The latest flurry of data shows the economy is looking weak from more than just one angle.

Importantly, all the figures are for May, so take us well beyond the immediate impact of the floods and cyclonic weather earlier in the year.

The figures released on Thursday show credit growth is slow, housing prices are down and job vacancies are heading lower.

The credit figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) showed the supply of credit to the private sector by banks and other lenders was up by a modest 0.3 per cent in May, seasonally adjusted, and by 3.1 per cent through the year to May. Get full info…

There have been several recent product announcements or launches that move a step closer to the future vision of computing that I began advocating two years ago. That vision that moves computing to the pocket, home, or office and envisions display and input devices relevant to the context the person is currently in.

I believed two years ago and still believe that what the world needs is not more smart devices, but more flexible and plentiful dumb devices that are driven by the one smart device to rule them all – an extensible smart phone that can not only drive multiple display and input devices wirelessly, but also augment its processing and storage capabilities via wireless devices or the cloud.

Here is a flashback to what I said the Apple iPhone should become two years ago:

“People don’t want a fourth screen. What

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The ballroom on the third floor of San Francisco’s Moscone West convention center doesn’t look like anything special. But in recent years this nondescript hall has become the source of major news about smart phones, tablets and other cutting-edge mobile gizmos. Apple and Google use it for the keynote addresses that are the signature events of their developer conferences. As the two most significant companies in the mobile-software business, they’re doing much of the heavy lifting in determining where the industry is going, and the rivalry between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android is as fierce as any tech face-off I can recall.

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The International Monetary Fund gave its backing on Monday to George Osborne’s austerity measures, although the fragile nature of the economy was again underlined by figures showing a sharp drop in high street spending last month.

It argued that the current slowdown could be pinned on rising prices for oil, foodstuffs and other commodities, which are beyond the control of the chancellor. It also endorsed the Bank of England’s low interest rate policy, married to public sector spending cuts, which has minimised distress for homeowners.

The CBI, the leading employers’ group, also backed the chancellor’s policies after a group of academics and economists warned in a letter to the Observer on Sunday that the economy was too weak to cope with planned spending cuts.

But the latest retail data will leave little room for complacency.

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The findings of a recent study by Babson College suggests that exposure to entrepreneurship in school increases the intention to become an entrepreneur.This is consistent with preliminary findings we are seeing in data we have gathered here at Belmont.Increasing exposure to entrepreneurship is a driving force behind our inclusion of entrepreneurship coursework for all students pursing either undergraduate or graduate degrees in business at our school.  It opens students’ eyes to business ownership as a career path.  We are also trying to take our efforts to integrate entrepreneurship into other programs across our campus.  While we cannot get entire courses into other academic programs, we can help integrate the topic into existing courses by working with faculty from other disciplines.  In fact, cross-campus entrepreneurship education is a trend happening at colleges and universities around the globe.Those students studying engineering, medicine and other areas of healthcare, art and music, the sciences, and so forth, all need exposure to entrepreneurship.  For with exposure we can increase the number of business owners in an economy.  We can offer these students a better understanding of what entrepreneurship really is and what it takes to launch and grow a venture.  We can demystify it and help dispell some of the myths and misconceptions they have about entrepreneurship.  This is why I included entrepreneurship education as one of the five points in my recent post about my agenda for utilizing entrepreneurship to help rebuild our economy.  While some level of entrepreneurship does “just happen”, educating students about business ownership and free enterprise will amplify entrepreneurial activity.  Teach entrepreneurship not only gives them the skills they need, it actually increases their confidence that they can be successful at business ownership and increases the likelihood that they will in fact start a business of their own.