Political/Economic
- US: The 90% Tax on Bonuses. This is an amazing over-reaction. True, the public has been outraged at the same executives who they think brought about this financial mess being rewarded for their mistakes. On one hand, I don't agree with the argument that 'These people are the only ones who know how to get us out, because their actions brought us here". But on the other hand, I don't like the Congress taking such drastic measures that account for less than 1% of the bailout money just to express its anger. I am worried about the precedent it is setting and at the speed at which this passed, without almost any debate. One (possibly positive) unintended consequence of this legislation will be that the banks will now want to return the bailout money as soon as they can. This makes us question the 'bailout/stimulus' process. It is too early to say whether the bailouts using borrowed (and possibly, printed) money will work or not. But it is quite clear the bailouts that started in the previous administration will go down as a mismanaged government give-away. For example, there is a report on New York Times about how the education stimulus money is going to the school districts that don't really need them. A deeper question that needs to be answered is whether the political systems have the maturity, power and the will to tackle the restructuring of the economic system that has triggered this latest bout of economic malaise. Or, have we come to a point where the economic forces are beyond the control of any single sovereign political entity? Alan Greenspan, in this Wall Street Journal article, suggests that we are dealing with global economic forces beyond the control of domestic monetary policy.
- India: Varun Gandhi's campaign remarks. This is interesting: although Varun Gandhi has denied making anti-Muslim comments and said that the video was doctored, he still said (in the denial) that the (Hindu) community is under a siege in its own country. Now, if you read the Urdu newspapers in India, they pretty much say the same about the Muslim community: that they are under siege, under police brutality and under-developed. Assuming both are right (and they may well be); it is giving rise to a very combustible situation where Hindus (~80% of the population) and Muslims (~15% of the population) feel that they are under threat from each other and the government.
- US-Iran: President Obama's video message to Iran. This is significant for someone who believes that the United States should begin engaging with Iran directly. The US needs Iran to stabilize the Middle-East. Along with Turkey, it is one of the few countries in the region that has some democracy: it isn't perfect (or even close to perfect), but it has a functioning, stable system. Iran needs to be part of any solution to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. The initial response from Iran was on expected lines; but the need for closer engagement is there. A very interesting beginning that has to be followed up from both sides.
Technology
- Gartner's 2008 smartphone sales data (press release and summary, full report). The report makes for very interesting reading. It pretty much reconfirms the impact of iPhone on the landscape. It also reports a dramatic growth of smartphone sales (69%)in North America mostly driven by iPhone, Blackberry and to a lesser extent, Palm. Windows Mobile sales registered a small growth, but the market-share slightly decreased. But overall, the iPhone juggernaut rolls on...
- Facebook Connect for iPhone. This is significant, in terms of the merger of the most popular social networking platform with the most popular (and effective) data enabled mobile platform. Other social networking platforms will surely follow (actually, twitter's APIs are pretty easy to use, it doesn't need a special set of libraries). It will be interesting to see how many useful apps or services take advantage of this integration.
- iPhoneOS 3.0 launch. Significant, because it releases a bunch of features developers and users have been asking for: push notification, system-wide search, copy-paste, MMS, P2P communications, in-app payments, Map APIs, in-app email. I love the fact that as a developer, I get to tinker with the pre-release OS and SDK.
- The Pope's comments in Africa. The comment on AIDs, along with other messages and information that have came out of the Vatican in the past (including the one about exorcism) makes for some interesting analysis. It is quite possible that Vatican is losing touch with reality. Or, it is part of a religious strategy to make Catholicism relevant in the 21st Century and beyond! In a somewhat related story, the British Governments condom campaign has received some criticsm too.
