| Mother Earth Mother Board
The financial districts of New York, London, and Tokyo, linked by thousands of wires, are much closer to each other than, say, the Bronx is to Manhattan. Today this is all quite familiar, but in the 19th century, when the first feeble bits struggled down the first undersea cable joining the Old World to the New, it must have made people's hair stand up on end in more than just the purely electrical sense - it must have seemed supernatural. Perhaps this sort of feeling explains why when Samuel Morse stretched a wire between Washington and Baltimore in 1844, the first message he sent with his code was "What hath God wrought!" - almost as if he needed to reassure himself and others that God, and not the Devil, was behind it. During the decades after Morse's "What hath God wrought!" a plethora of different codes, signalling techniques, and sending and receiving machines were patented.
Willy Northpole and the Phoenix hip-hop scene explode
The George S. May Company is going to join Magedson's corporate advocacy program. (Kushnir declined to say how much he's paying.) Basically, Kushnir will pay Magedson to reveal the complainants against the company, and then Kushnir can do what he would have wanted to do all along address them. Good news for Magedson. But not such good news for the people who had anonymously blasted George S. May. After all, Magedson will be giving them up. And if they're current employees, they're probably going to be in trouble with a capital T. Kushnir says he won't sue anybody he's learned his lesson but if it's a disgruntled secretary who called the founder a pedophile, it's hard to imagine things will end happily for her. Kushnir says he's happy with how things ended. But the incident does raise some ethical questions.
MOTO Q 9 3G HSDPA Smartphone hits store shelves in Egypt this November
The MOTO Q 9 will be available at leading retails outlets for the Egyptian consumers this November. Based on the Windows Mobile 6™ operating system, the MOTO Q 9 couples a new sleek form factor with a dual-processor HSDPA/UMTS engine, enabling broadband-like over-the-air downloads at up to 3.6Mbps. Consumers will be able to download their favourite music tracks directly onto the Q 9 in approximately thirty seconds without having to touch a computer. 'The MOTO Q 9 is developed for the Middle Eastern consumer as a multi-purpose communication device that is user friendly and uncompromising on user experiences,' said Patrick Mulligan, Area Director, Mobile Devices, Motorola Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and Pakistan. He added, 'This smartphone offers innovative features for professionals and includes state-of-the art voice quality technology, messaging1, speed, processing power, keyboard and display packaged within a sleek design for the modern consumer.' The MOTO Q 9 is more than just a device - it's a statement of power and personality: •Messaging machine -- Choose from eight messaging inboxes for your corporate and/or personal email including, Windows Live and other email providers, as well as SMS and MMS messages.
Show me the money and the perks
Not surprisingly, that shortage is pushing up wages. The latest EMA National Salary and Wage Survey showed that it wasn't just the bosses who got the big pay rises over the year to August. Although managing directors of companies with 50 to 199 staff did very well for themselves with average pay rises of 9.5% for the year, they were eclipsed by shop assistants, who achieved average pay rises of 9.9%. Other jobs which provided pay rises well above the average 4.5%, were registered electricians (9.2%), registered nurses (9.1%), diesel mechanics (8.4%) and general clerks (6.3%). However, that may be just the tip of the iceberg. A survey of pay and conditions by remuneration consultants DSD Consulting showed that companies were having to do much more than just increase pay to attract and retain staff.
Mama's got a brand-new bag
This year's Oscars is currently under threat because of the writers' strike but Mellon has already moved on: her tip for the next frontier of luxury retail is product placement. Jimmy Choo has secured lucrative appearances in Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada, and Mellon is pursuing more. Jimmy Choo himself, the Hackney couture shoemaker with whom she went into business in 1996, was sidelined soon after. (In 2001, he sold his half of the company for £10m to Equinox Luxury Holdings.) Choo's wife's niece, Sandra Choi, who had worked with Choo, sided with Mellon, and despite rumblings of discontent over her low profile compared to Mellon, remains designer of the collections. Next month the relaunched Halston fashion label, a project in which Mellon has collaborated with the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, will debut at New York fashion week.
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