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Legal Careers Lose Their Allure, Drop to Dentistry Status Posted Jan 7, 2008, 05:52 am CST By Debra Cassens Weiss College grads who want wealth and social status are passing up law and medicine for careers in investment banking. A career at a hedge fund or private equity firm can offer financial rewards that outpace earnings at even the biggest law firms. Partners at the nation’s largest 100 firms made an average of $1.2 million in 2006, but many senior investment bankers will take home an average of $2.25 million to $2.75 million in bonuses and salaries, the New York Times reports. But even more important than money are the glamour, control and quick path to financial rewards in investment banking, according to the article. Lawyers no longer enjoy the prestige they once held, and the quest for billable hours has taken away the notion of law as a noble profession. Doctors and lawyers “have slipped a notch in social status, drifting toward the safe-and-staid realm of dentists and accountants,” the story reports. The change is reflected in the number of students applying to law schools. The number of applicants dropped 5.2 percent in 2005 from the year before, and another 6.7 percent in 2006, when 83,500 applied to law schools.

Monday, October 29, 2007 The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream Continued from page 1 By Kate Greene Print E-mail Audio » New! Listen - Flash Listen - MP3 Subscribe to podcast What is this? Powered by Share » Digg this Add to del.icio.us Add to Reddit Add to Facebook

Three products in the social-software toolbox -- blogs, wikis and RSS -- have begun to gain traction inside companies. Blogs are probably the best known, thanks in part to their popularity on the Web and partly because of the handful of executives who use blogs to address customers and employees and to muse about industry trends. Lately, blogs are showing up inside companies -- including Procter & Gamble Co., Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. and ad agency TBWA Worldwide, among others -- as a way for rank-and-file employees to discuss important industry trends, to bring project team members up to speed, or for employees to vent about changes within the company. Wikis aren't as familiar as blogs, but they may be even better suited for business use. They're versatile tools for doing almost any sort of collaboration, from project management to building vast repositories of knowledge. (That's what the best-known public wiki, Wikipedia, has done.) At Walt Disney Co.'s Pixar studio, for instance, wiki technology is being used to help coordinate new computerized animation tools for the studio's planned 2008 release of a film called "WALL-E." Finally, RSS (for Really Simple Syndication) knits together all the material created on blogs and in wikis and delivers it in easy-to-find fashion. RSS lets employees keep up to date on the latest blog post or change in the project-team wiki. It also can alert users to changes in business-critical information like an entry in a spreadsheet or even the computerized output from production equipment, such as error messages from semiconductor machinery. Other Web 2.0 te

Forget iPhone, Think Google Phone Written by Om Malik Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 12:33 AM PT | 74 comments The Observer of London is reporting that Google might be working with HTC and mobile/telecom giant Orange to build a Google Mobile Phone, which could possibly have Google software inside the device, and would be able to do many of the web tasks smartly. The device, article speculates, could go on sale in 2008. (Of course, we would all have forgotten by then… if it doesn’t happen.) Orange and Google, both declined to comment. Their plans centre on a branded Google phone, which would probably also carry Orange’s logo. The device would not be revolutionary: manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese firm specialising in smart phones and Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), it might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset. It would be interesting to see if this comes to fruition. Google, in recent months has become increasingly aggressive about its mobile ambitions, and is pushing into the carrier space, though there have been some snags. Google Phone, if you think about it is a reasonable speculation. Google has been aggressive in developing location based services, has amp-ed up its local search and mapping services. In addition, it has also been mobilizing its applications such as GTalk and GMail. YouTube, the video arm of Google, is beginning to embrace the mobile ecosystem. Normally, one would not spend too much energy on this bit of news. However, presence of Andy Rubin on Google campus gives us a reason to pause. Who is Rubin? He was one of the co-founders of Danger, the company that makes the Sidekick devices. He sold his last company, Android to Google for an undisclosed amount of money, and he has been holed up in Mountain View, California campus of Google, doing something. No one knows what, but since Android was focusing on mobile, it is safe to assume that he just might be involved in Android. Danger, as you might know has become a multimillion dollar business based off the “compress web and take it mobile” technology developed by Rubin and others. Businessweek had reported that Android was working on a cell phone operating system. One source familiar with the company says Android had at one point been working on a software operating system for cell phones. … In a 2003 interview with BusinessWeek, just two months before incorporating Android, Rubin said there was tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences. “If people are smart, that information starts getting aggregated into consumer products,” said Rubin. For Orange, this could be a valuable asset in its triple play ambitions. The company owns broadband businesses across Europe, and has access to 3G networks, and is owned by France Telecom. It could use Google’s web expertise to take on its rivals, by offering web-mobile hybrid phones, and at the same time get a slice of mobile advertising revenues. I know, sounds far fetched, but not out of the real of possiblity. Your thoughts?