CTO-ville: From Adobe to Apple

Illinois Graphics Guy Hits Big at Apple (Cloud Computing Could be Brewing)

• Kevin Lynch, Adobe's Chief Technology Officer for five years, is moving to become vice president of Technology at Apple.  Well done Kevin, and hope you can leverage your Adobe technology experience to improve products at Apple!

Kevin studied Interactive Computer Graphics at the University of Illinois. Some of his influences can be read from his web page, including American electrical engineer's Vannevar Bush visionary article of 1945.

Steve Jobs was known for criticising Adobe Flash. Adobe's most recent quarter bagged $1bn in revenues. Now the time has come for those from Adobe to come to Apple.

The wider world of CTOs

What about other companies with a technology-driven culture? Take behemoth Microsoft.

• Eric Rudder is Microsoft's CTO/CSO (Chief Technical/Strategy officer) 

Eric has management responsibility over Microsoft Research. He's a graduate of Brown University (Rhode Island, East of Connecticut). He was the architect of Visual FoxPro 3.0 and has also managed developer outreach at Microsoft.

The CTO World Congress is one way to network with CTOs.

MBS Rocks 2012 .. but there are Risks

Mortgage-backed securities outperformed all other asset classes in 2012.

Why would an average person have an interest in MBS? Well, they have an attractive yield relative to Treasuries and Swaps.

The downside is an MBS portfolio requires active management. Additionally, mortgage analytics are needed for this, as is research into the housing market.

The risks of investing in MBS

MBS are subject to prepayment risk (which shortens the life of the security), When interest rates are falling, prepayments tend to rise.

17 years of Research Pays off as Japan Extracts "Ice Gas"

This opens the potential to extract energy from methane hydrates. The proof of concept was done by JOGMEC (Japan, Oil, Gas and Metals Corporation).

J's HQ is in Minato-ku, Tokyo, which is worth discussing in detail. Many embassies are located in Minato including the United States, Canada and Kazakhstan. The famous Roppongi Hills development (opened in 2003) are in Minato, constructed by building tycoon Minoru Mori.  Goldman Sachs (including Goldman Sachs Realty Japan Ltd.), Simmons and Simmons, Google Japan and the Pokemon company are located in the Mori Tower, Roppongi Hills.

Minato is also the location of the Tokyo Tower (over a 1000 feet tall, roughly the same size as the Eiffel Tower in Paris). The Tokyo Skytree is around twice the height of Tokyo Tower, taller than the Empire State Building.

JOGMEC is also responsible for stockpiling petroleum supplies to supply Japan's energy needs. Its petroleum stockpiling program began in 1978.

Jonathan takes Helm at Alibaba

Alibaba.com ("Global Trade Starts Here" (TM)) the e-commerce site has a new leader - Jonathan Liu (who led the development of the firm's payment system, AliPay). The website was started by founder-CEO Jack Ma from his apartment in 1999.