There is a way to make totally free calls to regular landlines in the US.

Here is how you do it. You dial 1800FREE411. This connects you to the US directory enquiry service. You then get them to look up your contact and they then through connect you. I haven't done this myself yet, but it is on the Skype website, so I figure they have worked through the model.

If that is not disruptive to old economy telcos, I don't know what is!

Seth Godin has a new book. It is called Flipping the Funnel, and has some really interesting insights.

He has made it available as a free download that anyone can host anywhere. Now you have to admire the brilliance of this! Not only does this enable other people (like us) to promote HIS book. It also means that by us hosting the file, it saves him an awful lot of bandwidth costs....

I recommend that you read it. It's only 18 pages long. Get it here.

A great analysis of the global outlook from Stephen Roach - simple to understand and extremely relevant to all of us....

Here is what it boils down to:




For the Goldilocks economic times to continue it requires for a lot of "best case" scenarios to happen simultaneously. A great concept, but hard to believe in. So we need to face up to the potential for stormy weather in global economies.

The US Government debt, as defined by its own website, has now reached $8,190.5 Billion. This breaches the current allowable debt as defined from time to time by the US Congress, by $5.5 Billion. Last time that the US was nearing the allowed debt level, there was great consternation in the US. This time the limit was reached and passeed without a whimper

There was a 40% increase in traffic on the Australian Tennis Website.

How much of this could have come from Greece/Cyprus - or from Greeks living in Australia?

Here is something nice to start Monday with...... an article from CNN/Fortune about the views of George Soros and Bill Browder on the potential scenarios that could lead to further spikes in the price of oil.

From the fall of the house of Saud to Iraqi insurgents disrupting pipelines - none of the scenarios are outrageous.

Last night on the BBC World News channel there was a tremendous program  hosted by Nik Gowing at Davos with leaders of countries, industries, companies - again from Davos - trying to establish what things should be on the agenda that are not. Key issue that came out was the need for mobility of labour. Demographics in Europe mean that there has to be a massive influx of non-anglo saxon people to provide basic labour as the native poplulations of the countries of Europe age. But this is not a vote winner domestically in each of the countries. Capital flows easily to where it can be used most profitably. People do not/can not.

At a hacker conference in Washington last week a new search concept was unveiled that will enable personal anonymity to be protected. It is called Anonym.OS. Apparently not viable on a large scale for a variety of reasons, it is nevertheless expected to lead to a system whereby you will carry a USB key with you that can be used wherever you are - on your own laptop or in a cyber cafe - to ensure that neither you nor the computer you use will be able to be tracked in the way that Google and others currently track your every move.

Some of the risk issues raised at Davos:

Continuing trade imbalances between the US and China, which have resulted in a severe deterioration of the American current account deficit

 The US housing market bubble is what has enabled the US consumerism to grow unabated. When the bubble bursts or deflates savings erosion stops dead in its tracks and so does the US consumer.

In China it is the reverse: The economy is driven simultaneously by exports and investment spending, with consumerism offset by a savings mentality.

Historically: When Volker took over as Fed Chairman in 1979, the bond market crashed within a quarter and when Greenspan took over in 1987 the stock market crashed within a quarter.

As if we should be surprised.... article in the WSJ about car ads moving on line. The diff now is that the "slippage may be turning into a landslide".

I had a meeting with a friend here in Sydney during the last week who is in the business of providing digital signage. (That is flat panel screens that carry ads. His speciality is providing these in stores together with touch screen kiosks to enable consumers to select products and then hasten to the check out). He told me that in conversations that he has been having here with significant brands and/or their agencies (think Coke for one) that they are moving their ad spends away from traditional media to placing their ads on line.

So now we have a trend away from "old" electronic media and a "landslide" away from old print media.

Sounds like the tipping point has really been reached. The time at which the non-digital media companies move from a few nasty cuts to serious arterial bleeding.

Of course there is another side to this equation...... Opportunity in the on line space! Pocasting, blogging, etc.

Here is a follow on from the post below about Stephen Roach's latest.  A Reuters story that hilights the probability of market volatility starting in the next week as Greenspan hands the baton to Bernanke. The problem that needs to be faced as a result of globalization, easy credit and overblown US deficit, is one of deflation. And Bernanke's expertise is elsewhere.