Envelope / Develope

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash I was reading about the developing efforts for a vaccine reflected through the stock market. It happened to have a few shares of the VIR Biotechnology ( VIR ) company when the chase of finding a vaccine started. It was an incredible ride, even for a guy accustomed with the up-and-downs of the shares in a company and the political game played when companies are bought or acquired. Just for illustration, please see the chart of this stock for a three month period. There is excitement, at the beginning  of March about the possibility of developing a vaccine for Corona virus, and the stock surpasses 70$/share when before is was lingering under the 17$/share threshold. There are many companies in the race - Moderna ( MRNA ), Gilead ( GILD ), Inovio Pharmaceuticals ( INO ) and probably a few of them will find a virus. What I don't understand is the effort spent in parallel of fighting the same cause. It is a lot of ...

Photo by CDC on Unsplash   Detect immunity One of the numbers broadcasted every day is the number of COVID-19 patients who recovered. Instead of being fixed on detecting people with corona virus, we should be fixed on detecting the ones who had a mild version of corona virus or even were asymptomatic. Once we know they can freely move, socially mark them in a certain way (with a special certificate).  They could be the soldiers of opening closed businesses or helping important economic sectors. They are on the other side of the fear, all the COVID-19 restrictions should not apply to them. It is not known for how long is the immunity lasting, but at least, these people should come back and revive the industries and get the jobs and make the economy re-start. It is a small number, but they can propel some ideas for the ones in the isolation (see below). That should be the second most important decision of our governments - detect immunity, instead of just...

Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash Podcasts are having a second life in the current media environment (2020). People are reviving the old habit of listening to stories on different subjects and being close to interesting or "out-of-normal" events in a disconnected-when-I-have time manner. Podcasts are the new way to be informed with specialized info channels, when your life allows it. If Apple managed to monopolize and to spear-head the streaming music industry with the iPod/Apple store, some new companies are trying to grab the audiences build by niche players in the podcast world  - Spotify, Soundcloud. On the same vein, the broadcasting companies are trying to have a second wind from podcasting their shows, by making them free and then getting money from advertising by having millions of listeners. I compare the podcast industry with the auto industry of 1920s: many attempting to break the ice, a few with an effort to monopolize the streams. My predict...

An article on Reuters - Is America the sick man of the globe? - caught my eye as a continuation of what went wrong with the industry in North-America. This debate is more acute after the financial meltdown but people are not analytical as they should be and as always the numbers are partially telling the truth. “From the 1980s onward, manufacturing jobs and the sector's contribution to U.S. GDP declined, a process accelerated by productivity enhancements and increasing competition from lower-cost markets. Now there are just over 8 million manufacturing workers in a population of 300 million.” Special Report: Is America the sick man of the globe? by Nick Carey, Thu Dec 16, 2010 Reuters The whole mess is politically driven. The decision to compensate the unemployment in industry with jobs in services and finance industry leads to decimation of an entire generation of tradesmen. Bill Gross (Pimco): " “We forgot that the more stable and safe way to go is to make things...We...

It's a well known fact the price for basic services is high in Canada. You can ask yourself why the prices for basic phone line, TV subscription or basic mobile phones is outrageously high and the only explanation is the low number of incumbents in each industry, their commodity of crying foul to regulators when other big players try to invade their territory, invoking "social aspects" of their services for all Canadians and the "complacency" of the political parties. My frustration covered the well known facts in the "competitive" industries in Canada - telecommunications, banks, transportation, wireless telecom, media distribution. Here I want to tell about a personal history, our family switching to VoIP. I knew about VoIP telephony and used NetMessenger, then Yahoo and lastly Skype, but at home I continued to pay $34 for almost nothing. So after a few investigations I bought the services of Vbuzzer, a Canadian company which for $60 per year will pr...