Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book race

Microsoft gave its high-end Surface a leap forward on Tuesday with the unveiling of the Surface Pro 4 and the surprise launch of the Surface Book, the company's first laptop.

The Surface Pro 4 (left) and Surface Book (right) are staking out the high end in tablets.

Microsoft's love affair with hardware just got more intense. If there were any doubts about the software juggernaut staying in the devices game, they were erased on Tuesday with one of the biggest and broadest hardware announcements in the company's history.

Microsoft showed off a fleet of new and freshly updated Windows 10-powered devices in New York. The stars of the show were the Surface Pro 4 and the new Surface Book laptop, which were a potent answers to Apple's recently unveiled iPad Pro and Google's newly announed Pixel C.

According to Microsoft Devices lead engineer Panos Panay there are nearly 110 million devices running Windows 10. Most of the products Microsoft unveiled at Tuesday's press event were intended to show how important mobile hardware and software integration with Windows 10 is to the company.

The event's biggest surprise, the Surface Book, and the new Surface Pro 4 are powerful machines, and both aim to connect with both enterprise users and creative professionals. They succeed big time in the specs department. In terms of usability and adoption, we'll know more after both are released on October 26.

The Surface Book is Microsoft's first laptop, and it's a fiery, ambitious device. The specs are decked, particularly given that the price is comparable to a Macbook Pro. The Surface Book starts at $1499, and comes with a full Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, 1TB of storage, 16GB RAM, and a GPU designed for gaming and multimedia editing by the Xbox team. Additionally, the 13.5-inch screen (3000 x 2000 resolution) can detach to become a stand-alone tablet.

The Surface Pro 4 tablet runs Windows 10 and, like its predecessors, can serve as a full-fledged laptop replacement. The Surface Pro 4 is, as expected, somewhat thinner and 30 percent faster than the previous model. It has 16GB of RAM, and comes with up to a terabyte of storage, and a 12.3-inch screen (2736 x 1824 resolution). Microsoft cloud and productivity apps Cortana, Windows Hello, Microsoft Office, and OneDrive are deeply integrated. The Surface Pro 4 starts at $899.

When the Surface debuted in 2012 running Windows 8, the tablet seemed like an awkward, out-of-place device. Today, the Surface Pro has been owning and innovating in the high-end tablet space. It's become a favorite of design professionals, IT administrators, and others who want a productivity tablet.

Arguably, the success of the Surface Pro helped pull Apple and Google into the high-end professional tablet market. Google's comparable new Pixel C is similarly powerful, features a keyboard cover, and is deeply tied to the Google cloud ecosystem. Yet, Google's device does not feel as durable as the Surface Pro 4, and Office is still often an essential tool for business users looking for a full laptop replacement.

Apple's iPad Pro is a powerful professional and creative tool. Apple's high-end tablet is larger and slightly more expensive than the Surface Pro 4. Microsoft is banking that the integration of Windows 10 and universal apps will help the Surface stand on par with the iPad Pro.

Microsoft's attention to detail with peripheral devices like the Type Pro cover and the Surface Pen stylus may lend them a slight edge in the professional tablet market. The new Surface Pro Type Cover, notable for its "precision glass trackpad" is a significant refinement over the previous generation. The cover still costs 130 dollars, but is lighter, more responsive, and features more space between the keys than the previous version.

Microsoft has worked hard to make the stylus seem useful and cool. The new Surface Pen is intended to feel like writing on paper. The stylus features a tip with 1,024 points of pressure sensitivity, an eraser (yes, an eraser!), year-long battery life, and comes in five colors. When not in use the pen is held snugly to the top of the tablet by magnets. Microsoft took great care to display the tablet tilted in portrait mode like a clipboard, with a pen resting on top. The company emphasized the tablet itself "just fades into the background" when used by office workers, doctors, architects, and musicians.

Microsoft's Surface Book is the company's first laptop.

As with the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, the new Lumia 950 and 950 XL phones are powered by Windows 10, with special consideration to mobile productivity. The devices measure at 5.2 and 5.7 inches respectively, and feature an upgraded camera with a dedicated shutter release button.

The most unique and innovative announcement from Microsoft may have been the Display Doc. Intended to maximize workplace flexibility, and uncouple the enterprise user from the constraints of a laptop, the Microsoft Display Doc was initially announced at last spring's Build conference as the Continuum docking station. The Display Doc is a small, square device that connects to any compatible Windows 10 mobile device like the Lumia 950 using three USB Type-3 ports, a DisplayPort and HDMI. When connected to a monitor using Display Doc, the phone will present a traditional Windows home screen, complete with the familiar Start button and icon tray. Though not as robust as a true desktop PC, the experience resembles desktop Windows and is able to manage productivity tasks like mail and messaging, document creation and sharing, and web browsing.

Windows 10 is at the core of the new Microsoft device environment. The company also announced updates to the Windows 10 universal app ecosystem [LINK], and a launch partnership with Facebook to expand the core Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram applications.

CEO Satya Nadella closed the event by stressing the importance of Windows 10 as a unified platform. Every device Microsoft released on Tuesday is a step towards fulfilling that vision. As impressive as the devices were, the biggest thing standing in their way perhaps is the stability of Windows 10, as our ZDNet colleague Mary Jo Foley and others have cited recently.

Forum: Private Wealth Latin America & The Caribbean : Miami, Oct 20-21, 2015

Markets Group los invita a participar en el Private Wealth Latin America & the Caribbean Forum 2015, el cual tendrá lugar los días 20 y 21 de octubre en el JW Marriott Hotel en Miami. Será el mayor encuentro de family offices, bancas privadas, administradores de fondos, y gestores de patrimonio en la región.  El foro reunirá a los principales líderes de la industria de wealth management para discutir las últimas tendencias relacionadas con la banca privada en la región, asignación y protección de capital, inversiones alternativas, gobernanza familiar, inversión de impacto, así como otros temas de gran importancia en el ámbito de private wealth.  Descargue la Agenda Aquí 10% de descuento para miembros de CAMACOL Acompáñenos y conozca a más de 600 ejecutivos del sector financiero, provenientes de todas partes del mundo, principalmente de los Estados Unidos, Mexico, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Perú, Argentina y el Caribe. Algunos de los oradores confirmados son: Vicente Fox, Former President of Mexico (2000-2006) Bob Browne, Executive Vice President & Chief Investment Officer, Northern Trust (US) Dan Mitchell, Senior Fellow, The Cato Institute (US) Adriana M. Sarmiento, Managing Director USA Representative, Organización Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo (US) Antonio Álvarez Desanti, President, Álvarez y Marín Corporación (Costa Rica) Niladri ‘Neel’ Mukherjee, Director – Chief Investment Office, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management (US) Maria Elena (Mel) Lagomasino, Managing Partner & Chief Executive Officer, we Family Offices (US) Ben Pace, Partner & Chief Investment Officer, HPM Partners (US) Alfredo Monge, President, Grupo Monge (Costa Rica) Britt Whitfield, Regional Chief Investment Officer, Abbot Downing (US) Patricia Sierra, Executive Director, Fundacion Pies Descalzos (Colombia) Christopher T. Battifarano, Director of Research, GenSpring Family Offices (US) Diego Martinez, Founding Partner, MM&A Consultants (Uruguay)  Solicite la Lista Completa Aquí Para más información póngase en contacto con: Carolina Barreto Relationship Manager +1 646-216-8690 Carolina.Barreto@marketsgroup.org Con el apoyo de:

Human Trafficking Event @ FNU, Hialeah Campus

Young Americans Are Giving Up on Getting Rich (BusinessWeek)

Despite debt, stagnant wages, and sluggish economic growth, young people may yet find a path to prosperity.

Young Americans’ incomes are depressed, their retirement nest eggs are microscopic, and their rate of employment is weak. The trend lines aren’t promising, either, which likely explains why there’s no shortage of pessimism out there. In a Bloomberg poll of Americans age 18 to 35—the millennial generation—47 percent said they do not expect their cohort to live better than their parents. For one thing, it’s hard to imagine outdoing your parents if you’re still sleeping under their roof. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, 15 percent of people age 25 to 34 were living with their parents last year, up from 10 percent 30 years earlier. High home prices and strict mortgage lending standards are prime reasons for many millennials’ failure to launch. “They are priced out of the kind of housing that they grew up in,” says Richard Portes, an economist at London Business School.

Living at home, or living away from home but depending on help from Mom and Dad, keeps many young people from learning how to manage their finances, says Vicki Bogan, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. “You don’t have any ownership, any force to push you to become financially literate,” she says.

Not all young people have student debt, but for those who do, it can be paralyzing. Jessica Xydias, 25, says she didn’t take out a lot of student loans, “but my husband did. I look at our accounts all the time. It feels crushing and insurmountable.” And the debt crimps their ability to save. While paying off loans, she says, “it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to put money into your Roth account.”

One thing millennials do have in their favor, of course, is time. Modest economic expansion that exceeds population growth “is more than enough to support a higher standard of living for our children over time,” says Gus Faucher, senior macroeconomist at PNC Financial Services. Whether young people dig out from their deficit and end up surpassing their parents’ generation depends on some unknowable things. Will globalization and automation kill or create jobs? Will humankind be saved by nuclear fusion and a cure for Alzheimer’s, or be doomed by climate change, wars over resources, and the crippling cost of elder care?

One way to look ahead—and restore some optimism—is to look back to millennial parents’ salad days. Median wages and assets were higher, adjusted for inflation. But would you trade that life for the one you have? Would you give up your smartphone, your GPS, Google, Amazon.com, fresh peas in winter, and Ford F-150s with aluminum bodies that won’t rust?

It’s just as likely to envision a similar set of innovations 30 years from now that people can’t imagine living without. If so, then no matter what the official statistics say, the best years just might lie ahead.

Inventions: IdeaFestival: The 3 things businesses need to focus on to stay relevant

At the 2015 IdeaFestival, business leaders discussed how their companies stay relevant and profitable in the shifting global marketplace.

For businesses, staying relevant can mean life or death in the marketplace. But, with a rapidly changing marketplace, it's often difficult to predict what ideas will stick.

At the 2015 IdeaFestival in Louisville, Kentucky, a panel of experts explored how their organizations stay relevant with customers, employees, and their community.

To open the discussion, Inc. editor Ledbetter asked the three panelists (The Immunity Project CMO and co-founder Naveen Jain, On Second Thought founder Maci Peterson, and Carey Smith, the founder of Big Ass Fans) to share their key metric for measuring relevance:

Jain - "Did I talk to my customer today?"

Peterson - "How many times were we (the app) used today?"

Smith - "What are we going to do in terms of developing new products?"

After establishing baseline metrics, the conversation shifted to focus on the three key areas where businesses must maintain relevance in order to be successful: Customers, talent, and community.

Customers

As anyone in business will tell you, customers are the lifeblood of your company. So, remaining relevant to those customers is vital.

The Immunity Project is a nonprofit working on developing a nasal-inhalable, room temperature stable vaccine for HIV. The major challenge that Jain faces is the diversity of customers that his organization interacts with. Their customers include general supporters, people in the HIV/AIDS community, people in the scientific community, and people in the tech community. With that many different constituents, Jain said his main goal is communicating effectively and maintaining relationships with all of those groups.

Peterson's company, On Second Thought, built an app that allows users to delete SMS messages after they have sent them. And the mobile market she's in is highly competitive. Users of the app tend to set it as their default SMS app, Peterson said, to have the "texting insurance" it provides. To stay relevant, though, they continually listen to their customers about what they want from the product. To meet the demands through other channels, Peterson has extended the model to other chat apps and social media. The company is also working with mobile banking in places like Kenya to become more of a broad utility for mobile users.

Big Ass Fans, which was founded in 1999, produces just that — big ass fans and other industrial equipment. Smith said that his biggest challenge in staying relevant has been understanding the risks of developing products and moving forward.

Understanding the product development cycle requires a keen eye for changes in what the customers want. By selling directly to customers, Smith said they are able to more quickly see what customers want. The biggest changes that he's seen in customer need over the past 18 months has been the introduction of IoT smart home products, and they responded by creating an IoT consumer fan.

Talent

In addition to remaining relevant to their user base, businesses must also strive to maintain relevance to their employees. For many companies, especially in tech, providing an equity stake in the company has become a useful way to increase employee engagement.

Smith's company, which is still private, set aside 25% of the company as an equity pool that any employee in the company can buy into. Also, Big Ass Fans provides all employees with a bonus. The bonus was smaller during the recession of 2007-2008, Smith said, but he made the promise that he wouldn't lay anyone off. He said that has paid off in dividends as the company has experienced massive growth since 2008 and they receive almost 15,000 resumes a year from prospective employees.

When asked why more companies don't operate this way, Smith responded: "Because they're lazy, greedy, and maybe not so smart."

As a smaller startup, On Second Thought is just now hiring the company's first employee. Peterson said they used the contract-to-hire method, where the employee begins as a contractor for three months and is brought on full time if it is a good fit. It has allowed them to mitigate the risk of hiring someone full time, while being able to offer a stake in the company as well.

While Peterson and Smith may be facing similar issues when it comes to talent, Jain's relevance challenge for new talent is completely different. As a non-profit, he typically can't offer an inflated salary so, to attract talent, he has to appeal solely to the mission of the project. He, too, receives many resumes a day from people he said "just want to help."

Community

Outside of your customers and your talent, staying relevant to your community is also an important aspect of success. How you define the community around your product or service will inform how you can remain relevant.

For Smith, it's simple. He takes care of the community by paying competitive salaries and offering equity ownership. Additionally, he said, most of their suppliers are within 40 miles of the Big Ass Fans headquarters so he's supporting the geographic community as well.

Peterson just hired a community manager, an essential employee in helping bring together the plethora of communities that the company is a part of. Peterson said they have five distinct communities — users, team, investors, minority community, and women in tech. For starters, On Second Though focused on developing a brand voice and persona and made sure it was consistent across channels.They engage their communities on social media, and Peterson herself does some work with women in tech initiatives

In the medical space, The Immunity Project remains relevant by remaining as open and transparent as humanly possible for each constituent at the proper time, Jain said. For example, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham was among the early group of people who donated blood for the organization's experiments and Jain feels that he owes that early group clear communication when new information is available.

Musk and SolarCity unveil ‘world’s most efficient’ solar panel

The sun is a virtually endless supply of energy that goes mostly untapped. The solar panels you see covering the roofs of an increasing number of homes and businesses capture some of that energy, at least during the daytime and when there isn’t extensive cloud cover, but, by most standards, they are incredibly inefficient.

The sun is a virtually endless supply of energy that goes mostly untapped. The solar panels you see covering the roofs of an increasing number of homes and businesses capture some of that energy, at least during the daytime and when there isn’t extensive cloud cover, but, by most standards, they are incredibly inefficient.

SEE ALSO: How solar panels could capture a lot more sunlight on slanted roofs

Experts say the average solar cell panel can convert 14-to-20% of the energy it collects into usable electricity. By photosynthesis standards — a plant is 5% efficient — that's not bad, but humans believe solar panels should do better.

On Friday in New York City's Times Square, SolarCity, the nation’s largest installer of residential solar panels, and company chairman Elon Musk introduced what they claim is the world’s most efficient rooftop solar panel, achieving a peak efficiency of 22.04%.

SolarCity said the rating was verified by the Renewable Energy Test Center, a third-party certification testing provider for photovoltaic and renewable energy based in Fremont, California.

The panels are the same size as traditional panels, but, according to SolarCity, produce 30-to-40% more power. They also claim that the panels perform better than competing products in high temperatures.

Peter Rive, SolarCity's co-founder and CTO, told Mashable in an interview that the new panels are sufficiently cheap to produce that they will allow the company to continue to make money off of them even if government policies to provide tax breaks for panel installation expire.

“That’s been the singular focus of the company… to continue to get the costs down,” Rive said.

“I’m really excited about this… it’s the best solar panel on the planet and it empowers us from 2017 and beyond to control our own destiny,” he said.

SolarCity’s efficiency leap, however, may not be that big when compared to the current state of the art.

Solar energy expert John Farrell, who serves as Director of the Democratic Energy Program for The Institute for Local Self-Reliance told Mashable that typical solar panel efficiency is, at 18%-to-22%, actually in the same range as SolarCity’s new panel.

“In the lab they get to 40%,” said Farrell, but that’s with special materials that would likely jack up the cost of solar panels by 50%. Out in the field, companies like SolarCity must balance efficiency with cost.

When I asked Farrell about the increased power output he said, “That sounds like a lot. Not sure what they would be comparing it to.” If SolarCity’s current panel tech had a peak efficiency of, say, 16%, a 37% jump to over 22% could account for the difference.

Farrell does agree that heat management is an issue worth tackling. With solar energy, the very thing that lets these panels produce energy is also the thing that overheats them.

“In Minnesota, we have less sun, but that means the panels can work better here and be more efficient for the sunlight we have because it’s colder. So I’m not surprised that’s one of the things they work on,” said Farrell.

Are SolarCity’s new panels a true solar energy breakthrough? As far as Farrell is concerned, dramatically better solar panels is not the story, “I think the big story is SolarCity Installed one-third of all panels on residential property in the U.S. in the last year, so whatever they’ve done will get to a lot of customers.”

Still, 22% efficiency is nothing to sneeze at, especially wen you consider that, unlike traditional energy sources, you do not pay for the fuel — the sun — you put into solar energy.

When the SolarCity 1 gigawatt factory in Buffalo reaches full capacity next year, SolarCity said it plans to produce as many 10,000 solar panels a day.

How Congress Helped Save Goldman Sachs From Itself

In October 2011, things were looking bleak at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s commodities business. Revenue was down, competition was up, employee attrition was at an all-time high and new regulations were on the horizon.

Beyond the usual rivalries with Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs executives saw an upstart doing deals they couldn’t do and throwing lots of cash at traders: Glencore Plc. The commodities company wasn’t tied down by rules that applied to banks and had become even more of a presence since a $10 billion initial public offering earlier that year. It boasted strong growth and higher stock multiples than Goldman Sachs was receiving for its commodities unit.

“Glencore competes with GS Commodities but has a broader business mix, including significant production, refining, storing and transport activities,” Goldman Sachs executives said in a presentation that month to the bank’s board later made public by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “May be model for evolution of commodities trading.”

Four years later, that envious assessment is looking wrong, and Goldman Sachs executives are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Glencore shares plunged 29 percent Monday, extending their decline to 78 percent in the past five months. The Baar, Switzerland-based company is seeking to sell assets and cut debt to avert a credit-rating downgrade. It has sold new stock and scrapped its dividend as part of a $10 billion debt-reduction program amid a broad commodity rout spurred by China’s economic slowdown. Last week, Goldman Sachs analysts said the company’s efforts were inadequate, sending the stock lower.

Fed Scrutiny

Goldman Sachs and other banks have the U.S. Congress and the Federal Reserve to thank. While you won’t hear many bankers praising regulation that limits their activities, the Fed’s scrutiny of banks’ physical commodities units came at a fortuitous time for the largest Wall Street firms.

The Fed was already overseeing the commodities units of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as a result of their 2008 conversion to bank holding companies when Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, held hearings in 2013 on the risks those businesses posed to lenders and markets. He pushed regulators to review banks’ commodities activities and the exemptions that allowed firms to own such businesses.

Gregory Agran, co-head of the global commodities group at Goldman Sachs, during the Senate Subcommittee hearing.

Gregory Agran, co-head of the global commodities group at Goldman Sachs, during the Senate Subcommittee hearing. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg.

The Senate subcommittee held hearings last year and released findings from a two-year investigation that concluded Wall Street’s role in owning physical commodities provided unfair trading advantages and could threaten the financial system if a bank’s business suffered an industrial catastrophe. While the Fed still hasn’t introduced its promised new rules, banks didn’t wait to act.

Morgan Stanley in July 2014 sold its stake in oil-transportation company TransMontaigne Inc. and some physical inventory to NGL Energy Partners LP for about $750 million, in part because of the regulatory attention. It booked a $101 million gain on the sale. Since then, the publicly traded subsidiary of TransMontaigne has dropped by a third and oil has fallen by $60 a barrel.

JPMorgan Sale

JPMorgan sold part of its physical commodities business to Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. in October. Morgan Stanley tried to sell its oil merchanting business to OAO Rosneft last year. After that deal fell apart because of U.S. sanctions against the Russian company, the bank found another buyer in Castleton Commodities International LLC earlier this year.

“We don’t think we need to be in the physical oil assets or merchanting business to be effective,” Morgan Stanley Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Pruzan said at an investor conference in June. “Ten years or 15 years ago it was important, and we thought it was a competitive advantage, but we don’t think that’s the case today.”

Spokesmen for Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan declined to comment. Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, is a senior independent non-executive director at Glencore.

When Glencore went public in 2011, the stakes of the company’s top six executives were valued at $23 billion, surpassing the wealth generated by Goldman’s own IPO 12 years earlier. Goldman Sachs executives told their board that year that the combination of commodity production and trading was proving attractive to investors and that Goldman’s business would be valued more highly if it looked more like Glencore.

Goldman’s commodities business at the time boasted more than 1,000 clients in dozens of countries and had earned more than $10 billion in pretax profit over the previous five years, more than Amazon.com Inc. and Starbucks Corp. combined. Still, trading across the industry was in a decline that has continued. Commodities-trading revenue at the 10 largest banks generated $12 billion in the two and a half years ended in June, less than it produced in 2009 alone, according to data from industry research firm Coalition Ltd.

‘Dangerous Business’

While Goldman Sachs hasn’t expanded as it may have wanted and sold two of the largest physical commodities operations it owned, it has cut back less than others. Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc are among banks that have slashed their commodities units, and Goldman Sachs CFO Harvey Schwartz said earlier this year that the firm saw less competition in commodities trading from other banks.

In 2007, then-CFO David Viniar dismissed the threat of other banks bulking up in commodities.

“It’s a dangerous business to be in if you’re not expert,” Viniar said at the time. “It’s a dangerous business to be in even if you are expert.”