functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.
Kamprad discovered that offering low prices wasn had enough, he to win over customers with truly beautiful designs.
the retailer is positioned uniquely to bring wireless charging to as many people as possible at the lowest possible price.
also improve the financial health of its insurance businesses by allowing customers to live longer, healthier and more independent lives.
But can you imagine letting a U s. health insurance company know every piece of information being collected here?
Studies taken from insurance databases are considered generally less reliable than experiments where people are randomly getting an invention,
Obviously, trust issues about giving information to insurers are a bigger hurdle in the U s. than in many other countries.
No insurance company here has the reach that Japan Post does. Apple and IBM say they are trying out a huge number of pilot studies,
#Long term Investors Should Prefer Facebook to Google Last week saw another slew of quarterly earnings releases.
For long-term investors, who hold stocks for years rather than months, these provide the opportunity to look at trends,
Google prices keep dropping, even as growth slows in oremarket Google once again reported higher sales and profits.
But, once again, the price of Google primary product declined. Revenues increased because volume gains exceeded the price decline
which indicates that the market for internet ads keeps growing. But this makes 15 straight quarters of price declines for Google.
Due to this long series of small declines, the average price of Google ads (cost per click) has declined 70%*since Q3 2011!
While this is a miraculous example of what economists call demand elasticity, one has to wonder how long growth will continue to outpace price degradation.
At some point the marginal growth in demand may not equal the marginal decline in pricing. Should that happen, revenues will start going down rather than up.
Part of what drives this price/growth effect has been the creation of programmatic ad buying, which allows Google to place more ads in more specific locations for advertisers via such automated products as Admob, Adexchange and Doubleclick Bid Manager.
But such computerized ad buying relies on ever more content going onto the web as well as ever more consumption by internet users.
Further, Google revenues are almost entirely search-based advertising, a category Google dominates. But this is largely a PC-related sale.
Today 67.5%of Google ad revenue is from PC searches, while only 32.5%is from mobile searches.
Due to this revenue skew, and the fact that people do more mobile interaction via apps, messaging apps and social media than browser,
search ad growth has fallen considerably. What was a 24%year over year growth rate in Q1 2012 has dropped to more like 15%for the last 8 quarters.
So while the market today is growing and Google is making more money, it is possible to see that growth is slowing.
And Google efforts to create mobile ad sales outside of search have failed largely, as witnessed by the recent death of Google+as competition for Twitter or Facebook.
and thus generate higher revenues and profits with outstanding growth. The#1 site for social media and messenger apps is Facebook, by quite a large margin.
From nothing in early 2012, Facebook mobile revenue is now $2. 5b/quarter and represents 67%of global revenue (the inverse of Google revenues.)
Further, Facebook is now taking its own programmatic ad buying tool, Atlas, to advertisers in direct competition with Google.
Google $17. 3b Q1 2015 revenue is 30 times the revenue of Facebook. There is no doubt Google is growing,
and generating enormous profits. But, for long-term investors, growth is slowing and there is reason to be concerned about the long term growth prospects of Google as the market shifts toward both social and mobile.
Google has failed to build any substantial revenues outside of search and has had some notable failures recently outside its core markets (Google+and Google glass.
Just how long Google will continue growing, and just how fast the market will shift is unclear.
Using the example of information Google GOOGL-1. 71%collects from its usershich includes names, email addresses, telephone numbers, credit card data, online history, devices used,
But prices were falling, and the analysts predicted batteries might reach the $350 point in 2020.
$250/kwh. here nothing remotely at these price points, said Tesla product architect Elon musk. Earlier Thursday night,
At Tesla price, utility-scale batteries have the potential to perform better than 2 cents per kilowatt hour where it counts the most:
but it a remarkable number if one expects new capital expenditures on batteries to increase electricity bills. onsidering both the impact on electricity bills and improved reliability of grid-integrated storage,
4. Deferred Investments. Typically, utilities need enough power plants to serve their customers at peak hours, not at average hours.
they can also defer investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure designed to serve peak loads.
we assume that customers would pay for the storage investments just as they pay for transmission and distribution investments.
Customers would then receive offsetting reductions in retail electricity costs from the storage in the form of deferred investments, refunds from the wholesale market auction proceeds,
and reduced power purchase costs. Customers would additionally benefit through increased system reliability from avoided distribution outages.
ut as prices decline for energy storage, we expect a substantial broadening of the economically viable projects.
Opportunities should blossom as prices fall and also as batteries improve. Gundersen based his 2¢estimate in part on improvements in cyclinghe number of times a battery can be drained
Even at twice that price, he said, grid-level batteries offer utilities a return on investment now:
hat batteries bring positive ROI at such a price surprises lots of people. And it means windmills+batteries may be cheaper than nuclear plants right now,
That when she and cofounder Amy Poinsett decided they needed to create a platform that tracked every gram of marijuana and every dollar.
Business is so good that MJ Freeway has doubled is revenue every year since inception. NIC targets the government as its client in the cannabis space.
labs and producers were forced to ship their product off to third party labs losing time and money.
Not unlike the other commodities exchange, this platform will allow cannabis farmers to lock in prices for their crops
He said the problem with the cannabis tech companies is a lack of access to institutional money.
The only space that Bierman is impressed with is the payment kiosk space and in particular Integrated Compliance Solutions.
The banking transaction works in coordination with the seed to sale software so that the product and purchase match up.
if Bank of america decides cannabis won get them in trouble with the Feds. In the meantime these new companies aren letting any grass grow beneath their fee t
This Technology Reduces Lenses To The Thickness Of A Credit card A team of scientists at the Harvard School of engineering
Whatsapp lost $230 million in the first half of last year on revenues of approximately $15 million, reported The Wall street journal
. While Facebook generates most of its revenues from advertising, Whatsapp charges 99 cents per year for a subscription after one year of free service.
However, Koum acknowledged that Whatsapp scaled back efforts to generate revenue following the acquisition i
As the price for developing a new game climbs steadily due to improving graphics and added complexity,
The runner games are notoriously hard to monetize they do not yield much revenue even from tens of millions of players.
The app revenue chart continues to be dominated by more than 2 year old titles by Supercell
Both are now pouring massive amounts of money into lavish ad campaigns around the world to cement their position.
The biggest mobile money makers of Electronic arts right now are the ancient Simpsons and Simcity franchises
Instead of depending on Kakao and accepting its high revenue cut, Reliance has decided to use Facebook as the social media network for its apps.
Ory Okolloh, Director of Investments, Omidyar Network Government; Professor Reid Whitlock, the new CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation.
the ripple effects of the long-term investments in a new generation of Africapitalists will be felt throughout the continent,
with a target of creating one million new jobs and $10 billion in additional revenues in the process.
That said, investors remain bullish on the U s. drone sector. In the third quarter of 2014 alone, investors poured a record $65 million into drone tech startups.
Backers included major VC players like Adreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Google Ventures hope what youl see is the regulations get cleared very soon
At the same time, the economics of LEDS are now comparable with other light sources. These changes have resulted in LEDS displacing CFLS as the choice for organizations looking to save money
and deliver an environmentally friendly lighting alternative. But while these huge benefits for LED consumers have come to fruition,
the economics for LED lighting providers have been more problematic. As prices have lowered, LED TECHNOLOGY rapidly becomes commoditized meaning that LED vendors,
once selling into a top-level market, now need to compete with other vendors based on price.
So it was interesting to talk recently with Terralux, a company that focuses on offering solutions for the retrofitting of lights in existing buildings.
which has announced just an $11 million growth investment from Enertech capital, has announced also just its LEDSENSE product.
#Will Payments On Facebook Be Successful? Facebook: The Social Graph Of Payments Today March 17th, 2015 Facebook has entered into payments in a very big way 1. This is perhaps the biggest news in this sector since its inception.
Much like Wechat a sort of Facebook of China along with Alipay with their hundreds of millions of users to send money via instant message.
To become a person to person payment system in the US the company must apply for
and be granted a money transmitter license in every state. Facebook has been approved money transmitter licenses in every US state and territory along with many European and Asian countries.
My good friend Faisal Khan has been researching this for a number of years. In the US
there has not yet been a person to person payment system centered around a communication platform. One could argue that Google system was a communication platform centered around Gmail,
but it was linked not fully to the chat system. The elements of the social graph, essentially your network of friends tied to payments is pure brilliance.
The network effect takes hold and there is a tipping point where one can be certain that the recipient can be found on Facebook.
It turns out a vast majority of Facebook 500 million monthly users are logged on to Facebook Messenger with about 80 million payment cards on file.
With Facebook Payments, the entire system is built currently around the Messenger platform. Fundamentally person to person payments are a form of deep communication
and Facebook Messenger is a logical jumping off point. A vast majority of person to person payments begin with a conversation, perhaps already within messenger.
Thus with the press of the new $ icon and the entry of an amount, you can send money that will arrive to the recipient listed debit card within seconds.
How Does Facebook Payments Work? To use the system, the sender will need to associate a US based debit card with a Visa or Mastercard logo to their Facebook account.
If the user already has a debit card on file with Facebook from gaming, advertising, or donations, this can be the default card.
The system will allow for the user to image the card via a camera or to manually enter the card into the setup form.
Users will be prompted to set a passcode or use Apple Touchid on compatible ios devices to confirm transfers,
Specimen of Facebook Payments payment sending sequence. To send money press the button in the Messenger message composer,
you have an option to send a photo or sticker along with a text message and the money, enter in an amount that is currently less than $250 and tap the aybutton.
Specimen of Facebook Payments payment receipt screen. The money is removed instantly from the sender debit account
and delivered to the recipient Facebook associated debit card. Facebook uses the debit card network and the recipient bank
and can take about 24 hours to become usable. Both sender and recipient will see a confirmation message detailing the transfer status and time.
If the recipient has associated not a debit card, they will be prompted to register going through the same process and choices as the sender.
If for some reason the money is claimed not by the recipient in 30 days, it will revert back to the sender.
Along the way, Facebook will send the recipient notices to claim the money. As an added security feature, Facebook may ask users some extra security questions before a transfer can be authorized.
This may take the form of id you ever own a red caror n what city did you live in during the period of 1984 1986 etc.
Banking On Debit cards Facebook is currently a debit card based system and is using a similar system that Square adopted for Square Cash 2,
but there are a number of changes and optimizations made by Facebook to make the system more fault tolerant and redundant.
Facebook is also using more recognized APIS that will have the ability in the future to also allow payments from credit cards using the full extent of systems like Visa VPP API 2. The system will also be able to easily scale to countries outside the US
I am rather certain that Facebook has negotiated with a number of regional debit card networks to lower effective rates that Facebook will pay for each transaction.
The debit card networks will see a huge growth of aggregate transactions allowing the networks to continue to be relevant and vital in this new space.
I am rather certain we will see merchant payments using this platform as the primary, ultimate source of revenues for this system.
Now The Person To Person Payments Party Is Ready To Begin Facebook is entering into a market that has many existing solutions,
Google Paypal Venmo Square Banks And others It is very clear that a sort of shakeout will commence that will define competing products and perhaps remove a few products from the market.
Square Square Cash seems to be in a very vulnerable position before Facebook Payments 3 and
and money that will result in abstractions and distractions for Square. It is clear that Square is the current payment platform for Snapcash
and currently this element of Square Cash is growing, just not to the level that has been expected.
Paypal+Venmo Paypal and Venmo will see a challenge from Facebook Payments. There is no doubt about it.
There are many ways that Paypal and Venmo can stay vital and relevant because of the scale they have achieved already.
Banks Banks have been doing person to person payments via inter-accounts and intra-accounts for over two decades.
Banks have finally began to catch up to payment startups with useful and intuitive apps. There is also good reason to believe that banks are currently working on a system that is outside the ACH system
and will allow for instant person to person payments in the next 12 months. However, as it stands today, banks that have whole families
and friends on the same platform in the US may very well continue to hold their own for some time to come,
even if they fail to continue to innovate because they have a ome fieldadvantage. Google Google has been sending person to person money via Gmail for over two years
and although it is not breaking any records, it continues to grow and become a platform for many users.
The simplicity of attaching payments like a document or a picture is quite genius. Google will need to lower costs
The other person to person payment products that are centered not around out of country remittances will face huge adoption issues and attrition.
Apple Will Enter Soon Finally Apple will become a huge part of Person to Person payments
Paypal, Google, and Square, Apple will not handle any payments themselves. High Likelihood Of Success There is little doubt that Facebook will be successful In person to Person payments.
If not just by the size of the user base and the utility this new feature will offer.
One can surmise that at some point, even though currently there is no revenue model from Facebook pavements,
there is a path where the cards on file will become a source for payments for products and services from merchants.
Thus, I predict revenues from payments to soar over time once the merchant payment system is activated.
Specimen of revenue sources at Facebook. The Payment isruptionera Is Now Officially Over In less then 12 months
the entire payments landscape has changed forever. Back in March 2012, I wrote Brian Roemmele answer to Who will enter the retail Payments market next?
and listed Apple, Facebook, and retailers themselves. Today, Apple Pay, Facebook Payments, and MCX/Currentc are here.
It was fun times as my thesis and postulations were controversial and constrain. This was the height of the ayments disruptionmania
and frankly few wanted to hear about the practical and pragmatic merchants and consumers. Today, we are just beginning to see the sweeping changes in payments,
I am postulating far more changes. For example and entire banking system can be built around this platform very much like Brett King has postulated for quite some time.
This new banking future is far closer today than it has ever been. As always you and I along the way
will vote with our wallets w
#Emerging Market Medical Education Goes Digital A shortage of skilled health workers is an acute and ongoing problem in many emerging markets.
Weak medical education systems bear a major part of the blame. But a big opportunity for rapid progress has emerged as online medical education becomes increasingly common.
So will massive investments in public health infrastructure, stronger regulatory regimes, and R&d for new and improved treatments.
And Financial Data Medical and financial data belonging to as many as 11 million Premera Blue Cross customers may have been exposed in a breach discovered on the same day as the Anthem breach, the health insurance company
in addition to affiliate brands Vivacity and Connexion Insurance Solutions. Additionally, other Blue Cross Blue Shield customers in Washington and Alaska may have been affected by the breach.
and bank account information to Social security numbers and dates of birth going back thirteen years. While Premera says it does not have evidence that the data was removed from the system or sed inappropriately,
and is offering two years of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection. Premera is the second health insurance provider to announce a major breach this year.
On the same date as Premera, Anthem discovered a breach that affected nearly 80 million customers
Unlike in the Premera breach, medical data and banking information were believed not to have been exposed in the Anthem breach.
Premera is one of the largest health insurance providers in the Pacific Northwest, with $7. 6 billion in revenue in 2013 and 1. 8 million members in Washington and Alaska n
it is difficult for people in a subsistence economy to leave their farms or jobs for a week to get it In addition,
In spite of the initial costs involved, the efficiency gains and quickly reduced cost of production make it a useful investment for hospitals.
because she understood that what the company was creating was data products. e use data to price by demand dress may be higher in the holiday season,
and safety needles will receive WHO funding after 2020 should radically reduce infections caused by dirty syringes.
as a commodity product and are used by healthcare firms as a brand carrier, a market-getter, a loss leader.
Indeed, the price differential between conventional and auto-disable syringes has been a major barrier to getting the world to convert to safe syringes without the big stick of a global regulator.
Conversion costs manufacturers nly a couple of million dollars, according to Koska an expense that is set to become the effective cost of staying in the syringe manufacturing business.
has swallowed investment of £4m-£5m from amily, friends and connections, though royalties from K! and Star have brought in more than $20m over the last years.
Wee a little British company with British funding and we hope we can fly the flag. x
The 360-degree cameras have a price range of about $300-$1, 000. With the 360-degree option, filmmakers and brands will be able to offer a unique experience by letting viewers watch scenes from multiple angles. ou share incredible videos with your fans every
#In Historic Turn, CO2 EMISSIONS Flatline in 2014, Even as Global economy Grows A key stumbling block in the effort to combat global warming has been the intimate link between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth.
Only when economies stumble and businesses shutter as during the most recent financial crisis does energy use typically decline,
But for the first time in nearly half a century, that synchrony between economic growth and energy-related emissions seems to have been broken
according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, prompting its chief economist to wonder if an important new pivot point has been reached one that decouples economic vigor and carbon pollution.
even as the global economy grew at a rate of about 3 percent. his gives me even more hope that humankind will be able to work together to combat climate change,
the most important threat facing us today, the IEA lead economist, Fatih Birol, said in a statement accompanying the findings.
The agency also cited the ongoing deployment of energy-efficiency and renewable power policies in Europe, the U s. and other developed economies as additional factors.
and economics are unlikely to be realized, given changes in energy consumption patterns in various countries and the status of ultimately recoverable fossil fuel resources globally. n a business-as usual situation,
it is unlikely that fossil-fuel-depleted industrial economies in Europe and parts of Asia will strategically position themselves to be dependent on fossil fuel imports,
Lyfelens is available for pre-order at a discounted price of $199 (plus $20 shipping.
Outcries like these do not seem to be just about profit and image but rather a call to be more human.
clean store and use their insurance to purchase them, unlike street drugs. oth prescription opioid and heroin addiction is growing significantly among the affluent and people with private insurance,
two groups that historically have had relatively low rates of abuse, the CDC Vital Signs report says.
Schwab explains. e showed that we can actually make the fluctuations of one of the variables smallert the expense of making the quantum fluctuations of the other variable larger. hat is called
saving time and money. aybe someday we could apply this approach to healing of wounds or other applications,
and Corning, Inc. provided funding for the research n
#3d printed dge detectorsorts sound waves Scientists have developed a new method to differentiate very weak and short sound waves from longer ones.
and produces the finished product with a smaller investment. This proof of concept also shows that BMCS can be broken down to the sum of their parts,
In the United states, costs for kidney disease are about 40 billion dollars per year. Kidney disease affects approximately 700 million people worldwide.
The National institutes of health, the NCATS Loan Repayment Program the National Kidney Foundation, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative medicine and the Kidney Research Institute, both at the University of Washington,
and that is used in the strip on your credit card. Because spin has both a magnitude and a direction,
while to secure proof of principle funding in 2008 to look at biomarkers in urine, but it's been worth the wait for these results.
Watson can handle extremely large amounts of data as an aid to decision making in medicine, customer service, finance,
and it is currently looking for financial backing and manufacturers to refine its design, along with participants for further testing.
With a suggested retail price of US$30, 000, the ME20F-SH is geared certainly more towards professional users than hobbyists trying to get a crisp shot of the night sky.
#Acer's Cloudbooks offer Windows 10 from just $169 Acer has announced a pair of new laptops that are set to provide access to Windows 10 at a very reasonable price point.
Still, with prices starting at just US$169 for the 11-inch model and $199 for the 14-inch, the race to the bottom is alive and well.
a life sciences company working on a glucose-sensing contact lens, the lab formerly known as Google X and investment arms Google Ventures and Google Capital,
According to one filing, Google and the other new subsidiaries of Alphabet will report separately to investors,
Google shareholders will automatically convert to Alphabet shareholders, but the stock will continue to trade under the same GOOG and GOOGL ticker symbols s
The company doesn't list an official price for the Smart-Drive MX2 but expect to pay around the US$6000 mark.
provided we have the right level of investment and the right industry partners. Our main aim is to develop a prototype that can demonstrate that it is possible to go all the way with'Quantum CMOS
"Such a powerful quantum computer would have major implications for the finance, data security, and health industry.
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