Snail mail as scanned images to save money in Finland

The postal service in Finland is experimenting with scanning household mail and then delivering these PDF files to via secure email. The paper mail will be bunched up and delivered every two weeks. This is a brilliant cost saving measure - specially for deliveries to remote locations. I hope this catches on (the project is in limited opt-in testing) worldwide. Link above from physorg.com.

Using prizes to shape innovation

Very interesting thinking on how prizes are being used to spur and direct innovation into very specific paths. See articles by McKinsey here and here. Strangely, not many governments use prizes as a means to get the private sector to solve problems. Governments have however been increasingly successful in using deregulation as a means for spurring innovation.

Bill Gates dissects CO2 emmissions

Bill Gates does a good job at TED breaking down the total CO2 emmisions into measurable factors and then talking about which of these are controllable. The bottom line is, we need to focus on energy efficiency to decrease the CO2 emisssions.

New concepts: energy density, energy farming.

Google defers to user concerns, is making changes to Google Buzz

Google rolled out Google Buzz this week. Before most early adopters could figure out what Buzz was really about, the web exploded with user concerns about the privacy settings. See this excellent mollyrant from the incomparable Molly Wood at CNET  http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-10451428-256.html?tag=twitter2

Google apparently listened, and is making changes http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html

Warren Buffett reiterates the diminishing value of cash

Bill Gates has interesting conversation partners, and it is great to have some of these recorded and made available.  Warren Buffett goes on to say "cash is crap", see http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Conversations/specialfeature.aspx?ID=83 posted on the Gates Notes site.

For most people however, other investments may be too risky or too illiquid as a contingency fund, and cash does have justifiable utility for this purpose. Beyond this fund however, investors looking to diversify, investments in commodities (the run on oil in 2008-2009) represent very high volatility and low returns, particularly as the the market most likely has already factored in the bullish outlook for commodities. The price at which retail investors purchase commodities end up being already inflated.

Creating space for the private sector in space exploration

With the new policy and funding for NASA unveiled recently, there has been a lot of talk about the US Government giving up spending money (and it does take billions) to maintain its leadership in space exploration and related technologies. What the US appears to be doing however, is creating space for private sector participation in the final frontier.

Esther Dyson does a good job in FP of arguing that the new policy is actually a positive development. I really like her comparison with the decision decades ago on allowing the public to use and improve the Internet rather than leaving it only in the control of the military. See http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/08/prepare_for_liftoff

India pushes indigenous capability, risking speed of implementation

Amol Sharma of WSJ reports that Government of India has decided to throttle back the use of cheap expertise from Chinese firms in an attempt to push domestic capabilities. http://on.wsj.com/cqgTRj