an investment in the future.


This process was a delicate balance between investing in slightly more capacity or capabilities than you initially needed—to allow for growth—but not to invest so much that you tied up capital that could be used for other projects. Get it wrong and you could find your organization going down a technology dead-end—a cul de sac.


And IT departments found themselves focused on the business of maintaining the technology, rather than on the business of the business.


But Times Have Changed

Now, with the introduction of cloud computing, CIOs have an entirely different landscape and industry to navigate:



  • SaaS—Software as a Service—allows a choice of applications that reduce the investment in static legacy systems.

  • PaaS—Platform as a Service—still allows my team to build solutions ourselves, but we no longer need to focus on the underlying platform.

  • IaaS—Infrastructure as a Service—provides immediate expansion capabilities as our needs grow. We take traditional software and deploy infrastructure that my organization doesn’t have to buy nor maintain.


These three new cloud services provide several exciting benefits. Here are my top five:


Pay as you go: As the needs of my team grow or shrink, I’m no longer as concerned about long-term investment in licensing. Instead, my costs shift with my needs, taking the guesswork out of forecasting.


Consistent updates: We reduce the likelihood of out-of-sync software updates and force disciplined lifecycle management.


Focused staff: My team is now freed up to focus on the business of business. This is a tremendous boon for our business units: They now have an IT staff with the cycles to be part of the bigger picture. We can help them build and grow the business.


Improved agility: Needs may change. Situations may change. But my team is now able to respond and adapt with agility.


Demonstration of new services and technologies: Ramping up pilot programs can now be done with minimal investment, for immediate use and viability testing.


Get On Board—Or Be Left Behind

To truly understand the power of the cloud, you have to embrace the movement.


There are lessons to be learned. Here are six important aspects of our movement to a hybrid cloud environment:



  • Providing advice and guidance on appropriate cloud solutions—the broker role

  • Gathering solid understanding of cloud-provider roadmaps

  • Adapting to evolve with the changing IT landscape

  • Being willing to work in partnership with competitors

  • Driving efficiency, through disciplined cost optimization

  • Becoming experts in business process and agile responsiveness


The Bottom Line

As CIO, I want to pull the correct “lever” to meet NetApp’s business requirements. Increasingly, those levers come in the form of cloud solutions.


Next time: I’ll discuss the needs that led us to a hybrid cloud solution. I’ll also talk about the challenges we faced.


How has your role changed? Weigh in with a comment below…


By Cynthia Stoddard (@StoddardCA)


All In The Cloud


Now Read This (more from NetAppVoice )

Reinvention Needs Great Partnerships

Microsoft’s Big Data Cloud: Hadoop Now Available On Azure

Is Your Company Ready for Intercept Marketing?

This Is A Great Place To Work [100 Words Into The Future]

Read more from our talented writers






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/10/31/new-role-cio/

The 13 Spookiest Jobs


Halloween is the spookiest day of the year for many of us–but ghosts and witches aren’t any creepier than the things some professionals deal with at work on a daily basis.


In the spirit of Halloween, Glassdoor, an online job and career community, and CareerCast.com, a career guidance website, released two separate lists of creepy professions with job descriptions that may send shivers down your spine. I combed through each list to find the spookiest of them all.


“Some jobs require you to overcome a phobia to succeed,” said CareerCast.com’s publisher, Tony Lee, in a press release. “If you are unable to overcome a fear of heights, confined spaces or the dark, [for example], the job of a miner or transmission tower worker is not for you.”


In Pictures: The 13 Spookiest Jobs


If dead animals give you the heebie-jeebies and blood makes you queasy, you might want to avoid these professions. Here are the 13 spookiest jobs:


Blood Technician (Hemodialysis Technician)

Like to dabble in blood? Try your hand as a hemodialysis technician. Have an eerie obsession for human anatomy? Roll up your sleeves for this job. You’ll help a variety of souls by working closely with their blood. The squeamish need not apply.

(Source: Glassdoor)


Coroner

Examining the dead for a living might seem like an oxymoron–but that’s what coroners do. Determining cause of death is a typical job duty.

(Source: CareerCast.com)


Meat Cutter

If you go mad over slicing and dicing anything in sight, then you might want to arm yourself with a sharp knife and take on the role of a meat cutter. These employees chop up the meat of dead animals for your dining pleasure. (Note: they personally don’t harm any living animals.)

(Source: Glassdoor)


Herpetologist

Hate snakes and other scaly, cold-blooded animals? You’ll probably want to avoid a career in herpetology, which is the study of reptiles and amphibians.

(Source: CareerCast.com)


Night Walker (Nocturnist)

Do you get the chills thinking of someone who walks the halls of hospitals at all hours of the night? You shouldn’t. Nocturnists work the graveyard shift at hospitals to help people in pain.

(Source: Glassdoor)


Miner

Miners spend long hours confined to small spaces and working in darkness. It’s a dangerous job that taps into numerous common fears.

(Source: CareerCast.com)


Mortician

This creepy career deals with death from dawn to dusk. Morticians are often charged with planning all facets of a funeral with no mayhem. (Embalmer–one of the oldest-known professions–is another spooky job. Embalming entails preserving human remains and getting bodies ready for interment, based on legal requirements.)

(Source: Glassdoor)


Arachnologist and Entomologist

Spider webs are one of the ubiquitous signs of the Halloween season for a reason: Spiders spook people. But they don’t scare arachnologists–whose job is to study these eight-legged creatures. Along with entomologists, who study insects, this is a field of zoology sure to make the hair on many people’s necks stand on end.

(Source: CareerCast.com)


Entomologist is also a job for those who love the creepy and the crawly. This career works closely with scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, roaches and even maggots, among other creatures.

(Source: Glassdoor)


Shark Feeder (Aquarist)

If hungry sharks or other creatures under the sea make you scream, don’t dive into this career. Aquarists are known for feeding and caring for marine animals. Watch those fingers and toes.

(Source: Glassdoor)



Transmission Tower Worker

Don’t look down. People spooked by heights would not enjoy working at the altitude transmission tower workers must when operating on equipment for power lines and cellular towers.

(Source: CareerCast.com)


Cement Mixer (Construction Manager)

Are you dying to know what’s really behind that cement wall? Don’t anger one of these employees. They have the skill set to build cement walls around you while you’re still alive. Screaming won’t help.

(Source: Glassdoor)


Forensic Scientist Technician

Sometimes called crime scene investigators, forensic scientist technicians collect and analyze physical evidence. The work is often gruesome, especially at accident scenes.

(Source: CareerCast.com)


Taxidermist

Think it’s eerie to bring the dead back to life? While that’s not exactly what taxidermists do, they do get great pleasure by mounting or reproducing dead animals for display.

(Source: Glassdoor)


Click here for the complete CareerCast.com “Spookiest Jobs” list.

Click here for the complete Glassdoor “Spookiest Jobs” list.


In Pictures: The 13 Spookiest Jobs


This is an update of a piece that ran previously.



Follow me on Twitter, Forbes, and Google+.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/10/31/the-13-spookiest-jobs/

Here's What The Store Of The Future Will Look Like (Hint: Not Amazon)


Watch for more brick and mortar stores to include comfortable lounges, says WD Partners' Peterson.



Few would dispute Amazon’s status as the titan of the e-commerce world, selling more online than its next 12 competitors combined. But given the ubiquity of Jeff Bezos and his bookstore-killer, it’s easy to lose perspective.


Amazon made $61 billion in sales worldwide last year — just 13% of what Walmart cleared, and $10 billion less than Target. For all Amazon’s web dominance, e-commerce still accounted for only 6% of total U.S. retail sales in 2012, according to the Department of Commerce.


Retail consultancy WD Partners has published a report showing how traditional stores can still appeal to modern shoppers by updating their brick and mortar models rather than trying to chase Amazon online.


“The key to finding the edge isn’t copying what Amazon does,” said WD Partners’ Lee Peterson. “It’s doing what Amazon can’t.”


WD Partners surveyed 1,700 consumers across the demographic spectrum, screening respondents on their desires and behaviors both online and in-store. Peterson was surprised to discover that shoppers still value immediacy above all else, with 79% listing “instant ownership” as the most appealing attribute of any retailer, online or off. “In other words, Amazon still can’t compete with, ‘I can just get in my car and go get it now,’” said Peterson. “Stores are still winning.”


After the ability to buy a product immediately, “touch and feel”, or sensory perceptions of a store, ranked as the second most appealing attribute (75%), with “exclusive products and bargains” coming in third (65%).


However, when the data was sliced across age groups, it became apparent that online retailers have a huge edge with Millennials, who ranked “unlimited options” and “customer reviews” as their top two shopping ideals. “Instant ownership” came third.


Peterson explained that Millennials have grown up in the era of the impersonal big box store, with suburbs and strip malls dominated by Toys R Us, Best Buy and Target rather than Main Street shops or quirky one-offs.


“In the study, Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers were kind of rooting for the stores,” said Peterson. “It’s nostalgic. It’s emotional. Whereas shopping online is clinical. It’s, ‘I logged on, I found my Under Armour top, I pressed a button and got it 4 days later.’ The younger respondents got, the less physical experience mattered.”


Peterson and his team at the Columbus, Ohio-based consultancy parsed their findings to predict how brick and mortar stores will be forced to adapt in the near future:


- With Millennials wanting “unlimited options” at their disposal, stores have an imperative to integrate the digital with the physical. This means creating the illusion of an endless aisle. Peterson expects this will manifest itself in “armed, wired associates,” not unlike Apple store employees and able to offer up information at the touch of a tablet screen. “Shoppers should be able to say, ‘show me some reviews on this couch,’” Peterson said, noting Millennials’ preference for online write-ups. He stressed that in-store technology must be truly complementary, not just “gadgetry for gadgetry’s sake.”


- In focus groups of those surveyed, Millennials, Boomers and Gen-Xers alike expressed a desire for a more satisfying social and emotional experience inside stores. “Store employees are a tremendous asset,” said Peterson. “Look at the industry’s top-performing retailers, like Apple, Nordstrom, Sephora, and Whole Foods. They hire people who like people.” Devoted associates on the sales floor create margin whatever the business model, he said. He believes we’ll see more stores offering enviable salaries, benefits and training to improve the sort of personal service currently missing at big-box retailers. Added Peterson: “The more you are like a warehouse, the more Amazon is going to crush you.”


- Store environments themselves will change as brick and mortar stores integrate online characteristics. “Expect to see a place to pick up the stuff you bought online,” Peterson said, noting that Amazon pioneered the retail locker concept now taking off elsewhere. He believes retailers will be forced to add “super-comfortable” lounge-like seating for these areas. As well as lounges, Peterson predicts we’ll see more food and drink kiosks creeping into retail right behind the already-popular in-store coffee shop.


See below for mock-ups of future stores based on WD Partners’ findings:







from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2013/10/31/heres-what-the-store-of-the-future-will-look-like-hint-not-amazon/

The Liberal War On Food Stamps


English: McDonalds' sign in Harlem.

English: McDonalds' sign in Harlem. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




I can’t remember a more misguided attempt at attacking corporations than the move to frame food stamps as corporate welfare. Clearly liberals clinging to this think they have found a new clever argument for the minimum wage, but instead all they’re doing is making food stamps look bad. Here is one highlight from a recent example at the Guardian where the author complains about a help line that McDonald's uses to give its employees help:



Perhaps I’m being unreasonable, but it seems to me that when Republicans are so vocal about how much they hate government programs like SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) and Medicaid and indeed anything that makes life a little more feasible for low-income or no-income Americans, they should surely be able to work up a small sweat at such a blatant example of the system being gamed. Just last month congressional Republicans voted unanimously to cut $39bn from the food stamp program, and I surely don’t have to waste words here outlining their opposition to any form of government subsidized healthcare. Why then, when they have made their objection to welfare programs abundantly clear are they seemingly okay with hugely profitable corporations exploiting these programs while they underpay their workers?



The McResource help line in question is designed to help workers seek assistance. Here is how the company describes the purpose of this on its website:



The McResource Line consultant will research your situation to give you current, accurate information and resources that fit your needs.


McResource Line consultants were able to direct an employee to a local energy assistance program and credit counseling after he was told his utilities would be shut off.


The McResource Line was able to find late night and weekend hour childcare solutions for a swing manager when her babysitter suddenly quit.



Providing free financial advice and help finding out what kind of public assistance is available seems like the kind of useful thing that liberals would applaud if a non-profit or government were providing it. And since liberals regularly demand that corporations engage in charitable corporate social responsibility to workers throughout their supply chains, you’d think this would be something they would applaud. But in their misguided attempt to paint corporations as villains they instead try to give Republicans a new reason to not like food stamps by labeling it corporate welfare.


The end goal of pieces like this is to push for a $15 minimum wage. Unfortunately, a far more likely outcome than a $15 minimum wage is that corporations will simply stop offering services that implicitly acknowledge they employ low income people so they can avoid negative stories like these. Conservatives believe that minimum wages lead to more unemployment, and people on unemployment are going to rely on more not less public assistance. Maybe you don’t believe this but the conservatives you’re purportedly trying to convince do. So if you’re going to try to sell them on an argument that a higher minimum wage will lead to less food stamps you’re wasting your time. You may succeed is raising their ire more about food stamps, but you’re simply not going to sell them on a minimum wage with these arguments. My guess is those who write or cheer pieces like this are simply too cloistered in their own ideological bubbles to understand that.


Food stamps are an excellent program. It really is the sort of basic safety net that should have near 100% support. The recent cuts to the program only amounted to a 5% change, but there are larger changes being considered. Let’s not try to undermine this program further by putting it on the corporate welfare radar of Tea Party republicans.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/10/31/the-liberal-war-on-food-stamps/

Want to Track My Online Footprints? What's It Worth To You?


In this photograph taken on May 15, 2012 the '...

In this photograph taken on May 15, 2012 the 'Facebook' logo is reflected in a young Indian woman's sunglasses as she browses on a tablet in Bangalore. An Indian court on June 6, 2012 asked Facebook, Google and other Internet firms to respond to a private petition over allegations of being a threat to national security and withholding tax. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)




A theory has been tossed around for a few years that consumers might as well get paid for their data and any content they generate online since companies such as Google and Facebook are going to make use of it one way or another—either by aggregating it to sell ads against, or to use in an ad campaign. And those are just the tamer scenarios.


The question then becomes–assuming Facebook et al goes along with this theory–just how much is that content and data worth. Certainly there are numerous studies showing the value of a Facebook like to a company or non profit–Business Insider does a great job of outlining all of the research here—but are these companies going to actually pay that $136.38 or $22.93 or $8 per like? Probably not.


Yelpers Sue for Compensation


One case against valuing consumers’ online content comes from Fast Company, which took a look at some Yelpers’ reviews to see how much they were actually worth. This wasn’t a theoretical exercise on the part of Fast Company–some volunteer Yelp reviewers have sued the company alleging that their reviews are worth something and they should be paid for them. In response, Fast Company decided to take a look-see.


This is Fast Company’s theory:



Are Yelp reviews worth anything? Certainly, in aggregate, they sustain the company’s business. But, as single entities, it’s unclear if they warrant minimum wage, if that.”



It takes a look at the reviews and comes up with some beauts, like this review for Walgreen’s:



Holy crud! Kay and I came here last night after dining at the new Atria’s restaurant nearby in the Bill Green Shopping Center, and I couldn’t believe the selection of toys, Halloween gear, housewares, and snacks. It was like a miniature Wal-Mart! Unfortunately, like Wal-Mart, they’ve been hit with lawsuits involving racial discrimination, proprietary drugs, distributing oxycodone, selling tobacco, profiting from customer’s private information, and overcharging Medicaid. But they’re open 24 hours. And it’s clean, well-stocked, and organized.



And thus Fast Company concludes:



… one single reviewer provides little value to either Yelp or the user. It’s the aggregate of information that makes the service useful by creating a star ranking system.”



Google’s Screenwise Program


So a company may not want to put its entire social media user base on the corporate payroll. But what about a small, subset of such users? More precisely, what about something that is really worth something to companies—information about what that person does online and in the mobile environment? Where he clicks and when and how often. Google, at least, finds the concept worthy.


Earlier this month Engadget unearthed a project that Google was quietly working on, in which it will compensate users who allow their behavior to be monitored via a mobile app under development.


It was never a secret, Google said when contacted about the project by the media–the project is part of Google’s Screenwise market research program, which was launched about a year ago.


Engadget said the project has been dubbed “Mobile Meter,” internally and its uses both iOS and Android apps to monitor app usage and web browsing habits of the participants and then sends that data back to Google.


Clearly Google will glean some valuable information about real-time user behavior from the project–information that it could then use for segmentation-targeting or in designing apps or different promotional offers.


Google didn’t reveal how much it was paying participants or whether it would ever roll out this project to a larger audience. If it did, though, I am guessing a lot of people will want to jump on this particular bandwagon.


Maybe even demand it.


By now consumers have accepted that their digital data is fair game when they voluntarily use a service such as Facebook and Google–witness the dead silence whenever Facebook changes its privacy settings.


It is only a short step, then, for consumers to embrace the idea that their online footprints are worth something–especially if they are getting nowhere monetizing their own content.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2013/10/31/want-to-track-my-online-footprints-whats-it-worth-to-you/

You Might Be Shocked To Learn How Much Your Old Car Knows About You

Have you sold a car, or traded one in recently? If that car was built in the last five or ten years, there’s a good chance it could contain sensitive, personal data that it’s new owner now has access to. Many newer vehicles have GPS navigation, mobile phone integration, and other features which store a plethora of useful information about you.


A few years ago, we bought a Chrysler Town & Country minivan from Carmax. The 2009 minivan was equipped with a version of Chrysler’s MyGIG system—a 20GB hard drive that stores music, photos, and more. As a bonus, we discovered that it was actually already loaded with music and photos…from its previous owner.



This year, we acquired a 2011 Toyota Prius—again from Carmax. We found that the built-in GPS was filled with information. It contained a point-of-reference called “Home” which I assume would lead us straight to the previous owner’s residence, along with every other address the previous owner had entered—things like where they work, homes of family and friends, places they like to visit and shop.


The MyGIG system in our Town & Country is an older or lesser version, but the high-end system also has navigation capabilities, and it has the ability to store an address book of contact details. A used van equipped with MyGIG might be filled with a veritable treasure trove of personal details that could put you, and just about everyone you know, at risk. Do you really want that data to be accessible to your car’s new owner? No, of course you don’t.


In most cases, leaving your personal information in your old car’s computer system is simply an annoyance for its new owner—you’re placing the burden on someone else to erase your data. However, it won’t take long for criminals to figure out that used vehicles are a source of valuable information, and they will start “shopping” for high-end used cars like Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, or BMW in order to get home address information and target wealthier victims.


Most people are aware that their PCs or hard drives, and mobile devices contain sensitive data, and they’re accustomed to removing or erasing that data before getting rid one of these items. However, when it comes to other technologies that contain personal information—like vehicles, TVs, or even some refrigerators, many people fail to realize that sensitive data should be wiped before selling or pitching the object in question.


It wasn’t that long ago that a car was a car, a TV was a TV, and a refrigerator was a refrigerator, so it’s understandable that it wouldn’t occur to people to erase these things before getting rid of them. But. whether it’s the GPS system in your old car, the Netflix account credentials in your old TV, or the Google Calendar and Twitter account information in your Samsung refrigerator, you need to be aware of the fact that there is personal information stored in almost everything we use these days.


Unfortunately, removing data from these newer devices and systems is often not as intuitive as it is on a PC or mobile device. You might need to dig through the user manual to figure out how to erase the whole thing and reset it to factory defaults—assuming it can be done at all. You might find that removing information is a tedious, manual process, requiring you to delete each separate entry.


Even if you can wipe the data, there is no guarantee it’s truly irrecoverable. Deleted data or formatted drives can still yield vast amounts of information. To truly ensure data is gone forever, you have to use military-grade tools that overwrite all of the data multiple times to make sure it can’t be recovered. But, with a vehicle, or some of the other newer consumer appliances equipped with technologies that store personal data, those tools are probably not an option.


Even if it’s not completely obliterated, removing the data is still better than not removing it. A dedicated attacker might still be able to retrieve your data, but if you at least remember to erase the personal information from your device it’s new owner won’t have easy access to it.


As a side note, it would probably be a good idea for dealerships–especially dealerships that deal strictly in used cars like Carmax–to implement a process for ensuring that the data is wiped from any onboard systems before the vehicle is sold to a new owner.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2013/10/31/you-might-be-shocked-to-learn-how-much-your-old-car-knows-about-you/

الأربعاء، 30 أكتوبر 2013

Backstage At LinkedIn's Talent Cafe: How Do You Guys Hire?


LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner speaks as he introduc...

Jeff Weiner (Credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)




“You probably want to know if we eat at our own restaurant,” says LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner, with a smile. Tapping into LinkedIn’s databases has become second nature for big companies battling for talent. Organizations as diverse as Dell and National Public Radio use LinkedIn’s most expensive search tools to widen and accelerate their hunts.


So what about LinkedIn itself? Weiner runs a fast-growing operation–revenue was up 59% last quarter–and constantly needs more engineers, salespeople and corporate managers. Sure enough, LinkedIn’s own recruiters have a lot to teach others through their incessant and highly demanding use of house products, constantly testing new features in search of more powerful results.


Start with something as fundamental as where to look. LinkedIn’s databases can generate heat maps of the U.S., showing local variations between job listings and available talent for specific industries. So while LinkedIn still does much of its software engineer hiring in the obvious places such as Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York City, it is alert to “hidden gem” markets such as the Washington, D.C. metro area and Dallas/Fort Worth, where the supply and demand of engineering talent are in better balance.


To catch candidates’ attention, LinkedIn’s first moves are disarmingly low-key. Anyone who happens to glance at a LinkedIn employee’s profile is likely to see a nearby ad or piece of sponsored content from LinkedIn sharing a bit of itself. The goal is to induce these site-surfers to “follow” LinkedIn’s company page. Once that happens it’s easier to aim job ads or more content at them. Such digital serenades are known as “adding warmth.” In a recent hunt for systems-infrastructure engineers, Weiner’s team discovered that more than 35% of leading prospects were people who were already digitally acquainted with LinkedIn. That’s no accident. Three years ago LinkedIn had fewer than 50,000 followers; today it has more than 550,000.


Another lesson learned the hard way: Just because you can create a fussy list of criteria for candidates doesn’t mean you should. When LinkedIn hunted for its first data-center manager, the company’s own site originally found only seven identifiable people on Earth who met all conditions. Brendan Browne, the company’s director of global talent acquisition, warned that it could take 18 months to pry anyone from a current job.


So LinkedIn loosened up. It lopped off four dubious requirements, such as insisting that candidates have spent at least three years in their current jobs. Voilà!–126 candidates. Within a few months the job was filled. “We don’t need eight to ten years of people doing x,” says Weiner. “In fact, we may not want someone who has spent too much time working in a large-company culture.” Instead, LinkedIn needs agility and speed.


Even in data-rich LinkedIn, Weiner emphasizes intangibles that don’t show up on a résumé–qualities such as leadership, resourcefulness and humor. When he interviews candidates face-to-face, he often asks how they want to see their career in 20 to 30 years, to discern who is well-aligned with LinkedIn’s culture. “It’s a lot like M&A. People sometimes get too caught up in getting the deal done, when maybe they shouldn’t be doing the deal at all,” Weiner says. Unlike a lot of Web 2.0 firms, LinkedIn is a haven for disciplined planners. Managers create detailed road maps–and stick to them. For constant improvisers, there’s always Twitter.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/10/30/backstage-at-linkedins-talent-cafe-how-do-you-guys-hire/

Is Putin Really More Powerful Than Obama?

The criticism of Forbes dropping Barack Obama to the number two spot behind Vladimir Putin as the most powerful man in the world misses two big points.


One is confusing the power of the U.S. with the power of our President. The U.S. is many times larger economically and militarily than Russia. There’s no disputing that. Our survey was a ranking of people, not countries or companies.


The second and far bigger point is that Barack Obama is weak internationally by choice. At home he’s amassing immense, unprecedented powers over the economy. If Congress won’t pass one of his desired pieces of legislation, he’ll try to achieve his ends through decrees, a.k.a. executive orders, or unprecedented and sweeping regulatory rulings. The niceties of the law have never stopped this White House from doing what it desires. The Obama Administration routinely ignores adverse court rulings. Brazenly lying to the public is no barrier, as the President’s oft-repeated pledge that people could, if they wished, keep their health insurance policies and doctors demonstrates. From the get-go ObamaCare wanted to destroy the market for individual medical-care policies and to obliterate the practices of sole medical practitioners. Hardcore socialists have long understood that it’s much easier to regulate people when they’re herded into collectives.


Obama has been weakened politically by the botched introduction of the health exchanges, people’s outrage over being lied to about being able to maintain their existing policies and the deepening malaise over the lagging economy. But to the President what matters is that his power grabs have not been rolled back.


Internationally, however, Obama is the weakest President of the post-World War II years. Even the in-over-his-head Jimmy Carter was more of a factor in foreign affairs than Barack Obama. Diplomats are still astonished, for instance, at how little prep work Obama engages in before international conferences. He doesn’t arrive with much of an agenda, nor does he interact with other leaders in advance to line up support. He more or less just shows up.


This is deliberate. The President truly believes the U.S. has been a malignant force in the world and therefore wants to reduce our footprint on the world stage to something the size of Belgium’s or Albania’s, which is why Britain and France took the lead on Libya and the U.S. “led from behind.” When massive, anti-government demonstrations erupted in Iran in 2009, Obama gave no support to the dissidents. The perception that the world’s superpower is fecklessly passive is what led Saudi Arabia, a rich yet vulnerable state that has relied on close relations with Washington to preserve its existence for over half a century, to publicly distance itself from Uncle Sam. China is now convinced that the U.S. is a declining power, which could lead to serious miscalculations by not only Beijing but also its neighbors, specifically Japan and South Korea. If Tokyo and Seoul believe the U.S. is withdrawing from the world stage, they will start preparing to build nuclear arms.


And this gets to the real danger in President Obama’s deliberately weak overseas-power posture. He may wish he could take the U.S. off the world stage, but the world won’t let him; events will erupt that will force U.S. action. One such possibility is Iran reaching nuclear-bomb capability. Do you think Israel today, after Obama’s red line to Syria and his groveling before Iran, really believes that this White House has its back?






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2013/10/30/is-putin-really-more-powerful-than-obama/

Lavabit And Silent Circle Join Forces To Make All Email Surveillance-Proof


Image representing Edward Snowden as depicted ...

The summer of Snowden gives birth to the Dark Mail Alliance




In recent months, Lavabit, based in Texas, and Silent Circle, based in Washington, D.C., both shuttered their encrypted email services. The companies said they couldn’t keep them running knowing they were vulnerable to surveillance if faced with a dedicated enough attacker… which for Lavabit came in the form of the federal government when it wanted access to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s Lavabit account. Now the companies are teaming up with plans to offer an open-source tool that could make peer-to-peer, end-to-end encryption an easy add-on for any email service. The challenging part: they need to get other email providers – especially the heavyweights, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft – to join them in offering the tool.


The easy part: the name, which sounds like a group of superheroes – or supervillains – depending on your perspective on monitoring and data-mining email. Lavabit and Silent Circle are the first two members of the “Dark Mail Alliance,” a group of email providers who will give users control over the privacy of their email so that it can’t be handed over to third parties, scanned for ads, or easily hijacked by an interceptor. “We’re taking our inspiration from the Rebel Alliance,” says Levison. “We’re the rebels who have decided privacy is too important to compromise on. We’re fighting to bring privacy back to the Internet.”


“We believe email is fundamentally broken in its current architecture,” says Silent Circle CEO Mike Janke, a former Navy SEAL. “This is an opportunity to create a new email service where the keys are created on the device and only the user can decrypt it.”



A very simple logo for a concept dreamed up within the last two months



The problem now is that – as the NSA leaks have made us painfully aware – almost all of us store our email with third parties and send it through a digital ether that has many stops along the way where it can be captured. On top of that, there’s the possibility of our email being hacked, or being scanned by advertisers, or just being opened by a snoopy ex who has your password. Google and others have tried to make email more secure with two-factor authentication, but that doesn’t solve that fact that the email sits “in the clear” on a server or in the cloud somewhere — a vulnerability that hackers can take advantage of. According to a new report from the Washington Post, the NSA has taken advantage of that vulnerability by infiltrating the links to Yahoo’s and Google’s data centers. Lavabit and Silent Circle think email should be unreadable – decodable only by the sender and the recipient. While it’s possible to set-up encryption on your own, it’s a laborious process – I know from experience; the Dark Mail Alliance hopes to streamline it.


Lavabit founder Ladar Levison and Silent Circle CEO Mike Janke got to meet and swap tales of encryption woe during a privacy event in Seattle in September. Silent Circle’s impressive cryptography team had been working on a better email encryption system for some time, that wouldn’t leak metadata to the provider (or the NSA) nor depend on keys stored on a provider’s server. Levison meanwhile had been fighting the feds for months over their request to fundamentally break the security of his email service in order to get access to one of his users’ accounts. Levison, who has given up email since shutting Lavabit down, had downloaded Silent Circle’s encrypted text messaging service to have private bi-coastal conversations with his lawyer. He and Janke connected via Silent Circle and sat down in Seattle to talk about coming up with a new system together. Levison then flew to Silent Circle’s headquarters for a week-long project-crunching session with his former-competitor’s engineering team, including master cryptographers Phil Zimmermann and Jon Callas.


The “Dark Mail Alliance” plans to release a white paper about their tool, which relies on SMTP and XMPP. While still a work in progress, it will assign a private key to a particular user and populate it across their devices; put public keys and addresses into a public server; and store encrypted email for pick-up in the cloud. It’s not the first time technology of this sort has been deployed. What would make this different is that it, if successful, wouldn’t be sandboxed. If Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Hushmail, and others signed on – and that is a big if – you’d be able to send an encrypted email from one service to another “easily.” Janke says the user interface is designed so that if you’re sending to an address that’s part of the system, it glows green, and if it’s not, it glows red.


“Features of PGP are built into the code itself so it can function like regular email,” says Levison. “We want to make it easy enough for your grandma to use.”


“We want community participation on the protocols,” says Silent Circle cryptographer Jon Callas. “But we are not going to be sitting around, waiting for permission to do it. We’re going ahead with it even if it’s just the two of us.”


“We’re going to try to get as many people involved as possible,” says Janke. Levison announced the formation of “the Alliance” Wednesday at Inbox Love, a conference at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus for, as you’d expect, mail geeks. “All of the major email service providers will be there,” says Levison.


But will they want to join the Alliance? Given Lavabit’s dramatic shutdown and the Snowden revelations about the extent of monitoring of our digital communications, there’s momentum right now for the cause of more private email. And Lavabit and Silent Circle certainly have the industry’s attention. “Everyone knows now that email is broken and has to be fixed,” says Callas. But is that enough to get established providers to join their crew?


“We want to get the Googles, the Yahoos and the Microsofts to stand tall,” says Janke. “But it will be an interesting friction point. These companies make money by mining their free email.”


The dark mail tool would prevent scans of emails to deliver ads. Another potential downside from a provider perspective is that not being able to scan all emails will make it harder to root out spam, says Levison. But they hope that the fact that all email would be signed with particular keys will make it possible to develop a trust system around identity.


Intelligence and law enforcement agencies meanwhile, who have been complaining for years (perhaps disingenuously) about the Internet “going dark,” might be the most frustrated with the Alliance. It would make it much harder to monitor people’s emails or to read what they have stored in the cloud. I asked Lavabit – who is already fighting a court battle with the FBI – and Silent Circle whether they worried about the government reaction to their plan.


Levison says he does worry about criminals – terrorists and child pornographers – using the tool. “But I balance that with the need to speak privately as a fundamental part of any democracy,” says Levison. “Government has brought this on themselves, where this kind of security became a necessity.”



“That horse has left the barn. If law enforcement wants that data, they’ll have to subpoena an individual [rather than their email provider],” says Janke. “ I worry more about the big data processors. Google and Microsoft rely on data mining to make their profits. I worry more about them collectively because there is money on the line. I worry about that more than the nation states.”


The Alliance is not just focused on the big dogs. They’re also hoping to enlist smaller providers that want to offer more private and secure email services. Levison will play crypto-prophet, with plans to rack up frequent flier miles to help providers and organizations get this up and running when they release the tool in 2014. “If we have to fly to Switzerland and South Africa, that’s what we’ll do,” says Janke.


“We think the world is ready to embrace a new system,” says Levison.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/30/lavabit-and-silent-circle-join-forces-to-make-all-email-surveillance-proof/

OracleVoice: The CMO's Modern Marketing Toolset Combines Digital, Mobile, And Social

There’s a widening gap between yesterday’s marketing programs, where marketing messages get delivered through a few traditional channels to customers who share a little bit of information about themselves, and the new world of modern marketing.


Modern marketing is always on, multichannel, and content-driven, and it’s fully optimized for the digital, mobile, and social activities of today’s tech-savvy customers. Few marketing teams have all the pieces in place to fully engage customers that way, but they’re all racing to establish those capabilities.


Those are my takeaways from Eloqua Experience 2013 in San Francisco, where more than 2,000 chief marketing officers and other marketing professionals converged to learn about the latest tools, techniques, and strategies for becoming “customer-obsessed” businesses.


There were sessions on performance metrics, content marketing, predictive analytics, customer profiling, segmentation, social media engagement, and customer journey mapping, and case studies from Equifax, the Chicago Bears, Harley-Davidson, Huddle, and other companies on what’s working in modern marketing.


Steve Woods, co-founder of Eloqua, the marketing automation specialist that’s now part of Oracle’s portfolio of marketing and customer relationship management offerings, kicked off the conference with an overview of the five tenets of modern marketing: targeting, engagement, conversion, analysis, and marketing technology.


You may recognize Woods as the author of the book Digital Body Language, which describes a concept that has become a mantra with this crowd. Digital body language is what it sounds like: how online actions—page visits, e-mail opens, downloads, tweets, and social activity—provide clues to a customer’s interests and intentions.


Digital body language is the best way for marketers to understand customers, personalize messages, and identify individuals who are actively shopping around. “Every interaction we have with a customer, from videos to social interactions, from ad clicks to webinar views, gives us insight into buyers we could only have dreamed about a few short years ago,” Woods said.


That’s a long way from the mass-market TV commercials of a generation ago that pitched dish soap and sewing machines, but modern marketing brings its own challenges as the number and types of digital body signals keep growing. “The world is not that simple,” Woods said. “The world of buyers is chaotic.”


Modern marketers need tools that bring enterprise-class business processes and best practices to this fast-paced, constantly changing environment. To address that need, Oracle Eloqua introduced a range of new capabilities to help CMOs increase customer engagement, drive better customer experiences, and track and share business results.


Eloqua’s software-as-a-service enables companies to know and track their customers, automate multichannel marketing campaigns, deliver qualified buyers to sales channels, and perform other core marketing tasks. Newly announced enhancements include Oracle Eloqua Profiler, for providing more detailed information to the sales team on opportunities. Other functionality comes via Eloqua AppCloud, a cloud marketplace that, with the addition of 20 new partners, now comprises more than 100 third-party marketing apps.


“We’re staking a claim as the leader in the battle of the marketing clouds,” Kevin Akeroyd, Senior Vice President for Oracle Eloqua, told me in an interview.”Only Oracle’s marketing cloud has a universal customer profile for marketers at the core, enabling companies to better target, engage, and convert prospects to customers and customers to advocates.”


Tracking social media activity has been made easier through integration between Oracle Eloqua and Oracle Social Relationship Management, bringing an important new dimension to customer profiles. The Oracle Eloqua Profiler can be used to create a “universal customer profile,” a more-complete customer record that incorporates a customer’s digital body language.


Modern marketing hinges on quality content. From the very first digital interactions with an unknown prospect to ongoing relationships with loyal customers, businesses must have digital content that informs and engages customers every step of the way. “Content is the fuel for your marketing engine,” Stetic said.


Content Marketing


Oracle jumped into content marketing with both feet earlier this month with the acquisition of Compendium, a cloud-based content marketing provider that helps companies plan and deliver personalized content across various channels of interaction. Compendium’s unique data-driven approach to content marketing helps companies leverage content across marketing interactions. “The system can score the content for relevancy and for stages in the buying cycle,” said Stetic.


Businesses see content marketing and other modern marketing capabilities as vital to their competitiveness, and many are investing in their marketing infrastructures for that reason. That means CMOs must have the right tools to track and report on the performance of their operations.


Oracle president Mark Hurd told conference attendees that three-quarters of CMOs say they must be able to demonstrate marketing’s impact on the bottom line.


And CMOs are looking for a consolidated approach across marketing tools, Hurd said. With its many improvements, he added, Oracle Eloqua has the complete set of capabilities to serve as “the system of record” for marketing teams.


For more on customer-focused business strategies, see the following articles:


Customer Data: Will Yours Spark Love Or Ignominy?


Customer Experience: Will Your Company Pass The Toothbrush Test?


Modern Marketing Emerges As Sales-Stoking Science






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2013/10/30/the-cmos-modern-marketing-toolset-combines-digital-mobile-and-social/

Shale Gas Boom At 'Tip Of Iceberg'


Tower for drilling horizontally into the Marce...

Tower for drilling horizontally into the Marcellus Shale Formation for natural gas, from Pennsylvania Route 118 in eastern Moreland Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




Despite warnings that the shale gas boom would wither, industry is getting pumped in certain areas as their numbers are only headed higher. That’s according to government analysts, who are drawing special attention to the Marcellus Shale region in the eastern states where production is skyrocketing.


The region is beating its forecasts, which is made possible by the advancement in drilling technologies. In fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration is saying in a new report that breaks down productivity levels according to region that the gains in new gas wells are more than offsetting the declines from the existing ones. The Marcellus Shale, it adds, accounts for three-fourths of growth in the nation’s production.


“The sky has not fallen down like some have said would happen,” says Michael Krancer, Pennsylvania’s former head of environmental protection, in a speech. “We need to have continued good performance. Bad actors will be bad for business … The difference is that we can now hydraulically fracture together with horizontal drilling. That’s what is unlocking all this availability of American energy … We are just at the tip of iceberg.”


He adds that the Marcellus Shale region is producing the equivalent of 2 million barrels of oil a day, which exceeds the oil production of many OPEC countries. The energy agency, meanwhile, says that 2,203 trillion cubic feet of shale gas here is technically recoverable — enough to last 92 years.


Two decades ago, developers couldn’t find enough gas to pay the cost of production. But today that has changed. Modern technologies translate into new efficiencies: One gas well today can generate twice as much as a single gas well did in 1985, say natural gas groups. The drilling footprint of well pads, meanwhile, has decreased by as much as 70 percent.


The process of exploring for shale gas begins with “horizontal drilling.” Such a technique starts the same as “vertical drilling” but then moves laterally. It uses a drainage network to siphon off the available gas. Vertical wells, by comparison, go straight down. And while vertical drilling is cheaper than horizontal drilling, it is less productive. But if developers want the shale gas to start flowing they must then use hydraulic fracturing, which uses a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to stimulate the gas that is a mile beneath the earth’s surface.


If the decision is made to drill for gas, producers must then determine where to establish the drill site. And that depends on the formation of the expected deposits as well as the characteristics of the subsurface geology and the size and depth of the natural gas that it is to be explored. Once geologists determine the most optimal point to drill, developers then go to regulators to get the necessary permits that include the building of gathering lines that in essence create a tributary system from which any gas would flow.


Environmentalists, however, aren’t sold on the new technologies. And nowhere is that battle more passionate than in Wyoming, where the U.S Environmental Protection Agency had previously issued warnings to residents of Pavillion that the water there could contain carcinogens.


Altogether, close to 30,000 natural gas wells exist in the state, which may double in a decade. Wyoming is thought to hold 24 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. Among the drillers doing business there: BP, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil Corp. and Encana Corp., which has been accused of spoiling Pavillion’s water but which disputes the techniques that EPA had used to arrive at its conclusions.


Producers are emphasizing that they are committed to preserving Wyoming’s local habitat and have said they will spend millions to make sure it happens. They are making the same promises around the country. States such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia are welcoming the message where Chesapeake Energy, Range Resources and Shell Appalachia are active. Other places such as New York and Vermont remain highly skeptical.


If all of these gas reserves could get tapped, how would the supplies make it to market? After all, estimates are that natural gas will provide about 40 percent of the fuel used to make electricity by 2035. According to the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, between 29,000 and 62,000 miles of additional pipelines would need to be built in both the United States and Canada. And between 370-600 billion cubic feet of storage is also required. The cost: Between $133 billion and $210 billion over the next 20 years.


If the incentives are there, the industry and its investors will step to the plate. But such growth and productivity must be done responsibly, or consumers would reject the players and their products.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2013/10/30/shale-gas-boom-at-tip-of-iceberg/

How General Motors Was Really Saved: The Untold True Story Of The Most Important Bankruptcy In U.S. History

Editor’s Note: Lots of people–including President Obama–have trumpeted their role in the success of the government-backed turnaround plan that saved General Motors, the most important industrial company in the history of the United States.


But on the fifth anniversary of the crisis, Forbes presents an exclusive, unprecedented look at what really happened during GM’s darkest days, how a tiny band of corporate outsiders and turnaround experts convened in Detroit and hatched a radical plan that ultimately set the foundation for the salvation of the company.


Author Jay Alix, one of the most respected experts on corporate bankruptcy in America, was the architect of that plan, and now, for the first time, he reveals How General Motors Was Really Saved.


By Jay Alix


For months the news was horrific, a pounding beat of warm-up obituaries for what once had been America’s greatest and most influential corporation: General Motors. At death’s door or already in the graveyard were Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Citibank. The mood was apocalyptic.


With car sales in a free fall from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, GM was losing billions and running out of cash. By the time the company closed its books on 2008 it would be in the red by a staggering $30.9 billion. Chief executive Rick Wagoner led the auto delegation in Washington seeking government funding to save the industry and keep GM out of bankruptcy.


Five years later, after an unprecedented government equity investment, GM is thriving and the Treasury plans to sell its remaining stake in the coming months. With countless articles and books now written about the GM restructuring and turnaround–not to mention three years of trumpeting by the Obama Administration taking full credit for the turnaround’s success–the most startling aspect of the prevailing narrative is that the core of how the restructuring really happened, inside GM, is yet to be fully told.


In the popular version of the company’s turnaround story, as GM teetered toward liquidation in 2009, an Obama-appointed SWAT team, led by financier Steven Rattner, swept in and hatched a radical plan: Through a novel use of the bankruptcy code they would save the company by segregating and spinning out its valuable assets, while Washington furnished billions in taxpayer funds to make sure the company was viable.


The real GM turnaround story, significant in saving the auto industry and the economy, is contrary to the one that has been published. In fact, the plan that was developed, implemented and then funded by the government was devised inside GM well before President Obama took office. In what follows, the inside story of this historic chapter in American business unfolds, laying bare the key facts.


GM’s extraordinary turnaround began long before Wagoner went to Washington in search of a massive loan to keep GM alive. My involvement in that story began in GM’s darkest days, five years ago on Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008, when I visited Wagoner at his home that morning, presenting a novel plan to save General Motors.


As a consultant with expertise in restructurings and turnarounds, I had completed a half-dozen assignments at GM over the years. I had worked with Wagoner in 1992 when he became chief financial officer. I was asked to come in for a two-year stint as CEO of GM’s National Car Rental, the first time GM had recruited an outsider to lead a turnaround in one of its subsidiaries.


By 2008 I had over 20 years of experience with the auto industry and almost 30 years of working on turnarounds. But for the past eight years I had backed away from business and my firm, AlixPartners, to care for my daughters after the death of my wife. I was essentially “retired.” But GM’s enveloping crisis and my friendship with Wagoner would bring me out.


Early on that November Sunday I called Wagoner at his home in a Detroit suburb. I asked to see him right away, explaining that I had a new idea that could help save the company.


Three hours later I walked through his front door and into his family room. I knew Wagoner believed GM could not survive a bankruptcy. Studies showed consumer confidence would crash. No one would buy a car from a company that was bankrupt. However, what I knew about the economic crisis and GM’s rapidly deteriorating liquidity position told me the company had no choice but to prepare for a bankruptcy.


Yet I agreed with Wagoner. For a global company as big and complex as GM, a “normal” bankruptcy would tie up the company’s affairs for years, driving away customers, resulting in a tumultuous liquidation. It had happened to other companies a fraction of GM’s size. It would mean the end of GM.


“I don’t think the company will survive a bankruptcy,” he told me. “And no one has shown me a plan that would allow it to survive a bankruptcy.”


“Filing bankruptcy may be inevitable, Rick. But it doesn’t have to be a company-killing bankruptcy,” I said. “I think we can create a unique strategy that allows GM to survive bankruptcy.”



To be sure, my idea, sketched out on a few pages, was provocative. I knew as I pitched it to Wagoner that it might raise eyebrows, if not outright objection, from others who believed their plans would be safer.


In short, I proposed that GM split into two very separate parts before filing: “NewCo,” a new company with a clean balance sheet, taking on GM’s best brands and operations; and “OldCo,” the leftover GM with most of the liabilities. All of the operational restructuring to make the new company profitable would also occur before a bankruptcy filing so GM could go through bankruptcy in a matter of days–not months or years with creditors and other litigants fighting over the corporate carcass while the revenue line crashes.


Seeking funding from the government, or any source, we would use Bankruptcy Code Section 363, which allows a company to sell assets under a court-approved sale. Typically, 363 is used to sell specific assets, from a chair and desk to a factory or division, but not the entire stand-alone company. Under this strategy GM could postpone filing a plan of reorganization and a disclosure statement, which consume months and fuel a blizzard of litigation while market share and enterprise value bleed away.


Wagoner listened, challenging every assumption. After discussing it with board members, Rick asked me to come to GM and work on the plan, one of several alternatives GM would consider. I volunteered to help GM on a pro bono basis. But what I could never anticipate was how deep and strong the opposition to my plan would ultimately be.


***


On Tuesday, Dec. 2, I pulled into GM’s Detroit headquarters at 7 a.m. after most of the company’s executives had already arrived for work. I was given a small cubicle and conference room on the 38th floor, a spacious but empty place that held GM’s corporate boardroom and a warren of cubicles reserved for visiting executives and board members.


Each day I would be the sole person who got off the elevator on 38, one floor down from where Wagoner and his team worked. It was eerie and quiet, the main wall lined with large oil paintings of GM’s past chairmen. I’d walk past those gilded frames daily, feeling the full weight of their gaze, reminded of the history and past glory of what had been the most powerful corporation on earth.


Spending 18 hours a day digging through the numbers in GM’s filings, I began working in greater detail on the outlines of the plan and making some assumptions on what assets should be transferred to NewCo and what would stay in OldCo, which I dubbed Motors Liquidation. There were thousands of crucial questions that had to be asked and answered with management: Which brands and factories would survive? Which ones would the company have to give up? What would be the endgame strategy? What would be the enterprise value of NewCo? The liquidation value of OldCo?


Wagoner and COO Fritz Henderson were developing three alternative plans. First, they hoped to avoid bankruptcy altogether, believing the government would provide enough funding to bring GM through the crisis. At least two cabinet members in the Bush Administration and others had provided assurances to Rick and board members that government help would be forthcoming.


Second was a “prepackaged” bankruptcy plan being developed by general counsel Robert Osborne with Harvey R. Miller, the dean of the bankruptcy bar and senior partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Under this plan, GM would prepare a reorganization in cooperation with its bond creditors that would take effect once the company went into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The goal of a so-called prepack is to shorten and simplify the bankruptcy process.


Miller commanded great respect in bankruptcy circles and in the GM boardroom, and for good reason. At the age of 75 Miller was the only attorney in the country who had successfully dealt with as many high-profile bankruptcies. Miller was already in the middle of the largest corporate liquidation ever, at Lehman Brothers.


And third was the NewCo plan, based on years of ?experience at AlixPartners, where we had a major role in 50 of the 180 largest bankruptcies over $1 billion in the past 15 years. GM had also retained Martin Bienenstock, the restructuring and corporate governance leader from Dewey & LeBoeuf, to help develop the NewCo plan as well.


Inside and outside GM, the pressures mounted. Each day the company lost more money and got closer to running out of cash. In Washington several prominent politicians began calling for Wagoner’s resignation. On Dec. 7 Senator Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, told Face the Nation’ s Bob Schieffer that Wagoner had to move on.


The next day I went to see Wagoner to offer encouragement and advice. It is not unusual for a CEO to lose his job when his company is forced into bankruptcy and a major restructuring. I’d seen this play out many times before and learned the boss should never volunteer his resignation without first putting in place the things that would help the organization survive. I wanted to help fortify Rick’s resolve and keep us all focused on the endgame.


From my perspective Wagoner had been unfairly treated by many politicians and the media. Since taking over as CEO in 2000, working closely with Fritz and vice chairman Bob Lutz, Rick orchestrated large, dramatic changes at the company. They closed GM’s quality, productivity and fuel-economy gaps with the world’s best automakers, winning numerous car and truck awards. They built a highly profitable business in China, the world’s biggest potential car market. They reduced the company’s workforce by 143,000 employees, to 243,000. They reached a historic agreement with the UAW that cut in half hourly pay for new employees and significantly scaled back the traditional retiree benefit packages that had been crippling the company, while also funding over $100 billion in unfunded retiree obligations. And he was able to accomplish all these changes without causing massive disruptions among GM’s dealers or major strikes with the unions.


Ultimately, those structural changes positioned the company not only to survive but also to bring about the extraordinary turnaround. But now, with the economy and the company in free fall, all of that hard work seemed to be forgotten.



It was late in the day on Dec. 8, around 5:30 p.m., when I walked into Wagoner’s office.


“Rick, do not resign or even offer to resign,” I told him. “Later you may have to fall on your sword to get the funding deal done with the government, but don’t do it until we get the three things we need. If you’re going to be killed on the battlefield, we need to make it worth it.”


“And what is that exactly?” he pressed me.


“We have to get government funding of $40 billion to $50 billion. Plus, we need an agreement with the government and GM’s board to do the NewCo plan. And we must put a qualified successor in place. It must be Fritz and not some government guy. It’s going to be painful for you, but you’ve got to stay on the horse until we get all three.”


Wagoner was already there. He had no intention of resigning and was determined to complete his mission. I gave him a bear hug, letting him know he had my full support.


***


When we gathered for a telephonic board meeting on Dec. 15, the mood was urgent, the tension high. Only two weeks after arriving at GM I was about to present the plan to the board of directors in a conference room outside Wagoner’s office. Also on the phone were the company’s lawyers and investment bankers.


A Spiderphone was in the middle of the table for what would be a historic meeting of the board. Only three days earlier the Senate had abandoned negotiations to provide funding for the auto industry. Suddenly a free-fall bankruptcy within days loomed large. Consideration of the NewCo plan, now refined with the help of chief financial officer Ray Young and other senior finance staffers, took on greater urgency as we were just two weeks away from running out of cash.


“I know the company has many lawyers and bankers working on other approaches,” I said. “I know many of the people doing the work, and I’ve worked with many of them over the years. But I have an alternative strategy for the board’s consideration. I suspect there might be some controversy over it, but I believe this could be lifesaving for General Motors.”


After carefully laying out the details and time sequence of the NewCo plan, I drew to a close.


“Well,” one director asked over the phone system, “I want to hear what Harvey Miller has to say about this. Is there a precedent for this, Mr. Miller?”


Miller’s deep baritone voice filled the room, pointing out that the idea was unorthodox and lacked precedence.


Other attorneys chimed in, claiming the plan oversimplified the situation and there would be major problems with it. Yet another added that this would not be viewed well by the court and doubted any judge would allow it. Collectively, they characterized it as a long shot, discouraging the directors from thinking the plan could ever succeed.


Hearing all the disapproving words amplified from speakers in the ceiling, I felt ambushed by general counsel Osborne, who was strongly advocating for a prepackaged bankruptcy strategy, which he believed was the only way to go. Unbeknownst to me he had previously proposed the idea to GM’s board, naively believing GM could complete a prepack bankruptcy in 30 days.


GM’s most senior leaders had been working with me on the NewCo plan around the clock. I felt strongly this alternative approach could succeed, and I knew that any other type of Chapter 11 strategy would kill vehicle sales and lead to the demise of GM. Now it seemed as if the NewCo plan could be dead on arrival.


“If the attorneys feel this is a waste of time and corporate resources, I don’t know why we would pursue this,” stated another director.



A chilling silence descended upon the room, broken by Kent Kresa, the former CEO of Northrop Grumman and a GM board member since 2003.


“I understand this has some risk attached to it, but we’re in a very risky state right now,” he said. “And I understand it may even be unusual and unprecedented. But it’s certainly creative, and quite frankly, it’s the most innovative idea we’ve heard so far that has real potential in it. I think it deserves further consideration and development.”


Rick then addressed another lawyer on the call, Martin Bienenstock.


“Well, I’ve actually studied the problem, too, and there’s a way for this to work,” said Bienenstock. “Almost all bankruptcies are unique and the Code does allow for the transfer of assets. I can’t imagine a judge taking on this problem and not wanting to solve it. We’ve done a preliminary analysis, and it’s not as crazy as it sounds. It’s unique and compelling.”


“Okay, we’ve heard both sides of it,” Rick said after others spoke, smartly bringing the debate to a reasonable close. “I suggest we continue working to develop both the prepack plan and the NewCo option, while seeking the funding to avoid Chapter 11 if at all possible.”


The meeting adjourned without a vote. I left the room disappointed to hear Osborne’s legal chorus so dead set against NewCo and surprised their remarks had stopped all real discussion of the plan. But I also was relieved the plan was not completely dead, at least not yet.


***


Over the next weeks I worked closely with Bienenstock, assistant general counsel Mike Millikin, Al Koch of AlixPartners and GM senior vice president John Smith on the NewCo plan. We huddled dozens of times with Wagoner and Henderson to work out which brands GM would ultimately have to give up (Hummer, Saturn, Saab and Pontiac) and which ones it would keep (Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick). Informed debate and deep analysis of structural costs led to decisions about projects, factories, brands and countries.


On Sunday afternoon, Mar. 29, Wagoner called me. It was a call I had hoped would never come–but here it was.


“Jay,” he said, “I wanted to give you a heads-up. The Administration wants me to step aside. The President is going to hold a press conference tomorrow morning.”


Wagoner told me Henderson would be named CEO.


“What about the bankruptcy?” I asked.


“They’re enamored with the 363 NewCo plan. They seem bound and determined to make us file Chapter 11 and do NewCo. … This is really tough,” he said.


“I’m so sorry,” I said, pausing, “but … you got the money. They’re doing the NewCo plan, and Fritz is your successor. … You’ve succeeded. You got the three things.”


Rick responded with resigned acknowledgment, then said, “Please help Fritz in any way you can,” before hanging up.


Rick’s personal sacrifice was not in vain. Months of hard work had paid off. The assets and liabilities had been selected. The NewCo legal entities and $45 billion tax-loss strategy had been developed. The strategy I pitched to Wagoner in his living room four and a half months earlier was the plan chosen by Team Auto in a meeting on Apr. 3, 2009 in Washington. Treasury agreed to fully fund NewCo with equity, and thus it became the chosen path to save the company.



By late April NewCo implementation was well under way. The bankruptcy filing would occur in New York within weeks. My partner, Al Koch of AlixPartners, would become the chief restructuring officer running OldCo, now officially named Motors Liquidation, Inc. In my notes, I jotted: “My work is finished … impact from this day forward will be negligible. … Treasury’s in control. Time to get back to my girls.”


On June 1, 2009 General Motors filed for bankruptcy in New York, with $82 billion in assets and $173 billion in liabilities. It was the largest industrial bankruptcy in history. Harvey Miller and his team masterfully defended and guided the NewCo plan through the bankruptcy court, successfully making it their own. New GM exited bankruptcy protection on July 10, 2009–in a mere 40 days, as designed. Fritz called and thanked me.


There would be many other twists and turns to GM’s narrative, but the company got its fresh start using the NewCo plan, and the industry was saved with government funding from both Presidents Bush and Obama. In March 2009 President Obama cited a “failure of leadership” as his reason for forcing out Wagoner. In fact, it was Wagoner’s exercise of leadership through years of wrenching change and then simultaneously seeking government funding while developing three restructuring plans that put GM in position to survive the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression and complete its turnaround, which, ironically, became a key campaign issue in the reelection of Barack Obama in 2012.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/danbigman/2013/10/30/how-general-motors-was-really-saved-the-untold-true-story-of-the-most-important-bankruptcy-in-u-s-history/