Futuríveis

Primero llegó Napster, una de las revoluciones de Internet, que enseñó con éxito cómo descargar contenidos en masa. Y los usuarios le cogieron tanto gusto que, cuando aquél 'desapareció' entre juicios y millones de dólares, no pudieron despegarse de las redes P2P y se pasaron a alternativas como KaZaA o eMule. El último en incorporarse a la larga lista de herederos es Peer2Mail, un sencillo pero potente programa que combina el concepto original con otro aún más extendido: el 'e-mail'.

Creado por el programador israelí Ran Geva, Peer2Mail (P2M) es producto de la evolución de una serie de herramientas que comenzó en URLBlaze y que ha concluido, al menos de momento, en esta combinación de 'peer to peer' y correo electrónico llamada a hacerse un hueco entre los 'gigantes' de las descargas desde un punto de vista diferente.
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En este punto entra en juego la reciente carrera entre los principales servicios de correo en Internet, que arrancó por sorpresa de la mano de Google y ha acabado resultando en una importante ampliación de la capacidad de almacenamiento de todos ellos.

Es precisamente gracias a este "renovarse o morir" como P2M ha aprovechado las posibilidades que ofrece la competencia y se ha convertido en una alternativa a los sistemas tradicionales, cuyos envíos generalmente no se realizan desde un servidor hacia varios clientes, sino entre los propios clientes de forma individual.
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El Mundo

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The explanation is not scarcity. Despite recent claims of rapid depletion, there is enough oil to last many decades. The real problem is concentration. Saudi Arabia and its neighbours sit atop nearly two-thirds of the world's proved oil reserves. As the world depletes expensive oil reserves from sources outside the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in places such as the North Sea, the Gulf's market share will soar. The potential for disruption can only grow.

There is no immediate solution, because there is no practical alternative to oil today. Add to this inadequate oil stockpiles, especially in the developing world, and you get a world needlessly vulnerable to a shock. As for longer-term responses, three views dominate energy policy: relax, keep pumping and ride your bicycle.
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The best way for America to enhance energy security is to raise its absurdly low petrol taxes. A carbon tax, slowly phased in, would send a clear signal to markets that the externalities of burning fossil fuels matter. And if the revenue is recycled to households quickly as income tax relief, Mr Bush could even market it as the Patriot Tax Refund. Without picking winners, such a policy would also spur innovation and investment in clean energy technologies such as fuel cells. The good news is that hydrogen fuel cells finally offer a way to move beyond oil and the internal combustion engine. If this technology takes off, it could even mean the death of Opec. Because hydrogen can be produced anywhere, from any primary energy source, this brave new energy world could never be held hostage by terrorists.

Al-Qaeda's latest warning was on my mind in Riyadh recently, where a Saudi security expert was telling me the government had broken the local al-Qaeda cell - just as two car bombs went off nearby. That incident convinced me of the urgency of the task, and reminded me of these evocative words from Bill Ford, chairman of the car giant: "I believe fuel cells will finally end the 100-year reign of the internal combustion engine."

If the Texan oilman gets serious about climate change, today's nascent energy revolution could eventually end the world's addiction to oil. Now that would be a welcome energy shock.
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FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - The world is set for a new type of energy shock

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O abandono escolar continua a atingir 40,4 por cento dos estudantes do ensino secundário, contra 15,9 por cento no conjunto da UE, e quase 40 por cento dos universitários. Só Malta apresenta resultados piores.
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Publico.pt - Portugal tem os níveis de qualificação profissional mais baixos da UE

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RSS - which stands for "really simple syndication" - is a standard format that anyone publishing information on the web can use to make their data available. Information formatted in this way is called a "feed".
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For online publishers, this is already becoming of more than academic interest. The Pew Internet and American Life Project, which monitors internet behaviour, estimated this month that 6m Americans now receive information through RSS aggregators. The effects could be far-reaching.

RSS is "doing what the internet does - it eliminates the middleman," says Larry Kramer, founder of MarketWatch, an online financial news service that was acquired this month by Dow Jones. In other words, when the guts of a company's website have been laid bare by RSS, there is no longer any need to navigate around the site to find information.

Starting from an RSS aggregator, "people click through to stories, but maybe they don't go to [home pages] as much as they did," says Shelby Bonnie, head of CNET Networks, which runs a family of technology information sites.

One result of aggregating information from multiple sources in one place is that only the truly original will draw the readers' attention, Mr Bonnie adds. "You could say this is a technology that commoditises content," he says.

While the most immediate effects will be seen in the online media business, some companies are already starting to use R SS aggregators to monitor references to their products on influential blog sites, says Mr Gillmor. "It's a brand management tool of some power," he adds.

Combined with other technologies, it could have a much broader impact on how people filter information from the web.
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FT.com

O "World Economic Forum" em Davos, que se está a realizar por estes dias disponibiliza por estes dias as intervenções, os debates e uma grande quantidade de "papers", relatórios, sondagens sobre temas muito interessantes e com pessoas muito interessantes. vale a pena. e agora também tem um blog...

World Economic Forum - Homepage

World Economic Forum - Weblog

Yushchenko Affirms EU Aspirations | Current Affairs | Deutsche Welle |

The survey of some 1,000 taxi drivers said passengers had lost three times more handheld computers in the second half of 2004 than in 2001, when the research by security software company Pointsec was first carried out.

[print version] Cab drivers find limbs, laptops in back seat | CNET News.com

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m-Government has been bandied around like a dot-com buzzword, with little real impact. Now, some governments around the world, and not the usual suspects either, are taking steps beyond simple SMS notifications.
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Three key areas that are being explored are voting, payments and 3G.

Mobile voting is attractive around the world as a way of encouraging participation, particularly among the young and in remote areas. It is also potentially far cheaper than other alternatives. Puca will use its research results to push the Irish government to deploy new mobile voting platforms. In the Irish survey, 55% of the 25-34 year old age group was interested about being able to vote by SMS. Given only 42% of this age group voted in the last Irish election, this would represent a major boost to the number of younger voters.

Payment for services has been starting off with one-off payments such as m-parking in cities around the world. Other governments have been looking at allowing the public to pay for public services, such as tax being paid from a mobile device.

Although there is uncertainty around the impact and penetration of 3G, many governments are looking at ways of taking advantage of it. Those countries that have trialled different mobile technologies are confident that as users are more comfortable with m-government, they will be prepared to try 3G services. However, the main advantage of 3G could be as a way of overcoming current resistance to the evolution of m-Government. These typically include security, interoperability and cost.
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TheFeature :: m-Government Gets Serious


Púca mGovernment Survey Indicates Strong Demand In Ireland for Services via Mobile Phone

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I wasn't surprised when people used sms, blogs, cameraphones and wikis to organize relief efforts during the first hours after the tsunami of 2005. If you can smartmob political demonstrations, elections and performance art, you can smartmob disaster relief. I observed two of my friends on opposite sides of the world doing just that.
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TheFeature :: Smartmobbing Disaster Relief

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the top 25 innovations of the past quarter century, according to a panel of technology leaders assembled by the Lemelson-MIT Program, which promotes inventiveness in teens.

In creating the list, the group hoped to single out "25 non-medically related technological innovations that have become widely used since 1980, are readily recognizable by most Americans, have had a direct and perceptible impact on our everyday lives, and/or could dramatically affect our lives in the future."
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TOP INNOVATIONS
1. The Internet
2. Cell phone
3. Personal computers
4. Fiber optics
5. E-mail
6. Commercialized GPS
7. Portable computers
8. Memory storage discs
9. Consumer level digital camera
10. Radio frequency ID tags
11. MEMS
12. DNA fingerprinting
13. Air bags
14. ATM
15. Advanced batteries
16. Hybrid car
17. OLEDs
18. Display panels
19. HDTV
20. Space shuttle
21. Nanotechnology
22. Flash memory
23. Voice mail
24. Modern hearing aids
25. Short Range, High Frequency Radio
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CNN.com - Top 25: Innovations

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Whether anyone beyond antivirus researchers has downloaded Mr. Velasco's program is an unanswered question, and industry experts are careful to say that the age of the cellphone virus is not yet upon us.

But Mr. Velasco's virus, which appears to do little harm, points not just to the inevitability of more virulent ones aimed at cellphones and other mobile devices, but also to a virus-writing subculture unfazed by multimillion-dollar bounties, international prosecution and an official inclination, after the attacks of September 2001, to characterize virus writers as terrorists.
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But Symbian-based devices made big gains in the mobile market in 2004, according to data compiled by Canalys. In the third quarter of 2003, the three major platforms each made up about a third of all smart mobile shipments. In the 2004 quarter, Symbian-based devices grew to half of all new shipments. And on Wednesday, Symbian announced its entry, along with PalmSource, into the Open Mobile Terminal Platform group, an organization of mobile phone operators that seeks to bring more interoperability and consistency to the forest of mobile devices on the market.

These are the kinds of preconditions - market penetration, uniformity - that, according to Mr. Pescatore, will be needed to pique the interest of would-be scammers, hackers and virus writers. And in that sense, Mr. Velasco's exploits are something of an early object lesson.
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The New York Times > Technology > A Virus Writer Tests the Limits in Cellphones

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Traffic on the BitTorrent file-sharing network appears set to rebound just one month after Hollywood studios launched legal attacks against key operators helping internet pirates use the service to swap illegal copies of movies and music files.

With several key Bit-Torrent websites shutting down within days of the industry's crackdown last month, it appeared the legal actions could have a devastating effect on the network, one of several peer-to-peer services that lets internet users share large files such as movies, software programmes or video games.

But internet users are gravitating toward new BitTorrent websites that have cropped up since the crackdown began, said one group that tracks online traffic.
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FT.com - Campaign fails to halt movie net piracy

Venture investing in technology companies rose to $11.3 billion last year, reversing three years of consecutive declines as the market returned to more normal patterns of investing, according to a venture capital report scheduled to be released Friday.
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[print version] Venture investing in tech companies rises | CNET News.com

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The papers are again full of images of domination and degradation - photos of British soldiers simulating punches and kicks at trussed Iraqi detainees, standing on a detainee with stick in hand, or forcing others to act out gay sex.
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Degrading snapshots are everywhere - but commentators have offered little in terms of analysis or explanation. More insight comes from a somewhat unlikely quarter: On Photography, a slim book of essays published in 1977 by the American writer Susan Sontag, who died a few weeks ago (1). Sontag showed how Western society's use of images reflects its problems of social, intellectual and moral alienation.


The growth of photography, said Sontag, was about taking a 'chronically voyeuristic relation to the world'. With camera in hand, the world and its occupants become prey for our amusement, with our subjects expected to pose, to expose themselves on film. The effect, said Sontag, 'is to convert the world into a department store or museum-without-walls in which every subject is depreciated into an article of consumption, promoted into an item for aesthetic appreciation'.
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spiked-culture | Article | Putting the photos in perspective

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More than three years after federal and industry officials began to talk about how to cope with the "e-waste" problem, the situation has only deteriorated. Americans dispose of 2 million tons of electronic products a year -- including 50 million computers and 130 million cell phones -- and by 2010, the nation will be discarding 400 million electronic units annually, according to the International Association of Electronics Recyclers.

Environmentalists say the rising tide of electronic waste is slowly degrading in landfills and rivers here and abroad, posing a serious threat to water and air. Computers, televisions and other advanced devices contain neurotoxins and carcinogens such as lead and beryllium metal that are leaching into waterways and entering the air through burning or dust.

With little notice, e-waste has become one of the fastest-growing sectors of the country's solid waste stream, and technology products now account for as much as 40 percent of the lead in U.S. landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
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washingtonpost.com: Dead Electronics Going to Waste

Engraçado o reencontro aqui com o tom do "optimismo tecnológico" da segunda metade dos anos 90
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But in fact the blogosphere has evolved into a sphere of memes and ideas that are constantly shaped by the millions of web users who write, read and comment on blogs. In a sense, it operates in a similar fashion to open-source code, where a loose confederation of programmers tinkers with software, adding to it and sharing contributions with anyone who is interested.
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With blogs, however, anybody with an internet connection can engage anybody else. Concepts are presented, attacked, sliced, diced, added to and subtracted from, mangled, massaged and molded until what is left is an amalgam of the finest we as an online society have to offer. For the digitally well-endowed, it's akin to free-market capitalism, with information as its currency. And not only do we all get to watch, we can join in.
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In his essay, Anderson celebrated the breakdown of the old world economic order, to be replaced (potentially) by a new era of "open distribution" for any video content. "This, like the smashing of distribution bottlenecks everywhere," he argues, "could shift consumer taste from hits to niches, creating a Long Tail of demand." In other words, consumers would have access to any type of content they desired. Nothing would ever be out of print, because there would always be a market for it, no matter how small. Instead of Hollywood and the record industry deciding what we can buy, and neglecting to sell anything that doesn't generate high enough returns, we the consumers would. If the Long Tail were to have a slogan, it might be democracy, disintermediation and corporate decay.

So you see, we could fast be approaching an era of complete customization. Ultimately, Anderson defined the Long Tail as "content that is not available through traditional distribution channels but could nevertheless find an audience." In other words, "niche content." How would we get it? Over the internet, of course.
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Wired News

Legal music sites quadrupled to over 230 in 2004
Available music catalogue has doubled in 12 months to 1 million songs
Paid-for downloads up more than tenfold to over 200 million
Consumer attitudes more favourable to buying music online

IFPI report sees the digital music market taking off in 2005

Cerca de 30% dos trabalhadores portugueses não faz, por sistema, descontos nos rendimentos de trabalho para a Segurança Social, segundo o Jornal de Negócios.
O diário refere estatísticas da Segurança Social divulgadas na quarta-feira, havia 3,38 milhões de pessoas com remunerações declaradas no primeiro semestre de 2004.

Este número equivale apenas a 66% da população empregada em Junho de 2004 (5,12 milhões), segundo o INE, o que significa que os restantes 34% não declararam qualquer tipo de rendimentos à Segurança Social.


Millennium bcp

Los casos de gripe durante la segunda semana de enero aumentaron hasta alcanzar los 540,01 casos por cada 100.000 habitantes, la tasa más alta registrada en el país desde 1995, cuando empezaron a funcionar los sistemas de la Red Nacional de Vigilancia Epidemiológica.
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En toda Europa empieza a apreciarse también una mayor actividad del virus de la gripe y ya hay siete sistemas centinela europeos -Bélgica, Inglaterra, Italia, Irlanda, Irlanda del Norte, Holanda y España- que detectan actividad por encima del umbral básico.

España se encuentra en el grupo que presenta "intensidad media" junto a Inglaterra, Irlanda del Norte e Irlanda, mientras que el resto presentan baja intensidad.
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elmundo.es

El 43% de los hogares españoles con Internet utiliza la banda ancha para conectarse a la Red, lo que sitúa a España 12 puntos por encima de la media europea, según el informe "La Sociedad de la Información en España 2004" elaborado por el Grupo Telefónica.
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El Informe revela que a mayo de 2004 había en España 12 millones de internautas, lo que supone un 33,1% de la población, y de ellos el 62,3% accedía a la Red desde su hogar.
El 56% de los internautas son varones y el 44% mujeres; el 65,4% de los jóvenes de entre 14 y 19 años son internautas y el 60,4% del grupo de edad de entre 20 y 24 años, en línea con lo que sucede en Europa.
Dentro de los usuarios de Internet que utilizan la banda ancha, los que cuentan con ADSL son el 72,2% , el módem cable el 23,7% y el acceso a través de LMDS (telefonía local vía radio) son el 2,7%.
En telefonía móvil, sigue creciendo el número de usuarios, aunque el informe hace hincapié en que empieza a dar síntomas de madurez y saturación, y se está moderando el incremento. Cita los datos de 2003, con una penetración el 87 por ciento de la población.
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Cerca de la mitad de los hogares espanoles con Internet usa la banda ancha

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O recente Eurobarómetro 2004 da União Europeia apresenta resultados preocupantes quanto ao espírito de empreendedorismo dos portugueses porque exprime bem a contradição entre aquilo que preferimos e o comportamento que adoptamos.

Na preferência, 62% dos inquiridos portugueses preferem não ser empregados por conta de outrem, valor próximo dos EUA (61%) e bem acima da média europeia (45%).

E aliás, também julgamos ser realista criar o nosso próprio negócio no horizonte dos próximos 5 anos com 34% de respostas favoráveis contra 31% da média comunitária.

Todavia, o drama surge quando nos perguntam se já pensámos criar o nosso próprio emprego, em que 65% respondem negativamente contra 54% e 44% na EU e nos EUA, respectivamente.

Ora o mesmo inquérito explica-nos a causa desta contradição, quando se pergunta aos inquiridos: havendo risco de fracasso, não deve empreender o seu negócio?
Enquanto 50% dos europeus concordam com esta afirmação, em Portugal esta percentagem é das mais altas na Europa atingindo 65%.

Em suma, os portugueses estão mal preparados para a assunção do risco.
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Diário Económico

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You take a picture of something, send it to our servers, and we either provide you with more information or link you to the place that will. Let's say you're standing in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. You take a snapshot with your cameraphone and instantly receive an audio-visual narrative about the painting. Then you step out of the Louvre and see a cafe. Should you go in? Take a shot from the other side of the street and a restaurant guide will appear on your phone. You sit down inside, but perhaps your French is a little rusty. You take a picture of the menu and a dictionary comes up to translate. There is a huge variety of people in these kinds of situations, from stamp collectors, to people who want to check their skin melanoma, to police officers who need to identify the person in front of them.
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TheFeature :: Hyperlinking the World

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With many of us suffering from a financial hangover following the festive spending binge, employment agencies say that people already in work are taking on temporary jobs to raise funds.
This might be anything from night shifts in call centres to catering work in the evening, with the 24-hour culture creating a demand for flexible, temporary workers. According to the Office for National Statistics, there are more than a million people with two jobs - and that this figure usually peaks in January.

Adecco, the biggest employment agency, says that in the current buoyant labour market people have the chance to find temporary jobs quickly. Increasingly, people are looking to top-up their income or to pay off credit card bills.

The most popular type of second job is in call centres, says Adecco, but there is also demand for staff in offices, retail, hotels and catering. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) says this trend is a reflection of an increasingly diverse pattern of work.
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The greater availability of work and low levels of unemployment mean that we are collectively working an increas ing number of total hours, with the Office for National Statistics reporting that up to October 2004, we were working six million more hours each week than the previous year, higher than at any time since these records began 30 years ago. But becoming a nation of two-job night-owls might raise concerns that this is going to become another example of the long-hours culture and "burn-out Britain".
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Guardian Unlimited - Cashing in at the call centre

Primera prueba nacional de voto 'on line': el referendum de la Constitucion Europea

Concorrência Condena Seis Farmacêuticas por Cartelização

Digital Media Europe

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The Top ten movies in December (based on the number of unique copies available for download during the month on the Fast Track and eDonkey networks) were:

1. Alien vs. Predator - Fox - 37,212
2. Garfield - Fox - 31,463
3. Van Helsing - Universal - 31,009
4. I, Robot - Fox - 29,500
5. Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Sony Pictures - 28,218
6. Cellular - Warners Bros. - 28,147
7. Spider-Man 2 - Sony Pictures - 25,853
8. The Terminal - Dreamworks - 25,584
9. Shrek 2 - Dreamworks - 23,364
10. Anacondas: The Hunt For the Blood Orchid - Sony Pictures - 22,942

The Top ten software titles in December (based on the number of unique copies available for download during the month on the Fast Track and eDonkey networks) were:

1. Photoshop CS - Adobe Systems - 41,755
2. Norton AntiVirus 2005 - Symantec Corp. - 40,297
3. Nero 6 - Ahead Software - 32,593
4. Pinnacle Studio 9 - Pinnacle Systems - 30,178
5. Microsoft Windows XP - Microsoft - 28,747
6. Acrobat 6.0 - Adobe Systems - 27,621
7. Office 2003 - Microsoft - 27,371
8. Norton Internet Security 2005 - Symantec Corp. - 26,244
9. SUSE Linux 9.0 - Novell, Inc. - 25,742
10. AutoCAD 2005 - Autodesk - 23,653
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Digital Media Europe: News - Alien vs. Predator top P2P pirated film in December

Digital Media Europe: News - Vonage launches VoIP in the UK

Wired 13.01: Lawrence Lessig

Alvissaras!

Os gestores ocuparam os principais espaços de entrevista da pré-campanha. é um sintoma da quebra de credibilidade dos políticos, aos olhos dos jornalistas

DN Online: Gestores em tempo de votos

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Broadband telephony outfit Skype looks set to become a major threat to Europe's traditional telcos as more and people use the net to make phone calls.

According to research outfit Evalueserve, the European telecoms market is more vulnerable to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers because of per minute tariffs and high roaming charges.

With 13m users worldwide and numbers growing by 80,000 a day, Evalueserve reckons Skype could have between 140-245m subscribers by 2008.

It forecasts that incumbents could see revenue fall by as much as 10 per cent because of the surge in demand for internet telephony with profit predicted to slide by at least 22-26 per cent.
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Skype VoIP threat to Euro telcos The Register
Skype

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Ao longo das últimas décadas vem-se constatando uma descida gradual dos níveis de precipitação no Algarve, a uma taxa de 1,67 milímetros por ano, indica o trabalho, observando que cinco dos 13 anos mais secos desde 1941 pertencem aos últimos doze anos.
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O estudo compara também as temperaturas médias na região desde 1971, que têm vindo a crescer a uma média anual de 0,06 graus centígrados, originando um maior potencial de evaporação de água dos solos.
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Estudo alerta que cada vez chove menos no Algarve

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No caso da Maconde, que já iniciou contactos naquele mercado há uns dois anos, em Portugal poderá ficar apenas o design tendo sido já contactados três parceiros chineses (dois em Pequim e um em Xangai) para subcontratar a produção a preços mais competitivos.
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Negócios: Riopele e Maconde vão produzir na China

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a preferência dos portugueses por ter um negócio próprio tem vindo a diminuir: em 2002, 71% dos inquiridos preferiam ser empresários, valor que caiu para 67% em 2003 e 62% no ano passado.
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O estudo mostra ainda que os portugueses, juntamente com os italianos, são os europeus que mais consideram que esta não é uma boa altura para lançar um negócio próprio. Em Portugal e Itália, 82% das pessoas inquiridas considerou que o clima económico não é favorável para a constituição de um negócio próprio.

O Eurobarómetro baseia-se em 18.547 entrevistas realizadas nos diversos países em Abril do ano passado.


Conjuntura: Maioria dos portugueses sonha ser empresário

Segundo os resultados do Netpanel da Marktest, o número de páginas visitadas e o tempo despendido na internet cresceu mais de 21% em 2004 relativamente a 2003.

Durante o ano de 2004 foram 1 590 mil os indivíduos de 4 e mais anos que em suas casas acederam à internet, um número que representa um pequeno acréscimo de 0.5% quando comparado com o ano anterior. Este valor correponde a 97.5% do universo estudado pelo Netpanel.

A média diária de visitantes da web situou-se nos 28.1% dos internautas deste período, um número que cresceu 12.9% quando comparado com 2003, evidenciando uma tendência de crescimento na utilização diária da internet a partir de casa.
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A internet em 2004 - Noticia - Marktest.com

POL | Economia | Patrões e sindicatos unem-se para dinamizar contratação

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But the talk among Silicon Valley insiders is different. Their buzz is that India and China are launching high-tech companies that will innovate brilliantly -- and will bring their creations first to consumers in their own lands, often bypassing our shores entirely. India and China are the world's most promising end markets for technology, while the United States is nearly saturated. So the real issue for the coming decade isn't whether Asia's workers will steal our high-tech jobs; it's whether their high-tech consumers will still buy our products.

The new new thing in Silicon Valley isn't even in Silicon Valley: In September, the Silicon Valley Bank, which lends to tech startups, opened a branch in Bangalore, India. The bank has led two delegations, each of two-dozen top venture capitalists, on weeklong tours of India and China. Legends such as Don Valentine from Sequoia Capital, which invested early on in Apple, Yahoo, and Google; and John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the moneyman behind Amazon.com, joined the June trek to Beijing and Shanghai.

They found a nascent entrepreneurial culture inspired by their own, peopled by Chinese nationals -- educated in the United States and once employed by big American companies -- who have returned home to launch tech startups. "They were as world-class as anything you'd see on Sand Hill Road," the epicenter of Silicon Valley's capitalists, says Terry Garnett, former head of marketing at Oracle and now a venture capitalist at Garnett & Helfrich in Menlo Park.
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Fast Company | Offshoring Creativity

Who will vote against the new EU constitutional treaty?

Will Iraq have elections?

Will the main markets finish 2005 lower?

Will China revalue its currency?

Will the EU's stability pact be reformed?

Will Tony Blair be re-elected?

Will Japan escape from deflation in 2005?

Will oil end the year at more than $50 a barrel?

Will commodities keep rising?

Will hedge funds continue to attract so much money?

What will be hot in technology?

Will the Middle East peace process be revived?

Where is Africa's next crisis?

Will Latin America turn further to the left?

Will there be a deal on Kashmir?

Which city will win the 2012 Olympic Games?

Will 2005 be the hottest year since records began?

Os rumores tornaram-se realidade. As duas centenas de trabalhadores da Kaz Ibérica, fábrica produtora de aquecedores a óleo, sediada em Fânzeres, Gondomar, souberam, ontem, que a unidade será encerrada entre Fevereiro e Julho. A decisão foi conhecida após uma reunião entre a administração, a comissão de trabalhadores e o responsável pela área de recursos humanos da empresa-mãe, nos Estados Unidos da América. George Owen veio a Portugal expressamente para anunciar o fecho da fábrica e o despedimento de 207 operários.
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Ao início da noite, um comunicado aos jornalistas emitido pela Kaz Incorporated fez exaltar os ânimos. "Infelizmente, um clima ameno na Europa e nos Estados Unidos, este ano, deixará a fábrica com largos stocks", pode ler-se no documento. Mais, acrescenta, "os irradiadores importados da Europa ocidental e China arrasaram a competitividade da Kaz Ibérica e forçaram a empresa a baixar as suas tabelas de preços no mercado". A subida do euro, que "aumentou o custo da produção em cerca de 45% em relação à concorrência não europeia", foi outro dos motivos dados pela direcção da unidade fabril.
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Jornal de Noticias - Veio dos Estados Unidos para despedir 207 operários

Exports from China leapt during 2004 over the previous year as the country continued to show breakneck growth.
The spurt put China's trade surplus - a sore point with some of its trading partners - at a six-year high.
It may also increase pressure on China to relax the peg joining its currency, the yuan, with the weakening dollar.
The figures released by the Ministry of Commerce come as China's tax chief confirmed that growth had topped 9% in 2004 for the second year in a row.
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A US report issued on Tuesday on behalf of a Congressionally-mandated panel said almost 1.5 million posts disappeared between 1989 and 2003.
The pace accelerated in the final three years of the period, said the report for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, moving out of labour-intensive industries and into more hi-tech sectors.
The US's overall trade deficit with China was $124bn in 2003, and is expected to rise to about $150bn for 2004.

BBC

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Who owns your e-mails?

Espanha parece estar a ultrapassar um dos "handicaps" ao desenvolvimento empresarial e à inovação em Portugal...
Private equity and venture capital activity in Spain is set for a bumper year, with one deal alone likely to surpass total investments of nearly €2bn ($2.6bn) in 2004.

According to preliminary figures released on Tuesday by the Spanish Association of Capital Risk Groups (ASCRI), a further €2.5bn of locally raised cash is available as seed capital or for leveraged and management buy-outs this year.

However, this figure would be dwarfed if global groups pursue planned Spanish investments in 2005.
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According to the ASCRI, banks, pension funds and other institutional investors in Spain were becoming less risk-averse, while tight margins and small returns in traditional businesses and markets had forced them to diversify their portfolios.

Pan-European and US private equity funds had also stepped up their interest in buying small and medium-sized Spanish businesses.

The result was a 100 per cent surge in total funds raised in 2004, compared with 2003. Although still lagging countries such as the UK, France, Germany and Italy in terms of private equity investment, Spain was quickly “closing the gap”, said Mr Mataix
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FT.com / Industries / Financial services - Bumper year for investments in Spain

The Imagining the Internet Predictions Database examines the potential future of the Internet while simultaneously providing a peek back into its history. We invite you to navigate through three useful resource areas that: illuminate the views of stakeholders - The Experts Survey; give an historic overview - The 1990 to 1995 Predictions; and allow your participation - Share Your Vision Today.
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The Imagining the Internet Predictions Database

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Last September, the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a research organization in Washington, sent out a survey asking 24 questions about the future of the Internet to a wide range of technology specialists, scholars and industry leaders. Some 1,200 responded and, as you might expect, widespread agreement is hard to find.

Some of the more cherished notions of the Internet age - that it isolates people from real-world interaction, for instance, or that people use the Web to find reinforcement for their political views and filter out opposing ones - generate deeply divided views among the specialists. Some 42 percent of respondents agreed with the assertion that civic involvement will increase in the next 10 years as people seek and find organizations to join online; nearly 30 percent disagreed. Roughly 40 percent viewed the proliferation of online medical resources as a potential boon to health care management and access; 30 percent of the specialists thought that unlikely.
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Still, for investors, policy makers and others interested in getting a glimpse of what might be just over the horizon, there are hints to be had.

The survey results solidly confirm what media watchers may already know (and perhaps fear): that the Internet and the rise of the blogger are expected to drive greater change in the news media and publishing industries than in any other sector of society. Internet specialists also expect broad changes in education and working life, and 50 percent of respondents say they believe - despite all of the lawsuits filed by the recording and movie industries against online pirates - that the vast majority of Internet users will still be freely trading digital materials via anonymous networks by 2014.
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The New York Times > Technology > The Internet's Future? It Depends on Whom You Ask

As goes pornography, so goes technology. The concept may seem odd, but history has proven the adult entertainment industry to be one of the key drivers of any new technology in home entertainment. Pornography customers have been some of the first to buy home video machines, DVD players and subscribe to high-speed Internet.

One of the next big issues in which pornographers could play a deciding role is the future of high-definition DVDs.

The multi-billion-dollar industry releases about 11,000 titles on DVD each year, giving it tremendous power to sway the battle between two groups of studios and technology companies competing to set standards for the next generation.
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Yahoo! News - Porn Business Driving DVD Technology

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What is needed, he argues, is a radical change in what business schools teach. The problem with business school education is that it has no higher order ideals. It teaches that profit is the sole proof of business success, whether it is achieved by producing drugs that cure cancer or cigarettes that cause it. Business schools have nothing to say about "love, forgiveness, gratitude and hope", none of which can be reduced to money. Business schools have none of the aspirations for society as a whole that medical or engineering schools take for granted. What is needed, he says, is "a transcendent business education for the 21st century".

With this polemic, Prof Giacalone joins a growing group of business professors attacking their schools and what they stand for. The group includes some of the best-known names, including Henry Mintzberg of McGill and Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford.
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Central to the problem, it seems to me, is that business school professors have made fundamentally different career choices from their students. The professors have chosen to become educators; the students - the few non-profit managers apart - go to business school in the hope of reaching the highest echelons of business. Educators, for the most part, choose their jobs because they want to improve the life chances of the young. Business leaders aim for power, challenge, control and the opportunity to make money. Business school professors may not be badly paid, but, by choosing their careers, they have opted to earn less than their charges.
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Business schools can and should invite trade unionists, environmentalists and anti- globalisation campaigners to address their classes. But they will probably achieve more against corruption if they remind students of the consequences of getting caught. Some schools already invite business convicts to speak. According to the New York Times last year, Walter Pavlo, who spent more than 18 months in jail, spoke at the University of California Berkeley's Haas School. But the newspaper also reported that Mr Pavlo expected to earn up to $200,000 a year from his speeches, so he may be more of an inspiration than a deterrent.

FT.com / Business life - Michael Skapinker: On business schools and morality

When Bill Gates calls those in favor of copyright reform communists, the Microsoft chief's comments provoke a tongue-in-cheek embrace of the insult and some awesome logos for a growing movement

Wired News: We're Creative Commonists, Bill

Diário de Noticias

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In an interview with Novastream web radio, Sloncek said Exeem would combine ideas from the BitTorrent and Kazaa file-sharing systems.

Like BitTorrent, Exeem will have trackers that help point people toward the file they want.

Like Kazaa these trackers will be held by everyone. There will be no centrally maintained list.

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Dr Johan Pouwelse, a researcher at the Delft University of Technology who studies peer-to-peer networks, said Exeem was the next evolution in file-sharing systems.

But, he said, it would struggle to be as popular as BitTorrent and Suprnova because early versions were not taking enough care to make sure good copies of files were being shared.
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BBC NEWS


( Blog Percepção)

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Sales of consumer electronics in the US will climb to a record $126bn in 2005, an 11 per cent increase over the $113.5bn in 2004 sales marking the second year of double digit growth, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

The forecast, released on Thursday by the CEA at the International Consumer Electronics Sales (CES) show in Las Vegas, reflect the continuing interest from consumers in digital cameras, digital music players including Apple Computer’s enormously successful iPod, flash media storage and high-definition (HD) television.
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The association also drew attention to the boom in demand for storage - particularly flash media - as digital content grows and the storage demands of MP3 players, digital cameras and now mobile phones expands. Sales of flash media cards in the US soared from $1bn in 2003 to more than $3bn in 2004, and are expected to reach nearly $6bn in 2005.
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FT.com

Euro News alcanca a primeira posicao no mercado europeu

elmundo.es

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In 2004, the economies of the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development grew by some 3.6 per cent, a healthy improvement over 2.2 per cent in 2003 and 1.6 per cent in 2002. The US led the way, yet again, with an expansion forecast by the OECD secretariat at 4.4 per cent. Surprisingly, Japan managed 4 per cent. Less surprisingly, the UK achieved 3.2 per cent. Not at all surprisingly, the eurozone remained the laggard, on 1.8 per cent. Yet even this was a big improvement on a miserable 0.6 per cent in 2003.

Last year seems to have seen the fastest global economic growth for almost three decades. China, says the OECD, grew by 9.2 per cent last year. Brazil's gamble on orthodoxy seems to be paying off, with growth recovering to 4.5 per cent. Russia, buoyed by high oil prices, grew by more than 6 per cent.

That such a recovery has arrived in a world economy buffeted by the bursting of the high-technology bubble, terrorist attacks, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and soaring oil prices is testament to resilience. Particularly encouraging is the 9.5 per cent growth of world trade.

Yet the most important asset is credibly low inflation.
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If we ignore further visitations from the four horsemen of the apocalypse, we need to focus on six risks, positive or negative.
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The first is oil prices.
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The second is the dollar.
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The third is the prospects for demand in Japan and, above all, the eurozone.
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The fourth risk is adjustment to the end of house-price booms in some high-income economies
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The fifth risk is to the momentum of Chinese demand.
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The last risk is to the sustainability of an open world economy.

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - Martin Wolf: Turning upswing into sustained growth

The New York Times Magazine

Fast Company

El Mundo

Agencia Financeira - Número de mortes nas estradas em 2004 é o mais baixo em 30 anos

The average Internet user in the United States spends three hours a day online, with much of that time devoted to work and more than half of it to communications, according to a survey conducted by a group of political scientists.

The survey found that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours, said Norman H. Nie, director of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, a research group that has been exploring the social consequences of the Internet.
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A 2000 study by the researchers that reported increasing physical isolation among Internet users created a controversy and drew angry complaints from some users who insisted that time they spent online did not detract from their social relationships.

However, the researchers said they had now gathered further evidence showing that in addition to its impact on television viewing, Internet use has lowered the amount of time people spend socializing with friends and even sleeping.

According to the study, an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes, lowers the amount of time spent watching television by 10 minutes and shortens sleep by 8.5 minutes.

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The study, the latest in an annual series, was based on a survey of 4,839 people between the ages of 18 and 64 who were randomly selected. Respondents were asked to create detailed diaries of how they spent their time during six randomly selected hours of the previous day.

Data collection was performed by Knowledge Networks, a survey research firm based in Menlo Park, Calif. The researchers plan to release the study on Monday on their Web site, www.stanford.edu/group/siqss.

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The New York Times > Internet Use Said to Cut Into TV Viewing and Socializing

Faced with searing images of suffering and grief in South Asia, Americans are finding an instantaneous way to reach out to tsunami victims: on their home computers.

As never before, people are turning to the Internet to donate money, the latest step in a revolution that has altered everything from shopping to presidential campaigns.
"This is like 1951, when television really took off,'' Paul Saffo, director of the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future, said yesterday. "We are in the middle of a fundamental shift from mass media to the personal media of computers and the Internet, and charitable giving is a logical progression.''
At Amazon.com alone, more than 53,000 people had donated more than $3 million by yesterday evening after the company made an urgent appeal on its home page. Catholic Relief Services was so overwhelmed with Web traffic that its site crashed. Online donations to the Red Cross outstripped traditional phone banks by more than 2 to 1.
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The instant-response capabilities of the Internet, combined with a desire to reach out to bigger audiences, prompted a slew of companies to encourage donations on their own high-traffic Web sites.
The Internet search engine Google posted a link on its home page that offered "Ways to help with tsunami relief.'' Another click brought users to a screen with links to relief agencies ranging from Unicef and Oxfam to the Amazon.com home page.
On America Online's start page, subscribers yesterday found links to donate to disaster relief funds through Network for Good -- a Web-based nonprofit founded in 2001 by AOL, Cisco Systems and Yahoo.
"We're trying to put this in front of members in multiple ways to hopefully encourage donations," said Nicholas J. Graham, spokesman for AOL, which is donating $200,000 through the American Red Cross (news - web sites) and will also match the first $50,000 that AOL employees give.
A recent survey conducted by Network for Good said online charitable giving grew last year to approximately $2 billion.
For small relief agencies, the Internet has become a vital component in the drive to solicit funds. It is especially critical in disasters such as Sunday's earthquake and tsunami, when money and help are needed immediately.
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Internet Sparks Outpouring of Instant Donations


Italian mobile phone users were reported to have donated more than 11 million euros (15 million dollars) for the victims of the Asian tsunamis through a text messaging arrangement that seemed to be setting a trend in other countries.

The Milan daily Corriere della Sera said Italians could contribute one euro to tsunami disaster relief every time they send a text message to a special number, thanks to a scheme sponsored by the country's four mobile phone companies and its main television channels.
Organisers of Germany's biggest New Year's Eve party, to be held Friday at the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, said party-goers could make donations to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF (news - web sites)) by sending a text message to a special number.
Every message featuring the word UNICEF sent to the number will raise 2.65 euros for emergency relief. Up to a million people are expected to attend the event.
In Spain, Telefonica moviles, mobile offshoot of Telefonica, announced it was inviting customers to send messages for 0.90 euros (1.20 dollars) to three non-governmental humanitarian organisations with the company donating the entire proceeds raised from the operation to the victims' fund.
A spokesman said Telefonica moviles had set the system in train on Wednesday and added it would stay in place until the end of January.
Portugal's biggest mobile phone company, TMN, said it had opened a special line for its five million subscribers to contribute one euro per text message throughout January and donate the money to the Red Cross or other charities serving the Asian victims.
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Mobile phone text messagers raising millions for Asian tsunami victims

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Some of the most vivid descriptions of the devastation in southern Asia are on the internet - in the form of web logs or blogs.
Bloggers have been offering snapshots of information from around the region and are also providing some useful information for those who want to help.
Indian writer Rohit Gupta edits a group blog called Dogs without Borders.
When he created it, the site was supposed to be a forum to discuss relations between India and Pakistan.
But in the wake of Sunday's tsunami, Mr Gupta and his fellow bloggers switched gears.
Text report
They wanted to blog the tsunami and its aftermath.
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Others blogs are helping to spread information about relief efforts.
Dina Mehta is an Indian blogger who's helping with the newly created South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog. She says the blog is not meant to be filled with first person accounts.
"What we're doing is we're building a resource," she says.
"Anyone who says, OK, I want to come and do some work in India, volunteer in India, or in Sri Lanka or Malaysia, this is the sort of one-stop-shop that they can come to for all sorts of resources - emergency help lines, relief agencies, aid agencies, contacts for them etc."
Ms Mehta also says she wishes that governments in the region would realise the power of blogs.
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Web logs aid disaster recovery

Los principales competidores de Telefónica , entre los que están Auna, ONO, Jazztel y Uni2, y nuevas operadoras entrantes, como The Phone House, fuerzan al máximo su maquinaria comercial con ofertas centradas en precios.

Las llamadas gratis son el nuevo reclamo comercial que las compañías que compiten con Telefónica han lanzado al mercado para robar cuota de telefonía fija al operador dominante y a las empresa de telefonía móvil, que amenazan su posición en el negocio de la voz.

Tras seis años de liberalización del mercado de las telecomunicaciones, Telefónica mantiene una cuota cercana al ochenta por ciento en este segmento de negocio.

Además, el aumento de la utilización de los móviles para la transmisión de voz, en detrimento de la telefonía fija, ha impulsado las ventas de los operadores celulares durante el último ejercicio.
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En este contexto, las compañías buscan fórmulas para fidelizar a los clientes en el cada vez menos rentable negocio de la voz, aunque sin poner en riesgo excesivo sus cuentas de resultados. Así, algunas, como Uni2-Wanadoo y Auna, vinculan las ofertas de llamadas gratis a la utilización de sus servicios de acceso a Internet de ADSL, mientras que otros los limitan a llamadas entre clientes de la compañía, como ONO, Tele2 y The Phone House.

Las operadoras de cable, que ofrecen servicios de voz, acceso a Internet y televisión en paquetes conjuntos, empiezan a comercializar la telefonía como un servicio de valor añadido, más que como un factor de competencia. Así, ONO ha ampliado al ámbito nacional su oferta de llamadas gratis entre sus clientes, que deben pagar una cuota mensual de 17 euros para acceder a ella.
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Las operadoras de fijo lanzan el reclamo de las llamadas gratis para arañar cuota a los móviles

The Virtual Search for Survivors Deutsche Welle

BBC NEWS: Romanian doctors say a 67-year-old woman is seven months pregnant with twin girls after fertility treatment

El Mundo

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The global music industry is to urge movie studios to wage a joint war against piracy amid fears that sales of illegally copied music and films exceed $8bn (€6bn, £4.2bn) a year.
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FT.com Music industry calls on film studios to join anti-piracy fight

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A private initiative involving all phone companies here began monitoring mobile phones with international roaming and traced the call patterns to figure out the location of the phone users.
"There were 10,252 international roaming phones working on Sri Lankan networks at the time of the tragedy," Chris Dharmakirti, who is heading the Tidal Wave Rescue Centre said. "We sent everyone an sms and got responses from 2,321.
He said 5,983 roaming phones had gone dead since the disaster while 4,269 phones had been used to make at least one call after the tragedy.
"Whenever anyone used the phone, we could track where the person was and restrict our search to affected areas of the country."
"If a phone is dead it could be that the unit is lost or the person is affected by the tragedy," Dharmakirti said. "But, we are keeping a track on these numbers."
He said they sent instructions to the phone users to call a toll-free local number that will be answered by a call centre manned by some 100 people.
"Last night we had a response from a British tourist and based on tracking his call we were able to locate a total of 36 stranded Britons," Dharmakirti said. "Four of them were critically wounded, but we managed to get to them to safety."
Another 35 Hong Kong-based employees of Morgan Stanley, leading investment bankers, who were in southern Sri Lanka were tracked down because of their international roaming phones that continued to be switched on.
"Some people who called us did not know where they were. All they could say was they were on high ground. But we were able to pin-point from where the call was coming and could rush help," he said.
The mobile phone networks too were knocked out after Sunday's tragedy, but 90 percent of the services were restored quickly by arranging mobile generators to power base stations.

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Mobile phones save stranded Britons, Hong Kong workers in Sri Lanka

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Twenty-seven percent of online adults in the United States said in November they read blogs, compared with 17 percent in a February survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
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Though blog readership jumped, the percentage of online Americans who write blogs grew only slightly - to 7 percent in November, up from 5 percent early in the year. Blog creators tend to be male, affluent, well-educated and young; 70 percent of them have high-speed connections at home, and 82 percent have been online at least six years.

Despite the attention to blogging, a large number of Americans remain clueless - only 38 percent of Internet users know what a blog is: online agglomerations of ideas, information and links, usually presented with the most recent postings on top, and often offering a mechanism for visitors to post comments
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Blogging Catches On in 2004

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Since the sleepy territory, which returned to Chinese rule in 1999, deregulated its gaming industry in 2001 to allow foreign investment, it has enjoyed an unprecedented economic boom. Macao's economy expanded 22 per cent in the third quarter of this year, following a 48 per cent jump in the previous three months.

Numbers such as these have led to an explosion in local asset prices. Macao-related stocks listed in Hong Kong rose 200 per cent on average between September and November. Hong Kong residents are redirecting their passion for property investment towards Macao; one local executive says everyone in his office has bought property in the enclave.

The only city in China where gambling is legal, Macao made the landmark decision three years ago to end local tycoon Stanley Ho's 40-year-old monopoly on casino operations and offer new licences. Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Sands, Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts and Mr Ho each won one.

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FT.com - Macao's casino bet making mint former colony