Old-media firms are firmly in control of internet video LIKE stallholders in a busy market, technology companies hawked their online-video services this week. In Berlin, Sony announced it would begin selling films over the internet to Europeans. In San Francisco, Apple unveiled a smaller, cheaper Apple TV, a set-top box designed to play videos. It [...]
How the mobile internet will transform the BRICI countries BUYING a mobile phone was the wisest $20 Ranvir Singh ever spent. Mr Singh, a farmer in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, used to make appointments in person, in advance, to deliver fresh buffalo milk to his 40-odd neighbours. Now his customers just call [...]
Paul Allen has rekindled a controversy over patent trolls DEEP-FRIED beer may sound scrumptious, but is it patentable? Mark Zable, an inventive Texan, thinks it is. To protect his novel production process, which involves encasing the alcohol in batter and dunking it in a fryer, he recently applied for a patent. He wants to profit [...]
Our story on shocking new accounting rules (“You gonna buy that?” August 21st) contained a shocking error. We should have said that the obligation to pay for a leased item will go in the liabilities column, not the debit column. Sorry. … View full post on The Economist: Business
Counterfeit drugs used to be a problem for poor countries. Now they threaten the rich world, too DRUG smugglers can expect harsh penalties nearly everywhere—if the drugs in question are heroin or cocaine. Those who smuggle counterfeit medicines, by contrast, have often faced lax enforcement and light punishment. Some governments deem drug-counterfeiting a trivial offence, [...]
Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies? FIFTY years ago, in the glorious age of three-martini lunches and all-smoking offices, America’s car companies were universally admired. Everybody wanted to know the secrets of their success. How did they churn out dazzling new models every year? How did they manage so many people [...]
Monetary and fiscal stimulus make a potent, if uneasy, combination THE Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is the big event of the year for central bankers. But defining monetary policy is far harder than it used to be. In recent years central bankers have lurched ever closer to [...]
An enclave of unbridled capitalism thinks again IT HAS been mooted since 1932, but Hong Kong has never had a minimum wage. It soon will, however. In July a law was passed. And on August 30th, after endless meetings, an official commission agreed to recommend what the minimum hourly wage should be. That figure was [...]
The train giants of France and Germany are at war over European high-speed rail AT THE Gare de l’Est in Paris, Franco-German co-operation seems on track. Deutsche Bahn inter-city express (ICE) trains glide in from Frankfurt and SNCF sends trains deep into Germany, thanks to a joint venture between the two firms. Every train has [...]
Two gurus look at the perspiration side of innovation IN HIS new book, “Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership”, Warren Bennis, a management theorist, tells a story about Sigmund Freud’s flight from Vienna to London in 1938. On arriving in his new home Freud asked Stefan Zweig, a fellow Viennese intellectual, what [...]