Envelope / Develope

  Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash   I don't remember how I stumbled upon Azopan website but I do know being lost in memories of my childhood and of photographs taken on B&W films and only in late 80s on color films. It is a very interesting project and although I did not browsed the options of posting there, it seems to me that local history and family photos are amalgamated to transport you in pieces of life of a different time and place - Romanian mountains, seaside, Danube river, 1989 events, etc... The subjects and photos have the "family" feeling and rarely you  see an artistic photo. Most of them are about public events, families captured in candor moments, kids staring to the camera in a "I-know-you-take-a-picture" smile and many staged pictures. The surprise factor for me was the humanity and the raw emotions captured in people's look, events you forgot you participated just because their significance escaped you, the freedom to be ...

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...

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash One in five workers with a high school education or less are subject to a non-compete clause. Labor cost becomes one of the variables any company will try to contain, especially for large companies or small franchises (like soccer, basketball teams) where the star status is coming with large paychecks. I will try to touch this subject in the light of a few observations and findings of today's labor market. Large companies are been tacitly agreeing to limit poaching talent from each other in order to limit the salaries of the talented people Monopsony is the buyer's power in the market, single buyer or many of them agreeing to follow the same rules. I wanted to touch the subject because it reflects one of the old ideas where "managers" are trying to contain costs of their raising stars. That is valid for all industries with the exception of the movie, music industry or individual sports. All other cases - team sp...

As it happens with any traveler, I am using the big four trip booking companies - Booking, Expedia, Trip Advisor, AirBnB or Canadian equivalents. Over the years, I discussed with many hotel/lodging owners and everyone is saying they are not happy with the way they are represented and the cut the brokers are getting for only providing an interface and a common entry point for travelers. The broker companies offer convenience and service aggregation, a unique marketing platform and convenience for the user. It is a warehouse for a service (lodging), but many of the reviews are fake, misrepresenting the  reality. I realized there is competition about reviews, many companies are trying to get more and also veto the ones outside "reality". It is better to read the more recent ones. Companies like Google, Yelp (with many question marks), Trip Advisor are vying for people posting their last impressions or even their vacation photos. The reality is that the algorithms to promote t...

unsplash-logo Filip Mroz I used to watch the grand slam tennis matches and to observe the emotion of the players. Body language is a good indicator of what is happening with most of them. Their reaction on tense points or after long rallies is also an important indicator where their mind is. Small triggers based on spectators' reactions or referee's decisions are playing a role on their mind. You can see the maturity or the adolescence in some of their behaviors.  But you don't know how they judge and adjust during the match, what is crossing their mind and when the decisions are taken to employ a different tactic than before. And here is where the interviews with mass-media are shining some light about other side of their personalities, besides that of being a fantastic tennis player (because the majority of them are). We judge a sport based on the TV broadcasts instead of judging it based on the effort they put on to reach that level. If you have ever watched a...

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...

Microsoft just announced that the digital library they launched when eBooks were in vogue is closing the service, with a whimper and a small print saying that they will reimburse the buyers (which if you don't know, some of them already lost their devices and books). For me, besides the physical act of discovering and buying a book, it has a network effect starting to unfold: I read the book and post about it I recommend the book to my friends and sometimes they borrowed it from me (SOME friends, not any...) sometimes I write small ideas or thoughts spurred by ideas presented in the book I hope that my kids will enjoy some of the books I bought With an eBook, the problem seems to be that the usage period is your lifetime or the lifetime of the service ( the minimum of them). Yes, you may be able to borrow your book to friends, for limited periods and you can copy and paste, in case you need some content from it. But the bottom limit is that you are paying for a period of ...

Or read the small print before you buy  I am in the same cohort of adults as you, probably: with limited time for vacations, I am planning almost every day for seeing, sucking up scenery, tasting food or wines or having fun in a memorable way. Rarely there is a moment where playing by the ear is on my schedule. Often times I am forced to improvise as my plans are totally screwed by inevitable mishaps. And here comes one of my reality encounters with what is a map in our days and how different than reality it is.One hand driving, one eye on map and one eye recording the imagery, brain where are you ? In today over-scanned/over-visited/over-blogged/over-you-tubed world to be driven in a dangerous or unknown place by the technology seems like a dystopian event. And still, that happened to me. Garmin has an interesting policy regarding their own GPS devices - the maps are free for LI(F)E. What is not known, but hidden in the bottom of the license agreement, is that the l...