How Lagos hopes a railway will end daily endurance test and change lives | World news When Danladi Verheijen has to attend an important meeting, he doesn't know whether getting there will take 10 minutes or three hours. "You're going to upset someone," he says. "You're going to arrive very early or very late. It leads to massive loss of productivity." Verheijen works in Lagos, one of the world's fastest growing megacities – and one of the most congested. The simplest journey here can be a trial of will. But Verheijen believes he can do something to break the deadlock. "I think it will dramatically change the face of Lagos," he said. "It's cheaper than the alternative, it's faster, it's safer, it's more reliable, it's more environmentally friendly. Many railways laid during Africa's colonial era have decayed due to neglect, leaving Cecil John Rhodes's Cape-to-Cairo fantasy more remote than ever. But Lagos is badly in need of mass public transport beyond its recently introduced bus rapid transit system. It is hoped that a rail renaissance can be part of the solution.
Electricity to be costlier by 24.15% in Delhi from July 1 PTI Jun 26, 2012, 07.48PM IST NEW DELHI: Electricity will cost more in Delhi from July one with power regulator DERC today raising domestic tariff by 24.15 per cent for the year 2012-13. The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) Chairman P D Sudhakar said the average hike is 20.87 per cent in all categories and domestic tarrif has been hiked by 24.15 per cent. The regulator had in August last year hiked the tariff by 22 per cent hike for all categories of consumers. The tariff was hiked by five per cent in February and by upto two per cent in May this year to adjust the power purchase cost of the distribution companies. All the three power distribution companies, BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd, BSES Yamuna Power Ltd and Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd have been pushing for a hefty hike citing their "severe" finacial condition. The two BSES discoms have said the situation has worsened due to absence of a cost-reflective tariff structure.
Un salarié français coûte en moyenne 50 850 euros par an à son employeur Un salarié français coûte en moyenne 50 850 euros par an à son employeur, pour un coût horaire du travail proche de 32 euros dans les entreprises de dix salariés ou plus du secteur marchand, selon des chiffres de 2008 publiés mercredi 23 février par l'Insee. Ce coût horaire moyen (31,82 euros) en 2008 masque de fortes disparités, puisqu'il varie de 21 à 49 euros selon le secteur d'activité. Il est le plus élevé dans le secteur des banques et des assurances (49,01 euros) et la production et distribution d'électricité et de gaz (46,09). Le coût horaire croît avec la taille de l'entreprise. Les différences de coût horaire moyen entre entreprises s'expliquent aussi par leur localisation géographique. En moyenne, la rémunération des salariés représentait 67,3 % du coût horaire en 2008 dans l'industrie et les services, l'épargne salariale 2,84 %.
Ahead Of Funding News, Boku Debuts NFC-Enabled Mobile Payments Platform For Carriers, Merchants And Consumers Boku is debuting a brand new mobile payments platform today, that aims to disrupt the current way that consumers pay for goods via their mobile phones or credit cards. As you may remember, Boku offers an online payments platform that allowed users to pay for online goods by charging the transaction to their mobile phone bill. When a user wants to purchase a virtual item, he can enter his cell phone number on a site, the site sends a text message to the phone, the user confirms the transaction with a short reply, and all the charges show up on his phone bill. With Boku’s new product, called Boku Accounts, the startup is expanding online mobile payments technology to cover e-commerce and retail point-of-sale payments. The payments platform, which will be licensed to carriers, will be embedded on users’ mobile phones as well as via a pre-paid Mastercard credit card. Basically there are three prongs to Boku’s payments platform: the consumer, the carrier and the merchant.
Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job Some men see things as they are and ask why.Others dream things that never were and ask why not.George Bernard Shaw Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development, Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. I’m beginning to suspect this assumption may be wrong. Where Did We Go Wrong? It’s not that the tools are wrong, I think the entrepreneurship management stack is correct and has made a major contribution to reducing startup failures. Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job For the sake of this analogy, think of two types of artists: composers and performers (think music composer versus members of the orchestra, playwright versus actor etc.) Founders fit the definition of a composer: they see something no one else does. Entrepreneurial employees are the talented performers who hear the siren song of a founder’s vision. Lessons Learned
The DeanBeat: Crowd-funding gives hope to mid-size game developers Above: Brian Fargo Double Fine Productions turned video game funding practices upside down last week when it raised more than $1.75 million through the crowd-funding site Kickstarter in record time. That money will go toward the development of a new adventure game that would otherwise never have been made. Lack of funding has been putting a squeeze on a lot of mid-sized game development companies, but crowd-funding might turn that trend around. “This could bring a wonderful dynamic change to our industry,” said Brian Fargo, chief executive of InXile Entertainment, in an interview. Fargo has been making games since the 1980s, first at Electronic Arts, then at his own company Interplay Productions, and now at InXile. He recently relaunched The Bard’s Tale — originally developed in 1985 and remade in 2004 — on the iPhone and saw an outpouring of appreciation from nostalgic fans. “In almost every single interview I do, the game press asks me if I’ll ever do Wasteland again,” Fargo said.
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