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19.11.08
18.11.08
British Women Leaving Tech Sector
A British Computer Society study finds fewer women in technology than six years ago because employer policies aren't family-friendly and flexible
Thousands of women are leaving the IT industry due to a lack of flexibility on the part of their employers.
That's the verdict from the British Computer Society (BCS) which has this week revealed that around 37,000 women computing professionals left the IT industry between 2001 and 2007.
According to data from IT sector skills council e-skills, there were 229,440 women working in IT – 33 per cent of the UK's computing profession – in 2001. By 2007, that figure had fallen by six per cent to 192,580.
The fall came in spite of the number of UK tech professionals rising from 989,120 to more than one million over the same period.
Regaining the lost pool of female talent would go a long way to relieving the UK tech skills crisis, according to the BCS.
BCS Women's Forum manager Dr Jan Peters said the rise in women leaving IT is largely due to a lack of flexibility on the part of employers around career breaks to have children, care for relatives or travel.
The BCS said tech workers who are able to plan for a career break are more likely to make a successful return to work rather than leave the profession altogether.
In addition, having too few women in IT teams could affect the ability of companies to secure public sector contracts due to strict requirements around gender balance.
source BW
Thousands of women are leaving the IT industry due to a lack of flexibility on the part of their employers.
That's the verdict from the British Computer Society (BCS) which has this week revealed that around 37,000 women computing professionals left the IT industry between 2001 and 2007.
According to data from IT sector skills council e-skills, there were 229,440 women working in IT – 33 per cent of the UK's computing profession – in 2001. By 2007, that figure had fallen by six per cent to 192,580.
The fall came in spite of the number of UK tech professionals rising from 989,120 to more than one million over the same period.
Regaining the lost pool of female talent would go a long way to relieving the UK tech skills crisis, according to the BCS.
BCS Women's Forum manager Dr Jan Peters said the rise in women leaving IT is largely due to a lack of flexibility on the part of employers around career breaks to have children, care for relatives or travel.
The BCS said tech workers who are able to plan for a career break are more likely to make a successful return to work rather than leave the profession altogether.
In addition, having too few women in IT teams could affect the ability of companies to secure public sector contracts due to strict requirements around gender balance.
source BW
17.11.08
A Widget's Worth
Social networkers frequenting the likes of Facebook can't get enough of these small apps, but developers are still trying to determine how to make money
Developers of add-on software widgets for Facebook have had little trouble drawing huge audiences for their applications, which allow social network users to gather and share all sorts of information, photos, and videos. But generating a profit from this success has proven more of a challenge.
VideoEgg Chief Executive Matt Sanchez is helping to change that. In the second half of 2007, VideoEgg's new ad distribution network generated $1.5 million in revenue for the creators of more than 150 Facebook applications, including a Scrabble widget called Scrabulous, an app for reviewing and rating movies named Flixster, and Vampires, which transforms photos of users' friends into virtual bloodsuckers. "The fascinating thing about widgets is it turns out that distribution isn't really the challenge. People have been tremendously successful in aggregating attention," says Sanchez. "The question is how do you monetize that attention?"
Sanchez is one of several names featured on BusinessWeek.com's list of young tech entrepreneurs trying to transform this new genre of social network widgets into a legitimate business. Other widget creators such as RockYou! and Causes seem to be cracking the monetization code, too.
INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING
Most of the strategies involve advertising in one form or another. That's not so surprising. Of the $26 billion advertisers are expected to invest in online marketing this year, nearly $1.4 billion will go to placing ads on social networks, according to research firm eMarketer.
Many widget makers have two opportunities to generate ad revenue: They can display ads on their Web sites where users download widgets, and then within the widgets themselves.
Both RockYou and VideoEgg have networks that display ads within a variety of widgets for marketers interested in promoting brand awareness. VideoEgg works with NBC (GE), Nike (NKE), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), to name a few, charging them 75¢ to $1 when users interact with these ads by, for example, clicking on or scrolling over it, or perhaps watching a video. About 60% of the revenue goes to the widget developers. In addition to selling ads for other widget creators, RockYou also sells ads on the entertainment widgets it develops in house.
PROFITABLE TRANSACTIONS
Project Agape takes a different tack with its Causes application, which raises awareness and money for nonprofits and other causes. The service takes a 4% transaction fee on contributions raised through the application. Since launching nearly a year ago, the application has generated more than $2 million in donations. Causes also sells ads to companies that want to be associated with these nonprofit endeavors. "A lot of [our revenues] come from the huge expanding world of cause-based marketing," says Project Agape co-founder Joe Green. "Companies care a lot about how they are viewed in terms of causes."
Transactional revenues are also gaining ground as a way to make money from widgets. For example, iRead recommends books that people can purchase by clicking a link that takes them to Amazon.com (AMZN) or Barnes & Noble (BKS). The creators receive a referral fee for each book purchased. Similarly, Cartfly, a widget that enables small business owners to list items for sale on their blogs and social network pages, takes a 3% transaction fee on all items sold through the application.
Other ventures such as iLike are pursuing a mix of transactional and advertising revenue. The music-sharing and -discovery application, part-owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp's (IACI) Ticketmaster, takes a portion of the revenue generated when the widget steers them to other sites where they buy songs, ringtones, or concert tickets. It also sells ads and sponsored music recommendations. "You need to find a balance," says iLike CEO Ali Partovi.
Indeed, the widget economy is still taking shape, and no one is fully settled on the best way to make money from the small programs. "Ideally you want to build a business that has diversified revenue models," says Green.
source: BW
Developers of add-on software widgets for Facebook have had little trouble drawing huge audiences for their applications, which allow social network users to gather and share all sorts of information, photos, and videos. But generating a profit from this success has proven more of a challenge.
VideoEgg Chief Executive Matt Sanchez is helping to change that. In the second half of 2007, VideoEgg's new ad distribution network generated $1.5 million in revenue for the creators of more than 150 Facebook applications, including a Scrabble widget called Scrabulous, an app for reviewing and rating movies named Flixster, and Vampires, which transforms photos of users' friends into virtual bloodsuckers. "The fascinating thing about widgets is it turns out that distribution isn't really the challenge. People have been tremendously successful in aggregating attention," says Sanchez. "The question is how do you monetize that attention?"
Sanchez is one of several names featured on BusinessWeek.com's list of young tech entrepreneurs trying to transform this new genre of social network widgets into a legitimate business. Other widget creators such as RockYou! and Causes seem to be cracking the monetization code, too.
INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING
Most of the strategies involve advertising in one form or another. That's not so surprising. Of the $26 billion advertisers are expected to invest in online marketing this year, nearly $1.4 billion will go to placing ads on social networks, according to research firm eMarketer.
Many widget makers have two opportunities to generate ad revenue: They can display ads on their Web sites where users download widgets, and then within the widgets themselves.
Both RockYou and VideoEgg have networks that display ads within a variety of widgets for marketers interested in promoting brand awareness. VideoEgg works with NBC (GE), Nike (NKE), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), to name a few, charging them 75¢ to $1 when users interact with these ads by, for example, clicking on or scrolling over it, or perhaps watching a video. About 60% of the revenue goes to the widget developers. In addition to selling ads for other widget creators, RockYou also sells ads on the entertainment widgets it develops in house.
PROFITABLE TRANSACTIONS
Project Agape takes a different tack with its Causes application, which raises awareness and money for nonprofits and other causes. The service takes a 4% transaction fee on contributions raised through the application. Since launching nearly a year ago, the application has generated more than $2 million in donations. Causes also sells ads to companies that want to be associated with these nonprofit endeavors. "A lot of [our revenues] come from the huge expanding world of cause-based marketing," says Project Agape co-founder Joe Green. "Companies care a lot about how they are viewed in terms of causes."
Transactional revenues are also gaining ground as a way to make money from widgets. For example, iRead recommends books that people can purchase by clicking a link that takes them to Amazon.com (AMZN) or Barnes & Noble (BKS). The creators receive a referral fee for each book purchased. Similarly, Cartfly, a widget that enables small business owners to list items for sale on their blogs and social network pages, takes a 3% transaction fee on all items sold through the application.
Other ventures such as iLike are pursuing a mix of transactional and advertising revenue. The music-sharing and -discovery application, part-owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp's (IACI) Ticketmaster, takes a portion of the revenue generated when the widget steers them to other sites where they buy songs, ringtones, or concert tickets. It also sells ads and sponsored music recommendations. "You need to find a balance," says iLike CEO Ali Partovi.
Indeed, the widget economy is still taking shape, and no one is fully settled on the best way to make money from the small programs. "Ideally you want to build a business that has diversified revenue models," says Green.
source: BW
16.11.08
Innovate Out of the Economic Downturn
A crisis is precisely the time for governments to boost spending on innovation, not cut it. Otherwise, nations will find themselves playing catch-up
The Austrian economist Josef Schumpeter once declared that economic downturns are "a good cold shower for the economic system." Economic downturns can have positive effects; they force companies to increase their efficiency, cut waste, and strive to do things in smarter ways.
All companies have to cut costs, and deciding what should stay and what should go is the first challenge that faces them. One of the early victims of downsizing is often spending on innovation activities such as R&D, training, or education budgets. Long-term projects are shelved, hiring is frozen, and workers are made redundant. Worse, risk capital evaporates. Unfortunately, this is akin to patients deciding to reduce expenditure by not spending money on medication (as, indeed, has been reported recently).
During economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity. And while many businesses simply won't be able to afford further investment in innovation, governments should recognize that innovation systems, with all their academic, industrial, and public components, are strategic national assets that need to be protected, just like the financial and housing sectors. Times such as these call for government intervention to prevent the contraction of the knowledge bases upon which economies are now more than ever dependent.
In the short term, governments need to provide support to small companies to help them manage the crisis and continue to develop their portfolios of products and services. The British Innovation Advisory Services model, where government-supported consultants are paid for and loaned to companies, is one example of the type of thing that governments can do. Another is the Dutch voucher system, under which the government gives vouchers to small companies, allowing them to source the expertise (mostly consultants) they need from public research institutes. Some 80% of such voucher-supported projects otherwise would not have been undertaken. This type of support is critical to help many small, successful companies get through the crisis.
For the long term, governments should do four things so their countries can emerge from this crisis as winners:
Inject capital. Inject new funds to fill the gap in any serious downfall in private investment in strategic science and technology (S&T) areas such as nanotechnology, alternative energy, health and life sciences. This is what the South Korean government did when the country was hit by a major economic crisis in the late 1990s. Two years later spending on R&D exceeded pre-crisis levels, and Korean businesses did not have to play catch-up when the economy bounced back.
Think Global. Encourage leverage of international investments in S&T programmes from nations and regions that have the cash such as China, the Gulf, and Japan. The Japanese are looking to expand globally, the Chinese are hungry for knowledge transfer, and more recently, small, rich Gulf countries have allocated billions of dollars to spend on science, technology, and learning programs. Expensive long-term S&T programs can become new platforms for multilateral collaboration.
Focus on Public Programs. Maintain and expand levels of funding for public S&T programs. This should help keep a country's knowledge base expanding. When Finland was hit by a massive economic crisis in 1990, after the collapse of its main trade partner, the Soviet Union, its government's expenditure on R&D and education in all sectors increased. Ten years later, Finland emerged as one of the most competitive and innovative countries in the world. In Sweden, a major economic crisis in the early and mid-1990s saw the number of people engaged in R&D activities increase by about 20%. Swedish businesses emerged from the crisis with global leadership in sectors such as telecom and machinery.
Support Talent. Governments should create big seed capital funds to support the newly created army of potential entrepreneurs composed of highly skilled people made recently redundant in specific sectors.
This crisis might decide the fate of economic systems of many countries for decades to come. Not all have the capacity and resources to come out as winners. These are times for forging ahead—and no time for retreat.
source: BW
The Austrian economist Josef Schumpeter once declared that economic downturns are "a good cold shower for the economic system." Economic downturns can have positive effects; they force companies to increase their efficiency, cut waste, and strive to do things in smarter ways.
All companies have to cut costs, and deciding what should stay and what should go is the first challenge that faces them. One of the early victims of downsizing is often spending on innovation activities such as R&D, training, or education budgets. Long-term projects are shelved, hiring is frozen, and workers are made redundant. Worse, risk capital evaporates. Unfortunately, this is akin to patients deciding to reduce expenditure by not spending money on medication (as, indeed, has been reported recently).
During economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity. And while many businesses simply won't be able to afford further investment in innovation, governments should recognize that innovation systems, with all their academic, industrial, and public components, are strategic national assets that need to be protected, just like the financial and housing sectors. Times such as these call for government intervention to prevent the contraction of the knowledge bases upon which economies are now more than ever dependent.
In the short term, governments need to provide support to small companies to help them manage the crisis and continue to develop their portfolios of products and services. The British Innovation Advisory Services model, where government-supported consultants are paid for and loaned to companies, is one example of the type of thing that governments can do. Another is the Dutch voucher system, under which the government gives vouchers to small companies, allowing them to source the expertise (mostly consultants) they need from public research institutes. Some 80% of such voucher-supported projects otherwise would not have been undertaken. This type of support is critical to help many small, successful companies get through the crisis.
For the long term, governments should do four things so their countries can emerge from this crisis as winners:
Inject capital. Inject new funds to fill the gap in any serious downfall in private investment in strategic science and technology (S&T) areas such as nanotechnology, alternative energy, health and life sciences. This is what the South Korean government did when the country was hit by a major economic crisis in the late 1990s. Two years later spending on R&D exceeded pre-crisis levels, and Korean businesses did not have to play catch-up when the economy bounced back.
Think Global. Encourage leverage of international investments in S&T programmes from nations and regions that have the cash such as China, the Gulf, and Japan. The Japanese are looking to expand globally, the Chinese are hungry for knowledge transfer, and more recently, small, rich Gulf countries have allocated billions of dollars to spend on science, technology, and learning programs. Expensive long-term S&T programs can become new platforms for multilateral collaboration.
Focus on Public Programs. Maintain and expand levels of funding for public S&T programs. This should help keep a country's knowledge base expanding. When Finland was hit by a massive economic crisis in 1990, after the collapse of its main trade partner, the Soviet Union, its government's expenditure on R&D and education in all sectors increased. Ten years later, Finland emerged as one of the most competitive and innovative countries in the world. In Sweden, a major economic crisis in the early and mid-1990s saw the number of people engaged in R&D activities increase by about 20%. Swedish businesses emerged from the crisis with global leadership in sectors such as telecom and machinery.
Support Talent. Governments should create big seed capital funds to support the newly created army of potential entrepreneurs composed of highly skilled people made recently redundant in specific sectors.
This crisis might decide the fate of economic systems of many countries for decades to come. Not all have the capacity and resources to come out as winners. These are times for forging ahead—and no time for retreat.
source: BW
Future Hotel Room
Cocktails delivered by robot, panoramic windows-cum-TV-screens, beds that rock you to sleep: German researchers envision a 21st-century hotel room
Bored of boxy hotel rooms where luxury amounts to a mini bar and a remote control for the television set? Take a stroll around the flashy, gadget-laden hotel room of the future, as created by the German research organisation, the Fraunhofer Society, which has its sights set on revamping hotels as we know them.
Its team of scientists and engineers have built a prototype in their 1,500 square meter "laboratory" in Duisberg, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. And it consigns carpeted box-rooms firmly to the past. Firstly the room itself is completely round. A centerpiece is a massive window, shaped like an over-sized ski mask, which by day gives hotel guests a view of the landscape, but at night transforms into a screen where films can be projected.
Changes also take place underfoot. Its carpet is lined with sensors which monitor the guest's arrival and, without delay, heats the room to the required temperature. The bed simulates a light pendulum motion. "It feels as if you were being gently rocked from a seven meter long rope," project leader Vanessa Borkmann said. "It's like being in Nirvana."
The frequently humble hotel bathroom is revamped into the "Future-spa." Here infrared beams from the walls can instantly transform it into a sauna and up to two people can bathe in the whirlpool set in the floor.
Meanwhile, room service also gets a modern twist: at the touch of a switch, a robot delivers the drink of your choice.
The creation may sounds like a futuristic gadgetry fest but, in reality, it responds to top end hotels worldwide which are already toying with conventions and standards when it comes to holiday accommodation. In Songjiang, China, guests can opt for underwater suites, minimalist rooms with a giant aquarium providing the walls. In the Swedish ice hotel, tourists relax in an igloo hotel which is permanently kept at five degrees. Beds are covered by animal pelts.
And such ventures have lifted the bar for German hotels—something which is all too clear to Klaus Scherer head of the Duisberg innovation center. "Here, hotel rooms are still an innovation-free zone," he said.
It can only be reached by boat or helicopter. The designs for the Apeiron Island Hotel in Dubai, to be built 300 meters off the coastline.
Source: Spiegel Online
Bored of boxy hotel rooms where luxury amounts to a mini bar and a remote control for the television set? Take a stroll around the flashy, gadget-laden hotel room of the future, as created by the German research organisation, the Fraunhofer Society, which has its sights set on revamping hotels as we know them.
Its team of scientists and engineers have built a prototype in their 1,500 square meter "laboratory" in Duisberg, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. And it consigns carpeted box-rooms firmly to the past. Firstly the room itself is completely round. A centerpiece is a massive window, shaped like an over-sized ski mask, which by day gives hotel guests a view of the landscape, but at night transforms into a screen where films can be projected.
Changes also take place underfoot. Its carpet is lined with sensors which monitor the guest's arrival and, without delay, heats the room to the required temperature. The bed simulates a light pendulum motion. "It feels as if you were being gently rocked from a seven meter long rope," project leader Vanessa Borkmann said. "It's like being in Nirvana."
The frequently humble hotel bathroom is revamped into the "Future-spa." Here infrared beams from the walls can instantly transform it into a sauna and up to two people can bathe in the whirlpool set in the floor.
Meanwhile, room service also gets a modern twist: at the touch of a switch, a robot delivers the drink of your choice.
The creation may sounds like a futuristic gadgetry fest but, in reality, it responds to top end hotels worldwide which are already toying with conventions and standards when it comes to holiday accommodation. In Songjiang, China, guests can opt for underwater suites, minimalist rooms with a giant aquarium providing the walls. In the Swedish ice hotel, tourists relax in an igloo hotel which is permanently kept at five degrees. Beds are covered by animal pelts.
And such ventures have lifted the bar for German hotels—something which is all too clear to Klaus Scherer head of the Duisberg innovation center. "Here, hotel rooms are still an innovation-free zone," he said.
It can only be reached by boat or helicopter. The designs for the Apeiron Island Hotel in Dubai, to be built 300 meters off the coastline.
Source: Spiegel Online
Porsche Racer
Something special
Designed by Ferry Porsche's eldest son "Butzi," the 1964 Porsche 904 GTS Coupe is widely recognized as one of Porsche's most elegant
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