Tuesday, July 17, 2012

FoxConn Style Outsourcing

Deutsch: Foxconn Logo
Deutsch: Foxconn Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When companies like Apple outsource production, they send it off to FoxConn that employs people who do great work for cheap. But what does FoxConn do when it decides to outsource? Looks like there is a plan.

Migrant Workers in China Face Competition from Robots
Foxconn, which employs nearly one million low-wage workers to hand-assemble electronic gadgets for Apple, Nintendo, Intel, Dell, Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony..... the Taiwan-based manufacturing giant would add up to one million industrial robots to its assembly lines inside of three years
Enhanced by Zemanta

Big Data For The Masses

Big Data
Big Data (Photo credit: Kevin Krejci)
Big Data is not new. Walmart has been crunching Big Data for decades now. What's futuristic about the term  though is that Big Data is about to descend to the masses.

Technology Review: Your Laptop Can Now Analyze Big Data
As technology gets more networked, and data sets get larger, graph computation is becoming more and more relevant in many domains ... "Enabling web developers to construct these analyses on their desktop computers catalyzes these industries and accelerates product development." .... "Big data is everywhere now, but some big data isn't as big as it once was, relatively speaking. Tools like GraphChi will let many companies and startups solve all their graph-computing needs on a single machine. It's cost effective, and it drives innovation, too."
Enhanced by Zemanta

Marissa Mayer, Kara Swisher

Image representing Yahoo! as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
There is talk that Yahoo managed to announce Mayer's ascendancy to its top spot without Kara Swisher knowing about it beforehand. I think that claim itself establishes Swisher as a top tech journalist. What think you?

Swisher's 10 Questions
Enhanced by Zemanta

Marissa Mayer's Pregnancy

Hillary Rodham Clinton, January 2007
Hillary Rodham Clinton, January 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Marissa Mayer is pregnant. Who knew before yesterday? It is like Bill Clinton became president in 1992 and a big chunk of the media talked often of Hillary Clinton's hair. It is one of those things. I think Hillary carries herself well, but style would not be her number one strength.

I am happy for Marissa Mayer that she is expecting. I know she is very happy about it. And I guess it is a very big deal to be Yahoo CEO. But there seem to be as many headlines about Mayer's pregnancy as her ascendancy to the CEO position. There is a tinge of gender there. She already has been a role model. Now she is to be a bigger role model for women. And one would hope the attention would soon pass on to the wonderful work she has done at Google and what she might be able to do for Yahoo.

People are comparing Yahoo to Apple when Steve Jobs came back in 1997, I believe. There are some legitimate high expectations there, and that perhaps is the bigger story.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Marissa Mayer: Top Search Term At This Blog

Marissa Mayer is the top search term at this blog right now.