Abo46n2's Favorite Links on business from Diigo

Tech Tyrants: The 10 most terrible tyrants of tech

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:07:14 -0000

Tags: tech technology business google microsoft

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Futuristic Play by @andrew_null (Andrew Chen): 50+ essays on viral marketing, social network monetization, product design and more

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:46:38 -0000

Tags: marketing socialmedia advertising business

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The Price of Profits by Zachary Hurwitz

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:17:04 -0000

The Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure in South America is the latest and largest in a series of bank-financed schemes to bring "development" to the Amazon Basin—and more trouble to the region's indigenous communities.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure in South America

The Interoceanica Sur highway in Madre de Dios, Peru, is one of the 31 first-stage IIRSA projects that are programmed for completion by the year 2010. The road is financed by the Andean Development Corporation, the Brazilian National Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Peruvian government and is currently under construction.

The Interoceanica project is going to benefit large agricultural interests, not local populations. Local populations are not prepared economically to benefit from the highway, and there’s been no interest from the national or regional government to give us at least a few incentives to prepare us for the highway. If the government doesn’t promote a sustainable vision for our region, what we’re going to see are large trucks passing through here, big businesses from the Brazilian side. There they have a broad vision of expanding spaces for soy cultivation, which is going to affect indigenous peoples, riverside communities, and rural communities. So this is only a capitalistic vision, not a vision that will help the poor populations of our country.

We’ve been informed that there is a new proposal for an executive law that would allow the government to begin a colonization project with agricultural and industrial ends. For the Amazon, this is a threat, because we already live here, we already exist here, so what lands are they going to colonize? This could mean land invasions, conflicts between agricultural interests and indigenous people, so this proposal for new law worries us, and we’ve rejected it through the Alliance of Federations here in Madre de Dios.

The Madeira Hidrovia Complex is one of the most controversial projects included in the Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure of South America. The Hidrovia plans include the construction of five hydroelectric dams (two in Bolivia and three in Brazil) along the Madeira river, to facilitate transporting soy from the southern city of Porto Velho to Manaus for export.

For the Parintintin of western Brazil, who depend on the river for their livelihood and culture, the hydroelectric dams proposed by the Madeira complex are a serious threat. As cacique (chief) Domingos Parintintin points out, mining and logging already exert tremendous pressure on their territory. Hydroelectric dams would offer even more pressure, cutting river water levels, which would threaten the availability and health of fish, as well as the Parintintin agricultural plots, which depend on the river’s natural cycles of flooding to restore soil fertility. There would also be increased competition for land and resources, as migrants move in to work in construction and agriculture.

This is 2007; it’s time for things to be different. The government threw a party to celebrate the 500th birthday of Brazil, but we’re against that. Because today you go to any land in Amazônia, and our close relatives, brothers, parents, they’re all buried on that land. How can you celebrate on the land where your relatives are buried?

Our people, in the area of health, we have our own traditions. We make remedies ourselves. We have a part of our culture that knows which medicine to use, which medicines cure, and we pass this on to our people who conserve this knowledge. For example, if you have a bruise, or a cut, we know which treatment to use to cure it. We have remedies for everything. We never give up our culture.

Beyond this, we never let go of our culture. For example, we never give up our traditional clothing. Our people are advancing, but they don’t know how to do everything. We don’t know how to do everything at the beginning of something new, but we’re advancing. There are some things about our culture that I can’t speak about, because they are secrets. This goes for other people too. Truthfully, for us as Parintintin, from the time of contact to today, our vision has changed. Today, our people are much more like Brazilians. To us, our people have failed in some parts of our culture. There are things that are changing our own culture as indigenous people. We speak two languages. In the case of my village, we speak our own language and Portuguese. But we never give up our culture. I’m not an enemy of Brazil, I’m an indigenous man, but the question of land invasions, the question of mining, the question of illegal logging, hunting, fishing, all of this comes back to our people; it causes a problem, a very serious problem.

Tags: anthropology culture latinamerica humanrights business

Posted by: abo46n2

Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:47:28 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Time Warner would not reveal how many gigabytes an average customer uses, saying only that 95 percent of customers use under 40 gigabytes each in a month.

Tags: utilitycomputing internet future business

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Microsoft withdraws offer for Yahoo | Reuters

Sun, 04 May 2008 16:17:41 -0000

Tags: microsoft yahoo business

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Social media's future looks bright, apply sunscreen | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Sat, 03 May 2008 03:39:21 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

"It's really an evolution of media from a one-way direction to a highly interactive model, where people are developing relationships around content. That drives engagement...and creates a whole new opportunity for business," Mike Jensen, director of technology group at Credit Suisse,

One opportunity for new business is in e-commerce.

Dave McClure, an angel investor at 500 Hats, believes the future of the business will be in so-called social commerce, or the intersection between online shopping and socializing. Netflix might be an example of early social commerce because it encourages members to recommend movies to friends. But he envisions social commerce going much further.

"Social commerce is where (the business is) headed. Companies that have mined enough social graph data and can combine shopping to it--whoever figures that out, they will be set," McClure said during a panel.

more developers should be working on applications that provide utility to people, rather than just entertainment. For example, spin-offs of Twitter for health care or emergency workers could hold promise

Thanks to social networks like MySpace and Facebook, companies are armed with much more data on people's habits, preferences, and social behavior. Executives believe that data, if used right, can build the next advertising giant.

Still, social networks have long been challenged to sell their inventory to mainstream advertisers for several reasons. For one, advertisers are squeamish about putting their brands next to a user-generated video of high-school band practice, for example. Another reason is that salespeople from social networks don't speak the same language of metrics that traditional advertisers and agencies speak.

"The promise for this space is that you've got this engaged audience--people spending 20 to 40 minutes talking to each other in a way they haven't before--and if you put these ads in front of them, what do you call it and how do you sell it to agencies?"

MySpace is seeing early success for its advertising service called hypertargeting, which lets advertisers reach customers by their behavior on the social network. Oberfest said people are responding more positively to those ads.

Seth Goldstein, founder of SocialMedia Networks, an advertising platform for social networks, said that he envisions an open system from Facebook or MySpace that would allow companies to look at a person's social graph, or collection of their friends. Then the company could extract who is most influential to that individual in areas like travel or movie recommendations.

"If I can select the right person to have influence over you, I can choose that person to send you a message," he said.

Nicolas Kardas, senior product manager at Microsoft's Windows Live Platform group, said despite the forward twist on social media, the business models aren't that different than those of years past. It's just that with social networks, companies know much more about the consumer, and that information delivers the option of a much bigger premium for advertising.

Tags: social media advertising marketing business web

Posted by: abo46n2

Sun Micro Records $34 Million Loss

Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:51 -0000

Sun Microsystems Inc., citing impacts of the softening U.S. economy, posted a net loss on a slight decline in revenue for its third quarter and announced plans to cut up to 2,500 jobs.

Tags: sun stock economics recession business

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The Social Customer Manifesto: Reaching Out: Four Retail Companies That Are Reaching Out with Blogs and Social Media

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:56:36 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

A definite step in the right direction for the company, with actual employees communicating about their individual areas of interest, with minimal company shilling taking place.

The bold TERMS AND CONDITIONS of the blog also state: "McDonald's owns any comments or other content that you post on this site. That means that McDonald's has the right to make, have made, offer for sale, use, sell, copy, distribute, perform, transmit, display, modify, adapt and otherwise use your submission(s) throughout the world in perpetuity in any manner that it sees fit without compensation to you. McDonald's also has the right to use your name in connection with any use of your submissions." This is not the best method to develop trust and a long-term relationship with a customer.

The key thing that Starbucks realizes is that these conversations are taking place anyway. If this site didn't exist, customers such as the individual above would be making these comments in other forums that were removed from the organization, or on his or her own blog. With My Starbucks Idea, the organization is getting the feedback in realtime, and has the opportunity to address issues in a rational and constructive way.

Tags: social media blogging business

Posted by: abo46n2

Businesses told to exploit social media

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:42:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

"The move toward social media is as big a change as Gutenberg and the printing press," said Karl Long, a product manager at Nokia. "Social media is the ability for anyone to publish anything without any cost."

Panelists said the social media sites are changing communications.

The panelists said businesses are beginning to recognize the benefits of having conversations with consumers.

businesses can learn from young people who create their own sites.

Social media can be used to create word-of-mouth advocacy for products or services,

real estate agents, for instance, are using Web sites that include reviews from clients after their homes have been sold.

Tags: social media business marketing advertising web

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New Study Indicates Consumers Use Social Media to Share Customer Care Experiences and Research Companies' Customer Service Reputations

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:29:54 -0000

Tags: social media advertising marketing business statistics

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Google and Salesforce Join to Fight Microsoft - New York Times

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:21:13 -0000

Google and Salesforce.com, two of Microsoft’s most conspicuous rivals, are expanding a 10-month-old collaboration in an effort to accelerate their sales of customer management and office software to businesses.

Tags: google salesforce microsoft business

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Microsoft Responds to Yahoo’s Google Test: “You’re The Evil Monopolist!”

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:58:30 -0000

Microsoft continued its letter writing campaign to acquire Yahoo this afternoon, following news that the former will be testing Google advertising in search results as an alternative to the software giant’s acquisition offer. The company issued a brief statement reading as follows:

Tags: microsoft google yahoo business

Posted by: abo46n2

Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier -- Update | Threat Level from Wired.com

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:34:36 -0000

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Pasdar won't name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit.

Tags: business privacy usa wireless

Posted by: abo46n2

Apple stabs Adobe in the back « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:28:11 -0000

On a week when Microsoft landed a big deal to put Silverlight on Nokia phones, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, tells Adobe that there won’t be Flash on the iPhone.

This is a real bummer for Adobe and many users and developers, because most of the world’s casual games are written for Flash. Just go over to game site Kongregate. Or, look at the world’s video like that on YouTube (or any other video site like the Qik one that I use on my cell phone). Almost all of it is done in Flash. Now developers at those sites will need to find some other method to get those games and videos onto the iPhone.

Tags: apple business iphone microsoft technology

Posted by: abo46n2

Crackpot technologies that could shake up IT | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2008-02-18 | By InfoWorld staff

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:01:00 -0000

Tags: business technology

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Social Media Will Change Your Business

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:48:56 -0000

Tags: business social media

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YouTube press release "Google Closes Acquisition of YouTube" Nov 13 2006

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:48:43 -0000

Tags: business google news youtube

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BBC NEWS | Business | EBay to ban negative seller views

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:13:23 -0000

Tags: business censorship ebay

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Exxon posts quarterly, annual profit records - Feb. 1, 2008

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:25:20 -0000

Tags: business energy exxon

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Microsoft bids $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo | Reuters

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:57:00 -0000

Tags: business computers corporate microsoft yahoo

Posted by: abo46n2