Businessweek Pieces: Transocean, Anheuser-Busch & Other Stuff

Handful of interesting stories from the last month of Businessweek.

In terms of feature writing, the issue that stood out was the July 4 edition with the exploding oil rig on the cover.



The lead story of "Transocean: No Apologies Over Gulf Oil Spill" painted a remarkable picture of a company focused on limiting their blame (and eventual liability) in the Deepwater Horizon fire and then Gulf Oil Spill. Good writing by Paul Barrett on the strategy taken by Transocean and it's crisis management firm (led by a former tabloid editor).

Another feature from this edition of Businessweek was "Fall of the House of Busch" by Susan Berfield. Pretty remarkable reading on the previously family-run Anheuser-Busch and it's ex-president (and current train wreck) August Busch IV.

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A bunch of other stories from this and other recent issues were notable in featuring interesting companies and technology...

- "Daniel Ek’s Spotify: Music’s Last Best Hope" on a recent entry to the US market for music delivery.

- "Pay as You Go with Smartphones" on current efforts to finally get something widely adopted in the field of mobile payments.

- "Turntable.fm: Where the DJ Is in the Next Cubicle" on a music service with a social component.

- "Can Jeff Weiner Realize LinkedIn’s Full Potential?"

- "Raves for Robert Brunner’s All-New Nook" on the Kindle competing eReader from Barnes & Noble.

- "Ford Steps on the Gas in Asia"

- "HP's Plan to Make TouchPad a Hit"

BusinessWeek Pieces - Apple Tablet & Other Tech Products

Very interested in what Apple may (or may not) announce as a new product entry in the computer tablet/reader category. Apparently I'm not the only curious party as the recent BusinessWeek piece "Five Ways Apple's Tablet May Change the World" shows.

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Not to completely shun the PC world... there's also been a good amount of (mostly positive) press around the recent Microsoft launch of the Windows 7 operating system. Two different product review pieces were from the (now departed from BusinessWeek) Tech & You writer Stephen Wildstrom. From the Oct 26 issue was "Win 7: Microsoft Gets It Right (Finally)" and the Nov 9 issue "Multitouch Moves to the Big Screen: PCs"... about how Win 7 enables multi-touch capabilities.

Going back to the "maybe forthcoming" Apple tablet, Wildstrom wrote "The Hypothetical Apple Tablet: User Input Will Be the Key" a few weeks ago on his personal blog.

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Also related to said hypothetical Apple tablet was this BusinessWeek piece on the Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble. Will be very interesting to see how products such as the Nook, the new e-reader from Plastic Logic or Kindle from Amazon compare and compete with whatever Apple may bring to the show.