BUSINESS LAMP

Harvard Business Review - September 2010

2010-08-27T09:48:00.001-07:00

English | 132 pages | OCR PDF | 52.50 Mb

Harvard Business Review is a general management magazine published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives, and management consultants.

http://hotfile.com/dl/62116505/87f5495/max.HBR.0910.rar.html

Business Process Management BPM 100 Success Secrets

2010-08-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

Business Process Management BPM 100 Success Secrets, 100 Most Asked Questions on BPM Implementation, Process, Software, Tools and Solutions
Publisher: Emereo Pty Ltd 2008-02-17 | 152 Pages | ISBN: 0980485266 | PDF | 12 MB

There has never been a Business Process Management manual like this. 100 Success Secrets is not about the ins and outs of Business Process Management. Instead, it answers the top 100 questions that we are asked and those we come across in forums, our consultancy and education programs. It tells you exactly how to deal with those questions, with tips that have never before been offered in print. This book is also not about Business Process Management's best practice and standards details. Instead, it introduces everything you want to know to be successful with Business Process Management.

http://hotfile.com/dl/64096902/955fbd3/Business_Process_Management_BPM_100_Success_Secrets.rar.html

Twitter - Free Social Networking For Business

2010-08-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

Twitter - Free Social Networking For Business (100 Success Secrets To Increase Your Profits and Sale)

Twitter: Free Social Networking For Business - 100 Success Secrets To Increase Your Profits and Sales Using Twitter Business Strategies Emereo Pty Ltd \| ISBN-10: 1921523999 \| November 3, 2008 \| 156 pages \| PDF \| 11 Mb "It's one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet." - New York Times Twitter Tools To Enhance Your Business - Discover Free Twitter Tools That Will Help Boost Your Website's Traffic & Sales Dramatically. Many companies are using Twitter in innovative ways. Dell has sold over $500K in products via twitter. Zappos is forging stronger relationships with its customers on Twitter. It has over 100 of its employees actively using twitter including its president. Comcast, HR Block, Southwest Air and other progressive companies are using Twitter to improve customer service. Mzinga has had`press conferences online via twitter. The list of smart companies on Twitter goes on and on. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates. How can you use Twitter for business? In this book, you'll discover free Twitter tools you can use to help you to not only boost your websites' traffic but also your income. It covers what these tools are, but also how you can make use of these tools to gain an edge over your competitors. Twitter is one of the prominent social networking sites that allows you to connect with people around the world with similar interests and/or To Enhance Your Business - dramatically faster then other social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, etc. Similar to other social networking sites, you can sign up as a member of Twitter for free (and you can do so in less than 30 seconds as there are only 3 fields you need to enter in the sign-up page - your username, password and email address) and you can start using Twitter instantly. This book covers ways to use Twitter to Share Ideas, Show Repect, Engage Customers, Build your brand and Provide Customer Service. Learn How To: * Get more people to follow you on Twitter - increasing your followers creates momentum * Have fun and let your personality shine because you are really conneting with people - not trying to slam "traffic" into "conversions" * Accelerate your presence on ALL your social networking sites and reap the benefits of more visitors. * Create a real business online by using these 100 Success Secrets. * Meet, connect with, and share ideas with other smart Tweeters. Follow and be followed and watch how these superstars take their business to the next level. * Use Twitter to start making money ON PURPOSE instead of by accident. This book will not only help you sharpen your business path - it will demand that you use the power of your laser focus to get results. HotFile.com

Business Math.

2010-08-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

Quote:

Now, it is easier than ever before to understand complex mathematical concepts and formulas and how they relate to real-world business situations. All you have to do it apply the handy information you will find in Business Math For Dummies. Featuring practical practice problems to help you expand your skills, this book covers topics like using percents to calculate increases and decreases, applying basic algebra to solve proportions, and working with basic statistics to analyze raw data. Find solutions for finance and payroll applications, including reading financial statements, calculating wages and commissions, and strategic salary planning.

Navigate fractions, decimals, and percents in business and real estate transactions, and take fancy math skills to work. You’ll be able to read graphs and tables and apply statistics and data analysis. You’ll discover ways you can use math in finance and payroll investments, banking and payroll, goods and services, and business facilities and operations. You’ll learn how to calculate discounts and markup, use loans and credit, and understand the ins and outs of math for business facilities and operations. You’ll be the company math whiz in no time at all! Find out how to:

* Read graphs and tables
* Invest in the future
* Use loans and credit
* Navigate bank accounts, insurance, budgets, and payroll
* Calculate discounts and markup
* Measure properties and handle mortgages and loans
* Manage rental and commercial properties

Complete with lists of ten math shortcuts to do in meetings and drive your coworkers nuts and ten tips for reading annual reports, Business MathFor Dummies is your one-stop guide to solving math problems in business situations.

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The Big Book Of Small Business

2010-08-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Big Book of Small Business

Resized to 93% (was 420 x 533) - Click image to enlarge

The Big Book of Small Business

The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants
Publisher: Collins Business | ISBN: 0061206695 | edition 2007 | PDF | 448 pages | 12 mb

Your shoes are charred from stomping out brush fires. You have nightmares about UFOs--Unreachable Financial Objectives. All-star interviewees turn into duds. Meetings cause more problems than they solve. The office is a ghost town at 5:01 p.m. Does this sound familiar?
Tom Gegax knows what that is like. Years after running his Tires Plus franchise by the seat of his pants, blissfully unaware of how little he knew about getting the most out of people and managing a world-class organization, Tom was faced with a cancer diagnosis and a business at the brink of disaster.

Resolved to change things around, he improved his mental clarity, health, and relationships and noticed that the more he profited on a personal level, the more his company profited. Tires Plus grew into a $200 million business with 150 upscale locations. He had learned the first lesson in Enlightened Leadership 101: Focus on the well-being of your employees and customers--as well as your own--and success will follow naturally.

Business The Richard Branson Way

2010-08-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Business The Richard Branson Way

Description :

In many ways, Richard Branson and his company the Virgin Group are unique. In an era dominated by strategists, Branson is an opportunist with an uncanny knack of sniffing out great deals where others hesitate or fear to tread. Never before has a single brand been so successfully deployed across such a diverse range of goods and services. Branson is the ultimate brand builder.
So how does he do it? Now bought completely up to date for this new edition, Business the Richard Branson Way, not only reveals the secrets of Branson’s remarkable success but also draws out the universal lessons and identifies strategies that can be applied to any business or career. From picking on someone bigger than you to moving faster than a speeding bullet, and from making work fun to keeping the common touch, you have in your hands the secrets of phenomenal success.

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Business The Richard Branson Way - Mirror Links

Photograph Restoration Service

2010-08-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

Photograph Restoration Service

Startup Costs: $10,000 - $50,000
Home Based: Can be operated from home.
Part Time: Can be operated part-time.

People will appreciate having their cherished photographs look picture-perfect again.

Business Overview

Purchasing a good quality scanner, computer and photo restoration software will enable you to start a business providing photo restoration services for clients right from a home based location. Regardless of whether the photos are black and white or color, you'll be able to restore old and damaged photos and produce new copies in print format or on a CD. It should be noted that you'll need to spend time practicing the art of electronic photo restoration, as the software isn't designed for beginners. Refer to your local community college to check on the availability of digital imaging training courses.

Free Internet Terminals

2010-08-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

Free Internet Terminals

Startup Costs: $10,000 - $50,000
Home Based: Can be operated from home.
Part Time: Can be operated part-time.

Start a key electronic resource for others.

Business Overview

Free Internet terminals are simply kiosks that contain computer equipment capable of connecting to the Internet. The terminals are strategically located in high-traffic community gathering places such as malls and sports complexes, and are free to use for visitors of the location. Due to the fact that the Internet terminals are free to use, the business that owns and operates the terminals sell advertising space on the kiosks to local companies to generate sales and profits for the business. In most cases advertising revenue split will not have to be part of an agreement to secure high-traffic locations throughout the community for the terminals. Participating businesses will benefit from increased foot traffic as a result of the free Internet terminals being installed on the site.

Mobile Computer Training

2010-08-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

Startup Costs: $2,000 - $10,000
Home Based: Can be operated from home.
Part Time: Can be operated part-time.

Prevent employees from having to leave their office by taking computer training to them.

Business Overview

Most computer training schools require students to come to their location for training classes. But for companies that have upgraded or purchased new computers and software, this is often not practical, especially if there are five to ten or more employees who are in need of training or retraining. Likewise, not everyone who purchases a new computer, software, or other hardware devices has time to attend classes to learn how to use the equipment. Herein lies the opportunity. Capitalizing on your computer, software, and marketing experience, you can start a mobile computer training service and train students on-on-one, or in a group format at their homes, businesses, or office. The proliferation of technological advances, and the constant new stream of software applications and hardware devices means that there will always be lots of people in need of training or skills upgrading, so they can get the most benefit from their computer equipment and programs. Advertise your service with fliers, in newspaper classifieds, the Yellow Pages, and by networking at business and social functions.

Used CD Shop

2010-08-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

Share a love of cheap and legally-purchased music with your customers.

Business Overview

If you love music, consider starting a used CD shop. The business can be established in a storefront location or alternately in a sales kiosk located within a busy mall or public market. To initially establish an inventory of CDs for the business, place classified advertisements in the local community newspaper offering to purchase whole or partial CD collections. Currently, secondhand music CDs are retailing for $5 to $12 each, and as rule of thumb, owners of secondhand CD shops mark up all products by 100 percent for retailing purposes.

Dollar Store

2010-08-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

Get a great deal with a dollar store that brings in big bucks.

Business Overview

Dollar or discount stores are popping up everywhere across North America, and that can only mean one of two things: Competition is too heavy and there will soon be a thinning process, or dollar storeowners are making money and expanding into new geographic areas of the country to capitalize on consumer demand. Given the popularity of dollar stores, and the fact that these stores require careful planning and a large startup investment, it's most likely that the second option will ring true. Competition is stiff, but there seems to be unlimited consumer demand for bargains and discount retail stores. The main objective in the discount retailing industry is two-fold. The first is to source and establish alliances with manufacturers of low-cost products, and the second is that the products have to be of reasonable quality and have a useful purpose. The best products to sell via discount stores fit the following profile: * Inexpensive, retailing for less than $5 * Kitchen products, toys, and household products * Less-expensive versions of popular name-brand product

The Market

Your customers are anyone looking for a bargain

Network Marketing

2010-08-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

Find a product you love and start selling to your friends and their network.

Business Overview

Network marketing is one of the hottest retail industries out there. It functions on the idea that you sell products to people who in turn sell to other people who sell to other people . . . and so on. Network marketing programs feature a minimal upfront investment--usually a few hundred dollars or less for the purchase of a product sample kit--which gives you the opportunity to sell the product line directly to family, friends and other contacts. Most network programs also ask that you recruit other sales reps--those same family members, friends and acquaintances. These sales rep recruits constitute your 'downline,' and their sales generate income for you. Then whoever they recruit becomes part of their downline as well as yours, generating income for them as well as for you. So the more people you bring on board, the better your income potential. If you're a sales-savvy type who can convince others of the beauty of this plan and keep them selling sales memberships (as well as products), you can earn a substantial amount of money. And you've got lots of network marketing plans to choose from. The most popular sell health supplements and beauty aids, but you can go with everything from long-distance phone services to fine art prints. The advantages to this business are that start-up costs are minimal, hours are flexible, you can start part-time, and you can work from home. About the only thing you need in this business is a sense of salesmanship. If you've got a background in sales, you're ahead of the game, but if not, you can still succeed. Just make sure you believe in the products and the company you're working with. Honest enthusiasm goes a long way toward convincing others to buy.

The Market

Your customers will be anybody and everybody you know or meet. Most network marketers start off soliciting friends and family. If there are others working for the same company in your area, they may have organized weekly meetings at which salespeople and prospects gather to cheer each other on and sign up new members. If so, make it a point to attend with your own prospects. It's harder for people to decline your invitation to join in a room full of other enthusiastic newbies. In this business, it's important to keep your distributors selling. Don't sell them a membership and ignore them, or they're liable to drop down their link in the chain. Talk to them often about how they're doing. Go with them on sales calls to offer moral support and enthusiasm and help sign up prospects. Many network marketers sell via the party plan. It's easy and it's fun. Have a host or hostess invite friends to sample your products. You sell products, sign people up, and the party-giver gets a free gift or a discount on her purchases.

Needed Equipment

You don't need any special tools or equipment, except for a phone to keep in touch with your distributors, parent company and prospects, and a car to go out and sign people up and attend the weekly pep-talk meetings that are a feature of this business.

Is That a Business Credit Card in Your Wallet?

2010-08-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

If it is, forget the Credit Card Act--you're as vulnerable as ever to sky-high rates, erratic billing and unexpected fees.

How important are credit cards to small-business owners?

According to the SBA's annual report to the president, they represent about 70 percent of small-business lending by the nation's largest banks.

More than 85 percent of small businesses use at least one credit card forbusiness, according to a 2009 National Federation of Independent Business report.

And a National Small Business Association poll showed credit cards as the top source of small-business capital.

So, passage of the Credit Card Act last year--a bill designed to stop the unfair and deceptive practices by many of the largest card issuers--should spell relief for small businesses, right?

Wrong. If that's a business credit card in your wallet, you're still fair game to credit card companies on the hunt for income opportunities. The new regulations stipulated that card companies report recommendations on protecting small businesses to Congress by April, but according to the small-business group, that deadline came and went without any action.

In the meantime, the pillaging continues. A whopping 75 percent of small-business respondents have been socked with higher interest rates, lower credit limits, or higher fees in the last six months, the association reports. More than a quarter of them are paying more than 20 percent interest--more than six times the prime rate. Nearly 60 percent reported receiving bills after they're due. And almost half say their due date randomly changes. Polls by theindependent business federation showed that almost 15 percent of those who'd been hit with a change in card terms suffered the worst change of all: outright cancellation.

This is exactly what happened in the consumer market. "Between its passage and when the law went into effect in February of this year, banks seized the window of opportunity to engage in a shameful frenzy of gouging," says Lauren Bowne, staff attorney for ConsumersUnion.org . "Even customers with perfect bill-paying records were targeted. Being a day late or a dollar short on a single payment could trigger $35 to $40 in late fees and a 20-point rate hike--overnight a cardholder could go from paying 10 percent interest to over 30 percent."

So where does all this leave the small-business owner? In a word, vulnerable. Sure, you could use personal credit cards, but your accountant would advise against it: It could lower your personal credit score and complicate an audit. Your lawyer would be against it, too: Commingling personal and business funds can threaten corporate protection. Even if Congress does step in on behalf of small business, history suggests that credit issuers won't lay down their guns until the eleventh hour. Schwark Satyavolu, CEO of BillShrink.com , offers one glimmer of hope, noting that some business card issuers, such as Capital One, are voluntarily doing the right thing and adopting some Card Act provisions.

If you're wondering how your business plastic stacks up, dig out your old fart glasses and read the fine print in your card agreement. Based on the Fed's reading of the biggest abuses, here's what you want to see:

Reasonable notice of rate or fee increases. Consumer issuers are required to provide 45-day notice of important changes in terms and give the cardholder the option to cancel the card.

Increased rates apply to new charges only. Before the reform, unannounced rate increases--often as high as 25 percent in a month--applied to carried balances, not just new charges.

Restrictions on over-the-limit fees. Consumer issuers must notify borrowers if a transaction will exceed their limit.

Limits on when rates can go up on new cards. Rates and fees, except those in teaser deals, cannot change for 12 months from the date of issuance unless a consumer is more than 60 days in arrears.

Rules about billing dates. Consumers must receive their bills on the same day of each month and 21 days before due.

Stipulations about how payments are applied. Before reform, many issuers chose to apply payments first to the portion of the bill with the lowest interest rate. Now they have to do just the opposite.

Rules about what balances are subject to interest charges. The new lawprohibits a "two-cycle average daily balance method" of calculating finance charges--expensive if you carry a card balance only occasionally.

Save Serious Money With a Business Energy Audit.

2010-08-25T12:13:00.000-07:00

Whether it's a home-based biz or an office high-rise, plugging energy leaks can bring measurable savings.
Sluggish sales and hard-to-get loans may blight the business landscape, but cutting energy waste can bring a big payoff to a small company. To shave liabilities off your profit-and-loss statement, aim to slash your power consumption instead of your workforce or the crucial projects that could help your company expand.
An energy audit creates a portrait of the energy demands that matter to your operations--as well as those you can do without--and it can lead to skinny electricity bills and fat tax breaks.
"We all have incentives to manage our utility bill, but many people don't try because they don't know how," says Geoff Overland, who runs IT and data-center programs for Wisconsin's statewide Focus on Energy program. "By efficiently managing our energy, we have an immediate impact on our bottom line."

DIY or Hire a Pro?
Although you won't find a one-size-fits-all approach to an energy audit, you will have to assign someone to be in charge of the project.

The Belkin Conserve Socket puts connected electronics on a simple timer.If your headquarters is at home or in a similarly small space, free online tools for residential audits will walk you through the process. Utility companies, Energy Star and similar programs, and groups such as the Residential Energy Services Network offer checklists and online calculators.

Once you gather a years' worth of utility bills, spending about half an hour with Enercom Energy Depot software will break down your consumption and suggest ways to trim it.

Pacific Gas & Electric on the West Coast, Duke Energy in the South, and other utility companies also provide web-based audit tools for small businesses operating in spaces ranging from an apartment complex to a small warehouse. If your business has multiple locations, dozens of employees, or specialized needs beyond those of the usual small office or shop, seek a professional auditor through your local utility.

Checklists and First Steps
A comprehensive energy-audit checklist takes into account the structure of the workplace, the lighting, and all machines, from the boiler room to the workstations. The Federal Energy Management Program checklist should suffice for an in-house audit at a small company.

Among the major first steps is to examine doorways, windows, and insulation for leaks of cool or hot air. A building shouldn't "breathe" unless you've opened a window for air. Heating and cooling are the biggest building energy hogs, so perform regular tune-ups and updates on heating and air conditioning systems, and seek Energy Star-rated Equipment.

Since lighting accounts for one-tenth of an electric bill, swapping old incandescent bulbs for fluorescent or LED lighting makes a big difference. Welcome light in from the windows, and install occupancy sensors that shut off lights when employees vacate the room.

Electronics
Consumer electronics account for one-fifth of home energy use, according to the government, but no hard-and-fast figure exists for small businesses. The more your company relies on hardware, the more energy it tends to use.

The Windows 7 OS features updated power-saving settings."The IT workload is growing almost as fast, if not faster, than any other workload in the U.S.," Overland says.

To measure exactly how much each gadget and appliance in your workplace costs in watts and dollars, devices such as the Watts Up or the Kill-a-Watt cost around $100, and some are integrated into power strips. Some utility companies lend watt meters to small businesses for several weeks at no charge.

Studies show that, in a home, electronic devices waste up to one-fifth of their energy consumption on standby power , plugged in but not in use--an easy opportunity for savings.

A typical computer can use 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity or more per year, Overland says. If you pay 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, that's $40 per year to run just one computer. Multiply that by two or three if you don't turn off the PC at night.

Too often, people disable the power-saving settings when they buy a new PC. Instead, take a minute to crank up those settings to an aggressive level on your operating system.

In Windows 7's Control Panel, for example, choose Power Options and select the Power Saver plan to turn off a display after 5 minutes of inactivity and then put the PC to sleep after 15 minutes (or even 5 minutes). Advanced options provide more controls, such as setting a laptop to sleep when you close its lid.

Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard provides similar options on the Energy Saver pane under System Preferences. Free downloads that go a step further include the Google Desktop Energy Saver gadget for Windows, which displays how much energy all users online are conserving.

Put Electronics on an Energy Diet
Among the simplest methods for reducing your devices' electrical load is keeping them plugged into a surge-protecting power strip that can flip off at the end of the day. Power strips with occupancy sensors , such as those from Belkin, shut down attached peripherals when you step away from a PC.

Switching out old equipment, such as CRT monitors for flat-screen LCDs, may cost more up front but almost always brings long-term power savings. Look for the Energy Star label, which marks everything from air conditioning units to computers to multifunction printers and scanners. EPEAT ratings of energy and environmental design rank desktops, displays, thin clients, and laptops.

To put an existing PC on double duty (or more), Ncomputing offers multiuser tools for PCs that enable one computer to serve more than one staffer simultaneously.

Power-controlling devices can reduce the energy consumed by big, old appliances, such as an aging refrigerator in the office kitchen.

In the Data Center
The Kill-a-Watt spells out in dollars and carbon emissions what your electronics are consuming. Businesses that maintain large storage needs or that manage a data center have additional energy concerns. For them,virtualization is a blessing. Overland has seen virtualization save companies $280 and 3500 kilowatt-hours per year per server, thanks to the reduction in server, cooling, and UPS power. Plus, a blade or blade chassis is a wise replacement for other physical servers.

In addition, to optimize a data center for efficiency , you should consolidate equipment, establish proper airflow management, improve power distribution, and use efficient power supplies and protocol data units (PDUs).

Energy and Money Saved
A business renting 2000 square feet of office space in San Francisco could save $1360 by optimizing its electronic devices' power settings, purchasing Energy Star equipment, and using fluorescent lighting, according to PG&E's SmartEnergy Analyzer.

If you work at home, look for consumer tax credits for upgrading windows, doors, and heating and cooling systems, as well as for installing solar, wind, fuel cell, or geothermal energy systems.

Commercial-building owners can enjoy federal tax breaks of $1.80 per square foot if they halve their yearly energy costs. States including California offer additional efficiency incentives and rebates.

Put Your Customers to Work for You

2010-08-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

Every small-business owner knows that one way to inexpensively build a client base is to get referrals from satisfied clients. But how do you induce existing clients to refer new ones to you?

19% - Percentage of smallbusinesses that expect to make capital outlays in the next three to six month

You should just ask. Business and marketing consultant Pinny Cohen in Fairlawn, N.J., points out that the people his clients refer tend to "match that client in outlook and perspective, so when a good client refers people, they are usually good clients. Make sure the person you're asking a referral from is your all-star client."

Cohen himself focuses on word-of-mouth referrals to help keep costs down. "My hourly rate has gone up over the years, but any one of my clients can refer another client to me, and I offer that new client the same grandfathered hourly rate as the referring client gets," he says. "Instead of spending on advertising--and I don't spend a penny--I'd rather pass on the savings to the customer."

Some firms reward both the existing and the new customer. VoicePulse, a Voice over Internet protocol service provider, offers existing customers the opportunity to send an e-mail to their contacts with a referral code. If the referred person signs up for service, both customers get a credit to theiraccounts.

Other small-business owners offer gift certificates for items clients would enjoy--think house cleaning services, chocolates, flowers, spa days, theater tickets and the like.

Finally, don't forget one old-school incentive: a straightforward thank you.

"It sounds simple, but a handwritten thank you goes a long way," says Alexandra Mayzler, owner of Thinking Caps Tutoring in New York. "Incentive programs, especially in service industries, aren't always appropriate, and genuine thanks go a long way."

10 Hot Startups --- Why these independents made us say 'Wow!' Learn how yours can, too.

2010-08-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

A "hot" startup company isn't the entrepreneurial equivalent of a winning lottery ticket. Probe a bit beneath the surface, and what you'll find is a combination of creativity, determination, hard work, great products and services--not to mention a strategy that produces rapid growth. They are the companies that capture the hearts and minds of their potential customers and, with them, that indispensable thing called market share. They're invariably run by men or women with an eye for sustainability--and expansion. The list runs the gamut of sectors. Some have venture capital money behind them; most were bootstrapped. Some are service companies. A few are manufacturers. Others are retailers. And while we routinely receive news of hot startups, and it's usually impossible to compare apples to oranges--or in the case of this list, apps to beer--these 10 independents, with their fast-paced success and future potential, are the ones that made even our seasoned staff and contributors say, "Wow!"

1. Cigar City Brewery
Tampa, Fla.
Founded: 2007

Self-described "beer geek and home brewer" Joey Redner had been around craft breweries for years. He had worked for both a craft beer brewery and an importer. He wrote a column about craft beer for the St. Petersburg Times. And, all the while, he thought about what it would be like to run his own enterprise. In a city the size of Tampa, it was only a matter of time before someone opened up a local craft brewery--and in 2007, he decided to be the one to do so. Using local flavors like guava and high-end ingredients, Cigar City Brewery's brews are more expensive, but have caught on far beyond the Tampa city limits. "We have a great demand in the northeast. People from Philadelphia were calling their relatives in Tampa and asking them to get our beer," says Redner. Launching a beer company is no easy task, but those thirsty customers have driven up brewing volume tremendously: The company sold about 1,000 barrels in 2009. By the end of the first quarter of 2010, it had already exceeded that threshold and was on pace to sell more than that per quarter throughout the year, marking more than a 400 percent growth in 12 months.

2. VeryMeri
Encino, Calif.
Founded 2006

Whenever first-grade teacher Meri Zeiff saw one of her students wearing a shirt that said, "Spoiled Brat" or something similarly negative, it bothered her. After years of listening to her daughter gripe about the same pet peeve--and her desire to start her own company with positive T-shirts for kids--her mother handed over $2,500 and told her to do something about it. That something was the launch of her T-shirt company, VeryMeri. In addition to creating kid-power T-shirts--sentiments include "Peace, Dude," "I'm a lucky ducky," and "Imagine"--she also donates a percentage of her profits to charity. Now, the company takes submissions for T-shirt designs to be voted on by the public. Each winning designer has his or her T-shirt produced and 3 percent of profits from the sales of those shirts go to a designer-chosen nonprofit. More than $50,000 has been donated to various charities so far. Do the math.

3. Smule
Palo Alto, Calif.
Founded: 2008

As the app world explodes, one of its perennial hit-makers is Smule (aka Sonic Mule), the iPhone application developer responsible for popular mobile phone apps like "I am T-Pain." "Ocarina," and "Magic Piano." Founders Jeff Smith and Ge Wang, both tech company veterans, have grown the company fast, landing nearly $12 million in hard-to-get venture capital in two rounds over the past year, allowing them to invest in more people, more infrastructure and more app development. Smith says Smule has "three gigantic things in the hopper now," presumably apps, although he declines to specify. The company is also building the "Sonic Network," a cloud network of its application users, which allows users to connect with each other through the network. Smith suspects it will ultimately be a building block for the company, uniting users.

4. Sevans Strategy
Elgin, Ill.
Founded: 2009

When Vanity Fair magazine calls and wants to feature you as a leader in your field of expertise, it's a good day. That's what happened to Sarah Evans, founder of Sevans Strategy, a new media and public relations consultancy. In the six months since she founded her business, Sarah has landed a beefy six-figure client roster that includes Fox News Chicago, Fox Corporate, Qmobius and Radio Shack. Evans is a highly prolific tweeter and Facebook participant, using social media and public relations as part of the counsel she provides to her clients. In addition, she's become a prolific speaker on social media topics, boosting her notoriety and spurring her projected 120 percent growth in 2010 alone, including the hire of three full-time employees.

5. Frogbox
Vancouver, BC and Seattle
Founded: 2008

After Doug Burgoyne had moved several times, schlepping his family's stuff in flimsy cardboard boxes, his frustration told him there had to be a better way. In addition to breaking apart, the cardboard boxes were wasteful and a drain on resources even when recycled. His wife, who worked in retail, mentioned that her company transported its wares in reusable plastic boxes. Bingo. Burgoyne realized he could rent the boxes to movers, providing an eco-friendly alternative. The idea has caught on and the firm plans to crack the $1 million revenue mark this year, with aggressive expansion plans to be in the top 30 cities in North America within five years. An international marketing award bestowed by advertising giant Leo Burnett, which includes $250,000 in marketing services, may help Frogbox do just that.

6. Foursquare
New York
Founded: 2009

You may not be ruler of all you survey, but you could be mayor of your favorite coffee shop. Foursquare can best be described as a convergence of traditional social media like Facebook and Twitter and real-life meet-ups. Users "check in" from their locations and can also see where other Foursquare contacts are to join forces. This game-like aspect of Foursquare, especially the mayoral designation, has fostered good-natured competition among customers, who may stop by the shop and check in via smartphone two or three times a day to keep top-visitor status. The person who checks in the most from any given location is named "mayor" of that location, and endowed with bragging rights and, sometimes, prizes. At press time, there were rumors that Yahoo! was considering buying the upstart, co-founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in 2009, for $100 million.

7. Consult A Doctor
Miami
Founded: 2007

Whatever happens with health-care reform there will be one constant: The need to cut costs. And that is what entrepreneur Wolf Shlagman is banking on with Consult A Doctor, a telemedicine company that offers the clients of health plans, self-insured groups, third-party administrators and other benefits providers round-the-clock remote access to physicians via phone and e-mail, making expensive, inconvenient medical office visits unnecessary for non-emergency situations. Shlagman was working with a startup internet company in 2002 when he saw that the same remote advantages found in the tech sector could apply to medicine. He spent a few years developing his idea and then teamed up with former co-worker Elan Shanker for the company launch. The year of their launch, the National Center for Policy Analysis reported that nearly 55 percent of all emergency room visits were non emergencies. The center found that people were using emergency rooms for primary care access because physicians weren't available by phone or e-mail outside of the office. Shlagman says these core problems are exactly the type of issues his company solves.

8. Game Truck Party
Tempe, Ariz.
Founded: 2006

It was 2006 and Scott Novis was frustrated with the pizza arcade experience at his son's 4th birthday party. Children were running around unmonitored, and the games were boring and static; most of the kids had better games and graphics on their home game boxes than what was being offered at the party. So not long afterward, he went home and, in his garage, retrofitted a truck with gaming consoles, flat-screen monitors and cool interiors, creating the first GameTruck portable gaming party. He threw a birthday party for a friend and, soon, GameTruck was a thriving weekend business. Since then, the company has grown to nearly $2 million in revenue, and is thriving with nearly 40 trucks in 20 locations across the country and 12 employees in its home office. The company also offers franchise opportunities.

9. RetireLife.net
Charlestown, Mass.
Founded: 2009

The Census bureau estimates that the number of people age 65-plus will shoot from 40.2 million in 2010 to 88.5 million in 2050, and some estimates put the eldercare market at nearly $200 billion. At 26, Meagan Shea isn't anywhere near that demographic, but she's serving it well with RetireLife.net, which helps aging adults and their caregiver children more easily find care solutions. Shea came up with the idea after going through the onerous process of relocating an aging relative across the country, trying to find appropriate medical and care facilities and services. It inspired her to make an online information and content center for caregivers of aging relatives. RetireLife.net was one of 15 of 42 businesses selected for development by Shea's business school peers as she was finishing her MBA at Babson College. Using $79,000 from family and friends, she launched last July and now has a database of more than 5,800 services. Two of her classmates have joined the company, and they will be rolling out nationally in late 2010.

10. GiftZip.com
East Lansing, Mich.
Founded: 2008

In 2008, then-MBA student Sam Hogg opened his wallet and stared at one of several plastic gift cards he had received for Christmas, thinking how wasteful the cards were. So, instead of paying attention in class, he began to form a business model. Later that year, he launched East Lansing-based GiftZip.com, an electronic gift-card aggregation site that has the potential to dramatically downsize a wasteful supply chain of tiny plastic cards. "I looked at gift cards and saw that 75 million pounds of them go into landfills every year," Hogg says. "If people heard that, they would never buy another plastic gift card." And the site is catching on. Since Giftzip.com's founding, use has increased 2,100 percent and has grown from 120 to 275 retailers. Hogg created his own website, which places competing retailers next to one another--a model outlined by a college marketing professor who suggested consumers are more likely to buy a product when given multiple choices, even if those choices sit next to competing brands. He gets ongoing support from the professors and classmates at his alma mater, Michigan State University. "You don't need an MBA to start a business, but I couldn't have gotten that from scratching my head in a basement," he says.

Rankings Best Business Schools

2010-08-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Sort by Rank | Name

Score	2009-2010 Tuition	Total graduate business enrollment (full-time)	Distance
Rank1	Harvard University Boston, MA
100	Full-time: $46,150 per year	1,837	Enter your zip
Rank1	Stanford University Stanford, CA
100	Full-time: $51,321 per year	765	Enter your zip
Rank3	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) Cambridge, MA
94	Full-time: $48,650 per year	792	Enter your zip
Rank4	Northwestern University (Kellogg) Evanston, IL
93	Full-time: $49,074 per year	1,241	Enter your zip
Rank5	University of Chicago (Booth) Chicago, IL
92	Full-time: $49,020 per year	1,185	Enter your zip
Rank5	University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) Philadelphia, PA
92	Full-time: $46,600 per year	1,674	Enter your zip
Rank7	Dartmouth College (Tuck) Hanover, NH
89	Full-time: $47,835 per year	510	Enter your zip
Rank7	University of California--Berkeley (Haas) Berkeley, CA
89	In-state, full-time: $36,472 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $45,672 per year	494	Enter your zip
Rank9	Columbia University New York, NY
86	Full-time: $49,728 per year	1,293	Enter your zip
Rank9	New York University (Stern) New York, NY
86	Full-time: $43,100 per year	826	Enter your zip
Rank11	Yale University New Haven, CT
85	Full-time: $47,200 per year	429	Enter your zip
Rank12	University of Michigan--Ann Arbor (Ross) Ann Arbor, MI
82	In-state, full-time: $42,800 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $47,800 per year	910	Enter your zip
Rank13	University of Virginia (Darden) Charlottesville, VA
81	In-state, full-time: $41,270 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $46,270 per year	642	Enter your zip
Rank14	Duke University (Fuqua) Durham, NC
80	Full-time: $45,850 per year	885	Enter your zip
Rank15	University of California--Los Angeles (Anderson) Los Angeles, CA
78	In-state, full-time: $36,434 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $44,675 per year	730	Enter your zip
Rank16	Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) Pittsburgh, PA
76	Full-time: $49,200 per year	413	Enter your zip
Rank16	University of Texas--Austin (McCombs) Austin, TX
76	In-state, full-time: $26,450 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $42,580 per year	534	Enter your zip
Rank18	Cornell University (Johnson) Ithaca, NY
75	Full-time: $47,150 per year	553	Enter your zip
Rank19	Washington University in St. Louis (Olin) St. Louis, MO
72	Full-time: $42,525 per year	300	Enter your zip
Rank20	University of Southern California (Marshall) Los Angeles, CA
70	Full-time: $41,990 per year	458	Enter your zip
Rank21	Ohio State University (Fisher) Columbus, OH
69	In-state, full-time: $23,235 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $38,475 per year	290	Enter your zip
Rank21	University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler) Chapel Hill, NC
69	In-state, full-time: $20,525 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $41,050 per year	577	Enter your zip
Rank23	Indiana University--Bloomington (Kelley) Bloomington, IN
68	In-state, full-time: $22,000 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $41,000 per year	454	Enter your zip
Rank24	Georgetown University (McDonough) Washington, DC
67	Full-time: $41,952 per year	506	Enter your zip
Rank24	University of Minnesota--Twin Cities (Carlson) Minneapolis, MN
67	In-state, full-time: $27,520 per year; Out-of-state, full-time: $39,184 per year	217	Enter your zip

Score	2009-2010 Tuition	Total graduate business enrollment (full-time)	Distance

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Business Week - August 2010 (full)

2010-08-24T13:07:00.001-07:00

usiness Week - August 2010 [full]

Business Week - August 2010
English | PDF | 105 pages | 41.8 MB

Each issue of BusinessWeek features in-depth perspectives on the financial markets, industries, trends, technology and people guiding the economy. Draw upon Business Week's timely incisive analysis to help you make better decisions about your career, your business, and your personal investments.

Code:

http://www.fileserve.com/file/jXmgtcT

Test Your Professional English Business : General

2010-08-24T13:02:00.001-07:00

Test Your Professional English Business : General

Test Your Professional English: Business General is organized into eight sections and covers words and expressions in areas such as marketing, finance, human resources, computing, meetings, presentations and business travel.

This text gives students of English for professional purposes over 500 words and expressions to refer to. It can be used for self-study or in-class. An answer key is provided.

Download :

http://www.filerack.in/224TestYourProfessionalEnglishBusinessGeneral.rar

Password :

http://www.xfilesworld.com

Test Your Professional English Business : General - Mirror Links

Business Process Management BPM 100 Success Secrets

2010-08-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

ESET NOD32 Antivirus Business Edition 4.2.64.12

2010-08-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

ESET NOD32 Antivirus Business Edition v4.2.64.12 + Plugins Added + Key Until 2015 | 53.4MB

ESET NOD32 Antivirus System – Integrated, Real-Time Protection against viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, phishing, and hackers. Best detection, fastest performance & smallest footprint. NOD32 Antivirus System provides well balanced, state-of-the-art protection against threats endangering your PC and enterprise systems running various platforms from Microsoft Windows, through a number of UNIX/Linux, Novell, MS DOS operating systems to Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Domino and other mail servers.

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Flash CPA 2 Stop Kidding And Build A Real Business

2010-08-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Flash CPA 2Are you on a tight budget?
Do you need to make money quickly?
So I have the Perfect Solution for you.
A formula that will change your IM game
and put money in your pocket almost instantly!
The 2 Methods You Will Learn
Inside Flash CPA 2
The Flash CPA 2 report includes 2 methods. The first one is for people who need to get fast results and who want to launch simple PPC campaigns promoting free CPA offers. Using this method you can find a winner in just a few days and by investing very little money.
The second method is exactly what I use to promote free trials on Google. Yes, it’s still possible to promote free trial offers on Google, you just need to work smart .
Method #1 – Making Money With Polls In 2010
Internet marketers have been making a lot of money online with PPC in the past few years by using the poll method. However, after the famous Google slap and the recent changes on Facebook advertising policies many people are saying that polls are dead. Are they right? Yes and no.
Things are always changing, and so does PPC. It’s still possible to make a full-time income online by promoting polls, but the problem is that people are creating polls the same way they used to do back in 2008.
If you learn how to create polls for 2010 it’s still by far the easiest way to make money with PPC. And that’s exactly what I’m going to show you inside Flash CPA 2. I’m going to reveal to you how I build my polls and make a lot of money from them now, in 2010, not 1 or 2 years ago.
Believe me when I say that…
This Method Will Allow You To Find A Profitable Campaign In Few Days With Just A VERY Small Investment!
(or maybe even without any investment! Keep reading and you’ll understand…)
Method #2 – Promoting Free Trials On Google
This is a more advanced method, and I use it to do what most people consider impossible: promote free trials on Google!
Google doesn’t hate affiliates, and they won’t hate you if you build your campaigns properly. It’s all about using the right approach, creating your landing pages properly and following the new rules of the game.
Inside this report I’ll completely expose to you this system and show you how you can make a lot of money promoting ANY free trial on Google.
Is That Everything?
No, no, no!!!
There is more, much more! I’m going to teach you the basics of promoting CPA offers with PPC, several techniques to get cheap clicks, how to avoid the Google slap, how to track your campaigns…Video:You can buy it there:Or get it for free here:

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VentaFax Business 6.1.59.145

2010-08-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

VentaFax Business 6.1.59.145

Quote:

Send and receive black-and-white or color faxes, and turns your PC's fax modem into a versatile answering machine with remote control. Retrieve your fax and voice messages from any touchtone phone, plus have your e-mail messages and faxes forwarded to you as e-mail attachments. VentaFax also supports Caller ID (if available) and allows you to record a telephone conversation with a single click.

Fax:
* Send facsimile messages from any Windows application
* Manual and automatic facsimile message reception ( >> ) and transmission ( >> )
* Color fax support (>>)
* Fax broadcasting
* Built-in scheduler
* Customizable cover page
* Convert incoming faxes to PDF documents
* V.34 Fax (Super G3) faxing support
* Scan support
* Fax priority system
* and many more

Answering machine

* Voice/data/fax mode recognition
* Remote DTMF control
* Voice mailbox support
* Distinctive Ring service is available even in Windows 2000, XP and Vista! ( >> )

Caller ID
* Black-list and white-list directories
* Phone number voicing
* Answering machine setting redefinition
* Caller data display

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Code:

http://www.fileserve.com/file/WPaTe8Q/VentaFax.Business.v6.1.59.145_Expresshare.com.by_Spark.rar

An Unorthodox Corporate Saga

2010-04-02T20:18:00.000-07:00

When i thought about the Unorthodox Corporate Saga two things would come in to my mind

1 : Rebels with a Cause
2 : The Google Economic Model

Google's story has been retold many times: the saga of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students who began their collaboration at Stanford University in the spring of 1995 with a project to improve search engine results. Today, little more than a decade later, they head one of the most successful enterprises in history.

In many respects, their story resembles that of all entrepreneurs—Steve Jobs or Bill Gates in consumer computing, even Henry Ford or Alfred P. Sloan in automobiles. But more so than most of their predecessors, Page and Brin's chosen marketplace and the context of their venture are central elements of the Google story.

1 : Rebels with a Cause

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have undeniable talent. Who else in recent memory has been able to start and build a world-changing, international powerhouse seemingly overnight?

Page and Brin have the self-confidence and conviction of visionaries for whom making a fortune is not enough. They want to change the world, and they are driven by a shared desire to improve Internet searching.

Nonconformists, they make decisions that buck conventional wisdom with ease. Anyone tracking the Google IPO learned this early when Google adopted a Dutch auction format that gave the investment world quite a stir in its attempt to democratize the sale of shares.

And Page and Brin are true friends, a characteristic shared by several company co-founders before them, like college buddies Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the two Microsoft co-founders, and college friends Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston of VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet). Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs met as 18-year-olds at a summer IT class hosted by Hewlett-Packard. Hewlett-Packard, in turn, was founded by college friends Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. And the list goes on.

Friendship creates a safe space for people to exchange and test their ideas, and friends can drive each other to succeed. In an environment as risky and turbulent as Silicon Valley, friendships can foster an us-against-them mentality that helps companies resist the pressures that threaten their independence.

Finally, but no less important, Page and Brin figured out how to take advantage of every available resource. In his pivotal book Art Worlds, the sociologist Howard S. Becker demonstrates that artists—the most individualistic of individualists—need what he terms "art worlds" to create their work. Entrepreneurs are no different. The co-founders of Google benefited from both a favorable environment and fortunate circumstances. The university they both attended, Stanford, competes with the University of California, Berkeley, to train some of the most highly skilled developers of web technology. (Two earlier large search engines, Yahoo! and Excite, also got their start at Stanford.)

Page and Brin founded Google when startup funding was available within their financial environment, and the legal environment facilitated the mobility of expertise and free circulation of ideas. Maturing hardware technologies meant that the memory and microprocessors they needed to build their engine were getting cheaper all the time, thanks to manufacturing in southeast Asia.

The main points regarding the Rebels with a Cause given here

Direct Heirs of Artificial Intelligence

The Invention of Page Ranking

An Environment for Innovation

Job Mobility and the Exchange of Ideas

A Short Leash

Winning Independence

What About the Rest of Us?

All the seven points will be discussed as separate posts with the respective point as the main title for the post.

you can find the related posts by the forum search with the highlated text

2 .The Google Economic Model

Like network television shows and other search engines, Google is free but with certain strings attached. For example, the "free" programs on network television are only free to view if you own a television set or a computer—and then only if you pay your electricity bill. You'll also have to watch commercials (or work to avoid them) if you still want to watch the programs for "free." In the same way, the Internet is not "free" for most people, who pay to subscribe through a service provider. Although you may not notice the cost because you get so much in return, somebody pays for everything. This reality disproves the fallacy of getting something for nothing.

Google Is Free, But …

After that cautionary note, let's examine some "free stuff " in economic terms. Anthropologists first explored this concept with Marcel Mauss's analysis of the potlatch, a Native American ceremony where a tribe hosts a festival and lavishes gifts on the guests who are then expected to reciprocate later. This practice constitutes a gift economy, with rituals involving exchanges of property and prestige through symbology and relationships.

The Native American potlatch custom is one example of an economy based on gift exchange. More contemporary examples include open source software, which is free software developed by groups of dedicated but unpaid volunteers. The creators of open source software give users the source code for their program and the right to use, copy, modify, and improve it. In exchange, the creators expect users' contributions to improve the program, whether those contributions are simply comments and suggestions or actual development and testing.

Traditional scientific research is another example of a gift economy. Scientists publish their research in print journals or online and present their results at conferences. Other scientists cite their work, and the researchers become more prestigious within the scientific community as the number of citations to their work increases. The scientific community benefits from the increased pool of knowledge, and individual scientists benefit from their growing status and the awarding of more grants or funding.

One final example of gift economics might be what are known as captive sales techniques. Manufacturers of inkjet printers give the printers away or sell them at ridiculously low prices, knowing they will get a return later by selling ink cartridges.

Two-Sided Markets

The Cost-per-Click Advertising Model

The Power of Minimalist Ads

Ads That Inform Rather Than Persuade

Automating Ads Reduces Overhead, Not Confidence

Competitive Bidding

How to Keep Channel Surfers

All the seven points will be discussed as separate posts with the respective point as the main title for the post.

you can find the related posts by the forum search with the highlated text

More On

Direct Heirs of Artificial Intelligence

2010-04-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

As Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin inherited a long, rich technological tradition. Using the term tradition in conjunction with a company that developed a brand-new technology might seem strange, but their breakthrough was a direct outgrowth of the concept of artificial intelligence (AI), which had been in development at some universities for half a century. When Page and Brin explain Google's mission, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," they are simply repeating the memex agenda—a theoretical project envisioned by Vannevar Bush, one of the more important American scientists during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Seeing the debt Google owes Bush is easy when you read an article he wrote in 1945, against the backdrop of World War II, when he was a scientific advisor to the White House:

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial. Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose.… The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.… A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.

Bush went on to list some contemporary techniques likely to address this problem before describing an imaginary machine called a memex. It sounded like science fiction at the time, but this machine nourished the dreams of technology experts and artificial intelligence advocates for decades until it became a reality:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "Memex" will do. A Memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

These early stages of modern Information Science were one source of Page and Brin's ambition and vision to make all the information in the world accessible. The Google co-founders were also given access to a considerable body of research. Universities played an important part in developing technology hubs, not only by training professionals who would go to work for the surrounding companies but also by making the work of their researchers freely accessible.

This tradition helped form Page and Brin's values and convictions. In particular, they had confidence in the capabilities of computers and the automation initiatives at the core of their corporate model

Read More

The Invention of Page Ranking

2010-04-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

As their thesis topic at Stanford University, Page and Brin chose the classification of search engine results from the Web. The subject may sound abstract or esoteric to some, but everyone involved in search at the time was focused on it.

Searching for information on electronic media is a field that goes back a long way, perhaps to July 1945 and the publication of Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" in The Atlantic Monthly.

Gerard Salton is thought to be the father of modern search, having developed the System for the Mechanical Analysis and Retrieval of Text (SMART) Information Retrieval System at Cornell University in the 1960s. Since then, software engineers have worked with librarians and documentation specialists to develop software to quickly find scientific information stored in databases containing tens of thousands of book and articles. These efforts have followed two parallel tracks:

Some automated the work of librarians, who index documents within a subject area, describe those documents with keywords, and then compile those keywords in a database called a thesaurus (not to be confused with the reference book of synonyms and antonyms). Employing these programs, the user (usually an expert) can perform complex research using Boolean operators (and, or, not, and so on).

Others wanted to automate the process fully by having the computer compare the words of the request with those in the documents. In these programs, like LexisNexis from Mead Corporation, the computer shows the user all the documents where the requested keywords appear, and the user can weight them by relevance. To prevent too many junk results in the form of irrelevant documents, the engineers created tools for sorting: The user can ask the machine to show only documents after a certain date, those where two keywords appear in proximity, or documents meeting other criteria.

The elegant simplicity of the latter approach intrigued data-processing specialists because the specialists didn't need to query databases manually. Anyone could enter keywords, thus eliminating the need to prepare and index documents. The hope was that documents could simply be digitized and stored in a database, available to be searched.

Language being what it is, however, the latter attempt to automate search has its disadvantages. For example, if you try to introduce synonyms or contextual meanings into the database, you create more volume and false positives. That's not necessarily a problem as long as the databases remain specialized within a limited field for use by professionals (like the legal documents for attorneys stored in Lexis), but using these programs for searching the Web was another matter.

When searching the Web, users could find plenty of documents containing the words they searched for, but there were too many irrelevant results. As the Web grew, and as more pages were assembled and indexed, search result quality deteriorated. As Page and Brin wrote in their 1998 paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," "'Junk results' often wash out any results that a user is interested in. In fact, as of November 1997, only one of the top four commercial search engines finds itself (returns its own search page in response to its name in the top ten results)."

To counter this failing, early search engines vacillated between two solutions. Some limited the size of their databases because adding pages produced worse results. Others, like Yahoo!, took an approach based on the thesaurus concept: They created elaborate systems to categorize and rank sites based on topic. A webmaster wanting to register a site was told to specify its category with keywords. Once submitted to Yahoo!, specialists called ontologists would check the description's relevance.

The thesaurus method of search posed significant problems. For example, suppose you typed the word horse into a search box and then pressed ENTER for your results. In response, you would see various search categories, such as Zoology, Sports, Art, and so on. Visit the Zoology branch and you'd find sites about the animal that is the horse. Click the Sports track and you'd see pages about horsemanship and betting. The Art category would take you to sites on equestrian paintings. The Food section would reveal French recipes for horse meat. In Politics, you might find a rant by a British activist, complaining about a French conspiracy to eat his pet. Yahoo! employed hundreds of workers to analyze and sort web pages this way according to the thesaurus method, language by language, culture by culture. Clearly, the thesaurus method was inferior to and much more time intensive than the automated search method, but automated search was far more expensive and complex.

Dissatisfied with the current state of search, Page and Brin looked for, and discovered, a way to automatically classify pages found in a search by their relevance or rank. Of course, they were not alone in trying to find a solution to the search problem.

For example, search engines like DirectHit tried to classify sites according to their cumulative use. If someone followed a link to a site and stayed a long time, that site was considered to be more relevant than one that was infrequently and/or briefly visited. This is how Lycos and HotBot still rank sites today.

Ranking pages by cumulative use has certain advantages over former methods, but the method also has inherent flaws. For one, cumulative use is less than reliable. With today's tabbed browsers that open several pages simultaneously, a user might keep a page open for a long time without actually reading it, thus skewing the server statistics to make them at best unreliable, at worst meaningless. And it lends itself to cheating. If I want to push my site up on the search page, all I need to do is write a small robot program that goes to the site, stays for a few minutes, leaves, and then comes back again using a different proxy IP number. Catch me if you can.

Like the developers of DirectHit, Page and Brin decided that reputation was the best way to measure a site's quality and relevance. But rather than measure a site according to the number and duration of hits, they looked at the nature of scientific research and the importance of citations.

For example, to judge the quality of an author, an idea, or a concept, researchers check the number of quotations from the article in scholarly publications and then classify scientific articles by the number of times they are referred to in other articles. In the world of the Internet, links to pages are more or less the equivalent of citations. If I put a link in my text, encouraging readers to load a page on another site, chances are I consider it important or at least relevant. By counting the number of links to various pages, a search engine can classify those pages and obtain more reliable results. This forms the basis of Google's search algorithm.

But Google isn't that simple. For one thing, not all citations have the same value, nor do all links have the same importance. For example, a quote in an article written by a Nobel laureate and published in a prestigious journal has more value than, say, a student's article in some little-known school's newspaper. In the same way, links coming from pages that are cited often are given more weight by Google than those coming from pages with few incoming links.

Google added other subtleties as well, such as the distance between words when a query contains several, and a system of weighting that gives more value to links from sites with many incoming links but few outgoing links. This mechanism made it possible to improve search quality greatly without the need for human intervention.

As obvious as it may appear today, the method requires highly complex mathematics and involves the integration of several classes of problems. This is why initial support for Google came mainly from the scientific community. In fact, Google's initial success was due to a mix of programming theory and network sociology. And because of its novelty, Google qualifies as a genuine invention, which is why it interested scientific researchers and mathematicians.

This is an important detail. As you'll read in this book, throughout Google's history one of its main strengths has been its ability to maintain relationships with the academic community. The quality of these relationships stems from the personalities of the company's founders and their contacts with high-level researchers like Terry Winograd, their former college professor and now a Google consultant. But Google's work in areas of inquiry that interest researchers also enables the company to transform questions posed by its engineers into problems that mathematicians are eager to solve.

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An Environment for Innovation

2010-04-02T20:00:00.001-07:00

Entrepreneurs thrive and prosper where there are other entrepreneurs to nurture them.

And when it comes to serial entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who have started company after company, California reigns supreme, with more entrepreneurs per square mile than any place on earth. And with those serial entrepreneurs comes venture capital. Seed money. One of those serial entrepreneurs, Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim, put up Google's first seed money. Rumor has it that after talking to the Google founders for only a few hours, he wrote them a check for $100,000—but they couldn't deposit it immediately because they hadn't yet filed the legal papers to establish their company.

If the story is true, Bechtolsheim did more than give Page and Brin a financial start; he lent them credibility. His buying into their project sent a message to those who know that serial entrepreneurs can spot the good ideas. Having created their own companies, serial entrepreneurs know how to judge the quality of new ventures at first glance.

When evaluating new ventures for investment, serial entrepreneurs ask questions about the company like, "Does it meet the needs of users?" and "Will the money we invest be used prudently?" and "Is the economic model viable?" Their experience helps reduce the risk of financing startups and seize real opportunities quickly.

In a 2006 study titled Skill vs. Luck in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital: Evidence from Serial Entrepreneurs, Paul Gompers and colleagues at Harvard University calculated that "entrepreneurs who succeeded in a prior venture (i.e., started a company that went public) have a 30% chance of succeeding in their next venture. By contrast, first-time entrepreneurs have only an 18% chance of succeeding and entrepreneurs who previously failed have a 20% chance of succeeding."[5] In a market fraught with high risk, this sort of expertise is invaluable.

California also offers young entrepreneurs a dense network of venture capital firms making deals. For example, according to a 2007 Entrepreneur.com ranking of the top 100 early-stage venture capital firms in the United States by deals made (Top 100 Venture Capital Firms), about half of the top 100 firms are in California. Massachusetts is a distant second with about 25 percent of the total.

This concentration of venture capital firms makes finding technology funding in Mountain View, California, a lot easier than it might be to land capital in Sedona, Arizona, or southern Italy.

[5]Paul Gompers et al., "Skill vs. Luck in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital: Evidence from Serial Entrepreneurs," NBER Working Paper Series No. 12592, 2006.

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Job Mobility and the Exchange of Ideas

2010-04-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

Serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists obviously didn't appear out of nowhere. One reason they are more numerous in California is that the legal environment lends itself to the creation of innovative companies. Stanford professor Ronald J. Gilson, an expert on Japan and venture capital, discusses this in an article. In 1996, he analyzed the contrasting destinies of Silicon Valley and Route 128, the technology corridor near Boston. There, in the early 1980s, prestigious universities like MIT spawned most of the great names in technology, including Wang and DIGITAL. But the climate soon changed.

One of the main reasons Silicon Valley flourished while its eastern counterpart stagnated was that California law prohibits restrictive noncompete clauses in employment contracts. California companies can require that employees sign a nondisclosure agreement, stating they will not exploit the company's confidential information, but such an agreement doesn't prevent anyone from going to work for a competitor. So engineers who come up with a bright idea that doesn't interest the company they're currently working for can take it elsewhere or start their own venture.

In most other jurisdictions, a new employee can be required to sign a contract agreeing not to use any knowledge gained on the job in case he or she ever goes to work for a competitor. In the case of a direct competitor, reusing that gained knowledge is often seen as inevitable, so an engineer who receives a job offer from a competing firm can be legally prevented from accepting it.

In California, the absence of noncompete clauses thus contributes to the mobility of people, ideas, and expertise. It supports the cross-fertilization of innovations and helps new ideas move from the laboratory into real-world development. It also contributes, perhaps importantly, to the quality of human resources available in the Valley. Finally, an ever-growing number of employees aren't required to change fields when they change companies. Communities of professional acquaintances can develop to exchange ideas, advice, and information about projects. All this leads to increased specialization, because people who change jobs can continue to work in the same niche and increase their expertise.

When we think about the influence of human capital on the development of technology centers, universities are usually seen as key. Their role is fundamental, of course, but the labor market's operation is also a factor. If the market supports mobility and specialization, as it does in California, the quality of available expertise improves. In 2000, at the peak of the Internet bubble, three times more teaching jobs were open in data processing at Stanford than there were candidates to fill them. All the people who could have filled the extra jobs were working in the industry. Some experts at the time warned that if the trend continued, one of California's strong suits would be threatened—but that didn't occur. By encouraging practical, hands-on learning, job mobility compensated for education.

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Business Systems Analysis ,be a better Business Analyst

2010-04-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

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1000 Best Quick and Easy Organizing Secrets

2010-04-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

"Reading this book is like getting advice from a trusted friend. Jamie's non-judgmental, conversational style put me at ease immediately. I felt like she had popped by and we had chatted over a cup of coffee. The last thing that someone who is dealing with clutter needs is more guilt! Jamie makes it seem manageable to conquer clutter."
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"Chock-full of simple, easy-to-apply tips and ideas to help you get organized. This is a great organizing reference to read, refer to often, and enjoy!"
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"At last - an organizing book that strives for progress instead of perfection. Jamie Novak's 1001 Best Organizing Secrets is real help for real people. Jamie understands that your house doesn't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to find your car keys."
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Will an Apple a day keep the laptop away?

2010-01-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

The way things are moving forward it might not be long before you say goodbye to your netbook, the just-arrived e-book readers and maybe even

laptops and desktops. And if Apple has its way, even mobile handsets might be facing a bleak future! The Cupertino-based technology wizards have, as all of you know, at last unveiled the much read, heard and rumoured about tablet, iPad. Billed to be a communication, entertainment, housekeeping; okay, not the last one, all-in-one kind of device, it surely is a glimpse at what the future holds for us.

Agreed that as usual Apple has come up with an amazingly simple but brilliant design, and knowing the kind of technology these guys dabble with, we surely can hope for nothing less than a miraculous performance out of it. But there is something that has surprised us, something that has never happened before, the pricing tactics by Steve Jobs and his team. Never before have we seen an Apple product so aggressively priced. With everyone expecting a price tag to the tune of $1000, the $499 shocker surely has to be the deal clincher.

Now moving on to the technical dynamics-what we have here is a product bundled up to do stuff like browse the web, watch videos and images, listen to music, play games, read e-books and a lot more. Its Kindle-killer feature, the iBook, lets you browse and buy through the thousands of volumes available at the App Store. Everyone knows about Apple’s legendary touch technology. And the iPad features several multi-touch apps that make working on it a breeze. Even a simple task like browsing the Internet is a different experience cause of the intuitiveness this device brings to it.

With measurements that defy the dimensions of any netbook ever made, this iPad is as of now the thinnest and the lightest device with computing abilities. And apart from the millions of apps available at the App Store, 12 apps have been specially created for the iPad.

Everything about the iPad is cool, but one. We’re in an era where even 1 TB of space seems less, and the max an iPad offers is 64GB. Surely we can have some way out. Otherwise from all the info Apple has released, the iPad sure seems like the perfect product to begin this decade with. And from past experience, at least, Apple’s products do have the bite that they suggest on paper. Now all that we’re waiting for is to get our hands on one of these and start padding away!

Beware! Bank frauds are on the rise

2010-01-30T19:02:00.000-08:00

NEW DELHI: If you are one of those who like playing it safe with hard-earned money and would rather stick to bank deposits, watch out. No lesser

authority than the Reserve Bank of India says that bank frauds are on the rise. What's more, public sector banks, perceived to be safer bets than private banks, beat the latter in the swindling game.

Crores of rupees are disappearing from bank accounts or are being used deceitfully everyday. Recently, a bank branch manager recklessly sanctioned housing loans for the purpose of flats. On spot verification by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on the behest of the bank's chief vigilance officer, it transpired that the three storeyed building was constructed as a hotel.

Further investigation revealed that the branch manager had sanctioned many other housing loans against fabricated agreements of sale in fictitious names. By the time, the investigation was completed the bank had been duped of Rs 25 cr.

"This is an alarming scenario. Afterall, it is people's hard earned money. Banks the worldover keep a tight vigil as any slip will bring them down and even impact the economy," says Mayur Joshi, chair-man of Indiaforensic Research Foundation, a Pune-based consultancy which conducts fraud examination and forensic accounting in India.

Information collated by the CBI which SundayET is in possession of, bank frauds—the central investigation body tracks frauds valuing only a crore or above—amount doubled in 2008-09 from Rs 659 cr in 2007-08 to Rs 1,404 cr.

The number of such frauds also rose from 177 to 212. "The focus is on expeditious completion of investigation, close follow up of under-trial cases to conclude them without delay," says a CBI spokesperson. The CBI conducts its investigations through differ-ent wings--the Anti-Corruption Bureau, Bank Securities & Fraud Cell and the Economic Offences Wing.

The rising number of frauds has also got the central bank concerned. "It's high time banks strengthen their fraud management practices. In their bid to quickly expand and grow, they are losing focus on risk control," a senior official of the bank, who did not want to be named, says.

Not that the RBI isn't aware of the rising trend. In September last year, it had blamed senior management at banks for their failure to have proper risk management mechanism. It had then advised the banks to form a special committee chaired by their CEOs, who could oversee fraud investigation and make monitoring centralised rather than leaving it to the regional centres.

China says it needs no Internet lessons from US

2010-01-23T03:08:00.000-08:00

BEIJING: China needs no lessons about its Internet from the United States, the head of an online media association said through official media on saturday after the United States rapped Beijing over information freedom.

A speech by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday showed a lack of respect for China, which cannot accept conditions on matters of "national security" or "social stability", said Beijing Association of Online Media Chairman Min Dahong.

The Internet has joined trade imbalances, currency values, U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan and tensions over human rights and Tibet among the quarrels straining ties between the world's biggest and third-biggest economies.

"How China's Internet develops and how it is managed are Chinese people's own affairs," Min said in an interview with state-run Xinhuanet.com.

"On the Internet question, China doesn't need any lessons from the United States on what to do or how," he said.

Clinton's speech criticised the cyber policies of China and Iran, among others, and demanded Beijing investigate complaints by Google Inc about hacking and censorship.

Google, the world's top search engine, said it may shut its Chinese-language google.cn website and offices in China after a cyber-attack originating from China that also targeted other firms and human rights campaigners using its Gmail service.

Websites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China, which uses a filtering "firewall" to prevent Internet users from seeing international web sites with content China's Communist Party opposes.

"Hillary's speech on Jan. 21 insinuating that China lacks freedom of information and speech is in fact disrespectful and doesn't stand up," Min said.

Know the risks of investing in penny stocks

2010-01-23T03:02:00.000-08:00

ECONOMICTIMES.COM, Sanjeev Sinha

Investing in stocks is always fraught with risks. There is, however, no dearth of people around who not only invest in low-risk stocks but also in very high-risk stocks such as penny stocks, turnaround stocks and concept stocks because of the lure of high returns, and most of them often end up burning their fingers too.

It is not that investing is such stocks has never been rewarding. Sometimes people make good money by investing in high-risk stocks also. But such instances are very limited. It is better, therefore, to know the risks involved before putting your hard-earned money into high-risk stocks:

Penny Stocks: These are low-priced stocks, typically less than Rs 5 (although there is no set definition). Trading in these stocks happens mostly for speculative purpose. The price movement of these stocks is more driven by trading than by the stock’s fundamentals.

Turnaround stocks: Generally a company that survives bankruptcy is considered a turnaround stock. This definition also applies to turnaround in fortunes of fundamentally-strong companies after they have experienced some hard times. The bad phase can occur due to adverse market conditions, adverse policy and economic conditions or even poor management.

Concept Stocks: Unlike penny and turnaround stocks, concept stocks are those stocks which are likely to create significant value for investors in future and are from sunrise industries or are focusing on new innovative and unique industries, technologies or services.

Liquidity Risk: Usually the large ownership of these stocks rests in the hands of few people like promoters of the company.

“If these people deicide to unload a significant number of stocks, the price drops steeply. Also, since most of the trades are speculative and not really backed by fundamentals, the moment there is a market correction everyone wants to get rid of these stocks, resulting in huge price corrections,” says T Srikanth Bhagavat, managing director, Hexagon Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd.

Trick trades: Going by the past experience, penny stocks’ prices are sometimes rigged and artificially inflated.

“Investors get sucked-in looking at the price movement only to suffer later as prices drop when the traders off-load large quantities of shares,” says Bhagavat.

Corporate governance: Most of the penny/small stocks are poorly managed and governed. Some of them don’t even send their annual reports to investors!

The risk involved with turnaround stocks is that the turnaround may not sustain, leading to losses.

“The risk in a turnaround share or a concept investment is that of the story petering out. The turnaround may not happen or the concept may turn out to be dud. The dotcom bust is an example of concept investing gone awry,” says Bhagavat.

Avatar's Cameron: King of the World (Once Again)

2010-01-23T02:55:00.000-08:00

By Ronald Grover, Tom Lowry and Michael White
Businessweek
Reasonable people can debate the artistic merits of James Cameron's work. Anyone for whom Arnold Schwarzenegger is a frequent muse is not likely to specialize in observing the human condition, unless it's in the aftermath of an exploding building or a run-in with a mercenary robot from the future.

What's indisputable, however, is that the Avatar director's influence extends far beyond his movie credits. More than George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay or Pixar (DIS), Cameron is the most important commercial force in modern film, and his vision for the future of the movie business is rapidly demolishing anything that gets in its way.

There are 1.64 billion reasons that Cameron is Hollywood's director of the moment—that figure being the mid-January worldwide gross of Avatar, the blue-aliened, 3D extravaganza that earned Golden Globes for best director and best dramatic picture. By the time you read this, Avatar may have passed the $1.84 billion mark set by 1997's Titanic, Cameron's previous feature and current holder of the title Highest-Grossing Film of All Time.

The money is impressive, but it only hints at Cameron's impact. It took Titanic several months to reach $1 billion worldwide at the box office. Avatar hit that milestone in 17 days. How? Because cinema operators say they can charge at least 30% more per ticket if a movie is in 3D. By persuading a huge number of filmgoers to put on the 3D glasses and pay more for the privilege, Cameron has changed the economics of the movie business. "Films can change people's minds, and the aim with Avatar was to introduce the industry to the possibilities of 3D," Cameron told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "I decided, let's go make a movie that they can't ignore."

At 55, the man who declared himself king of the world at the 1998 Oscars has mellowed some. Cameron accepted his 2010 Golden Globes with a mix of humility and amazement. No one knows better than he how close Avatar came to not being made. Despite Cameron's track record for delivering large profits on big budgets, Twentieth Century Fox (NWS), which co-financed Titanic, hesitated to make an even riskier film that required the creation of a three-dimensional alien world. "I knew that if this failed my name would be dirt, but that's the nature of this business," says Cameron. "Every director knows that you can flame and burn like the Hindenburg, and do it very publicly."

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With the studio balking, Cameron had to turn himself into an inventor-entrepreneur. Using his own funds, he developed the technology to bring Avatar to the screen, betting that what he saw in his head would be so visually persuasive that, ultimately, he could sell his souped-up camera rigs back to Hollywood at a potentially considerable profit.

Until Avatar came along, 3D movies—even such recent efforts as 2008's Journey to the Center of the Earth and 2005's Chicken Little—had the stigma of novelty. Now fellow directors, convinced their movies will attract a wider audience in 3D, are willing to pay Cameron to use his gear. Avatar 's technological wizardry also coincides with a big push by Sony (SNE), Panasonic (PC), and other consumer electronics companies to bring 3D into the home with a new generation of TVs and DVD players. "This is a game-changer," says Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp. (NWS), which owns Fox. "If you create a film of this quality and make it an event, it shows that people will pay to come see it. We will see more [3D in] films and TV."
A VISION OF BLUE ALIENS

Cameron wrote the original script for Avatar in the mid-1990s. Set 150 years in the future, it told the story of a paraplegic ex-Marine who travels to a moon called Pandora where he inhabits the body of a Na'vi, the 10-foot-tall, blue-hued humanoids who inhabit the world's lush jungles. The marine falls in love with a Na'vi princess (think John Smith and Pocahontas) and ends up defending her people against Earthlings eager to exploit Pandora's resources. Even 15 years ago, Cameron had a fully formed vision of Pandora—right down to the blue aliens, six-legged mammalian predators, and floating mountains. But he put any plans to film his Avatar script on indefinite hold, knowing that the existing technology could not do justice to his ambitions.

By 2000 he was growing impatient. So Cameron contacted Vincent Pace, an entrepreneur who helped design and manufacture the underwater lighting system for Cameron's 1989 movie, The Abyss. Through his eponymous company, which develops and rents cameras for use in hazardous conditions, Pace agreed to work with Cameron on a camera rig that could capture 2D and 3D images simultaneously. Cameron says the project cost about $12 million, much of it his money.

It's a rule as old as Hollywood: Never sink your own money into a movie. Ultimately, Cameron felt his investment would be justified not only because it would allow him to make Avatar but also because the new technology would accelerate the rollout of 3D, giving theater chains an incentive to upgrade their projectors and screens and moviegoers an incentive to leave their increasingly well-equipped living rooms.

Developing the technology was one massive project. Cameron also had to persuade Fox to finance Avatar. Although the studio had backed and distributed several Cameron films, the Titanic experience had made Fox executives cautious. Originally budgeted at $110 million, the film's production costs famously ballooned to $200 million when special effects and the cost of constructing the ship delayed filming. There were also months of rumors preceding the film's release that it would prove to be one of the worst business decisions in the history of the movies. Given all that scary background, says Twentieth Century Fox Co-Chairman Tom Rothman, "Avatar couldn't be rushed." In 2005 the studio decided to place a small wager on Cameron—$10 million so he could show proof of concept.

With the Fox money, Cameron repaired to the 280,000-square-foot hangar he leases in Playa Vista, Calif.—where in the 1940s Howard Hughes built the Spruce Goose—and began working on a 3D film clip that he could use to persuade Fox brass to make the movie. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, says he and Cameron were in touch frequently during the experimentation phase and that Cameron visited the DreamWorks facility in Glendale, Calif., to learn more about animation software. "We create our own world in animation," Katzenberg says. "But this was the first time a director could take real characters and put them into a world he had created, in real time."

Katzenberg is one of Hollywood's leading cheerleaders for 3D moviemaking—higher-priced tickets and bigger audiences mean more money for his studio. While entertainment executives often root against rival projects, Katzenberg was hoping Cameron's movie would jump-start the revolution. "Everyone," he says, "was waiting for Avatar."

In October 2005, Cameron screened his 3D segment for four Fox executives at the offices of his production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, in Santa Monica, Calif. "Their eyes kind of lit up," Cameron says. "They could see what I had been talking about for months." But Avatar producer and Cameron business partner Jon Landau says Fox still wanted a shorter script and a more reasonable budget.

In response, says Landau, Cameron combined several characters to trim expenses. Cameron says he also agreed to cut his usual fee in half and take a lower percentage of the film's revenues if Avatar wasn't profitable. "Luckily," says Cameron, "we're at such a stratospheric level now that we're not worried about that."

By mid-2006, according to someone involved in the negotiations, Fox was still concerned that making Avatar would cost too much money. "They told us in no uncertain terms that they were passing on this film," Cameron says. Cameron decided the best way forward was to try to persuade another studio to get involved. Walt Disney (DIS) had produced two of the director's 3D underwater documentaries, so Cameron invited Dick Cook, then Disney's studio chief, to watch the clip. "We loved Jim and would have liked to have worked with him," says Cook. "He has an infectious love of 3D that impressed us. Unfortunately, we never got that far." The reason: Fox had the first right of refusal. "We were never going to let this one get away," says Fox Co-Chairman Jim Gianopoulos.

To get the deal done, the studio decided to bring in partners to share the financial burden. Fox already had a deal with Dune Entertainment, part of a New York private equity fund that since 2006 has contributed financing for Fox movies. To further reduce its risk, Fox began talking to London-based Ingenious Media, which since 1998 has raised $8 billion to invest in such films as Shaun of the Dead, Night at the Museum, and Live Free or Die Hard. Taking a stake in Avatar, however, required some persuasion. James Clayton, who oversees Ingenious' movie investments, recalls multiple meetings with Cameron and Landau in Playa Vista before deciding to invest an undisclosed sum. "I was really impressed by their understanding of the business, that there is so much competition these days for people's leisure time that you have to create something you won't find on TV, on computer games, the Internet, to draw audiences into the theater," Clayton says. "This wasn't purely a creative process for them, like it is with some producers. Jon and Jim absolutely understood the need to cater to audience tastes."

With Ingenious on board, Fox had lowered its exposure to less than half of Avatar's $237 million budget. "We consider all filmmaking a dangerous game," says Murdoch. "And we always lay off [risk] to the film funds when we can. This time we laid off more than usual. But we own much of the distribution and other rights. In the end, we will make much more money than them." In October 2006, Fox agreed to make Avatar. Cameron says he still isn't quite sure why Fox finally jumped aboard but recalls studio executives saying: "We don't get the giant blue guys with the tails, but we believe in you and want to do this movie with you." Months earlier, Cameron had put a traffic light outside Landau's office. After Fox said yes, they switched it from amber to green.
Production began, and word soon leaked out that something extraordinary was going on in Cameron's airplane hangar. The director had rigged the ceiling of the cavernous space with cameras that tracked his actors, who were wearing versions of the motion-capture suits made famous by the character Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Headsets rigged with tiny cameras captured actors' facial expressions and eye movements, a jolt of reality that Cameron deemed crucial if he was going to make the film. Using software developed in-house, the crew imported the actors into Pandora's digital world while Cameron was shooting.

THE 3D STAMPEDE

Before long, other directors began making pilgrimages to Playa Vista. Landau recalls visits from Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. Landau even set up a screening room near the set so visiting filmmakers could watch on a monitor what Cameron was seeing in real time through the lens of his camera.

In December producer John Davis (I, Robot; AVP: Alien vs. Predator) screened Avatar at a special VIP showing in Hollywood. "I saw how 3D could improve a film," he says. Davis hopes to persuade Fox to shoot a remake of the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts in 3D. Transformers director Michael Bay and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams have said they would like to convert their franchises to 3D, too, though Paramount has not yet agreed.

Not every movie will warrant the investment that 3D demands. For the foreseeable future it will remain a high-risk, high-reward medium that excludes Woody Allen movies, and Sandra Bullock ones, too. But for directors and producers of action and fantasy films, 3D has to be a consideration. "What Avatar showed is that there is still a reward in taking the risk to make a large-budget film that will bring people out of their homes," says former Fox studio chief Bill Mechanic, who produced the 3D Coraline in 2009.

Vincent Pace has had a steady stream of inquiries since Avatar was released. His company rents out its 3D cameras and associated gear to other directors at a rate of $1.4 million to $3 million per film, depending on the difficulty of the shoot. Director Joseph Kosinski is using one for Tron Legacy, which is due out in December.

Pace says advertising agencies have also expressed interest in using the camera rigs for commercials, and networks are eyeing it for 3D TV sports broadcasts. "The perfect storm has kind of swept by," says Pace. "We're quite excited that what we embarked on 10 years ago is being accepted in a very commercial way." Pace says he and Cameron own the patents on the gear and that, given the buzz generated by Avatar and the coming wave of 3D TVs, it won't be long before they recoup their initial investment and start to reap a profit.

As Cameron anticipated, Avatar has theater owners rushing to equip more of their cinemas with 3D technology. "Avatar has put an exclamation point on what we have done and what we are going to do," says Michael V. Lewis, CEO of RealD, a Los Angeles company that supplies 3D screens, projectors, and glasses to theaters. Of the 38,000 screens in the U.S., only about 3,600 are currently 3D-ready. Lewis says RealD plans to add an additional 5,000 screens in the next 18 months.

The director has emerged from his 12-year odyssey far more powerful than after his previous box-office record-breaker. Even with credit still tight, money almost certainly will flood his way. And like any good businessman, Cameron will put his development costs to work with brand extensions. In other words, look out for that Avatar sequel.
Grover is Los Angeles bureau chief for BusinessWeek. Lowry is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York. White is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

Don’t Take This Bait (but You’re Safe if You Do)

2009-11-29T09:49:00.000-08:00

Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Mr. Mueller recently received an e-mail message that seemed to be from his bank. He clicked on the link and began to follow the instructions to “verify” his account information. Before completing the procedure, however, he realized that he had been led to a counterfeit site — so he left.
It’s the aftermath that is of most interest. After Mr. Mueller told his wife about his close call, he said she drew this conclusion from the experience: simply having online access to bank accounts is unacceptably risky.
“No more Internet banking for you,” she told him.

The F.B.I. director related the story in a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California in October. “Too little attention has been paid to cyber threats — and their consequences,” Mr. Mueller said that day.
He offered his own experience as a cautionary tale from “someone who spends a good deal of his professional life warning others about the perils of cybercrime,” yet who still came close to falling for a scam and “barely caught himself in time.” (The story ends there, and an F.B.I. spokesman for Mr. Mueller declined my interview request.)
An audience of civilians would naturally wonder, “What chance do we have of keeping our pockets from being picked?”
I’m not convinced, however, that online banking carries the high risk that Mr. Mueller implies. I know that as ordinary computer users, we are offered unlimited bait from phishers. But I’m not particularly worried: I’m not on the hook for losses from fraud — my bank is.
I could not find any online financial service — and I checked brokerage firms as well as banks — that stops short of promising to make a victimized customer whole.
Mr. Mueller, encouraging his audience to invest in “cybersecurity,” raised a terrifying specter when he spoke of guarding “against losing everything.” But how could I suffer “losing everything” at the hands of online criminals when my bank has this policy posted on its Web site: “We guarantee that you will be covered for 100 percent of funds removed from your Wells Fargo accounts in the unlikely event that someone you haven’t authorized removes those funds through our Online Services.”
“Zero liability is now an industry standard,” said Doug Johnson, vice president for risk management at the American Bankers Association. Restitution is full, and customers do not even have the $50 of exposure that credit card holders risk from unauthorized use of their cards.
Banks, online brokerage firms and payment sites like PayPal, exposed as they all are, would like for us to use more sophisticated security than a password to protect our accounts. One way to combat the phishing threat is to require that online customers supply a second piece of information when they log in, a one-time-only numeric code that is either generated by a little gizmo built for this purpose or is sent to the customer’s cellphone.
Your password is “something you know,” as security experts describe it, and the temporary security code is “something you have” — and something that a phishing fraudster would not. Requiring two dissimilar things is the essence of “two-factor authentication.”
Such a system isn’t perfect, but one can see why financial institutions would like to have a better lock installed on their front door. These institutions must proceed cautiously, however, lest they scare customers into abandoning online banking. At the moment, banks seem to be offering the security key system principally to customers with business accounts.
Teddy De Rivera, executive vice president in the Internet services group at Wells Fargo, said his bank would roll out its security key system more broadly over the next two years. Wells Fargo plans to require a code not every time a customer logs in, but only when its software detects a suspicious “high-risk transaction.” His group had collected feedback from customers who made clear that they “don’t want to have to use it every time,” he said.
I SIGNED up to try PayPal’s security key system, available to its users on request. Every time I log in, I receive a six-digit code in a text message sent to my phone — it’s easy to type in, but it adds an extra step.
When I asked Michael Vergara, director of risk management at PayPal, whether he recommended that all PayPal customers adopt the security key system, he said, “If I spend a lot of time going to shadier areas of the Internet, yes.”
“But if you’re talking about my mom, who visits three sites, having an extra level of security when she comes to PayPal is not going to improve her experience,” he added.
I don’t know whether Mr. Mueller at the F.B.I. has persuaded his wife to lift the household ban on online banking. If he hasn’t, he should deploy the two words that have the magical power to put the most anxious online bank customer at ease:
Zero liability.

Micro-blogging vs Mega-blogging

2009-11-29T09:47:00.000-08:00

I don’t think “mega-blogging” is actually a thing, I just made it up to make the title sound more dramatic. But if mega-blogging were a thing, you would do it with WordPress. Micro-blogging is a thing, ash a lot of people do it with Twitter.
TechCrunch drops in this fray with an article comparing the comScore numbers of WordPress.com and Twitter.com, which show an accelerating growth for WP.com and flattening for Twitter. I’ll talk about the data itself later, but first wanted to point out a point many overlook when trying to create a battle between the mediums.

New forms of social media, including micro-blogging, are complementary to blogging.
One of the many uses of Twitter is to link to and promote your blog posts. (And other people’s blog posts.) As we grow, so do they, and vice versa. I blog when I have something longer to say, like this. I tweet when it’s the lowest friction way to talk to my friends, or get distribution for something longer I did somewhere else.
It’s not really a “versus,” it’s an “and.”
Whether the Twitter team intended it or not, they’ve built a killer and highly addictive reader platform with dozens of interesting UIs on top of it.
Features like WP.me, post by email, Twitter publicize, RSS Cloud, P2, email subscriptions, and more stuff in the cooker is trying to tie these things together more because people who do one are highly likely to do another.
As for the accuracy of underlying comScore data I would say they probably are precise but not accurate, meaning that whatever flaws they have in collection now, for example for WP.com they don’t count the custom domains or RSS readers and for Twitter they don’t count API usage or desktop clients, they’re at least self-consistent in how they do things over time. Some months they show us flat our internal stats showed growth, and vice versa. Ultimately it’s not worth anyone outside of comScore arguing how they collect their data, it’s better just to use it as one reference point alongside Quantcast (my fav), Alexa, Google Trends, Nielsen…
How tweets get imported into a blog is still an open question for me. I’ve seen lots of ways people have attempted it but when a blog becomes an activity stream it becomes a weak version of all the things it aggregates, less than the sum of its parts, because of the loss of context.

Anonymous Gossip Sites

2009-11-29T08:49:00.000-08:00

So here's what free speech has come to on campus: "Name the freshman sluts!" an anonymous post demands on the Indiana University page of a multischool gossip site. So-and-so "has herpes!" proclaims an unsigned post on Texas Christian University's page. Among the profundities on the University of Alabama page: "Frats=fags."

Horny guys, lowbrow debates and run-of-the-mill spam all seem to be in abundant supply on CollegeACB.com (the acronym stands for Anonymous Confession Board). But what sets this site--and others like it--apart from the coarse commentary found on YouTube or, for that matter, a political blog are the personal attacks against private citizens, often with last names included, that leave victims with little recourse aside from demanding that the anonymous comments be taken down. (See a video of the CollegeACB founder.)

What used to be whispered on campuses is now broadcast, in the most cowardly way, for anyone with an Internet connection to see. Beverly Low, dean of first-year students at Colgate University, describes the phenomenon as an "electronic bathroom wall." The posts--which are often suffused with racism, sexism and homophobia--can be so vicious and juvenile that Ben Lieber, dean of students at Amherst College, likens them to "the worst of junior high."
And yet even the most élite universities are struggling with the problem of anonymous gossip sites. Some sites are homegrown and deal only with one school. Others are sprawling entities, catering to hundreds of schools and offering features like search capability and, at one enterprising site, the option to vote on how truthful an anonymous post is.
The biggest multischool site, JuicyCampus, was receiving thousands of hits a day when it folded in February--after advertisers pulled out. This happened around the time that two state attorneys general began investigating the site for possibly violating consumer-protection laws and its own terms of use. But wannabe sites are eager to replace the once mighty JuicyCampus. So eager, in fact, that the defunct site was paid by ACB to redirect traffic to the upstart gossip hub.
It may have worked. ACB logged a record 480,000 hits in one day in early November; a slow day brings half as much traffic, according to owner Peter Frank, a sophomore at Wesleyan University who runs ACB out of his dorm room. The 19-year-old English major defends the site as a "student-controlled discussion space where the communities dictate what's talked about." Though the site does not "call for salacious gossip," he says, on a busy day he receives 40 requests to take down posts and "on a bad day, just a couple."
He does not have moderators or police the site. But he follows up on complaints about individual posts. "If it says your name, we'll take it off," he says.
Hundreds of individuals and several schools have sent Frank requests to delete comments or even to remove a college from his site. For example, Washington and Lee University asked him in October to delete almost all threads about the school, but Frank refused. "I am not looking out for the school's best interests," he says. "I'm looking out for the students' best interests."