“But there’s another good reason for checking out a candidate’s Facebook page before inviting them in for an interview: it may be a fairly accurate reflection of how good they’ll be at the job.” Kashmir Hill reports on a study that will be read by HR consultants the world over.
www.forbes.com
Tag Archives: business
Canonical’s ticking time clock
“Ubuntu could have stayed relevant if Canonical hadn’t tossed aside its user base to pursue Unity and tablets.” Barbara Hudson shares her doubts about Canonical’s apparent strategy for Ubuntu.
www.linuxinsider.com
Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?
“Evidence indicates that when it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals.” Financial crisis ongoing, Matt Taibbi’s article should be of interest to anyone.
www.rollingstone.com
Apple v Google
“Apple’s and Google’s war for the phone in our pockets is the biggest clash since Apple v Microsoft for the space on our desktops” and, according to Robert Lane Greene, likely to impact the way we experience the world around us.
moreintelligentlife.com
Twenty reasons never to fly Ryanair
“Depressingly, all publicity is good publicity when you are the world’s leading budget airline and Ryanair doesn’t give a damn whether you like it or not. But while the airline can be cheap, the customer service truly sucks. So, here are 20 things to remember next time you are led into temptation by those 1p flights.” Laura Whateley has done her research.
timesbusiness.typepad.com
The roots of the crisis
“It is the intersection of several underlying trends that have brought us to this point, not a breakdown in any specific part of the financial sector.” Michael Flynn looks at the underlying reasons for the current Wall Street crisis.
www.reason.com
Off the record
“Record company insiders are aghast at the demise of what was their golden goose. And some of them know that they were partly responsible for killing it.” Robert Sandall looks at reasons for the decline in the value of recorded music over recent years.
www.prospect-magazine.co.uk
Open secrets
“Enron proves that in an age of increasing financial complexity the idea that the more a company tells us about its business, the better off we are, has become an anachronism.” Malcolm Gladwell on why Woodward and Bernstein would never have broken the Enron story.
www.newyorker.com
Silos are for grain, not VoIP
“The ability to lose is ours according to Microsoft, Skype, Vonage and many others in the mix.” Erik Lagerway argues that VoIP, the biggest show on the Internet, is being undermined by some of the largest players in the industry.
gigaom.com
Darwinian markets
“I’m struck by the work of some of the anti-globalization protesters, which has been admirably out-of-the-tunnel in terms of motivation, but naively ill-informed about how the world economy works.” Economist Paul Seabright on how human beings developed a complex system of cooperation and specialization between unrelated individuals.
www.reason.com
Ego makes entrepreneurs?
“While conventional wisdom assumes entrepreneurs have great risk tolerance compared to the rest of us, we consistently found that they aren’t really that different. In some cases, they’re even more risk averse.” Researcher Brian Wu finds overconfidence to be the vital ingredient.
www.businessweek.com
Low taxes do what?
Was Ross Perot right in suggesting that NAFTA would result in a “giant sucking sound”, with US jobs fast disappearing over the border to Mexico? Or did the number of jobs increase after NAFTA went into effect? Thomas Sowell is in search of the facts.
www.hoover.org
Linux Inc
“Little understood by the outside world, the community of Linux programmers has evolved in recent years into something much more mature, organized, and efficient. Put bluntly, Linux has turned pro.” Steve Hamm takes you on a tour of what has become the Linux phenomenon.
www.businessweek.com
Linux: the thinking person’s IT solution
“It is ironic that a fear of technology has sent thousands of companies hurtling into the arms of an IT vendor that has some of the most complex, resource hungry and insecure server technology on the market.” Malcolm Cartledge prefers low cost and high reliability.
www.biosmagazine.co.uk
The real reasons Bush went to war
“Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with weapons of mass destruction as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate.” A disturbingly coherent explanation put forward by John Chapman.
www.guardian.co.uk
10 truths about trade
“Is globalisation sending the best American jobs overseas? If you get your news from CNN’s Lou Dobbs, the answer is ‘of course’.” Brink Lindsey puts some commonly made assumptions about the US American economy to the test. Useful reading even if, like me, you do not live in North America.
www.reason.com
A cloud over civilisation
“Wars are a major threat to civilised existence, and a corporate commitment to weapons procurement nurtures this threat.” Economist John Kenneth Galbraith argues that companies control the state.
www.guardian.co.uk
Microsoft’s sacred cash cow
“Recently, I’ve had a crisis of faith. Perhaps I’ve rebooted Windows one too many times.” Former Microsoft employee Jeff Reifman tells on why addiction to Windows revenue, mediocre products, and missed opportunities could spell doom for the software giant.
www.seattleweekly.com