Consumer policy is on the right track
July 6, 2009
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
Loading ...At the end of last week I attended the European Business Leaders Convention in Helsinki where I delivered the keynote speech. It was very useful to learn the views of McKinsey Global Institute on the consumer responses to the crisis. Consumer behaviour is changing and new principles will have priority in decision making. Their analysis has identified five tactics of consumers – replace only when needed, control the spending, do-it-yourself, seek value and shop smarter. I had a talk with Mr Esko Aho – the former Prime Minister of Finland at the time of its accession to the EU and who is currently on the Board of Nokia. I am interested in what action Nokia takes in the field of privacy and data protection for consumers as this seems to be on the top of company’s agenda now. These elements are an essential part of our work at the Commission as well. Last year we looked at these aspects at a Behavioural economics conference and the Consumer Rights Directive also takes into account behavioural economics, privacy and data protection. This shows that our objective – to be in line with the developments of the 21st century - is on the right track.
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July 6th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Dear Commissioner Kuneva:
Thanks for your very important work on Privacy and Consumer Rights.
Video on the Internet is vital, for Health Care video-conference, for education, for commerce and trade, security, tele-work , family and friends, child care, banking and trading, insurance and real estate, technical training , etc., and video options is one way to make sure there is growth , privacy and jobs.
HTML 5 is working very hard to become a reality, so that consumers have a choice on video in the Internet , an alternative to proprietary video platforms like Flash, but we need to define the codec of HTML 5 , time is of the essence and an article in the arstechnica magazine below is very clear and precise.
In my opinion, Europa needs more choices than just the proprietary Flash of Adobe for video on the Internet , Europa and the whole world needs options, HTML 5 is a brilliant one, if only the kids from Europa ( and the USA ) could understand how lucky they are that the WWW was invented in the EU by Tim Berners-Lee and its free and open, if only….
With tele-work and video-conference going to mobile phones ( like Nokia, iPhone, Android, RIM, Motorola,SonyEricsson, Palm,etc.) the need of choices for video platforms is even greater than ever, with mobile payments, security access, Health Information databases, we can’t have just one “proprietary option” for internet video, that’s a huge costly monopoly that cuts down on growth and jobs, Europe needs choices and options, so that the kids can start their own businesses, develop their own solutions, invent…..but if the only choice is Flash, a proprietary platform , there is no future.
The work in the HTML 5 platform is vital and wonderful, a European ( and world ) job well done.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars
http://corp.kaltura.com/
http://pandastream.com/
http://www.videolan.org/
http://www.getmiro.com/
http://www.mythtv.org/
http://www.ffmpeg.org/
http://www.kdenlive.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_software_packages
http://www.w3.org/
July 17th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
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Dear Commissioner Kuneva,
It is proud of yours to take a decision to stay to the end of mandate.
In regard of your excellent results as Commissioner of Consumers’ affairs I would like to share with you an idea concerning future consumers’ relations - EER or Energy Equivalent Return.
In brief the meaning is to be able as a producer, distributor or consumer to return the energy equivalent of any product to its right source by its right quality and quantity.
An example: Who will return the energy equivalent of RWE, Siemens and Deutsche Bank investment in Sahara’s sands?
One more example: Try to produce by your own physical force the energy necessary to run your office computer within a day or the electrical demand of your fridge over the night.
Sincerely yours,
Chavdar Azarov
July 25th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I agree with the previous comment. You are a very good puppet, dear commissioner.
July 27th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
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Dear Commissioner Kuneva,
This is the continuation of previous comment. EER – Energy Equivalent Return might concern the energy equivalent of your car, your flat, your breakfast and many other products around but EER might concern your job too.
The basic problem of economy now becomes production-consumption balance or number of jobs to number of consumers.
Many would like to create jobs and to increase the consumption but to create jobs at any price should not be a good idea in regard of current economy stage.
Presently we have a business-born industry and economy that’s why when we speak about jobs we mean business related jobs.
Here we start speaking about EER - Energy Equivalent Return.
In brief the meaning of EER is to be able as a producer, distributor or consumer to return the energy equivalent of any product to its right source by its right quality and quantity.
After that unusual shot what do you think about EER-born industry and economy? And what about EER-born jobs and EER-born consumers?
Sincerely yours,
Chavdar Azarov
chavdarazarov@yahoo.com
August 18th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Dear Commissioner Kuneva :
a) Mobile smart Phones and laptops with IP voice are going to be the office-store-workshop of the near future…they will need video, voice and data in broadband levels, and the options and fair competition between 802.11n Wi-Fi , WiMax and LTE are the key, ideally consumers should have phones and laptops-netops with all these chips and all the choices in them…..will the EU side with consumers or with some Phone operators that would like to monopolize the whole business ?
Right now there are tests going on with WiMax, which is very popular in Asia but not in the West, ideally the EU and the Americas would put this choice in all its phones, will they ? are we going to compete ? or just watch ? it’s like every kid in the EU speaking at least 3 languages, including Chinese mandarin…or not be able to even get to China to sell , the biggest market on the planet…will the EU kids get the tools to compete and win ?
also “White Spaces” offers a huge chance for Wi-Fi, will the EU let consumers benefit from it ?
Wi-Fi via White Spaces
A network design that uses old TV spectrum could produce better long-range wireless connectivity.
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/23271/
White Space Networking with Wi-Fi like Connectivity
http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/?q=node/504
Successful 4G tests show Verizon closer to taking on WiMAX
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/08/verizon-has-4g-working-in-boston-and-seattle.ars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
Dear Commissioner , with tools we have a chance, without them we got nothing, again : these 3 technologies above must be like second nature to the older kids and students , like swimming and bicycling, like solar and wind energy , like advanced batteries and electric motors, like organic natural cooking , a natural activity …
b) There is more news on the search for bio-diesel from algae-seaweed , a way for consumers to break free from the Oil-Gas Monopoly…there are now 350 more companies around the world working on these solutions, and the Transportation Industry, the Commercial and Military Aviation and many others must get new solutions to survive and succeed…
A New Test for Business and Biofuel
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/business/energy-environment/17algae.html?
August 21st, 2009 at 8:41 am
Gentlemen,
To control the quality of goods, and to protect the consumers from bad and even dangerous goods is very difficult job. Fortunately in present days we are living in completely different situation – we have Internet.
The question is: Is it possible to have objective and correct estimation for all goods, given by whole consumer community in real time?
Yes, in the epoch of Internets it is possible.
How such a system suppose to work?
It is necessary to create web site with all goods which are on the market. Everybody can enter in this site after registration. The user is anonymous, he has only e-mail. From one computer it is possible to register only 1 or 2 users to avoid fake users. Every user can vote for each good and to estimate it once in the week or in month (it will depend on type of good: cheese – every week, shoes – every 3 months). To avoid hacker attacks every user estimation must be supplied with security code (just like here in the blog). Each estimation can be attended with note explaining it.
This way each good receives objective and real estimation practically from whole population in real time.
Who will use this site? I’ll give you simple example. Almost during the whole last year I was buying one particular very good brand of cheese. But from some moment the quality of this brand was decreased. I was trying some other brands, but they have other disadvantages.
If we had such a system I would look there at the estimations of cheese brands and would choose the best one, with highest estimation! If it doesn’t satisfied my expectations I simply would enter my estimation for it and go to the next one in the ranking list.
So now the question is how to create such useful system….:-)