The way corporate logos are designed has evolved a lot, especially since after WWII, the advent of television, the “visualization” of popular culture, and the explosion of consumerism that really took off in the 1950s and 60s. Here is a short video published in The Atlantic in August, 2018 featuring one of the firms involved
I just listened to Sam Harris interview Andrew Yang about his proposals for a Universal Basic Income in the U.S. They also touched on Yang’s campaign to become President of the U.S. in 2020! If you don’t know, a the Universal Basic Income proposal (UBI) is the idea that every adult citizen would receive an
People who admire Apple Inc. for what it has accomplished over the years tend to believe the company can do no wrong. But the idea that Apple is destined to remain at the top of the tech heap forever is, in my opinion, misleading to investors. Because, as we all know, nobody stays at the
The most interesting technology developments of the last decade or so, at least from the perspective of the average consumer, have been in computer, internet and telecommunications. These areas of development have come together with great fanfare and significant impact in the development of mobile networks and powerful “smartphones” – essentially portable computers. I follow
I live just down the street from a major Blackberry office complex, and Blackberry employs thousands of people in this local (Waterloo) area, so I have a natural interest in how the company is trying to resurrect itself. If Blackberry succeeds in remaking itself it will be because they finally adopted a realistic, workable strategy.
There’s an interview with John Chen, Blackberry’s new interim CEO on Crackberry.com that is quite interesting for those of us who are Blackberry watchers. Chen is known in the business world as a “turnaround specialist” having been at the helm of the company formerly known as Sybase. His team and the shakespeare comms marketing strategy
John Chen is the new interim CEO of Blackberry. Today was the day the Fairfax Financial (Prem Watsa) deal was supposed to go to the next phase. Watsa had signed a deal some months ago to buy the company for $4.7 billion and take it private. But when he couldn’t arrange the financing the way
The VeloCity garage work area at the U of Waterloo. Working on 30 new startups this fall. There’s no doubt the ongoing reports of layoffs and downsizing at Blackberry are painful to many individuals. Many are losing their jobs, at least temporarily. And this recurring news gives the distinct impression that both Blackberry is fading
In this article, Why Apple Will Buy BlackBerry the author puts forward some convincing reasons why we might expect Apple to end up buying Blackberry. First, the $5 billion or so it would cost is chicken feed for Apple. They currently have more than $150 billion in cash. Second, buying BB would give them a
The Toronto Star reports today that the large collection agency iQor Canada Ltd. has been fined $500,000 for making unsolicited robo calls to people saying they owed money, without identifying themselves. Companies like this get away with unethical and illegal behaviour like this all the time, so it is good seeing the laws actually enforced.
Samsung makes lots of phones. The news this week that Samsung was unveiling its newest smartphone, got me thinking about Korea. In spite of the instability involved in being in a technical state of war with their cousins to the north, South Korea is doing amazingly well in the world. Korea was divided after WWII.
Another sign of the exploding Chinese economy – for 2010 GM sold more cars in China than in the U.S. Total 2010 unit sales for GM by country were as follows: 1.China 2,351,610 up 28.8 over 2009 2.United States 2,215,227 up 6.3% 3.Brazil 657,825 up 10.4 4.United Kingdom 290,250 up 1.0 5.Germany 269,061 (down 29.5%)
The recent news that Target is moving into Canada by buying up most of the existing Zellers stores has been greeted by many eager Canadian shoppers as good news all around. If nothing else it will inject new life into what is basically a pretty boring store (Zellers). Long gone are the days when we
There’s an interstesting story about the Canadian cell phone business in the November (2010) issue of The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business. The focus of the article is on Egyptian billionaire entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris and his upstart wireless company called Wind Mobile. The revelations about the Canadian wireless industry are intriguing, to say the
I admit it, I know nothing about Facebook Credits. This just shows how online gaming-challenged I am. Facebook Credits are the “official currency of Facebook”, used in more than 200 online Facebook applications such as Farmville, YoVille and Cafe World, none of which I know anything about. The more interesting thing about this (at least
If you were expecting the arrival of the Chevy Volt to be the beginning of the electric car revolution you’re going to be disappointed. Back when GM was on the verge of collapse the Volt was put forward as GM’s answer for the future. But more than two years later the Volt has turned out
