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28 June, 2013

Dubai Safari Project



Dubai Municipality has released more details of its AED150m ($40.8m) Dubai Safari project, which is currently under construction and is scheduled to open by the end of 2014.
Dubai Safari, which is being built in Al Warqa 5, Aweer Road in anarea of 396 hectares, will include a number of different areas, Dubai Municipality said in a statement on its official Facebook page. The project will include several areas known as Arabian Village, Asian Village, African Village to accommodate animals from different continents, as well as open safari areas, a butterfly park, golf courses and entertainment and recreational areas.
"The safari that covers 60 hectares of the total area is aimed at establishing the best centre for wildlife in the world, providing a variety of environments appropriate to different animals," the statement said. 

Built on an old Dubai landfill site, the safari "will use modern interactive methods in control and movement to ensure the distinctive and unique experience for visitors. The project comes in the old landfill area of Dubai."
A dedicated area for the valley will be in of 7.5 hectares, with a length of more than 1 km and a height of 12m and with a waterfall, restaurants and terrace overlooking the valley.
"The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2014," the municipality confirmed. Dubai Safari will replace the ailing Dubai Zoo and hundreds of animals, birds and other creatures living in enclosures in the existing Dubai Zoo in Jumeirah will be relocated to the new site.

A BIG Dream: Dubai's emirate as green city by 2020




The #Dubai Municipality has pledged to turn the emirate into a green city by 2020.


Taleb Abdul Kareem Julfar, director of the civic body's Public Parks and Horticulture Department, said plans are in place to turn 380 sq km of the sheikhdom into cultivated land.

In addition to this, four per cent of urban areas will be transformed into attractive parks.

Mr Julfar said a lot of work has gone into the "greenification" of Dubai in the last ten years or so and the results are starting to speak for themselves.

He stated that in 2003, just 191,655 sq m of the emirate was classed as green land, with a modest 63,237 trees standing across the entire city.

However, last year there were 105,340 trees covering an overall area of 529,827 sq m.

Dubai is often viewed as the global blueprint for urban development, as the city has grown at an incredible rate over the last 50 years.

Although even more record-breaking buildings are in the pipeline, the government is keen to alter Dubai's image by making it more eco-friendly.

Earlier this year, the Dubai Land Department (DLD) insisted it is possible for the city to maintain its position as an international property investment hotspot without causing undue damage to the environment.

A number of green building laws have been introduced of late and developers must give more consideration to sustainability when planning new structures.

The Sustainable Real Estate Conference was held at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre in May 2013, where the DLD and other influential organisations reinforced the importance of eco-friendly construction.

Sky Central Hotel - Dubai





Sky Central Hotel, as our largest and most ambitious hotel development to date, this prestigious urban address is poised to become a sought after base for business and leisure.


Invest in a hotel room. The demand is high.

Featured here: Newly released renderings of the Azure Suite.



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27 June, 2013

Why Your Business Needs To Jump On The Social Media Bandwagon

It used to be that a business could rely on their placement in Google to drive customers to their website. Content marketing has always been an important part of search engine ranking and many website owners are in direct competition with one another for page rank through the use of specific keywords.
Times are changing and with the many algorithm changes that Google continues to roll out, old SEO strategies have become a lot less reliable. The need for good and valuable content never changes, but your business needs to listen and respond to customers through more personal avenues and social interaction.
With the advent of social media, everyday people have the opportunity to interact with large corporations and celebrities on a daily basis. Social media has brought the world together and bridged many economic gaps as well as eliminating distance as a barrier to communication.
If your business is not involved with social media, then you have no real way to interact with or to reach your customers. You need to determine which social media networks will be the most effective for your business. It is important to establish profiles on all of the networks that you have identified as being the most relevant to your business.
Many large companies will simply hire marketing experts to take care of the details of the everyday social media updates. If you have a twitter account, you will want to interact with users by tweeting on a regular basis. The tweets that you send out should include recommendations, connections with other business, and links to content that you have posted on your webpage.
A business page on Facebook can invite people to interact with you. You can run contests on your page and create interest by offering items to people on your page. You can post links to free downloads which people would be interested in accessing, in exchange for them joining your mailing list with a valid email address.
Social media can help you to create a social network where people share your content and ask questions or provide you with suggestions of products they would like to see. People tend to share your social information more easily than trying to share web addresses. An analysis of your social network can help you to identify who the “influencers” are within that network. Influencers are people that other people trust and look to for advice. If an influencer makes recommendations about your product through their social media channels, people are more likely to trust your business and purchase from you.
Free webinars are a great way to attract a large amount of people who are specifically interested in your business. You can cross promote your upcoming webinar by providing information about it on your Facebook page, tweeting about it or writing a short summary on Linkedin. Be sure to provide a useful webinar that will get people talking about your business.
The potential of social media is amazing and if you are not currently harnessing the power of it, you are missing out on a lot of potential business. It can help you to get an in depth view of your customer base, what they are looking for and how they talk about your business. Social media creates brand awareness and can skyrocket your business, but only if you know how to leverage it properly.

Japan to Bring First Robot to Space

SpaceSpace
Russia was the first people to put a man in space. America was the first to put a man on the moon. Now Japan will be joining the list of space fairing firsts. They are going to be the first nation to put a robot in orbit. Not a remote controlled robot arm, but a real functional robot.
The robot, which is named Kirobo, is like a very tiny human. The bot stands at about 13 inches tall, making it about the size of a Barbie Doll. Though he is in no way likely to be confused with that buxom figure. The Kirobo bot is black and white, with a snazzy pair of red boots and a red mouth. His eyes have a wide, anime style, oval look.
Kirobo will be making a trip to the International Space Station to spend some quality time with Koichi Wakata, a Japanese astronaut. The bot will be there as a companion, as he is capable of speech. Though all of this begs one question, what does an astronaut say to a robot in space?

21 June, 2013

Swiss Banks & Gold will rise again


European Austerity doesn't work
=====================
Disappointing PMI data from Germany confirms that the European slowdown continues and not just in southern Europe.
Austerity combined with limited access to credit by SME will only result in prolonged no-growth and higher unemployment. The continuous jobs reduction from European businesses (now at the 16th consecutive month) will likely push the 12% unemployment rate higher.
Central to the problem is also the financing disparity of European SMEs (that accounts for 98% of euro-zone companies
and 75% of employment). On a five year loan German and French SME will pay 3.5% vs. 6% in Spain or Italy (GS data). This cannot be easily solved by the ECB.
Europe needs a set of pro-growth policy that will ensure that cheap money is not just available to banks but is properly transmitted to SME. Austerity will not simply kill growth and make many of the European countries uncompetitive.
Gold will rise again
=============
I view the recent drop in Gold as a buying opportunity especially for these portfolios that have little or no gold component. Physical gold sales (e.g. Golden Eagle coins sales surged eight fold vs. the same month last year) are seeing increased demand while "paper gold" in the form of futures and new investment vehicles like ETFs created an higher level of volatility. It is now much more easier to react and sell gold in the case of rumours, founded or otherwise, that a central bank is around to sell a large amount of Gold in the market.
Gold will reach, in time, new highs but investors should be prepared to higher volatility. Further drops will likely be followed by new physical demand both by investors and central banks.
European Equities: Opportunities
======================
Despite the various issues that Europe has European equities remain relatively cheap. Given that only 46% of the revenue of the companies in the MSCI Europe is actually linked to Europe investors can still benefit from global companies based in Europe that present attractive valuations. For instance, given the recent improvement of the political situation in Italy, the Italian market might present some interesting opportunities. This is particularly true for global "made in Italy" brands like luxury makers. (e.g. Prada, Ferragamo, Cuccinelli).
In Short
========
- The European slowdown will continue as Austerity will only fuel a no-growth, high unemployment environment. Pro-growth measures are needed quickly.
- Gold will rise again and the current lower pricing is a good buying opportunity especially for physical gold.
- Despite the no-growth environment European equities are still attractive

The End of Swiss Banking Secrecy?


The End of Swiss Banking Secrecy ?
=======================
The Swiss government proposed bill to allow banks to share clients data with the U.S. received a setback with the parliamentary committee rejection of the draft.
Today's vote by the upper house will probably decide the future of Swiss banking secrecy. Both bankers and Cantonal financial directors are supporting the agreement as a rejection could lead to criminal indictments for some Swiss banks with obviously a very bad impact to business.
With very limited information available it is however clear that one of the historical competitive advantages of Swiss banks is going to be impacted. The main issue is if the acceptance of some unilateral conditions will set an important precedence that might lead to the end of Swiss banking secrecy.
In my view several Swiss major banks have already adapted their business model by leveraging their competitiveness on security and stability and by refocusing on high growth area like Asia but with a very fierce competition the loss of secrecy might have a negative impact to business.
A recent drop on several Swiss banks might still be a buying opportunity, especially for these banks that have already successfully changed their business model.
contact businessknit@gmail.com for Online Master Programmes enquiries

20 June, 2013

$123,000,000,000,000 - China’s estimated economy by the year 2040.


In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000. China's per capita income will hit $85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union, and also much higher than that of India and Japan. In other words, the average Chinese megacity dweller will be living twice as well as the average Frenchman when China goes from a poor country in 2000 to a superrich country in 2040. Although it will not have overtaken the United States in per capita wealth, according to my forecasts, China's share of global GDP -- 40 percent -- will dwarf that of the United States (14 percent) and the European Union (5 percent) 30 years from now. This is what economic hegemony will look like. 

Most accounts of China's economic ascent offer little but vague or threatening generalities, and they usually grossly underestimate the extent of the rise -- and how fast it's coming. (For instance, a recent study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predicts that by 2050, China'seconomy will be just 20 percent larger than that of the United States.) Such accounts fail to fully credit the forces at work behind China's recent successor understand how those trends will shape the future. Even China's own economic data in some ways actually underestimate economic outputs.

It's the same story with the relative decline of a Europe plagued by falling fertility as its era of global economic clout finally ends. Here, too, the trajectory will be more sudden and stark than most reporting suggests. Europe's low birthrate and its muted consumerism mean its contribution to global GDP will tumble to a quarter of its current share within 30 years. At that point, the economy of the 15 earliest EU countries combined will be an eighth the size of China's.
This is what the future will look like in a generation. It's coming sooner than we think. What, precisely, does China have going so right for it?
The first essential factor that is often overlooked: the enormous investment China is making in education. More educated workers are much more productive workers. (As I have reported elsewhere, U.S. data indicate that college-educated workers are three times as productive, and a high school graduate is 1.8 times as productive, as a worker with less than a ninth-grade education.) In China, high school and college enrollments are rising steeply due to significant state investment. In 1998, then-President Jiang Zemin called for a massive increase in enrollment in higher education. At the time, just 3.4 million students were enrolled in China's colleges and universities. The response was swift: Over the next four years, enrollment in higher education increased 165 percent, and the number of Chinese studying abroad rose 152 percent. Between 2000 and 2004, university enrollment continued to rise steeply, by about 50 percent. I forecast that China will be able to increase its high school enrollment rate to the neighborhood of 100 percent and the college rate to about 50 percent over the next generation, which would by itself add more than 6 percentage points to the country's annual economic growth rate. These targets for higher education are not out of reach. It should be remembered that several Western European countries saw college enrollment rates climb from about 25 to 50 percent in just the last two decades of the 20th century.
And it's not just individual workers whose productivity jumps significantly as a result of more education; it's true of firms as well, according to work by economist Edwin Mansfield. In a remarkable 1971 study ,Mansfield found that the presidents of companies that have been early adopters of complex new technologies were on average younger and better educated than heads of firms that were slower to innovate.
The second thing many underestimate when making projections for China's economy is the continued role of the rural sector. When we imagine the future, we tend to picture Shanghai high-rises and Guangdong factories, but changes afoot in the Chinese countryside have made it an underappreciated economic engine. In analyzing economic growth, it is useful to divide an economy into three sectors: agriculture, services, and industry. Over the quarter-century between 1978 and 2003, the growth of labor productivity in China has been high in each of these sectors, averaging about 6 percent annually. The level of output per worker has been much higher in industry and services, and those sectors have received the most analysis and attention. (I estimate that China's rapid urbanization, which shifts workers to industry and services, added 3 percentage points to the annual national growth rate.) However, productivity is increasing even for those who remain in rural areas. In 2009, about 55 percent of China's population, or 700 million people, still lived in the countryside. That large rural sector is responsible for about a third of Chinese economic growth today, and it will not disappear in the next 30 years.
Third, though it's a common refrain that Chinese data are flawed or deliberately inflated in key ways, Chinese statisticians may well be underestimating economic progress. This is especially true in the service sector because small firms often don't report their numbers to the government and officials often fail to adequately account for improvements in the quality of output. In the United States as well as China, official estimates of GDP badly underestimate national growth if they do not take into account improvements in services such as education and health care. (Most great advances in these areas aren't fully counted in GDP because the values of these sectors are measured by inputs instead of by output. An hour of a doctor's time is considered no more valuable today than an hour of a doctor's time was before the age of antibiotics and modern surgery.) Other countries have a similar national accounting problem, but the rapid growth of China's service sector makes the underestimation more pronounced.
Fourth, and most surprising to some, the Chinese political system is likely not what you think. Although outside observers often assume that Beijing is always at the helm, most economic reforms, including the most successful ones, have been locally driven and overseen. And though China most certainly is not an open democracy, there's more criticism and debate in upper echelons of policy making than many realize. Unchecked mandates can of course lead to disaster, but there's a reason Beijing has avoided any repeats of the Great Leap Forward in recent years.

The Russian Consulate in Dubai awards The First Group for its outstanding work

The Russian Consulate in Dubai awards The First Group for its outstanding work in strengthening ties between Russia and the UAE

The First Group was selected ahead of other industry leading nominees to win the new and prestigious 2013 Appreciation Award in the Real Estate category, in recognition of its excellence in serving the Russian community  award
Dubai, UAE, 17th June 2013: The Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Dubai and Northern Emirates has chosen The First Group as winners of their 2013 Appreciation Award, in Real Estate category, in recognition of its exemplary service to the Russian community. The new awards were set up to highlight companies that have contributed greatly towards establishing strong bilateral relations between the
Russian Federation and the United Arab Emirates. While several leading UAE property companies were nominated for the prestigious accolade, the judging committee felt that The First Group had shown the highest level of excellence in providing outstanding products and services in Russia and the UAE.
“It is a real honour to have won this award and to be praised for our work by the Russian community here in the UAE and beyond,” commented Danny Lubert, cofounder and joint-chairman of The First Group. “We have had a thriving office in Moscow for many years and more recently one in Kazan and a very strong Russian client base that is continuously growing, thanks to the country’s high interest in and thriving demand for Dubai property. We are delighted to have been selected ahead of so many other deserving developers in the UAE and look forward to continuing our commitment to serving our strong Russian community.”
The First Group received the top honour in the Real Estate category at a Gala dinner held at the Madinat Jumeirah. The event was held on the occasion of the National Day of the Russian Federation and over 350 people were invited, including UAE ministers and government officials, diplomats from all over the world, as well as Russian business community leaders and members and other VIP guests.
“At The First Group, we pride ourselves in being able to connect with people from so many different nationalities,” agreed Rob Burns, Chief Operating Officer, who was on hand to collect the award from HE Consul General of Russian Federation in Dubai and Northern Emirates, Gocha Buachidze. “In particular, we have a high number of Russian team members, which helps us to converse with our clients from Russia in their own language. We are delighted that our work in the world of property development is helping to strengthen the UAE’s ties with Russia and we thoroughly enjoy spreading the word about Dubai and its many opportunities. It is a real honour to have been recognised as a leader in UAE property development.”
About The First Group:
The First Group is an internationally acclaimed British owned global property development company based in Dubai, with an exclusive focus on hotel development. The First Group was co-founded by joint chairmen, Danny Lubert and Gary Shepherd, who each draw from strong and diverse backgrounds in the fields of global property, finance, acquisition, marketing and product development. With a proud history of over 25 years’ experience and success, through their company they offer innovative and unparalleled off plan opportunities in the UAE with an emphasis on the lucrative world of hotel investment. With offices spanning Dubai, Moscow, Almaty, Kazan, Astana, Abuja and Lagos, The First Group continues to produce and develop highly sought after property investments in some of the world’s most desirable locations. For more information visit www.thefirstgroup.com

Photographer ascends Dubai's Burj Khalifa


 'The unusual vantage point': Mr McNally, who has 26 years' experience as a photographer for National Geographic, spent three years in correspondence with the building's administrator to arrange the shoot
 A brave photographer has taken some memorable shots after climbing Dubai's imposing Burj Khalifa.

Joe McNally - who has been a regular contributor for National Geographic for more than 20 years - was invited by two maintenance workers to scale the world's tallest structure.
The building's administrator had given Mr McNally permission to record footage of his adventure and this can now be seen on video sharing website YouTube.
Although the two men who guided the photographer to the summit of the 2,722ft skyscraper are accustomed to dangling from the building on a daily basis, for Mr McNally this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
"I've been a big fan always of getting my camera in different places and trying to seek the unusual vantage point," he remarked.
"The tower is obviously a commanding presence. It sprang out of the desert here. It's the tallest structure in the world."
Anybody who has visited Dubai in recent years will know just how dominant the Burj Khalifa is.
Work first got underway in 2004 and the massive spire was in place by January 2009. The tower was officially opened 12 months later.
As well as being the tallest manmade tower on earth, the Burj Khalifa holds a number of other records, including the highest number of storeys in the world (160), the highest occupied floor on the planet, the tallest observation deck and the elevator with the longest journey in the world.
The building is the centrepiece of the Downtown Dubai area, which is proving to be an increasingly popular region among property investors.
Real estate prices in this particular part of the city have risen sharply in recent years and this is a trend that is likely to continue throughout the rest of 2013.
A recent study conducted by Bayt.com showed the average rent in a two-bedroom apartment in Downtown Dubai increased by 4.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, while the asking price for studio accommodation and one-bedroom properties went up by 2.3 per cent and 4.2 per cent respectively.
The First Group can help you find properties for sale in Dubai

Microsoft Releases Office For iPhone

Office for iPhoneOffice for iPhone
For many professionals, Microsoft Office is the only productivity suite that does the job. In fact, that’s the most widely used software program around the world, with over 90% of the market in productivity suites. But with the increasing uses of tablets and smartphones, many of us want to bring our document editing capabilities with us on the go. Up until now, the only way to do that was to use a Microsoft device such as a Windows Phone. There have long been rumors that the company was working on an iOS version, but without any confirmation. Now, Microsoft has released its very first version for iPhone.

Right now, the offering is fairly meager. The app is available on the App Store for iPhone only, without a tablet version. When contacted for comments, the company says that they encourage users to use the web based version of Office when on an iPad. Also, the app doesn’t do any local saving, which means you must rely solely on SkyDrive to store documents. Finally, while the app is free, you must have an Office 365 subscription to use it. So needless to say, a lot of early reviews are negative, with few people fitting into this usage pattern.

Still, if you happen to use the cloud and subscribe to Office 365, then you may try it on your iPhone. The US version was released yesterday with other countries following in the coming days. Right now the app allows basic editing functionality for all Office document types. In fact the Windows Phone version is still a better release, but for basic editing needs, this one works just fine.
 

On GPAs and Brainteasers: New Insights From Google On Recruiting and Hiring

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”
That was just one of the many fascinating revelations that Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president for people operations, shared with me in an interview that was part of the New York Times’ special section on Big Data published Thursday.
Bock’s insights are particularly valuable because Google focuses its data-centric approach internally, not just on the outside world. It collects and analyzes a tremendous amount of information from employees (people generally participate anonymously or confidentially), and often tackles big questions such as, “What are the qualities of an effective manager?” That was question at the core of its Project Oxygen.
I asked Bock in our recent conversation about other revelations about leadership and management that had emerged from its research.
The full interview is definitely worth your time, but here are some of the highlights:
The ability to hire well is random. “Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring,” Bock said. “We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except for one guy who was highly predictive because he only interviewed people for a very specialized area, where he happened to be the world’s leading expert.”
Forget brain-teasers. Focus on behavioral questions in interviews, rather than hypotheticals. Bock said it’s better to use questions like, “Give me an example of a time when you solved an analytically difficult problem.” He added: “The interesting thing about the behavioral interview is that when you ask somebody to speak to their own experience, and you drill into that, you get two kinds of information. One is you get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation, and the valuable ‘meta’ information you get about the candidate is a sense of what they consider to be difficult.”
Consistency matters for leaders. “It’s important that people know you are consistent and fair in how you think about making decisions and that there’s an element of predictability. If a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom, because then they know that within certain parameters, they can do whatever they want. If your manager is all over the place, you’re never going to know what you can do, and you’re going to experience it as very restrictive.
GPAs don’t predict anything about who is going to be a successful employee. “One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation,” Bock said. “Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything. What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who have never gone to college.”
That was a pretty remarkable insight, and I asked Bock to elaborate.
“After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different,” he said. “You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently. Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.”
Please share your thoughts on these insights below, and as I’ll be tweeting frequently on Twitter @basseysamco button to see future posts.

Develop An App For NETGEAR'S Million Dollar App Contest & Win Up To $1,000,000!

If you’re a master of creating networking apps, you’ve got a great chance to score up to one million dollars in Las Vegas for your innovative development skills via NETGEAR'S Million Dollar App contest.
To have a shot at being one of the 16 finalists, you’ll need to register a Smart Network Developer account for your or your team, download SDK, pay the $99 registration fee, program and upload your incredibly useful app to the Netgear genie+ Marketplace. Click here to see the sort of apps that are already on Netgear’s genie+ marketplace to get some inspiration for your new app.
The top three app developers will receive a round-trip ticket to the finals in Las Vegas, but only the grand prize winner leaves Sin City with $10,000 dollars, but not before the lucky winner gets a chance to win an additional one million bucks! Some of the other goodies that winners will receive include other big cash prizes and top-notch Netgear gadgets.
 
To work your app into the running, make sure that it’s developed with Smart Network SDK (download a copy here), runs in English, free of destructive software and suitable for all audiences. The judges will critique the apps by their ease of use, innovativeness, level of integration to Netgear hardware, features/functionality, and how crucial the app could be for its user’s network. In other words, create the greatest networking app ever! No problem for InventorSpot’s audience of programming wizards, right?
You have plenty of time to set up and submit your entry into the NETGEAR'S Million Dollar App contest, as the window for app submissions closes on September 30th. The finalists will asked to jet to Las Vegas next January, so be sure to clear your calendar well before you get that lucky email! (Click here for the full contest rules)
Good luck, Developers!

Hey, Software Developers! Back That App Up With Appbackr!

If you’re an innovative app creator who needs help with funding your current and future app developing projects, then you’re going to learn about Appbackr.com.
It’s a problem as old as time (or maybe as old as the internet): You’ve made an app that new, novel and amazing, but you need funding to continue your development cycle. I’ve discovered an interesting crowdfunding solution to this common problem for the budding software developer via Appbackr.
Developers join Appbackr and link to their completed app under your profile. Interested app Backrs (Cute, right?) will buy your app in bulk at a discount, which nets the developer instant money via PayPal. These app enthusiasts are buying digital copies of the app to sell on their favorite digital marketplaces. Developers and Backrs are then paid when the app sells in its mobile app store.
What I appreciate about Appbackr, is how the developer earn quick money for the bulk purchases made by Backrs, and the marketing done by Backrs looking to make a return on their digital stock results in additional profits for both parties. Any developer with an app on the Apple or Android marketplaces, can take advantage of using Appbackr.
There are plenty of finer nuts and bolts to Appbackr including the variety of mobile platforms and marketplaces supported, pre-release app funding and their new Xchange program, however Appbackr is a simple concept to help app developers and it apparently works!

If Appbackr looks like a tool that can help fund your upcoming app development, click here for more information about this inventive crowdsourcing website.

Source: Appbackr

Instant DIY Videos: Latest Social Media Craze For Those Who Oughta Be In Pictures

It's becoming evident in social media circles, the written word (or even 140 characters) is just not enough. And although it's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, to get really social these days, users just wanna be in (moving) pictures. The success of YouTube alone is testament to this growing trend.

This past week, the 2-year old start-up Qwiki is said to be close to being acquired by Yahoo for a cool $50 million dollars. Promoted as an automated video production company that converts photos, music and videos from a user's smartphone into movie shorts, Kara Swisher from AllThingsD noted that "while deals such as this often go sideways, sources said that Qwiki and Yahoo are in advanced stages of discussion over the acquisition."

The same week, a similar service called Animoto added a major update to its iPhone app, which reduces the number of steps it takes to create videos. The 6-year old company operates on a freemium model, in which users can create videos up to 30 seconds in length for free, but have to pay for longer videos or more customizable features. It’s either $5 a month or $30 a year to take advantage of those features.

And the Silicon Valley isn't the only creative denizen for creating instant movies. While Kathmandu struggles through daily electricity cuts, unreliable Internet, and Maoist protests and strikes that cripple the city’s infrastructure, Picovico, a fledgling start-up that hails from that neck of the woods thinks they can compete head-on with Animoto by rendering videos quicker, reducing the production from 30-seconds to 15-seconds.

Even Twitter sees value in riding the DIY video craze (albeit an offering with a much more basic approach). The microblogging network has teamed with Vizify to offer a way to automatically generate short videos highlighting user’s tweets, photos and Vines.

The Portland, Oregon-based Vizify helps users unify their online presence by pulling together data from social networks and other sources into a single, visually appealing presentation. The start-up’s second partnership with Twitter should help the 2-year-old company gain major critical mass as it tags on to Twitter's 500 million user base.

The Vizify video for Twitter can also show when a user is most active during the day and the keywords that are mentioned most often in tweets. The editable video, which is technically an HTML5 animation, can be posted to Twitter and that tweet can be embedded on other websites. Users may automatically link to the video from their bios.

Twitter is calling the tool #FollowMe, and it's ready for a test drive at Vizify. I was able to put mine together in just a matter of minutes.

But the fun is just beginning.  All these services might soon face a new competitor planning a bigger and better "mousetrap" in the not so distant future.  Still in the developmental 'incubation' stage is a new player appropriately named "Tawki" (entering the scene 90 years after the silent movies transitioned to "talkies," with the debut of "The Jazz Singer" in 1923).

David LeonhardtDavid Leonhardt"We're looking to make Tawki much more robust and streamlined than the current software apps," noted David Leonhardt, one of the founders. "Including a social network for users to share and communicate with one another will also set us apart," he added.

The company's goal is to make their video production functionality simpler, without sacrificing quality.  In fact, they have plans to boost quality, so that users can add an exciting new level of “coolness” to their videos, without having to pay high premiums for customization. "Small-to-medium size companies are looking for solutions like this to compete in today's marketplace, but don't have the marketing dollars to spend on costly video productions," noted Leonhardt.

Want to join the team of cool beta testers and be the first to create your very own "tawki's"? The company would welcome your participation. You can contact them here: info@tawki.us.

Instant DIY videos might be the latest craze, but they are far from a passing fad. Are you ready for your close-up, Mr. DIY Filmmaker? If so, just comment below as to what service you prefer (and why), or what additional options and/or functionality you would like to see added to these types of platforms?

LG Announces Mass Production of Flexible Screens

In what could be considered a first step of many towards fully-flexible smartphones, LG Display has announced that it will begin mass producing a line of OLED-based flexible displays starting the fourth quarter of this year. The screens will be produced at LG Display's South Korean facility, made using its “4.5th generation glass-cutting technology” with monthly output set to “12,000 sheets”.

LG also demoed a 5" flexible panel at the SID Display Week tradeshow last month.LG also demoed a 5" flexible panel at the SID Display Week tradeshow last month.

There is not much more information available, but the panels will probably initially cater to devices with 5” screens and smaller, with pixel resolutions of up to Full HD (1920x1080). Predictably enough, LG Electronics, a stakeholder in LG Display, is planning to put out a new smartphone with the flexible screen technology also later this year. LG Display also plans to provide panels to other major manufacturers, forecasting that flexible screens will shape up the next mobile fad.
Now, as hinted at the beginning of this article, it is not reasonable to think that these flexible displays will instantly allow paper-like smart-devices, as batteries, chips, and circuit boards will also need to be made flexible, or just smaller. That kind of reality is still some years away, but until then we'll need to be content with the smart-watches and devices with slightly curved screens that will more likely be made with LG Display's new technology.

Lightning Charger Connector Caps Add Dash To iPhones, iPads & iPods


Is your iPhone, iPad or iPad bare and naked? Cover those unsightly holes with one of 5Lightning Charger Connector Caps from the Bone Collection. Snapping snugly into your Apple device's Lightning connector slot, these cute character covers fit flush against the body while keeping the slot dirt-, dust- and debris-free.


According to Chao0574, the seller who's offering these character covers on Taobao, they'll fit any Apple device including the iPhone 5, iPad Mini, iPad 4, and iPod Touch 5.

The covers are designed in such a way that when the clear plastic business end is plugged in to the Lightning connector slot, the soft & colorful silicone plastic character end opposite curves around to lay flush against the device's body, avoiding snags and presenting its best face forward.

Choose from five different styles: Red Power Ranger, Penguin, Red-Nosed Reindeer, Wise Owl, or Yellow Rubber Duckie. The latter should be especially popular in China where giant inflatable Rubber Duck Mania has swept the country. Chao0574 is pricing Lightning Charger Connector Caps at 15 yuan each, or around $2.45 a piece.

15 June, 2013

EIA Says Worldwide Shale Oil And Gas Potential Is Huge

A surge in oil and gas production from shale rock has transformed energy in the United States, helping reverse declines in oil production and prompting a massive shift from coal to natural gas electricity production that has led to a significant drop in carbon dioxide emissions (since burning coal releases more carbon dioxide than burning natural gas). A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration lends support to the idea that a similar transformation could take place outside the United States. 
A map from a new Energy Information Administration report on shale oil and gas resources.
The map above gives a sense of just how widespread oil and gas resources are. The EIA report concludes that Russia has even more technically recoverable shale oil than the United States. Three countries have more shale gas—China, Argentina, and Algeria. Geologists have long known that some shale deposits contain large amounts of oil and gas, but it’s only recently that hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology have made it feasible to extract.
While other countries may have more of these resources than the United States, the impact in some of them may not be as great, or happen as quickly. It could take many years to develop resources in other countries because the geology is somewhat different—the techniques that work in the United States might not quite work elsewhere. What’s more, many countries don’t have the needed technological expertise. Some countries make it difficult for companies to set up and find ways to exploit the resources (see “China Has Plenty of Shale Gas, But It Will Be Hard to Mine”).
What’s more, the United States had a lot of spare natural gas generating capacity, which made it easy to switch from coal to natural gas. In a place like China, where energy demand is quickly growing, there’s little spare capacity. Natural gas production might only serve to slightly slow the growth of electricity from coal plants, not reverse it.
So far, the impact of increased shale gas production has been limited outside the United States. Because natural gas is relatively expensive to export and requires the construction of specialized infrastructure, prices for natural gas have fallen sharply inside the United States, but not outside the country.
But it has had one impact: increased natural gas production in the U.S. has led to increases in coal consumption elsewhere. Unlike natural gas, coal is relatively easy to export. When demand for it dropped in the U.S., it was shipped abroad, lowering coal prices and contributing to an increase in coal use—and carbon dioxide emissions. 

The repercussions of a shale revolution on oil-exporting nations

In sweeping terms, the economic model of countries in North Africa, parts of West Africa and the Middle East comes down to this: Trading hydrocarbons for carbohydrates.
The oil-out, wheat-in formula has worked rather well for decades, the odd land war and revolution notwithstanding. Egypt is the world’s biggest single buyer of imported wheat. Saudi Arabia is giving up on its gruesomely expensive experiment to grow wheat in the desert; it is happy to swap oil for much of its food consumption. Ditto Nigeria, whose population is exploding and which produces almost no wheat itself.
And then came the shale revolution.


Shale oil and gas production in the United States is soaring and American oil imports are falling fast. Oil and gas prices are down and the forecasts are bearish, a remarkable turnaround from 2007 and 2008, when $200 (U.S.) a barrel oil seemed somewhere between possible and likely (the benchmark Brent price is now about $104). The shale revolution is about to hit Britain and other parts of Europe.
What is good for the United States and Europe – less imported oil and gas and lower prices for both – is bad news for some of the one-product wonders in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The power-and-income shift away from the traditional energy exporters to gluttonous energy consumers could trigger potentially dire economic and social consequences in the exporting countries, especially the ones with undiversified economies. The world saw what plummeting personal incomes and national wealth did to Greece. The same, or worse, could occur in the developing world’s oil-pumping economies.
For Americans, the shale revolution is the most thrilling news since the invention of the propane barbecue, in spite of legitimate concerns about groundwater contamination from “fracking” – the hydraulic cracking of shale-rock formations to release hydrocarbons – and methane release from wells. The shale drilling and production has created vast numbers of jobs, turned struggling states, like North Dakota, into mini Saudi Arabias and attracted industries, like chemical and fertilizer producers, that require cheap hydrocarbons to thrive.
Most of all, it has drastically cut the American oil import bill. Thanks to the shale-drilling bonanza, U.S. crude oil production grew by more than one million barrels a day – equivalent to 14 per cent of output – in 2012, the biggest increase ever, according to the latest edition of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, published this week.
Surging oil and gas production has allowed the United States to reduce oil imports to 7.5 million barrels a day from a peak of 12.5 million. The International Energy Agency predicted the United States will become the world’s biggest oil producer by 2020, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia. The American gas glut could soon turn the United States into a liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter and the American trucking industry, probably the world’s biggest single consumer of diesel fuel, is talking about converting its fleet to natural gas.
If you are sitting in Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Mexico or Venezuela, you would be watching the American gusher with white-knuckle fear while putting on a brave face and praying that China will somehow take up the slack. These countries, and others, have been using rising exports and prices to finance food imports and social programs, attract investment from exchange-listed energy companies and buy political popularity (a trick Libyan strongman Gadhafi pulled off for decades, until he took a bullet during the 2011 revolution).
If demand for their energy exports wanes, taking prices down with it, the leaders of these countries are going to have to rethink their economic and social policies in a hurry. But with no fallback industries, there is no ready solution.
Already, some oil-exporting countries are feeling the pinch, a situation made worse by the natural decline in production in some of their old fields. According to the Energy Economist, Mexican oil exports to the United States have decreased to 972,000 barrels a day in 2012 from a peak of 1.6 million in 2004. The United States is importing almost 700,000 fewer barrels a day of Nigerian oil than it did in 2007. Imports from Algeria and Angola are also down a lot.
Some of these countries face lower energy-export revenues just when they need ever-rising amounts of income to keep their citizens fed. Take Nigeria. Its population has gone from about 90 million in 1991 to about 170 million. By 2050, the population will be 300 million or more. Egypt’s population is also rising at staggering rates. At the same time, climate change threatens to reduce farm yields, especially in water-scarce North Africa and the Middle East.
All of this is a recipe for political, social and economic turmoil. When the United States relied heavily on imported energy, it was not in its best interests to see the exporting countries fall apart. Now that it is on its way to energy self-sufficiency, it may not care what happens in those countries. The American shale revolution could trigger ugly revolutions elsewhere.