Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 02/23/07
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“THE FUTURE OF MONEY A CASH CALL”
Portions of an article in the 02/18/07 print edition of The Economist
“…Mobile phones are becoming an increasingly popular way to make all sorts of payments. In America fans of the Atlanta Hawks have been testing specially adapted Nokia handsets linked to their Visa cards to enter their local stadium and to buy refreshments. Elsewhere schemes are more advanced. You can already pass the day in Austria without carrying cash, credit or debit cards by paying for everything, including consumer goods, with a mobile phone, says Arthur D. Little, a firm of management consultants. It reckons worldwide payments using mobile phones will climb from just $3.2 billion in 2003 to more than $37 billion by 2008.
“Mobiles are used to buy lots of things in Asia. Earlier this month Visa and SK Telecom, South Korea’s leading mobile company, announced the commercial launch of a phone-payments system aimed initially at 30,000 subscribers. In Japan hundreds of thousands of transactions, from buying railway tickets to picking up groceries, already take place every day with customers passing their handsets across a device like that pictured above. Payments are confirmed with a sound like the bell of an old cash register…
Buying a train ticket, picking up a newspaper and grabbing a cup of coffee on the way to work with just a wave of your handset promises to be a lot more convenient than fumbling for money and waiting for change, or using a credit or debit card and having to tap in numbers or sign a slip of paper…
Mobile phones can be much smarter than smart cards. They can be de-activated remotely; they have a screen which can show information, like a credit balance and product information; they have a keyboard to enter information and they can communicate. This means they can also be used to authorize larger payments by entering PIN codes directly on the handset or topped up with stored credit from an online bank account without having to go to an ATM…
“For customers in a hurry, being able to pay with their keitai – as mobiles are known in Japan – is a lot easier than using cash. Many handsets now perform the various functions of cash, keys, credit cards and ID. Most Japanese consider their phone to be secure; if it is lost or stolen it can be locked remotely to protect the cash, credit and other valuables tied to it.
“According to ‘Mobile Payments and Keitai Credit,’ a new report by Gerhard Fasol, of Eurotechnology Japan, paying small sums with electronic cash is rewriting the rules for the credit-card industry. ‘We believe that mobile operators, as well as credit-card companies inside and outside of Japan, should consider how to prepare strategically for the likely success of these mobile payment systems,’ says Mr. Fasol.
“Accounts can be set up quickly and mostly without credit checks. There are already 500 or so smart-card services in use in Japan and many of these are migrating to mobile phones. Credit can be bought for cash, topped up at ATM terminals or purchased from online banking services. Some cards and phones also double up as employee ID badges and allow purchase at canteens, nearby restaurants and vending machines…
“Many of the keitai-credit systems rely on a NFC chip called FeliCa, which was developed by Sony. This chip is embedded in both NTT DoCoMo’s wallet phones and the new Pasmo system. The chips have to work rapidly and reliably, says Ted Osamura of FeliCa. For instance, the railway operators have insisted that their system can admit 60 passengers a minute through each ticket barrier…”
To read the full article and see a photo of a mobile phone in operation, click on http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8697424
“THE END OF THE CASH ERA”
Portions of an article in the 02/15/07 print edition of The Economist
“In the spring Adam Smith will replace Sir Edward Elgar as the face on Britain’s 20-pound note. The first economic thinker to be so honored could well be the last. Not because economists are especially undeserving, but because cash, after millennia as mankind’s most versatile and enduring technologies, looks set over the next 15 years or so finally to melt away into an electronic stream of ones and zeros. If an era is represented by its money, the information age is at hand…
“Nobody can be sure how fast bits and bytes will drive out metal and paper. A hundred years ago you could still pay your taxes in Uganda in cowrie shells. Perhaps hard cash will always find a niche, tucked away in children’s birthday cards and as money for the unbanked and phoneless. But most of the time a phone or a smart card that can be waved over an electronic reader will beat notes and coins hands down for convenience. The doubt – and the remaining obstacle to digital money – concerns a third property of cash: its anonymity…
“Information-money can be handled by any information-processing device. That includes the mobile phone, which can add to money’s utility thanks to its display and its power at any time to link to your bank as a mobile ATM. VISA thinks a contactless digital transaction takes less than half the time of a cash one and that people liberated from what happens to be in their wallets spend a fifth more…”
To read the full article, click on http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RSDNRJD
“SHARK-SMUGGLING BUST NETS $1 MILLION FOR HABITAT PROTECTION”
Parts of article by Stefan Lovgren in National Geographic News of 02/20/07
“Leopard sharks in the San Francisco Bay Area will benefit from fines totaling nearly a million U.S. dollars – money resulting from the bust of a massive shark-smuggling ring that had been operating out of a local church…
“Over the span of more than a decade, the smugglers had pulled thousands of baby leopard sharks from the waters near San Francisco, California. The animals were sold alive to pet stores and private buyers throughout the United States and abroad…
“Last Monday Kevin Thompson – the 48-year-old pastor of the Bay Area Family Church in San Leandro and the poaching ringleader – was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay a fine of U.S. $100,000. Five other people were convicted in the two-year investigation and were ordered to pay a total of $310,000. And in a ‘nonprosecutionagreement,’ the Unification Church of America, which is affiliated with Thompon’s church, will pay $500,000 into the restoration fund…
“Lisa Nichols, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in San Diego, California, said that ‘we estimate anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 sharks have been collected over the last decade.’…
“Leopard sharks are about 10 inches (25 centimeters) long when they are born, and the smugglers had been taking the pups directly from pregnant females. ‘It’s tragic that they were harvesting adult female sharks as the sharks were ready to give birth,’ said John Ugoretz, environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Game, who is based in Monterey. ‘They’re not just illegally taking one animal, but potentially impacting future generations by pulling all of those babies out of the environment and not giving them a chance to survive,’ he said…
“In 2003 Thompson’s group was selling the sharks for $35 to $45 a piece to middlemen, who in turn sold them to pet shops and individuals for $75 to $95. In the store a baby leopard shark could fetch as much as $240…”
To read the complete article, click on
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070220-shark-poaching.html
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