And while advertisers paid less, there was always more stuff for people to read. All kinds of writing poured onto the web. The median post was much worse than a random story plucked from the top tier of magazines, but the best stuff was and is as good as anything. Drawing on that huge base, there is always a lot of “best stuff” to read now…”

Gerd adds: this sums it up pretty well! March 06, 2013 at 11:42PM

Netflix now has about 30 million streaming subscribers worldwide, more than 25 million in the United States, in addition to about 8 million people—admittedly dwindling daily—who still pay to get DVDs in the mail. At $7.99 a month, that’s about $3.6 billion a year rolling in. Nearly a third of all U.S. Internet streaming traffic in the evening comes through Netflix. (YouTube accounts for 13 percent, Facebook less than 2 percent.) February 07, 2013 at 02:26PM

4.) Enough to go round but millions still starve. Food has never been such a global issue. Some 1.5bn overweight and obese adults share the planet with 870m chronically hungry people, and governments are grappling with the same challenges: how to produce more food from less land, slash waste and reduce price volatility, while battling erratic climate patterns. December 18, 2012 at 03:06AM

We believe these 13 trends, by no means exhaustive, will help define travel and many other interconnected sectors:

Everyone wants a Chinese tourist
Ancillary fees are the new normal
Last-minute mobile hotel booking
The rise of price transparency
Travelers are hungry for food tourism
Airports as destinations
Destination branding through movies
Digital maps are one of travel’s key battlegrounds
Personal in-flight entertainment through mobile devices
Affordable design at hotels
Blurring of business and leisure travel
Cementing of the Gulf as the next great global aviation hub
Lure of the last unknown: The rise of Myanmar

Gerd adds: nice report ( and free;) January 04, 2013 at 09:53AM

For Saudi Arabia, 2012 marked a year of growing apprehension as a frightening trend emerged: that by the end of the decade, according to mid-range forecasts, two new hyper-producers—Iraq and the US—will be pumping some 14 million barrels of oil a day, a 58% jump from today’s production levels. And that’s not even counting Iran, which is also likely to have resumed full-tilt production, churning out 4 million barrels per day (bpd), an increase of 1.3 million bpd from current production….”

Gerd comments

This spells the end of the idea of ever lowering emissions to the 350 ppm standard - more oil and natural gas, at lower prices, will have the opposite effect. A frightening thought. December 21, 2012 at 08:16AM

4.) Enough to go round but millions still starve. Food has never been such a global issue. Some 1.5bn overweight and obese adults share the planet with 870m chronically hungry people, and governments are grappling with the same challenges: how to produce more food from less land, slash waste and reduce price volatility, while battling erratic climate patterns. December 18, 2012 at 03:06AM

It’s not only newspapers and magazines that are wrestling with this – though, of course, the announcement by Newsweek that it’s going digital-only next year shows that they’re in the frontline. (“Is Heaven real? Newsweek intends to find out”, as one ironist put it on Twitter.)
Add superfast 4G connections – which we’ll have in the UK from next year – and you may wonder if the only safe business is dry-cleaning (though even that is prey to people buying cheap replacement clothes made in China). November 21, 2012 at 07:14PM

A Wall Street Journal analysis estimates that the typical American doing everyday activities ends up having data being collected about him or her in 20 different ways (i.e. cell phone location, web searches and online purchases) — and more than half of the tools being used in this surveillance did not exist 15 years ago.

November 20, 2012 at 06:06PM

From an IBM study of more than 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers, 71% say they are under-prepared to deal with the ‘data explosion’ they face in the marketing arena, even as 79% say that customer analytics influence their strategy decisions November 17, 2012 at 10:32AM

“Google is no longer organizing the world’s public information; that’s doing an increasingly fine job of organizing itself. Google is keeping the world’s secrets”

Good piece — made me think
Is this a Faustian bargain ?? November 14, 2012 at 06:49AM