Work In Progress

Apple’s five official stores in China — three in Shanghai and two in Beijing — generate more revenue on average than any other Apple stores in the world, the company said last year.

The operation took about 25 minutes. Child Health Plus, a state insurance plan for low-income families, covered the $21,369 cost. Medicaid in almost every state and many private health plans now cover bariatric surgery, often more readily than diet or exercise plans.

A Belgian study of adult patients found that nearly half had their bands removed within 12 years for various reasons, according to the study’s principal author, Dr. Jacques Himpens: they did not lose much weight; they regained what they had lost; they had frequentheartburn or vomiting; or the band would slip or perforate the stomach.

Many of the most impressive people, on the other hand, were strategic self-deceivers. When something bad was done to them, they forgot it, forgave it or were grateful for it. When it comes to self-narratives, honesty may not be the best policy.

The most exciting essays were written by the energetic, restless people, who took their lives off in new directions midcourse. One man, who was white, trained an all-black unit during World War II, was a director of the pharmaceutical company that developed The Pill, and then served as a judge at an international court at The Hague. “Career-wise, it was a rocky road,” another wrote, “but if diversity is the spice of life, then mine resembled hot Indian curry.” Nobody regretted the life changes they made, even when they failed.  

Bubble Motion, based in Singapore, introduced Bubbly in India in May 2010. People who use the service can send a text message to followers that contains a link to a short audio message. The audio is played back as a voice call. This year, it expanded Bubbly to Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan and has been adding about 100,000 new users a week, said Thomas Clayton, the company’s chief executive.

In July 2010, Mr. Bachchan started using Bubbly, a voice-based messaging service, and he now has just over a million followers in India. Each one pays 30 rupees a month, or about 60 cents, to hear his sonorous voice.

The company now has about 12 million users in the four countries, but Mr. Baidya says he believes Bubbly needs to overcome several obstacles if it wants to become as popular as Twitter. According to an estimate by eMarketer, a digital marketing research firm, Twitter will have 21 million users in the United States alone by the end of the year. 

In a new report, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) calculates that every year for the foreseeable future another 30m Chinese will go online to shop for the first time. By 2015 they will each be spending $1,000 a year—about what Americans spend online now. BCG calculates that e-commerce could rise from 3.3% of China’s retail sales today to 7.4% by 2015—a jump that took a decade in America.

Purchases on Taobao, an online Goliath that is a division of China’s Alibaba, are thought to account for a staggering 50% of all packages shipped in China. The cost of shipping parcels is now a mere one-sixth of what firms in America have to pay. 

According to BCG, over 40% of Chinese online shoppers read and post product reviews online, making them twice as likely as American online shoppers to do so and four times as likely as Indians. 

But administration officials and even some military officers balked, fearing that it might set a precedent for other nations, in particular Russia or China, to carry out such offensives of their own, and questioning whether the attack could be mounted on such short notice. They were also unable to resolve whether the president had the power to proceed with such an attack without informing Congress.

• It’s all about the content, though. That’s the difference that other tablet makers missed. Motorola, Samsung, RIM — they seem to be chasing the iPad on specs, building the best tablet they can manage at the same starting price of around $500. But they have no clear message telling people what you can do with them.

• The e-ink Kindles are to the Kindle Fire what the music-playing iPods were to the iPhone, and what the iPhone was to the iPad — traction in the mass market based on trust and loyalty.
   

• The iPad and Kindle Fire are emblematic of their makers. Apple’s primary business is selling devices for a healthy profit, and they back that up with a side business of selling digital content for those devices. Amazon’s primary business is as a retailer, including as a retailer of digital content. They back that up with a side business of low-cost digital devices that are optimized for on-the-fly purchasing of anything and everything Amazon sells. The Kindles are to Amazon what the printed catalog was to Sears a century ago.