اخبار 1

A mobile phone app start up has received $ 1 m in funding. Nothing special about that - after all thousands of start ups get funding. What is interesting is the nature of the app itself. It is called Yo. And what it does is that you can send a message - Yo - to any of your friends. That's it. That's all you can say - Yo. Apparently its USP is that you can say Yo in two taps instead of the 13 taps it will take you in Whatsapp.  I am scratching my head in bewilderment. Why would I want to say just Yo to you ? In comparison, Twitter seems positively garrulous. Yo is being downloaded like there is no tomorrow - it has reached the top 50 downloaded apps on the Apple store. For some strange unexplained reason, iphone users want to say Yo more than Android users ! Apparently this is the start of something called "contextual communication" ! If a world cup match is going on and you send a Yo, it means - Dumbhead; somebody has scored a goal; turn on the TV and watch it. If you...

If you nodded your head saying money can't buy love, that wasn't what I meant ! After all this is a business blog and starry eyed affairs of the heart seldom feature here !!. Money can't even buy the thing money is supposed to be good at buying - a major sports championship. The trigger for this post is the NBA finals that concluded yesterday. The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Miami Heat to win the "World Championship" of basketball . For the sports purist, it was a wonderful result. The Spurs played sublime basketball. They came back after a heartbreaking loss last year to win it this time around. This is their fifth championship.  But this post isn't about the sport - its about the money. In sports, superstars make insane amounts of money as salaries. If ever there is a breed even more mercenary than bankers, it is sports stars. Salary levels are simply insane. Kobe Bryant the highest paid NBA star, earned a salary of $ 1 per second ! There are 31 m seconds...

It is fairly clear that I would not be able to get a job with Rockwell (a web hosting company) or the Kerry Group (food ingredients company). This is because I would have to answer, in the selection interview,  "How would you react if you were shot in the head with a Nerf gun?" (Rockwell) or "Is a Jaffa Cake, a cake or biscuit ?" (Kerry). Since I do not know what a Nerf Gun or Jaffa Cake is, it can be safely assumed that I would flunk the interview. The Glassdoor Blog chronicles each year the weirdest questions that companies have been known to ask in interviews. It of course makes extremely interesting reading and I would strongly recommend it instead of that useless report you are writing at this minute ! How would you answer to " "How many square feet of pizza is eaten in the US each year?" (Goldman Sachs !), or  "Can you instruct someone how to make an origami "cootie catcher" with just words?" (Living Social), or, "I...

Why is it that I, an incorrigible Americophile, am ranting against the US every month in this column ? I have long admired the US, the society, the culture and, especially, the economics.  I continue to be an unabashed admirer of so much in the US. and yet readers of this blog could easily mistake me for a "burn the US flag" extremist, considering the number of times I am criticising US policy and action in recent posts. Take the case of BNP, the French bank. Like so many banks before it, it has been caught up in investigations by the US on money laundering. The crime committed by the bank is that it routed transactions to Iran, Cuba and Sudan covering them up. Standard Chartered had a similar problem and I blogged about it here . Now it is BNP's turn.  The problem is not the act itself (although I will question even that later). BNP admits fault, is prepared to pay a fine etc etc. The problem is the quantum of the fine - $ 10 billion - the largest fine in the history of ...