I found this article to be very interesting and relating to chapter 12 in that it talks about how Chinese companies can improve as they are taking there businesses globally.Chinese firms are in the hunt to use their cash to make acquisitions, as Industrial & Commercial Bank of China did with Standard Bank in South Africa last year. With plummeting valuations and weakened American firms slashing payrolls and marketing budgets, look for the trend to continue.
“We found that more than 70% of large industry leaders have already made meaningful steps toward global expansion, as have more than a third of smaller industry leaders. Most companies said they expected to increase their plans for international expansion in light of the global turndown.” one company owener says in the article.
Another issue is defining your brand. Which is big! Most Chinese companies have focused on selling at the cheapest possible price rather than by creating a long-term brand image. In China, where many consumers lack the brand savvy and disposable incomes of American consumers, this strategy has often paid off. However, in the U.S. brand loyalty is higher and consumers buy for emotional reasons, so it is critical that Chinese companies find their niche and develop a sustainable brand strategy. If they do not, they will essentially commoditize themselves and lose when a lower-cost brand from a Vietnam or India emerges.
Refernces:
www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2008/gb2008121_644935.htm
Five years ago, Mozilla made it clear that the browser wars weren’t over after all.
In the 1990s, Netscape had lost its dominance in the browser market to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and the Netscape came up with a new internet browser called Mozilla which had sunk into obscurity. Even a federal antitrust suit accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive practices with its browser and Windows was not enough to turn the tide.The project,which was than named Phoenix to symbolize rebirth from Netscape’s ashes, has now clawed its way back to account for nearly a quarter of the browser usage today. Microsoft may not be on the run, but it’s on the defensive, gradually building its browser development effort back up into fighting form.Then, he was a young programmer whose work with Linux gave him open-source inclinations. He’d been advocating an open-source release of the engine within Netscape Communicator that ran Web-based JavaScript programs, but was surprised in 1998 when Netscape announced the entire software package would become open-source software.
“For me it was confluence of being at the right place at the right time and having a lot of contacts,” Shaver recounted
Microsoft helped out in its own way by letting Internet Explorer languish and become a preferred channel for computer attacks, but Firefox features such as speed, a tabbed interface, the ability to accept add-on customizations, and pop-up ad blocking helped, too. Firefox 1.0 arrived was downloaded 10 million times in the first month.Overall, the browser market has become more vigorous than ever. Even Microsoft is getting involved in Web standards and is building a Web-based version of Microsoft Office. And even as Firefox’s leaders must grapple with the old rival, there’s a new Firefox challenger in the form of Google Chrome.
Shankland,S.(2009)”After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges”Retreived: November 12, 2009
I found this article very interesting. It’s a new way of looking at the world, this article talks about how far we’ve come in technological advances and how we can all share data easily.
The first thing that probably goes through our minds when we hear the word “data” is pie charts and line graphs and spreadsheet full of columns and rows with numbers. But now data can mean what you share on your facebook or twitter.
An emerging set of tools is making it easier than ever to track and compile all sorts of “data” and display it in a way that’s relatively easy to understand.
You can now point your mobile phone at a street and instantly get ratings for restaurants. Or type in your address and find reports of crimes that may have occurred in your neighborhood. It’s even possible to track emotions on a national and global scale.
There are several reasons why we’re seeing more data visualization in popular culture and why it’s becoming simpler and more innovative, experts say. Computers and software have gotten cheaper during the past few decades, and the technology needed to build applications is now in the hands of more people.
Finally, through the advent of social media applications like Facebook and Twitter, coupled with the rise of increasingly sophisticated mobile phones, a cultural shift is seemingly under way.
I related this to chapter 10 because I feel like this is kind of like collaboration systems that gather all of this data and share the flow of information.
Maneeauve,T. “A New Way of Looking at the World” Retrieved on November 04, 2009 from
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/02/data.viz/index.html
Are you bilingual? Would you like to learn another language along with helping someone learn your native tongue. Well, now you can with LiveMocha. LiveMocha you get to learn the language of your choice while helping others who want to speak your native tongue. Once you complete a structured lesson, you submit your own writing and audio recordings to other users for feedback. Reading a sentence aloud and then sending my recording off was pretty intimidating, but it really works and you can get a response within minutes. There’s also lang-8,which is all about the practice of writing. You essentially keep a journal in the language you are practicing, and others in the online community read and correct it. This should also help you in learning a new language and communicating in it. If you’ve got an iPhone, you’ve got another way to get exposure to your language of choice wherever there’s adequate reception. In general, I’m kind of in awe of the idea that I can have a pre-recorded voice pronounce words as many times as I want so I can match it .What I really like is the convenience, you can be learning a new language on your way to school or during breaks. I related this to chapter 9 because it talks about Business Intelligence; I defiantly think this is utilizing that.
Laundau,Eliz.(2009)”How to learn a foreign language online” Retriever on October 28,2009 from CNN.com/technology
Today HP is announcing the rollout of a line of ultra-inexpensive PCs, both laptops and desktops, with extreme budgets in mind. These laptops are just as good as the new netbooks, but area full-size screen .The specs of this new laptop are the following; Consider first the Compaq CQ61z (pictured), a 15.6-inch laptop with an AMD Sempron CPU, 2GB of RAM, DVD burner, 160GB hard drive, and discrete graphics. Running Windows 7 Home Premium, the machine costs a nearly unfathomable $399. Which hp giving this deal of owning a laptop for $400 it makes the buyers of netbooks ask themselves the question “Why not pay the same amount of money and get a laptop that bigger and has more space?” Compaq’s aggressively inexpensive hardware — particularly the $399 laptop could have massive ramifications for the computer market. This will probably cause other computer manufacturing companies to lower their prices if they are planning on staying in the market. It looks as though HP is getting serious about cutting Dell a new “you know what” with this kind of product at this kind price. It is to be expected the others will follow. Hopefully the displays, the HDD’s, the memory, the motherboards, and peripherals will hold up for more than a few months though. It’s only good if the reliability is there and they aren’t using cheap materials. I related this to Chapter 8 because Hp is utilizing a OM Strategy of price. It lowered its prices so that people suffering through this economy can afford it. C. Null,(2009) “HP jump-starting Compaq brand with ultra-cheap machines” Retrieved http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/152839?comment_start=26&comment_count=20#see_comments
I found this article on cnn.com/tech. It talks about how GPS systems can help monitor staff, and how small business owners can profit from this. Because some small companies can’t afford expensive tracking systems. Resulting in managers having to spend hours on the phone trying to track the driver and the package down. FedEx alone spends $1 billion each year on its tracking setup. So what a small business owner for a delivery service did was buy everyone the cheapest Iphone and asked one of his in-house tech specialists to build a custom application that used the phone’s global positioning system (GPS) technology. It’s so such easier to get GPS on your phone these days that can pinpoint where you are anywhere on the planet. The cheapest plan starts at $9.999 including the GPS app. Global spending on GPS receivers and software is set to hit $13 billion by 2013, according to ABI Research in London, up from $2.5 billion today. Entrepreneurs are getting creative with the technology and GPA — using it to keep tabs on remote workers, and even using it to track down stolen machinery. GPS is also helping small business expand because it helps the manager be more efficient and manage time better. Some of the cons are the GPS snooping can be kind of legally risky, since the employees still have the phones after work. But a simple solution to that would be to turn the phone off after work hours. This can also be seen as an advantage by the employee, because some companies offer bonuses to their employees for efficiency. If GPS turns out to be integral to your business and you need more than phones can offer, you can upgrade to more specialized, sophisticated GPS hardware from established players such as Navtrak, and Networkfleet.
J.,Alsever (2009) Retrieved on October 8,2009:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/08/smallbusiness
So, when it’s your birthday on facebook, thanks to the facebook application it alerts all of your”friends” a week in advance so they can wish you a happy birthday on your wall. But the questions arisis wether or no this is safe. To display your birthday too all of your “friends”. But, unfortunately this is now very safe, because nowadays we have more people out there who are trying to hack into your accounts. People usually use their birthdays as passwords much too often and hackers know that. “It’s all about providing the bad guy with intelligence,” said Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDtheftsecurity.com. “Back in the day, spy organizations planted someone on the inside to get proprietary data. Social media is the man on the inside. We’re giving away all the intelligence for free.” This also goes for other information displayed on facebook, like your children’s names and pet names. A lot of identity thief’s and these kinds of scams have been having too often since facebook has been on the web. Another threat on facebook is that you can tell people where you are at any time with the status application. A lot of people don’t take this very seriously but they should because it can have devastating results. I hope a lot of people start to take this seriously if they want to protect their identity online. Another thing is that the “friends” on face book are not always people you know. That’s why we should only add people we know personally and set our profile to private.
Baltzan, P., & Phillips, A. (2009). Business Driven Information System. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Almasy,S.(2009) Social media an inviting target for cybercriminals.Retrieved:http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/28/dcot.socialmedia.privacy/index.html
Google’s email service is having trouble again! In recent month’s Google’s email service has crashed and many were upset, it being such a big company a lot of people did not expect this to happen. “A problem with Google Contacts caused many Gmail users to experience slowness and degraded service for about an hour today,” the company said in a statement. Millions of people around the world use this service mainly because it is free. Google is such a big company that people but a lot of faith into it. It almost seems that people don’t expect Google to ever mess up. This is unreasonable because even though Google is huge in the internet industry it is not perfect, and it has proved that over the few months of mishaps. Although it probably is not Google’s fault people only have Google to blame. A blogger that covers social medialisted”5 things to do while Gmail is down” here are a few of those things although I’m not sure they would help getting Gmail back up and running. The first is to Flood Twitter and then Facebook. Basically they are trying to say to flood all other communication resources so that people realize how dependable they have become on internet, than they would go outside and get some fresh air. I chose this article because I felt that it related to Chapter 5. Google is really in need of a good information architect .It needs to have greater reliability. I think they need to find out what is causing this outage and fix it, because it has been happening more frequently in the past few months.
Baltzan, P., & Phillips, A. (2009). Business Driven Information System. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin
A blogger who posted rumors about model Liskula Cohen said she was the real victim in the case and plans to sue Google for violating her privacy. Rosemary Port the one who initially spread the rumors in a blog as an anonymous poster on Google. A New York Supreme Court judge ordered Google to reveal Port’s identity after Cohen sued the company to acquire information about the anonymous blogger. This revealed Rosemary’s identity. So, just because you post something as anonymous doesn’t mean you are fully anonymous, when the law gets involved they can access your information fairly easily. This related to the chapter 4’s topic of information security and how people take online privacy very seriously. So we should always be careful about what we post on the internet regardless of whether or not we post it as anonymous. Legal experts say Rosemary Port is not likely to win her case and the reason for this is because Google never promises anyone absolute anonymity there are many cases where Google has no choice but to cooperate with law enforcement. This is all written in their online information policy as discussed in Chapter 4. CNN’s senior legal analyst, said “Google was complying with a court order and that disclosing Port’s name cannot be viewed as violating her rights” So, basically if we post anything on a website as anonymous we need to know that it is not impossible to track us down.
Stephen,S.(2009)outer model blogger plans to sue Google Retreieved: September 17,2009 from:http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/25/new.york.model.blogger/index.html#cnnSTCText
President Obama announced Friday he is creating the post of cyber security coordinator to oversee “a new comprehensive approach to securing America’s digital infrastructure.” We can’t deal with the nation’s crisis without first feeling safe while conducting online activities “America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cyber security,” Obama said. Obama promised that these efforts will not violate our private sector networks or inter “I know how it feels” to have online privacy violated, the president said referring to last year’s hacking of the presidents information while he was campaigning. The Department of Homeland Security reports the number of cyber attacks on government and private networks increased from 4,095 in 2005 to 72,065 in 2008. Evidently cyber safety is becoming a great threat that needs to be dealt with. I think Obamas new proposal of posting a cyber security coordinator is a step forward in solving the security issues with online privacy. Thousands of confidential files on the U.S. military’s most technologically advanced fighter aircraft have been hacked into by unknown computer hackers over the last couple of years according to senior defense officials. Although In a statement released later, they claimed that no classified information had been accessed. But, it could have just as easily been accessed if the hackers have gotten this complex. I chose this article because I felt it related to consumer privacy discussed in chapter three along with cyber fraud. Although internet has become something massive, along with its pros there are cons.
Benson.P(2009)Obama creates top job for guarding online security. Retrieved September,2009 from CNN website:http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/29/cyber.czar.obama/index.html#cnnSTCText
Data mining is now helping discover new medications! Ross King, a computer scientist at Aberystwyth University created an extraordinary robot scientist. The robot, known as Adam, uses advanced artificial intelligence combined with data mining and techniques to analyze the results of experiments it conducts itself. This robot scientist can make informed guesses about how effective different chemical compounds will be at fighting different diseases. This could revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry by developing more effective treatments more cheaply and efficiently than current methods. By relating the chemical structure of different compounds to their chemical activity, Adam is able to learn which chemical compounds should be tested next, so basically Adam predicts what chemicals are more likely to sync with each other and give a positive result or new drug. Prior to Adam being innovated, and still in most laboratories, When a new drug is attempted to come about researchers have to do tens of thousands of blind studies of chemical compounds. Exhaustive testing like this is time-consuming, costly and generally has to be repeated each time a new drug is needed. This innovation is very beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry in regards to saving time and money. Now experiments can be performed more effectively and efficiently! The reason I chose this article is because in chapter 2 it discusses Artificial Intelligence and how it can be vital in a business’s success, and this was a perfect example of Artificial Intelligence and more specifically data mining, I think it was a great innovation for the pharmaceutical industry.
http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=LS_090402_RoboSciMusicVid
Hsu. Jeremy, (2009) Staff Writer This Robot Is the Scientist Retriever September 3, 2009 from www.Lifescience.com/Technology web site:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090402-robot-scientist.html
Nokia is newly entering the Mobile Money market. Last week, Nokia announced that it was launching Nokia Money, a new payment service powered by Obopay that allows you to send money to friends, family, buyers, and service companies simply by using an application on their phone. This should be in the market by 2010, with this new service being offered you will be able to send money across the world within minutes! I feel like this new application will save people a lot of time and many may overlook the switching costs to switch to Nokia. Since Nokia is the only mobile device manufacturer engaged in the Mobile Money Market it does have a temporary competitive advantage because it was the first-mover advantage, but shortly others will follow, and Nokia would have to keep its customers through other means. Of course, this method of fund transfer does still have competition, there are other ways to send funds it’s just that this is more convenient. One of the biggest markets for this technology is going to be in regions like China and India because people over there have phones that are prepaid but don’t have bank accounts. The article stressed that there are “4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts” which is a very big gap, so this service will definitely be helpful to many! In the article Nokia stated that it is a big step to enter the Mobile Money Market and they realize that they will gradually improve their services and allow the payment services to be consistent with future competing services. J., Kincaid (2009) Nokia Eyes Emerging Markets with Obopay Retrieved August 30, 2009 from CNN.com/Technology Web Site:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/26/nokia-eyes-emerging-markets-with-obopay-powered-payment-platform/
