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customers will only be able to pay for applications using operator billing when the application developer has set the price in USD

Motorola will launch its own app store for its Android based phones

Shop4Apps

This is not the first store that will offer Android applications outside Google’s Android Market

Already several independent stores for Android are available, but Motorola is the first big handset vendor to launch one.

MotoAppstore

Since Android is an open platform, it is possible to install stores besides Google’s Android Market

The problem however is that most of the new independent Android stores are not pre-installed on the device

The Orange Application Shop was launched this week during the Le Web conference in Paris

Samsung Bada applications are coming in the first half of 2010 and will very likely be distributed via the Samsung Application Store

The Nokia Ovi Store is reaching close to 1 million downloads per day

Apple promoted a set of applications in the App Store during Black Friday. This promotion greatly influenced rankings and downloads of the featured applications

Samsung is holding a launch event in London next week December 8, to kick-off Samsung Bada

We want to innovate to get better and better access to content

Reader owners can already buy electronic books from 200 bookstores

don’t know how important those booksellers will be to the success of the Sony Reader. The Kindle has mindshare as well as market share. But the opportunity to instantly get a book from the library at 8 pm so my 11-year-old could have something to read before bed was pretty nifty. And it didn’t cost me a dime

Executives at all levels would be more innovative and therefore successful if they approached problems the way designers do

understanding a problem or need from the consumer's point of view and then coming up with the best good or service for the job

What can we do that really nobody else can?

It's the query that sparked the DSi's dual/touchscreen action, the Balance Board's super-accurate weight and mass measurements, and the Wii's revolutionary motion-sensing gameplay

Nintendo has sold 4.02 million Wiis this year, compared with Micosoft's (MSFT) 2.39 million Xbox 360s and 1.94 million Sony (SNE) PlayStation 3s, according to market trackers NPD Group

Miyamoto says their mimicry shows that Nintendo was right to gamble with the Wii. But he worries that a sameness will turn off gamers. "I don't necessarily think all the companies should move in the same direction," he says. "I would like to see each individual company take advantage of its own uniqueness and specialties."

For Miyamoto, that means coming up with a sequel to the Wii. Or does it? Updates such as the Wii MotionPlus accessory and Wii Fit Plus are proof that "there are still a lot of different opportunities and possibilities that haven't been exhausted yet on that console," he says. And it's clear he works by his own schedule. Miyamoto is notorious for scrapping or rebooting projects he thinks aren't up to snuff. Even the new Mario Bros. game ran late, nearly missing the upcoming holiday season because, as Miyamoto admits, "I got deeply involved rearranging elements and polishing it." Although Nintendo investors may want a blockbuster, you can bet the company won't be introducing any new products until Miyamoto says so.

If the federal government doesn't provide the state with an additional $6.9 billion requested by Schwarzenegger, the governor's budget calls for eliminating In-Home Supportive Services, CalWORKS welfare and Healthy Families programs, which provides services to millions of Californians.

"There are recommendations to cut more than $2.9 billion from social service programs," McIntosh said. "This action alone will further push families into poverty, putting them in a dire situation from which they may never recover."

Elimination of these programs will, in turn, impact other areas as well, including the criminal justice system, the homeless population and county welfare rolls. Elimination of the IHSS and CalWORKS programs would put 450,000 people out of work.

While many Western countries experienced negative growth last year, China registered a jaw-dropping 8.7 per cent increase. Though much of it was achieved by a generous stimulus package, it maintained jobs and, in the end, helped fuel feelings of superiority.

Economic power is inexorably shifting away from the U.S. and towards China, he says, and coming with it is power and influence. "China is stronger now. It's more influential," says Yao. "And the Chinese banking sector looks better than the Western banking system."

"Saving face matters to the Chinese," he says. "But if you slap the Chinese face once, twice, three times, four times – that's too much." That language underlines the stark differences in the two nations' perception of issues such as Taiwan, Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

"China has risen to a different place. ... It's clearly an unsettling stage in U.S.-China relations, a new paradigm. No one is really sure how it's going to shake out."

Aside from pure monetary donations, however, is a new model that is transforming corporate philanthropy.

Increasingly, corporations are turning to a shared value model, in which companies work in alignment with society rather than against it, producing mutual benefits to both the community and the corporation

It evolves the traditional model of financial and material goods donations, to one in which corporations leverage a range of corporate assets including employee skills, business acumen and partner networks, to drive social change.

Here’s the shift: Instead of viewing it as our responsibility to drive business and social value, view it also a valuable opportunity to rethink existing practices.

The business case for social innovation

there are a variety of benefits for an organization, from brand building, to staff retention, and even improved client stickiness. Shareholders and the investment community are also increasingly considering corporate responsibility when making investment decisions.

collaborations can drive innovation through necessity. Non-profits work in extreme environments, faced with limited infrastructure, connectivity and staff. Operating in these situations exposes corporate staff to new sets of customer challenges, which can often deliver innovations in product design or services into the business.

by working with a non-profit organization, a corporation can demonstrate its expertise to a new audience, expanding its business network.

Increasingly, investors weigh environmental, social and governance  data when making investment decisions. While such data has been a benchmark for European-based companies for some time, we are now seeing a more global adoption and interest in this, which should be another forcing function for more corporations to act as good corporate citizens.

Applying social innovation in practic

A good starting point is to assess the company’s available skills, expertise, partnerships against the touch-points the company currently has within a given community. From there, establish specific goals to achieve and a strategic plan to meet those goals.

Companies that have an expertise in technology, for example, can collaborate with non-profits or social entrepreneurs to provide the infrastructure backbone that turn their ideas into reality. With the social enterprise mPedigree Network, HP leveraged its technology expertise in cloud-based services to design and build an anti-drug counterfeiting service in Africa. Counterfeit medicine is a significant problem in developing countries, causing more than 700,000 deaths each year. The new service helps save lives by enabling patients to validate the integrity of their medicine by sending a free text message.

Gabi Zedlmayer is Vice President of Hewlett-Packard’s Office of Global Social Innovation.

The R&D focus should be on industry clusters that can leverage the country's natural resource wealth and traditional strengths. Think energy, water, agriculture, forestry, mining and manufacturing that serves vital Canadian needs.

In areas most closely linked to innovation, the progress is equally slow. Mr. Wilson, for example, urged Ottawa to look at creating tax incentives to encourage venture capital and speeding up the commercialization of intellectual property developed in universities.

The to-do list on the path achieving that objective is long. There's overhauling the Investment Canada and Competition acts, opening up the telecom and broadcast industries to more foreign competition, creating a national securities regulator, reforming copyright laws, eliminating remaining internal trade barriers and lowering personal income tax rates.

It may mean that government plays a larger role in some industries while leaving others to their own devices. That, at least, is how other similarly sized economies successfully leverage limited government funds.More study has become an excuse to put off these much tougher, but inevitable, choices.