Goldman Sachs has reported the earnings of the third quarter, and has surpassed the analysts’ expectations. It has indeed survived the rough times of the financial crisis with billions of dollars pouring in from the federal government.

The earnings of $ 3.19 is said to be due to the mergers and acquisition fees and also better securities trading. The analysts had predicted the value of the Goldman Sachs’ share at $4.18 per share or $2.34 billion. The current rate going at $ 5.25 a share clearly indicates that the bank has begun to show some signs of stability and the financial conditions are improving at a steady rate.

Goldman Sachs has also declared that it has kept aside $ 5.35 billion for the annual bonus. With the bank receiving federal aid of billions, this continues to be a controversial topic. The bank asserts that it needs to retain its employees and it is essential. Goldman Sachs has returned $10 billion to the federal government earlier this year.

Another Wall Street bank, JPMorgan Chase announced profit of $3.6 billion for the third Quarter.

Via: NyTimes

According to the mobile marketing firm, Brand in Hand which handles global clients like P&G, General Mills, American Express and other big global players, is of the opinion that females who use smartphones likes iPhones are more likely to overlook mobile advertising.

Over the 60 trial campaigns that have been analyzed, it was seen that female iPhone users’ post click page view rates were way lower than the conventional cellphone users. Post click page means the online actions of the user in response to the banner advertisement. Non smartphone users had as average of 3-3-5 post click page views in comparison to 1.3 for iPhone users.

Around 721,000 mothers in the age group between 25-44 years own an iPhone. These women are more task-oriented and it is more difficult to keep her engaged and expose her to mobile marketing.

Brand in Hand develops mobile advertising that caters to a larger population of mobile users and not necessarily only to the smartphone users. It deals with mass consumer brands and so its strategies for mobile marketing will also be the same. However, it can be seen as a creativity limitation; however, with the mobile users also targeted in countries like China, India and Brazil, it only makes more sense. Male users of smartphones like iPhones have shown more response to mobile sites and advertisements.

Via: Adage

Over the years, Goldman Sachs has declared that the emerging nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China. (BRIC) will be the economic powerhouses in future. Citigroup too has declared the increasing influence of China and India in the rest of the world with their increasing prosperity.

However, this economic prosperity has not actually trickled down the millions of Indians who live below the poverty line. According to the Institute of Development Studies, at least 2000 to 3000 children starve to death everyday. At least 25 % Indians still don’t get to eat one square meal a day. 880 million Indians earn less than $ 2 per day. Others earn on an average $ 5 per day. These figures are actually worse than the sub Saharan Africa.

The middle class is mainly the contributor to the boom in the Indian economy with their increased purchasing power.  The majority of Indians living in the rural areas in poverty are neglected. Politics, caste system, religion, superstition, traditional prejudices are some of the root causes of poverty in India. For example, a woman from a lower caste would not be allowed to attend government initiatives to educate the villagers about malnutrition. India’s progress to reduce malnutrition is still very slow in comparison to China.

If majority of the children are still starving to death and are growing hungry, what good is an economy that grows consistently? How is it going to sustain the growth if its future generations are growing up malnourished and uneducated?

Via: Dailyfinance

The US retails sales continue to remain sluggish after all these months of global recession. The sales figure for the retail industry showed the highest amount so far this year in September 2009. The sales figure was down by 1.5 percent, according to the US Commerce Department, but did better than it was expected.

The consumer spending is a huge part of the US economy. The consumer spending has plummeted over the course of last few months. However, the car sales still have contributed to poor retail sales figure. The late Labor Day did help the retailers sell their merchandise in September that would have been otherwise purchased in the month of August.

The auto industry witnessed a drop of 10.4 percent. However, with the government initiative to pay out up to $4500 to give up the older model and replace it with more fuel efficient cars, has helped a bit. The sales in the merchandise stores like Target and Wal-Mart show an improvement of 0.9 percent.  Analysts opine that furniture sales are up by 1.4 percent, again a sign of improvement in the housing industry.

Via: BBC

India has more than 47 million online users, and half of which is very active on social networking sites like Facebook or Orkut. However, so far, Orkut had dominated the market share in India. This may not last for all that long though. The Google owned networking site saw a huge drop in its customer base from 16.95 million in June to 14.7 million in August.

Facebook which is the second most popular networking site after Orkut in India said to have been poaching the users out of Orkut through a data portability application. This application allows the users who are on both the sites, to transfer their contact list to Facebook. There has been an exponential growth for Facebook with the help of this application. It has even been reported by an executive from a digital marketing agency that Orkut had to actually disable this facility of data transfer. However, when the users expressed discontent, it has no other option but to call it as a technical issue.

The biggest irony of all is that, this application is not even an invention of Facebook. OpenSocial was an initiative taken by Google as a common application programming interface to make it easy to transfer data for other Google products. The battle is not over yet. However, Orkut does have a danger lurking around.

Via:Livemint

Many teenage girls in Hong Kong, China are indulging in what they call “compensated dating”, a form of prostitution. In the last two years the number has only increased. More number of school girls is indulging in this to earn money for their shopping and other luxuries.  Sze, (name has been changed) started with this “compensated dating” at a tender age of 16. Her first customer was a 40 year old man who skipped dinner and had sex in the guesthouse in exchange for money.

Sze shares her stories to warn many other girls in this world who may stray in the wrong path. She said that this form of dating where they get paid not only for going out with a man, but also to have sex is very common in all girls’ schools. Young girls get attracted to all designer clothes, shoes, and jewellery that fast money could buy. She was introduced to it by her classmates through chat forums where she met her male customers. Sze explains that although she made her conditions very clear in the telephone about the charges and the number of times she would have sex, she still had to deal with some pushy customers and some even refused to use protection. The risks of diseases in these teenage girls are very high. Safety is a major concern as well. A teenager was killed and flushed down by the toilet by a man named Ting-Kai-Tai who is sentenced to life imprisonment.

Such teenagers feel “compensated dating” is not prostitution as they think have control over the whole dating process. However, such mistakes are made by this age group. The girls are from all socio economic classes, not necessarily only from poor backgrounds. Social worker Chiu Tak-Choi is working with such girls and has helped many like Sze to overcome this. Sze now works for a hair salon.

Via: CNN

Two months ago the chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt of the search engine giant, Google, resigned from the Board of Directors of Apple Inc.  Now the resignation comes from the Arthur Levinson as the member of the Board of Directors of Google. He was on both the boards as a director prior to the resignation.

Resignation became a necessity for these two directors are the two companies have started to compete more directly and openly. The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was pleased with this resignation as it had been probing on this issue. According to the law of United States, a person cannot be a member of two organizations simultaneously when both are direct competitors or rivals.

Earlier Google and Apple were earlier seen as allies to beat the Microsoft in the business. However, in the recent times both Apple and Google have been seen as competitors especially in the mobile phone segment.

The Federal Trade Commission chairman, Mr. John Leibowitz welcomed the resignation of Arthur Levinson. Having a member in the Board of Directors of such two rival companies raises the question of severe anti trust issues. Anti trust issues could cause serious damage to the reputation of the company too. Al Gore, who was the former US vice president, is he last person who is the connecting link between these two companies. Al Gore serves as an advisor to Google and still retains the member in the Apple board of directors.

Via: BBC

The next best innovation of Google, the search engine giant is the Google Wave, creating waves of excitement in the internet shores. Although, the company has allowed a limited number of previews that is 1,00,000 so far, it promises that in future the virtual world will be ruled by the Google Wave in terms of internet communication.

Google Wave is an attempt to redefine the form of communication over the internet. It’s an improvisation of the boring form of chatting, e-mail and other forms of communication. The Google wave is also an open source giving an opportunity for the developers to build new applications.

The best feature of the Google Wave is the smart integration of the e-mail, chats, Google maps, and other applications. The speed is another commendable feature. The files, pictures and other data can be instantly transferred. While chatting, the other person can see what one is typing instantly, every letter on a real time basis. The spell check has been improvised too.

The most innovative feature of the Google Wave is that it allows users in the waves to instantly brainstorm, make business or personal plans, edit collaboratively, to name a few, all in a single wave.   “Yes/No/Maybe’’ gadget  instantly allows you to poll amongst friends, For example, the number of people interested in a particular event. Moreover, allowing every user in that wave to make comments, suggestions, etc. A playback button is rather an important feature to see the way the conversation has begun and one can follow the entire thread even after it has been edited.

Play hangman or Sudoku, or update your Twitter status from the wave itself. It is indeed the future of internet communication!

Via:Economictimes

Sally Sinclair, 40 year old business woman working for Vodafone was stabbed to death by her husband Alisdair. The post mortem examination revealed that the woman was stabbed more than 30 times by variety of kitchen knives and found dead at the property near Amport, Hampshire. She suffered broken ribs and was beaten up badly.

Sally was the head of the Business Analysis in Vodafone and the breadwinner of the household. She was said to be dominated by her husband to the point that she did not even have her own bank account until few weeks before she died. A child witnessed the husband and wife with knives and shouting at each other. “Nobody has to get killed” shouted the child.  It has been reported that the wife revealed her affair with another person to her husband. Their marriage was already on the rock for months. Sally had filed for a divorce petition of more than 20 years which was ignored by Alisdair.

The friends and family of Sally say that Sally did not have any control over her finances and her husband was insensitive and dominating. He had got into fights with the neighbors. He also splurged in his wife’s money by buying high end cars and bikes and never drove them fearing damage to the vehicles.

Alisdair Sinclair surrendered himself to the police and accepted the murder of his wife. Although, he was wounded and taken to the hospital, the jury doubts that it could be self inflicted.

Via: Dailymail

If you ever missed eating the American fast food while you were travelling in Nepal, then get ready to savor the Kentucky Fried Chicken and some pizza from the Pizza Hut too.

The RJ Corp that has entered Nepal in the real estate sector with luxury apartments and condominium project is now all set to introduce KFC and Pizza Hut in the valley of Kathmandu. These fast food giants will be located at the Sherpa Shopping Mall. The chicken for the finger licking KFC will be flown from Brazil. The other necessary equipment is brought from India, Thailand and China. The training for the staff is also done in India.

The RJ Corp, that owns Varun Beverages, the largest bottler for the soft drink Pepsi, had planned for the launch much earlier. However, it was delayed due the insurgency by the Maoist government and the never ending political turmoil.  Pokhara, a popular tourist destination of Nepal is another location the company is considering to launch another branch of KFC and Pizza Hut in future. The group has been considering launching Costa Coffee from UK as well.

Although the authentic Nepalese fast foods like dumplings and noodle soup have competitive price range, KFC and Pizza Hut could bank on the affluent customers and tourists.

Via: TimesofIndia