Category: News

For years, I’ve been trying to convince people that success is not about who you are, but about what you do.

Roughly two years ago, I wrote about the “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently,” which became HBR’s most-read piece of content over that time span. It was a list of strategies, based on decades of scientific research, proven effective for setting and reaching challenging goals. I later expanded that post into a short e-book, explaining how you can make each one a habit. But how would readers know if they were doing enough of each “Thing”? (After all, we’re terrible judges of ourselves.) To help answer that question, last spring I created something I called the Nine Things Diagnostics — it’s a free, online set of questionnaires designed to measure your own use of each of the nine things in pursuit of your personal and professional goals.

I now have responses from over 30,000 people who’ve logged on and completed one or more of the Nine Things Diagnostics. The results are fascinating, and a bit surprising even to me. First, each of the Nine Things had a significant impact on success. (That actually didn’t surprise me, for obvious reasons.).

But which packed the biggest punch? To find out, I recently took a look at the responses of about 7,000 people who had completed every Nine Things Diagnostic, along with a brief measure of how successful they felt they had been in reaching their own goals in the past.

In order of effect magnitude, the most impactful strategies were:

1. Have Grit — Persistence over the long haul is key
2. Know Exactly How Far You Have Left to Go — Monitor your progress
3. Get Specific — Have a crystal-clear idea of exactly what success will look like
4. Seize the Moment to Act on Your Goals — Know in advance what you will do, and when and where you will do it
5. Focus on What You Will Do, Not What You Won’t Do — Instead of focusing on bad habits, it’s more effective to replace them with better ones.
6. Build your Willpower Muscle — If you don’t have enough willpower, you can get more using it.
7. Focus on Getting Better, Rather than Being Good — Think about your goals as opportunities to improve, rather than to prove yourself
8. Be a Realistic Optimist — Visualize how you will make success happen by overcoming obstacles
9. Don’t Tempt Fate — No one has willpower all the time, so don’t push your luck

Notice how persistence is at the very top of the list? While we marvel at people who’ve shown incredible perseverance — Earnest Shackleton, Nelson Mandela, Susan B. Anthony — I wonder how many people have ever thought to blame their own failures on “not hanging in there long enough”? In my experience, very few. Instead, we assume we lack the ability to succeed. We decide that we don’t have what it takes — whatever that is — to meet the challenge. And we really couldn’t be more wrong. Grit is not an innate gift. Persisting is something we learn to do, when (and if) we realize how well it pays off.

Or take “knowing how far you have left to go.” Even someone with a healthy amount of grit will probably find his or her motivation flagging if they don’t have a clear sense of where they are now and where they want to end up. How much weight would a contestant on The Biggest Loser lose if he only weighed himself at the beginning and the end, instead of once a week? How well would an Olympic-level athlete perform if she only timed her official races, and never her practices? We can see how essential monitoring is for others’ performance, and yet somehow miss its importance for our own.

But does that mean that the items further down the list aren’t as important? Not quite. For instance, #7, “focusing on getting better, rather than being good,” actually predicted using each of the other eight things! People who focused on “being good,” on the other hand, were less likely to use the other tactics on the list. In fact, if you do a lot of “be good” thinking, you are less likely to be gritty or have willpower, and you are more likely to tempt fate. You’re also, not surprisingly, less likely to reach your goals.

Perhaps the most remarkable finding, however, was the extent to which people weren’t using these tactics.

Respondents answered each of the diagnostic questions on 1-5 scale, with 1 being “not at all true of me,” 3 being “somewhat true of me,” and 5 being “very true of me.”

If your average score for a particular tactic falls between Not at all and Somewhat, then you really aren’t doing what you need to do to be effective. Here’s how the percentages break down:

So about 40 percent of responders aren’t being realistically optimistic, or focusing on what they will do, rather than what they won’t. And 50 percent of responders aren’t being specific, seizing the moment, monitoring progress, having grit, and having willpower. An astonishing 70+ percent of respondents also don’t bother avoiding tempting fate. (Apparently, people just love to put themselves in harm’s way.)

Here’s some good news: an incredible 90 percent of responders report pursuing at least some of their goals with Get Better mindsets. But here’s the Bad News: 80 percent of responders are also pursuing goals with Be Good mindsets. So there’s still way too much I-have-to-prove-myself thinking going on out there, and it’s sabotaging our success.

If you have a few spare minutes, I encourage you to take the Nine Things Diagnostics yourself, assuming you haven’t already. It’s a quick yet powerful way to target your weaknesses (and learn about your strengths). Remember, improvement is only possible when you know where you’re going wrong, and what you can do about it.

A Korean news report suggests that 70% of the initial 10 million units of Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 smartphone will have Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 processors rather than Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa processors. According to the report, Samsung’s LSI team, who is responsible for the next generation of Exynos processors, were unable to correct all the performance and production issues in time for the Galaxy S 4 launch in late April. Samsung confirmed production issues when they announced a couple of weeks ago that the Exynos 5 applications processor would not be mass produced until the second quarter of 2013, well after its initial launch.

Samsung faced a similar problem last year when production problems regarding the case delayed initial sales of their Galaxy S III devices. Rather than risk early losses, Samsung is now looking to Qualcomm to supply them with their Snapdragon 600 processors which have been reported to be exclusive to U.S. variants of the Galaxy S 4. Qualcomm has done well partnering with Samsung in the past and it is sure to come to Samsung’s rescue until production issues can be sorted out with their Exynos 5 Octa processors.

Source: UnwiredView

Come comment on this article: Report says 70% of first 10 million Galaxy S 4s to have Snapdragon 600 processors

“We are Spotify, and we are for music.”

That’s the tagline of a new ad campaign for Spotify, the first major ad campaign from the music streaming service in the U.S.

The campaign is the work of NYC-based Droga5, and it will feature TV, digital, and social media spots. This is the first of the three new ads, called “For Music.” It’ll debut on Monday night during The Voice on NBC.

Spotify says that is shows viewers “the journey of one individual being carried on a sea of people, speaking to the emotions that music inspires in each of us: the way music sets you free and unites us all.” It also features a nice “I am the Walrus” reference. Check it out:

Here are the other two ads, “Her Song” and “Getting Weird.”

Spotify is rolling out their new ad campaign as rumors surfaced that the company is planning on getting into the business of original video content.

Mozilla announced a while back that it would start selling Firefox OS Developer Preview phones sometime in February. That obviously didn’t happen, and there’s no mention of when the phones will be widely available to developers. Until then, you’re best chance to get one is at one of Mozilla’s recently announced workshops.

Mozilla announced today that it will be hosting a number of Firefox OS App Workshops starting in April. The first will take place on April 20 in Madrid, Spain; the second on May 18 in Bogotá, Colombia; and the third on June 1 in Warsaw, Poland. Mozilla says that it plans to have more workshops in more locations later on in the year.

So, what will those attending the workshops receive? Mozilla says it will be offering the usual free swag, like t-shirts, and a free meal to all attendees, but the real treat is that all those in attendance will receive a Firefox OS Developer Preview phone.

All Mozilla asks is that those wanting to attend have “solid ideas and strong Web development skills.” In other words, it’s looking for developers who have built apps using open Web development platforms like PhoneGap, Chrome, webOS, BlackBerry Webworks, etc.

Those attending can also look forward to working one-on-one Mozilla’s own Firefox OS development team to create new apps for Firefox OS or port an existing app to the HTML5-centric mobile OS.

If you wish to attend, you’ll have to apply for a spot at one of the events. Mozilla says they’ll be approving applications on a first-come, first-served basis.

Opscode would love to have you attend our second annual user conference, #ChefConf 2013, to hear directly from innovators at the intersection of some of the more important emerging trends in IT today. From ecommerce for a mobile world to the private cloud in the enterprise to the power of “hacker culture” to agile application development, the speakers at #ChefConf will have stories from the front lines of what’s next in IT.

Join us at the Hyatt Embarcadero in San Francisco, April 25–26, to connect with your peers, hear real world tales of DevOps success from those making it happen and learn applicable strategies for taking your own path to IT automation. Confirmed speakers include General Electric, Facebook, Nordstrom, Disney, Adobe, Ancestry.com, Kickstarter, Splunk and many more.

Are you interested?

If so, please go here to learn more about the show, then register here. We look forward to seeing you in April!

Automakers are coaxing entertainment apps out of the smartphone and into the dashboard, turning the connected car into the next big mobile services platform. But a new startup in San Francisco called Joyride is wondering why you would even bother with dashboard software development if the tools for making a good in-car app are already in the smartphone.

Joyride is creating a voice user interface for the smartphone designed to function much like the voice command-and-control systems in your car. Founders Jeff Chen and James Zhang created Skyvi, a voice-assistant app for Android that received 5 million downloads. With the help of $1 million in seed funding, they’re now building similar voice-interaction technology into Joyride with the aim of creating a game, entertainment and education platform that is fully hands-free. Though you could use its app anywhere, Joyride CEO Chen said, it’s most useful within the restrictive confines of the car.

Joyride plans to launch an Android app in the next few months — right now it’s in a private beta — and its first service will be a trivia game Chen described as “a hands-free version of Words With Friends.” But Joyride plans to layer more games and services on top of the app, and will eventually invite outside developers to embed their own applications into the Joyride app framework.

“Think of Joyride as a portal,” Chen said. “It’s an enabling technology intended for people to build things on top of.” Joyride would be the overarching brand and its voice technology would not only power the apps themselves, but allow you to navigate between them. The first Joyride apps will be games, but Chen hopes to layer on any manner of service that lends itself to voice interaction, from audiobooks and music streaming to highly interactive language-learning apps.

Joyride makes use of the car’s stereo system through an auxiliary jack or a Bluetooth connection, though the app doesn’t actually tap into any connected car software or OS — it’s just using the speakers. From there, all interactions are done via voice — it makes use of Google’s speech API — requiring  no actual physical input, Chen said. The approach also has the advantage of making the app car agnostic. If you can connect your iPod to the car, you can connect Joyride.

Joyride’s $1 million seed round comes Cowboy Ventures and Freestyle Capital as well as from angel investor and Turnable.fm co-founder Seth Goldstein, who is also Joyride’s executive chairman.

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Microsoft’s Surface Pro doesn’t yet come with integrated mobile broadband, so if that’s what you’re after, Samsung’s Windows 8 tablet might be worth a look. The company announced Monday that it has a new model of its Windows 8 slate, the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T, which comes with a built-in LTE radio. The 11.6-inch tablet with docking keyboard can roam around the country on AT&T’s LTE network when Wi-Fi can’t be found.

The connectivity comes at a cost though: Samsung’s retail price for this particular model is $1,599. Hopefully, that’s just a suggested price because the non-LTE version of the slate lists for $1,199.99 and can be had for slightly less online. Connectivity is certainly valuable — especially when there’s none to be found — but a $400 premium seems a bit excessive.

Aside from the integrated mobile broadband radio, I see no other differences in this tablet and the non-LTE model.

It runs on Intel’s Core i5-3317U processor with Intel 4000 graphics, includes 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB of flash storage memory, and comes with Microsoft Windows 8. The 11.6-inch touchscreen provides 1920 x 1080 resolution and attaches to a full keyboard dock for laptop use. Samsung estimates the the 1.98 pound tablet to run for up to 8 hours on a single charge.

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Packing some RFID tags and a few sensors into a plastic bracelet might hold the key to better hand washing. MIT’s Technology Review profiled IntelligentM, one of many companies trying to help stop the spread of infections in hospitals by using sensors and connectivity to police the hand-washing habits of doctors.

But IntelligentM and it’s ilk are just another example of how employers and maybe even governments will use connectivity plus sensors for surveillance. The question then becomes, how much of our privacy are we willing to trade for the benefits of lowering infections in a hospital setting, or catching criminals or even improving traffic safety by monitoring cars?

The IntelligentM bracelet contains RFID tags and an accelerometer and can track when, where and how well a doctor washes his or her hands. The bracelet vibrates, for example, to let the doctor know when their hand washing effort is sufficient.

The RFID tags interact with receivers near the sinks and at the doors of patient’s rooms to communicate with the bracelet. The data collected is uploaded at the end of the shift. Because the IntelligentM bracelet relies on RFID, it is somewhat less intrusive, tracking hand washing at sinks and at the doors to patient rooms, as opposed to the real-time movements of the doctor around the hospital.

However, these bracelets are part of a larger shift of monitoring workers to ensure compliance with company procedures and perhaps ensuring productivity. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently wrote about how some employers are using physical trackers placed on employees and around the office from a company called Sociometrics to track how people move around and interact.

And last March at our Structure:Data conference my colleague Mathew Ingram got into a debate with the CEO of Cataphoroa, which analyzes employee emails, IMs and other electronic messages for risky or illegal behavior. But instead of looking for trigger words, the company’s software mines the entire text to understand the “digital tone” of the employee. That data can be used to prevent risk, but also search for the company’s “best” managers.

And that’s the rub in many of these cases: more information — as long as it’s interpreted accurately — will benefit those who perform well or fit within the norms of the group. However, those using the data have their own norms and value judgments they bring to the analysis, which puts the scrutinized at risk. It’s hard to argue with promoting hand washing in hospitals. However if that same data sees a doctor going into a patient room more times than the hospital’s best practices call for to talk to a patient, then that same doctor might get penalized.

The courts have thus far been fine with employers monitoring employee email and communications in the workplace, but not with requiring a password to someone’s Facebook account. As more and more sensor-based surveillance occurs we’re going to need to new rights for employees, especially around employers applying their morals and norms to the workplace.

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Saturday night’s Powerball drawing saw a ticket sold in New Jersey win the $338 Million jackpot. The winner is supposed to be announced on Monday.

The winning numbers were: 17, 29, 31, 52, 53, Powerball: 31.

The last jackpot winner was Dave Honeywell from Virginia, who won the $217 million ticket in February.

In addition to the jackpot winner, Saturday’s drawing saw a Match 5 Power Play winner ($2 million) in Iowa, and $1 million Match 5 winners in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia.

There were a total of 2,486,305 winners on Saturday, and $30,662,765 in non-jackpot prizes won.

The jackpot is now back down to $40 million.

News from the cloud computing sector includes developments from Red Hat, Panzura and Avaya:

Red Hat collaborates with Code for America.  Red Hat (RHT) announced a collaboration with Code for America (CfA), a non-profit organization that partners with local governments to foster civic innovation, focused on using technology to increase civic engagement. The collaboration brings Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering to CfA Fellows and partner communities free-of-charge to help achieve CfA’s goal of fostering collaboration between city hall and city residents and innovative problem solving through technology. In a contribution worth approximately $300,000,the CfA Fellows will have access to OpenShift free-of-charge for one year and have the option of one additional year of free hosting and services. OpenShift supports many popular frameworks, such as Zend, Java EE, Spring, Rails, Play, with built-in platform support for node.js, Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl and Java. OpenShift offers an application platform in the cloud that manages the stack so that developers can focus on their application code.

Panzura selected by California State, Northridge.  Cloud storage provider Panzura announced that California State University, Northridge (CSUN), selected the Panzura Global Cloud Storage System to transform its off-site data backup protection process by utilizing Panzura’s encrypted Quicksilver cloud storage controllers. CSUN will streamline its off-site data protection efforts and significantly reduced storage needs, while also shifting CapEx to OpEx. The university manages approximately 300TB of NAS/SAN storage, protected by tape and disk storage. Backup processes were becoming increasingly slow and cumbersome and they needed to transition from the endless CapEx cycle of refreshing tape backup equipment and provisioning more capacity for offsite data protection. “Our goal was to increase process efficiency and reduce storage footprint for off-site backups by eliminating tape and avoiding use of campus-owned disk for off-site backup storage,” said Chris Olsen, Sr. Director of Infrastructure Services and ISO at CSUN. “We had some initial hesitations about cloud storage, including the cost to get data to the cloud, data security, and controlling capacity. With Panzura’s Global Cloud Storage System, we simply pointed our Symantec NetBackup application to the Panzura Quicksilver Cloud Storage Controller and the cloud became our backup target, while RSA 4096-bit encryption protected our data with us owning the encryption keys. The solution was straightforward to deploy and the deduplication exceeded our expectations.”

Avaya Collaborative Cloud for Cloud Service Providers. Avaya announced additions to the Avaya Collaborative Cloud with new offers specifically designed for cloud service providers (CSPs) that allow them to brand and deliver Avaya’s unified communications, contact center and video solutions. With these new solutions CSPs can help organizations off-load the challenges of managing BYOD environments, widely dispersed workforces and the shifting demands of end-customers. The new offers enable CSPs to evolve and augment enterprise communications with cloud-based solutions as well as provide greater interoperability across vendors, domains and protocols. ”With Avaya Collaborative Cloud, cloud service providers can offer a differentiated UC, contact center or video solution to enterprises,” said Joel Hackney, SVP and general manager, Cloud Solutions, Avaya.

To see other cloud computing news, visit our Cloud Computing Channel.

Just hours after Google made the unsurprisingly unpopular decision to kill off Google Reader on July 1st, Digg announced their plans to build their own RSS reader – one that will serve as a replacement both in functionality and in spirit. Although Digg said that they were “confident [they] can cook up a worthy successor,” it appears that they have combed through the user feedback and constructed an outline of the product they hope to build, based on what former Google Reader users really want.

And there was a lot of feedback. According to Digg, their blog post announcing the Google Reader replacement received over 800 comments – more than when Digg announced the big Digg redesign back in July.

Here’s what Digg says were the four overarching trends they found in the user feedback, meaning these are the things that former Google Reader users want to see in a Digg Reader:

1. Keep it simple, stupid
2. Make it fast (like, really fast)
3. Synchronize across devices
4. Make it easy to import from existing Google Reader accounts

As we know, simplicity is one of the things about Google Reader that users seem to be the most fond of.

“Google did a lot of things right with its Reader, but based on what we’re hearing from users, there is room for meaningful improvement. We want to build a product that’s clean and flexible, that bends easily and intuitively to the needs of different users,” says Digg.

And they are also planning on building a reader that better incorporates content from Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, reddit, LinkedIn and other, more social places.

Digg says that they have been planning on building their own Reader for some time, but were forced to expedite their plans after Google dropped the hammer on Reader.

“We’re confident we can ship a product that meets the principles above, but if a feature is missing on Day 1 that you were really looking forward to, we ask that you 1) tell us and 2) be patient.”

Spotify has become to the go-to source of music entertainment for many people on the Internet, and soon, users may also be watching shows with the service.

Business Insider cites “two sources briefed on the company’s plans” as saying the company is planning on investing in original video content that would compete with providers like Netflix and HBO.

From the sound of it, we’re not looking at movie and television show availability in a format like we’re used to for music from Spotify, but rather video content produced specifically for Spotify users. Perhaps this will be something of a water testing into video for the company, and if successful, we’ll see it grow to compete more directly with the Netflixes of the world. But that’s a big if, and certainly a lot to ask of a service that we don’t even know for sure is going to exist.

Nicholas Carlson reports:

Our sources said that Spotify is looking for partners that can help it fund and create exclusive content. It is unclear if these talks would lead to a new round of investment in Spotify itself.

Spotify, so far, has not commented on the rumor.

Earlier this month, Spotify announced that it has added a million paid subscriptions in three months.

The LEO Zoological Conservation Center (LEOZCC) in Greenwich, Connecticut, has announced the birth of a rare giraffe.

A six-year-old Rothschild giraffe named Petal gave birth to a female calf on Friday, March 22. The center has stated that Petal “has bonded extremely well” with the calf and that the calf was standing and nursing within half an hour of being born.

The Rothschild giraffe, named after Lord Walter Rothschild, is an endangered subspecies of giraffe. The gestation period of the Rothschild giraffe is 14 to 16 months (Petal’s was 15). The LEOZCC claims that there are fewer than 670 of the animals left in the wild.

The LEOZCC is a non-profit refuge for endangered animals. The organization focuses on breeding at-risk species, and has succeeded in the case of the Rothschild giraffe. This birth was the LEOZCC’s first giraffe birth.

The video below shows the calf standing up for the first time:

High Street Partners, a developer of business software and services focused around international expansion, inked $8 million in new financing. Baird Capital led the round, which included participation from Sigma Partners and Gold Hill Capital.

PRESS RELEASE
High Street Partners (HSP), the leader in business software and services designed to simplify international expansion, today announced an $8 million round of financing, led by institutional venture capital investor Baird Capital, along with Sigma Partners and Gold Hill Capital. This is the largest investment round that HSP has raised to date, and the proceeds have been earmarked to accelerate the launch of newly developed applications within its cloud-based software platform, HSP OverseasConnect®.

“With these proceeds, HSP will be dramatically enhancing its ability to go to market with the full solution set all organizations need as they expand and operate overseas,” said Larry Harding, Founder and President of High Street Partners. “HSP uniquely supports the entire spectrum of Finance & Accounting, Human Resources, and Legal requirements arising with an international business.”

This expansion round of financing will further spur High Street Partners growth. “We have a wonderful partnership with HSP’s management team,” said Benedict Rocchio, Partner with Baird Capital’s Venture group. “They have done an excellent job supporting their clients’ international needs with a solution that really resonates with Finance and HR executives in the middle market. We believe the company is well-positioned for continued success as the preferred partner to help companies grow their businesses globally.”

“HSP solutions help customers focus on driving their business,” Harding points out. “Our software, services, and proprietary content allow them to manage and control their international operations more effectively. We have extended the capabilities of HSP OverseasConnect beyond the core accounting, document storage, and expense reporting applications hosted on the platform today, and with the advent of HSP Global Payroll, we offer the first true SaaS application in the market.”

HSP Global Payroll allows customers to manage payroll in any country in a secure environment architected in accordance with global data protection requirements. It offers unprecedented flexibility and full compliance with local statutory requirements, completely from the cloud. “HSP Global Payroll is a cost effective solution whether you’re meeting the payroll needs for a single in-country employee or a significantly larger local presence,” Harding said.

“HSP is strengthening its cloud-based solutions in a unique way,” said Paul Flanagan, Managing Director at Sigma Partners. “Their business has grown tremendously, and we’re excited to continue to support the company as it pursues a rapidly expanding market opportunity.”

Combined with HSP Overseas Direct® managed service offerings, the HSP OverseasConnect platform provides solutions appropriate for the entire lifecycle of international expansion, from planning, set-up, and implementation services, to standard finance and accounting (“F&A”) outsourcing, to local statutory compliance and corporate secretarial (“CoSec”) services. Says Harding, “HSP offers the full range of solutions customers need related to their international operations. Some customers may choose to utilize only our technology platform, others only some or all of our managed services, and for others both solution sets are what best meets their needs. In all instances, HSP Advisory Services are available to provide guidance and expertise designed to deal with the inevitable complexities and challenges, of all kinds, that are apt to occur at any stage of the process.”

About Baird Capital
Baird Capital makes venture capital, growth equity and private equity investments in strategically targeted sectors around the world. Baird Capital’s venture team invests in early and expansion-stage technology-enabled services and healthcare companies. Having invested in more than 260 companies over its history, Baird Capital partners with entrepreneurs and, leveraging its executive networks, strives to build exceptional companies. Baird Capital is the direct private investment arm of Robert W. Baird & Co. For more information, please visit www.BairdCapital.com.

About Sigma Partners
Founded in 1984, Sigma Partners is a leading early-stage venture capital firm. The Sigma team uses their deep operational experience to provide entrepreneurs with practical strategic counsel through every phase of company growth. With over $1.5 billion under management and bicoastal offices, Sigma invests in innovative technology startups across the United States. Some of the market leading companies in which Sigma has invested include Atria, Aprimo, Acquia, Internet Security Systems, Initiate, m-Qube, Nasuni, Octane, Rethink Robotics, Storage Networks, Tradex, Vermeer, Vignette, and Vlingo. For more information, please visit www.sigmapartners.com.

About Gold Hill Capital
Gold Hill Capital is a private venture firm focused on providing debt and equity capital to expansion stage, technology companies. Gold Hill works with companies to deliver flexible financing solutions. Gold Hill is headquartered in San Jose, CA with an office in Boston, MA.

About High Street Partners
High Street Partners is a premier provider of international business software and services. Its mission is to help companies capitalize on their international growth opportunities by simplifying the management and control of international expansion and operations. HSP’s signature solutions include HSP Overseas Direct®, an integrated service bundle which incorporates all required recurring services, including international payroll, expense reimbursement, cash management, vendor payments, bookkeeping, quarterly and annual tax filings, and local statutory compliance, and HSP OverseasConnect®, a cloud-based application for the aggregation and management of accounting, finance, HR and legal requirements across multiple geographies and lifecycles. Both solutions are offered with a full suite of custom Advisory Services. HSP provides a single point of accountability for customers spanning a range of industries and sizes: from those making their first overseas hire, to larger, publicly traded companies managing multiple subsidiaries on several continents, to top universities and research institutions operating in dozens of countries. HSP now has 15 global offices, including Annapolis, Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Miami, New York, San Diego, Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo.

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The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer commended his budget to the House of Commons last week to help create a country that “wants to be prosperous, solvent and free.” Discussing Greece, Germany’s Angela Merkel said “The top priority is to avoid an uncontrolled insolvency, because that wouldn’t just hit Greece, and the danger that it hits everyone, or at least a number of other countries, is very big”

Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman wrote recently “the less solvent you are, the more sovereignty you have to give up.” In recent years Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Cyprus have flirted with national insolvency, been termed ‘insolvent’ by the markets, and many have had to relinquish some of their sovereignty as a result.

You are insolvent when you can’t pay your debts. Households and firms have struggled with insolvency for centuries. Insolvency is usually a balance sheet concept based around the valuation of assets. When the value of your assets is less than the value of your liabilities, you are insolvent. Usually you work out a repayment schedule with your creditors via a restructuring process.

For countries the notion of national insolvency is a newer, and potentially very misleading, idea. Countries aren’t corporations. Technically almost every country would be insolvent if if was asked to pay all of its debt using its available assets. All governments in practice secure their national debts on their abilities to levy taxes. You can’t really repossess a country, in fairness. When a sovereign borrows too much, it either pushes the debt into the future by rolling over its debt, or failing that, defaults on some or all of the debt. The history of sovereign debt is in fact the history of sovereign default. Defaults tend to happen, in bursts, about every 30 years or so. But before the current crisis, very little attention was paid to this idea of national insolvency. There are very few mentions of national insolvency during the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s, for example.

In fact national borrowing on the modern scale really only began around the seventeenth century. Before that in the monarchical era, so-called “court bankers” provided cash-strapped sovereigns with loans and quite often served as royal tax collectors and handled other fiduciary matters for them. Monarchical debts, when they were paid, were usually paid at the people’s expense. For example the land now known as Pennsylvania was given by the Crown to William Penn to repay a 16,000 pound debt. With the passing of the monarchical governance structure, responsibility for a nation’s debt moved from the rulers to the ruled. Henceforth these were the people’s debts, issued by a national bank, the Bank of England — in return for the privilege of producing its own banknotes — on behalf of the people, to their elected rulers.

I believe the analogy between national finances and insolvency is damaging. If politicians and policy makers believe their country is, literally, insolvent, then they behave differently towards their creditors. For politicians of debtor states, suddenly vast privatizations make sense, because of course you’re selling some of your remaining assets. Suddenly the will of the people of the debtor nation becomes secondary to the will of the nation’s creditors. Suddenly democracy is an expensive irrelevance in the face of an overwhelming technocratic desire for a speedy, and market-friendly, solution. There are many examples, but two come easily to mind: Europe’s fury in 2011 when then-Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou threatened to put his country’s bailout terms to a referendum, and more recently when the Cypriot parliament refused to pass a law which would levy a deposit tax on ordinary citizens with less than 100,000 euros in the bank. When the deal to bailout Cyprus was finally done, the Financial Times reported markets rising as “the plan does not need approval from the Cypriot parliament.” Super.

Creditor countries calling the tune by which debtor countries dance is not a new invention. But using the language of insolvency to do so is new. So when and why did it happen?

The single European currency project, in depriving member states of the ability to issue their own currency, has created the conditions for something close to national insolvency when economies slump. With high debt-to-national output ratios, current account deficits, fiscal deficits, and, putting it mildly, shaky banking systems, the debtor countries of Europe look very much like insolvent firms to the markets. Their sovereign power to issue currency is gone, meaning only painful deflation through the wage channels are possible. Leaving the currency union is very, very costly. The solution is national austerity. Indeed, in some cases, like Cyprus, Ireland, and Italy, the banking systems are so big relative to the rest of the economy as to make the sovereign itself almost vestigial.

The saving of the banking system and the system as a whole is the prime concern of Europe’s policy makers — typically representing the interests of creditor countries — but what will take its place? A more or less autocratic system of coercion is the logical outcome of these policies. They come from using ideas like national insolvency to reduce the grip a people have on their sovereignty.

But there is no asset valuation concept in the founding documents of any nation state; nor should there be.

Nexus phones were never complete spec beasts as in one or two items always seemed to trail other high-end devices. The Nexus S had a mediocre CPU, the Galaxy Nexus had a horrible camera, and the Nexus 4 didn’t offer an LTE option. While most high-end phones in 2013 will probably sport a 1080p display, this week’s rumor says the Nexus 5 won’t. In fact according to a tipster, it will be more compact than the majority of upper echelon phones, featuring a 4.5-inch 720p display. The display itself will cover 88% of the phone, which would be the most of any phone.

According to Phone Arena the tipster told them the Nexus 5 will put a bigger emphasis on the camera instead. This isn’t really all that surprising when you consider Vic Gundotra’s comments last month about how Nexus devices will have insanely great cameras in the future. To top things off, last week we heard that the next Nexus phone will have Nikon-branded camera module that will sport a “triple camera sensor.” Of course this same report said the Nexus 5 would indeed have a 1080p display. Back to the camera, the tipster says that the Nexus 5 will come with a 9MP CCD camera, which is a little bizarre since most cameras come with a CMOS sensor for speed.

The rest of the specs include a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor as well as a 2,800mAh battery. Last week’s report said it would have a 3,140mAh battery, but the processor wasn’t mentioned. I don’t know about you, but I would love to finally see an “insanely great” camera on any phone.

source: PhoneArena

Come comment on this article: Nexus 5 to be all about the camera, will be more compact, and will skip the 1080p display

#GivingTuesday began with a simple question: On the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, could we trigger a new day of giving after two days of getting?

People all over the country came together to answer that question with a resounding “yes,” and social media certainly helped us get there. But what really fueled #GivingTuesday was not technology tactics or whiz-bang applications; it was a mindset built around four principles, ones that can apply to many organizations seeking to use social media to create change.

A bit of background: We launched #GivingTuesday in September 2012 and just 75 days later — four days after Thanksgiving — Americans in all 50 states came together to inaugurate a new “opening day” for the giving season.

The community that got behind #GivingTuesday grew beyond our highest expectations. Over 2,600 partners took part — from multinational companies to local nonprofits. The campaign was endorsed by The White House and Bill Gates, generated more than 800 media features and mentions in outlets like CNN, Washington Post, and CBS News, and our hash tag trended No. 1 on Twitter. The results? A range of donation platforms reported online giving increases of around 50% and partners reported excellent results in everything from volunteering initiatives to matching campaigns to food drives.

Our vision is to grow these efforts so that one day #GivingTuesday becomes as well-known as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. For 2013 — mark your diary for December 3rd — we’ve set a goal of 5,000 partners including some of the nation’s top corporate names and leading funders. And we’re already hearing about incredible campaigns in the works across the country.

So what has led to #GivingTuesday’s progress? And how can other social purpose organizations use social media to transform their work? What’s worked for #GivingTuesday is having the right mindset:

1. Think movement, not initiative

Rather than setting out to execute an initiative, we focused on growing a movement. #GivingTuesday came to life here at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. We worked closely with the United Nations Foundation and then brought together a “posse” of leaders from Stanford University, Mashable, The Bridgespan Group, and more. Support grew in concentric circles, each ring of activity bringing more communities into the cause and into conversation with each other until we had created a network across the country.

2. Think upload, not download

#GivingTuesday always wanted to avoid the “download” mindset, telling groups what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. We focused much more on people’s increasing desire to “upload”. From the start, our web and social media strategy was based on how people could make #GivingTuesday their own, from becoming a “Social Media Ambassador” to helping spread the word to getting their own organizations involved as partners.

The big opportunity — which was critical for #GivingTuesday — is to craft the right unifying theme that motivates people to tell their stories. A great example of this is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean-in” movement, encouraging people everywhere to start and join lean-in circles and share their experiences online. The most powerful social organizations aren’t just content-creators, but also context-creators.

3. Think current, not currency

We thought of #GivingTuesday not as something one could “own” but as something with a flow of its own. The movement bubbled up, flowed, ebbed and — thankfully, just at the right moment — surged. That isn’t to say that we couldn’t try to influence its direction a little, or alter its current, but it was never something we could fully control.

This is perhaps the most challenging (and exciting) element of a project like #GivingTuesday. To connect with the broad power of social media communities, you have to give up your desire for top-down control.

4. Think tools, not rules

We believe that the more people who have an authentic stake in the campaign, the more successful it can be. The core function of the #GivingTuesday team is to empower: To provide the right resources to support the community and champion its efforts.

One of the most powerful moments of the campaign was seeing #GivingTuesday spokespeople, none of whom we had ever met, appear on morning shows across the country. All of them were members of the community who had taken a central set of talking points we provided and made them their own.

For some, it has been a little surprising that the catalyst and incubator for #GivingTuesday is the 92nd Street Y — a 139-year-old Jewish cultural and community center that reaches out to serve people of all backgrounds (founded in 1874 as a Young Men’s Hebrew Association). However, the movement is a natural extension of what we’ve been doing for over a century: creating and growing communities.

The challenge ahead, for any organization trying to create movements at scale, is not simply to master social media, but to learn to shape and support social communities. This will require not just new toolkits, but new mindsets.

Please join the conversation and check back for regular updates. Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and give us feedback.

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