It matters because it highlights three big themes for the global economy that I suspect we will keep coming back to in 2013.

BBC: New Year messages from Japan

In trying to wrap my head around the Karma hotspot a new prepaid 4G mobile hotspot service that relies on a novel model I keep coming back to the (often post-Apocalyptic) sci-fi stories where some other commodity or service has supplanted cash or gold as the chief currency.

FORBES: Meet The Karma Hotspot: A Business Model So Crazy It Just Might Work

While there has been on and off speculation over Facebook developing smartphone hardware, I keep coming back to the fact that other than Apple and its iPhone offering, smartphone hardware offers margins that are well below that for software and Internet companies.

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