Hope you all survived this years’ Christmas? I must say I had a very good Christmas celebration. On top of that, I had three Christmas dinners in a row! On First Christmas day I was at my parents, Second Christmas day I was a friend’s place, and yesterday I celebrated Christmas with my house mates! We (the Dutch) must be the only nation that actually has a First and Second Christmas day! I do not know the exact reason for this but I do know that we like to have official holidays, like having a social life, and quite pragmatically, well at least trying to, anyway, this way it’s easier to arrange Christmas with your in-laws: one day at his parents, one day at hers. NB The photo at the top of this post is not a typical Dutch cityscape 
, in fact it’s a Tokyo Christmas cityscape!
While surfing on the net, I came across a couple of interesting web links which I like to share with you: Tim Berners-Lee, the man who more or less invented the Internet, has started a weblog here, and if you’re a true consultant and you want to convince the dude/dudette you’re with why they should continue dating you, read this, it had me in stitches.
Always wondered how Amazon’s supply chain looks liked? At least I did! Business week has published in today’s top stories a photo report on how Amazon is processing the holiday season demand! Quite interesting stuff, it suprised me how many things are still handled manually.
Find below Infoworld’s top 10 IT moments in 2005!
- Wal-Mart, DoD Mandates RFID Compliance Jan. 1
- Oracle Completes PeopleSoft Buy Jan. 7
- Publication of “The World is Flat” April 5
- CardSystems Hack May 22
- Sun Opens Solaris June 14
- AMD Sues Intel June 28
- Another SOX Delay Sept. 21
- Massachusetts Votes for Open Documents Sept. 21
- Vapor Without the Ware Oct. 4
- The Arrival of SQL Server, Visual Studio 2005 Nov. 7
Economist’s annual prizes recognise successful innovators in seven categories. The Economist recognises these talented people through our annual Innovation Awards, presented in seven fields: bioscience, computing and communications, energy and the environment, social and economic innovation, business-process innovation, consumer products, and a special “no boundaries” category. The awards were presented at a ceremony in London on November 14th by Bill Emmott, editor-in-chief of The Economist. And the winners were:
- Herbert Boyer, co-founder and director of Genentech, and Stanley Cohen, professor of genetics and medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, for developing recombinant DNA technology.
- Computing and communications: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google for the commercialisation of search technology.
- Energy and the environment: Stanford Ovshinsky, president and chief scientist and technologist, Energy Conversion Devices, for developing the nickel-metal-hydride battery.
- Social and economic innovation: Victoria Hale, chairman and chief executive, Institute for OneWorld Health, for her work promoting the development of pharmaceuticals for the developing world.
- Business-process innovation: Alpheus Bingham, chairman, InnoCentive, for his work developing a web-based problem-solving community.
- Consumer product: the iPod team at Apple for the development of the iPod digital-music player.
- No boundaries: Fujio Masuoka, professor, Tohoku University for the invention of flash memory.
The New York Times has conducted an automated survey on the most frequently mentioned books by the blogging community. Topping the list is New York Times’ bestseller “Freaknomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything” written by one of the most outspoken Economists in his age, Steven Levitt. For complete coverage you can visit this NYtimes page, and for an essay written by Pamela Paul about book blogs you can click here!
Did I already inform you that my Christmas holiday officially started yesterday, after a tiresome week packed with exams and essays. yeah! Anyway, anyhow, owing to my plenty of course-related readings of last half year, I had no time or at least no motivation to finish up any non-school related reading! Regarding to this holiday, next to my daily job assignments, I will be pretty occupied with lounging and bouncing around and about and finishing up my non-school related readings. At least for the sake of getting in some means any return on investment of the books I bought. -P One of the books which I will finish by the end of this holiday is Freakonomics! Having already read plenty of reviews, I still couldn’t manage to finish it over the course of last half year. Well, I better get going and start reading now!
Donald Trump appointed Randal as his new Apprentice of season four! Having followed for the last 14 weeks all episodes of the Apprentice season 4, it was to me a big relieve to see there was again a clear cut winner, likewise an exceptional one!
As in the first season, over the course of the job interview it was quite obvious who eventually will be hired by Donald Trump. When Bill was hired at the end of season 1 it was like a no-brainer, like this time! The main reason I can figure out it is because both Bill and Randal belong to the rare race of exceptional business people that combine and advance complementation of IQ and EQ. In comparison with Bill and Randal, the winners of season 2 (Kelly) and season 3 (Kendra) seem to lag far behind in EQ capability and competence, as they all have an outstanding academic record. Probably, identifying exceptional business people with the right set balanced out in both IQ and EQ seems like a no-braining and easy task.
Nonetheless, these rare kind of exceptional business people do not seem to appear very often at the horizon. In fact, when summing up all applicants of all four seasons of the Apprentice it result in a total of 3,5 million applicants, only season one had not 1 million but a half million applicants. Therefore, since there are only a few exceptional people with the complete package, picking the right people out of the talent pool can still be seen as an art and dedicated task to execute. Well, lets gear up for season 5!
As expected, London Business School (LBS) lead for the second consecutive year Financial Times’ ranking list of best European b-school. LBS is ranked top in both the full-time and Executive MBA programme. For the Dutchies among us, Erasmus University, Rotterdam ranked 7th in best European full-time MBA programme and 17th overall.
Not that I am planning to pursue a MBA challenge after graduating for my Master degree, in 1,5 years from now. *sigh*, that sounds really long, right? Although, as I noticed, according the last half year time really flies these days so 1,5 year becomes suddenly really short, isn’t? Over the long run I might consider doing a MBA, especially because it seems like a great investment to justify. Consider a tuition fee of £41.970,- (not including living expenses) in light of the average salary three years after graduation, as a LBS-er of $126.590,-. Even with today’s currency exchange rate it still looks good. -P Well, up till now, I still think I do not need a MBA for achieving my (ultimate career related) dreams. Maybe that will change in the future when having achieved these dreams…haha..Out for now!
The complete FT ranking can be found here.
Always wanted to know what’s on the mind of our Far Eastern neighbours, China? Well, China’s most popular search engine, BAIDU.COM, has published their 10 most searched keywords. Here Baidu’s ‘hottest’ list:
- MP3
- ???? (TV sensation Super Voice Girls)
- ??(“Fairy Tale,” a pop song by Malaysian singer Guang Liang)
- QQ (instant messaging software)
- ???(Li Yuchun, the winner of Super Voice Girls)
- ??? (Korean TV series Dae Jang Geum or Jewel in the Palace)
- ?? (Jackie Chan’s move The Myth, also a band)
- ?? (“keep the Party in the vanguard”)
- ??(Kill the God, a famous internet novel)
- ??? (o2jam, an online music game)
Source: Shanghai Daily
This week I will verify this list with my fellow students from China!
>>Note: As you can see I have some problems with displaying the Chinese characters, I will try to fix it as soon as possible<<
Business week published a survey on the year 2005! Adam Curry, is the only fellow Dutch man whom is selected among the best leaders of 2005.
Next to the best leaders, Business week selected the best ideas and best products for the year 2005, as well. Saidly, I haven’t more time to elaborate more on this survey. -P
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