Industrial Processes - operations and organization

We have seen different systems in play. Excel sheets have calculated queuing numbers. gnatt charts show enough information to calculate system cycle times, lead time, WIP.

Can it be as easy as ... Sales = Operations / Finance

We will receive a case to analyze a system and to better it soon...

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Starting on Xcode

I have found an Intro to xcode that is more of a reference site than an intro. This site linked me to:

• an image of shortcuts on xcode
• a pdf on how to become a xcoder
• a link to apples dev site which has an intro to cocoa

This is the beginning of my research. 

I have already registered as a dev on apple and downloaded the necessary programs and sdk for iOS and Mac

What companies DJIA tracks

The Dow Jones Industrial Average follows 30 blue chip companies: (As of January 24, 2010)

MMM	3m Co
AA	Alcoa Inc
AXP	American Express Co
T	AT&T Inc
BAC	Bank of American Corp
CAT	Caterpillar Inc
CVX	Chevron Corp
CSCO	Cisco Systems Inc
DD	E. I. Du Pont De Nemours & Company
XOM	Exxon Mobil Corp
GE	General Electric Co
HPQ	Hewlett Packard Co
HD	Home Depot Inc
INTC	Intel Corp
IBM	International Business Machine
JNJ	Johnson & Johnson
JPM	JPMorgan Chase and Co
KFT	Kraft Foods Inc
MCD	McDonald's Corp
MRK	Merck and Co Inc
MSFT	Microsoft Corp
PFE	Pfizer Inc
PG	Procter & Gamble Co
BA	The Boeing Company
KO	The Coca Cola Co
TRV	Travelers Companies Inc
UTX	United Technologies Inc
VZ	Verizon Communications Inc
WMT	Wal Mart Stores Inc
DIS	Walt Disney Co

Apple - iAd

http://advertising.apple.com/

linked through:
google-vs-apple

Passwords: Short & sweet...

Short & sweet but at least 14 characters...

     Passwords are our personal firewall against cyberattacks. Almost everything we do online involves a password; email, bank account, blogger, google analytics all require passwords. Even news sources like WSJ.com and entertainment sites like fandango. Are you into online shopping? Amazon.com, eBay.com, Zappos.com? We may have 10-20 sites to access with user names and passwords. I myself could easily name 42 of my favorite sites which I use frequently that require a user name/password. Sometimes we create accounts with our usual passwords in sites we may not even trust and most of the time forget we visited.

Most people use one password for everything. If access where to be gained for one account, then all online accounts (i.e. facebook, eBay, zappos, amazon, nyt.com) would be compromised. Experts suggest long complex passwords and ask use to check how strong they are. Is it possible to remember a unique password for all individual sites? [and along with that also remember the password limit for all specific sites, i.e. 4, 8 or 12 characters password limit]

Test your password with Microsoft Online Safety

Check your password(s)

is it strong?

Microsoft recommends the following when creating passwords.
When creating a password avoid using:

• Dictionary words in any language. 
• [Words in all languages are vulnerable]
• Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations. 
• [Words in all languages are vulnerable]
• Sequences or repeated characters. 
• [Examples 12345, 22222, or adjacent letters on your keyboard (qwerty)]
• Personal information.
• [Your name, birthday, driver's license, passport number or similar information]

So I suggest having different tiers of passwords. 


So microsoft recommends long passwords and a list of what to avoid. But This doesn't really help the people who have 10-40 different sites to access. So I suggest having different tiers of passwords. Place your websites into importance of information contained within and then bundle the passwords or the idea that you used to create a password. For example, the password for wsj.com and nyt.com can be the same ; But don't use the same password for eBay, Amazon, your email or bank account. Everything you use the same password you lower the security of your personal information.

Sources:

• http://viathread.blogspot.com/2010/06/ww3-is-not-what-you-may-think.html
• http://www.zappos.com/
• https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx?WT.mc_id=Site_Link
• http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/create.aspx

WW3 is not what you may think...

As bad as WW3 sounds its upon on us, but not as history would have predicted. The next global war is completely digital and its effects are economically devastating...


In response to the ongoing onslaught of cyberattacks on numerous companies, individuals, governments and any other entities connected to the internet, the US government has named its first commander, Gen. Keith Alexander, for the U.S. Cyber Command; which is given a mission of defending against cyberattacks.

Cyberattacks are very complicated but a simple scenario for illustration would start with a botnet. A botnet is an application that gets installed on pc users computers without their knowledge by either opening a malicious attachment in an e-mail or downloading a file (i.e. music downloads). The application sends emails from the infected computer without the users knowledge and thats how it spreads. Now the cyberattack happens when the all the computers that have the application installed are told to do certain actions as a big group of computers. The action of millions of computers trying to access a single website can cause the site to crash and/or simply overload routers and servers and bring an entire infrastructure down [without the PC user ever knowing their computer was being used for an attack elsewhere].


Enron comes to mind when I hear about cyberattacks and infrastructure dangers. While Enron and cyberattacks have no correlation the thought of manipulating energy grids and shutting down power does have a correlation with Enron and cyberattacks. Apparently the computers used to control the energy grids were made to be used in isolation to any other network. Problem is cheap PCs and improved technology has connected almost all energy grids to the internet which makes it susceptible to cyberattacks. The control systems and energy infrastructure are fragile. The best solution seems to be to take systems offline. Bruce Averill writes about why energy companies need to pay attention in the Journal of Energy Security.


Network infrastructures keeps growing for different uses and governments can control the internet more than they have in the past, but should they? Is an Army General the right one to lead against cyber crimes?


Sources:

• http://www.nsa.gov/about/leadership/bio_alexander.shtml
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-20005749-42.html
• http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123205791
• http://www.topbits.com/botnet.html
• http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=243:canvassing-the-cyber-security-landscapewhy-energy-companies-need-to-pay-attention&catid=106:energysecuritycontent0510&Itemid=361

Strangers with Experience

Take notice of the second trusted source "Strangers with experience"; in 1997 it was the 3rd lowest trusted source and in 2007 it is the 2nd highest trusted source. 

Check out the new look

Blogger themes are okay, but not enough control is given over every corner of the screen. Hope you like the new theme.

Salt? How about Soap?

Salt sales go up during winter, not because people cook more during winter lockdowns but to melt snow and prevent re-freezing. Salt has a dual purpose. How about soap?

Are you perhaps P&G Selling soap? Make sure your customers know its intended use


Entering a new market can be tricky but analyzing data is even harder.

Market characteristics and transaction characteristics can be a bases for segmentation. For soap a market characteristic segmented on usage is an ideal market to be in, if people use soap. But a blunder occurred when research was being conducted on which soap brand people preferred. The research mentions that Irish Spring is by far the best seller by results of a sample taken near the university where the study was being held. Local stores attested to Irish Spring brand soap being hard to keep on there shelfs.

This research was great news to Irish Spring, may even show how effective its marketing campaign was.

The reality is customer usage of the product was not its original intended use. In this town where the research was conducted locals were buying Irish Spring to prevent deers from browsing in there properties. Soap bars were hanging from trees and repelled deers due to the strong perfume scent Irish Spring had. Even worse the deer browsing was seasonal. Had the study been done in another season Irish Spring may have been sitting on that store shelf.

Effectiveness of Soap

On a lighter note, know what this really means?
when it rains it pours...

Is your Brand OFFLINE?

If your Brand is offline does it exist in todays dynamic global marketplace? Maybe. 


Maybe?! well a good Brand can be the embodiment of a great product and it may strive without connecting to todays online market, but the chance that it may survive the long haul without connecting to online social medias are slim to none. Besides, the chance a competitor is offering their competing brand online is higher than ever these days...

not sure where to find a social media channel? look here

blogger, wordpress, myspace.com, facebook, youtube, itunes, twitter, linkedin

These key social media channels are essential to housing the power of e-marketing in todays dynamic global market. Lets take CNN for example, would a media news company need to use external social media channels when it has its own TV channel along with a website which includes great web-tools for media and discussion? perhaps Rick can tell you...

CNN now tells television viewers to join the conversation and talk to Rick on twitter, facebook, and myspace

What is more important to you (a startup e-store owner) to showing up on Google's first few pages for your products search or sending a tweet on twitter about a on going promotion on your product?

Hopefully you (a startup e-store owner) have been doing your homework and choose the latter. Google now includes tweet updates on their search results page. It was only a few months ago when google reached an agreement with twitter. 

Personalization and customization of messages via threads, post or tweets can significant make a Brand thrive if the audience accepts it. Also there are several ways to communicate with fans, customers and spectator within the online communities. Jordan's suggestion of 5 models a "Brand" can utilize to communicate with its audience is clear and to the point. The framework illustrates the simplest form of e-marketing down to what every brand hopefully strives for "Brand Embodiment". 

US newspaper circulation falls 8.7%

The spark: The New York Times just confirmed that it will start charging for at least some of its content in January 2011.

US newspaper circulation falls 8.7% in latest 6-months.

Daily Circulation

The Wall Street Journal      2,092,523

USA Today                             1,826,622

The New York Times               951,063

Los Angeles Times                   616,606

The Washington Post              578,482

An old tale...

Suzy in her blog mentions that the move towards a subscription based pay-per-read method to generate revenues for newspaper companies is nothing new. New Century Newspaper was established in 1995 which was a year before Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working on their project at Stanford that became Google. NCN one of the first attempts to collaborate all news paper giants in a consortium of sorts. 

According to this Business Week article from 1998, none of the nine new media companies could agree on a business model to follow and were seeking other streams of revenue; the adventure lasted three years and did very little for the online world.

It works for WSJ...

The Wall Street Journal, famously, charges about $100 a year to about 1.1 million online subscribers, for more than $100 million in revenue. That's good money, but it's a unique circumstance, driven by the Journal's high-quality business-targeted content, expense-account-paid subscriptions and nearly 15 years with a paid model. It's highly unlikely that any other paper could match numbers like that (yet).

Answers to several raised questions:

• A paywall revenue model will add to the several revenue streams which include advertising and print circulation. Readers may flock to “free” news which may decrease advertising dollars since it is mostly tied with site traffic. Most people just look elsewhere for the news they want when faced with a paywall.  

• The new phase of subscriptions and paywalls from online content providers will allow smaller news and entertainment media outlets to gain on advertising dollars if they attract those who hit the “wall” on media gaints. YouTube and Blogger will not be the only source of free intellectual content.

• Subscriptions work for WSJ so it may work for NYT. The impact will be felt as the advertising revenues shrink from less site traffic but the revenues from subscriptions will balance it off if NYT plays its cards right.

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Sources:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/US-newspaper-circulation-apf-436809869.html?x=0

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2009/03/doing-the-math-on-online-newspaper-subscriptions.html

E-Commerce: Business Models

Major Types of e-Commerce business models include B2C B2B C2C, and all these existed in completely different forms before Commerce evolved into what it is today. 


P2P e-commerce is referred to as having a unusual business model due to its peer-to-peer technology which may or may not have a central location for data gathering. During this youtube video (which is also posted above) over 15 different P2P applications are showcased together which shows the evolved nature of web 2.0 and web 3.0.


Lately, M-commerce has taken a positive stride toward shaping the future of e-commerce transactions. M-commerce will continue to grow as wireless device technology adapts and creates an easier way to access the web.


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   -Use any of the links on the right just below e-marketers..


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