Saproon's blog on map more good info..
Fxm: I read how they are depending on their reitirees to survive. Well, these are the people who are buying stuff in the area which once they are gone the whole place can also be gone. They decided to promote themselves, but really they are the last..
“In the past, as a camera maker we were able to take it easy, watch what was happening,” said Makoto Kimura, the President of Nikon Imaging and a senior managing director of Nikon, its parent. “Now we’ve had to revitalize ourselves.”
With digital photography, Sony and other electronics makers immediately boatested advantages that offset their lack of optical experience. From it’s video camera business, Sony knew how to design and manufacture charge-coupled devices, or C.C.D.’s the light sensing chips that became films most common digital replacement. Making the chips is beyond the financial or technical reach of most camera makers, several of which rely on Sony and other electronics companies as suppliers..
The electronics companies main advantage, however, was fare less technical. The shift to digital photography meant that even relatively expensive cameras were increasingly purchased at electronics chains rather than specialty shops. The traditional camera makers were, by and large, left learning how to elbow their way onto shelves at Best Buy, Staples and
“I was with Sony for a number of years, “said Jeff R. Clark, the senior digital photography analyst at Current Analysis. “Supply chain management was probably more important to that company than the products it made.”
“A new wave of technology has given the newcomers the upper hand,” Mr. Hoffenberg said. “for the consumer electronics companies, digital photography has been all upside, while the photo industry was stuck in a slow evolution stage.”
For customers like Mr. marke, it may be a tough sell. While sony has been skilled at makng it’s cameras easy to use, particularly for newcomesrs, ti has sometimes omitted features like optical viewfinders and tripod sockets, which serious photographers oftern view as essential. Similarly, Sony cameras us eporoprietyry memory cars that are generally more expensive than industry standards such as compact flash..
Saprono’s offer web map on who killed how…
Offered next week on hbo..
Seith Godin, an author and speaker on marketing, called HBO’s interactive map a perfect example of a way to get online users excited about TV show. “The real home run, and the reason this isn’t just a silly stunt, is that ideas no longer spread directly from mainstream media to individuals, there’s a middleman now and that middleman is word of mouth.”
Mr. Schafer said the concept of the campaign also mirrored aspects of the “The Sopranos, “ which he hoped would add to the appeal. “The visual concept is, in a way, a survelillance of everything that has happened in Season 5. We are extending that paranoia into the application itself. And it puts it also into a context of Reality..”
Ian Schafer, the founder and chief executive of Deep Focus, said Google gave permission to use it’s satellite maps, which have detailed satellite imagery of the earth, without charge. The map will be available at hbo.com beginning next Monday..
“The idea here is that it’s going to be cool enough that people will want ot share the experience with their friends, “ he said.
IBM used
They key to pushing the technology further is a fluid immersion process for conducting the light onto the material that is etched to from the circuit pattern.
Japan House wifes trading on line, day traders..
Published: February 19, 2006
YUKA YAMAMOTO dutifully quit work to assume her expected role as suburban homemaker when she married six years ago. But she quickly grew bored at home, and when she saw a television program about online stock investing, she took $2,000 in savings and gave it a try.
Today, Ms. Yamamoto says she has turned her initial investment into more than $1 million as a day trader, scanning her home computer for price movements in stocks, futures and foreign currencies that could lead to quick profits. And by writing books and holding seminars on trading strategies, she has also become a celebrity among homemakers who are investors. She says she has met thousands of other married women who now play the stock market online, many without their husbands' full knowledge.
Having overcome the country's sluggishness in embracing cyberspace and deregulating discount brokerage firms, day-trading has taken off in
While
"Day-trading is great because everyone is equal, even housewives," said Mrs. Yamamoto, an energetic woman in her late 30's who declined to reveal her exact age or to document her trading profits. "Success or failure depends entirely on how clever you are, and nothing else."
ANALYSTS say online investors are driving the soaring volume — and volatility — in
That more than accounts for all the increased trading during the Japanese market's rally. The leading Japanese stock index, the Nikkei 225, has risen about 40 percent since August. While all the short-term money sloshing around has helped Japanese stocks snap out of their decade-long slump, it is also creating new dangers, say analysts. Many recall how a similar fad in the
Something similar happened here last month, though on a much smaller scale, when prosecutors started an investigation of Livedoor, a Web portal company that had been a darling of Internet investors. The news set off an avalanche of sale orders — most placed online, according to securities companies — that shut down the computers at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the world's second-largest bourse, after the
Since the
The exchange is racing to update its computers, but many analysts fear similar waves of panicked selling in the future. They also say that the rising popularity of online trading has coincided with an almost three-year rally in
"The real test will come when the market goes down," said Yukihiro Yabuki, a managing director for marketing at Matsui Securities, one of
In Japan
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Published: February 19, 2006
(Page 2 of 2)
So far, Livedoor's fall has failed to dampen enthusiasm for online trading. That popularity is seen in the appearance of televised day-trading competitions and in books with titles like "How a University Student Like Me Made 300 Million Yen in Internet Trading."
Looking to win more clients, online brokerage firms have begun setting up trading sites that offer cellphone access, with price charts shrunk to fit palm-sized screens. Brokerage firms say that these sites have allowed trading even from taxis or restaurants.
The surge in day-trading has even created celebrities, including its own "stock idol," a young woman named Maiko Asaba who poses in miniskirts for photographs in day-trading and stock investing magazines next to captions describing her fondness for ice cream and index futures.
"In
The dream of many day traders — in
One is Yuta Mimura, a 22-year-old university senior. During the four-and-a-half hours each weekday that the Tokyo Stock Exchange is open, Mr. Mimura sits in his bedroom monitoring stock prices on three computer screens. He said he became hooked two years ago, after he put all his savings, $25,400, into shares trading at about 25 cents, and then watched the price jump to 45 cents in just two days. He said his parents, who are farmers, were opposed to his day-trading, but he appeased them by earning $127,000 in a month and using the money to renovate their home outside
Over all, he said, he has made $2.54 million by trading stocks at home, enough to be invited to a New Year's party attended by a few dozen of Japan's biggest day traders. He said the group swapped trading tips at a hostess bar in
Mr. Mimura says that he wants to use his earnings to start his own investment company after college but that the allure of the stock market was more than the prospect of quick riches. Trading stocks, he said, offers freedoms that he wouldn't have had in a more traditional career path in
"Day-trading gives me a chance to stand on my own two feet," he said. "Everything I do is up to me. That's a chance you don't often get in
The rise of online traders, as well as their go-it-alone ethic, has its critics. Many business leaders disdain the stock market as an unsavory money game, for example, while many others dislike stock trading because of a traditional dislike for greed and the bitter memories from the collapse of
"The sight of housewives trading stocks on personal computers undermines the education of children," said Shunzo Morishita, the chief executive of NTT West, a phone company. "Making money without sweating for it undermines the work ethic."
Against such attitudes, the biggest reason for the success of online trading here has been its anonymity, analysts say. Traditional brokerage firms scared away potential clients because orders had to placed by phone, or face to face. The Internet allows the Japanese — particularly women — to trade in the privacy of their own homes hidden from the possibly disapproving gaze of neighbors and friends. People "can trade without being embarrassed," said Mr. Yabuki of Matsui Securities.
Mrs. Yamamoto says that her husband, a university professor, has not objected to her trading, but she says she still has to walk a fine line between her desire to trade and her role as wife and mother. To spend more time with her two small daughters, she has started using trading programs to buy or sell shares automatically at certain prices and has hired a secretary to handle her speaking schedule and appointments with publishers. (She says she has already written or contributed to 17 books on Internet trading.)
Despite the public attention she has received, Mrs. Yamamoto said that she still hadn't revealed the full extent of her earnings to her husband, who insists on paying the family's bills from his modest university salary. "He still thinks he's in charge," she said. "He just thinks I'm going to lose all my earnings, or blow it on clothes."
Analysts and traders say that greater financial uncertainty, resulting from sweeping change in the Japanese economy, has also led to changing attitudes about stock investing. Years of deregulation and reforms have created a more competitive economy and eroded traditional social guarantees like lifelong corporate jobs. That may help explain why most account holders at online brokerage firms range in age from their 20's to early 40's, according to the Kinzai Research Institute, a financial research company.
"We learn more about the real economy in our trading club than we do in class," said Kazuhiko Makita, a sophomore at
ONE online brokerage firm, Monex Beans Holdings, has even held after-school classes in stock trading for elementary and junior high school students who are accompanied by their parents. Monex said that about 2,300 students in that age group had already opened accounts at the brokerage firm, after getting their parents' permission.
Analysts say young Japanese, as opposed to many of their elders, are starting to view the stock market in a much more positive light: as a legitimate way to make money.
"This is a real turning point for
Google Search article..
Incentive To Grab For Google's Share
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Speculation abounds about the future of search and the dominance of Google, as rivals Microsoft and Yahoo ramp up their search engines and consider incentives for people to use their search.
Amazon's A9 search usage has been the key to a 1.57 percent discount off items sold on the retailer's website. To get that "piece of pi," users have to install the A9 toolbar and use it for an unspecified number of searches to trigger the discount.
In recent weeks, Yahoo sought feedback on a potential promotion that would provide various incentives to users of a special Yahoo search toolbar. Frequent flier miles and Netflix discounts were listed among the suggested incentives.
Bill Gates suggested last year search engines may have to start paying their users. He said Google makes $50 per user every year based on the searches the user makes.
But Microsoft isn't quite ready to pay search users yet. Its recently announced contest invites users to take a chance at winning prizes while using MSN Search. That three-month promotion offers the three big cash prizes of ten-, twenty-five- and fifty thousand dollars as charitable contributions on behalf of the searcher who finds them.
Yahoo! says its new system will present advertising relevant to the search in hand and therefore more likely to be clicked. Microsoft will launch Windows Live Search, which will simultaneously search across the internet, desktops and mobile devices, to get 'fast access to real answers, rather than hundreds of pages with thousands of links'.
The problem for Yahoo! and Microsoft is that the public can associate searching just with Google; both companies need attractive incentives to win customers and, in turn, advertising revenue.
That advertising revenue in play comprises billions of dollars, and will continue to grow year over year. It's no surprise that Yahoo and MSN want to get a larger slice of the revenue. And Amazon recently confirmed it has been trying out ad advertising network that delivers ads on third-party sites like Google's AdSense does.
MSN launches its adCenter service in July, after its existing contract with Yahoo's Overture search marketing unit ends. Google has to hope its relevance can keep searchers coming to it for search, and maintain its market share and its lead in the search advertising field.
'Click war' as Google rivals get serious
Another net battle is looming, reports Edward Helmore from New York, as Microsoft and Yahoo prepare to take on the world's best-known search engine in the crucial market for internet advertising revenue
Sunday February 19, 2006
The Observer
Of the many faces that Google presents - the do-gooding empire with a staggering market valuation, the accomplice to Chinese government censorship, the feared media machine - in essence the service remains a search engine for finding information online. The company's good timing in launching a superior search engine at a time of rapidly increasing online advertising and broadband connections has left its rivals Microsoft and Yahoo! struggling.
But Google's party could soon be crashed and some analysts are predicting a repeat of the bloody Netscape-Microsoft browser battles of the mid-90s.
The fight is set to be joined later this year when both Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN portal are expected to improve their search offerings.
Yahoo! says its new system will present advertising relevant to the search in hand and therefore more likely to be clicked. Microsoft will launch Windows Live Search, which will simultaneously search across the internet, desktops and mobile devices, to get 'fast access to real answers, rather than hundreds of pages with thousands of links'.
But the real struggle will come when competing search engines begin to offer direct incentives to users. Not unlike newspapers giving away DVDs or offering competition prizes, the search engine business is about to become a world of direct promotion.
Last week, Microsoft announced a three-month incentive promotion inviting searchers to visit www.msnsearchandwin.com to try for a prize. 'We're hopeful that once people give it a shot, they'll want to come back again and again,' said Lisa Gurry, marketing director at MSN Search. Yahoo! recently asked users if offers such as discounts on frequent-flier miles or a subscription to the online DVD rental service Netflix, would convince them to switch to its search engine.
The problem for Yahoo! and Microsoft is that the public can associate searching just with Google; both companies need attractive incentives to win customers and, in turn, advertising revenue. Microsoft is being tentative, offering just $1m in prizes. Still, it is almost certain this is where the search engine business is heading.
Last month, Amazon.com began offering regular users of its search site A9.com, a 1.57 per cent discount on purchases made through its site. Google has Blingo.com, which receives revenue from Google for referring search users to its results; the company takes a part of that revenue and gives prizes to users who access Google via its site.
Bill Gates has suggested that Microsoft might go further, by kicking back advertising revenue to consumers. Sharing ad revenue generated by searches on MSN with the people doing the searches, is confounding in the simplicity of its logic. But it shows how confusing the commercial business of internet search has become and how potentially fragile Google's revolutionary pay-per-click ad business model could turn out to be.
An article in the financial magazine Barron's has warned that Google's stratospheric market capitalisation could be abruptly halved should its model of business receive any comparatively mild knocks. One scenario is a decline in the market for key-word advertising. The price advertisers pay to Google when users click on their links after a key-word or phrase search depends on market forces - for instance, the number of similar services prepared to pay for Google to direct search traffic their way. But there are complaints that Google searches cost advertisers too much.
Online advertising revenue last year grew by 34 per cent, to about $13bn, compared with just 4 per cent linked to TV, radio and print ads. How long that will last is uncertain. Firms including eBay and Travelocity talk of 'unsustainable levels of spending' on search advertising; Barron's says a phrase such as 'charity car donation' now costs the advertiser $35 when their site is visited. The phrase 'home equity loan online' will cost $27.89.
Clearly, with billions of ad revenue dollars sloshing around the search engine business, Google's big rivals will be willing to pay for a market share. But advertisers must believe online ads are value for money. The 'pay per click and search' model does not guarantee a sale after all, and the system can be easy to abuse with software trained to click on ads repeatedly. In other instances 'click farms' have been contracted to drive up the cost of their competitors' advertising. By some estimates, up to 25 per cent of all clicks are fraudulent.
With Google and Yahoo! executives under oath before Congress over concessions granted to the Chinese government in exchange for access to that country's market, the news that the online search party may soon be spoiled by gatecrashers has yet to sink in. Google has lost more than $100 per share off its peak valuation over the past month, but it still has some $230 to go before it reaches the level considered reasonable by that well-known net bubble sage, Henry Blodgett - who last week said $100 was right.
Spy ware
Companies that specialize in security software are in a unique postion because of their experience and research in the field over the years, said Parveen Jain, executive vice president of corporate development and stragetgy with security software vendor McAfee Inc.
“We can’t ignore what Microsoft is doing, but at the same time we are very, very strongly positioned to compete, “ Jain said in response to a question during a panel at last week’s RSA conference in San Jose, Calif, a larage annual gathering of security experts..
Software Notebook: Security a balancing act for Microsoft
After watching a detailed demonstration of Microsoft's new anti-spyware program, people in the audience at the company's RSA Conference booth last week were offered prizes for naming one feature that caught their attention.
"It's free," someone in the front row said.
That particular "feature" will probably stand out to lots of other people, too. Microsoft plans to include the anti-spyware software, Windows Defender, as a component of the upcoming Windows Vista PC operating system and offer it free for older Windows versions.
The situation illustrates the fine line Microsoft is walking as it starts offering its own software to combat online threats. The incorporation of extra programs into Windows helped spark past antitrust actions against the company. And the ready availability of the Windows Defender program in the widely used operating system could reduce the need for computer users to buy anti-spyware tools from others.
But Microsoft's Bill Gates has said the company considers spyware protections so critical that they need to be included with the operating system itself.
In addition, Microsoft says it will charge for most of its security-related programs, rather than offering them pre-installed with Windows. For example, Windows OneCare Live, Microsoft's all-in-one PC security and maintenance service for consumers, is set to debut in June for a $49.95 annual subscription fee.
And the notion of offering consumer anti-spyware software on a stand-alone basis has been falling out of favor since well before Microsoft's move, industry analysts say. Many software vendors sell anti-spyware tools as part of packages that include antivirus and other programs.
So far, there hasn't been any public indication that the company's move into the security software business could spark antitrust problems. The Justice Department said recently that it was investigating industry complaints about unidentified aspects of Windows Vista, but an agency spokeswoman last week declined to say whether any of them involved anti-spyware or other security-related programs.
Publicly, at least, the existing players in the security software market have been downplaying the competitive threat posed by Microsoft.
Companies that specialize in security software are in a unique position because of their experience and research in the field over the years, said Parveen Jain, executive vice president of corporate development and strategy with security software vendor McAfee Inc.
"We can't ignore what Microsoft is doing, but at the same time we are very, very strongly positioned to compete," Jain said in response to a question during a panel at last week's RSA Conference in
Microsoft's move into security software isn't limited to consumer PCs. For example, the company also is expected to charge businesses for an upcoming security product, Microsoft Client Protection, which will include antivirus, anti-spyware and other protections for corporate desktop PCs, laptops and computer servers.
But even though Microsoft plans to sell most of its security software apart from Windows, it stands to benefit from another type of connection to the operating system, said analyst John Pescatore, vice president for Internet security with Gartner Inc. Microsoft can deliver new signatures for fighting viruses and spyware through the same automatic update mechanisms already used to download security patches for the company's software.
The simplicity of using one mechanism could appeal to businesses that need to update many PCs across a corporate network, Pescatore said. Existing vendors such as Symantec and McAfee offer their own software for receiving new signatures.
"That's a killer piece of plumbing that's built into Windows that does give Microsoft a huge advantage," Pescatore said.
But Microsoft is also dealing with its own challenges as it enters the market. Among other things, the company's security reputation has suffered as viruses and worms have exploited vulnerabilities in Windows and other programs over the years.
Compared with Symantec and McAfee, Microsoft is "nowhere near as trusted a brand name" in selling security software to large businesses, Pescatore said, explaining that it could take "a couple years for enterprises to trust Microsoft and start using their antiviral."
Mike Nash, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft's Security Technology Unit, said the move into the security software business is an effort to improve and simplify the overall computing experience.
The company also hopes to make money on the software itself.
Nash said he considers Microsoft's move positive for consumers, by creating more competition in the market.
He pointed in particular to Symantec's announcement of plans for its own all-in-one, subscription-based PC security service, code-named Genesis, after Microsoft began publicly testing the Windows OneCare service.
"The competition is driving innovation," Nash said, calling Symantec's move "the proof point" for that assertion.
Among other things, Windows Defender will work with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 to scan files that people download through the browser, alerting them if it's a spyware.
Mike Chan, product manager for Windows Defender, said the company believes the anti-spyware will protect consumers without using additional anti-spyware programs. But he acknowledged that it may take a while to establish that trust.
"We have no problem with you running extra protection on top of that if it makes you feel safer," Chan said at RSA last week.
SECURITY LINEUP
Microsoft is developing several security programs -- some to be offered free, others for a price.
· Windows Defender: Consumer anti-spyware, free.
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· Windows OneCare Live: All-in-one PC security and maintenance subscription service, with anti-virus, anti-spyware and other protections, $49.95 a month.
· Microsoft Client Protection: Antivirus, anti-spyware and other protections for corporate desktop PCs, laptops and computer servers, to be offered to businesses for purchase.
Software Notebook is a Monday feature by P-I reporter Todd Bishop. He can be reached at 206-448-8221 or toddbishop@seattlepi.com.
Zillow article
“I think when the history of the industry is written five years from now, what is going to be more important is not that there was yet another ad-driven real estate web site that did comparative market analysis, “REDifin chief Esecutuve Glenn kelman sia. “The one thing that nobody has done, that is really a huge change in the industry, is given a consumers the choice ot actually work with an online brokerage.”
NWMLS chief Exectuve Jack Johnson said the organization had not received any complaints abou the admission of Zillow. And he added that the company will be treated like any other broker.
“They are a real estate brokerage licensed by the stat of
In it’s current form, Johnson said, Zillow’s service is not a threat to traditional real estate agents.
“As time moves along, we will hav eto wait and see whether or not what they have in store for Zillow would be a concernor not, “he said. “we don’t know.”
Fxm: I really like this website they have a lot of good info. Good read..
http:seattlepi.nwsource.com
I have learned some gret new stuff today.. yes..
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