Pulitzer Prize winners 2009 - journalism

April 20, 2009 - Columbia University announces 93rd annual Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, letters, drama and music.

Here you can read the winners for journalism:

-Public service
Awarded to the Las Vegas Sun, and notably the courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon, for the exposure of the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.

-Breaking news reporting
Awarded to the New York Times Staff for its swift and sweeping coverage of a sex scandal that resulted in the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, breaking the story on its Web site and then developing it with authoritative, rapid-fire reports.

-Investigative reporting
Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been coopted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.

-Explanatory reporting
Awarded to Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times for their fresh and painstaking exploration into the cost and effectiveness of attempts to combat the growing menace of wildfires across the western United States.

-Local reporting
Two Prizes of $10,000 each:
Awarded to the Detroit Free Press Staff, and notably Jim Schaefer and M. L. Elrick, for their uncovering of a pattern of lies by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick that included denial of a sexual relationship with his female chief of staff, prompting an investigation of perjury that eventually led to jail terms for the two officials
and
Awarded to Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of the East Valley Tribune, Mesa, Arizona for their adroit use of limited resources to reveal, in print and online, how a popular sheriff's focus on immigration enforcement endangered investigation of violent crime and other aspects of public safety.

-National reporting
Awarded to the St. Petersburg Times for "PolitiFact", its fact-checking initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign that used probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters.

-International reporting
Awarded to The New York Times Staff for its masterful, groundbreaking coverage of America's deepening military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reporting frequently done under perilous conditions.

-Feature writing
Awarded to Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times for her moving, richly detailed story of a neglected little girl, found in a roach-infested room, unable to talk or feed herself, who was adopted by a new family committed to her nurturing.

-Commentary
Awarded to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post for his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture.

-Criticism
Awarded to Holland Cotter of The New York Times for his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling.

-Editorial writing
Awarded to Mark Mahoney of The Post-Star, Glen Falls, N.Y., for his relentless, down-to-earth editorials on the perils of local government secrecy, effectively admonishing citizens to uphold their right to know.

-Editorial cartooning
Awarded to Steve Breen of The San Diego Union-Tribune for his agile use of a classic style to produce wide ranging cartoons that engage readers with power, clarity and humour.

-Breaking news photography
Awarded to Patrick Farrell of The Miami Herald for his provocative, impeccably composed images of despair after Hurricane Ike and other lethal storms caused a humanitarian disaster in Haiti.

-Feature photography
Awarded to Damon Winter of The New York Times for his memorable array of pictures deftly capturing multiple facets of Barck Obama's presidential campaign.

Zuckerberg and the future of Facebook

26th October 2005, Zuckerberg explains how you can monetize users "pretty easily"; today he would have said different things...

Mark Zuckerberg was 19 years old when he created Facebook, with Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. It was February 4th 2004 and nobody could imagine that after 5 years Facebook has almost 200 million active users worldwide.

Zuckerberg & friends moved to Silicon Valley during the summer of 2004 (the world is NOT flat, Mr. Thomas Friedman!) and they looked for investors.

October 2008: Zuckerberg says: "What every great internet company has done is to figure out a way to make money that has to match to what they are doing on the site. I don't think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. But on both sites people find information valuable. I'm pretty sure that we will find an analogous business model. But we are experimenting already. One group is very focused on targeting; another part is focused on social recommendation from your friends. In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today."

3 years can mean October 2011! Does Zuckerberg think he has such a long time?

The future of Facebook doesn't depend only on Zuckerberg but it depends on its investors too:

- Microsoft put $240 million

- Li Ka-shing put $120 million

- TriplePoint Capital put $100 million

and others (full list here)

According to Techcrunch (article of October 2008):

"The company is likely spending well over a $1 million per month on electricity alone"
[...]

"With 750 employees and growing, Facebook is spending at least another $10 million per month on payroll."
[...]

"It costs a couple of hundred million dollars a year just to keep the lights on at Facebook. But the real problem is keeping up with growth, particularly storage needs. Add another $100 million or more per year for capital expenditures, and you’ve got a company that’s doing exactly the opposite of printing money."

Time is running out for Zuckerberg, it's going to be "Facebook must make money or sell Facebook"

It would be nice to have an etiquette for Facebook, how long do we have to wait for?

The Economist asked "Cameron Marlow, the “in-house sociologist” at Facebook, to crunch some numbers. Dr Marlow found that the average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 120" and "women tend to have somewhat more than men"[...] "Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten."

1st phase Feb 2004-Aug 2005 Facebook only for US university

2nd phase Sep 2005-25 Sep 2006 Facebook only for US university and high schools

3rd phase 26 Sep 2006-today Facebook is open for everyone of ages 13 and older with a valid e-mail address

What would Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) think about Facebook? He could think it's the Panopticon of the XXI century with important diffences:

- in Panopticon there are prisoners and observers; prisoners don't choose to lose privacy.

- in Facebook people do choose to lose part of privacy

- in Facebook everybody can be an observer

Techcrunch: commercial radio is dead

March 11th 2009. In a few minutes a new FM radio is starting in New York - 92.3 NOW FM - but Nicholas Deleon (Techcrunch) 2 days ago wrote:

Commercial radio is dead: Why CBS Radio's K-Rock format switch in New York won't make a bit of difference in fight against technological irrelevance

There’s something wrong with CBS Radio’s press release announcing the launch, complete with silly “countdown,” of 92.3 Now FM in New York City, a contemporary hit radio station that will replace K-Rock on Wednesday, March 11, at 5:00pm. (Contemporary hit radio, in plain English, means garbage pop songs, distinguished by their use of auto-tune and use of lowest-common-denominator song-writing.) CBS Radio Senior Vice-President of Something or Other, Don Bouloukos, is quoted in the release as saying, “Our assets in the country’s No. 1 market include among them the best known brands in the business. From the most listened to news and sports stations in the country, to the classic sounds of WCBS FM and the adult contemporary styling of Fresh 102.7, CBS RADIO offers something for everyone in the market – including young adults who are using the radio to discover today’s most popular music as featured on 92.3 NOW FM.” [Emphasis added, obviously.] And that, friends, is why the radio business, as we know it, is truly doomed. No, Mr. Bouloukos, young people are not turning on their radio to discover new music; they’re certainly not sticking around through the commercials to listen to new music on a radio station. No, sir, that’s what the Internet is for, and that’s why your business has no future. [...]

how do people discover new music in the year 2009?

[...] They’re not listening to the radio, sitting through commercials, waiting for the marble-mouthed DJ to say, “Hey, here’s [Cool New Band].” Yes, we know. We heard about [Cool New Band] two weeks ago via Twitter/Facebook/MySpace Music/whatever. Thanks for trying to remain relevant, though!

Now, I still think radio, as a medium, isn’t dead yet. Plenty of people listen to talk radio, whether it’s of the comedy variety à la Opie and Anthony, of the political variety à la Hannity or Rush, or of the sports variety. (My God does sports radio delve into minutia!) Radio is great for news, too: nothing wrong with listening to the headlines while you’re stuck in traffic on the BQE. But this idea that CBS Radio, and others, cling to, that commercial music radio has a future, that people still seek out commercial radio to listen to new music, is laughably outdated.

Click here for the full article and all the comments

Mediaweek:
Remember the Top 40 radio wars of the 60s? Well, they're back. CBS Radio announced Monday (March 9), it plans to ditch K-Rock on WXRK-FM in New York for Top 40, challenging Clear Channel Radio's Z100 (WHTZ-FM). Called "92.3 NOW FM," the Top 40 station will launch Wednesday, March 11 at 5 p.m. playing the hits that appeal to an 18-34 year-old listener.

Click here for the full article and all the comments

Globalization of football (soccer) communication

David Beckham invited on closing ceremony of olympic games, Beijing; August 24, 2008

Let's see the official sites of football (soccer) team of Serie A: how many languages are official sites available in?

milan 6 languages: italian, english, spanish, portuguese, chinese, japanese

inter 4 languages: italian, english, spanish, chinese

juventus 3 languages: italian, english, chinese

chievo, napoli, palermo 2 languages: italian, english

atalanta, bologna, cagliari, catania, fiorentina, genoa, lazio, lecce, reggina, roma, sampdoria, siena, torino, udinese 1 language: italian

other important teams in Europe:

barcelona 7 languages: catalan, spanish, english, japanese, chinese, korean, arabic
bayern munich 5 languages: german, english, japanese, chinese, spanish
manchester utd 4 languages: english, chinese, japanese, korean
chelsea 4 languages: english, american version (?), korean, chinese, russian
real madrid 3 languages: spanish, english, japanese
psv eindhoven 3 languages: dutch, english, spanish
manchester city 2 languages: english, chinese
ajax 2 languages: dutch, english
porto 2 languages: portuguese, english
olympique de marseille 2 languages: french, english
borussia dortmund 2 languages: german, english
zenit st petersburg 2 languages: russian, english
red star belgrade 2 languages: serbian, english
liverpool 1 language: english
benfica 1 language: portuguese

obviously somebody doesn't understand the globalization of audience in football (soccer) ...

Radio's impact on public spending (USA, 1930's)

FDR (1882-1945) after giving one of his famous fireside chats

David Stromberg is a professor at Stockholm University and he wrote a paper called

Radio's impact on public spending

(quarterly journal of economics 119-1, 2004 but the paper appears in early version on 1999)

Abstract:

If informed voters receive favorable policies, then the invention of a new mass medium may affect government policies since it affects who is informed and who is not. These ideas are developed in a voting model. The model forms the basis for an empirical investigation of a major New Deal relief program implemented in the middle of the expansion period of radio. The main empirical finding is that U.S. counties with many radio listeners received more relief funds. More funds were allocated to poor counties with high unemployment but, controlling for these and other variables, the effects of radio are large and highly significant.

1 introduction

2 the FERA program and the expansion of radio

3 model

4 specification and data

5 results

6 conclusion and discussion

"governors allocated more relief funds to areas where a larger share of the population had radios" (page 23)

Invention of telephone and national heritage

Sirio187: Telecom Italia telephone with caller ID and SMS - 2000

Who invented the telephone?

Yet we can't be sure at 100%. The problem is that an invention isn't only an artefact but often it is seen as a part of national heritage (similar thing about the invention of radio, i already wrote about it).

From Wikipedia:

the history of the invention of the telephone is a confusing collection of claims and counterclaims, made no less confusing by the many lawsuits which attempted to resolve the patent claims of several individuals

In the USA Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) for very long time was credited with inventing the telephone: patent 174,465 (see the 6-page patent here), including the claim on transmitting vocal sounds, was issued to Bell on 7 March 1876 by the U.S. Patent Office.
But things are much more complicated.

On 11th June 2002 the US House of Representatives passed the second version of bill number H.RES.269 EH

Whereas Antonio Meucci, the great Italian inventor, had a career that was both extraordinary and tragic; (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)

HRES 269 EH

H. Res. 269

In the House of Representatives, U.S.,

June 11, 2002.

Whereas Antonio Meucci, the great Italian inventor, had a career that was both extraordinary and tragic;

Whereas, upon immigrating to New York, Meucci continued to work with ceaseless vigor on a project he had begun in Havana, Cuba, an invention he later called the `teletrofono', involving electronic communications;

Whereas Meucci set up a rudimentary communications link in his Staten Island home that connected the basement with the first floor, and later, when his wife began to suffer from crippling arthritis, he created a permanent link between his lab and his wife's second floor bedroom;

Whereas, having exhausted most of his life's savings in pursuing his work, Meucci was unable to commercialize his invention, though he demonstrated his invention in 1860 and had a description of it published in New York's Italian language newspaper;

Whereas Meucci never learned English well enough to navigate the complex American business community;

Whereas Meucci was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay his way through the patent application process, and thus had to settle for a caveat, a one year renewable notice of an impending patent, which was first filed on December 28, 1871;

Whereas Meucci later learned that the Western Union affiliate laboratory reportedly lost his working models, and Meucci, who at this point was living on public assistance, was unable to renew the caveat after 1874;

Whereas in March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, who conducted experiments in the same laboratory where Meucci's materials had been stored, was granted a patent and was thereafter credited with inventing the telephone;

Whereas on January 13, 1887, the Government of the United States moved to annul the patent issued to Bell on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation, a case that the Supreme Court found viable and remanded for trial;

Whereas Meucci died in October 1889, the Bell patent expired in January 1893, and the case was discontinued as moot without ever reaching the underlying issue of the true inventor of the telephone entitled to the patent; and

Whereas if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged.

After over a century Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) is credited with the invention of telephone ... but Alexander Graham Bell is a hero in Canada (he spent years in Canada and he died on 2 August 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75) and after 10 days we have news from canadian Parliament:

Friday, June 21, 2002

Oral question period

Canadian Heritage

Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand—Norfolk—Brant, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

The minister must be aware now of the silly goings on in the United States capital where the U.S. house of representatives passed a motion claiming that somebody other than Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

I am wondering if the minister will take the time to inform the U.S. congress that indeed yes, Virginia, Alexander Graham Bell did invent the telephone.

Hon. Sheila Copps (Minister of Canadian Heritage, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this is one planted question that will bear fruit.

The member for Haldimand--Norfolk--Brant has raised a very important point. It has also been raised by my colleague from Brantford and by members on all sides of the House.

I am very pleased to report that right after question period I hope we will be able to table a unanimous resolution of all members of the House recognizing the fact that the real inventor of the telephone was indeed Alexander Graham Bell.

and later the same day:

Routine Proceedings

Alexander Graham Bell

Hon. Sheila Copps (Minister of Canadian Heritage, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the House for unanimous consent on the following motion, which has been discussed with all parties, regarding Alexander Graham Bell. I move:

This House affirms that Alexander Graham Bell of Brantford, Ontario and Baddeck, Nova Scotia is the inventor of the telephone.

The Speaker: Does the hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage have the unanimous consent of the House to propose this motion?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to)

Hon. Sheila Copps: Mr. Speaker, might I suggest that we forward a copy of this to the congress in the United States so they get their facts straight?

--
Not a word about Antonio Meucci, not a single evidence about the invention. Is the important thing to discover the truth about history or to save the national heritage?

There is even a second controversy about a race to the patent office between Elisha Gray (1835-1901) and Alexander Graham Bell (again!): I don't know who should be credited but I do know that Bell is a legend and Gray is completely unknown by the masses...

Using radio to fight corruption

Nathalie Francken - Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - LICOS Center for Transition Economics -, Bart Minten - Cornell University - Food and Nutrition Policy Program; Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - Department of Agro-Engineering and Economics - and Johan F.M. Swinnen - Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - LICOS Center for Transition Economics - in 2005 wrote a paper called

Listen to the Radio! Media and Corruption: Evidence from Madagascar

abstract: This paper investigates the role of the media in reducing corruption. We analyze data on personal capture of public education expenditures by local officials in Madagascar. We find that corruption can be successfully constrained through a combination of media programs and monitoring. More transparent funding mechanisms and access to mass media reduce capture. However, the impact of the media is conditional on the characteristics of the population. With high illiteracy in poor regions, the effectiveness of newspaper and poster campaigns is limited, and radio programs are more important to reduce capture.

The analysis is based on data collected in a budget tracking survey in 2002-2003.

1 Introduction

2 The policy framework

3 Monitoring and the media

4 Measuring capture and its determinants

5 Theory and hypotheses

6 Empirical model

7 Results

8 Conclusion

Digital radio and catch-22

If you want to know a simple reason (there are many reasons, actually) why digital radio hasn't succeded yet, watch this video.




It's an old video but after 1:20 you can listen to Glyn Jones (i think he was BBC managing editor of digital radio from 1995 to 1999 and today is operations director at DigitalOne):

the manufacturers hesitated because no broadcasters are committed, no one
has said "right, we are gonna start transimitting this" and the broadcasters
hesitated because the manufacturers won't say "right, we'll have sets
available in the shops by this day"

It's a catch-22.

From Wikipedia: Catch-22 is a term coined by Joseph Heller in his novel Catch-22, describing a false dilemma in a rule, regulation, procedure or situation, where no real choice exists. In probability theory, it refers to a situation in which multiple probabilistic events exist, and the desirable outcome results from the confluence of these events, but there is zero probability of this happening, as they are mutually exclusive.

We can say that, in a transition from analogue to digital radio, deregulation can't work or, at least in this case, hasn't worked at all. We need the government (after talking to everybody: authority, broadcasters, manufacturers, listeners, etc..) to set a timeline (assuming that staying forever in analogue radio isn't really an option). We'd better read the Final Report (26 pag. 121 KB) by Digital Radio Working Group published on 19 December 2008. The report doesn't really talk about DAB+ but talks about switching off analogue radio: FM started in UK on 1955 and it could almost end between 2017 and 2022 (according to the report only small scale commercial and community radio will allowed to be in FM after digital migration). What will happen to 87.50 - 108.00 MHz frequencies after the switch off?? Low power FM radio (keep dreaming!) ??
The DRM standard is mentioned only once and not about UK ("DRM has been trialled in Switzerland, Russia and China")

Some reactions:

Guardian (John Plunkett)
Digital Radio Working Group reports on DAB, but ducks DAB+
(technology blog, Guardian)
BBC welcomes DRWG's report
Grant Goddard radio blog
UK free tv blog
Frontier Silicon
Daily Telegraph

Radio is an important part of the national discourse and perhaps an even more important voice in local democracy
(Final report of DRWG, page 11)

Hedge Funds and the Financial Market

George Soros (from Flickr)

The Committee on Oversight and Government reform held a hearing titled, “Hedge Funds and the Financial Market” on Thursday, November 13, 2008.

Here you can read some interesting excerpts:

Testimony of Professor David Ruder (Professor of Law Emeritus, Northwestern University School of Law, Former Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 1987-1989)

The definition of hedge fund is unclear. The SEC has acknowledged that the term has no "precise legal or universally accepted definition". The President's Working Group on the Financial Markets has called a hedge fund "any pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administered by professional managers, and not widely available to the public".

[...]

Hedge fund managers do not want their investment strategies to become known.

[...]

Although hedge funds have been active participants in the financial markets during the past years, they do not seem to have played a major role in the events precipitating the crisis. [...], the market participants central to the credit crisis were loan originators, investment banks, rating agencies, and sellers of credit default swaps.

Testimony of Professor Andrew Lo (Director, MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management)

If hedge funds are forced to reveal their strategies, the most intellectually innovative ones will simply cease to exist or move to other less intrusive regulatory jurisdictions.

Testimony of Houman Shadab (Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University)

First, hedge funds did not cause the financial crisis and are in fact helping to mitigate its damage and save taxpayers money. [...]

Second, hedge funds' short-selling activities have helped draw attention to the poor management and investment decisions of financial companies in recent years. [...]

Finally, existing laws and regulations should be strictly enforced against hedge funds and their managers, but changing how hedge funds are regulated could actually undermine the interests of investors and increase economic instability.

Testimony of Philip Falcone (senior managing director and co-founder of Harbinger
Capital Partners Funds)

Our investment philosophy is very simple; we study, often for months, the fundamentals of companies to identify those that are undervalued or overvalued, and we act decisively when opportunities present themselves. We are not momentum traders, nor are we day traders; we are investors. It is not magic. My analists perform thorough due diligence, rather than relying on ratings agencies or other research reports -- like many of the reports that improperly valued securitized mortgage products over the past few years.

Testimony of Kenneth Griffin (founder and CEO of Citadel Investment Group)

I am proud that in the 18 years since I founded Citadel, it has grown into a financial institution of great strenght and capability, with a team of over 1,400 talented individuals. Citadel manages approximately $ 15 billion of investment capital for a broad array of institutional investors, endowments, high-net-worth individuals and Citadel's employees.

Testimony of James Simons (chairman and CEO of Renaissance Technologies LLC)

Renaissance's investment approach is driven by my background in mathematics. Before I ever entered the business world, I was a mathematician. I have a PhD from Berkeley, won the 1975 Veblen Prize of the American Mathematics Society (given every four years for work in geometry and topology), and taught mathematics at the MIT and Harvard before becoming the chairman of the Mathematics Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Along the way, I spent four years as a code cracker for the National Security Agency. Renaissance, an SEC-registered Investment Adviser since 1998, manages what are termed quantitative funds - funds whose trading is determined by mathematical formulas designed to predict market behavior. Individual trades are generated by computers, based on work continually developed by our researchers. Naturally, human beings carefully monitor the trade execution process, making sure that all parts of the system are behaving properly. We operate in only highly liquid, publicly listed securities, such as stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities, and do this on exchanges throughout the world. This means, for example, that we do not trade in credit default swaps or collateralized debt obligations, neither of which satisfies the above criteria. In the stock trading of our Medallion Fund, we hold balanced portfolios in each country, i.e., portfolios very close to being equally long and short. Our trading models tend to buy stocks that are recently out of favor and sell those recently in favor.

Testimony of John Paulson (president and founder of Paulson & Co. Inc)

Paulson & Co. Inc is an investment advisory firm that was founded in 1994 and has been registered with the SEC since 2004. We currently manage assets of approximately $ 36 billion using event-driven strategies. We are based in New York and also have offices in London and Hong Kong. We have approximately seventy employees. Prior to founding the firm, I was a Managing Director in Mergers & Acquisitions at Bear Stearns. I am a summa cum laude graduate from New York University and graduated with high distinction, as a Baker Scholar, from Harvard Business School in 1980. Our investors include pension funds, endowments, banks, insurance companies, family offices and high-net-worth individuals in the U.S. and around the world. All of the investment funds we manage are open only to "qualified purchasers", which are highly sophisticated investors with $5 million in investable assets if they are individuals, and $25 million in investable assets if they are institutions. Our investors look to us to protect their capital, and to show positive returns in both good and bad markets. We do this by going long securities that we think will rise in value and going short securities that we think will decline in value. By constructing a diverse portfolio of both long and short positions, we have been able to operate profitably in 14 out of the last 15 years, including this year and the 2000-2002 periods when the NASDAQ index lost 78% of its value. [...] We share profits with our investors on an 80/20 basis where 80% of the profits go to the investors and 20% remains with us. We only earn performance allocations if our investors are profitable. All of our funds have a "high water mark", which means that if we lose money for our investors, we have to earn it back before we share in future profits. Some of our funds also have a "claw back" provision, requiring us to return profits earned in prior periods if we lose money in subsequent periods. In addition, we invest our own money alongside that of our clients, so we share investment losses along with gains.

We are a private company and have no public shareholders. We receive no taxpayer subsidies. All of our investors invest with us on a voluntary basis. We also use very little leverage. Over the past five years, for over half the time our base portfolios were not funded with any borrowed money, and our maximum borrowing as a percentage of equity capital over this period was 33%.

In February 2004, we voluntarily registered with the SEC as an investment advisor.

Testimony of George Soros

The crisis was generated by the financial system itself. This fact - that the defect was inherent in the system - contradicts the prevailing theory, which holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations from the equilibrium either occur in a random manner or are caused by some sudden external event to which markets have difficulty adjusting. The severity and amplitude of the crisis provides convincing evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with this prevailing theory and with the approach to market regulation that has gone with it.

Zeitgeist of the year 2008

Sarah Heath Palin: she lost election but she won the Google Zeigeist

One year ago, i wrote about Google Zeitgeist of 2007. Now it's time to write about the Zeitgeist of they year 2008.

Zeitgeist is a german word and it could be translated as "spirit of the age" or "spirit of the times", it is best known in relation to Hegel's view of philosophy of history.

From Google Zeitgeist site:
As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. We've compiled some of the highlights from Google searches around the globe and hope you enjoy looking back as much as we do.

Actually, in US Zeitgeist they are more specific:
"Fastest rising" means we looked at the most popular searches conducted for 11 months of 2008 (we compile this list by early December) and ranked them based on how much their frequency increased compared to 2007.

Fastest Rising (Global)

1. sarah palin
2. beijing 2008
3. facebook login
4. tuenti
5. heath ledger
6. obama
7. nasza klasa
8. wer kennt wen
9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers

1 Tuenti is a Madrid-based, invite only private social networking website (launched on May 2006) that has been referred to as the "Spanish Facebook". The name Tuenti, pronounced in Spanish, sounds like Twenty in English. Tuenti is targeted at the Spanish audience. The site is currently accessible only to those who have been invited
2 nasza-klasa.pl (Our Class) is a large social networking platform for people in Poland, a social networking site bringing together a school's students and alumni; launched on november 2006, today has 11 million registered people
3 wer kennt wen is a german social networking website created on 2006, today has 4.9 million of users
4 Jonas Brothers are an american boy band active since 2005

---

Google.com - Fastest Rising (U.S.)

1. obama
2. facebook
3. att
4. iphone
5. youtube
6. fox news
7. palin
8. beijing 2008
9. david cook
10. surf the channel

5 att should be AT&T: the largest provider of both local and long distance telephone services, DSL Internet access and wireless service in the United States with 71.4 million wireless customers and more than 150 million total customers
6 David Cook (1982) is an American singer-songwriter. On May 21, 2008, he won the seventh season of the reality television show American Idol
7 SurfTheChannel is website for TV fans

---

Fastest Rising UK

1. iplayer
2. facebook
3. iphone
4. youtube
5. yahoo mail
6. large hadron collider
7. obama
8. friv
9. jogos
10. wiki

Most Popular UK

1. facebook
2. bbc
3. youtube
4. ebay
5. games
6. news
7. hotmail
8. bebo
9. yahoo
10. jobs

8 friv is Friv.com: a site with 200 flash games online
9 large hadron collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelerator

---

You can't miss the Techcrunch article about the Google Zeitgeist and you can read the TOP 10 searches for 2008 by Yahoo (but it's so similar to the 2007 list!):

1 Britney Spears
2 WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
3 Barack Obama
4 Miley Cyrus
5 RuneScape
6 Jessica Alba
7 Naruto
8 Lindsay Lohan
9 Angelina Jolie
10 American Idol

Where are the techno-enthusiasts who were telling us "Mankind will enter a new era with Internet!" ??

The battle of (mobile)phones goes on

pic from Flickr - iPhone

Last year i was writing about phone business: iPhone and Android, let's see what happened in the last 12 months.
On 14th November 2007, i wrote about Android Developer Challenge: a contest for the most innovative application for Android, 10 million US dollars distributed between two phases of the competition.

First phase - 12th May 2008 - The top 50 applications are announced, click here to know 46 of them (4 teams decided "to continue their efforts in secret"); each team received a $25,000 award to fund further development
Second phase - 25th September 2008 - 10 teams received a $275,000 award each and 10 teams received a $100,000 award each. Click here to know all the projects

The winner of $275,000 award are:
cab4me
cab4me enables you to easily call a cab to any location worldwide
CompareEverywhere
Compare prices, read reviews, and connect with local stores
Ecorio
Ecorio automatically tracks your mobile carbon footprint, suggests transit and carpooling alternatives and lets you stay carbon neutral by offsetting your trips easily
GoCart
Scan a product's barcode with your phone's camera and view all the best prices online and at nearby, local stores
Life360
Life360 uses a multi-channel messaging system and neighborhood-centric social network to keep you up-to-date and in contact with your family and local community
Locale
Locale is an advanced settings manager that automatically changes your phone's settings based on conditions, such as location
PicSay
Easy to use image editor that enables you to quickly personalize your pictures and share them with friends or photo sites
Softrace
With Softrace people around the world meet online to compete against each other in different physical activities
TuneWiki
TuneWiki Social Media Player, is an advanced player, featuring synchronized lyrics for audio or video, translation, music maps and a social network
Wertago
Find the hottest parties in town and connect with friends and others all night long

Since 21 Oct 2008, Android is available as open source, the source is approximentely 2.1GB in size

The first phone in the market running Android is the T-Mobile G1, released on 22nd October 2008, it came preinstalled with Android 1.0

pic from Wikipedia - T-Mobile G1 (made by HTC)

And what happened to the iPhone?
iPhone has been a big success but iPhone 3G has been a HUGE success:

picture from Wikipedia
Q1 Oct-Dec; Q2 Jan-Mar; Q3 Apr-Jun; Q4 Jul-Sep

iPhone was realeased on 29th June 2007, iPhone3G was released on 11th July 2008. Apple sold more iPhones in 92 days (July-Sep 2008) than in the previous 12 months!! 6.89 million of iPhones in July-Sep 2008 and 6.124 million from 29th June 2007 to 30th June 2008.
Apple might win the battle of business but isn't winning the battle for climate leadership.

From the site of Greenpeace:

The Guide to Greener Electronics is our way of getting the electronics industry to take responsibility for the entire lifecycle of its products. We want it to face up to the problem of e-waste and take on the challenge of tackling climate change.

First launched in August 2006, the Guide ranks the leaders of the mobile phone, computer, TV and games console markets according to their policies and practices on toxic chemicals, recycling and energy. Since June 2008, the Guide has ranked companies on five climate and energy criteria. In this current edition we're focussing on climate leadership - not only because the global climate needs it but because electronics firms have a big role to play in the low-carbon economy of the future.

Nokia is the best one: ranking 6.9/10
Apple ranking 4.3/10

Complete results of 2008 US presidential election

pic from Wikipedia - popular vote by county

pic from Wikipedia - red denotes states/districts won by McCain/Palin, blue by Obama/Biden. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state

Election results

1. Barack Obama 67,981,686 votes--------52.77%--------365 electoral votes
   
2. John McCain 59,082,002 votes--------45.86%--------173 electoral votes
3. Ralph Nader 720,227 votes-------------0.56%----------------------------
   

Barack Obama/Joe Biden (democratic party) won in 28 states + DC + NE2
(California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachussets, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska2, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin)

John McCain/Sarah Heath Palin (republican party) won in 22 states
(Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississipi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska1, Nebraska3, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming)

Barack Obama is going to be the first president (since John Fitzgerald Kennedy) who has been neither a governor nor a vice president. If John McCain had won, it would have been the same (but McCain spent 4 years as a member of House of Representatives and 22 years as a member of Senate)

The night of 4th November 2008, Obama gave his acceptance speech:



McCain gave his concession speech (click here)

It's impossible not to talk about another famous speech:
28th August 1963 - Martin Luther King's speech (I have a dream) in Washington during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom



MLK: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

If MLK had been alive today, what would he has said? Is his dream real today??

Best DJs of 2008!!

record needle on technics 1210 (pic from Flickr)

I talked about it one year ago and I can't miss it this year!
DJ magazine wrote the TOP 100 DJ of 2008, the first two positions haven't changed:

1 Armin Van Buuren - (Netherlands)

2 Tiësto - (Netherlands)

3 Paul Van Dyk - (Germany)

4 Above & Beyond - (England)

5 David Guetta - (France)

6 Ferry Corsten - (Netherlands)

7 Sasha - (Wales)

8 Markus Schulz - (Germany)

9 John Digweed - (England)

10 Infected Mushroom - (Israel)

11 Deadmau5 - (Canada)

12 Carl Cox - (England)

13 Sander van Doorn - (Netherlands)

14 Paul Oakenfold - (England)

15 Richie Hawtin - (England)

16 Hernan Cattaneo - (Argentina)

17 James Zabiela - (England)

18 Andy Moor - (England)

19 Eddie Halliwell - (England)

20 Axwell - (Sweden)
--
To know the whole TOP 100, click here

Investment banks and financial crisis 2007-2008

Leverage ratios of investment banks (from Wikipedia)

US Gross Federal Debt, unadjusted for inflation (from Wikipedia)

If we want to try to understand the global financial crisis going on now, we need to try to understand the role of investment banks in USA.
There is an interesting paper about investment banks, the paper was written and it's called
The Demise of Investment-Banking Partnerships: Theory and Evidence
written in 2004 by Alan D. Morrison (University of Oxford-Said Business School; University of Oxford-Merton College) and William J. Wilhelm Jr (University of Oxford-Said Business School; University of Virginia-School of Law)

Abstract:
Until 1970, the New York Stock Exchange prohibited public incorporation of member firms. After the rules were relaxed to allow joint stock firm membership, investment-banking concerns organized as partnerships or closely-held private corporations went public in waves, with Goldman Sachs (1999) the last of the bulge bracket banks to float. In this paper, we ask why the Investment Banks chose to float after 1970, and why they did so in waves. In our model, partnerships have a role in fostering the formation of human capital. We examine in this context the effect of technological innovations which serve to replace or to undermine the role of the human capitalist and hence we provide a technological theory of the partnership's going-public decision. We support our theory with a new dataset of investment bank partnership statistics.

This is a very important issue: before 1970, the New York Stock Exchange (the famous Wall Street) prohibited investment banks from going public (in USA "going public" means starting an IPO in order to enter the stock exchange).

We can read from the official site of NYSE:

Public Can Own Member Firms
March 26 1970
Public ownership of member firms is approved for the first time

And, maybe, it was the beginning of the end...

James Surowiecki wrote (29 September 2008; The New Yorker):

[...] All, then, seemed good. But, for Wall Street firms, going public was a deal with the devil, because it meant exposing themselves to what was, in effect, a minute-by-minute referendum, in the form of the stock price, on the health of their operations. This was fine as long as things were going well—the higher the stock price, the richer everyone got—but, once things started to go bad, that market referendum started to look like a vote of no confidence. And that made the problems that the companies were already facing much, much worse. [...]

and

[...] All companies, of course, worry about how their stock is doing. But for most the stock price is a product of performance, rather than a cause of it. If Procter & Gamble’s stock plummeted tomorrow, people would still keep buying Tide. By contrast, if an investment bank’s share price tumbles, it not only wrecks people’s confidence but also can lead to credit-rating downgrades, which provoke a further decline in the stock price, and so on. The downward spiral can be stunningly fast and near-impossible to escape. [...]

After 1970, investment banks could enter the stock exchange, and theese are the dates when they decided to do so (NYSE):

1971 Merrill Lynch
1985 Bear Stearns
1986 Morgan Stanley
1994 Lehman Brothers
1999 Goldman Sachs

What happened to the 5 investment banks that we can see from the first image?

Merrill Lynch: acquired by Bank of America
Bear Stearns: acquired by JPMorgan Chase (with the help of the Fed)
Morgan Stanley: changed its status from investment bank to bank holding
company
Lehman Brothers: bankruptcy
Goldman Sachs: changed its status from investment bank to bank holding
company

On 23rd September 2008 we heard:

The FBI is investigating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc and insurer American International Group Inc and their senior executives for potential mortgage fraud, CNN reported on Tuesday.

Well, who is going to investigate the role of the Sec about the subprime crisis??

35 innovators

Last year I already talked about this (35 beautiful minds) and I'm glad to write about it again.

Since 1999, the editors of Technology Review (magazine of Massachussets Institute of Technology) have honored the young innovators whose inventions and research they find most exciting; today that collection is the TR35, a list of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35. Their work--spanning medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology, and more--is changing our world.

Theese are the winners of 2008.

2008 Innovator of the Year: JB Straubel
2008 Humanitarian of the Year: Aimèe Rose

Blaise Aguera y Arcas (33 years old - Microsoft Live Labs)
Building immersive 3-D environments

Theodore Betley (31 - Harvard University)
Re-creating photosynthesis

Martin Burke (32 - University of Illinois)
Molecular diversity

Dries Buytaert (29 - Drupal)
Simple, flexible Web publishing

Cristopher Chang (33 - University of California, Berkeley)
Probing chemical reactions in the body

Michelle Chang (31 - University of California, Berkeley)
Designing microbes to make fuels and drugs

Jenova Chen (26 - Thatgamecompany)
Gaming with the flow

Tanzeem Choudhury (33 - Dartmouth College)
Inferring social networks automatically

Peter L. Corsell (30 - GridPoint)
Making the electric grid smart

Jack Dorsey (31 - Twitter)
Personal updates made simple

Stefanus Du Toit (25 - RapidMind)
Programming for parallel processors

Nicholas Fang (33 - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Superlenses for watching cells

Ric Fulop (33 - A123 Systems)
Energizing rechargeable batteries

Julia Greer (32 - California Institute of Technology)
Revealing how materials behave at the nanoscale

Hossam Haick (33 - Technion-Israel Institute of Technology)
Sniffing out cancer

Seth Hallem (28 - Coverity)
Deconstructing software to find bugs

Donhee Ham (34 - Harvard University)
Portable nuclear magnetic resonance

Konrad Hochedlinger (32 - Harvard Medical School)
Turning adult cells into stem cells

Xian-Sheng Hua (34 - Microsoft Research Asia)
Enhancing video search

Sundar Iyer (31 - Cisco Systems)
Making memory at Internet speed

Jeffrey Karp (32 - Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology)
Gecko-inspired surgical tape

Farinaz Koushanfar (32 - Rice University)
Locking microchips to prevent piracy

Johnny Lee (28 - Microsoft)
Streamlining human-computer interactions

Meredith Ringel Morris (29 - Microsoft Research)
Searching websites jointly

Andrew Ng (32 - Stanford University)
Building household robots

Kostya Novoselov (34 - University of Manchester)
Two-dimensional transistors

Milica Radisic (32 - University of Toronto)
Patching damaged hearts

Aimèe Rose (34 - ICx Technologies)
Ultrasensitive detectors to sniff out explosives

Bilal Shafi (34 - University of Pennsylvania)
Preventing congestive heart failure

Adam Smith (23 - Xobni)
Making sense of e-mail madness

JB Straubel (32 - Tesla Motors)
Engineering electric sports cars

Joo Chuan Tong (31 - The Singapore Agency for Science, Technology, and Research's Institute for Infocomm Research)
My vision: Personalized vaccines

Eric Wilhelm (31 - Instructables)
Putting DIY projects online

Robert Wood (31 - Harvard University)
Building robotic flies

Ronggui Yang (34 - University of Colorado, Boulder)
Efficient electricity from waste heat