| The world in 2008: a year and an era
This is the third year in succession openDemocracy has invited our contributors to look ahead to the year to come. The previous collections are: ▪ What does 2006 have in store? - parts one and two ▪ 2007: reflections and predictions The coming year has the potential to be a revolutionary one that forces European publics into a radical re-perception of the world. The Beijing Olympics will mark the shift from a Europe-centred world to an Asia-centred one. The hosting of this major spectacle is but one indication of China's arrival as a global superpower. A worldwide economic slowdown - perhaps recession - will accelerate the shift and make awareness of it unavoidable. And as liberal democracy continues to lose its monopoly on political discourse, the world's China-focus will increase interest in liberal democracy's competitors: Beijing's one-party capitalism or the Kremlin's "sovereign democracy".
EDiets says CFO resigned, affirms outlook
EDiets.com said Chief Financial Officer Robert Hamilton has resigned to accept the CFO position at a privately held company. The Fort Lauderdale-based online diet company has named Carla Cox, senior vice president of financial reporting, as its interim CFO. EDiets (NASDAQ: DIET) also reaffirmed its fiscal 2008 revenue outlook of about $50 million. Shares closed at $5.11 Friday. The 52-week high was $6.10 on Jan. 2. The 52-week low was $2.67 on March 19. .
Archive for: January, 2008
Service-Oriented Architecture Latest Post | Last 10 Posts | Archives Goodbye, Geronimo? IBM says app server is alive and well Posted in: General Business ROI Vendor Watch When IBM acquired Gluecode, many industry watchers saw it as the ultimate statement that open source was a force to be reckoned with in the SOA and middleware space. And, it was a smart move by IBM to embrace this new disruptive force that promised to bring SOA to underserved and unserved markets. Joseph Ottinger just posted a tidbit over at The Server Side that suggests IBM may be letting the Apache Geronimo project — which was productized as Gluecode, which became IBM's WebSphere Community Edition (CE) — wither on the vine. (Apache Geronimo is an independent community project, but a number of committers are employed by IBM.) "An anonymous conversation with a Geronimo user who's been paying close attention to Geronimo's development yielded an interesting statement: Geronimo's days are numbered.
Enterprising retirees work on the Web
These entrepreneurs say the work combines their talents from the corporate world with the leisure activities they want to enjoy in retirement. And because such businesses can be both successful and easy to maintain, they give retirees the money to afford their hobbies and the time to enjoy them. There are 76 million baby boomers in the U.S., and as many as 80 percent of them plan to work into their retirement years, according to AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons. In an AARP contest going on now called "My Dream Job," people have shared their visions of the perfect job for workers 50 and older. "Ninety percent of what we're seeing is people wanting to turn their hobbies into some kind of viable business," said Deborah Russell, the organization's director of work force issues.
How Topshop.com survives the Kate Moss effect
When Topshop launched the Kate Moss range earlier this year, its website traffic leapt from its average of 1.5 million page views per day to 5 million. But the site could cope with such a spike because it had an infrastructure designed to weather the often sudden changes in consumer demand which characterises the fashion sector. Parent company Arcadia Group's IT director Andrew Clarke told silicon.com he expects traffic on the company's site to spike again as shoppers gear up for Christmas. Clarke estimates �13.8bn will be spent by the UK's 27 million online shoppers over the Christmas period - and wants plenty of that spend to go through one of Arcadia's branded sites. Agenda Setters 2007 Find out who made this year's Agenda Setters list of the top technology movers and shakers.
Facebook and the CIA
A better question to ask is if Mark and his team have the right level of judgment that's needed to succeed, especially when it comes to understanding user privacy and advertising sensitivity. This appears to be their repeated blindspot, and they would do well to learn from their mistakes. That's the core of judgment, which is gained only through experience. For myself, I thought Zuckerberg looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights, turning in a tame performance that missed on almost all counts. But does it matter? If we are to believe Hodgkinson then it doesn't - at least not to Facebook: The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the programme. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favourite consumer objects.
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