The smartphone market is going to be hit by a new heat wave at the end of the month–the Samsung Galaxy Note II. If you don’t know about its predecessor, the Note I, to have a general idea of this new product, this is a pretty decent approach: you drop the phone, you might kill a small dog.

The phone has a massive 5.5” screen which makes it genuinely impossible to be fit into most pockets. So what makes people want to buy this “bigger than an iPhone but not yet an iPad” phone? The value proposition of Note II seems to be stuck in between the one of a smartphone and a tablet.

However, Samsung has found a spot somewhere on the scale for this giant phone. It is a phone to give its owner an experience beyond a smartphone yet the owner is not burdened with the weight of a tablet. All in all, it is the solution for those who want both but would only pay for one.

If the Galaxy Note II turns out to achieve another successful sale, it might be a good idea to try proposing a product in the middle of a spectrum when both sides are occupied already.

Oct. 18, 2012. Akkad, Omar. <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/gadgets-and-gear/gadgets/galaxy-note-ii-a-giant-stretch-of-the-word-phone/article4621461/?page=2>

What has been sweeping the front page of the economy news is the crisis and eurozone; more specifically, the potential bailout of Spain. If this nightmare became realty, it would be the fourth full-blown bailout in Europe.

As a legitimate soccer fan of Spain, this is a piece of very upsetting news which stalled me from updating to it until I came across a friend’s blog just now. The title “Spain does not need a bailout” was what caught my eyeballs. So the future of  Spain is not as worrisome as I expected?

If the realty is just as how the German Finance Minister describes, “Spain is doing everything necessary and needs no aid”, then all anxieties and worries are in vain.

However, a story can always be told by two sides. Statistics have come out and the figures are shocking. Unemployment rate in Spain has reached a historical high of 25.1%.  That is, one person  jobless out of very four!

This figure shows the continuously increasing unemployment rate in Spain in the past four years. Image adapted from Google Public Data

I will keep following the news and hope for more optimistic news.

Hewitt, G. October 2nd, 2012. Clock ticks on Spain bailout. BBC News. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19797656>

Fifteen years ago, when I was still living in China, my grandma always said to us, “there’s never that many motorcycles on the streets before. Even the alleys have got more crowded.” Four years ago, when I just moved back to Richmond, Canada, my mom told me, “the amount of cars now on the street is incredible. There were never that many cars in Richmond.”

The rate of economic growth in the past decade in both China and Canada was dazzling. After studying a few chapters of Microeconomics, I was very positive that such phenomenon reflects significant progress in the society and people in the society were better off with the rapid growth. I thought, arrogantly (arrogance came from understanding a few pages of the Econ textbook), resources have been utilized rather efficiently!

But such growth comes with tradeoffs. One of them is the compromise of public leisure spaces like playgrounds. I was completely unaware of the issue until I came across a blog of one of my classmate–Dayah Johal. She addresses the issue which more and more townhouses, which comes with smaller yards, are built in the city of Richmond while fewer and fewer playgrounds are put into proposal. Children then become the indirect victim of the municipal plan which favours in profitable real estate market.

This is a picture I took in May, inspired by such harmonious view.

Next time, while we are enjoying the harvest of economic booming, we might want to take a minute and think, “are we growing too fast?”

Dayah Johal. “Kids Contending in Construction”. Dayah Johal’s blog. Sept 12, 2012. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/dayahjohal/2012/09/12/kids-contending-with-construction/>