Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

“Informal actions by the agencies, which are not made public and often go untracked, also doubled during that time, reaching 1,099 last year, according to data provided to American Banker.” According to the FDIC quarterly banking profile, there were 8,012 insured banks at the end of 2009. Some of these actions are double counts since regulators might issue an informal action and then a ... Full story

Amid all the hoopla about hybrid electric cars and plug-in hybrids, what sometimes gets short-shrift is the battery, which, like gasoline, is made from a resource extracted from the earth. The WSJ Environmental Capital blog points out that questions are being raised about whether there is enough lithium to go around, especially as car makers ramp up production. It quotesLux Research which ... Full story

The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert profiles Van Jones, the activist with a gift for getting attention to advance a green jobs agenda. The appeal clearly widens the environmental tent beyond the “nearly ninety percent white, mostly college-educated, higher-income, and over thirty-five” set that defines the current eco-base. While Kolbert doesn’t run any numbers — how many workers will it take, for example, to retrofit ... Full story

How does a large, global corporation capture employees’ ideas about new technologies? “An Inside View of IBM’s ‘Innovation Jam,’” from the Fall 2008 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review, analyzes the results of IBM’s 2006 “Innovation Jam,” where about 150,000 people, from within IBM and also from outside it, participated in online discussions about promising new business ideas for the company. The article’s authors conclude that the ... Full story

What if user communities create their own brands?  That question is explored in an intriguingrecent working paper by Johann FĂŒller and Eric von Hippel, an open innovation expert at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Their findings suggest that traditional brands would be wise to pay attention to this emerging arena. The researchers surveyed members of Outdoorseiten.Net (ODS), ... Full story

Shhh, can you hear that? What you’re hearing is the collective shrieks from Twihards everywhere as The Twilight Saga: New Moon is upon us. For those of you asking yourself, what is a Twihard? I’ve included the definition below. twi-hard noun A serious/obsessive reader of the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer, one leap above Twilighters. Are you a Twilight fan? Do you plan on seeing the movie? ... Full story

MONTEREY PARK, CA — Whether you played the game at any level or are just a spectator, if you truck the kids to hockey practice very early in the morning or just lie on the living room couch and watch games on television, just about everyone touched by the game has a hockey dream or two. In Living The Hockey Dream, author Brian Kennedy, Ph.D., a ... Full story

The "virtual fifth label" is now friends with MySpace.  Merlin, an organization that represents independent music companies, is supposed to have signed a deal with the social network that should nicely complement MySpace’s existing partnerships with EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner. Merlin’s association with indie artists and late arrival to the music scene (it launched in January of 2007) set it apart from the so-called Big ... Full story

Town of Kraskovo coat of arms (from the official site) Russian activists gathered in Kraskovo, a small town near Moscow, to call for increasing broadband Internet access and protest against Internet provider monopoly.  The activists also talked about superficial regulations that slow down the development of wide Internet access in the country. The ... Full story

Nov. 12, 2000. Anaheim, CA. On our way to a (then, Mighty) Ducks-Red Wings game, my friend and I engage in a discussion about who the best players on either team are. Halfway into the conversation, he mentions “Lidstrom” and “overrated” in the same sentence. After threatening him with physical violence should he ever string these two words together again, we move on to other subjects. We had good ... Full story