New E7 nations 'will overtake G7 by 2050'

The G7 group of rich nations will be overtaken by an "E7" bloc of emerging economies by 2050, presenting a major challenge to a swath of Western companies and workers, according to research published today.
The collective size of the economies of the fast-growing septet - China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey - will have surpassed the Group of Seven by as much as 75 per cent by the midway mark in the century, it said.
The report, by the accountancy firm PwC, said the rise of these economies was beneficial to the West but warned there would be winners and losers - among companies and individual workers. Its report, which it said showed an urgent need for boosting skills levels, came as the online retailer Amazon.com said it was moving its main European customer service centre from Slough to the Irish Republic because of a shortage of multilingual workers.
PwC found that people with low- or medium-level skills would come under threat - both from having their jobs moved overseas and having them taken by migrant labour. Eventually, even high-skilled professionals such as lawyers and accountants could find their livelihoods under threat.
"Premium incomes currently earned by highly skilled and educated professionals - senior lawyers, accountants, bankers, financial market analysts - will tend to be gradually eroded by an increasing number of equally well-qualified, extremely highly motivated and hard-working English-speaking professionals from the E7 countries."
But it said that many business sectors and trades would be better off as long as Western countries adapted.

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Facebook launches pages redesign

Facebook has wanted to redesign Facebook Pages ever since it launched the profile redesign.

 

-- Facebook has begun rolling out a full redesign of Facebook Pages. The changes will make the Pages look and operate more like user profiles. The new Pages redesign was first seen in December, when Facebook accidentally launched it and quickly took it down. The update not only removed tabs, but it gave page admins the ability to post and comment on other Facebook Pages through a "Login as Page" feature.
Those prototype features have made the cut for today's launch. As Facebook's Rohit Dhawan, the lead product manager for Facebook Pages, explained to me earlier today, the company has wanted to redesign Facebook Pages ever since it launched the profile redesign.
"We strongly believe you should have consistent experiences when possible," Dhawan said.
The big difference everyone will notice will be the new layout. The left-hand menu for editing pages has been removed in favor of a new navigation menu that replaces the old tabbing system.
And like the Facebook Profiles redesign, the left-hand "Information" box is also gone. However, page admins can now add info about their brand at the top of the page under the main title.
The right-hand menu has also been tweaked. There is now a section that features the page's admins (if you so choose) as well as a section that shows users how many of their friends have also "liked" that particular page.
Finally, just like profiles, a page can now feature relevant photos at the top. This could lead to some very creative uses for Facebook Pages.
Log in as your Facebook page
There are some other notable differences between the new Facebook Pages and the old version, especially for page admins.
The "Login as Page" feature gives admins the ability to interact with the rest of Facebook as a page, not an individual. For example, I could log in as Mashable and start commenting and "liking" things on Facebook Pages that have "liked" Mashable.
Admins will also see a different News Feed if they are logged in as their page; It will display the most important news from the pages you've "liked."
"A page can now use Facebook as if they were an individual with the ability to interact with other pages," Dhawan said. "It provides interesting content when people are visiting the page. "
Mashable: What the new Facebook pages mean for users & owners
Pages can't do everything a user can, though. Most importantly, they cannot post on a user's wall or comment on his or her status. The lone exception is for a user who has opted for the "everybody" privacy setting; Pages can comment on status updates for those individuals.
The other update Facebook is adding is an "Everyone" filter that brings the most interesting and engaging posts from a page's community to the top of the page. This makes it easier for users and admins to easily find the most "liked" and commented-on conversations on a particular page.
The new Facebook Pages are also smart enough to filter out posts that are not in a language you speak.
The new design launches today as a preview for Facebook Page admins. Before switching, they can check to see what their page will look like and tweak elements of the design before launch.

The company is also releasing a Page Tour and a manual to explain the new design. Admins will have until March 10 to switch over though, before Facebook automatically updates every page to the new design.

source : cnn.com

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The Interchange Skyscraper

Special Mention

The Freeway Interchange Tower seeks to reclaim the “throw-away” land often left in the wake of massive highway junctions, typically an abandoned, unattractive space at the center of maze-like crossings. These infrastructure nexus not only serve as transportation nodes, but also act as buffers between differing land conditions, uses, and city environments. In this particular site, the freeway interchange is bordered by low density residential neighborhoods on the south and east sides, a nearby institutional center to the north, and a major drainage canal to the northwest. With such proximity to varying uses and zoning regions, the interchange often becomes the separating barrier.
The intent of this proposal is to elevate the status of the interchange from utilitarian infrastructure to one of regional unifier. By sucking up the visual language of southern California’s formidable freeway system and coalescing it into an iconic high-rise, the tower can act as a symbolic ribbon that ties the area together, signifying the crossing points of the cities of Anaheim, Orange and Santa Ana. The mixed-use program of the tower – retail, commercial office and high end hotel near the top – completes the micro-arcology of the area, complementing existing nearby residential and recreational uses. At the same time, the tower reinforces the Southern California automotive culture, celebrating the constant dynamism and technological achievement of its impressive freeway system.
In a vision for the future of the these endless sprawl zones so ubiquitous to southern California, Interchange Tower would be the common place connecting and completing the local ecosystems. With the development of “community towers”, destination nodes would be created that enhance local economic stability (retail), relocate and diversify commercial office space, as well as form areas of vertical social density encompassing high end hotels and condominiums. Ironically, the Interchange Tower would serve to reduce the burden of excessive automobile transportation by creating waypoints; however, this intervention would also begin to render the mega interchange (its habitat) obsolete with the reduced need for such infrastructure.
In conceiving the idea of the Interchange Tower the parti was developed in which the freeway strata was brought quite literally into the tower, forming a symbiotic relationship between site context and object. As the automobiles are brought into the building, they would circulate up to the parking levels which are followed by retail and observation decks, office space, hotel, and final a sky lounge. In order to create a unified language based on the sweeping lines of the freeway below, the tower’s outer skin is composed of a helical ribbon of aluminum panels which serve two main functions; first and foremost a sound damping system to control the noise inherent of its surroundings, and secondly as a sun shading device which is more sinuous at the lower levels to allow more or less light at the upper levels, where solar shading is necessary.

Board - 1

Board - 2

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Water Purification Skyscraper in Jakarta

The city of Jakarta, Indonesia, was originally designed in the confluence of thirteen rivers which were used for transportation and agriculture. The largest of its rivers is The Ciliwung River, which has been extremely polluted during the last couple of decades, characterizes by hundreds of slums inhabited by thousands of people in marginal conditions.
The Ciliwung Recovery Program (CRP) is a project that aims to collect the garbage of the riverbank and purify its water through an ingenious system of mega-filters that operate in three different phases. The first one separates the different types of garbage and utilizes the organic one to fertilize its soil. The second phase purifies the water by removing dangerous chemicals and adding important minerals to it. The clean water is then fed to the river and to the nearby agricultural fields through a system of capillary tubes.  Finally in the third phase all the recyclable waste is processed.
One of the most important aspects of this proposal is the elimination of the slums along the river. The majority of the people will live and work at the CRP which could be understood as new city within Jakarta. The CRP project will be a 100 percent sustainable building that will produce energy through wind, solar, and hydroelectric systems. 

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Modern Cities Of Indonesia

When I was still working in Jakarta, I lived somewhere 30 km away from the city center, where trees and greens were completely part of my surrounding. Everyday I had to drive trough two newly-developed modern town, Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) and Bintaro Jaya. Both have turned itself into modern and self-sustained cities.

BSD City

BSD Central Biz District Phase II

Bintaro CBD Phase I

Harvest City Phase I, 25 km south of Jakarta

Jakarta Garden City, East of Jakarta

There are some more ”independent” modern cities outside Jakarta which become new magnets for Indonesian youths to come and bet their lucks, namely Alam Sutera, Modernland, Pondok Indah, Kota Wisata, Kelapa Gading, etc. My only concern is that, maybe it’ll be much better if those many areas are integrated in one single area, and make a new metropolitan like Singapore, which may be Jakarta’s blood sister. Can Indonesia? Yes, it can. Soon.

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BlackBerry-Indonesia: Everybody Wins!

Shares in Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion rose Tuesday, a day after it said it will filter its BlackBerry web services for pornography.
The government of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, threatened to revoke the smartphone maker’s licence in that country.
RIM says is ‘fully committed to working with Indonesia’s carriers to put in place a prompt, compliant filtering solution.’ (Courtesy AT&T)
RIM shares closed higher by 38 cents at $62.15 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Tuesday.
In a statement, the firm said it is “fully committed to working with Indonesia’s carriers to put in place a prompt, compliant filtering solution for Blackberry subscribers in Indonesia as soon as possible.”

The threat would have blocked RIM’s access from one of Asia’s fastest-growing telecommunications markets.
RIM shipped 14.1 million units in its latest quarter, making it the world’s fourth-biggest smartphone maker.
This will be the first time it has agreed to filter its web content.
Company representatives are due to meet with Indonesian officials on Jan. 17 to discuss the details of how RIM’s filter will work.
Last year, RIM faced a series of confrontations with governments including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and India after they complained about difficulties monitoring communications on the smartphones.

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Samsung: 3DTV Not Inherently Dangerous to Elderly

We promised you we’d look closer into the 3DTV warning that Samsung issued a few weeks ago. Well, we heard back from the electronics company and talked to an expert on elderly eyes to find out the real deal about seniors and 3DTVs.
Samsung didn’t grant us an interview, but it did issue an official statement from its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. It says, in, part, that:
“Samsung 3D TVs are safe. Like many other consumer electronic products, Samsung 3D TVs – and all Samsung TVs – carry a consumer advisory to equip our customers with information necessary to enjoy our products responsibly…Watching 3D TV is an entirely new experience and with any new technology, we advise customers to use their own judgment if they experience discomfort. When used properly with instructions and advisories followed, 3D functions should not pose adverse health or safety risks to elderly customers.”
Our eye expert, Dr. Dominick M. Maino, who is editor of the Optometry & Vision Development journal, a member of the American Optometric Association and a professor at Illinois College of  Optometry/Illinois Eye Institute, affirms Samsung’s statement.
“Right now, as far as I know, there’s currently no evidence to support the belief that 3D movies harm the eyes – and that includes seniors,” he says.
Dr. Maino does note, however, that senior eyes may not be as good at conversion, or moving the eyes toward each other to form a singular picture, as younger viewers are. “The eyes are really only designed to last for 40 years,” he says. “In our late 50s, 60s and older a huge percentage of us have problems getting the eyes to turn in enough to create binocular vision.”
This type of vision is necessary for 3DTV viewing. Without it, seniors may experience double vision, blurred vision, nausea and eye strain when utilizing their TV’s 3D functionality. These symptoms can last from one hour to the better part of a day, according to Dr. Maino.
All hopes are not lost, however, if you’re unable to see a 3D picture or experience these symptoms when viewing 3DTV. There are many vision remedies out there, although they cannot be obtained without a comprehensive eye exam, which Dr. Maino believes should happen every year if you’re 60 or older.
Dr. Maino has a few other tips for seniors. He recommends watching 3DTV in normal room lighting, creating a comfortable TV-watching environment and, ironically, staying active for optimal 3DTV viewing.
“As research shows, the more active you are the better your brain is,” he says. “And the better your brain works the better your eyes work. Watching a 3D movie for an hour or two would be just fine, but then go do something that’s active for you.”

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