Inside View from Ireland: FT Weekender Tech Items

WHEN THE SILLY SEASON hits Ireland during the summer, the Financial Times delivers real news. This weekend's edition has several items worth reading and that probably means they will be covered in Irish newspapers early next week. I open my 10-minute Qik video clip with a shot by London-based photographer Nadav Kander along the Yangtze River. "China is progressing rapidly," says Kander, "and the landscape both economically and physically is changing daily." The shot he snapped under a bridge in the city of Chongqing shows people dwarfed by their surroundings. It's probably an image that will never be snapped again. I noticed some other interesting things in FT Weekender when reading the photos. I discovered Savik Shuster, Russian presenter of a hit political talk show, uses a Nokia E90 (my favourite phone). And I noticed Evan Williams, the Twitter guy with more than one million followers, carries a Moleskine (my favourite journal). Both of those images are in the FT Weekend. But there's more.

California's Budget On Front Page. You would expect to see California, with the world's eighth-biggest economy (if it were a country) on the front page of many American newspapers. It's also making front page news in Europe, with the IOUs which it has printed for vendors. [1] The State has a $26bn deficit, slightly more than Ireland. I wonder if Ireland will follow some of the same strategies as the Governator has laid down.

Listening to customers. General Motors has restructured, cutting its debt to $17.3 bn. That's close to Ireland's deficit. Unlike Ireland, GM plans to launch a "Tell Fritz" website allowing people to share their views with senior management". CEO Fritz Henderson promises to respond to input every day. [2]

Obama Leads World News. Ghana takes great pride in Obama's arrival there. William Wallis writes a telling piece from Accra where he heard the difference between a white man lecturing an African and "a black brother giving advice." [3]

Google on a Collision Course. Depending on who writes the piece, Google will either collide directly with Mircosoft in a war over operating systems or Google will collide directly with regulators who believe the company has overplayed its hand in the marketplace. FT thinks Google will face the wrath of the regulators. [4]

Data Portability is Essential. Power.com thinks Faceboook is monopolising the social networking market. Once you put information into Facebook, you cannot export it or move it to another site. [5] I believe that if social networking is to become part of the fibre of the internet, no one company can own your content. I'm topgold on Facebook. As soon as I post this item to Typepad, it cross-posts to Facebook.

Small World. The moon landings were about more than the conquest of space. They brought home the earth's vast isolatio. A smart, well-designed coffee table book of Apollo photographs, chosen by the programme's 24 surviving astronauts, is available for ordering. [6]

Giving Away Things for Free. John Gapper rehashes a familiar theme of Fred Wilson in pointing out the things that will probably remain free on the internet and the things that have a paid model. "For a venture capitalist investing in internet businesses that are trying to grow as rapidly as possible, free is also a good bet. If nine out of 10 of those businesses fail because they burn through their capital, but one grows enough to make money from advertising or freemium services, that is a good result." [7]

Stuff you could buy. If you were around Colchester recently, you might have purchased a rubber eraser once owned by nine-year-old Diana Spencer. It fetched a price of £540. It had the handwritten words "Bomb", "Beware", and "Help". You could take a hint from the FT Weekend Magazine and buy a Quooker for true boiling water on demand. You can bid on products in the AuctionRoom at Auctionair-FT.com. Bids close at fixed times. The lowest win so far for a Mini Cooper S was £5. You could jump ahead of Pat Phelan and buy one of 300 Audi R8 V10s that will drop into the UK this year. You need £98,000. You can see most of these items by viewing the Qik clip accompanying this blog post. Simply click on the image to let it run.

1. Matthew Garrahan -- "Schwarzenegger plays it cool" on the front page of FT Weekend, 12 July 2009.

2. Bernard Simon -- "GM Announces Rebirth with vow to start listening to its customers" on the front page of the FT Weekend, 12 July 2009.

3. William Wallis -- "Africa welcomes a son of the soil" in the World News section of FT Weekend, 12 July 2009.

4. Richard Waters -- "Google's Answer to Gates" in the Comment section of FT Weekend, 12 July 2009.

5. David Gelles -- "Facebook accused of restricting its users" in the Companies section of FT Weekend, 12 July 2009.

6. Robert Jacobs -- "Apollo: Through the eyes of the astronauts" ISBN 978-0810921467

7. John Gapper - "When charging nothing makes sense on the internet" in his "From the blogs" column, FT Weekend, 12 July 2009.

Direct link to Qik video: http://www.qik.com/video/2167844

Last month: "10 Factors behind my 5000 blog posts"