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Microsoft's planned release of Windows 8 in 2012 with its use in tablets, and its new strategies for increasing Windows Apps for smartphones.

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Matt Dickinson of The times of Lonson gives this story of the youngest winner of the Tour de France, 22 years old,  from a small town 25 miles north of Bogota, Colombia. His dad is a guard for the local cathedral and is his son's motor pacer and mechanic.  Cycling is huge in Colombia. Zipaquira is 2600 metres or 8600 feet up in the Andes mountains. A nearby climb of 23 kilometres is described by Bernal as his "office" and his father rides up ahead with him on this daily training.  In the trials Bernal was 22nd and this never fazed him even though on Stage 13 in Pau he fell behind colleague Geraint Thomas by 1 minute 22 seconds. In the final run in the Alps Julian Alaiphilippe of France who had shaken up the race faltered, Geraint Thomas  also did not keep up. so that Bernal with the Andean training and serious work prevailed with 1 minute 11 seconds to spare to win. Much of his maturity comes from working within a family where the mom and dad live together to keep costs down but have separated. As the elder of two children Bernal gained maturity in having to work with both parents to keep the home together. The first thing he has done with his new earnings is to buy a flat for his mom. Sky team's Brailsford who hired Bernal describes the confidence and maturity he has encountered in Bernal. At 22 years of age he is seen as having a bright future ahead of him. ...

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2013 will be a crucial year for Windows mobile software, according to IDC. IDC analysts say developer support is critical and mobile platforms that fall below 50% in support from developers 'very interested' in developing apps for them are likely to see a gradual demise. IDC's quarterly surveys of more than 4800 mobile apps developers shows Windows 8 tablets having such support from 33% of developers and Windows phone 7 software having 21% support. Research in Motion (RIM) has a mere 9% support for Blackberry phones and 8% for the PlayBook tablet. The figures for Apple iPhone are 85% and iPad are 83%, followed by Android phone 76%, Android tablet 66%.

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At this time following the Brexit vote $1 trades for 82 pence. This is a sharp drop in the value of the British pound. With it tech companies Dell, Microsoft, HP, and Apple are raising their prices sharply. Apple prices are up about 25% as a result of Brexit and fall in value of sterling. The price of Apple apps now reflects the falling value of the pound. Not only Britain is affected. In India the app which cost $0.99 now costs 80 rupees in India from 60 rupees previously, a 33% increase. In Turkey the increase is 30%. It all goes to show that as the Bank of England's GOvernor Carney has pointed out that Brexit comes at a price, a price that the British public were not alerted on at the time of the vote with the temporary crises of refugees influx and internal squabbles inside Labor and Tories deciding the vote.

 

 

 

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The key people in the effort to implement DJT agenda of the Border and renewing the Tax cuts that expire on Dec 31, 2025 are Senate Majortiy Leader John Thune, Deputy Senate majority Leader. Alos playing a part are the Budget Committee chair Lindsay Graham and Mike Crapo of Idaho who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Here is the approach Tohn Thune plans to use. He will do it two step, first getting the Border right by committing additional resources including offsets of cost from clean energy tax credits. Only after enough technology and resources for Border Patrol are made to secure the Border will the second step of tax cut renewal be taken up.  The process Thune plans to use is budget reconciliation which requires only a simple majority in the US Senate. Things are tight in Congress, in the House very tight with 217-215 and in Senate 53-47. Budget reconciliation means cannot add to budget deficits beyond 10 year window and bill have to budgetary. ...

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IDC forecasts a decline in sale of high-end interchangeable lens cameras by 9.1% in 2013 from 19.1 million units to 17.4 million units. Part of the decline is from the frequent use of smartphones with photo-editing apps, and from customers shifting their purchases to smartphones and apps instead of high-end cameras.

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The shift in Facebook to privacy emphasizing apps and away from public posting of status updates and photos. Snapchat was a pioneer in the field of private messaging. Data shows social media is in big trouble with the young who no longer favor public posting of photos and status updates. The privacy shift from Facebook comes not as a value shift but a shift with the data about user trends. Swisher suggests that a lot of damage was done as Facebook was incapable of handling the business it was in including threats from fake news in news feeds, making this a much needed shift, which Swisher says Snapchat and the public originally initiated not Facebook. Facebook merely followed the data about users.

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A new trend is underway to automate retail stores to reduce waiting time for customers in lines and create cost savings. This can be seen at the Amazon Go experimental convenience shop in downtown Seattle. 

The world's top retailers are doing this in the competition with Amazon. Being tested are robots to keep shelves stocked and apps that would enable buyers to ring up items on a smartphone.

About 30-50% of retail jobs around the world could be at risk say experts if automated checkout is fully implemented. 

At Amazon Go convenience store hundreds of cameras in the ceiling automatically keep count of items placed in shoppers carts and charge the customer the total amount as he goes out. 

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As the pandemic continues to spread and numbers grow with reopening of the economy the question remains -what can we learn from other countries positive experience in controlling spread? Here the Times provides the example of German contact tracing- chancellor Merkel has emphasized that a lot depends on "total" contact tracing, and contact tracing "above all else." Germany's experience is that even if you don't get everything right, you make an honest effort with everything you've got and do it early it makes a real difference. Some of the offices across Germany are stretched and short of staff but they have been working since the beginning of March, sometimes in the early days 7 days a week. Only 33% or one third of the offices throughout Germany for contact tracing have the required 5 person team for every 20,000 people, and 35% are overstretched or at their limit, according to one survey. No apps, just a low tech effort with people from the state administrations who were not working during lockdown trying doing something else, or volunteers. Mainly using the phone, talking to people and tracing the contact chain of people testing positive. Putting this information on the computer with a central database.  The Berlin office has 115 workers and has tracked down every one of 666 virus cases it was given. Because of privacy concerns at the Munich office sometimes even the patient's name is not given and office staff have to locate the name and the person. It requires dedication, flexibility and above all resilience, says Harold Rau, the deputy Mayor of the Cologne office, cited in this Times report. The doctor alerts the local office with a test result. The office calls the person and finds out who he has been in contact with for the last 14 days. Then the people who were in contact with are grouped based on the directness of contact, face to face, so on. These people are asked to quarantine for 14 days, sometimes with the rest of their household. They get daily call to find out how their doing for symptoms. The effort goes back to Robert Koch in the 1892 cholera epidemic in Hamburg. Robert Koch, microbe hunter in Germany, was called in after the epidemic spread from Moscow. It devastated Moscow and Tokyo, but Hamburg suffered far less about 8605 deaths as a result of the contact tracing and strict closing off quarantining of affected chains after isolating them, closing off affected parts of the city. Bit by bit the cholera epidemics sparks were put out before turning into flames, says Koch. In the current pandemic Germany has suffered 8241 deaths and 178,000 confirmed cases. So far this is in line with the cholera epidemic in Hamburg 1892, and this for all of Germany. And it is not just affluent nations that can do this. where there is a will there is a way. In Kerala state in southwestern India, similar efforts have worked to limit spread  with even better results than Germany. ...

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A sense that the U.S. and Britain have still not got contact tracing right. Contact tracing is key to controlling the pandemic and letting jobs come back to normal. We've got to get contact tracing right say communities and experts across the U.S.  About 30 per every 100,000 people are needed. but the U.S. has got only a fraction of this. By the time it is organized more people can get infected, and this is a very serious problem. Indiana for instance needs 2000 contact tracers for six million people. With this so disorganized communities are taking up the task themselves. The Mt. Carmel Indian fire department is putting its 171 fire fighters on this job as additional work as contact tracers.States need to take up this task and do this quickly following the German example where speed is what counts and low tech is the way to go, requiring only a computer with a central database and a phone, and most important the good human relations skills to make calling work with people facing a strange formidable virus. Too much time is being wasted on high tech apps. See the German example by searching for "Germany contact tracing." ...

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From the Alps to floating islands of solar panels Europe is seeing a surge in solar energy installation- DW.com gives images of these places.

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Nokia struggles with loss of sales and market share in the low end of the market as Asian competitors bring in better phones at low price points in emerging markets. At the same time its launch of the Lumia 900 smartphones using Microsoft's software is facing headwinds competing with established competitors such as the Apple's iPhone and the Android phones which have more apps.

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This exceptional account by WSJ's Shira Ovide on Microsoft Windows 10 looks at ways CEO Satya Nadella is changing Microsoft's culture and old way of doing business. Microsoft is changing its culture and strategy of charging for all its products. It will let businesses and individual buyers upgrade for free to the new Windows 10 product. This means $500 million less in sales revenues in 2015, but opens up new oppoortunities in sale of add-on apps and services on more devices, such as health sensors and smartphones. The failure to penetrate the smartphone business- with a meager 3% penetration for Windows in smartphones - is a problem facing Microsoft as it competes with Apple, Google and other companies. Terry Myerson describing the thinking behind this change at Microsoft puts it in a cultural perspective, saying that it should result in a more engaged user base. There is a sense that the space Microsoft is in stretches way beyond PC's to all the new computing devices now in place, including smartphones and other devices, with Windows taking up only 15% of these devices. Founder Bill Gates calls this "exciting" and is excited to see the reaction in the market....

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The new Samsung Fod smartphone is $500 costlier than the priciest Apple iPhone. It provides a tablet sized phone with glass display that bends in half, so that it can be closed as a wallet and fit in the pocket. It has 6 cameras, can run 3 apps simultaneously and measures 7.2 inches diagonally when open.

In an effort to have a wider lineup at different prices there will be 4 versions of the Galaxy S10, similar to a strategy of Apple to go to a wider lineup.

Smartphone sales have declined for five quarters, including  4.9% decline in the last quarter of 2018, according to IDC. The new versions are an effort to stop the decline.

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The success of Apple's stores in Beijing, Shanghai. Apple plans to open stores throughout China. China's rising upper middle class and its passion for premium products. Fot the first three quarters of the fiscal year, Apple revenues in China were $8.8 billion. This is a six fold jump in revenues. China is now the second largest market after the U.S. for apps that run on the smartphone and the tablet, according to Distimo.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers some advice to young people- In a marraige she says it helps sometimes to be a bit tone deaf. To ignore that remark someone made or comment which if reacted to would only make one feel worse. Who knows it was not meant that way, and maybe did not reflect the whole way that person felt, or even was transitory, This advice she got from her mother in law. Another piece of advice was from her father in law, to stop worrying and find a way to manage, find a way to do it, for something you want to do but are not sure you can. Something she learned from her colleagues in the court including Justice Scalia, was to get over it, not to spend time thinking about comments that are made or some things that happen in the course of one's daily life that one thinks shouldn't have happened.

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Suspicions of Chinese government connections have dogged Huawei, China's big telecom maker, as it was founded by an army officer. Huawei has shown interest in Motorola's network equipment unit, but bidding for this will wait till 2011. The U.S. represents only $319 million in sales out of a total global sales of $21.5 billion for Huawei. To change the image and to get deals done Huawei has hired Sullivan and Cromwell, Skadden Arps, and Arnold & Porter law firms.

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Silicon Valley R&D at Google X, Microsoft Research and other creative labs. How this is different from R&D at Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, which gave an impetus to work at Apple and Fairchild Semiconductor during the the era of the sixties and seventies. Claire Miller poses the question what happens to basic research done at government research labs and places like Bell Labs, PARC, in today's world where moonshot research efforts could mean Google Glass, and where many of the new products or apps are acquired such as Google's Maps. These acquired companies lack the resources for basic research and are for the most part smaller efforts. Is what is done now adequate? Apple has many efforts in-house and invested in developing the iPad and iPhone, including coming up with the new concept and taking it to commercialization on a global scale. The Google X draws media coverage, yet basic and applied research is going on all the time in labs from Boeing's airplane research to Apple's new product from scratch efforts building on prior research and developments in each field....