Knowledge@Wharton released an article about typical CEOs background, education and carriers, based on a comparison which compares the "typical" executives in the 80s and in 2001. Quite interesting to observe the shifts in a lot of fields.

Today’s executives are younger, more likely to be female, and less likely to have Ivy League educations. They make their way to the executive suite faster than ever before about four years faster than their counterparts in 1980), and they hold fewer jobs along the way. They spend about five years less in their current organization before being promoted, and are more likely to be hired from the outside. What’s more, the Organization Man, the lifelong corporate employee who worked his way faithfully and slowly up the executive ladder, appears to be headed out the door — increasingly nudged, apparently, by women.

The dates for the coming U2’s Vertigo Tour are online since 3 days. I will try to get some tickets for Zürich on 11th July 2005.

‘VERTIGO//2005’ WORLD TOUR – EXCLUSIVE!

The dates, cities, venues and ticket information on the tour we’ve all been waiting for!

U2 will begin the first leg of their Vertigo//2005 world tour in San Diego on March, 28th 2005.

Vertigo//2005 will visit 13 cities in North America before arriving in Brussels on June 10th for the first of 24 scheduled European performances, finishing up in Lisbon in the middle of August.

[Thx Patrick]

I was yesterday in St.Gallen – Switzerland at our Headquarters. Quite snowy, more than 40 cm in town :-)

I haven’t updated my blogroll for a while, oups.
So, that’s now corrected, I’ve added the blogs of Jeff Clavier – Musings of a software developer/entrepreneur/senior executive/VC – and Marc Goldberg – A VC perspective on technology and investment confusions. I’m reading this both blogs for a while, definitely worth a reading :-)

I’ve also added a link to the book of Seth Godin, The bootstrapper’s Bible (pdf), which is really great. If you are working in a small company/unit and if you are confronted with big companies (as client, provider, etc.), have a look!

The book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivs license. And, Seth gives an explicite authorization to spread his work electronically!

You are given the unlimited right to print this manifesto and to distribute it electronically (via email, your website, or any other means). You can print out pages and put them in your favorite coffee shopʼs windows or your doctorʼs waiting room. You can transcribe the authorʼs words onto the sidewalk, or you can hand out copies to everyone you meet. You may not alter this manifesto in any way, though, and you may not charge for it.

A “normal” book is also available at Amazon.

[via @rgumente]

Wow, Tom Peters seems to be quite irritated by some CEOs. Worth a reading, including the comments.

It’s rude to call people “idiots.”

It’s rude to call CEOs “idiots.” (I am assuming here that “CEOs” are “people.”)

It’s really rude to call people “idiots” when you are a Guest.

It’s really, really rude to call people “idiots” when you are a Guest in another country.

It’s really, really, really rude to call CEOs “idiots” when you are a Guest in another country […]

[via BetaNews]

Two and half months after Firefox’s 1.0 launch, the Mozilla Foundation has more to celebrate than non-stop media coverage: Firefox has surpassed 20 million downloads. The milestone comes just days after new tallies of Web browser usage shows strong gains by the open source newcomer, which is slowly chipping away at Internet Explorer’s dominance.

Last November, Microsoft IE product manager Gary Schare told BetaNews, “We think that getting the first set of early adopters is a lot easier than getting the next set, and then crossing over into the mainstream is pretty difficult.” But Firefox is refusing to relent, garnering up to 270,000 downloads per day.

In the past month alone, Microsoft’s IE market share has dropped 1.5 percent, according to WebSideStory, while Firefox has picked up a full percentage point. In an interview with BetaNews, Firefox architect Blake Ross said he expects the browser’s growth “to remain vibrant as more and more people learn about Firefox and tell their friends and family members.”

You surely already know BlogShares, the “fantasy stock market where weblogs are the companies. Players invest fictional dollars on shares in blogs. Blogs are valued by their incoming links and add value to other blogs by linking to them. Prices can go up or down based on trading and the underlying value of the blog.”

I’ve received an email from BlogShares for two days saying that my account balance was credited from … B$184’667.85 because of the merge of “Didier Beck\’s Weblog” in “Didier Beck’s Weblog”. I don’t really understand but anyway, I decided to play a little bit with my new cash.

I did the following:
– buy 4’000 shares of my own blog
– buy 2’500 shares of the blog of Laurent
– buy 500 shares of the blog of Le Danois
– buy 4’000 shares (!!!) of the blog of Loic Le Meur (English)
– buy of 350 shares of the blog of Loic Le Meur (French)
– buy 125 shares of the blog of Rodrigo Sepulveda
– buy 350 shares of the blog of Jeff Clavier
– buy 4’000 shares (!!!) of the blog of Marc Goldberg

I found particularly funny to be able to buy the complete shares of Loic and Marc (4’000 for each blog) for about nothing (Loic => B$2.57 per share, Marc => B$.98 per share).

Good portfolio? Let’s see :-)
Investment: B$176’787
Current portfolio valuation: B$709’980

via Washington Post (free subscription)

Did you hear something? Great, no?

Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley. […]

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States. […]

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

via ESA.

This image was returned yesterday, 14 January 2005, by ESA’s Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. This is the coloured view, following processing to add reflection spectra data, gives a better indication of the actual colour of the surface. Initially thought to be rocks or ice blocks, they are more pebble-sized. The two rock-like objects just below the middle of the image are about 15 centimetres (left) and 4 centimetres (centre) across respectively, at a distance of about 85 centimetres from Huygens. The surface is darker than originally expected, consisting of a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice. There is also evidence of erosion at the base of these objects, indicating possible fluvial activity.