Pip Coburn writes about a comment by Arnie Berman: "Replacement time frames for personal computers grow longer While simultaneously Replacement time frames for televisions shrink."

Om Malik writes:

Necessity, they say is the mother of invention. It couldn’t be more true in case of Africa, where pre-paid airtime is fast becoming the ‘virtual’ currency for Pan-African trade, overcoming conventional currency exchange and lack of banking infrastructure. It started out as phone users in Nigeria, especially in the rural areas trading minutes, but then the transactions took a mercantile trend.

Instead of paying cash, people started paying in airtime. Minutes became moolah and since the trend has caught on, and is being used for cross border trade as well.

Read/Write Web does an interesting analysis on the "textual information we consume in a typical day, focusing in particular on blogs, news, email, IMs, Twitter."

Bokardo addresses the question: why invest in social features? Four reasons:
1. Amplify Customer Opinion
2. Data, Data, and more Data
3. Reduce Support Costs
4. Engender Trust

Guy Kawasaki talks to Margie Zable Fisher:

# The client doesn’t understand the publicity process. PR folks need to better educate people about how publicity works. The first thing many clients ask is, “Can you get me on Oprah or the front page of the Wall Street Journal?” The answer might be “yes,” but the process to get to the “yes” may take months or years, and may first include a series of smaller placements.

# The scope of work is not detailed and agreed upon by both parties. Here’s a typical example: a client signs an agreement to spend $3,000 per month. Client expects to get three publicity placements per month. PR person expects to work 20 hours, regardless of the outcome. The inevitable disconnect leads to customer frustration and the feeling of being “burned.”

# The client has not been properly trained on how to communicate with the media. Proper training for interviews is crucial; otherwise, key messages can be misconstrued, and even negative stories can result. Clients seldom blame themselves when this happens.

In May, the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh made a widely- discussed speech to the CII. Here is the full-text of that speech. I think the PM missed an opportunity to lay out a vision for a New and Better India. My colleague, Atanu Dey, has written a speech that the Indian PM should have made. Here it is.

Dear Members of the Confederation of Indian Industries:

I am very honored to be invited to share my thoughts with you on the subject of “Inclusive Growth – the Challenges for Corporate India.” I appreciate deeply the critically important role that Indian corporations play in the present – and will continue to play – in the economic growth and development of India. For that, you have my gratitude; not just mine but the gratitude of the people of a nation that is on the move.

You, more than any other group, certainly understand the source of all wealth – production. And what is more, you know how to create wealth. Wealth does not drop like gentle rain from heaven; it does not come as a gift from some government agency; it does not spontaneously arise from some softly spoken magic spell; it does not materialize out of the vain electoral promises of some demagogue; it does not flow unbidden from the earth like some volcanic eruption. No, you know as well as anyone does that it requires hard work, entrepreneurship, risk taking, imagination, skill, investment, and vision to create wealth.

Production – that is, the creation of wealth – matters because ultimately that is what gets distributed as income to the people. If production were inadequate for whatever reason, even equitable distribution of that production would not eliminate poverty. The problem of a fair distribution of wealth is a much more tractable problem than the production of wealth. Society rightly burdens you – the corporations of the economy – with the task of producing wealth, and relieves you of the burden of correcting for any unfair distribution and assigns that task to the government. It is an understandable division of labor. Corporations have a comparative advantage in creating wealth. If any redistribution is necessitated, then it is the job of the government to do so.

You – the private sector – have to do what the government cannot do. The government does not create wealth; you do. In every sphere, wherever you have been allowed to go ahead with your job – producing wealth – you have surpassed all expectations. Decades of government involvement in attempted production of wealth had resulted in diminished expectations from India and Indians. You have demonstrated that if given the chance, India and Indians are second to none.

Consider for a moment those things that India is known globally for in the world of excellence and achievement. Every sphere in which India competes and comes out among the leaders has been the result of private enterprise, whether it is in IT and ITES, or in manufacturing. What about the government and political leadership? While the captains of our industries – the Tatas, Birlas, Kalyanis, Mallyas, Ambanis, and others – compare very favorably globally, our political leadership is infamous for being a haven for criminals. The percentage of criminals among the politicians is an order of magnitude greater than that in the general population. That is a fact that we have to keep in mind when we talk about governance of this great nation.

Ladies and gentlemen of the CII, in my talk here I will remind you of your responsibility and your duty, of course. But I will also take this opportunity to remind us of what the government’s responsibility is. I further assert that the industry and the government have distinct and important roles, and that separation of industry and government must be maintained if we have to have growth.

Tomorrow: Governance