« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »
Kirk Kerkorian, who controls 9.9% of GM stock, is proposing that GM enter the Renault-Nissan fold, reports Automotive News. This was done via a securities filing in which the investor states that the Renault-Nissan alliance is receptive to buying a significant minority interest in GM.
I'm traveling to India on Saturday, as part of a business delegation. We'll be visiting Bangalore and Mumbai, mainly to meet with Technology Parks, look at areas of mutual interest for our IT sector, and the such.
Here's three things I do before every trip overseas:
1. What kind of electrical adapter plug should I take when I travel? A good place to start is Radio Shack. (But double-check, as I see an error there: all of South America does not use the plug they show there.) Another source is Walkabout Travel Gear.
2. Local etiquette, customs, business practices. A must to learn or brush up on before any business trip. The best sources I've found: Executive Planet and Business Etiquette. Not to be heeded blindly as I've read some doozies, but sometimes a doozy turns out to be true... :)
3. Weather Channel!
BTW, look at the electrical adapter plug for India:
DaimlerChrysler is bringing the Smart Fortwo micro compact to the U.S. in 2008. The car will be sold and supported by Roger Penske's UnitedAuto Group 173-franchise network.
The Smart is sold in 36 countries, and very popular in Europe. It was designed as a 2 person mini-vehicle geared towards urban users in cities where parking is a major issue.
Daimler's target is 20,000 cars per year (the BMW Mini sells 40,000). The Smart has done well in Canada... read a nice review here.
Honda will build a 2,000 employee plant in Indiana. Production is slated to begin in fall 2008, with a maximum annual capacity of 200,000 vehicles, says Automotive News.
This is Honda's sixth plant in the U.S.
Ricart Automotive, based in Columbus, Ohio and one of the largest dealerships in the U.S., will begin to sell Chinese made sedans and SUVs this year, says The Columbus Dispatch. According to Rhett Ricart, the company's CEO, "It's all about the consumers looking for the best bang for the buck. This is a $35,000 car (that sells) for $20,000."
Ricart will sell the Europa sedan from Brilliance Auto and the Hover SUV from Great Wall Motor Co.
Both Microsoft and Yahoo recently announced that they are building giant new data centers, but Google has one-upped them with their "Project 02", an up until now secretive initiative that is piece by piece coming to light.
Based 130 kms east of Portland, Oregon, as big as two football fields and with twin 4-story cooling towers, Google is constructing a massive data center that will house what experts say will be the world's most powerful super computers, needed for handling the billions of daily searches plus the growing quantity of web services the company provides.
The new center will be only a part of the "Googleplex", a worldwide computing system tied together by fiber optics. A similar center already exists in Atlanta.
Toyota, in line with the prevailing notion that their biggest worry is not overtaking GM in sales but rather that Hyundai overtake them, is thinking of telling its suppliers not to sell parts to Hyundai. If there is resistance, they are looking at becoming larger stakeholders in these companies.
Hyundai continues to grow. After recently announcing that they want to be among the top 5 manufacturers by 2010, they've now climbed from #7 to #6 in the recently released 2005 ranking, mainly based on growing sales in emerging markets like China, Russia, India, although they've also grown in NA and EU.
So the current ranking is... #1 GM, #2 Toyota, #3 Ford, #4 VW, #5 DaimlerChrylser, #6 Hyundai (and Kia).
Philip Murtaugh, former head of GM China from 2000-2005, joins Shanghai Automotive (SAIC) as an exec-VP in charge of overseas operations. This is one of the highest appointments of a foreigner to a Chinese state-owned firm in history. Shanghai is GM's joint venture partner in China.
This is just another step in line with SAIC's plan to become a worldwide provider of its own cars, rather than those they produce today through their 2 joint ventures (GM and VW). SAIC is investing $460M in a new business that will build and sell its own vehicles, 120,000 by 2009.
As reported by The Australian.
No, I don't think I've discovered America (or gunpowder, or chocolate, depending on the term of choice in your country)...
I'm currently the moderator on en e-learning course on an unrelated topic (the Rules of Squash), and the enthusiasm and dedication shown by the attendees is impressive. The 7-day course was booked completely in a matter of days by people from 10 different countries. Apart from the obvious didactic motive, I also agreed to do this in order to see first-hand what the format and the technology were like.
And I can tell you, there's somethin' happenin' here!
We're not new to this, as we're already working with web-based training for Autologica users around the world; this takes the form of trainer and user looking at the application at the same time through their browsers, with the trainer providing audio as they move along.
But e-learning isn't based on video-conferencing. You could say that though it is on-line, it's not "just-in-time". Users choose when they read the course material, which is all on a website, and can then participate actively and passively in forums and by chat... but the actual training isn't done live.
There are some cool uses for this that I can foresee, not for training in actual use of our software, but for many related topics. I'll tell you more as we advance along these lines...
