Visa Regulations for the Philippines

Visa Regulations for the Philippines:
By: Leonard Dalugdog

Visa regulations for the Philippines, By: Glen MCBeth

Foreign nationals are allowed to enter and travel within the Philippines for 21 days without a visa provided that they have valid tickets for their return journey to their port of origin or to their next travel destination port and that their passports are valid for a period of at least six (6) months. Extension of stay is available at the Philippine Bureau of Immigration after paying a minimal fee. For stays longer than 21 days, a Temporary Visitors Visa is required. Here are 9 easy steps as to how to obtain your visa:

• Determine if you even need a visa. You can enter the Philippines for a stay of no more than 21 days without obtaining a visa. If you will be staying for more than three weeks, continue to the next step.
• Obtain two passport photographs. When you apply for your Philippine visa, you will need to have a passport photograph that measure 2 inches by 2 inches. If you have existing passport photographs, they can be used as long as they were taken within the last six months.
• Find the Philippine Consulate Office that is nearest to where you live. The main Philippine Embassy is in Washington, D.C., but there are Philippine consulate offices in many major cities. You can find a complete list of locations on the website for the embassy.
• Get an application form for a non-immigrant visa to the Philippines. The form can be obtained from the consulate office that manages your area, or it can be printed online at the Philippine embassy website. Simply click the link for “Consular Forms,” then click the link for the non-immigrant visa application.
• Complete the visa application form, but do not sign it. If you will be traveling to the consulate office personally, you should sign the application in the presence of the consular. If you will be sending your application by mail, sign the application in the presence of a notary public, who will check your identification and notarize the form as proof that you are really the one who signed it.
• Gather proof of financial responsibility. You will need two items for this. First, you will need a photocopy of a recent bank statement to show that you are financially able to travel. Second, you will need to have either photocopies of a round-trip ticket or a certification from a travel agent that you will be in possession of round-trip tickets at the time of your travel. The reason for these items is to make sure no one finds themselves stranded in the Philippines without a method of returning home.
• Research the application fee. Up-to-date fees can always be obtained from the Philippine embassy. As of 2010, the fee is $30 for a single-entry visa that expires in three months, $60 for a single that expires in six months, or $90 for a multiple-entry visa that expires after one year. Note that the visa is only valid for a stay of up to 59 days per entry, regardless of when the visa expires.
• Package together your application form, a check or money order for the application fee and your proof of financial responsibility. Also include your passport, which must be valid for a period of six months beyond your date of travel. Either take them to your nearest consulate office in person or mail your application. If your application is mailed, provide a postage-paid envelope for the return of your passport, preferably by FedEx, UPS, DHL or other certified courier.
• And finally, get your passport back with the visa inside. If you take your paperwork to the consulate in person, you can expect to get your visa processed and added to your passport within a couple of hours. If you mail your paperwork, you should receive everything back in about a week, but processing times may vary depending upon the volume of requests.

 

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Can Romney replicate Bush’s 2004 path to victory? It looks dicey.

Can Romney replicate Bush’s 2004 path to victory? It looks dicey.:
There’s little question that come Nov. 6, President Obama won’t equal the 365 electoral votes that the then-candidate Obama won in the 2008 election.
But the bigger and more important question when it comes to the electoral-college conversation is whether former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney can come close to replicating the path to victory that President George W. Bush took during his 2004 reelection race. At the moment that looks like a dicey proposition, and that should make Republicans very nervous.
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Resistant to the inevitable: How technology is changing the restaurant industry

Resistant to the inevitable: How technology is changing the restaurant industry:
Technology touches every facet of our lives – as it always has – but with the emergence of mobile devices and cloud computing making more of an impact than ever, you’d be hard-pressed to go anywhere and not find a high-tech piece of hardware or software around. These advances have made an impact everywhere, and one of the places we’re seeing more and more technology is in the food and restaurant industry.
Between the arrival of mobile devices on the table, online reservations, social media, and new payment methods, technology has infiltrated the food and restaurant industry like never before. Some of the advances will serve to improve the experience — both for the industry and for the patron. Yet with every new advance comes a new challenge, and with technology moving faster these challenges can seem insurmountable. It’s how the industry deals with these advances — and the challenges that accompany them — that will determine the fate of many restaurants, regardless of what’s on the menu.

High-tech help

There have been a variety of iPad mounts for the kitchen available for our homes for some time, but now we’re seeing them invade the kitchens and dining areas of restaurants. According to a recent article in the USA Today, restaurants in San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and in other parts of the United States are starting to allow patrons to use iPads to place their orders. While this may be a welcome sign for the industry as a whole (which, according to the piece, has been flat due to the economic downturn since 2007), it might not work out so well for the servers who are displaced by a tablet. Payroll is one of the largest controllable expenses in the industry, and keeping it as low as possible can have a huge impact on a restaurant’s bottom line.
Chris Vickers has several years’ experience as a server in a variety of restaurant settings. While he waits tables to pay the bills (he’s an up-and-coming actor — yes, the stereotype isn’t lost here), he says that using a device to act in place of a real person in that manner isn’t necessarily the best option.
“When people are going to to eat, they are looking for a human experience. They like that someone is taking the time to cater to their needs.”
Vickers goes on to say that while using iPads as menus may be passable in some of the “middle of the road” restaurants, they just aren’t suitable for those that specialize in fine dining.
“Human interaction is very important,” Vickers says. “A machine can’t replace that. A good waiter brings what a machine can’t.”
Besides replacing menus (and possibly those who take your order from them), tablets have the potential to help hosts deal with incoming patrons who may have reservations. This can be accomplished through connecting the restaurant’s website to some form of online reservation system (using a service like OpenTable or a website extension like TableBoss or JS Restaurant) and then simply using the tablet as a means of checking out who is scheduled when. This allows the restaurant to maintain their computerized system (such as tone of the primary point-of-sale systems like Squirrel) on their main computers while the tablet is used for secondary tasks.
But the use of mobile devices isn’t limited to the serving side of things. They can be used to track inventory, regular checklists, and can go so far as to be used in a similar way we use in our own home kitchens – as a way to help out new kitchen workers get a handle on the restaurant’s menu items.
Still, with all of these potential benefits come the possibility of pitfalls.
Shellie Gudgeon is co-owner of Il Terrazzo, a fine Italian dining restaurant based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She believes that there are certain aspects of the business that technology can’t do all that well – and can actually harm an establishment when it does fail. For example, bringing mobile tablets into her restaurant would be an exercise in futility — or failure.
“Our restaurant has a lot dead spots since it is housed in an older building,” Gudgeon says. “With the red brick walls throughout it’d be tough to adopt that sort of thing.”
But it has more to do with what Vickers has already said that is what will keep iPad menus off the table at Il Terrazzo.
“No way. Having a server is part of the experience. You can’t take that away.”
Again, mobile devices (and the Internet for that matter) come into play in a variety of ways, and what happens with them while in the customer’s hands both inside and outside the walls of a restaurant can have a huge impact on an establishment’s success.

The power of the crowd

Social networking sites have played a huge role in shaping the views of society on a myriad of issues, and they are also playing a role in shaping people’s opinions of dining establishments. With Foursquare, customers can leave their thoughts on a restaurant – good or bad – when they check-in. In fact, they can simply be in the area of the restaurant and do that. If a patron has an experience they want to share on Facebook or Twitter (again, good or bad), they can influence a lot of users with just one update. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
According to an article at DailyDealMedia, Yelp is perhaps the worst for a restaurant’s business:

“43 percent of restaurant owners polled said that Yelp, the restaurant review site was a problem because it basically gives customers carte blanche to say whatever they want about a restaurant and a lot of the reviews can be very damaging.”

In a city like Victoria, where tourism is one of the primary industries, tech-savvy patrons from out-of-town often refer to Yelp to choose where to eat. When looking at the Yelp reviews on Il Terrazzo, they generally fall between 4 and 5 stars, but a 2 star review is what caught my attention:

What caught my eye was that it was the sole 2 star review among a sea of 4 and 5 star ones. While this review wouldn’t keep me from eating at Il Terrazzo because of all of the excellent reviews by other users, it definitely stood out. And that could make a problem for many restaurants.
Gudgeon is a fan of sites like Yelp — but especially TripAdvisor — saying that it “drives business” to her door.
“(It) sends a powerful message and creates a huge awareness,” Gudgeon explains. “It assists our management in ensuring that everyone is treated well because everyone is equal. These kind of sites are a huge tool for restaurants and they really democratize the landscape.”
Gudgeon went on to cite the example of Ruth Reichl, the well-known food critic who would dress up in disguises when going to restaurants she’d be reviewing so that she’d be treated as a regular customer as opposed to getting superior treatment. Gudgeon says that because of sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other social networks, restaurants have to be more vigilant than ever to make sure that “everyone is treated well”.
Another establishment that I researched on Yelp was my local coffee shop, Koffi. It has also offered a Groupon in the past, which was another site that the DailyDealMedia article stated was generally harmful to restaurants. I spoke with owner Michael Manhas about how services like Yelp and Groupon have impacted his small neighbourhood shop, and how these services haven’t really helped or harmed his business over the long-term.
“We’ve built up a core clientele, and those customers are more likely to let us know of problems (offline) instead of going online to do it,” Manhas explains.
(Manhas admittedly hasn’t spent much time looking at his Yelp reviews, but was glad when I mentioned them to him. He says he’s going to spend more time monitoring them going forward, as well as sites he has used before for rating restaurants like TripAdvisor.)
Koffi has run two coupon deals (with Groupon and Couvon) and Manhas isn’t convinced that they can show measurable results over the long-term, unless there’s additional technology in place to monitor customer loyalty. The coffee shop uses a paper stamp card to help build a rapport with its customers and switching to an electronic one “isn’t in the cards right now”, according to Manhas.
“That kind of stuff people just love seeing. I love the idea: less paper, less clutter. But our clientele want to see something more…physical.”
Groupon has seen its share of troubles lately, but electronic “couponing” isn’t going away. If anything, it’s gaining traction. With Apple joining the fray by including Passbook in iOS 6, the practice of scannable coupons is on the cusp of going mainstream. And that means more technology is coming to the food and restaurant industry because those establishments that don’t adopt it run the risk of being left behind by competitors that do.
Yet with the inclusion of more technology into the restaurant environment, there comes the challenge of training employees to use it.

Serving it right

When I was at Macworld | iWorld earlier this year, I went to Sightglass Coffee (which, incidentally, has a 4 star rating from Yelp) and it was the first time I had ever seen a Square payment portal in the wild. The transaction was seamless and didn’t seem at all out of place considering the environment I was in. I mean, I didn’t even think about the notion of having Square in a food and restaurant setting, and here it was. But in order to use the system, there has to be training in place to use the new technology — and also on how it integrates with the older technology.
“It could be a little costly, especially when it doesn’t work,” says Manhas. “You could be opening up a can of worms if you go into that.”
Vickers wasn’t so sure that servers need another option to deal with either, but can see it is inevitable.
“[I don't think] it’s a problem for the servers so much as it is for the patrons,” Vickers explains. He offered the use of the newer portable PIN pad devices that are really no different from stationary ones as an example. “They throw people off because they aren’t expecting it and some of the American tourists we had didn’t know what do with them.”
Vickers discussed several more examples with me, including the security chip on major credit cards that can confuse those unfamiliar with them (or using them for the first time) and he thinks that adding another option could harm the overall dining experience.
We are still years away from this kind of payment really hitting the mainstream. In fact, during my years at Costco (in Canada) we didn’t even take anything but cash at the Food Court because the goal was to process as many orders as possible in the shortest time. Adding time to the transaction by using debit or credit cards wasn’t “on the menu”. Over the years I ran that department, I noticed an increasing number of members who were frustrated by our accepted payments (especially considering all of the point-of-sale terminals took both credit and debit cards). Speed of service was prioritized over convenience, but that’s not something a smaller business would be able to weather.

Just desserts

Technology has never been more intuitive than it is today, and it’s only getting better. It allows restaurant patrons to find restaurants, rate them, and decide where they want to spend their hard-earned money when they go out to eat. It allows restaurant owners to be more efficient and effective in the areas they feel can be streamlined by hardware and software. But if used in the wrong place and at the wrong time, it can do a restaurant great harm – as it can with any industry.
With a better understanding of the technology, the industry has better chance of thriving. And in tough times, those restaurants who are on the right side of the equation have a better chance of surviving.
Image Credit: Eric Feferberg/Getty Images

The Silicon Valley company cafeteria shootout: Who has the best food?

The Silicon Valley company cafeteria shootout: Who has the best food?:
When it comes to the high-flying perks at the top companies of Silicon Valley, nothing is more salivating than the food. Major tech campuses scramble to get their employees the best of the best in food and drink, often three square meals a day, for no extra cost. In short, it’s a level of workplace heaven that few can only hope to achieve, and one that has friends of friends asking whether they can bring any leftovers home in a doggie bag.
Of course, it comes as no surprise that companies are happily willing to cater to the gastronomic needs of their workers, because it actually helps their cause in the long run. After all, a happy worker is a more productive worker, and providing a steady stream of meals and snacks ensures that no one gets caught in the unforgiving office hunger spiral of hate that can consume a large chunk of otherwise decent work time. Free food is a glorious perk, and we should all be so lucky.
But, if you had an all-access pass to the Silicon Valley cafeteria culture and a gun to your head, where should you pull up a chair and affix your napkin bib? The Next Web has taken a survey of some of the best eats in town to get an insider’s opinion, including anecdotes from those who work there. Figure out which one suits your taste best and start practicing your ninja skills, because you can’t get reservations for these top grub spots.

Google

It’s pretty much statistically impossible to eat your way through all of the free food offerings at each of the 29 restaurants and cafes located in the search giant’s Mountain View headquarters (not to mention the conveniently placed and enticingly stocked micro-kitchens that house everything from chips to dried fruit to chocolate), but Googlers are happy to try.
“I’m aggressively pursuing the Google 15 right now,” said one Googler, alluding to the multitude of offerings that are scattered about the company’s main campus.
It’s easy to get caught up in the options at the Googleplex, due to the sheer diversity of food cuisines and diet styles available. Employees can munch on bowls of ramen, gnaw on sliders and even partake in pork tacos. The company is able to produce the volume in large part due to its fully-employed team of executive chefs, who run the company’s food endeavors like clockwork. In addition to providing a variety of cuisines, Google’s food staff incorporates local and sustainable food throughout its offerings and encourages employees to go for healthier options via a “stoplight system,” which codes healthy foods green, less-than-healthy foods yellow, and the even-less-healthy foods red.
So what’s the most popular joint in the Googleplex? An insider said that it’s difficult to get a seat at Long Life Cafe, which slings handmade sushi rolls and other East Asian delights in the middle of campus. With maki rolls that include real crab and freshly stir-fried noodles, the restaurant is one to steer clear of during high-traffic times — or suffer the consequences of the long line.

Facebook

With just an ancillary look at the culinary team’s expansive Facebook profile, it’s hard not to drool at the options served from the company’s two major cafeteria spaces on its year-old Menlo Park campus. Braised shortribs, cinnamon toffee muffins, steamed snapper and pork belly BLTs grace the menus that are carefully crafted by the company’s so-called “Culinary Overlord,” Josef Desimone, but the healthy stuff gets ample love, too.
“Tofu scramble in the morning, for the win!” exclaims one happy employee whose culinary choices would be approved by the health-conscious Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook’s cafeterias not only follow a similar stoplight system protocol to keep employees eating right, but it also offers mainstay vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options for those with dietary restrictions as well as a conscious foray into locally grown and sustainable food.
But the quality gourmet doesn’t end in the traditional cafeteria space. Facebook’s campus also has its own mini town center of sorts, specifically designed for a more downtown-esque feel. There, employees can order classic hamburgers, southern-style barbecue, and custom burritos, among others. The company also embraces the influence of outside vendors and chefs, recently hosting an authentic summer luau with a pig roast and incorporating a local coffee shop to bring artisanal roasted beans to campus.
Amidst all the options, Facebook’s employees also tend to prefer East Asian lunches — forming crowds when the cafeterias offer Thai and Chinese cuisine. Due to demand, the company is excited to roll out Fuki Sushi, a new fixture in the campus square that would offer sit-down and takeout Japanese cuisine. While it will cost employees a little extra (Fuki Sushi is a local vendor and will operate with a subsidized price scale), there’s a good chance it’ll be just as big of a hit as it is at the Googleplex.

LinkedIn

An underrated fixture on the Silicon Valley food scene due to its interesting catering style: Instead of serving a fixed menu with an in-house staff, LinkedIn instead works with local vendors to come in and cater more than 850 meals that are served in the office every day.
“LinkedIn’s food program is diverse by design,” says Michael Nguyen, LinkedIn’s resident Food Guy. “Our employees ask for a range of dietary and flavor options, so we feature an ever-changing lineup of local restaurants to keep the food exciting, healthy and tasty.”
Vendors are hand-picked via reviews and local area reputation, and employees offer feedback to ensure that the food they love the most will come back around another time. With a handful of restaurants on rotation, the last two weeks of meals at the company’s San Francisco office has included herbed spiced turkey breast with a saffron cream sauce, Brazilian vegetable tofu curry, three-cheese enchiladas and vegetarian moussaka. In addition to the catering, LinkedIn pays attention to special “food calendar” days, such as National Cupcake Day and National Mac and Cheese Day, and tends to coordinate their food offerings with the spirit of the season; the company even ensures that kid-friendly cuisine is served on Take Your Child to Work Day.
But one of the biggest hits at the company has been Food Truck Friday, a weekly survey of local food truck options that commandeer the office’s lunchtime meals. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest hit in the food trucks have been ones that specialize in Asian cuisine, such as CurryUp Now, Sanguchon and An the Go.

Square

Though not as big in stature as the other three companies surveyed, this mobile payments company has received raves from insiders who appreciate the company’s smart work with vendors. And, while the company does not offer free food in their perks program, the meals are often so good that employees are happy to fork over the cash — in Square payment, of course.
“They seem to place a focus on healthier foods for the most part,” says one insider. “Also, their espresso bar is killer!”
Much like LinkedIn, Square works with outside vendors to cater the companies three daily meals. In addition to regularly featuring Square merchants, employees get to plan a special meal once a month with a local vendor in the area. Some of the cuisine offerings, which also are allergen-free and cater to a variety of diets, include Memphis-style barbecue, grilled steak, polenta and a fully-stocked taco bar.
As for favorite cuisines, Square’s Lindsay Weise says that the company pays attention to what flies off the shelves.
“Over time, we’ve gotten a feel for the type of food items that are popular with Squares,” Weise says. “For example, we tend to like brussel sprouts, grilled chicken, tacos, Indian cuisine, and cookies.”
Image Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images

The politics and power struggles of the Chinese Internet superpowers

The politics and power struggles of the Chinese Internet superpowers:
The dust is settling on the latest round of competition in the Chinese Internet space, and four superpowers remain strong: Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Sina. While there are plenty of other players in the market, these four have distinguished themselves in each of their target markets, garnering hundreds of millions of users and near-monopoly positions along the way.
With their respective dominance, they’re each looking to leverage their user base and existing technology to broaden into new areas in order to sustain the growth levels from their rises to power. As each of the four muscle their way into opportunities like mobile, the cloud, and international expansion, the Chinese Internet scene has taken on a decidely “Game of Thrones” air about it, albeit with less incest and murder.
Before we dive into the power struggles and uneasy alliances that these companies have been engaging in, let’s take a quick look at each of the four by themselves:

Alibaba

Core strength: Ecommerce

Western equivalent: Ebay/Amazon

Q2 2012 revenue: N/A [Alibaba Group is currently in the midst of preparing for an IPO. An SEC form from Yahoo, which has a stake in the company, revealed Q1 2012 revenue of $806 million]

Headquarters: Hangzhou
Alibaba Group runs a business-to-business ecommerce site, but Taobao, its consumer-to-consumer site, is the star of the show these days. Chinese consumers initially were resistant to buying online, but they have since taken to it with gusto, largely thanks to Alibaba’s work. Similar to Paypal in the US, Alipay, the online payment division of the group, has built itself up as the de facto e-payment standard in China.
The company was founded in 1999 by the charismatic Jack Ma, a former English teacher who is believed to have built the first Chinese Internet company before he went on to start Alibaba.

Baidu

Core strength: Search

Western equivalent: Google

Q2 2012 revenue: $859 million

Headquarters: Beijing
Baidu would be a formidable force with just its nearly 80 percent share of the Chinese search market, but it has reinforced its dominant position with a set of community sites. Baidu Tieba (PostBar in English) is a massive online forum based around keywords; Baike, or Baidu Encyclopedia, has grown to contain more posts than the Chinese version of Wikipedia; and question and answer service Baidu Knows has also caught on with local Internet users.
CEO Robin Li established Baidu in 2000 after moving back from (and being inspired by) Silicon Valley.

Tencent

Core strengths: Social, gaming

Western equivalent: Facebook

Q2 2012 revenue: $1.7 billion

Headquarters: Shenzhen
The Chinese Internet population has been obsessed with QQ, Tencent’s instant messaging platform, for years now. Tencent put the service, which has over 90 percent penetration rate among Internet users in the country, to use as the foundation for a highly-profitable gaming division. The company also operates a popular Qzone social network and its Weixin (known as WeChat internationally) group messaging app is seeing rapid adoption, recently topping 200 million users.
Pony Ma, Tencent’s founder, remains fairly enigmatic, as he’s not known for making public media appearances.

Sina

Core strengths: Web portal, social

Western equivalent: Twitter/Yahoo

Q2 2012 revenue: $132 million

Headquarters: Shanghai
Sina is the smallest of the four, at least in terms of revenue, but its Sina Weibo micro-blogging service is having a significant impact on Chinese culture and society. The company got its start with a Web portal, which has risen to become the largest in the country.
Founded in 1999 via a merger, Sina is currently helmed by Charles Chao.

Storm clouds over China

There’s a storm brewing in China, and you can see it in the clouds. Cloud computing, that is. Tencent and Baidu are the main players because of their pre-existing size and the infrastructure that they’ve already built up for the massive scale of their own services. Spokesmen from both companies have declared their respective clouds to be the largest in China, though it wasn’t clear what metric they were using (users, computing power, etc.).
Alibaba is also looking to the cloud with is Aliyun (云, pronounced yun, means cloud in Chinese) mobile operating system.
Baidu’s Robin Li declared earlier this month at Baidu World, its annual developer conference, that China has entered the age of the cloud. The company is investing $1.6 billion in a cloud computing center in the north of China.
Lei Chen, Tencent’s general manager for cloud computing, Open Platform and social advertising, acknowledged that competition in the Chinese cloud space is heating up, but he viewed it as a positive thing.
“There’s competition among the cloud players, but I think competition is a good thing, that it pushes everybody to provide higher quality services to our customers,” Chen said in an interview with TNW at a software developer conference in Beijing.
To that end, Tencent recently revamped its Weiyun (literally micro-cloud) service to make sharing to its social networking services easier.
However, Baidu’s rhetoric wasn’t quite as congenial during Baidu World, its own annual developer conference. Li called developers to arms during a keynote speech by outlining the “seven weapons” that it is offering them to help gain users. The (free) weapons include a mobile test center, the Baidu app engine, location-based services, a ScreenX tool for multi-screen applications, personal cloud storage, a site app resource for turning websites into Web and mobile apps, and its new browser engine.

Promotional material detailing the tools depicted each of them as traditional weaponry with technical twists, such as a rack of servers shooting a spear from its cabling. The images call to mind the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history when three separate states fought for control of China. However, in this case, it’s a modern war of platforms, with the developers armed as foot soldiers to apparently attack rival developers from other cloud-based ecosystems. The user is, presumably, either the captive or the prize.

The Android-meda Strain

The growing importance of cloud computing is invariably tied to the future of the mobile Internet. Baidu’s Li said so himself earlier this month at Baidu World:

“The cloud is very important to support the mobile internet. This is the focus for the next wave of innovation.”

When it comes to the mobile space in China, Google’s Android is mopping up its competitors with as much as 80 percent market share, according to some estimates. However, domestic companies have brought instability to the platform by repeatedly forking the OS, often to Google’s displeasure.
The fragmentation issue flared up in China last week when Acer canceled a joint smartphone launch with Alibaba at the last minute after Google put pressure on Acer. A subsequent statement from Google explained that Acer’s membership in the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a group of companies committed to maintaining purity in the Android platform, precluded it from shipping “non-compatible Android devices” like the Aliyun-powered CloudMobile 800 smartphone they had developed.
Android mastermind Andy Rubin elaborated on the decision via his Google+ account, noting that Aliyun “incorporates the Android runtime and was apparently derived from Android.” Alibaba VP of International Affairs John Spelich maintains that Aliyun “is not part of the Android ecosystem.”
“It is ironic that a company that talks freely about openness is espousing a closed ecosystem…Will someone please ask Google to define Android?” he said in a statement.
The back-and-forth continued with Rubin claiming that Aliyun’s alleged use of the Android runtime, framework and tools mean “there’s really no disputing that Aliyun is based on the Android platform.” He also accused Alibaba of stocking “pirated Google apps” in its app store.
Rubin also pointed to recent comments from an Alibaba executive that demonstrated the company’s goal to surpass Android in China by providing a better user experience.

Does Aliyun count as Android?

These recent developments are particularly noteworthy because they represent a new effort on Google’s part to enforce the terms of the OHA. The incident is still fresh, but how this plays out in coming weeks could set a precedent for Chinese Internet companies looking to stand on the shoulders of the Android giant. If tempers flare, this could escalate to an “us versus them” dispute that might see other Chinese and western companies involved as well.
Of course, not all Chinese companies are at odds with Google over Android. For instance, Baidu Cloud is compatible with Android and cooperates with OHA members. Baidu, a direct competitor to Google, does not consider the product to be an operating system, instead marketing it as a platform that sits atop Android.

Social motion

Going social is a trend in the worldwide Internet market, and it’s caused plenty of friction in China lately. The past couple years have seen a high-stakes race between local competitors in the microblog market. Sina and Tencent emerged as the two leaders, with Sohu and Netease as the underdogs. Sina boasted 368 million registered accounts last quarter.
Baidu tried its hand at microblogging, but eventually gave up in 2011. It’s worth noting that Baidu tried to launch its service with an unpopular real-name system, something that the government would go on to mandate for surviving services earlier this year.
During an earnings call last month, Sohu also admitted defeat, acknowledging that it had lost the “battle of the micro-blog” over the past two years. CEO Charles Zhang did say that he’s optimistic his company can make a comeback, but it’s hard to tell whether he said that just to keep from being eaten alive by investors.
Baidu is building social components into many of its products, but it is also not above partnering up with others who have established themselves in the sector. In July, it announced an agreement with Sina that will see the Weibo app pre-installed on Baidu Cloud and bring Baidu search to Sina’s mobile portal. Renren, a Chinese social network that, like Facebook, got its start catering to students, has also teamed up with Baidu.

Qihoo: China’s competitive catalyst

While the big four have been maneuvering around each other, there’s one scrappy upstart that has been a thorn in the side for these giants. Qihoo 360 has developed a reputation in the Chinese Internet industry for picking fights with others.
In 2010, Tencent and Qihoo got into a bitter feud that quickly escalated out of control. Qihoo’s anti-virus software began blocking Tencent’s QQ messenger on allegations that it was spying on users. The move was most likely an effort to keep QQ’s own security software from competing with Qihoo. Tencent fought back by blocking logins from computers with Qihoo’s software installed. The spat went on for a couple months before the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stepped in and ordered a reconciliation in late November of that year. Sufficiently chastised, Tencent issued an apologetic statement, excerpted below:

“We extend our sincere apologies to all our affected users! To the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other government departments, we humbly accept your reprimand and will earnestly implement the relevant requirements in accordance with the follow-up. In this process, through all our comments and criticisms, we will carefully listen and learn.” (machine translation)

Earlier this month, Qihoo CEO Zhou Hongyi reiterated the relucant truce that his company had reached with Tencent by publicly vowing at a goverment-backed Internet conference to never enter the instant messaging sector. The issue isn’t fully resolved, however, as hearings for a lawsuit between the two began on September 18, with Tencent seeking RMB 125 million in damages.
Tencent’s Lei Chen says the 2010 incident actually served as a catalyst that motivated the company to accelerate a move toward its Open Platform application ecosystem.
“The company recognized it as an opportunity to push along on the direction of openness faster…so we started to build all the infrastructure and all the tools necessary for us to open up since December 2010,” he said.
Open Platform was slowly made available to partners throughout early 2011 before going official in June. The platform has grown quickly to encompass more than 500,000 registered developers and 200,000 applications. By way of reference, Baidu has attracted roughly 60,000 developers to its platform.
Tensions between Qihoo and Tencent may have cooled some, but Qihoo is now stirring up trouble with its recent entrance into the search business. The company’s search engine made a splash when it went live last month, largely due to referral traffic from Qihoo’s portal and browser products. However, some observers were quick to point out suspicious similarities between the results of the two search engines. Baidu then moved to block some of Qihoo’s inbound links, and Qihoo responded by removing links to Baidu from its web portal and other services.
It’s too early to tell whether Qihoo will have the same catalytic effect on Baidu as it did on Tencent, but several industry players that I spoke to seemed optimistic. Some have argued that Baidu could use a new challenger to its near-monopoly on search in order to spur competition and innovation.

Eyes abroad

Compared to other countries around the world, China is a largely homogeneous market. Each of the country’s four Internet superpowers is set up for continued growth as more of the population comes online, but they all have ambitions that extend beyond China’s borders.
The international commerce side of the Alibaba Group’s main site has already given it opportunities overseas, and a recent restructuring of the company was, in part, designed to better capitalize on the English-language division. Meanwhile, it has begun taking baby steps abroad with its Taobao site, launching first in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
At the least, Alibaba is ready to compete on the international stage on pure numbers, as it expects to surpass Amazon and eBay in transactions this year.
Baidu is actively building up its foreign language capabilities in hopes of tackling search and social information services in foreign markets. A new research lab in Singapore will focus on Southeast Asian languages, as well as Arabic and Portuguese. The company has launched its Tieba forums in Vietnam, albeit to some opposition. It has also powered up its Hao123 link-list directory site in Brazil.
Tencent has seen success with its products in areas with large Chinese diaspora populations, such as Southeast Asia. It has begun putting feelers out for a push into the US, and early uptake of WeChat in America could act as a vanguard.
Though the company’s Open Platform hasn’t yet been fully marketed overseas, it has attracted foreign developers, including Zynga (Cityville), EA (Sim Social) and Popcap. In the future, Tencent could make a push to bring Open Platform ecosystem to other countries, but it will be following the lead of its social services.
“Open Platform is going to go wherever [Tencent's] social networks go,” Chen said.
Sina has already branched out its new portal with an English-language US version, but it has yet to make a sizable impact. Its Weibo service has also remained largely a Chinese affair. During the recent London Olympics opening ceremony, approximately 96 percent of related tweets came out of China.
Considering how dramatic competition already is in the Chinese Internet space, the eventual emergence of these four superpowers as competition for their western counterparts should prove even more exciting. So far, Chinese companies have had it easy, since foreign rivals like Facebook, Google and Youtube, Twitter and others have been absent from the Chinese market in recent years, but their “Game of Thrones”-style maneuvers could turn into a full-on “Clash of the Titans” when they begin competing overseas.
Further reading: The Startup Guide to China
Images via: Flickr / scoobyfoo, Bloomberg, TNW, Flickr / faykwong, MomoBKK, HBSTR, 21CBH

How technology gave us cheap food in huge quantities – and why it has to stop

How technology gave us cheap food in huge quantities – and why it has to stop:
In the fairly near future, Earth will have nine billion mouths to feed. To solve this dilemma, Rob Aukerman, president of U.S. operations at Elanco Animal Health, has been a vocal advocate of “proven technologies” to assist farmers in delivering more food using fewer resources. Citing Elanco’s acquisition of ChemGen—a private food specialization company—Aukerman promoted food enzymes earlier this year as “natural digestives”.
His concerns regarding food delivery are well shared. A 2010 symposium hosted by the Global Harvest Initiative in Washington, DC, promoted a need for continuous innovation to meet global food demand, with Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund arguing that in order to do so, “the footprint of food” must be frozen.
“Holding crop area fixed and assuming only historical yield growth, food production will fall far short of the needs by 2050,” Clay’s colleague, IHS global insight managing director of agricultural services John Kruse, agreed. “Meeting those needs with the same land area would require global crop yields to increase nearly 25% faster than historically.”
As the global community faces a food crisis, biotechnology—genetic manipulation of food DNA to meet consumer desire—has frequently been cited as the cause, as well as the solution, of the problem. Timothy Wise recently cited biofuel production as a “demand shock” that consumes crop production and yields price increases. The Guardian’s Larry Elliott argues that as demand for protein-heavy diets in developing nations increases, supply constraints mean that a 50% increase in food demand will exist by 2030. And Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe also cited rising production of bio-fuel—and the high subsidies it receives—as the direct cause of rising food prices.
“The only difference is that with the food market you need 2,500 calories per person per day, whereas in the energy market you need 50,000 calories per person,” Brabeck-Letmathe told BBC News in July. “It takes about 4,600 litres of water to produce one litre of pure ethanol if it comes from sugar, and it takes 1,900 litres of water if it comes from palm oil.”
Advances in bioechnology have helped us push food production to its limit. But with the exit of cheap food a strong reality, it is worth assessing how technology has allowed it to be produced in mass amounts, what the potential consequences of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are, and what the global public’s role is in their use or disuse.

The move towards biotechnology

Prior to 8,000 BC, nomadic hunter gathering was the norm. Populations thrived on the harvesting and processing techniques that allowed agricultural production to keep pace with human population growth. This growth extended agricultural practice to more vast, diverse lands, and by 1,000 BC, many of the practices that define agriculture today, such as using manure for fertilizer, were already in use.
The 19th century paved the way for technology developments; 1800 saw the first simple threshing machine, hoes, and seed drill come into use, with steam power replacing horse power in the 1890s. John Deere’s introduction of the steel plow in the 1830s gave way to tractor use in 1905, leading the way for production of nitrogen fertilizers in 1920 and pesticide use in the 1940s.
The world population reached one billion in 1825, and the population of industrialized nations grew from 500 to 800 million between 1850 and 1900. As agricultural science gained prominence, consumption of animal proteins, cereal and calories per capita also skyrocketed. The world population of three billion that had arrived by 1960 gave way to the industrialized agriculture that defines food production today. Chemical inputs, mechanized farming methods, and the start of the animal agriculture business all saw dramatic increase in yields, and the use of technology to produce GMOs was born.

GMOs: What they are and why they’re used

According to the WHO, GMOs “can be defined as organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally…it allows selected individual genes to be transferred from one organism into another, also between non-related species.”
Simply put, genetic modification involves manipulating the genetic makeup of food to create or enhance characteristics that are desired by humans. As scientific advancements throughout the 1980s discovered that DNA could be transferred in pieces from one organism to another, genetically modified products including cotton and tobacco plants were produced.
The success of the first tested genetically engineered cotton in 1990 led biotech company Monsanto to introduce herbicide-immune soybeans—aka, “Round-Up Ready”—in 1995, and the 2000 discovery that modification can enrich foods using nutrients and vitamins has made biotechnology a global giant in the world of food production.

European disapproval

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tours biofuel plant

Arguably the most interesting aspect of biotechnology is its role in creating or enhancing “characteristics that are desired by another species.” Food production has historically evolved alongside consumer demand, utilized to meet each population’s needs and desires. It is therefore worth considering how a population’s conception and consumption of food impacts the global debate surrounding GM use.
As consumer confidence in food supply safety has decreased in Europe following scares throughout the late 90s, discussion extended to consumption of GM foods. General disapproval throughout Europe has led to extensive legislation of GM marketing tactics since biotechnology became prominent. The need for agreement between EU Member States and the European Commission means that no authorizations for GMO release into the environment have been granted since October 1998.
But with 12 authorization applications pending, debate within Europe regarding the effect of GMs continues. Eight out of nine ongoing cases have been examined by the Scientific Committee on Plants. In all cases, the committee declared that the information submitted by Member States did not justify their bans. The WHO declares that all GM products on the global market have passed risk assessments put in place by national authorities, which evaluate health risks to the environment and public.
The problem is not limited to these potential risks. As Brabeck-Letmathe discussed, it is not only biofuels themselves, but the subsidies they receive—and the amount of land being used to produce them—that has some in the development sector seriously worried.
“It’s an extremely serious issue and it’s only getting worse,” Stephen Brown, UK Campaigns Manager at The Global Poverty Project, told The Next Web. “An area the size of London is being grabbed every 6 days to create biofuels, crops that could be used for food.”
“Next year the UK will host the G8 in London,” Brown added. “I hope G8 governments will put these issues high on the agenda”.

The validity debate

Earlier this week, a study led by scientists from Caen University and published in the Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal claimed that the adverse health effects of Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize caused treated groups of female rats, studied over their two-year lifespan, to die younger than the spared control group.
The research claims that maize that had been modified for resistance to the Roundup herbicide yielded evidence for “a raft of health problems”—implicit concern that such herbicides could cause similar health problems in humans:
“The rodents experienced hormone imbalances and more and bigger breast tumours, earlier in life, than rats fed a non-GM diet,” the researchers claim. The GM- or pesticide-fed rats also died earlier.
This kind of GM maize accounts for more than half the US crop, yet the French team says this is the first time it has been tested for toxicity throughout a rat’s lifespan (Food and Chemical Toxicology, DOI: 10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005).”
The research’s publication has received swift critique from journalists and academics. Forbes contributor Tim Worstall strongly dismissed the research, calling it more closely aligned with political bias than concrete science. U.S. citizens, he says, have consumed GM corn for years now; Europeans have not. With no noticeable differences in disease prevalence, he concludes that blaming GM technology on health and environmental problems is poor science.
Dr. Wendy Harwood, senior scientist, John Innes Centre, called GM a neutral technology in itself that cannot be linked to inherent health or environmental risks. Nevertheless, she argued the results of the study “do indicate possible concerns over long-term exposure to Roundup that require further study.”

Tech shortcomings in the global food market

The catch-22 is that while biotechnology has been linked to health concerns, lack of technology can also have negative effects. A 2011 study conducted for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations found that causes of food loss and waste in low-income countries related, in part, to harvesting techniques limited by fewer tech resources.
The study concluded that farmers in such nations needed “to organize and to diversify and upscale their production and marketing.” Analysis of food practices within developed and developing countries found that roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally—1.3 billion tons per year.
“The fact remains that we produce enough food in the world already but structural problems like access to markets and storage means that it is not reaching everyone,” Oxfam spokesperson Lucy Brinicombe told The Next Web. “With almost one billion people going to bed hungry every night, it is crucial that we tackle the problem.”
Lack of technological resources isn’t limited to the developing world. Short of the machines necessary to create cheap food at high volumes, some U.S. companies compensate by producing “formulated” versions of various foods.
Earlier this year, Chobani Greek Yogurt founder Hamdi Ulukaya allowed All Things Considered correspondent Dan Charles to tour the factory in upstate New York that churns out one million pounds of Greek yogurt per year—but refused allowance to photograph the machines that make it. Seeing the market appeal for Greek yogurt, other brands have tried to compensate for their lack of Ulukaya’s machinery by adding “milk thickeners,” such as milk protein concentrate, to their own versions.
“That ruins the expectation in the consumer’s mind of how pure and simple this product is,” Ulukaya told Charles. He added that yogurt companies’ allowance of starch or concentrated milk, as well as a lack of legal definition for Greek yogurt, contributes to the problem, allowing manufacturers to artificially modify food to compensate for lack of technology.

The role of consumer choice

In the U.S., a country that has historically endorsed GM use—a 2011 ISAAA report found that the U.S remained the leading global producer of biotech crops—documentaries like 2008’s Food, Inc. have questioned corporate control of the food industry, making the case that executive involvement in food regulations—or lack thereof—allows GM use to enable mass food production at the cost of public health. As health problems continue to soar and additional medical spending for obesity has reached $190 billion, many have blamed GMOs as the culprit.
Bonnie Lee is not so sure. The UK food blogger and founder of Miso Tasty argues that the concept of technology offering cheap food in huge quantities is misguided. Technology, she insists, does not enable cheap food itself, but rather production volume. It is retailers, not manufacturers, who must be confronted for price evaluations.
“Technology itself is not responsible for cheapening food per se—the production of anything at volume is always going to make it less expensive,” Lee told The Next Web. “This is not technology’s fault, but the retailer’s fault for pushing hard on the producer to produce a cheaper product and attract the customer who is price-sensitive.”
“It is also important to note that technology has enabled us to make food affordable for the masses…and also allows us to consume all sorts of foods safely, especially if you live in a remote place or you do not have necessary refrigeration. Mass producing can [also] enable us to afford certain food-preserving processes such as vacuuming and sterilising that need volume to pay for itself.”
As suggestions for how to combat the food shortage continue, acknowledging use of biotechnology and the role of machines in mass food production is inevitable. Likewise, the genetic modification of food will remain under fire. In this regard, it is worth acknowledging that while consumer choice and knowledge remain crucial aspects of this debate, the inherency of biotechnology—to genetically modify food based on consumer demand—means that as long as desire exists for mass amounts of cheap food, its production remains inevitable.

Home grown initiative

Permaculture: Urban beekeeping on East London rooftops

The good news is that as long as consumer demand dictates food market behavior, there are alternatives to biofuels and the high subsidies that sustain them. The Technology Strategy Board has supported collaborative competitions for investments in projects focusing on initiatives including sustainable protein production. In light of a predicted domestic vegetable protein production shortage in the UK, the organization will partner with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to invest over 75 million pounds in innovative technological research and development in areas such as crop productivity, sustainable livestock production, and greenhouse gas reduction.
“We fully support a future where sustainable agriculture plays a part and are looking at ways in which innovation can support a more sustainable agricultural industry that will aim to lower the negative impact of [environmental, public health, and social inequality consequences],” TSB spokesperson Laura Quinn told The Next Web.
Other initiatives are also at work. Last year, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew launched the UK Native Seed Hub at the Millennium Seed Bank to draw on the Bank’s collection of native UK seeds. A member of the UK’s Sustainable Restaurant Association, Richard Bell, owner of London pub The Three Stags, sells only seasonal food, including free-range meat and vegetables, to his customers. And Brinicombe says that while technological advancements would help, it is often unconsidered alternatives that could really make a difference.
While some technological advances might have a role to play, simpler measures like investing in small holder agriculture would be far more effective and sustainable,” Brinicombe suggests. “At the moment, there are 500 million small holder farmers feeding almost two billion people worldwide. They remain a relatively untapped and unacknowledged solution that could make a big difference in global food security if better investment were forthcoming.”
Image Credits: Scott Olson/Getty Images, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Dan Kitwood/Getty Images