Google Launches Free, Legal Music Downloads in China

In another small step forward on its unrelenting march toward worldwide media domination, Google has launched a free music download service in China with the cooperation of major music labels there. According to the article, Google hopes to draw users to its service with better quality in a country where 99 percent of all music files distributed are pirated. In addition, the company hopes that this service will help it compete with its rival, Baidu.com, which unlike Google, offers mp3 searching and downloading abilities.

Skype for the iPhone

This is something we talked about last year in IS717. Free Skype for the iPhone is now available. A blackberry version is expected in May.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/skype.iphone/index.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/162179/sneak_peek_at_skype_for_iphone_available_tuesday.html

Creators vs. Aggregators

Last week during our presentation on Media & Entertainment, my team and I posited that newspaper publishers and other professional content creators were going to want to get a piece of the value captured by aggregators like Google News and Digg. It looks like that tug of war is getting underway: Guardian wants Government to look at Google News. It'll be really interesting to see how this plays out in the UK and if we'll see a similar move by one of the big players on this side of the pond any time soon.

H-P May Use Google's Android for Some Netbooks

There've been rumors of something like this for the last couple of years. That being said, I think this time around the timing might be right, and it could mean that Android is the distribution that finally brings Linux to the mainstream. A lot of netbooks running Linux end up getting returned because the OS either doesn't run the applications the users are used to or doesn't have native driver support for their periferals. Android faces similar problems, but I think the Google brand, coupled with an increasingly rapid transition to browser based applications (think Google Docs, webmail, or even Andy's post last week about OnLive), could give Android the boost it needs to be a real player in this space. Imagine an Android netbook preloaded with Google Desktop, Google Chrome, a selection of Android apps, and Gears versions of Google Docs. We're already seeing netbooks subsidized by major carriers in exchange for 2-year data plan contracts. Would you be surprised to see H-P and Verizon team up to offer those Android netbooks for $100 in the next year? Oh yeah, here's the story I'm referring to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123852934905974845.html.

Of course, how long are netbooks even going to matter? In all likelihood, netbooks are going to be transitional devices that fill the gap between full featured laptops and smartphones until the two completely converge. When you don't have physical media and all your processing is done in the cloud, the only thing you'd be missing in a smartphone that you get in a laptop is the interface (keyboard & mouse) and the larger screen. How many years before we see periferals for our phones that take care of that problem?

Samsung TV with Internet Conenctions

This is one of the shifts that we discussed.

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I am sure we will see more convergence in the coming months..

Can Second Life help teach doctors to treat patients?

This article is about medical students in England htat are supplementing their studies by treating patients in second life. Students can see patients, order X-rays, consult with colleagues and make diagnoses. Their professors can observe them so they can correct any mistakes.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/doctors.second.life/index.html

Robots Preforming Surgery: Bandwidth Law

This article from portfolio.com does a good job of illustrating the bandwidth law on the advancement of surgery. They have robots who currently perform surgery while being operated by a surgeon (ie the robot is not thinking, the doctor is).

What they want to do is have the best doctor anywhere in the world perform a surgery from afar but any packet loss or a delay of any sort can be critical to the survival of the patient.

Regardless of feelings about having someone thousands of miles away performing surgery on you, this is an interesting way to think of the bandwidth law, and will this every be good enough to trust your life with, since any risk of a interference or signal degradation would be a to big a risk for many people to trust.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/dual-perspectives/2009/03/03/Outsourcing-The-Surgeon

Twitter Terrorism

In our discussion about news and Twitter being used for the dispersion of news, I couldn't stop thinking about how we are pushing the publishing time of information being digested as news to a shorter and shorter period of time that does not allow for proper fact checking. As we have seen in the example about the flood (which is being repeated for the Fargo flood), a news event can be reported and virally spread through Twitter users at a very fast rate. To me, this leaves open the risk of having people (for whatever reason) utilize Twitter to cause havoc by reporting false events and having them rip through the Twitter ecosystem quickly without proper time for verification.

Let's say that you are a retail store chain and one of your competitors is opening a new store in an area downtown. You don't want this to be successful, so you hire a random college student to create a program reports on Twitter that a large fire is happening on that city block. That student had ripped the usernames and passwords of other local college students so they have access to many accounts, or they have skillfully created real looking people that local groups have started following due to their image and comments (perhaps even through engineered false Facebook pages). The accounts that this person has control over quickly spread the rumor about the fire and immediately the fire is verified through the chain by simulated other people. This could dramatically effect new store sales, eh?

This could even take a more dramatic turn if one believes a US Army report speaking about how Twitter (with its relative anonymity) could be used to manage terrorist attacks in real time. (link)

For Lauren :-)

I have posted this on Facebook... but I little bit of humor won't hurt our blog... So in case you missed it here it is again... enjoy

I actually think this is a great opportunity to get Lauren excited for some cool discussion

More on Twitter

It's funny - I could never really understand the appeal with Twitter. The way I see it, who am I to presume that others (aside from possibly my parents) want to read about the daily minutia of my life? It makes sense, then that there's some heavy - and candid - twittering amongst celebrities. This recent NYT article provides some interesting insight into the "Celebrity Twitter Ecosystem".

Twitter...again

To follow up on our discussion of Twitter the other day (which spilled out into the hallway and eventually ended up in the grad lounge), it's going to finally start cashing in on its popularity. Twitter's preparing to offer enhanced services to commercial users, for a price. They haven't set a date, but it's expected that these services will be launched sometime in 2009. On another note, I think the evolution of Twitter's demographics has been really interesting. A year ago middle aged men were the biggest group of users on the service. This year, the largest group of users are now 18-34 year old males. It started out as a tool of the technocrati, and I think those roots are reflected in these demographics. I also find it interesting that the majority of users make over $60k per year, with 28% making over $100k. On the flip side, young people aren't using this service, with only 1% of their users coming from the 12-17 age bracket. By comparison, 30% of Facebook's users come from that age group. What does that mean for Twitter going forward, as those 12-17 year olds grow up? I'm also really curious about how the vast ecosystem of Twitter based applications are going to respond if twitter starts charging for access to their APIs? 

I know, enough about Twitter. Just one more thing: I wouldn't be surprised if the Twitter brand fades into the background, supplanted by the vast and growing ecosystem of apps and services based on their technology. I fully expect that "tweeting" will be the generic term for microblogging by the time those 12 to 17 year olds start entering the work force. 

Lost in the Clouds

The article attached below summarizes the growing confusion over the definition of “cloud” computing. The idea of the cloud is not a new one and has been used for years to represent a nebulous area outside of one’s immediate systems. The widespread adoption of this metaphor has spurred companies to invent such creative names for new offering as Stratus, OpenCirrus, and Azure.

With the overuse of this term and the uncertain meaning behind it, Cloud computing may evaporate as quickly as Web 2.0 and cyberspace.

Wall Street Journal- March 26, 2009

Moving beyond portals

As I was listening to our team's presentation and the other media group's, I was noting the number of 'portals' mentioned throughout the presentations. TV portals, movie portals, user generated video portals, news portals. The value in having these portals is clear, I don't need to go to 20 sites to watch user generated videos, just YouTube. But, if I want news, time to move on to the news portal, and if I want tech news, well, time to go to the tech news portal, and so on... This seems highly inefficient.

I may just be getting back to our discussion on Google News and customizing the articles by choosing your source of choice, etc, but there must be a better way to do it than visit 10 portals, 3 different types of aggregaters, and a dozen other random sites I visit.

Maybe there are solutions out there already that I am unaware of, or maybe all I'm looking for here is some kind of hybrid mix of RSS feeds and mashups with many content types, but if had a way to customize a mix of content and different types of sources (video, audio, news, etc) to a central location there would definitely be some value there.

Anyhow, just thinking out loud here...

Game consoles a thing of the past?

Picking up on Mitch's piece from yesterdayI caught this on Cnet last night. Official company website here. The basic idea (see graphic below, sorry it's fuzzy) is that they house the games on their servers and stream them to your computer, set top box, whatever... They've already lined up some content providers to work with it as well (EA, take-two, Ubisoft, etc). As far as video games and consoles go, it's an interesting idea. Why should I bother having a particular console if I can stream the same to my living room without a console? (Except of course their streaming box "console"). If I can get all the games that are currently platform specific through one system without buying three consoles, it's a compelling idea if I'm a gamer. The details are not fully fleshed out yet, and it's true that some of the value of an Xbox 360 is through network effects of the online interaction, but clearly with gadgets like this around the corner console makers are going to need to provide more services and capabilities to get people to buy.

Newspapers May be a Thing of the Past in Michigan

To piggyback onto Zack’s point from class today about daily newspapers moving to web-based models, four markets in Michigan will cease or drastically reduce their printed circulation and move to an online model where the emphasis will be on reader input and community forums. It was announced Monday that starting in July, the 174 year-old Ann Arbor News will become AnnArbor.com, and will only produce printed editions two days a week. The Ann Arbor News has a weekday circulation of 45,000. The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times will also be reducing their daily printing to Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays only. In addition, these three papers plan to lay off 35% of their workforce.

Media Sector and Open APIs

I thought we had a good overview and spirited discussions on the transformations underway in the media sector. Here's a presentation from Guardian Newspapers in the UK that discusses 'open' strategy and touches on some of the ideas that we have covered in our course so far. Hope you find this useful as part of our discussions of IT-enabled (driven) business transformations.

The Open Strategy

View more presentations from mattmcalister.

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Memo to the CEO-- Sovereignbank

I choose Sovereignbank for a couple of reasons:
1. my interest in financial intermediation industry (esp. in banking). Given the current global financial meltdown, it is a time of restructuring and reshaping for the industry. How banking can better use the technology available to better serve its stakeholders is an interesting path to investigate.
2. Sovereignbank came as a natural choice as I’ve done my summer internship with them. Also, in the end of February 2009, they were acquired by Banco Santander, one of the few global banks who reported stable profits in 2008. Again, it’s a moment of opportunity, of change for the bank.
Some initial thoughts to choose from for the Memo are: how data mining capabilities are used for price versioning towards business clients (the interest& fees are mainly influenced by credit history and business performance, but also by others factors), how the anticipated move towards more traditional business model banking can be leveraged by technology capabilities, “democratization of finance” (Stiller).

Missing the Point with Print Media

Here is a related article to our discussion of the newspaper industry and a fine example of your elected representatives comprehension of the changing world we live in. The AP reports that a senator has suggested making the newspaper industry tax-free in an attempt to help them survive. Other than the obvious fact that taxes are paid on profit, which newspapers are not making, there are additional issues that touch on where newspapers will place themselves within the layers of the industry. One glaring example is how papers continue to focus on their editorial content or will use editorial content as one area in which they will be able to extract value. Non-profit status will greatly limit the types of editorials they can run due to campaign finance regualtions [the non-profit info is down towards the end].
To add one final point, notice where I found the article, Google News. Though this is probably no surprise since the industry's own advocacy association shows 67% of subscribers are over the age of 45, which in my opinion will only increase in the future.
Legislation like this will not help a failing industry.

On-demand cloud gaming

A company called OnLive will be launching a remotely-hosted gaming experience, essentially gaming as a service. Using your normal computer, inputs from the controller are sent to a remote server and graphical output is sent back.

This would all be fairly uninteresting, if it weren't for the fact that they are partnering with high-end gaming companies such as EA, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic, and Atari. Even graphically intense games are supported by this system, like Prince of Persia or Call of Duty. All you need is a 1.5Mbps connection for 480p video and 4-5Mbps for 720p video.

This will be quite cool if it works as well as they say it does. More info can be found on SlashGear and engadget. Here's a demo video:

A Recent Overview of Google's Android in the Mobile Space

This video is a good overview that highlights some of the discussions we had in the course.



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Enjoy it.

March Madness for Social Media

This is an interesting article on the future of social media. It pulls different social sites and runs a bracket in the style of March Madness to see who the general public thinks will win the social media battle.

Take a look at the wins of losses of each site, it goes though and shows the current strengths and weaknesses of sites such as youtube and twitter.

You can also vote as this gets to the final 4.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3633168

Cisco Acquires Another Consumer Electronics Company

I thought this was interesting given the discussion we had about Cisco's "Human Network". Last week Cisco Systems bought Pure Digital Technologies (PDT) for $590M in stock. For those of you unfamiliar with the company, PDT sells a line of low end, simple to use, small form factor digital video cameras (Flip cameras). These devices are perfect for creating web videos, and, in Cisco's world, should fit nicely with their existing video conferencing business. It will be interesting to see if they release "good enough" video conferencing devices for the consumer market or if they simply maintain PDT's current focus. Here's an article about this acquisition: A Tiny Camcorder Has a Big Payday

“Do You Want Fries With That?” Outsourcing in the Fast-Food Industry

Outsourcing is commonplace in some industries, such as high-tech and services. However, one industry that seems like an unlikely candidate for outsourcing is fast food. Yet, several chains such as Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. are either experimenting with the idea or have implemented the idea in their drive-through windows.

These companies see many advantages to outsourcing such as improved speed and accuracy of order taking, in addition to freeing up restaurant employees to do other jobs such as take payments. Another major benefit of outsourcing for the industry has been the elimination of the language barrier that sometimes occurs between a native English speaking customer and a non-native English speaking employee. “According to Hudson Riehle, SVP of Research for the National Restaurant Association, remote order-taking can shave drive-through time by milliseconds, which can add up to millions for the fast food industry.”

So the next time you go through the drive-through at your favorite fast-food restaurant, be aware that you may be speaking with someone half-way across the globe.

Batteries Now Included

In our team presentation on the automotive industry, Kel Frazier discussed the constraints of hybrid and fully electric vehicles at a high level. The issues of travel distance and battery charge time cause many customers to hesitate in making the conversion. The article attached below discusses the latest advancements that seek to eliminate the bottleneck of electron movement in lithium ion batteries and significantly decrease charge time. Rapid charge times may eliminate the need for batteries capable of holding complete battery power for long trips. In the future, long road trips may require quick charging stops similar to refilling a gas tank. Good news for all the truck stops across the nation.


Economist- March 12, 2009

Two striking news at the end of this week

First one, IBM maybe buying Sun Microsystems. This is very strange to me since IBM has been moving into software and services and we know Sun is mainly a hardware company. In the article they say that IBM wants to leverage Sun servers to sell more services and add some of the software applications (Java, MySQL) to its product offering. To me, it looks more like a monopolistic move to try to erase the benefits HP is getting from the EDS acquisition. 

Second one, Sony partnered with Google to offer content for its digital book reader. I am suprised that Sony made the first move to partner with Google. To me, it would have been more natural to see Amazon partnering with Google. I guess I was wrong. Amazon already has the content, so it doesn't need to partner with anyone. However, Sony is entering yet another battle to fight for a standard (as they did with Betamax and BluRay DVD). By partnering with Google, will they win??

Cadillac In-car Internet Coming Soon

I saw this article on SlashGear about a new feature that Cadillac will be offering in their CTS Sports Sedan. The hardware is provided by a company called AutoNet, who will also be selling the device for $499 to retrofit on other automobiles. Service will cost $29 per month.

While other devices like this have been made available at retail before, this is one of the first to be provided by a top-tier carmaker. This could potentially lead to more widespread adoption across GM's product line, as we saw with OnStar.

Health and Crowdsourcing

To me, the idea described in this article is incredibly exciting. Many organizations have begun to exploit the talent and knowledge that exists outside of our 'physical' and 'social' spheres/networks. How many better decisions could be made with a standardized information about genes? That is the question Friend hopes to answer and he believes that quite a bit can be gained. I tend to agree based on the experience of innovation on the Internet.

Thoughts?

The article describes:

"If Merck’s Stephen Friend gets his way, about five years from now, he will have ushered in a new era in which biologists work together to make drugs that are better than any company can today inside its walls."

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"Sage is built on the premise that vast networks of genes get perturbed, or thrown off-kilter, in complex diseases like cancer, diabetes, and obesity. Scientists can’t just pick one faulty gene or protein and make a magic bullet to shut it down. But what if researchers around the world capturing genomic profiles on patients could get all of their data to talk to each other through a free, open database? A researcher in Seattle looking at how all 35,000 genes in breast cancer patients are dialed on or off at a certain stage of illness might be able to make critical comparisons by stacking results up against a deeper and broader data pool that integrates clinical, genetic, and other molecular data from peers in, say, San Francisco, New Haven, CT, or anywhere else.

Besides helping scientists aim higher, this will make medicine more transparent than ever, Friend says. Physicians from around the world could look at genetic profiles from their patients, match it up with the Sage database, and then prescribe the medicine most likely to work, Friend says. The FDA could look for insight into the proper balance between the risk and benefit of a drug. Health insurers could look at drugs for certain patients that have the greatest likelihood of success, and pay for ones that work. Drug companies could use the database to weed out treatments that are bound to fail or cause side effects for patients with certain genetic profiles, potentially saving years of wasted effort and hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We see this becoming like the Google of biological science. It will be such an informative platform, you won’t be able to make decisions without it,” Schadt says. He adds: “We want this to be like the Internet. Nobody owns it.”"

Major Technology Player: The Discovery Channel?

When we spoke about the various large players in the technology market, who else should have been included in that market spectrum? Well, recent legal incidents might have us adding the Discovery Channel to that list. Yes, it is true, the same channel that brings us French-Canadian wildernessmen eating bugs and raw fish in the woods and endless hours of savanna lion copulation footage, is currently suing Amazon.com for patent infringement for various features that the Kindle possesses. Apparently, Discovery Communications (the parent company to the discovery channel) has some pretty impressive IP around digital content copy protection.

It will be interesting to see how this battle plays out, because who knows what kind of essential IP is being held by various companies that have not been considered technology players due to their inactivity. Perhaps they have the patent, but the bandwidth or networks had not existed to make their ideas reality. As entrepreneurs and larger firms react to the trends that we have discussed in this class, we will have to see if they end up tripping over a lattice of hidden IP traps held by various unknown players.

Article: Slashdot

Reinventing the Automobile: GM's View

Here is a presentation from GM on 'reinventing the automobile.'

Converging on Sustainability: The New DNA of the Automobile

View more presentations from generalmotors.

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It builds on the discussions of the connected vehicle and the shift to the electric car as well as the role of electronics at the center of the new DNA.

Mr. Hulu Gets a New Gig: Former NBC Digital Boss George Kliavkoff Goes To Hearst

Mr. Hulu Gets a New Gig: Former NBC Digital Boss George Kliavkoff Goes To Hearst

Posted using ShareThis

“The Cloud Is The New Dotcom” (Video Highlights)

“The Cloud Is The New Dotcom” (Video Highlights)

Posted using ShareThis

Blellow: Social Project-Based Networking

There is a new service called Blellow (must have found that name at the bottom of the .COM name bin) that mixes professional social networking like LinkedIn with a tool like Yammer (a professional sort of Twitter) and gears it towards fluid employment opportunities like independent contracts and temporary work. It allows for the dynamic creation of temporary project teams and provides social networking tools to promote and help facilitate the short-term team during the project. 

From the various trends that we have been evaluating in this class and their many effects, we can clearly see the position that Blellow is taking. They are recognizing the labor is becoming less geographically anchored and that through the bandwidth law, there is more and more freedom to collaborate effectively through additional feature sets. It also leverages the value of the "network" of professionals idea in its most primal sense. 

It will be interesting to see how the service does and also to see what effect it has on the other members of the social networking sphere.

Resources: 

TechCrunch

Memo to CEO - PNC

PNC is a financial services corporation. The memo to the CEO of PNC will mainly deal with the following:

1. In order to excel in the value discipline of customer intimacy it is imperative to customize services according to customer needs. This requires extensive customer knowledge gathering and flexibility. Information systems can play a vital role in understanding the customers better and identify new market opportunities. Expanding services available over the web, product innovation, customer relation improvement and identification of new technology and aligning IT with business needs will help PNC to improve customer satisfaction.
2. Better portfolio and documentation management and risk management software can help in making better investment decisions.
3. Leveraging IT to centralize regulatory information and high level communication by management and educating business executives of company objectives can improve the learning measures.
4. Mergers cannot be successful without proper IT integration. Survival of redundant applications can result in increased complexity, duplication of effort, separation of IT capabilities and also inhibit scalability. Investment for standardizing enterprise data and systems can ensure
flexibility and scalability.

Memo to Disney CEO Robert Iger

I plan on sending a memo to Disney CEO Robert Iger regarding the role that IT will play in developing his espn360.com site.

1. I think developing the live streaming video capabilities will prove valuable in the future as technological advances will accommodate content on demand from computers as a replacement to more traditional entertainment options.

2. Developing the availability of archived video on demand will be a natural evolution of this technology as older content is converted into the digital realm.

3. Addressing the move to an online digital player from traditional television network in the future needs to begin now and with such players like netflix already taking this step increases the urgency for this transition.

4. The increased demand for all games to be digitally streamed will increase in the future. By becoming the leader in this market, espn360.com can be established as the premier oinline provider of digital media.

Memo to CEO - Suzlon

Suzlon is the one of the largest players in the Wind Energy sector. The company is based out of India and has expanded its operations all over thw world.

Before the current meltdown, the demand for Wind Turbines worldwide was more than the supply and hence the company had the benefit to choose its customers. Surprisingly even the current economic situation, the company has reported a very profitable Q3 and is growing. 

This is the perfect time for the company to leverage its current position in capturing more market share and making in-roads in new market segments and enter into the service part of business.

I plan to focus on the still developing service part of the business and identify how IT can play a significant role inthe same.

Suzlon can enter into the service part of the Wind Turbines, similar to GE into the jet engines servicing business.

Suzlon can use IT significantly to help companies mover from the traditional servicing model.

Right now the serivicing model is based onregular time interval and on-call. This can be modified by monitoring the wind turbines and managing the servicing in a more cost effective manner.

Moreover, IT can be used to better managed their current resources spread across the world. They manufacture parts of a turbine across the globe and then assemble them at the closest manufacturing facility and ship the product to the client.Using IT they can stramline their production and delivery model to be more cost effective and serve more customers.

IT can also be used for Marketing. They currently have negligible presence on the web and the marketing plan is not leveraging the power of the WEB. An integrated marketing plan can go a long way in creating the Brand , but it is not possible without using IT effectively.

CEO Memo - Office Depot

I have chosen Office Depot as my company for writing the CEO memo assignment. The office supplies industry is indeed facing some really interesting times. Staples by far has been the most successful of the three big firms in this space (other two being Office Depot and Office Max). All the three players also offer technology products. With cirucit city going out of business and Staples trying to enter this segment through the test marketing of its technology stores, the industry is indeed changing rapidly. As the economy continues to contract and businesses cut spending I see a big role that technology needs to play to make Office Deport successful in comparison to its competitors. Some of the key things I will look to address in my memo are:

1. Rationalizing and Re-prioritizing IT projects to reflect the new economy. Office Depot is faced with a major liquidity crunch and in this era of slowing economy I would look to rationalize the portfolio of IT projects. The focus would be definitely on projects which require lower capital investments and have quicker turnaround in terms of ROI.

2. There has been a major focus on closing down unprofitable stores by the 3 major players. I believe IT systems can be leveraged for data mining the vast amount for sales and margin information from each store to better understand the profitability of each store. This will help rationalize the portfolio of stores in a more systematic fashion rather than ad-hoc store closures to cut costs.

3. Real Estate prices have declined significantly and this would also be a good time to invest in new store locations. As organizations close unprofitable stores and when the economy gets revived (hopefully) IT systems could be leveraged to build statistical models to predict profitability of new store locations based on historical data. Building such IT capabilities would help Office Depot better invest in opening new stores and improve profitability.

3. Improving Supply Chain would also be a big focus of my recommendation. Moica Luechtefeld who was appointed the Executive VP of IT was also recently (in 2007) made in-charge of Supply Chain and has an extensive background in Business Development and Supply Chain. This can be leveraged by developing IT projects to better manage the supply chain. One example would be analyzing the sales and profitability based on products categories in stories across North Aamerica and trim the unprofitable product lines. This will greatly improve liquidity which has been the Achilles' heel of Office Depot in recent times.

4. Online sales and e-commerce partnerships would be another major focus. Office Depot which was the largest e-retailer has been overtaken by Staples in recent times in terms of sales through online purchases. Online sales have higher margins and help better manage the Supply Chain. This will help boost Office Depot's profitability and will also help improve the liquidity situation.

Please feel free to comment and give suggestions as to more avenues I should explore or how to improve the above mentioned initiatives.

IT innovations help Kiva expand microfinance mission

I came across an article on how Kiva is using facebook to expand microfinance mission. One of the major problems confronting microfinance institutions is to get funding for the investors. Facebook can help Kiva connect the investors to the MFIs.

http://www.cio.com.au/article/279526/it_innovations_help_kiva_expand_microfinance_mission?rid=-154

Is facebook closed to rest of the world?

I came across an article which shows that US visits to Facebook grew by 149 percent in market share.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10196184-2.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

The social networking site is expected to be ubiquitous in a few years time. I was wondering how facebook can have a valuation of $15b based only on advertising. Perhaps facebook is using its large user base to make more profits by marketing analytics rather than concentrating on advertising alone. Are these sites closed to rest of the world? This video link might help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwnTWZ1-UWY

While you were away on spring break, the web turned 20

While you were away on spring break, the web turned 20. Yes, if you define the origin as the date that Sir Tim Berners-Lee's submission of a proposal to CERN titled "Information Management: A proposal."
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He discusses what now needs to be done to unlock the potential of the web, focused on Linked Data.
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Here's the video of his talk.

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Some useful links for you.
DBpedia that shows linkages within wikipedia and other databases. Here is a useful picture with links of relationships.
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Linked Data
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I wanted you to think about what these developments may mean for the company that you are tracking as well as the industry transformations that we will be discussing over the next four weeks.

Eric Schmidt on Learning and Teaching

This is a video worth perusing

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Enjoy.

Google Voice!

Goolge has recently announced that it will soon introduce Google Vocie!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10194446-2.html?tag=mncol

It is a new service which Goolge is providing for FREE!You can register and will be assigned a number which users can call. It provides all the features that a typical phone or cell phone provides and more.

In the most basic avtar when a user calls on the number , all phones registerd with that number will ring simultaneously. You can list the single number on your visintg card instead of the dozen numbers .

We knew that goolge is after the Mobile space but this is beyond mobile OS and handsets.

A few direct imapcts;

1. You can switch your mobile carrier without having to worry about your change in number because your google number will stay the same.

2.New revenue streams for goolge by voice based search and maybe audio advertisments.

3.In future when VOIP takes over big time, the first compnay to benefit will be Goolge because you are already using it.

Make sure you get your number before all the good ones are taken.

Memo to CEO of Cigna Healthcare

Over the course of the MS-MBA we have discussed many of the issues involved in taking a product company to a service based strategy. In my view much of this entails thinking about what information you have and understanding its value to your customers. For a traditional product company it could be the design or the ability to service your product.
Cigna Healthcare is already considered a service based company. At their core they process medical claims, however there are many opportunities for them to leverage their IT infrastructure in new ways in which to leverage the contextual knowledge abilities of a national medical insurance carrier.
The basis of my recommendation is for them to open up their claims rules engine to the provider customer. Making the codified knowledge within the engine open removes many administrative layers that cause frustration and cost to both parties. Allowing access gives providers the opportunity to streamline the billing aspects of there business and improves revenue cycle management. Cigna can monitor, now in real time, provider billing and, tangentially, treatment. This gives the company an advantage when creating plans tailored for the businesses that carry the employee's/patient's coverage.
The second advantage is with the right infrastructure adjustments to make the engine a platform allowing for providers to create their own applications. With the move towards evidence based medicine, and payment based on physicians following accepted guidelines, customer apps can utilize the claims rules to ensure their internal processes adhere to said guidelines.
There is significant value to be obtained by providing the base rules to the customer and using the new information flows to improve medical care, insurance products, and consulting capabilities to Cigna clients.

Leveraging IT at John Deere

I selected John Deere for the CEO memo assignment because I wanted to explore how IT can be applied to a traditional, industrial business.

Here are some examples of how Deere has already begun to leverage IT in its products:

• This GPS-enabled tractor uses sensors to collect data on crop health and yield and then uses the data to determine exactly how each square foot of soil should be prepared the following year. It creates value for the farmer in two ways: it both reduces pesticide and fertilizer costs and increases crop yields.
• This cotton harvester streamlines the harvesting, bailing and wrapping process. Some of the harvester’s tech features: it adds smart tags to bales that provide info such as whether the cotton is organic or grown with pesticides; it also communicates to a base station to signal when service is required.

Part of my memo will address how John Deere can continue to create value for its customers with IT. I plan to approach this by first identifying information that is currently not available to Deere’s customers but that could be accessed and leveraged through IT to make them more efficient and effective.

I'd also like to explore how Deere can use IT to create value for itself. For example, instead of having the GPS-enabled tractor send a repair signal to a base station, maybe it should send the info to a central server that is monitored by Deere. Under that scenario, Deere could still notify the farmers via diagnostic emails while collecting valuable information on the performance of its product. Perhaps there are also ways that Deere can use IT to make internal operations more efficient and improve collaboration which could lead to better product designs and faster development cycles.

Before the break, I thought about how Deere could possibly leverage facebook but no good ideas came to mind. If anyone has thoughts on this I'd appreciate your comments. Any other comments are welcome as well.

Automakers and Facebook???

Well, I have been thinking about this (I explain in a second) and my brain is short of ideas.

How can Renault leverage Facebook???

First, I don't think Facebook has caught up in France at the same level of other parts of the world yet. I couldn't find any information that links Renault to Facebook besides the obvious fans pages.

However, I didn't find if any of the US automakers are using Facebook either.

Renault, as well as Peugeot and Citroen, has entered in the digital media world. I guess the idea is to create brand loyalty and provide customers with a more inside view of what the company does.

The only "innovative" way I could think of any automaker leveraging Facebook is to create an app that let you customers retrieve data from his/her car, such as number of miles, when is the next change of oil, tire pressure, and other services. However, you don't really need facebook for this. This could be very well hosted in the company site.

Is there anyway you could think of Renault linking the two (Facebook and Personalize Service Site) in order to take advantage of the Facebook user community and, maybe, incentivize sales??

HELP!

Back to the smart roads discussion

So, a couple of weeks ago I was reading this article in the WSJ about smart roads, smart bridges, smart grids. 

It seems like the future is not too far away and technology already exists. I guess the question now is how are we (they) going to commercialize and monetize this technology.

For those of you that don't want to read the article you can get a sense by watching this short video.

Beyond Facebook: The Micro-sociology of Networks

I am glad to see posts on how companies can leverage Facebook. Please continue blogging on that.
--
Here is a good presentation that lays out some of the broader trends that we will focus on after the spring break.
It is worth reviewing.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

View more presentations from David Armano. (tags: behavior human)

What shoud Your Company Do with Facebook? -- Can you help NPR?

During our Wednesday class, we asked--'what should your company do with Facebook?' It turns out to be the same question that NPR is asking its listeners..

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on what else NPR should be doing on Facebook. We've got a lot of people who've signed up as fans to our official NPR page, which is really great, and we probably could be doing even more activities than what we've got posted here. For example, would you want to see more of our content appearing automatically and available for your profile pages? Should we use the discussions to host chats with NPR personalities? Are there any tools you think we should develop?

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how NPR can improve its Facebook presence. You can use the following link to tell us what you think:

Thanks in advance,

Andy Carvin
NPR social media desk

--
As you think about the question for your company, if you have some good ideas for NPR, please do tell NPR. A good public service!
--
We may revisit the issue when we get to the media and entertainment sector after the sbreak. Cheers.

Facebook changing its home page..

Facebook is comming up with a changed interface for the homepage. Instead of pushing it on to the users they decide to put a small note on every ones profile that the home page is going to change. They also put a link to preview the new homepage. 

This fosters discussions in the facebook blogs by the users. The facebook executives can then have a first cut view of users reactions on it.

"Changes to the Home page are coming soon

Learn about the new features ahead of time. This is happening soon; check out the home page tour now."

http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/homepage_tour.php

I guess this is why face book wins over other social networking webportals. --
I just added the photo of the forthcoming changes to the blogpost (Venkat)

Thoughts about Technology at Shaw's Supermarkets

As I considered a memo to a company CEO I wanted to find something that is comparatively low tech vs. most of the high tech companies we discuss in class.  Shaw's supermarkets jumped out at me because Shaw's (or another supermarket) is an experience that almost everyone has at some time or another, and the experience is largely unchanged from many years ago.  Yes there are now 60 types of crackers on the shelves instead of 4 (for more on the concept of too many products and choices I recommend "The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More" or a video summary here), and we have some self checkout lanes, but you still show up with your grocery list, go through the isles, pick what you want, checkout, load it into your car, drive home, and unload your groceries.

Looking at the industry, what differentiates stores and chains?  In my opinion two aspects, price and quality, decide where people shop.  I live less than a mile from a Shaw's and another

 grocer store, yet I shop at Shaw's because the quality is essentially close enough between the two and prices are lower at my Shaw's.  The brand name means very little to me however.  The slogan seen above "crazy about food" means even less to me. If Shaw's were to raise their prices, I'd take a left turn instead of a right and bring my business elsewhere.

Technology now in place at grocery stores is pretty limited to the ubiquitous discount cards where you scan your card and get products at a "discount" for having the card.  However, usage of these cards is generally limited to sending out some discounts when you reach a certain dollar amount spent - hardly a worthwhile usage of all the data they could be collecting.

So, I have a few thoughts on technology and supermarkets.

1) Discount cards - why is there not greater mining of the data there? This is a no brainer for most online companies.  Why am I not getting emailed recipes utilizing things I buy regularly, or suggestions of meals based on what I purchase, or suggestions for sides that go along with my purchases?  How about dietary tips based  on my purchases?  Where is the next level of analysis that I would actually find worthwhile and might lead me to shop at one store over another?

2) What else could they be doing with technology?  Lots.  How about meal recommendations based on what I purchase?  How about weekly menu suggestions tied into the delivery service where I don't even have to go to the store but my weekly groceries are delivered to my house.  Why not give me suggestions based on a diet I'm currently on and allow me to have those automatically delivered as well.  Where is my weekly list of suggestions for healthy meals or suggestions for beef based meals, or seafood meals, etc.  Why is there no connection between what I order and telling me how to best prepare meals with it?  If I'm planning to have friends for a dinner party, why can't we go onto the Shaw's facebook app and plan meals together while scheduling delivery of the ingredients?  Where is the option to deliver my 

"super bowl pack" of goodies and foods for the big game.  Why are these things not automated so that when I start to think about Thanksgiving dinner, I've already had an email from Shaw's with a list of ingredients I can one-click to order? Again I wonder, where are the extra value added services that would make it worthwhile for me to bring my business to one store over another? 

In short, what I'm really talking about is grocery stores moving beyond pure commodities to provide services.  We've discussed how it can be difficult for a product company to branch into services, but grocery stores aren't quite pure product companies and I think it could work.  Just a sampling of thoughts I'm having regarding Shaw's...comments welcome.

Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media

From our conversation today on facebook, I thought this article on how Mars is using social networking to provide the content and buzz on Skittles was interesting. Though the article uses twitter as its example of social networking, you can easily replace it with facebook.

-Scott

WSJ
MARCH 3, 2009
Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media
Candy's Site Is Built on Consumer-Created Content From Twitter, Facebook
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604377921415283.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

By EMILY STEEL
For years, Skittles has encouraged consumers to "Taste the Rainbow." Now, the candy brand wants people to "Chat the Rainbow."
Mars Snackfood, maker of the chewy, multicolored candies, launched a new homepage at Skittles.com on Thursday that may represent the closest embrace of social media yet by a mainstream marketer. Instead of a typical product site that highlights information about or videos and games related to a product, Skittles.com features content created by consumers -- most of it gleaned from other Web sites.

Posted on the site last week was the Skittles article from Wikipedia, the user-created Web encyclopedia. On Monday, Skittles.com featured postings from the social-messaging site Twitter that include the word "skittles."
Mars Snackfood says it redesigned the site to better connect with its core teenage audience, which spends a lot of time using social media. "The teen audience relies heavily on their peers for advice on products. This is a unique, unexpected way to engage and to be a part of the conversation," says spokesman Ryan Bowling.
More
Digits: What Are You Doing? (#Skittles)
"It is a very bold campaign in the sense that they are letting consumers speak on behalf of the brand," says Chad Stoller, executive director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital-marketing firm owned by Omnicom Group, whose digital-ad shop Agency.com created the site.
Most brands don't dare go so far, says Charlene Li, founder of digital-media consulting firm Altimeter Group. "They are getting so much buzz on it, it is unbelievable. ... They are really showing people, this is redefining the way you think about brands."
On Monday, the term "Skittles" was among the most popular topics discussed on Twitter, according to Twitter Search. Nielsen Online also noted a sharp increase in online buzz related to Skittles since the new site's launch.
Other marketers have experimented with featuring consumer-created content on their Web sites. Online retailer Zappos spotlights its Twitter mentions on a section of its site. The Web site for Chrysler's Jeep brand features user-generated photos from Flickr or video from Google's YouTube online video site. But few marketers have built their homepages around messages, videos and other content created by consumers.

The strategy involves plenty of risks, digital-marketing executives say. Skittles has little control over who participates and what they say.
Other experts say Skittles is taking the wrong approach to social media. Instead of encouraging teens to have a conversation about Skittles, it is encouraging false conversations about the brand, says Shiv Singh, vice president and global social-media lead at Razorfish, a digital-marketing firm owned by Microsoft. "Everyone is having a field day and writing 'Skittles' on Twitter just to get attention," he says.
Sure enough, the site became the target of Internet pranks on Monday. The way the "Chatter" portion of the Skittles.com site is built, any Twitter user who mentions the word "Skittles" is featured on the homepage.
At least one Web site has been launched by pranksters encouraging Web users to post negative comments about the candy. The comments range from the thoughtful to the outlandish. "Skittles taste terrible. If you eat Skittles you support killing kittens and puppies," wrote a Twitter user named kingshane.
The new site design has sparked controversy on the candy's Wikipedia page, among users who are concerned that marketers will destroy the integrity of the site "If every corporation does this, Wikipedia will be just a collection of advertising pages 'controlled' by corporate employees, who can monitor their pages 24/7 and edit out what they don't 'approve,'" wrote a Wikipedia user with the handle ConcernedCitizenry.
Skittles.com acts as a filter on top of a slew of other social-media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The brand says it is monitoring its site but not changing any of the content.
The type of content featured on the new Skittles.com homepage varies according to what's generating buzz. For example, if Skittles launches a new TV commercial, the homepage that day might be Skittles's page on YouTube.
Whether Skittles has reached its target audience remains to be seen, digital-marketing executives say. The Skittles.com site doesn't usually generate much traffic. In January, Skittles.com attracted 20,000 unique U.S. visitors, according to comScore.
Moreover, the Twitter audience is still small. The messaging site had 2.6 million unique U.S. visitors in January. Much of the conversation Monday about the new Skittles site appeared to be coming from ad-industry insiders.
"We live in an echo chamber where we think Twitter is the biggest thing. But the reality of the situation is it is not yet. It is an experiment," says Ian Schafer, chief executive of Deep Focus, an independent New York digital-ad firm.
--
I just added what I thought was an important graph from the WSJ article.. (Venkat)

Facebook use in a public school district

I think there are many ways that a school district could use facebook. Much in the same way we use this blog to extend the class discussion outside of the classroom, facebook could be used for the same purpose. Classes, sports teams, or teachers (3rd grade teachers, or science teachers, etc.) could all form groups. Many of these groups already exist for the school district I am looking at.

So I guess after thinking about this further, the question may not be how to use facebook but how to not over-use facebook. With groups popping up for every student organization, the school district may want to limit it's role and be selective about what presence it has. Else the students could be subject to information overload and ignore attempts by teachers to extend classroom learning, sports teams to provide infomation, and teachers to form groups and gain access to and learn from each other.

Facebook for Thermo

Facebook provides many interesting points of analysis for a company like ThermoFisher. Being a scientific company where intellectual property and also the process of innovation must be balance and leveraged in order to create and protect value, a thin line must be walked between open collaboration and also control over the limits of collaboration. Facebook's open style and ability to be data mined both directly and indirectly through intelligent spidering, provide serious threats to the intellectual property that the firm possesses (http://charlenecroft.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/facebook-privacy-and-data-mining/). Therefore having a social networking "strategy" would be important to the firm in order to ensure that the technology did not create too many unprotected information leakage points. It also provides many potential uses for collaboration including science research groups, the ability to create their own subnetworks of customers and researchers within the network, and also the ability to evaluate more macro-trends based upon user demographics in order to predict possibly where the entire research world might be moving through the use of their own intelligent agents. 

How Starbucks is Leveraging Facebook

Starbucks is using Facebook not only as a way to build their online community and create an environment for feedback and discussion amongst members, but also as a way to communicate with the public, much like companies do with their corporate web sites. The Starbucks Facebook page contains copies of their advertisements, company information, promotions, an events calendar, and links to other applicable content, which is what you might find at their corporate web site. It's just presented in a more web 2.0 friendly way. Starbucks also has its own Facebook app for "Starbucks Pledge 5" which is their campaign to promote volunteerism amongst its customer base. The idea behind the promotion is that you commit to volunteering 5 hours to a local non-profit/charity and you recieve a free cup of brewed coffee at a Starbucks location. Overall, I thinkStarbucks is using Facebook as a way to reach a younger audience that might not be its core customer base, but perhaps will be in the near future.

How L'Oreal can leverage Facebook

L'Oreal brands can be broadly classified into two types: Brands of Authority & Brands of Conversation. While the former are brands that tell the customer what to buy, the latter are those brands that customers resonate with, and buy based off the community created by the brand.
For example, brands such as Garnier and Keihl's involve the customer at a very deep level and invite them to talk about their lives with eachother, relating that to the brand. Surprisingly enough, I did not see too many Facebook groups / communities / pages relating to these brands. This is definitely one avenue for L'Oreal to explore.
Another great thing they could do is take advantage of Social Ads on facebook - it is super easy to identify specific types of customer groups and target them directly.
I am sure there are plenty of other ways in which this company can utilize Facebook - will hopefully bring all of that up in my Memo.

Facebook Applications for Jae H. Kim Tae Kwon Do

I think there are several ways that JHK TKD can utilize Facebook. The natural community that forms at the Tae Kwon Do school could translate nicely to an online community or group. Additionally, more playful applications could be created to help keep the Tae Kwon Do school top of mind. How to use Facebook and other online communities depend on the company's end goals and strategy. As with all online/community building endeavors, it is important that the company's actions are honest and transparent.

Thinking of moving to the cloud

A little off topic, but just a few thoughts. As network speeds continue to increase and the internet becomes more and more accessible, will we move back into the age of owning dumb terminals?

Soon there will be no need to own software or install/uninstall software onto our computers. Everything can possibly move to the ‘cloud’. Some antivirus companies offer online services, so you don’t have to keep updating your local virus definitions. Traditional locally installed software utilities are increasingly available on the net, like archiving, file zipping, file format conversion, document editing (Google docs), gaming. Maybe one day most of the operating system will also reside on the net. Just like it used to be long time ago… we’ll end up with dumb terminals and mainframes. (?)

This concept is also extending to other mediums than software. Movies, books, music. It’s been a while since I have bought any music album. Now I just listen to my online playlist, I don’t need to buy songs, or movies. I will be able to watch any movie at a touch of a button, when all movies are stored online.
Books have shown a lot of resistance, since the current generation grew up reading physical books. It’s the same resistance older people show to computers. Our coming generations will be more accepting to e-books, especially with devices like the Kindle.

If everything moves into the cloud we might own nothing and subscribe to everything :) I wonder what other categories the cloud might affect?

Memo to CEO of Applied Biosystems

As a manufacturer of genome sequencing equipment, Applied Biosystems (ABI) operates in a difficult industry. The R&D costs for this type of equipment is astronomical, and the potentional list of customers is limited. One would think that such an industry would be dominated by one particular player since covering fixed costs are difficult, but surprisingly this is not the case here.

ABI used to be dominant, but new entrants to the market have sprung up in the last five years and have been drastically consuming ABI's market share. Part of the reason for this emergence has been a need for a new type of sequencing, which ABI's devices didn't support. Recently, ABI released a new device to meet this need, but it is lagging behind the competition.

I feel there are significant opportunites for ABI to make their devices more attractive. Unlike other industries, the sequencing industry sees significant collaboration between the manufacturers and customers of the equipment since customers can usually make the equipment work more efficiently than the manufacturer intended. I believe that ABI can use IT to make this collaboration more productive and desirable.

Memo to Renault CEO

I have chosen (being asked) to write to the CEO of Renault. Actually, I do feel very pasionate about cars, specially racing cars and that's why Renault was one of my options. I have a pretty good understanding of the company, since I used to live in France and saw first hand how important the brand is to french people. (kind of GM to Americans)

Anyways, I think it would be interesting to learn more about the operations of the company and how do they use technology to create competitive advantage.

For the moment I would like to focus on how do they bring technology born in the Formula 1 and put it on their commercial vehicles. However, I think this is a little to limiting in scope and I will look more into IT strategies as a whole too.

Another aspect I would like to analyse is how do they differentiate from competitors. For example, The PSA Group (Citroen and Peugeot) is one of their biggest competitors, but they use the Rally circuits instead of formula 1 to develop their technology. A question I ask is: Is the technology developed in Rally more adaptable to commercial cars than that developed in Formula 1? Is Formula 1 more futuristic and long term and puts the company in a better position for the long term??

I might look into the American car makers, but I won't promise anything :-)

Any comments??

CEO Memo to Michael Dell

When his company was in trouble almost two years ago, Michael Dell stepped back into the CEO role. But despite his efforts, the last few years haven’t been good for Dell. Last year, Dell's shares went down by over 60%, losing much more than its competitors. In 2006, Dell commanded 19 percent of the worldwide PC market share and led its closest competitor, HP, by about 3 percent. Since then, the company's worldwide market share has slipped to below 13 percent, while Acer and HP gained ground.
Last week HP also overtook Dell as Intel’s largest customer accounting for 20% of Intel’s revenues. Dell is now second at 18%.

Dell is trying various things to get out of this slump. From integrating its marketing efforts (by forming the 4.5 billion Enfatico) to diversifying its product portfolio by introducing new products like the portable music players, the new mini and maybe even a smartphone.

In my memo I will try to explore the options Dell is pursuing (and can pursue) and will hopefully try to recommend the best ones.

Sources:

CEO Memo to HTC

HTC has been manufacturing smart phone and pocket pc for microsoft windows mobile for several years. Two years ago the company acquired windows mobile device vendor Dopod.
In 2006, the company revealed its first touch phone following Apple's iPhone.
More recently, HTC worked with Google on G1 mobile phone which features Google's first open mobile phone operating system Andriod competing mobile phone os market share head to head to Microsoft. On one hand, HTC has been a OEM&ODM company for HP,DELL, PalmOne,T-mobile and Vodafone for many years, one the other, the company is trying very hard to build its own brand.Similarly HTC has been working with Microsoft to promote MS CE on smart phones for a long time, but now it's also woking with Google to push Andriod.


It would be interesting to look at how HTC can leverage IT to grow its own brand and at the same time being a OEM&ODM manufacturer without confronting with its clients.


Also, how the company works with Microsoft and Google at the same time without spoiling the relationships with either one is a big question mark. Is the company going to be able to work with those two big software powers as competiton betwteen them get more and more fierce?

CEO Memo - Chevron

I have chosen to write to Dave O'Reilly of Chevron Corportation for my memo to the CEO. Chevron is one of the worlds leading integrated enegry companies. The company has seven core values that make up The Chevron Way: Integrity, Trust, Partnership, Diversity, Ingenuity, Protecting People and the Environment, High Performance. Several of these core values are supported by technology, though I am looking forward to exploring how techological advances can further Chevron in the energy arena.

www.chevron.com

What recommendation to offer Hearst as they launch a rival to Kindle?

On the heels of Amazon launching Kindle2, there is a news item that Hearst Corporation is planning to launch an e-reader. It raises interesting questions from an IT strategy point of view.

According to the article,
1. Hearst has "developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines." So, what technology-based functionality could they introduce to differentiate from Kindle2?

2. "The device and underlying technology, which other publishers will be allowed to adapt, is likely to debut this year." Will other publishers embrace the underlying platform offered by one of their competitors?

3. "Kenneth Bronfin, who heads up the interactive media group for Hearst, told Fortune in an interview for a forthcoming magazine story that the publishing company has a deep expertise in the technology. "I can't tell you the details of what we are doing, but I can say we are keenly interested in this, and expect these devices will be a big part of our future," Bronfin told Fortune." The origin of this idea goes back to a project done at MIT. If Hearst Corporation truly develops best-of-breed expertise, it will signal that the executives have recognized the importance of IT in their business strategy and have responded appropriately. Will see how it plays out.

4. "Insiders familiar with the Hearst device say it has been designed with the needs of publishers in mind. That includes its form, which will approximate the size of a standard sheet of paper, rather than the six-inch diagonal screen found on Kindle, for example. The larger screen better approximates the reading experience of print periodicals, as well as giving advertisers the space and attention they require." Is the newspaper industry using technology to preserve their historical business model and revenue stream against new models of web-based search and advertising? How will it fare against news integrators like Google? and other multi-purpose devices like netbooks?

5. "Given the evolving state of the technology, the Hearst reader is likely to debut in black and white and later transition to high-resolution color with the option for video as those displays, now in testing phases, get commercialized. Downloading content from participating newspapers and magazines will occur wirelessly. For durability, the device is likely to have a flexible core, perhaps even foldable, rather than the brittle glass substrates used in readers on the market today." How will other e-readers such as Sony, Amazon (and others) evolve their design and functionality as this technology becomes more cost-effective?
--
What recommendations can you offer to Hearst as they embrace this initiative? Some newspapers will decide to partner with Amazon while others may experiment with Hearst's e-reader and some may do both. How can Hearst make a success of this initiative? Any lessons from the music sector or television sector that you can draw upon as you develop insightful recommendations?

CEO Memo - Healthrax, Inc.

Healthtrax is a rehabilitation, wellness and fitness company that serves individuals in more than a dozen fitness centers as well as on-site at partner companies. At their fitness centers, free trainer assistance is available for all members to help them achieve their goals. In their on-site work, Healthtrax works with companies to evaluate and educate their employees and introduce them to the benefits of healthy living with the support of Healthtrax. I will be focusing on this side of the business. The major issues within this branch of Healthrax relate to infrastructure problems, mainly with productivity, database and networking applications and services to run their on-site business in an efficient, reliable and low cost manner.