Shell Oil is famous in forecasting circles for their use of scenario planning in Shell’s strategic planning process.  And as a former energy economist (I got better), I still look forward to their annual energy forecasts. 

This year’s forecast looks out to 2050 and has several scenarios around energy production and consumption.  The key charts – their baseline energy demand and production forecasts to 2030 are below.  The key points, I think, are:

1. Rising energy demand from non-OECD (developing) countries
2. A slight decline in energy demand from the OECD countries
3. The growing role of natural gas
4. The growing role of coal
5. How little renewables contribute – even in 2030

Like most small business owners, we don’t have a lot of time to devote to keeping up with the events in the Middle East.  Because of this we’ve turned to Stratfor – a leading geopolitical risk firm – for this information. 

Their most recent article – Revolution and Muslim World – does a nice job of framing what is going on in that part of the world. 

Stratfor has both free and paid content.  Their primary target market is geopolitical risk professionals. 

We used to subscribe to the paid version, but it swamped us with information so we switched and now subscribe to their free newsletter.  The free version not only saves us money, but also better meets our needs. 

The Mobile World Congress was held last week in Barcelona.  This is one of, if not the, biggest mobile tech show in the world attracting over 50,000 participants.  This event led to a flurry of articles and here are the ones I found most interesting:

 - CNET has a long article providing in-depth coverage of the Hot Trends at Mobile World Congress.  If you only want to read one article, scan this one. 

 - Pew’s Generations and Their Gadgets report shows that 85% of adult Americans have a cell phone and 90% of all U.S. house

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The primary goal of every business is earning money by selling some products or services. Now, if the transaction of money is not convenient to both the seller and the buyer, a business cannot sustain. Hence, to take a business to the next level a business needs to have a merchant services account.

A merchant services company aids businesses in accepting payments whether it be by credit cards, debit cards, online checks etc. and therefore it’s a necessary element in order to run a business efficiently. With the popularity of internet shopping, it has been possible for even small businesses to set up shop online, but that is not to say that processing monetary transactions is an easy job. It involves a lot of complexities, and has a lot of risks. P

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Every person who has gone through grade school remembers having to cover their answers from that one person always trying to get an answer that they are stuck on. You want to make sure that your intelligence is only benefitting you and not the person who did not learn the material. That same mindset seems to be playing out right now between Bing and Google. Google claims that Bing has been copying its information so as to not have to go through the trouble of searching out its own information throughout the web.

The complaint is a large one since Google has a 1/3 of the income of Microsoft, yet enjoys three times the amount of searches than Bing. The complaint came about when Google noticed that there was a consistency when looking up information on Bing and Google. The reason why the related lists was too close to be called a coincidence has a lot to do with the algorithms which are used and the manner in which the information is presented.

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With economic recovery from the graphic communications industrys deepest recession finally having begun, companies counting on improving conditions alone to revitalize their businesses may be in for an unpleasant surprise, according to the economists of the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) Research Center in the new NAPL State of the Industry Report, Ninth Edition.

In the past, once the economy recovered, demand for print would grow and everything would return to normal, but now recovery is what we make it, notes NAPL Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Andrew Paparozzi. Build productivity, competitiveness, and value to our clients, and we will participate fully in the recovery.

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