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Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Robert G. Eccles and his co-writer explain how business’s use of integrated and transparent reporting of financial and nonfinancial results adds value to companies, their shareholders, and the overall sustainability of society.

Felice Frankel, a research associate in systems biology at Harvard Medical School, and her co-author help to explain nanoscale technology with a book of thorough explanations and colorful, illustrative photographs.

From the emergence of the beauty industry in the 19th century, Geoffrey Jones, the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, traces such beauty bastions as Coty, Estée Lauder, and Avon, and how they made beauty a full-time fascination and business.

As we inch closer to summer, all I can think about is the awesome vacations I want to take. I picture myself spending weeks at the beach, lounging in the sun, listening to the waves roll in.

And then I’m yanked back to reality. I can’t actually spend weeks and weeks relaxing at the beach. Hotels are expensive!

So instead, I’m going to make the best use of my weekends, and with some budget-minded travel tips, I won’t break the bank.

I’ve been itching to get out to Great Falls National Park to hike the trails and enjoy the views of the waterfalls. National Parks are an extremely budget-friendly form of entertainment and can be a great way to get your family outside enjoying the weather. Check the National Parks website to look for different parks and activities in your area.

In my research for budget-friendly things to do this summer, I hadn’t expected to add amusement parks to my list of possibilities, but because of the economy, some parks are offering really cheap tickets or other special deals. It’s been way too long since a roller coaster has flipped me upside down, so that might be on the agenda too.

If you’re looking to travel this summer, make sure to check out Fueleconomy.gov for a list of the cheapest gas prices in your area. With gas nearing $3 per gallon around here, I know it’s something I’m going to pay extra attention to this summer.

What’s your best tip for summer vacations on a budget?

“A man’s got to know his limitations.”  I cannot believe that I just quoted Clint Eastwood.   I guess this officially means that I choose the next movie rental in my household.  But I digress.  On the heels of Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein’s declarations concerning the company’s future, a potential buyout of Palm, Inc. has been all the buzz.  So the question on everyone’s mind is whether a buyout will breathe some life back into the Palm products or be a nail in Palm’s coffin.  As a smartphone newbie who loves her Palm Pre Plus, my question is how did it get to this point?

Over a decade ago, I was one of the many Palm Pilot users awe-struck by the new fad of electronic organization.  Palm and PDA were synonymous and the smartphone was just a twinkle in the cell phone industry’s eye.  Though the playing field of today’s smartphone revolution is clearly different, there is no question that Palm continues to have a very recognizable, strong brand name.  So as a once forerunner in the PDA market, how did Palm lose steam when it came to the natural progression of smartphones?

Many of us can agree that one of the main reasons for Palm’s current predicament is poor marketing.  A decent ad campaign and overall marketing plan not only facilitates consumer awareness and knowledge of a product, but also drives interest and demand.  Needless to say, a poor or lacking campaign translates into the opposite.  And let’s face it, if your friends, family and coworkers aren’t buying a Palm smartphone, likely you aren’t either.  We tend to perceive value and demand products based upon what we see others using and wanting. 

To be fair, advertising cannot be the full story and is not entirely to blame.  In my opinion, two other factors played into the equation – inadequate employee training and lacking retail inventory.  Having personal experience with both, I can honestly say that these are definitely contributors to Palm’s lackluster sales.  

At the first Verizon store I visited in my quest for the perfect smartphone earlier this year, I was surprised to learn they didn’t carry the Palm phones.  The saleswoman informed me that they didn’t stock the Palms because “customers were interested in them.”  Pretty self-predicating in my opinion.  How could anyone be interested in a phone that they can’t see or touch, and maybe don’t even know exists, because it is not on the shelf?  The saleswoman went on to state that she could order one for me, but that when she did have a brief experience with a Palm Pre Plus, she couldn’t figure out how to turn it on.  Wow, ringing endorsement.  

The second retail store I went to did have the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on display, but presented a different challenge.  The sales representative actually confessed that he owned the Pre Plus but switched over to the Droid after a week because he couldn’t figure out the gestures.  He then went on to show me the Droid and even the then yet-to-be released Motorola Devour online.  At this point, I had almost given up entirely on the Palm Pre Plus, but I am glad I ultimately followed my instinct and went forward with purchasing one (albeit from another, more deserving retailer).

All in all, webOS is a smart, intuitive and fun operating system and should have had a greater impact on the smartphone industry, especially considering the fact that it has received praise across the board.  I am not sure that Palm could have affected the market share of some of the big hitters, but with webOS’ multitasking, email integration and web capabilities, it surely should have interested more business users.  While many have faulted Palm’s design and the cited need for a full touchscreen, this argument doesn’t hold up when you consider the fact that Blackberry has a strong hold on its market with similar styling and design, and – in my opinion – less function.

So is a buyout the answer?  In a word – maybe.  If slashing prices and offering free mobile hotspot service (along with a new ad campaign) is not enough to sway the masses, then some sort of drastic change is certainly needed.  Maybe a different company with a new vision can revamp Palm and restore some of its former glory.  Or maybe the change needs to come from within.  No matter the direction, I think we can all agree that the current course isn’t working for Palm, but that webOS is something special and should not be put out to pasture.

Facebook created quite a splash with its announcements at the f8 developer conference. The new features are a bold move forward, but plenty of people were a little worried about the power Facebook was seemingly amassing. Facebook has released an overview of the conference and also several interesting numbers. The most interesting: more than 50,000 w… (read more)

The Australian reports that Tony Abbott’s scuttling of the CPRS means that investment in new power stations is stalled until some clairty emerges about carbon pricing – Power station plans put on hold by ETS freeze.

UP to $2 billion of investment in new power stations will be put on hold as a result of Kevin Rudd’s decision to delay his emissions trading scheme, as major power generators are unable to close financing of projects because of uncertainty about climate policies. …

Energy Supply Association of Australia chief executive Brad Page said yesterday about $2bn of shoulder and baseload power projects could be put on hold by the deferral of the CPRS because the continuing uncertainty over the future price of carbon would mean they could not close deals with financiers.

The Australian also has some good news from the government’s clearing the decks of controversial legislation, with the minister for censorship having his evil internet filter plan shelved – Rudd retreats on web filter legislation .

KEVIN Rudd has put another election promise on the backburner with his controversial internet filtering legislation set to be shelved until after the next election. A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said yesterday the legislation would not be introduced next month’s or the June sittings of parliament. With parliament not sitting again until the last week of August, the laws are unlikely to be passed before the election.

Major U.S. and European banks would be exposed to far more risk from the Greece crisis if they weren’t allowed to short the euro and European sovereign debt.

That’s because a collapse of Greece’s financial system, or further stress on the broader eurozone system, would have substantial negative effects on major banks through many parts of their large and varied businesses.

They’re inherently massively exposed to a Greece/euro crisis if they have anything to do with Europe. Thus they need hedges to reduce this exposure from a risk management stand point.

That’s why they are shorting the euro and European sovereign bonds including those of Greece, France, and Germany.

Risk.net:

Banks should, by now, be protected, says the London-based market risk head at a large UK bank. “If Greece defaults tomorrow and some bank stands up and says ‘I’ve lost a billion dollars on Greece’, they should fire everybody. Greece is an old story. What we’re trying to figure out is what happens next. Is it Portugal? Italy? Spain?”

Large banks will have all kinds of assets and liabilities to balance, many of which have long-Europe exposure but which cannot be removed from the balance sheet. They need ways to balance these exposures in order to reduce risk.

Faced with this range of possibilities, banks have tried to focus on something they can get their hands around – for example, the possibility yields at the long end of the euro interest rate curve could widen substantially or, conversely, tighten. “There are scenarios where the curve should steepen a lot and ones where you could expel a bad country – which would set a precedent – and I think the long end of the euro curve would look just great as a result. So it really could break either way,” says the US bank’s market risk head.

His bank has been seeking to hedge a eurozone crisis scenario by shorting the euro. The European bank’s risk manager says the institution has been doing something similar, but using German and French bonds as a proxy for the eurozone and shorting them instead. Of course, those hedges might backfire if Germany did choose to walk away from the single currency. “It’s another concern. We’re very short Germany and France, as I’m sure a number of other banks are,” he says.

Thus take away shorting mechanisms from markets and banks would all simply betting on the same long-Europe trade with no way to insure themselves.

Just because they are short certain securities doesn’t necessarily mean they are net-shorting the euro, and hoping that Europe falls into chaos. Though some hedge funds could be net-short Europe in various ways. In fact most global financial institutions probably remain net-long Europe’s financial situation regardless of the short-hedges they may have in currency or sovereign bonds, since a collapse of the euro economy would probably be ugly for them, even if it were mitigated by gains on some short positions.

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It’s been rumored for several weeks now that Palm was up for sale, with a number of different companies supposedly taking a look at it, but news has come through now that HP has picked it up for $1.2 billion. Palm’s business has been running downhill for a few years now; its worldwide market share has fallen from 3.5 percent in 2005 to 1.5 percent in 2009 — despite the relatively warm welcome its Pre device received. The Pre was the first Palm phone to run its latest operating system, WebOS, which was supposed to help the company compete in a revitalized and highly competitive marketplace against the likes of Android devices and the iPhone. But that hasn’t yet happened. The Pre (and the following device, the Pixi) hasn’t grabbed significant market share, which compounds Palm’s other problem: lack of a strong developer community for WebOS. That is actually sort of ironic, given that an older incarnation of Palm was probably better than anybody in the mobile space at cultivating a huge and loyal developer community, back in the days of Palm OS. So if scale and a lack of developers are the two biggest problems holding Palm back, does the HP deal actually do anything to help solve them? Maybe that’s looking at the situation the wrong way: perhaps the point of this isn’t for HP to fix Palm, but for Palm to bring something more to the table for HP. Like 1,500 patents.

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It was a difficult world premiere for Joey Lawrenc baby daughter Liberty Grace — after the tot was delivered prematurely and spent five days in an intensive care unit battling a devastating blood disorder.

Lawrence and his wife Chandi Yawn-Nelson welcomed Liberty on March 4 after a difficult pregnancy, which saw the mom-to-be diagnosed with with Rh, a rare blood disease which can often cause babies to be stillborn.

“We had to go to the specialist every 24 hours during the last two or three weeks of the pregnancy,” Joey tells Life & Style. “We were so worried. We wanted to get Libby out so bad.”

The couple was relieved when the tot was delivered safely — weighing in at 6 pounds, 8 ounces — but they faced an anxious wait after doctors spent nearly a week assessing their daughter before she was allowed to go home. Libby’s now 100% healthy.

The couple also has a three-year-old daughter named Charli.

“They handed Libby to me first, even before they cleaned her off. I held her for a second and then they took her from me and locked her in a tube (intensive care unit),” says the proud pop. “Our family of four is perfect,” Joey says. “We’d love to try for a boy, but unfortunately we’d have to deal with the Rh stuff every time. So if it’s not in the cards, then that’s okay. We’re blessed with two healthy girls.”

The former teen star will join Sabrina The Teenage Witch actress Melissa Joan Hart in the new sitcom Melissa & Joey, premiering on ABC Family this fall.

First Peugeot RCZ commercial

Peugeot has launched the first advertising spot for RCZ, which opens the way premium brand model “Hors Series. According to the ad, French coupe owner chooses and not vice versa.

Check please the YouTube commercial now,

More Peugeot news!

Dr. Daniel MacArthur pointed me to this story, Conn. woman alleges genetic discrimination at work:

A Connecticut woman who had a voluntary double mastectomy after genetic testing is alleging her employer eliminated her job after learning she carried a gene implicated in breast cancer.

Pamela Fink, 39, of Fairfield said in discrimination complaints that her bosses at natural gas and electric supplier MXenergy gave her glowing evaluations for years, but targeted, demoted and eventually dismissed her when she told them of the genetic test results.

Her complaints, filed Tuesday with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission and Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, are among the first known to be filed nationwide based on the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

What probability do readers put in regards to this being a legitimate complaint? This seems a large firm, so I doubt that group insurance rates would change because of one person (I have heard of this occurring in small businesses where an expensive employee or employee’s family member can effect the rate for everyone else). So if it is legitimate the main issue would have been their fear of future illness, but the woman in question went through a double mastectomy, which I assume would obviate that concern. What am I missing? Are there expectations that she’d be taking medical leave in the future due to follow up operations or treatment?

Despite the recent revelation and tear-down of the next-gen iPhone, there are still many questions surrounding the device (just less than there were before…).

One of those questions concerns the camera in the upcoming device. We know that there is a flash on it, but what of the resolution?

Well, according to The Chosun, LG Innotek have ramped up production of a high-quality 5MP sensor for the next iPhone.

This comes as a contradiction to reports last December that OmniVision — current suppliers of iPhone CMOS sensors — would supply a 5MP variant for the next iPhone, but, so what? Either way, it looks like the next iPhone will have a 5MP camera.

And damn well it should, too. This is the first year that the iPhone is faced with serious competition, so I wouldn’t doubt that Apple will finally bump the camera specs to match other phone manufacturers. And I don’t doubt they will.

[via Apple Insider]

Is Heidi Montag hooked on painkillers? That’s the scoop a group of pals close to the reality star spill in this week’s edition of Us Weekly. Insiders say the reality star has become hooked on the painkillers prescribed after her marathon plastic surgery earlier this year.

We can’t say we’re surprised, but are they suggesting she wasn’t on drugs when she decided to get 10 cosmetic procedures in one day?

“She’s a shell of her former self,” a Hills tattle blabbed to the mag.

Following a rash of weirder than usual behavior from Heidi and her handbag hubby Spencer Pratt — ie: changing their names to “White Wolf” and “Running Bear” and blowing thousands of dollars on a collection of crystals — the couple have “crossed over to this bizarre place,” says the source.

“They are addicted to the fame. As The Hills winds down and people start to care less, they are desperate to get back that high.”

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

After Ultraviolet Sciences was founded in 2002, it took the little San Diego cleantech startup seven years to launch its first product. It’s a water purification device that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to sterilize microbial contaminants in drinking water.

Such UV technology has been gaining momentum in recent years as an alternative to chlorine disinfectant, CEO Ron Chaffee says. It’s a trend that might reflect the wave of interest and enthusiasm that nearly all things clean and green have been generating. Pure water encompasses an estimated $l billion-dollar global market that includes bottling and beverage plants, municipal and quasi-governmental water treatment plants, and other commercial, pharmaceutical, and industrial uses. Semiconductor manufacturers, for example, require huge quantities of ultra-pure water to rinse silicon wafers.

Using UV technology to kill germs is an idea that’s been around for 50 years, Chaffee says. Big conglomerates like GE, Siemens, ITT, and Wedeco make most of the existing UV water purification equipment. It’s been hard for UV Sciences to compete. Chaffee says they often have trouble differentiating themselves from equipment makers, even though he sees UV Sciences as more of a technology development company. Chaffee also contends that gallon-for-gallon, the proprietary tools designed by UV Sciences founder J.R. “Randy” Cooper are 75 percent smaller than existing UV purifiers, cost 50 percent less to buy, and cost 90 percent less to operate.

Even so, Chaffee describes UV Sciences as a “capitally constrained” startup in an established industry where most of the marketing is conducted through visits with customers and trade shows, which can quickly get expensive. “I don’t think our challenges are any different than any other small startup trying to break into a mature market,” Chaffee says.

Since the company opened its office in 2004, Chaffee says UV Sciences has raised $1.7 million in seed and Series A venture funding, and collected another $816,000 through a government technology transfer grant for small business.

One sign that the little startup might be onto something emerged last week, when Chaffee gave a presentation about UV Sciences to the San Diego chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum. Sitting in the audience were two engineers from …Next Page »

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Canada is a big place and, with much of it being pretty remote and inaccessible, mapping it can be an arduous task. Exploring it is even harder, though, which is why plenty of people probably appreciate the effort companies like Google put into providing accurate mapping data. Google is now taking things one step further and has announced t… (read more)

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Before she was singing about telephones and the dangers of the paparazzi to international acclaim, she was just Stefani Germanotta — a girl who liked to swing on poles.

New pics have surfaced of Lady Gaga in her pre-fame years, working as a bikini-clad go-go dancer at a New York club in 2007.

A motormouth who knew Gaga back in her days as an exotic dancer claims the future Grammy winner was known on the NYC club scene as a shy, quiet girl who was more into heavy metal than the dance anthems that have become her calling card.

“She was really into her metal music and she always wore her black leather jacket – back in those days I always thought of her as a quiet metal girl, she never really had much of a personality, I had no idea she would transform into this outrageous dance music mega-star,” says the tattle. “I last saw her towards the end of 2008 at St. Jerome’s, her debut album had dropped and was becoming huge and she looked totally different, she had the blonde hair and was dressed totally differently to how she used to dress, she had become Lady Gaga and left quiet, shy Stefani behind.”

Despite an acceleration in Chinese inflation, Morgan Stanley remains confident that the Chinese government has longer-term inflation expectations under control.

Morgan Stanley’s Qing Wang:

Inflation rebounding in April: Following the release of weekly price data on April 25, we forecast headline CPI inflation to bounce back to +2.8%Y in April from +2.4%Y in March, translating into sequential growth of +0.3%M (versus -0.7%M in March). The higher inflation is mainly attributable to food inflation, which we expect to accelerate. The momentum of upstream inflation should remain strong, intensifying to +6.5%Y (versus +5.4%Y in March). We expect the carryover effect of CPI inflation to rise to 1.3% in April (versus 1.1% in March), and that of PPI inflation to edge down to 4.1% in April from 4.2% in March.

The chart below shows how inflation expectations in the Chinese bond market have actually been in a moderate down-trend since December 2009. They’ll need to keep this up given Morgan Stanley’s expectations of accelerating inflation.

After two RRR hikes, one in January and one in February, the PBoC has remained subdued, but it is not resting. In fact, the PBoC is working hard to withdraw the excessive liquidity released last year to cushion the economic hard-landing. After nine weeks of consecutive net withdrawal, the PBoC has drained around Rmb1 trillion of liquidity, equivalent to three 50bp RRR hikes. In this context, inflation expectations have remained tame.

We expect the PBoC to continue such quantitative tightening in the coming months, postponing the timing of interest rate hikes to adapt to the pace of the renminbi exchange rate reform. In light of the extraordinarily aggressive open-market operation (OMO), market participants are concerned that market liquidity may become stretched if this large-scale OMO continues. In our view, such worries are unwarranted, as the reference yield of the 1-year central bank bills has remained unchanged at 1.9264% since January, regardless of the massive net withdrawal seen.

(Via Morgan Stanley, China: Inflation rebounding in April, Qing Wang, 28 April 2010)

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