The rapid downfall of Palm showed just how ruthless the battle between Microsoft’s, Google’s, and Apple’s ecosystems has become, as RIM is currently finding out. But what happened? How did the company meet its demise so quickly? After extensive research, and numerous interviews Chris Ziegler pieced together the story of the final years of Palm. It’s long, detailed, and well-written. If you’re interested in the mobile wars we encourage you to read it here. But some highlights include:

• In CES 2009 Palm looked set to enter the market and transform the smartphone wars. 31 months later it became a faceless subsidiary of a faltering company without a clear future ahead of it.
• The problem starts with the success of Palm’s own mobile operating system, which dominated most of the 90s. As with any established software ecosystem it was difficult to break from the past and create a modern software platform that is caught up with the times.
• Palm finally made a serious attempt to develop a new operating system in 2007 – after the iPhone had been released – but before it met with its genre defining success.
• However by 2008 it was clear that the new software being developed was junk and too difficult to use.
• Two executives had an innovative idea to develop an entirely separate operating system based on existing technologies created by other companies.
• However there was internal fighting between the two visions for the future of Palm.
• At the end of the day the new idea was successful and was debuted at CES 2009 with extremely positive critical reception. Behind the scenes though the company was in crisis. It had promised to deliver the phones by mid-2009, but Palm essentially had to start all over again with its software development.
• When the phones were released, a small carrier, bad advertising, and a bug-ridden OS ensured that sales disappointed.
• Palm realized it needed a buyer and an investor. HP stepped up to the plate and bought it for $1.2 billion. However internal strife at HP meant that the company soon lost interest in its acquisition.
• Meg Whitman the current CEO of HP claims to have high hopes for it, but there are reasons to believe that she will drop it after July 1^st. All of the senior members of the original Palm team have left anyway.

Again if this is your kind of thing you have no idea just the kind of details you’re missing. Read about how Steve Jobs was so afraid of Palm’s initiative that he tried to strike an illegal deal, or how Palm was betrayed repeatedly by Verizon, some choice quotes, why people started erecting curtains around their desks, the role that bake-offs played, how Palm was like a startup, why Meg Whitman was honest, the thousand dollar dinner that could easily be justified, and a comprehensive video library in addition to much more over here.

Source: The Verge

Jane Wells reported on some fascinating statistics about those youths who are just joining the labour market:

• 3% of recent college graduates say that their parents sat with them during interviews with employers.
• Boys are more likely than girls to ask for help from parents in finding a job.
• 12% of them say that they wouldn’t work somewhere that didn’t let them check Facebook or Twitter.
• 5% said that they wouldn’t take a job where they weren’t allowed to shop online or check sports scores.

To read many more interesting statistics, including how many need a workplace that allows personal phone calls, what they expect in terms of health benefits and job security, what percentage had their parents drive them to job interviews, how many have their parents cover some or all of their living expenses, and the 58% that seem to have more realistic expectations, click here.

Source: USA Today

Via: Marginal Revolution

Rohin Dhar took a look at the market for used TVs. What he found is likely to surprise you:

• A lot of people try to sell their used TVs for more than what the same TV would cost brand new.
• Televisions from Sony seem particularly vulnerable to this trend.
• A lot of people price their used televisions below market price, of course, but overall in the market there is only a 14% discount to buying a used television. In contrast used headphones and phones sell for more than a 30% discount.
• One explanation for this is that people don’t realize how quickly their assets depreciate. In one ad a seller offered to sell a $1,500 television that they bought 9 months ago, for just $1,000. This 33% discount sounds impressive until you realize that the retail price of TVs fell faster than that.
• Another problem is inaccurate product identification. A TV might actually be called something like LG-47LK520 but it will be advertised as the more ambiguous “LG 47 inch LCD TV.” This makes the market less liquid and drives up prices.

To read many more details, and to see some really well designed and fascinating graphs, to find out how this problem can be fixed, what a solution to the problem would look like, to find out what percentage of televisions are correctly identified, which used models sell for more than their sale price, and why buying a used TV is like shopping in a foreign market where you don’t speak the language, click here.

Source: priceonomics

Via: Freakonomics

There is a widespread perception in the west that the Chinese government operates through a meritocratic system that promotes those with strong credentials. This is a myth, writes Minxin Pei, and it is time to bury it. Highlights include:

• 60 of the 250 members of an elite group of the Communist party claim to have earned PhDs.
• Yet the majority received them through part time programs in the party’s training schools after they had become government officials.
• One individual received his PhD after just 21 months. These degrees are not credible.
• Another way that China is thought to be a meritocracy is that it promotes those who have delivered high economic growth.
• Yet these numbers are very obviously fabricated by officials.
• Or they grow GDP by borrowing large amounts from banks and by selling land. This burdens subsequent local governments with high debt and wasted investments.
• Overall the governance structure of China is more corrupt than is commonly perceived.

To read about how a Master’s degree doesn’t cut it in China anymore, how Bo Xilai personifies the Chinese “meritocracy”, why even fake credentials aren’t good enough, how guanxi is now the only way to secure power, and the average length that a local official will serve before they are promoted click here.

Source: Project Syndicate

Via: Marginal Revolution

Centives has previously mentioned Michael Sandel’s book: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Thomas Friedman looked at some notable examples in the book of how “we have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society”

• In 2001, Fay Weldon, a British novelist, was paid £18,000 by Bulgari to write a novel which mentioned the jewelry company at least 12 times. (It has a 3.8 star rating on Amazon.)
• You can pay Pete Ross, a disgraced baseball player, $299 (plus shipping and handling), to send you an autographed baseball with the words “I’m sorry I bet on baseball” inscribed on it.
• An elementary school in New Jersey sold naming rights to its gym for $100,000 to ShopRite

Read Friedman’s entire review of the book here.

Source: New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Here at Centives we’re eagerly preparing for the release of the next Batman film. We should have some articles that you’ll enjoy. Until then though Jordan Crook has discovered that Nokia has secretly been supplying the Dark Knight’s crusade against crime for some time now:

• The first evidence of this is in the 2008 film The Dark Knight. Lucius Fox is seen using the Nokia 5800 XpressMedia to help form a blueprint that Batman later uses to infiltrate a building.
• A year later Nokia released the Nokia 6205 Dark Knight edition which came with the Bat logo and Bat content pre-loaded onto the phone.
• Fast forward to the present and in anticipation of the film Nokia has released a bat version of its well-received Lumia 900 range. The device is powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone system, and comes with specialized bat-software preloaded. Might we perhaps see the World’s Greatest Detective pin a Lucius Fox live tile onto the home screen? Time will tell.

To see many more pictures and to read other examples including the concept Batman phone, click here.

Source: TechCrunch

Eric Goldschein took a look at “13 People Who Came To America With Nothing And Made A Fortune.” Some highlights include:

• Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo. He was born in Taiwan and when he arrived in the United States, he only knew one word in English: “shoe.”
• Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo. She was born in India, worked as a receptionist to pay her way through Yale, and had to show up to interviews in a Sari because she couldn’t afford to buy clothes.
• Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor from Romania, who has written several books about the Holocaust. He has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Mel Martinez was brought to the United States through “Operation Peter Pan,” an initiative by the United States and the Catholic Church to save Cuba’s children. He represented Florida in the US Senate and is currently the chairman of Chase Bank Florida.
• Gene Simmons (né Chaim Witz) was born in Israel to a Hungarian family. His mother moved to the United States when he was 8, and he went on to become the bassist for KISS.

To read many more examples, including the founder of a bakery, the father of Pentium, the first Indian born CEO of a US transglobal corporation, and the person with average grades who went on to become worth $400 million click here.

Source: Business Insider

Via: Newmark’s Door