Blog 13

In "Business Week" I read about a Web-based program that is supposed to replace all of the programs on Microsoft Office. The program is called "Glide." Glide offers everything from word processing, to presentation layouts, to a Web browser, to picture and video media, and even email. However, it is still in its "beta" stages. It will be a while before all the kinks are worked out. One down-side I see to this is an Internet connection is needed to use even the word processing program. That can be problematic considering that most business people on the go may not have one readily available to them.

Blog 12

An article of "Business Week" talked about political spending in 2007, particularly for TV time. It's estimated that at the end of the Presidential and congressional elections in 20 months the candidates will have spent $2.5 billion dollars in TV spots alone. This seems to bode well for broadcasting stations...or does it??? A down-side to this is that the stations may loose many other companies that have advertised with them for years due to the elections. I would guess the trick would be to balance the candidates spending to gain that extra profit while trying not to loose long-time companies that have been loyal in the past years. Any suggestions???

Blog 11

I read in "Business Week" about a new product called the Blackberry 8800. It is supposed to be the counterpart to the Blackberry Pearl. However, it is still very much like it's predicessor the Blackberry 8700 except it has a much thinner body (5 mm thinner) and has a much larger battery so it runs longer. One of the main features talked about in this article it the GPS Navigation system it has in it. Though it has some draw-backs like the refresh rate of the GPS due to the TeleNav software used.

Blog 10

I read an article in "Business Week" that talked about the New York Times and how it is supposedly loosing market share (I'm not quite sure. The article was a very confussing read). The author expresses that the reason for this is the 6 of the 8 board members are family and they are set in their ways. Even one man with the last name of Elmasry brought this issue to the board members itself. To try and save the "Times" he told them the apparent issue. However, they were unresponsive...(surprise, surprise). They told him that if they just do nothing and let things take their natral course then things would get better.

Blog 9

Today, I read an article in "Business Week" that talked about social networking and the increasing importance of it for businesses. The article mentioned sites such as "Myspace.com" and "Youtube.com". The article goes on to even talk about Second Life. it says that IBM has built a replica of a research center that is owned by IBM in Second Life. Even Coldwell Banker has opened a virtual office to sale virtual real estate. However, a new way for businesses to to be apart of the social networking craze is called "Ning." It is free to start and like any networking program, it is free. I does require a little skill to start, because it is like a Webpage. After it is up and running loading videos and photos should be easy. There is a downside to this program. It is free, however there are google ads that come up all along the right side of the screen and for business owners this could be problematic. They don't want to advertise their competitors unknowingly. So it costs $19.95 a month to replace or remove the google ads. Another $4.95 a month allows you to change the address by removing the .ning.com to whatever the company wants...dot com. Another $7.95 a month is paid if the business wants to remove a link that allows others in their network to create a network of their own...at least from your site. This could potientially avoid such networks coming up that talk down against your company or allowing a competitor to make a network.

Blog 8

I recently read an article in "Business Week" that talked about the different search engines and the effectiveness of each site. A search was conducted for 24 hr. perscription stores to jazz concerts. And every search engine had its strengths and weaknesses. For example, for the perscription stores Yahoo! local was the best. And for the concerts, Ask. com was the most effective.

Blog 7

I recently read in "Business Week" that as of 2005, Anheuser-Busch is loosing sales. To help this along A-B is spending 30 million dollars on what will become "Bud.tv" a place to create online videos similar to youtube. However, there will be problems with the interaction due to the age verification process that is required by the Beer Institute. Total, A-B will be spending 509.2 million dollars on media.