0129-As labor costs grow, factories in China go

At the end of last year, I toured Tsingtao, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other industrial cities in China. Manufacturers that had located there in order to take advantage of low labor costs were struggling with losses, while consumer-oriented service industries were eager to expand their market share. I concluded the time had come to “change players.”

The owner of a toy company in Suzhou lamented that he was like “a lost migratory bird.” His losses will mount if he keeps the factory running, but he hasn’t found another place in Southeast Asia that meets his logistical needs. 

If he comes back to Korea, he would struggle to find affordable workers. What about companies from other countries?

Last year, “reshoring” was a buzzword in the American manufacturing sector. Companies that had relocated abroad - especially to China - began to come back. 

GE moved back a portion of its home appliance manufacturing capacity, and Apple decided to make computers in the United States. The toy maker K’Nex, bioplastics company Trellis Earth Products and bra manufacturer Handful announced reshoring plans as well. 

The wage level in China is going up by nearly 20 percent every year, and the U.S. shale boom has cut down the cost of production in America. In August 2013, Walmart declared it would purchase an additional $50 billion in U.S. products in 10 years.

Japanese companies began to exit China in the 2000s in the face of growing anti-Japanese sentiment. Many of them moved to Southeast Asia, and the Japanese government offered generous subsidies for industrial complexes. Japanese operations are now strategically located in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The emergence of China in the 1990s reorganized the global manufacturing system. Products made by 400 million low-wage workers began to encroach on markets in the West, and as China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the country became the “factory of the world.” But rising wage levels, the revaluation of the Chinese yuan and environmental pollution have made China’s industrial conditions less attractive. 

The Obama administration is promoting its “Make It in America” initiative. Japan is using Southeast Asian industrial complexes as post-China alternatives. But what about Korea? 

Rather than bringing back the companies that have moved abroad, thriving conglomerates are moving their establishments to other countries.

I am worried that the entire Korean economy may feel like “a lost migratory bird.”

*The author is the director of the China Institute of the JoongAng Ilbo. 

by HAN WOO-DUK

0128-Amid Chinese New Year Frenzy, City Offers to ‘Mail’ Children Home

Ahead of the weeklong Lunar New Year celebration, one Chinese city is offering to help ship home a precious cargo: children.

The eastern city of Qingdao is setting up a service to escort the children of migrant workers home for free as part of a “children mail” service, according to official Xinhua news agency.

The service targets families that want to send their children back to their hometowns before the parents head back. Many schools have already closed for the long holiday break, but most workers won’t get off until Jan. 31, the first day of the Lunar New Year and the start of the nationwide holiday. The service will transport the children by bus under the care of drivers with the help of video surveillance, Xinhua cited Jiang Shiqun, Communist Party secretary of the Qingdao long-distance bus station, as saying. Bus staff would exchange special codes with relatives who come to pick up the children.

Many of the country’s more than 260 million migrant workers choose to leave their children behind in their hometowns, in the care of grandparents or other relatives, because China’s strict household registration system ties access to subsidized social services to a person’s legal residence. That system often prevents migrant children from attending decent urban schools or getting health care in the cities where their parents are working.

Some cities have started experimenting with granting migrant workers and their children hukou, the household-registration document that entitles them to live there and grants access to subsidized social services.

In November, China’s Communist Party announced that smaller cities will relax residency requirements to allow children to settle with their migrant parents, confirming a change already under way in some cities for years. Officials also have set up more boarding facilities in rural schools. The moves likely will have little impact. Officials haven’t budged on rules that keep migrant workers from bringing children to China’s largest cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, where the better jobs are. Officials there are worried about the health and education costs of taking in so many kids.

About 61 million Chinese children—one of every five in the world’s most populous nation—haven’t seen one or both parents for at least three months, according to the All-China Women’s Federation, a Communist Party advocacy group. The total has grown so big that the children are widely known as left-behind kids.

fSome of the working parents in Qingdao said they see the “children mail” as a useful service.  Tan Hongwei, a seafood shop assistant who applied to send his 12-year-old son to their hometown of Jinan, about 350 kilometers away, told Xinhua the lead-up to the Spring Festival is usually a busy time for the workers.

“In the past, my son had to stay home and had nobody cooking for him or taking care of him,” Mr. Tan said.

Qingdao’s “children mail” service covers 14 long-distance bus routes in Shandong province. It isn’t the first city to offer the service. It’s previously been used in Wuhan, Hangzhou and a handful of other cities.

Every year, hundreds of millions of Chinese travel back to their hometowns to celebrate the traditional Lunar New Year, China’s most significant holiday. Government officials earlier estimated that this year people will take to the air, roads and railways 3.62 billion times over a 40-day period around the holiday, about 200 million more than last year, in what is known as the world’s largest human migration.

Some Web users were skeptical of the service, noting that it would be too risky to send their children with strangers.

“Qingdao station once sent three pieces of my luggage to a wrong address,” one user of China’s Sina Weibo microblogging platform wrote. “Be careful this time.”

Others were hopeful the country could expand on the program to help the migrant workers themselves make it home for the holidays.

“It will be even better if adults can be mailed too,” another user wrote. “Many migrant workers are too poor to go home.”

–Brittany Hite, with contributions from Liu Jing

0127-Traditional games for healthy holidays

By Song Sang-ho

We are getting close to the Lunar New Year’s holiday, when people will gather for large family reunions to share good wishes and traditional food.

Although it is a time for the family and relatives to gather from all over the country, many of us do not know how to make our time together enjoyable. For instance, adults often watch TV and children spend hours playing games on computers or their mobile phones. In the end, these long family gatherings can sometimes grow tiresome.

If you would like something different to do this time, I would suggest you play some “traditional” games. This will remind many adults of their childhood, and children can learn about traditions. Above all, playing many of the folk games is one great way to check your joints.



Let me explain.

Let’s start with Yut Nori, one of the most popular folk games. Yut Nori is helpful in keeping your back (spine) healthy. When you cast the four yuts (sticks) or move your mal (tokens) on the board, you need to sit up straight or stand up; this activity will prevent a stiff back. Moreover, if you get lucky either to cast “yut” or “mo,” which gives the biggest points, or to catch the opponent’s mal on the board, players and audience cheer with screams and clapping; this will relieve stress on our shoulders, knees and wrists. Besides these positive aspects, however, keep in mind that sitting or kneeling for hours playing Yut Nori may strain your knee or back. Therefore stretching exercises during the game are advised.



Next, we will take a look at “jegichagi.” In this traditional outdoor game, you kick the jegi, which looks like a badminton shuttlecock, continuously without dropping it on the ground. This game is good for the knee joints and leg muscles. It works great especially for inner and outer muscle strength on your legs. Since it requires using a lot of movement of the knee and hip joints in order to kick the jegi, you need to take care of them. If there is any pain around your buttocks, or in the knee or hip joints while kicking the jegi, it may be a sign of a joint disease. If you are a middle-aged person and feel consistent pain during or after playing jegichagi, I advise you to visit a nearby clinic for a check-up.

Playing “Tuho,” you can check if you have frozen shoulder or rotator cuff tear. You may have a frozen shoulder if you are too uncomfortable to lift your arm, or feel pain while throwing the stick. And it might be a rotator cuff tear if you have trouble lifting or rotating your arm. Both frozen shoulder and rotator cuff tears seem similar but they are different in terms of the range of movement. In short, it is a frozen shoulder if you are unable to lift your arm even with somebody’s help. Otherwise, it is probably a rotator cuff tear. In any case, it is highly recommended you visit a clinic for your shoulder pain, because you can get great results with simple therapy.

Lastly, it is “neol-twigi,” another outdoor game for women. You can check your knee joints playing this game. Moreover you can enhance muscles around your knees as you continuously bend and straighten the knees to jump. This jumping game also helps blood circulation and metabolism. However, you need to be careful with your knees and hips if you have weak bones. The sudden weight may place stress on your joints as you come back down.

I hope this coming Lunar New Year’s holiday is a pleasant time for family bonding. Instead of playing computer games alone or watching TV all day, I encourage you to take your family and relatives outside and play traditional outdoor games together. It will be a fun and healthy family activity. But if you have joint disease, you need to check your condition before joining the activity. Why don’t we all try to bond with our family and relatives in this holiday season with healthy traditional games?

The writer is the president of Wellton Bone & Joint Hospital.

0124-Are You Vain Enough to Get Ahead?

You don’t have to be a total narcissist to be a successful executive – but a solid dash of ego can help.

Self-aggrandizing individuals with a need for impact and power are slightly more likely to become leaders than the general population, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and personality testing firm Hogan Assessment Systems. But while a dose of self-confidence is necessary to raise your hand for the top job and steer a big corporation, too much can cause a leader and company to falter.

The study, set to be published in the journal Personnel Psychology, analyzes 54 prior studies touching on narcissism. Some of those studies relied on surveys, which asked leaders whether they identify with statements like, “If I ruled the world, it would be a much better place” or “I think I’m a special person.” Others analyzed clues in shareholder letters: the number of self-references, for example (is it just a string of “I, I, I”?), or the size of the executives’ photos.

It’s helpful to think of narcissism as distributed along a spectrum.  On one end, self-doubt isn’t a useful characteristic in a leader—they can look weak or have trouble making decisions, according to Peter Harms, one of the study’s authors and a management professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. But individuals on the other end don’t take feedback well and can make reckless choices, he says.

Examples of too much self-confidence abound in the world of politics. Harms cites Jonathan Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate who spent lots of time grooming his hair and had an extra-marital relationship on the campaign trail, as displaying the vanity and self-centered nature emblematic of narcissists.

Another researcher went on the hunt for CEOs that display humility. Analyzing earnings call transcripts – comparing the number of times executives said “me” and “mine” versus “we” or “our,” for example – an Australian management expert compiled a list of the least narcissistic American CEOs. The line-up included Target’s Gregg Steinhafel, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi and Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan.

Rodney Warrenfeltz, who administers personality tests to high-level leaders as a managing partner at Hogan Assessments, uses what he calls “the bold scale” to measure where the corporate executives he works with fall along the continuum. The test incorporates statements that participants have to check off as true or false, such as, “I could get this country moving in the right direction.”

Warrenfeltz says a bold score of 70 to 90 on the 100-point scale signifies someone is truly confident. Anything above that can indicate arrogance or entitlement.

“When things go wrong, they blame other people,” he says of those who score at the very top of the scale. “When things go right they take the credit.”

In addition to narcissism, Harms, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor, studies other “dark traits” like Machiavellianism and psychopathy. (A 2010 study found that psychopaths are more likely to be found in the corner office than on the street.) At lower levels, these attributes can be useful in the corporate setting, he says—a little psychopathy often translates to being brave. A bit of Machiavellianism is really just political skill, being able to manipulate coworkers or sell people on an idea.

Harry Kraemer, a former CEO of the health-care company Baxter International Inc., says being able to influence people is a crucial part of effective leadership. He also thinks executives need “true self confidence,” a mentality where positive thoughts abound: “I know I’m good, I know I can add value, I’m going to make good decision, I’m going to get a lot of stuff done.”

But he also says humility is key. If an executive’s ego gets out of hand, employees won’t follow him or her.

Unless, of course, you’re someone like former Apple chief Steve Jobs– so intelligent and brilliant that the rules don’t really apply.

“If you’re that one-in-10-million person, even though you’ve got a mammoth ego, even though you don’t treat people very well, you’re so unusual that maybe people are willing to put up with it,” Kraemer says.

0123-10 tips for working smarter

Forbes reported 10 tips for working better. David Rock, director of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of “Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long,” provides the tips.


1. Don’t check your email first thing.

2. Make your first task of the day prioritizing your top three goals.

3. Conserve your decision-making energy at every opportunity.

4. Find and protect your quality thinking time.

5. Reserve meetings for your low-focus time.

6. Don’t waste precious energy multitasking. Single-task as much as you can.

7. At the beginning of each meeting, decide where you want to be by the end and the most effective way to get there.

8. Learn to maintain a positive state of mind.

9. Carve out down time.

10. Celebrate small wins.

0122-Google unveils smart contact lens project to monitor glucose

Google Inc. is diversifying into contacts lenses -- sart ones.

The Mountain View, California-based company said in a blog post yesterday that it’s testing an ocular device that’s designed to measure glucose levels in tears, as the company pursues long-term projects at its secretive X Lab research group. The lenses use a tiny wireless chip and glucose sensor to provide readings once per second, project co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz wrote in the post.

Google is expanding beyond its core search-engine business by investing in new technologies that can lead to new business opportunities, including the Google Glass devices, driverless cars and high-altitude air balloons to provide wireless Internet access. The contact lenses could address the challenges of diabetes, including the process of getting readings from blood, the company said in the post.

“It’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies which are helping to refine our prototype,” Otis and Parviz wrote. “We’ve always said that we’d seek out projects that seem a bit speculative or strange.”

Bloomberg News reported last week that Otis and Google employees with connections to the X Lab had met with Food and Drug Administration officials who regulate eye devices and diagnostics for heart conditions.


Otis is on leave to Google from the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is an associate professor in the electrical engineering department, according to the university’s website. Otis has worked on biosensors and holds a patent that involves a wireless powered contact lens with a biosensor.

Parviz was involved in the Google Glass project and has talked about putting displays on contact lenses, including lenses that monitor wearers’ health.

In 2012, the two were among the co-authors in a paper titled “Glucose Sensor for Wireless Contact-Lens Tear Glucose Monitoring” for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

Google said in the post that it’s in discussions with the FDA and will need to do more work to make the lenses a viable product. The company said it plans to look for partners to bring devices like these to market.

The lenses may be able to act as an early warning system for wearers, Otis and Parviz said in the post. Tiny LED lights could be integrated to light up if glucose levels significantly deviate from certain thresholds, they added.

The company declined to comment beyond the post or make anyone available for interviews.

Google is committed to making bets on research and development even if they don’t deliver significant profits and revenue, Chief Executive Officer Larry Page has said.

“Our main job is to figure out how to obviously invest more to achieve greater outcomes for the world, for the company,” Page said during a call with analysts last July. “And I think those opportunities are clearly there." (Bloomberg)

0120-Literature goes online for free in Norway

Most books published in Norway before 2001 are going online for free thanks to an initiative that may have found the formula to reconcile authors with the web.

At a time when the publishing world is torn over its relationship to the Internet -- which has massively expanded access to books but also threatens royalty revenues -- the National Library of Norway is digitising tens of thousands of titles, from masterworks by Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun to the first detective novels by Nordic noir king Jo Nesboe.

The copyright-protected books are available free online -- with the consent of the copyright holders -- at the website bokhylla.no ("bookshelf" in Norwegian).

The site currently features 135,000 works and will eventually reach 250,000, including Norwegian translations of foreign books.

National Library head Vigdis Moe Skarstein said the project is the first of its kind to offer free online access to books still under copyright, which in Norway expires 70 years after the author's death.

"Many national libraries digitise their collections for conservation reasons or even to grant access to them, but those are (older) books that are already in the public domain," she said.

"We thought that, since we had to digitise all our collection in order to preserve it for the next 1,000 years, it was also important to broaden access to it as much as possible."

The National Library has signed an agreement with Kopinor, an umbrella group representing major authors and publishers through 22 member organisations.

For every digitised page that goes online, the library pays a predetermined sum to Kopinor, which will be responsible for distributing the royalties among its members under a system that is still being worked out.

The per-page amount decreases gradually as the collection expands ? from 0.36 kroner (0.04 euros, $0.06) last year to 0.33 kroner next year.

"A bestseller is treated on an equal footing with a regional almanac from the 1930s," said Yngve Slettholm, head of Kopinor.

Some measures have been implemented to protect the authors: "Bokhylla" does not feature works published after 2000, access is limited to Internet users in Norway and foreign researchers, and the books cannot be downloaded.

An author or publishing house that objects can also request the removal of a book, but relatively few have done so.

Only 3,500 books have been removed from the list, and most of them are not bestselling novels, but rather school and children's books -- two very profitable genres for publishers.

Among all the works eligible to appear on "Bokhylla" by household names Stephen King, Ken Follett, John Steinbeck, Jo Nesboe and Kari Fossum, only a few are missing.

So far, sales do not appear to have been affected by the project. Instead, "Bokhylla" often gives a second life to works that are still under copyright but sold out at bookshops, said National Library head Moe Skarstein.

"Books are increasingly becoming perishable goods," she said.

"When the novelty effect fades out, they sink into oblivion."

Eight-five percent of all books available on the site have been accessed by users at some point, proving that digitising does not only benefit major works.

While many countries' attempts at digital libraries have gotten stuck in complex copyright discussions, Norway has been successful partly due to the limited number of stakeholders -- the library and Kopinor -- and the near-universal coverage of their agreement, which even includes authors who are not Kopinor members.

"In other countries, you need an agreement among all the copyright holders," said Slettholm, the head of Kopinor.

"But it's hard to find all of them: old authors that nobody knows, publishing houses that closed in the 1960s, every illustrator, every photographer."

"Instead of spending our money on trying to find the copyright holders, we prefer to give it to them," Moe Skarstein said. (AFP)

0117-[editorial] The virtue of being unpredictable

In 2013, the bosses of the Republic of Korea did not deviate from expectations. The political leaders, especially President Park Geun-hye and the Democratic Party’s Moon Jae-in, faithfully stuck to their own lines and fought only for their camps. They spoke and decided as expected. Their supporters came to love their bosses even more and clearly learned who their enemies were.

Even in the course of the longest railway strike in history, which lasted 22 days, the politics were totally predictable. The Saenuri Party called the union workers criminals and focused on the economic losses caused by the strike. The Democratic Party reacted to privatization rumors and tried to take advantage of the anti-Park effect. Political leaders also were perfect at making political issues out of the National Intelligence Service’s election interference and the controversy over the transcripts of the inter-Korean summit meeting in 2007.

So the latest drama between those bosses is not very interesting. It is so predictable, and we already know what the leaders will say and what solutions they will offer.

Being unpredictable is a virtue, not just for an artist but also for a political leader. Former President Roh Tae-woo, who was a conservative, introduced price restrictions and other regulations on land ownership, while progressive President Roh Moo-hyun signed a free trade agreement with the United States. While their core supporters felt betrayed by these moves, the decisions ultimately boosted their approval ratings. They won the hearts of those who did not vote for them and even loathed them. When approval ratings go up, leaders get more opportunities to realize their ideas.

During the election campaign of 2012, Park was flexible. When she was chosen as the Saenuri Party candidate, she visited President Kim Dae-jung’s grave and met with Kwon Yang-sook, the former first lady and wife of Roh Moo-hyun, in Bongha Village. Park repackaged “economic democratization,” DP’s signature policy, as her own. To become Korea’s leader, she tried to win the hearts of moderates and opponents. But why did she stop making such efforts after being elected?

Moon Jae-in, who is eyeing a presidential run in 2016, has a chance of winning if he goes against expectations. When a politician talks about the last election, supporters may cheer for him, but it leaves him isolated. In any kind of battle, the defeated need to admit defeat in order to end the game. If not, his supporters will not accept it. If the situation continues, Moon could lose everyone in the middle and on the other side.

Predictability doesn’t work. Literature that does not create an unfamiliar world cannot impress readers. A conservative leader who advocates conservatism and a progressive leader who speaks of liberalism cannot lead the entire nation. In 2014, I hope to see them betraying their own camps and going in the opposite direction from time to time.

*The author is a national news writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.

0116-Cyworld’s global ambitions are over

Cyworld’s global ambitions are over
Once-dominant SNS in Korea was too tardy in going mobileJan 11,2014

Cyworld, once Korea’s largest social networking service, decided to end its global service on Feb. 10 after failing to compete against global SNS sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Collapsing after less than three years, Cyworld plans to maintain its Korean service, but it is currently reviewing an employee buyout plan and is parting from SK Communications, which acquired it 2003.

According to the IT industry, SK Communications has already notified Cyworld users that it will terminate the service and has posted a notice on its home page.

Cyworld went international in November 2011 with the hope of benefiting from the Hallyu, or Korean Wave, of cultural exports. It provided lots of content regarding Korean music groups and actors and interviews with celebrities as part of its marketing strategy. It offered its services in seven languages.

The number of its subscribers peaked at 35 million.

But premature expansion outside of Korea, a slowness to move onto mobile platforms like smartphones and tablets, and a security breach in which the personal information of its 35 million users were hacked helped bring Cyworld down.

Most of Cyworld users migrated to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“Almost everyone in the country once used Cyworld, and some people still have more than one Cyworld account,” said a spokesperson for SK Communications.

“Even though they moved to Facebook and Twitter, people still have their photos and journals left on their Cyworld accounts and we have a tremendous amount of data to proceed and maintain. Thus, the cost of running the service and still maintaining their data is quite burdensome.” No Internet service enjoyed such heady success in the domestic SNS market as Cyworld.

When Cyworld’s “minihompi,” equivalent to Facebook’s Timeline, first appeared in 2001, established by the EBIZ Club run by students of the Kaist Graduate School of Technology Management, it attracted enormous popularity.

Virtual money called “dotori” allowed users to purchase music to put on their minihompi and buy decorative items, too. They posted photos, videos, journals and interacted with friends. Koreans used Cyworld both at home and abroad to get in touch with people.

Even political figures such as President Park Geun-hye, as a lawmaker during the 2004-5 period, communicated with people through Cyworld.

But with the spread of smart phones, the popularity of Cyworld went downhill.

As Facebook and Twitter entered the domestic market, offering mobile services, Cyworld adhered to its PC-based services.

After a cyberattack got the personal information of its users, more than 7 million people closed their accounts.

Cyworld was in the red for eight consecutive quarters until the third quarter of last year, and SK Communications has already cut the number of Cyworld employees by half, reducing the 64 teams at the company’s headquarters to 19.

“As its failure and weakness mainly resulted from its slow adaptation to the mobile era, quick decision-making is the key to its restructuring,” the company spokesman explained.

SK Communications plans to concentrate on its portal Nate and messenger Nate On.

It will also try to make Cymera, a camera and photo editing app, a new growth driver and establish foreign subsidiaries in the United States

Cymera has been posting a high number of downloads from Southeast Asia, the United States, South America and Europe.

0115-Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

In fulfilling online orders, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.84%  is all about expediency. The fewer people involved the better.

But when it comes to filling higher-level jobs, the e-commerce giant is in no rush—and it has a gantlet of people, dubbed "bar raisers," who must sign off on would-be hires.

Bar raisers are skilled evaluators who, while holding full-time jobs at the company in a range of departments, play a crucial role in Amazon's hiring process, interviewing job candidates in other parts of the company. With a word, they can veto any candidate, even if their expertise is in an area that has nothing to do with the prospective employee's.

Amazon believes the program, created in the company's infancy and honed by founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, screens out cultural misfits and helps make the e-commerce giant a feared competitor in fields as diverse as logistics, tablet manufacturing and television production.

"There is no company that sticks to its process like Amazon does," says Valerie Frederickson, whose eponymous Menlo Park, Calif., human-resources consultancy works with Silicon Valley companies including Facebook Inc. FB +1.26%  and Twitter Inc. TWTR -0.09%  "They don't just hire the best of what they see; they're willing to keep looking and looking for the right talent."

As Amazon's payroll has swelled to 110,000 employees, however, the program is exacting a toll, current and former employees say.

There are several hundred bar raisers today across the company, according to former employees, though Amazon won't confirm a total. Some employees shun the bar-raiser designation, a voluntary program that comes with no extra pay, even though it reportedly can lead to speedier promotions, because of the time demands. Bar raisers may be asked to assess as many as 10 candidates a week, for between two and three hours each, including paperwork and meetings—all while doing their regular full-time job, be it in finance, marketing or product development.

That has led to a crunch of bar raisers at times, some managers say. Andy Jassy, head of the fast-growing Amazon Web Services cloud-computing unit, said in an interview in November there seemed not to be enough bar raisers to go around and he was looking for more.

Not every Amazon applicant faces a bar raiser. Current and former employees say the company uses a streamlined process for warehouse employees, estimated to be three-fourths of its workforce.

Most others, though, must endure an obstacle course of phone interviews and one-on-one sessions. The interviewers then write evaluations and then meet to discuss the candidate. Inside Amazon, evaluating an applicant typically takes five or six employees at least two hours each.

"We want to be as objective and scientific in our hiring as possible," said Susan Harker, Amazon's vice president of global talent acquisition, noting the process extends even to C-level executives. "The point is to optimize our chances of having long-term employees."

Other tech companies have their own systems for identifying the best and brightest. For a time, Google Inc. GOOG -0.01% asked candidates their IQ's, and posed brain teasers. Microsoft Corp. MSFT +1.44%  calls in senior executives known as "as-appropriates" in the late stages of considering some applicants. Facebook Inc. asks some job hopefuls tricky coding questions or solutions to business challenges.

The bar raiser is Amazon's distinction. To become a bar raiser, a worker generally must have conducted dozens or hundreds of interviews, and gained a reputation for asking tough questions and identifying candidates who go on to be stars.

Bar raisers typically interview candidates in another part of the company, posing unexpected or challenging questions to gauge an applicant's analytical skills. Current and former bar raisers say the designation is both an honor and a burden.

Sailesh Rachabathuni, who developed software for Kindle devices before leaving Amazon in 2012, says he once vetoed a candidate for a programming job because the candidate didn't know much about a specific programming language, a detail others missed.

"It's an enormous time commitment," Mr. Rachabathuni says. "I had to limit myself to six interviews a week."

One of Mr. Rachabathuni's former colleagues in Lab126, Amazon's secretive Silicon Valley hardware laboratory, says he conducted more than 700 interviews over eight years at Amazon. But this ex-employee declined to become a bar raiser for fear of devoting more time to hiring.

In cultivating the program, Mr. Bezos wanted to create a consistent corporate culture. Amazon executives say the approach reduces hiring mistakes by forcing several people to sign off on a candidate. The program is "something the broader team is very proud of," Mr. Bezos said in an interview last year.

John Vlastelica, an early Amazon human-resources employee who helped design the program, said the tough review process was meant to weed out job hopefuls who aren't adaptable and may be skilled at only one task.

"You want someone who can adapt to new roles in the company, not just someone who can fill the role that's vacant," said Mr. Vlastelica, who now runs HR consultancy Recruiting Toolbox and counted Amazon among his former clients. "It can be an expensive process because it takes longer, but think of how expensive it is to hire the wrong person."

The burden is likely to grow as Amazon extends its torrid hiring pace, needed to staff its ambitious efforts to expand same-day delivery, and to build Kindle tablets, as well as smartphones and set-top boxes. In the 12 months ended Sept. 30, Amazon added close to 30,000 employees, roughly as many as eBay Inc. EBAY +0.17%  's total payroll. The retail giant's workforce has more than tripled in the past three years.

Google contracted to 46,421 employees as of the end of September 2013, from 53,546 a year earlier, due in part to cuts at its Motorola Mobility division. Apple Inc. AAPL -0.67% grew by 10% to 80,300 in the fiscal year ended Sept. 28, and Microsoft Corp. increased its staff by 5% to 99,000 in the year ended June 30.

Dave Clark, vice president of Amazon's world-wide operations, said the company typically will conduct more than 75,000 interviews to hire 30,000 new workers. Bar raisers "help bring a consistency of the types of skill sets and perspectives that we're looking for," said Mr. Clark.

John Sullivan, a San Francisco State University management professor, said Amazon's protracted hiring process is an important signal for applicants that Amazon is a tough place to work, with a lot of pressure.

"If a job seeker feels like they want to run away from the building screaming after the interview, that's a probably a good sign that they don't belong there," he said.

0114-Qualcomm up, Intel down

LAS VEGAS ― It’s obvious that Qualcomm and Intel are taking different paths in the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (ICES) here.

Qualcomm is making a fast move toward connected devices, while Intel is not.

The former is also seeking a competitive edge in chips for automotive and technology industries, a key theme at the world’s biggest electronics trade shows.

Korean CEOs flocked to the Qualcomm booth.

Qualcomm chips are being adopted by many but Intel’s chip to be used in wearable devices is being questioned.

At ICES, Qualcomm unveiled an authorized new application processor to go with a car infotainment system. The company has already been supplying its chips supporting high-speed Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks to Audi. Qualcomm officials said it inked several deals and is involved in additional business talks with technology leaders.

“SK hynix CEO Park Sung-wook learned how Qualcomm’s strategy shift is smoothly underway. The firm plans to shift focus to advanced application processors possibly to be used in cars to ensure business sustainability,” an SK official said.

Samsung Display CEO Park Dong-geun also showed interest in how Qualcomm is diversifying its business structure during his visit to the Qualcomm booth, said a Samsung official, requesting anonymity.

“The automotive industry is open to accept new technologies for innovation and that means chip suppliers will have new business opportunities. Qualcomm is leading the way and I think Samsung Electronics will catch up,” said the official.

Samsung Display is closely collaborating with Samsung Electronics, the world’s biggest smartphone maker, in several futuristic business projects including wearable devices and corporate solutions.

In contrast, Intel received little interest during the show as its latest strategy and chips introduced at ICES were not appealing; and the company failed to brush off its image as a traditional PC-oriented company.

Experts said that while Qualcomm sent a clear message about its migration into new territories, Intel tried to resort to “emotional rhetoric and hard-to-understand technical theories during its press conference.

“Intel’s Quark chips are receiving a lukewarm response and I didn’t get any concrete plans from the company from this year’s tech fair. One of the key points you should keep in mind that the U.S. chipmaker is still dependent upon unprofitable PC chips,” an official at Dutch-based microchip designer NXP Semiconductor.

“I think it is Intel’s biggest dilemma that prevents its transition toward connected devices,” he added.

Its CEO Brian Krzanich recently said it will delay the production of its Broadwell chip due to a “density defect issue” that impacts the number of usable chips.

“Intel is feeling a sense of urgency. Its business in Korea is also struggling hit by Samsung and LG moves to cut conventional PCs. Samsung and LG may buy Intel’s new chips for wearable devices; however, the volume won’t be high,” said another Samsung official during the show.

0113-SNS rumor buster developed

By Kim Da-ye

A group of Korean researchers said Friday they have developed technology to filter rumors from postings on social networking sites (SNS).

Researchers at the Graduate School of Culture Technology at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) analyzed more than 100 cases of rumors and non-rumors spread on Twitter in the U.S. between 2006 and 2009, according to KAIST.

“This research integrates statistics and mathematics with theories from sociology and psychology. We drew characters of rumors by analyzing an abundance of data,” Cha Mee-young, an assistant professor at KAIST who led the team, said.

“It is still difficult to classify rumors at the very early stage of their dissemination. But it is possible to do so, using big data, once some time has passed.”

By discovering clear characteristics of rumors ― how long they spread for, who disseminates them and which words are frequently used, the team could correctly identify 90 percent of unfounded claims as rumors.

Among unverified information circulating on Twitter that the researchers identified as rumors were allegations that U.S. President Barack Obama was a Muslim, the “antichrist” and illegally obtained his American citizenship.

Social networking sites including Twitter are helping spread messages easier than ever, but not all of them are true or well-intended. One clear characteristic of rumors is that they continue to spread over a long period of time. Information from news will widely spread in a short period of time, and is rarely mentioned by the media again. But unverified information tends to be repeatedly dealt with for several years.

Rumors are also circulated randomly by people who do not know each other while the spread of ordinary information can be tracked along the networks of online acquaintances.

Furthermore, some words associated with assumption and doubt are frequently seen in rumors. They include, “not sure,” “no idea if it works,” and “heard.”

Kwon Se-jeong, the first author of the paper and a PhD candidate at KAIST, said that he began the research after observing damage done by rumors to their victims including celebrities who committed suicide. Unproven folk remedies spreading online that would only deteriorate a patient’s condition also concerned Kwon.

“Rumors circulate for years, so we will be able to make a list of them,” Kwon said.

“I personally hope to identify wrong pieces of medical information and list them in order to help improve the health and welfare system.”

The research was jointly conducted by Jung Kyo-min, a professor at Seoul National University, and Microsoft Research Asia in China.

0110-Top 10 gifts of 2013 show U.S. philanthropy rebound

Philanthropy in the U.S. made a comeback in large donations in 2013, with the country's wealthiest donors giving more than $3.4 billion to charity, according to a new count of the top 10 gifts of 2013 by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

The analysis of the year's top gifts also found more gifts of $100 million or more than in 2012. In 2013, there were 15 publicly announced gifts of at least $100 million, compared with 11 in 2012.

The largest donation of 2013 came from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who announced in December that they had given 18 million shares of Facebook stock to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The gift was valued at more than $990 million. This was the first time donors under the age of 30 have made the nation's largest philanthropic gift, according to the report.

Colleges and universities were among the primary beneficiaries of some of the biggest donations, the report found.

Nike Inc. co-founder and chairman Philip Knight and his wife, Penelope, made the second largest gift commitment of 2013, pledging $500 million to the Oregon Health and Science University Foundation for cancer research. The university has to match the donation in the next two years to receive the full gift.

The third highest gift of 2013 was a $350 million pledge from Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to promote cross-disciplinary studies and undergraduate financial aid.

Other top gifts by American philanthropists were pledged to Yale, Stanford, the University of Michigan, Yeshiva University in New York City, Georgetown University, Columbia Business School, the University of California at San Diego and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

``The fact that we had so many gifts that were $100 million or more is an indication that people are really giving big again,'' and that may continue into 2014, said said of Philanthropy Editor Stacy Palmer. ``People seem more optimistic about the economy, and certainly the strong stock market has propelled a lot of gifts. It looks like it's going to be a better year.''

In 2012, the top gifts totaled $5 billion, but that count included three $1 billion gifts from Warren Buffett to his children's foundations. When those gifts are excluded, the other top gifts of 2012 totaled just $2 billion compared with $3.4 billion in 2013.

However, the wealthiest philanthropists did not give as much in 2013 as before the Great Recession, according to the analysis. In 2007, before the recession, the biggest gifts totaled $4.1 billion.

The chronicle also examined all gifts of $1 million or more. Those gifts totaled $9.6 billion in 2013, compared with $6.1 billion in 2012. (AP)

0109-What to Feed a Cold

The sneezing. The coughing. The lethargy. It's enough to make a cold sufferer's appetite disappear completely. Studies show that certain foods can help alleviate the symptoms of a common cold—and sometimes shorten its duration. One expert, Sharon Horesh Bergquist, assistant professor at Emory School of Medicine and a primary-care physician with a specialty in internal medicine at Emory Healthcare, offers her take on what to eat and what to avoid.

—Heidi Mitchell

Dairy Decoded

The most common misconception about a cold, says Dr. Bergquist, is that dairy should be avoided because it increases mucus production. The belief likely hails, she says, from the fact that when saliva comes into contact with any high-fat drink, it can mimic mucus.

Australian scientists debunked that assumption in a series of 1990s studies where they gave hundreds of common-cold patients either cow's milk or soy milk, and found no difference in mucus production between the two groups.

A body needs hydration when it is sick, says Dr. Bergquist. "So if your beverage of choice is a latté, that counts as hydration."

Cocktail as Cure?

Just make sure the latté is decaf, since any diuretic, such as caffeine, can promote dehydration, which usually worsens a cold. "When you're hydrated, your mucus membranes are lubricated, which will help you feel better," says Dr. Bergquist.

She puts alcohol, also a diuretic, in a "mixed" category. "Mild inebriation can cause pain relief…hence the hot toddy and brandy cure," she says. But while liquor may temporarily relieve symptoms, it, too, can cause dehydration.

'Mom's Penicillin'

Chicken soup may have benefits even beyond the hot liquid and vapors that open sinuses and lubricate mucus membranes. Studies suggest that the chicken and vegetables themselves inhibit the mobilization of neutrophils, immune cells that are the main culprit in causing inflammatory symptoms like stuffy nose and aching bones, says Dr. Bergquist.

Spices, especially pungent ones like hot peppers, can also help open sinus passages and provide short-term relief. But no one spice has been scientifically proven better than any other, says Dr. Bergquist.

Go Steady on the C

According to the most recent review of studies on vitamin C and colds, Dr. Bergquist says, scientists find that people who regularly take 200 milligrams a day of the vitamin can decrease the severity and duration of a cold by continuing to take that high dose. (Starting vitamin C after the cold's onset doesn't provide the same benefit.) To maintain a steady level in your system, she says, "it's reasonable to drink a glass of orange juice every day during cold season."

Zinc is a bit more controversial, "largely because the studies are not high quality," she says. A recent meta-review of research showed that taking zinc within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms can reduce the duration—but not the severity—of a cold by one day.

"However, the dose that is the most studied is 75 mg or greater, and you'd have to take that daily throughout the duration of the cold, which is very hard to get through food," says Dr. Bergquist. You'd need to eat 12 oysters, 2 racks of ribs, 10 cups of cashews or 12 cups of chocolate, she says.

A zinc lozenge is the way to go, but only for short spans; studies show that long-term zinc megadoses can cause copper deficiency.

0108-Dollar-and-Cents Secrets of Music Streaming

In the good old days of the CD boom, the music industry was all about the first week. Prime the pump with endless airplay on pop radio and MTV, blanket major markets with billboard ads and buy acres of promotional space in big record stores, with a crescendo toward the release date.

Even as digital downloads have started to supplant CD sales, a strong debut remains critical, particularly for the big stars. Witness Beyoncé's recent coup selling more than 1 million copies of her latest album during its first week in Apple Inc. AAPL -2.20%  's iTunes Store—using strong online buzz in place of normal promotion.

But as the industry starts to embrace digital services that let fans rent access to vast libraries of songs for a flat monthly fee, major labels may need to adjust their approach to marketing music, and perhaps to which artists they sign.

Spotify AB, Pandora Media Inc. P +3.10% and a host of less-known competitors pay record labels and artists every time a user listens to one of their songs.

So instead of trying to sell a $15 CD at Tower Records, or even a 99-cent download on iTunes, labels need to get fans listening to a given song or album for years to come.

Spotify set off a flurry of back-of-the-envelope math when it recently disclosed on its website that its average payments amount to tiny fractions of a cent per song.

Some pundits quickly concluded that a Spotify user could never listen to a song or album often enough to generate the same revenue that a download sale would.

But that missed the point.

Data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showed that one major record company makes more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services like Spotify or Rdio than it does from the average customer who buys downloads, CDs or both.

The average "premium" subscription customer in the U.S. was worth about $16 a year to this company, while the average buyer of digital downloads or physical music was worth about $14.

Other data from the same company showed that in the long run, even many individual albums eventually make more money from streaming services than they do from downloads.

Underscore that phrase, in the long run.

The acts were identified in the data only with generic descriptors. When they first hit the market, all the acts' albums made more money from download or physical sales than from streaming.

It took 34 months for an album by an "indie rock/pop group" to make more money from streaming than from sales. An album by one "modern male R&B rapper" reached that juncture after just four months.

In both cases download revenue flattened as sales flagged, while streaming revenue continued to climb as people kept listening to the music.

Notably, pop acts, which tend to rely on heavy marketing, were the least likely to see the revenue from streaming services exceed sales revenue. That is because online listening—and therefore revenue—tended to level off for those types of acts at about the same rate as their sales.

In Sweden, where streaming subscription has overtaken downloading as the most popular method of acquiring music, the difference is more pronounced.

An average premium subscriber there is worth about $17.75 to the company, versus less than $4 for the handful of people who still buy music.

The lesson for record companies and artists appears to be: making disposable hits may once have been a viable business, but new technology could demand tunes built to last.

—Ethan Smith is The Wall Street Journal's bureau chief in Los Angeles. The Upshot is a business column by bureau chiefs around the globe that offers timely analysis of the industries they cover.

0107-Genesis sedans to offer app for Google Glass

Hyundai Motor‘s new Genesis is expected to offer owners a chance to control their cars through a Blue Link application that will that offers the same kind of remote services delivered from a smartphone, including basic remote control, maintenance updates and sending Google Maps directions -- all via Google Glass.

However, Google’s eyewear won‘t be the only wearable device the new Genesis consumers will have access to, since Hyundai has already said it will be offering the Blue Link support for other devices as well. 

“Hyundai will offer an application designed for Glass and other wearable electronic devices starting with the 2015 Genesis,”South Korea‘s largest automaker said in a statement.

The feature is an extension of Hyundai’s current Blue Link in-car system that provides diagnostic and maintenance services, the Seoul-based company said.

“The Glass application is only for pre-drive operations -- not when you‘re behind the wheel,” Miles Johnson, a company spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “The goal is that when you get to the car to start your trip, the drive is less stressful.”

Park Min-hyung, a spokesman in Seoul, said further details on other devices Hyundai plans to offer the app will be revealed at this year‘s Consumer Electronics Show to be held in Las Vegas next week.

Hyundai‘s plans follow similar intentions by Nissan Motor Co. and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz to integrate wearable data devices with their vehicles. Google released technical specifications for its Glass computing device in April 2013 to encourage software developers to create applications for the Web-enabled spectacles.

Google, expanding beyond its core search-engine business, has been investing in Glass as it bets consumers will shift more attention to wireless devices that let them easily snap photos, check e-mails or listen to music without the aid of smartphones or traditional computers.

Hyundai will demonstrate the Glass-enabled system Jan. 6 in Las Vegas, before the start of the International CES technology trade show, said Johnson, who declined to elaborate on specific features.

0106-How to Improve (and Increase) Your Sleep

Growing up in a hard-working Midwestern city in the 1980s, I quickly learned that sleep is the first expense I should cut in a given day. The men I looked up to at a young age regularly boasted about running on just a few hours of sleep. While this was rooted in a good-natured work ethic, it led me to view needing sleep as a sign of weakness. I continue to see this perception in the workplace today, where it is considered a badge of honor to stay at the office late working on a project.

The problem is, one less hour of sleep is not equal to an extra hour of achievement. In many cases the opposite occurs. When you lose an hour of sleep, it decreases your well-being, productivity, health, and ability to think the following day. One of the most influential studies of human performance, conducted by professor K. Anders Ericsson, found that top performers slept 8 hours and 36 minutes per day. The average American, for comparison, gets just 6 hours and 51 minutes of sleep on weeknights.

You are simply a different person when you operate on insufficient sleep. And it shows. If you do not get enough sleep, it can lead to a cascade of negative events. You achieve less at work, skip regular exercise, and eat poorly.

This lack of sleep is also costly. According to a study from Harvard Medical School, lack of sleep costs the American economy $63 billion a year in lost productivity alone. The problem is not just people missing work on account of sleep, the larger issue is people who show up for work in a sleepless state. One scientist, who has studied this topic extensively, claims a loss of four hours of sleep produces as much impairment as consuming a six-pack of beer. According to a survey from the National Sleep Foundation, roughly two-thirds of people studied do not get enough sleep on weeknights.

However, if you are able to get an additional hour of sleep tonight, it can make the difference between a miserable day and a good one. A small adjustment, even 15 or 30 minutes, could make or break your next day. The key is to aim for somewhere between seven and nine hours of quality sleep per night. While getting this much sleep each night is easier said than done, there are a few small tricks to improve your odds of a good night’s sleep.

What you do in the hours before bed could matter most. More than 90 percent of Americans admit to using electronic communications in the hour before bed. This is an obvious problem in terms of allowing things like late-night messages to enter your thoughts. What you may not realize is that the light from these devices alone could also suppress your melatonin levels by as much as 20 percent, which is a more direct threat to your sleep. To avoid these issues, impose a moratorium on all electronic devices in the hour before your normal bedtime and be cautious about bright light from any sources in the hours before bed.

Creating the right environment for sleep in your bedroom can also give you a head start. It is easier to sleep in a room that is a few degrees cooler than the temperature you are accustomed to throughout the day. This prevents your natural body clock from waking you up in the middle of the night. The same principle applies to noise, where using white noise apps or devices can drown out sounds that wake you up unnecessarily throughout the night. What’s critical for a good night of sleep is to create a routine where you eliminate as much variance as possible.

Prioritize seven to nine hours of high-quality sleep ahead of all else. You will be more likely to have a good workout, get more done at your job, and treat your loved ones better when you put sleep first. Keep in mind that every hour of sleep is a positive investment — not an expense. Based on all of the research on this topic, we need to make sleep a core value at home and work.

Sacrificing sleep may no longer be a sign of strength.

0103-'Samsung, Apple in talks over patents'

By Kim Yoo-chul

A senior Samsung Electronics executive said Thursday the firm is holding working-level discussions with Apple to find a breakthrough in their patent disputes.

“Yes. Working-level discussions are now underway,” the top-level Samsung official said, confirming earlier reports by The Korea Times that the two firms have resumed “peace talks” to end their patent feud.

Samsung earlier agreed with Apple to submit a joint settlement proposal before January 8 to the U.S. federal Judge Lucy H. Koh, who has presided over the patent cases since 2011.

The executive said he will fly to the United States to participate in this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (ICES), which kicks off next week in the U.S. desert city of Las Vegas.

He, however, refused to confirm whether he will meet with Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the patent issue.

“I will tell you more about that litigation issue in Las Vegas,” according to the executive.

Officials at the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) and the Korea Fair Trade Commission said Samsung and Apple are “narrowing their differences” over royalty payments.

“Samsung is currently in talks with Apple to sign a patent accord. The two companies are quite softening their positions on some contentious issues,” said an MSIP official.

Still, the two companies are far apart on the value each places on their patent infringement claims. Samsung’s payment to Apple was fixed at $640 million.

A new jury recently ordered Samsung to pay an additional $290 million to the iPhone maker, which is subject to the approval of the presiding judge.

Since 2011, Apple and Samsung have sued each other in the United States, Australia, Germany, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands.

Samsung has been a primary component supplier to Apple since 2007, which means the latter is paying billions of dollars each year to purchase Samsung flat-screens, application processors, DRAMs and NAND flash chips.

Apple is attempting to shift its sourcing channel to Taiwan’s TSMC to cut its heavy dependence on its Korean rival. However, it remains to be seen whether TSMC will be able to meet Apple’s strict quality guidelines and requirements, industry sources say.