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From the New York Times: US universities are partnering with international schools to add global reach to existing executive MBA (EMBA) programs. UCLA awards EMBA degree to students from National University of Singapore, after the students complete residency programs in Los Angeles, Bangalore, Shanghai and Singapore.

HPU’s EMBA program is conducted entirely in Honolulu. Surely there are universities around the world that would send their EMBA students to Hawaii for a few weeks. The University of North Florida is located in Jacksonville, and according to this article, students are willing to attend UNF’s Global MBA program.

The EMBA degree is expensive, but there are alternatives. Henry Mintzberg picks apart MBA programs in his book, Managers Not MBAs. He makes some excellent points. The MBA is not a cure-all or a golden ticket. I earned my MBA in 1988 with limited work experience. I spent a few years in the late 1990s in industry, and I consult on Oahu. My life is like an never-ending post-doctorate in management.

From BoingBoing, here’s a Google document that explains the global economic meltdown – with stick figures. Mortgage holders of the world unite! You have nothing to fear but exotic derivatives.

From the New York Times, here’s a report about the booming gray market for iPhones in China. iPhones are manufactured in Taiwan, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apple doesn’t sell the iPhone in Taiwan or in Communist China because no Chinese telecom operator will meet Apple’s demands. So there’s not legal way to buy an iPhone in Taiwan or China.

No carrier? No support? No problem.

It’s relatively easy to unlock an iPhone and use it with on a GSM network. Third-party software is available to localize the screens and provide missing features. When Apple updates the iPhone’s firmware, these unlocks tend to break. This article from Business Week mentions that Prague is a major center for iPhone hacking.
But someone who is using an iPhone in China may not care that much about these new features. As more iPhones enter the gray market, more programmers join the effort to jailbreak the device.

This makes me wonder what might have happened if Apple sold unlocked GSM iPhones online and in its retail stores, and told AT&T, T-Mobile and every other GSM carrier in the world to just deal with it. The customer service problems might be significant, which explains why Apple has decided not to break the rules… yet.

I also wonder how many iPhones have been purchased in Honolulu and then shipped outside the United States.

Silicon Hutong predicted over a year ago that Apple would wait to introduce the iPhone in China. Looks like he was right!

See my earlier posts about the iPhone:

• 31 January 2008: Applications are coming for the iPhone
• 26 January 2008: iPhone helps AT&T add more wireless customers
• 13 January 2008: The story of the iPhone
• 20 November 2007: An iPhone for China?
• 14 November 2007: No iPhone for you, China

From two articles in the New York Times: the US government is blocking a buyout of network equipment manufacturer 3Com. Cisco dominates that industry, and 3Com has never recovered from the dot-com bust earlier this decade. Dan Primack posted an article that provides additional insight into the US government’s national security concerns. Boston’s Bain Capital had teamed with Chinese manufacturer Huawei Technologies in the proposal. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (Cfius) reviewed the proposal, and was concerned that the Chinese military might try to compromise 3Com’s security software unit, TippingPoint.

According to Reuters, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is discussing a possible expansion of his company’s facilities. Malaysia is the most likely location, as that country ranks number one in Google usage in Southeast Asia. The country is also close to Google’s existing offices in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.