In a post by Don earlier this month, he wondered if China would ever bring down its firewall. In the post, he speculates that the coming Olympic Games would only make the crackdown worse. Well it looks like he may have been right and wrong according to this piece in the National Post yesterday.
The article says China will open up very limited parts of the “Great Firewall” in order to give visiting foreigners unrestricted access to the internet for the duration of the games. They’re able to do this because the Chinese Internet censorship system is precise enough that it can filter (or not) searches from specific IP addresses as well parts or all of any webpage - the Chinese are hoping to medal in this discipline in 2008.
One of our collaborators, Sean Moffitt, pointed me to this very thoughtful (and funny) video on the changing relationship between advertisers and customers. It clearly shows the growing disconnect between traditional media advertisers and a new generation of consumers impervious to the old sales methods. The ironic thing is that the clip was made by Microsoft, a company that spends $11.5 billion on sales and marketing, with over $1 billion in U.S. ad spending alone. Although, admittedly the company is moving the bulk of its ad dollars to the digital sphere and hopes to significantly transform its marketing mix by 2010. With clips such as ‘Bring Back the Love’ the company clearly shows that they understand where to invest.
With the increasing use of mobile comes increasingly innovative applications. As we have seen in the past, community driven applications offer the most potential and Trapster is no exception. Trapster is a mobile application that works across a wide range of mobile platforms that alerts users as they approach a speed trap. The service depends on its users either pressing a button or calling a toll free number whenever they encounter a speed trap. Trapster can be used with any kind of phone, but is optimized for phones that support GPS or WiFi (using skyhook wireless technology). Not only is trapster free to use, it saves you money by avoiding hefty speeding charges and increased insurance premiums.
Wikinomics and Risk Management The economic "risk bubble" has broken, and it's going to take significant changes to restore long-term confidence in the financial services market. In Risk Management 2.0: Overcoming the Current Financial Crisis and Restoring Stability and Prosperity with a New Perspective on Risk, Bob Tapscott and I outline how this industry needs to be redesigned to [...]
