Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

From Bloomberg:

Uber faces an ever-growing cast of adversaries that includes dubious regulators, litigious drivers, hostile members of the press, and some well-funded rivals. But the most significant threat to the app-based transportation company may be much closer to home: one of its biggest investors, Google.
Google Ventures, the search giant's venture capital arm, invested $258 million in Uber in August 2013. It was Google Ventures' largest investment deal ever, and the company put more money into Uber's next funding round less than a year later. Back then, it was easy for observers to imagine Google teaming closely with Uber, or even one day acquiring it. David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development, joined the Uber board of directors in 2013 and has served on it ever since.
Now there are signs that the companies are more likely to be ferocious competitors than allies. Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project. Drummond has informed Uber's board of this possibility, according to a person close to the Uber board, and Uber executives have seen screenshots of what appears to be a Google ride-sharing app that is currently being used by Google employees. This person, who requested not to be named because the talks are private, said the Uber board is now weighing whether to ask Drummond to resign his position as an Uber board member.

Uber is also teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University for a research facility in Pittsburgh, Pa., to develop its own autonomous vehicle technology, the company announced on Monday. (The news was reported earlier by TechCrunch.)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-02/exclusive-google-and-uber-are-going-to-war-over-taxis

Standford’s How Everyday Things are Made

Again, the productive capacity including manufacturing is the wealth of a nation.  I started to develop my interest in manufacturing when I was working for a GM division in Midwest.

From Standford University:

If you've ever wondered how things are made - products like candy, cars, airplanes, or bottles - or if you've been interested in manufacturing processes, like forging, casting, or injection molding, then you've come to the right place.

AIM has developed an introductory website for kids and adults showing how various items are made. It covers over 40 different products and manufacturing processes, and includes almost 4 hours of manufacturing video. It is targeted towards non-engineers and engineers alike. Think of it as your own private online factory tour, or a virtual factory tour, if you wish.

We are able to cover only a small number of products and processes, but we believe it will give you a good introduction to the world of manufacturing.

Enjoy!

 

http://manufacturing.stanford.edu/

The Future of Medicine? Forget Private Doctor Appointments, Group Medical Visits are Coming

From Bloomberg:
In a typical doctor’s visit, you wait around for a while, get your vitals checked, and spend a few minutes alone in a room with a physician. It’s private and short. Some doctors, frustrated by a relentless schedule of 15-minute, one-on-one visits, are experimenting with appointments that are neither.

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, around 10 percent of family doctors already offer shared medical appointments, sessions that bring together a dozen or more patients with similar medical conditions to meet with a doctor for 90 minutes. With pressure from the government and insurers to bring down the cost of care while treating the increasing number of people with health insurance, patients can expect group visits to become more common. “It’s efficient. It’s economical. It’s high-quality care when it’s done right,” says Edward Noffsinger, a California psychologist who created the model in the 1990s at Kaiser Permanente, the state’s largest health maintenance organization (HMO).

In a group visit, exams and tests are still conducted privately, but patients discuss their ailments in front of the group. The theory is that each patient can learn from the others’ experience, and doctors get to have a longer, more relaxed discussion instead of hopscotching to three or four exam rooms in an hour. “You have one appointment with 10 observers,” says Marianne Sumego, an internist at the Cleveland Clinic. “Patients are really getting the equivalent of 10 visits.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-29/health-why-group-medical-visits-are-catching-on?hootPostID=1ff64cc13e8ecfaf52a0f0e43fb3efd4

Female entrepreneurship: What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women

From Newsweek:

recent report on women entrepreneurs by the Kauffman Foundation identified the chief challenges to female entrepreneurship. Researchers interviewed 350 female entrepreneurs, and most cited “lack of available advisers” at the top of their list. Female professional attrition is only one reason for the scarcity of mentors for younger women.
…No amount of confidence changes the fact that the valley’s big venture capitalists are almost entirely male. The top five don’t have any female senior partners, and VC partners are 96 percent male. Twenty years ago, the partners were 97 percent male.
VCs are not funding women. According to a study by Babson College, only 2.7 percent of the 6,517 companies that received venture funding from 2011 to 2013 had women CEOs. Meanwhile, the Kauffman report found that female-run startups produce a 31 percent higher return on investment than startups run by men.
One problem with the male-dominated system is that top partners have almost never been exposed to women as professional peers. Their interaction with women is limited to their wives and daughters, and maybe executive assistants.
Male VCs who don’t have female professional peers are especially difficult to pitch on products that serve a female market. “Dozens of times, women have come and told me, I pitched to a firm and what do I hear over and over, ‘Oh, I will go home and ask my wife about it,’” says Trish Costello, an entrepreneur and founder of Portfolia, a venture capital investment platform designed for women. She is also CEO emeritus and co-founder of the Palo Alto–based Kauffman Fellows, a global training institute for venture capitalists.

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/02/06/what-silicon-valley-thinks-women-302821.html?piano_t=1

The Worst Trade Deal That You've Never Heard Of

From Jesse's Cafe:

Obama's hypocrisy seems to know no bounds. He was for hope and change, openness and transparency, jobs and civil society.

He is a brand, a marketing product of identity politics. Unfortunately, most of the politicians of both the left and the right are the same. They are just targeted to different segments of the public.

They say what is required for their marketing campaigns, and then do what they have been told to do by the moneyed interests who have bought and shaped them after they are elected.

 

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.kr/2015/01/the-worst-trade-deal-that-youve-never.html

Nomi Prins: The Sinister Evolution Of Our Modern Banking System

From Zero Hedge:

I quit Wall Street and decided that it was time to talk more about what was going on inside it, as it had changed. It had become far more sinister and far more dangerous.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-01/nomi-prins-sinister-evolution-our-modern-banking-system

Lead, Kindly Light

From Jesse's Cafe:

Two versions based on John Henry Newman's famous poem, Lead Kindly Light.

“May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last."

J. H. Newman

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.kr/2015/01/lead-kindly-light.html