Thursday, March 25, 2010

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

What is CSS?

Cascading Style Sheets (CCS) is a language used to describe the look and format of a document written in a markup language from an external document. CSS is most commonly used today with HTML and XHTML to control the appearance of websites; however, it can also be applied to any type of XML document.

History of CSS

Various forms of external style sheets have existing since the 1970’s. CSS as we know it has been in development since the early 1990’s. When the concept of style sheets for XML languages was first proposed, nine different languages were considered. Two of these languages, Cascading HTML Style Sheets and Stream-based style sheets, became the foundation for CSS Level 1. In 1995, the World Wide Web Consortium became interested in CSS, and by the end of 1996 CSS Level 1 was officially recommended by the W3C. After the release of CSS1, the W3C went back to work improving CSS and developing CSS2, which was released in 1997. W3C has been working on CSS3 since 1998 and it is still in development.

Problems with CSS

While the theory behind Cascading Style Sheets is sound, its execution has had problems. The biggest problem CSS faced, and still faces today, is browser adoption. Internet Explorer 3 was released in 1996 and was the first browser that supported CSS however the extent of the support was minimal. It was not until 2000, with the release of Internet Explorer 5, that browsers almost completely supported CSS1. Other early browsers had minimal support but there were also serious incompatibilities. Only now are browsers starting to more fully support CSS2.

The most common of these support problems is with older versions of Internet Explorer—it is called the box model. Ordinarily, in compliance with W3C standards, the “width” that is specified is for the content. This “width” is then surrounded by padding, border and the margin in that order. Each of these levels adds to the overall width of the original content. In Internet Explorer the “width” refers to the width of the content, plus padding and the border. Margins are added on the outside of the “width” addition. The end result is that websites can look different between Internet Explorer and other browsers unintentionally. Various fixes have been made available and newer versions of Internet Explorer have since resolved this problem.

Why Use CSS?

CSS is used to separate the content of the document with the code to style each page. This allows for increased accessibility and increased flexibility, especially across different browsers, since different style sheets can be applied depending on the browser. CSS can be applied quickly and easily across multiple pages of content, allowing for easy maintenance and reformatting. CSS requires less bandwidth, since the style sheet only has to load once and then the browser will store the information making websites load faster where there is a lower bandwidth.

The most important reason to use CSS, however, is that it is remarkably powerful despite some of its shortcomings. The best demonstration of this is at www.csszengarden.com. This website allows users to take standard HTML and change the appearance just through CSS.

Sources

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

http://www.w3.org/Style/LieBos2e/history/

http://www.xmluk.org/css-history-information.htm

http://www.csszengarden.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_box_model_bug

Twitter

In these last couple of years social networking has become a popular phenomena. Some of the largest social networks were based on the intention of digitizing real world connections. Since then many of these sites have expanded from connecting people to people, to connecting businesses to people. These days’ people share their ideas in public through these social networks. In essence, the Internet has evolved into “a fully semantic read/write interconnected web of thoughts”. A major part of this new web culture is Twitter.

What is Twitter?

Twitter can be categorized as anything from a microblogging application (similar to a blog except instead of long passages, the entries are merely just short sentences or fragments), to a social instant messaging client. The fundamental idea of twitter is that a person logs into their account, they add friends, who are called “followers”, and they then send short messages (“tweets”) to them. These messages can be no longer than 140 characters and can be received through text messages, through instant messaging, through Twitter’s website or through other third-party applications.

How has it been integrated into our society?

Many people question the value of this service, and wonder how useful is it to know what your friends are up to every hour, and vice-versa. Although on a micro level, messages may seem insignificant, but over a period of time, people have gained insight into their friends’ lives that they would never otherwise, such as what their daily habits are, or how they feel throughout the day. Twitter has also become an outlet for real-time news. For example, when there was an earthquake in San Francisco, a message was sent out asking, “was that an earthquake?” Within minutes, somebody else responded confirming his question, and then guessing what the magnitude was. This quickly was responded with someone who had looked up what the magnitude actually was, and so on and so forth. More or less, news had spread using only sentences that were less than 140 characters. A San Antonio-based market research firm Pear Analytics that analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in English) over a 2-week period from 11:00am to 5:00pm found that only 4% of the tweets was actually about news. The other 41% was pointless babble, 38% was conversational, 9% had pass-along value, 6% was self-promotion, and the remaining 4% was spam. But in general, in addition to mundane personal information, Twitter also serves as a tool in politics, campaigns, public relations, protests, and is proven to be incredibly useful in branding and marketing. In fact 17% of Britain’s small businesses are using Twitter. They claim that it is a very effective way to attract new customers, and have saved them significant amounts of money (upto $8,000 in some cases) in advertising and other promotions. In the United States, large companies such as Dell, said that using Twitter in addition to Facebook and blogs, they have generated $9 million in direct sales. Thus it’s no surprise that the largest age segment on Twitter actually is 35-49yr olds. Approximately 62% of the 3 million users of access Twitter though work.

So how did this enormous service begin in the first place?

The idea originated in the mid of Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of the website. Dorsey, merely 14yrs old, worked as a software developer in his hometown, St. Louis. At the age of 18, he was admitted into NYU, where he began working at one of the largest courier services in the country, DMS, where he continued to write dispatch software. His fascination over the fact that the users of the software (general drivers, couriers, limo/taxi drivers) were just reporting what they were doing by stripping information down to it’s simplest form, served as inspiration for the idea behind Twitter. Putting the idea on hold for a couple of years, Dorsey went to California and launched his own company, during which he continued to work out his idea of combining dispatch software, instant messaging and text messaging to create real-time communication. Then in 2006, he proposed his idea to the podcasting company, ODEO. Through the company he formed a partnership with Biz Stone and Evan Williams, who eventually became co-founders of Twitter. In barely two weeks they came up with a prototype for Twitter, and then officially launched it in July 2006. By 2007, Twitter had established itself as its own company.

Future Growth

Since 2008, Twitter has grown from 475,000 users to 7,038,00 users in 2009 at an unbelievable growth rate of 1382%. At this point, Twitter is working on improving their very basic search engine that eliminates duplicates and other “noise” that comes up during searches. They are also working on embedding geographic locations into Tweets. Their latest addition to the site is a potentially powerful tool called the Twitter Lists, which allows users to create custom lists of Twitter accounts, which then can be shared or kept private.

Sources:

http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/76460 http://www.thedailyanchor.com/2009/02/12/a-conversation-with-twitter-co-founder-jack-dorsey/ http://dev.aol.com/article/2007/04/definitive-guide-to-twitter http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/356044/twitter-earned-dell-9-million http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15350940 http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com#demographics a b Kelly, Ryan, ed. (2009-08-12), "Twitter Study - August 2009" (PDF), Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage, San Antonio, Texas: Pear Analytics, http://www.pearanalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf, retrieved 2009-08-18

Instant Messaging

What is Instant Messaging?

Instant Messaging, also known as IM, is a method where two or more people can send fast real-time “text-based” communication on computers or a variety of other electronic devices over a network (usually the Internet). Currently in the marketplace, Instant Messaging is very widespread as it has become a popular form of communication at college, work and at home. Everyday millions of people use Instant Messaging as a form communication as our society is becoming more and more dependent on it. It also allows people to communicate internationally at real-time, which gives a new experience of interaction online rather than just purely sending e-mail. In todays fast past society, people are always looking for new ways to save time as people would often rather Instant Message than e-mail a co-worker or friend due to time and efficiency.

History of Instant Messaging

Although Instant Messaging is currently thought as utilizing such clients as AOL Instant Messenger, Google Chat, MSN, and Yahoo Chat, it originated in the 70s and 80s, which predates the Internet. Instant Messaging was originally conceptualized as a peer-to-peer protocol that was meant for users to communicate on a network of computers. Shortly after, in the early 80s, the idea of talker systems arose as people begun to log-in to private networks to communicate within a small community. Furthermore, the first primitive internet service Quantum Link was also born, which provided a text-based system called PETSCII on a modem, where people could message each other. In the late 80s, the application called Internet Relay Chat (IRC), developed as users were then able to talk to each other in channels as well as sending private messages to one another.

The New Age

The 1990’s marked an important decade where several Instant Messaging clients first arose. ICQ began in 1996 and was the first IM client to be used by a wide audience. Next, Quantum Leap evolved into America Online, which led to the development of the famous AIM in 1997. As a result of AIM, other companies began to follow suit by launching their own clients. Yahoo!, MSN, and later Google in 2005 launched their own Instant Messenger clients as companies realized that this was a hot, growing field that could add a lot of functionality to their e-mail clients with integration. Today, e-mail clients are almost always paired up with some form of instant messaging client as companies hope this will increase the usage and popularity of their e-mail clients.

In 2000, an application named Jabber, revolutionized the Instant Messaging world as users were able to utilize a single application that is a multi-protocol tool; which allowed a user to simultaneously chat with friends on various messengers. As a result, users no longer had to log into various messaging clients in order to contact friends from that specific client, which saved a lot time and hassle. Today, various other popular multi-protocol applications include Meebo, Trillian, and Pidgin.

Such web applications as Facebook have also realized the advantages of Instant Messaging as it recently redesigned its layout to have its chat system in a more prominent place. Previously, the chat feature was hidden into the lower status bar of Facebook and was not often used. Now, the chat status is located on left navigation page of the home page and users are able to see which of their best friends are online.

The Enterprise

Not only has Instant Messaging taken storm within every day use, it also has been integrated into the workplace as employees rely on it heavily now. Such companies as Microsoft have created such products as Microsoft Office Communicator where it contains a wide range of functionality such as chatting, video conferencing, file sharing, and application sharing; while integrating with Microsoft Outlook. Instant Messaging has changed multiple work processes in the enterprise as people are able to accomplish tasks faster and more efficiently. In addition, employees are able to view the current statuses of their fellow co-workers to see if they are at their desk, rather than calling them or sending an e-mail to check. Finally, employees are also able to share documents more easily and able to collaborate on projects more efficiently across the globe.

The Future

As Instant Messaging continues to grow, more and more functionality is continuously being added to each application making it a very modular market. Furthermore, as more clients begin to develop, companies will continue to try to consolidate and integrate all the functionalities of various platforms into a central location. As the years continue to pass, Instant Messaging will continue to have a great online presence in the marketplace, but also will continue to develop on other electronic devices such as PDA’s and cell-phones.

Sources

http://im.about.com/od/imbasics/a/imhistory.htm

http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid186_gci510743,00.html

http://www.jabber.com/CE/JabberMomentIM

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA012143441033.aspx

http://www.convergenorthbrook.com/MicrosoftOffice2007.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging#History

http://www.applelunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/instant-messaging-icons.jpg

eBay

Power of eBay

“Just get it on eBay!” This is what my dad said when I couldn’t find cheap enough headphones at the store. It makes me wonder how it all started. Who suddenly woke up one day and decided to invent an online marketplace? A place where people across states, countries can a

uction their used, semi-destroyed items and actually get some money back? Well whoever did (his name is Pierre Omidyar by the way, more on him later…) created a phenomenon, and has revolutionized the meaning of a marketplace through using the Internet.

The start of eBay

The online auction website was founded in San Jose, California, in September 1995 by Pierre Omidyar. He decided on this idea of an online marketplace and went ahead and created a simple program for it. Once he did he put up an ad for a broken laser pointer, and someone actually bought it for $14.83. Astonished, he contacted the buyer and asked them why they bought it, and the buyer explained, “I’m a collector of broken lasers.” This spurred the idea of creating a marketplace for the sale of goods and services for individuals.

In 1998, Pierre and his cofounder Jeff Skoll brought in Meg Whitman to sustain the success. Meg created an experienced management team with an average of 20 years of business experience and built a strong vision for the company -- that eBay is a company that's in the business of connecting people, not selling them things.

They quickly shed the image of only auctioning collectibles and moved into an array of upscale markets where the average sale price (ASP) is higher. ASP is a key metric in determining eBay's transaction fees, so increasing the ASP became an important item. By forging partnerships with namebrands such as GM, Disney and Sun, eBay has managed to do exactly that. Sun has sold 
$10 million worth of equipment and it now lists between 20 and 150 items per day.

The business model

In simple terms eBay has streamlined the person-to-person trading with their web interface. How? By allowing buyers and sellers to collaborate in a manner where sellers are permitted to list itemsfor sale and buyers bid on items of interest and all eBay users can browse through listed items in an automated way. Now knowing how eBay works, the question is how is it profitable?

Though browsing and bidding on auctions is free of charge, sellers are charged. For one, if an item is listed a non-refundable fee is charged which ranges between 30 cents and $3.30. A second fee is if the seller wants to promote the item, like advertising or changing the style of the item that is displayed, an additional fee is charged. A third and final fee is the end of the seller’s auction.

eBay notifies the buyer and seller via email once the costs are below the minimum price. The binding contract of the auction is between the winner bidder and seller only.

eBay and adversity

How does eBay keep its users? What is their pull? For one, the application itself is definitely a plus point. But the other point is the user trust that eBay has built. Since eBay at no point is directly in the exchange of the item between the seller and buyer, it is hard to build the trust. For eBay to be able to convince users to participate, they must deal with the inevitable delay between the buyer buying the item and receiving it, which is not an issue in the tradition model.

eBay introduced Feedback Forums. At the completion of a transaction, users are encouraged to submit compliments or criticism to the trading profile of the trading partner to the Feedback Forum. By looking at the trading partners history of trades, the user will be able to estimate more accurately the trustworthiness of the trading partner.

eBay and competition

eMay’s idea could easily be copied and these industries did just that: Yahoo and Amazon. Amazon in partnership with the well known auctioneer Sotheby's.

These (and many other) competitors have not only longer operating histories, but larger customer base and greater brand recognition. So why does eBay currenly control more than 80% of the online auction market, with Yahoo and Amazon lagging far behind?

eBay utilized their first mover advantage admirably, quickly and constantly building a community of buyers and sellers.The network effect is important in this market, since the number of buyers and sellers increases the value of the service for other buyers and sellers. If eBay remains price competitive with its competitors there is minimal incentive for the users to switch between auction sites, meaning it becomes more and more difficult for a competitor to displace eBay's trading community.

A different kind of threat is not a direct competitor but a service which can act as a substitute to auctioning, of which Half.com is a good example. Half.com designed a site which allows people to sell used books, music, movies and games at a fixed price. eBay dealt with that threat by buying the company and experimenting with adding their own fixed-price option to their auction listings.

eBay and Future

eBay has become an online middleman for buyers and sellers in a way which traditional brick and mortar companies cannot touch. Using the web has also brought along with it some challenges, especially regarding trust issues between buyers and sellers.
eBay seems to have dealt adequately with those trust issues, since users don't seem to mind and continue to use their service.

eBay is operationally sound, especially considering it is still in its buildup period and it has a business model that scales extremely well. The management has shown that it responds quickly and well, and has been working hard to expand the business without jeopardizing the core business.

Sources

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~magnus/ief248a/eBay/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-ebay.htm

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Computer Virus

What is Virus?

Virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs to interfere with the normal functions of the machine. It has the ability to damage various programs, overwrite and delete files, reformat hard drives and perform other harmful operations. For example, it can attach itself to a spreadsheet program and each time the program runs, the virus will run and reproduce by attaching to other programs. To be a computer virus…

1. It should be able to execute itself by inserting its code in the execution path of another application.

2. It must be able to self replicate by replacing existing files with copies of infected files.

Virus History

Virus started because of the spread of PCs, use of computer bulletin boards, and the use of floppy disk. The first computer virus, “Brain Virus” was created in 1986 by two Pakistani brothers, Amjad and Basit Farooq Alvi. This virus, which spread by floppy disks, was known only to infect boot records and not computer hard drives like most viruses today

What Viruses DON’T do

* Computer viruses cannot infect protected disks or written documents.

* Viruses do not infect compressed files, unless the file was infected prior to the compression.

* Viruses do not infect computer hardware, such as monitors or computer chips; they only infect software.

* Macintosh viruses do not infect DOS / Window computer software and vice versa. For example, the Melissa virus and the ILOVEYOU virus worked only on Windows based machines and could not operate on Macintosh computers.

Virus vs. Worms vs. Trojan Horses

Many people commonly mistake other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability as viruses. For example, Trojan horses and worms are programs that are similar to viruses but different.

* Trojan Horses

- It is simply a computer program that claims to do one thing but instead does damage when you run it. For example, it may claim to be a game but erase your hard disk.
- Trojan horses have no way to replicate automatically or spread like a virus.

* Worms:

- Worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself from machine to machine. It uses up computer time and network bandwidth when they replicate.

- Unlike a virus, the computer worm does not require a host file in order to propagate itself. It is able to enter a computer through system vulnerabilities and uses those flaws to propagate.

Types of Viruses

1. E-mail Viruses: An email virus travels as an attachment to email messages. It usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim’s address book.

2. Boot Sector viruses: It infects diskettes and hard drives and it has ability to hide in boot sector. Boot is the first sector of sectors, smaller sections of disks and hard drives. If you re-boot your computer while the infected disk is in the drive, your hard drive and diskettes can become infected. They were spread when floppy disk was popular since many of them can only spread through floppy disks.

3. Program viruses: It makes copies and will infect other programs on the computer such as .BIN, .COM, .EXE, .OVL, .DRV.

4. Multipartite: It is a hybrid of Boot Sector and Program viruses that infects program files and when the infected program is active, it will affect the boot record. Therefore, the next time you start your computer, it will infect your local drive and other programs

* Some other computer viruses include Macro, Stealth, Active X and Java Control, Polymorphic, Companion, Encrypted, Logic Bomb, Non/Resident viruses.

How to prevent viruses

There are few ways to prevent viruses. You can use more secure operating system like UNIX. Microsoft software is targeted by virus because of their desktop dominance and is criticized for having many errors and holes for viruses. That is why there are relatively few security exploits targeting Mac OS X and is a safer operating system.

Another way is to buy virus protection software. Anti-virus software such as McAfee, Symantec, Kapersky is recommended to keep viruses away from your system and to eradicate them as well. These software include sophisticated scanners that do a quick search of your entire system and detect malicious content from viruses to spyware.

In order for a virus to be effective, there needs to be some action on the user’s part. Therefore, you should avoid programs from unknown sources, but use commercial software purchased on CDs instead. Also, you should never double-click on an unknown email attachment that contains an executable file such as .EXE, .COM, .VBS, and even .JPG. In addition, you should enable Macro Virus Protection in all Microsoft applications which help to prevent many of the email viruses.

Examples of Viruses

* Melissa virus: This virus took advantage of programming language built into Microsoft Word called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), which uses auto-execute feature. So anyone who downloaded and opened the Word document on the Internet newsgroup triggered the virus. The virus sent the infected documents to first 50 people in the address book which forced Microsoft and other very large companies to completely turn off their email systems until the virus could be contained in March 1999.

* ILOVEYOU virus: Created in the Philippines on May 4, 2000, the virus was sent through email and spread around the world in one day infecting 10 percent of computers connected to the Internet, causing $ 5.5 billion dollars in damage. Anyone who double-clicked on the attachment on the email launched the code and sent copies to everyone in the address book and start corrupting files on the victim’s machine. It was more like Trojan horse distributed by email.

* Code Red: Launched in 2001, it targeted Windows’ IIS servers. It could clog the Internet so effectively that things would completely grind to a halt. It replicated itself for the first 20 days of each month and replaced web pages on infected servers with a page featuring the message “Hacked by Chinese”.

* Slammer worm: In January 2003, it used a hole in Microsoft’s SQL server to infect users.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/virus.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/teachers/compvir.htm

Monday, March 22, 2010

E-books and E-Readers

E-books and e-Readers are growing in popularity as people search for more convenient ways to access and store information, but they can pose problems in the publishing industry. There are a huge number of e-book companies on the internet, and also a handful of companies that produce e-Readers, although Sony and Amazon currently dominate the market.

In case you don’t know the different between an e-book and an e-Reader, an “e-book” generally refers to the text file or pdf version of a book, while an e-Reader usua
lly means a hardware or software device.

The Market

The e-book market is huge, and growing rapidly--it is a $350,000,000 market, and increased by 500% between 2002 and 2009. As of September 1, 2009, it was largely dominated by Amazon and Sony; the Kindle had 45% of the market share, while the Sony e-Reader had 30%. There are a number of other e-Readers, however, including the Barnes and Nobles Nook. In addition, Barnes and Nobles and Plastic Logic are developing a new proReader called Que that should be available this summer, while the Apple iPad will be launched in early April. Both the Que and the iPad are not marketin
g exclusively as e-Readers, while the Kindle, Sony e-Reader, and Nook are primarily e-Readers.

E-Readers


The Kindle, Sony e-Reader, and Nook are primarily used as e-Readers, and allow users to access the internet to download books. The Que is marketed towards mobile business professionals who do not want to worry about carrying a number of important documents around with them, but it also functions as an e-Reader. The iPad performs a numb
er of different functions, which are all listed here; the list includes allowing users to download e-books, and also has the added usability feature that users can “flip” a page and pick their books from a digital bookshelf.

Kindle and Sony e-Reader users can utilize a 3G network to download books, while the Que, Nook, and iPad both have wi-fi or 3G options. The Kindle, Sony e-Reader, and iPad both don’t charge the user for internet access with a monthly bill, but include the cost instead in the price of e-books, and it is likely that Que will also use this model. Most of the e-Readers allow users to browse the internet and check e-mail in addition to just using the device as an e-Reader.

One major different between e-Readers is whether they operate on an open or a closed standard. The Kindle operates on a closed standard, which means that books that you purchase on the Kindle can only be read on select devices. The Nook operates an open system, and so books purchased on the Nook can be read on any device, such as a blackberry. The Kindle achieves a closed system because it uses a specific file format that other devices are unable to read, while the iPad will use technology similar to the iTunes closed standard.

EPUB File Format

E-books come in a variety of different file formats, but .epub has become the standard since September 2007. However, many e-Readers support other file formats, including .pdf, .txt, or .doc files. Before EPUB, e-books used the Open E-book Publication Structure, which consisted of a zip file and a manifest file (a metadata file) and used XHTML and CSS.

EPUB is also similar to a zip file, for it is a compressed file that contains a mimetype, META-INF folder, and OEBPS folder. The mimetype merely tells the e-Reader what it in the EPUB file, and the META-INF folder has an XML file that tells the device where the book is in the file. The OEBPS folder, or packaging files, contain the actual book, including separate folders for images, a table of contents, and another file that contains information like the name of the book and the author, as well as the order that the chapters are supposed to go in.

EPUB is designed so that it contains “reflowable” content, which means that the content will wrap the text based upon the device and the reader’s window size. It also can be used on a number of different devices, and there is no fee to use it. It can contain DRM, is styled with CSS, and contains XHTML.

There are a couple of criticisms of EPUB, including that it doesn’t allow for complex layouts (such as a comic book layout) and also doesn’t have a specific way of annotating books. Including the ability to contain DRM information also negates the idea that the file format is open and can be used on any device.

The Publishing Industry

E-books have substantially changed the publishing industry in a number of different ways. Books that are in the public domain are now much cheaper to produce, and can often times be free (books the public domain are books whose copyright has expired). In addition, the hierarchical structure of the book publishing industry can be skipped by some authors, who can self-publish their books for extremely cheap (although they will not benefit from marketing and networking that an agent and publishing company would provide). In addition, book designers are posed with a number of differences between reading on paper and reading on screens. Royalties also need to be re-negotiated, for before publishers received a larger portion of the profit in order to pay for manufacturing and shipping costs.

Most publishers have embraced the revolution, and some are even using the EPUB file extension in-house in place of their old systems.

Sources

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/12/plastic-logic-says-que-e-reader-delayed/tab/article/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35648930/

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&categoryId=8198552921644523779

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10379125-1.html

http://www.ereads.com/2009/08/what-is-epub-and-why-its-important-to.html

http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/tutorial.asp

http://www.web-books.com/Publishing/epub.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

http://besttabletreview.com

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/as_the_e-book_market_matures_Amazon.com_will_face_competition.php

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-04-04-kindle-e-book-market_N.htm


Social Media

What is Social Media?

I’m pretty sure everyone knows the answer to this, but to be safe here’s the definition. Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. It has become huge and is all the rage in the marketing world these days.

History of Social Media

The first site resembling Social Media as we know it today was SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997. Named after the concept “six degrees of separation”, it was the first site to combine features of AIM, dating services, and classmate sites – allowing users to create profiles and list their “friends.” Users could send messages and post bulletins to people in their “degrees”. The site lasted until 2000, when YouthStream Media Networks purchased it for $125 million.

Following SixDegrees.com we saw the launch of many Social Media sites. Most notable were LiveJournal, Fotolog, Friendster, Linkedin, and, of course, MySpace. MySpace was launched in 2003 and can be credited for launching social media into the mainstream. The service grew rapidly because of Friendster alienation and in 2004 the younger generation began joining in masses. MySpace began allowing minors to join the service, with lawsuits involving sexual predators quick to follow. In 2005, MySpace was bought for $580 million. While MySpace has lost some popularity in the past years, we are now seeing a surge of users on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

Business Implications

Social media is no passing fad - it is the way of the future. Here are some facts to consider, as well as a really cool video that has undoubtedly been shown at every marketing event in the past year (socialnomics.net - The video gets a little cut off on the blog, so visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8 to watch):

  • By 2010 Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers, and 96% of them have already joined a social network.
  • In a comparison of how long it took to gain 50 million users, we see that radio took 38 years, TV 13 years, Internet 4 years, and yet Facebook was able to add 100 million users in just 9 months.
  • Facebook is now reportedly hosting 300 million users on its site.
  • 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary source of recruiting
  • There are over 200,000,000 blogs
  • 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines
  • Hulu grew from 63 million total streams April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
  • 78% of consumers trust peer recommendation, while only 14% trust advertisements

So what does this mean for business? Social media cannot be ignored. There are millions of blogs, and while most are probably unrelated to you and your company, there are still 40,000 new ones popping up everyday that could be talking about your business. Take for example an employee at Google, a well-known, yet secretive company. This employee was blogging about Google’s health care plan being less generous than former employer Microsoft. Within two weeks, he was fired. He became an overnight celebrity when Google was accused of overreacting and received job offers from Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, finally settling on Plaxo. He is now in charge of coordinating the company’s blogging efforts.

Social media is the new marketing endeavor. With numbers of users in the hundreds of millions, businesses simply cannot afford to not be Tweeting about their brand. Social network users are 3 times more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising when making purchasing decisions and one word of mouth conversation has the same impact of 200 TV ads. Businesses must get into the conversation.

Facebook vs. Twitter: Who is the Better Marketing Tool?

Recently, Ibtrax, a SEO Social Media optimization firm, compared the marketing benefits of Facebook vs. Twitter for business. The goal was to determine which of these social media platforms provide the best results for online businesses. The results were based on user feedback and experience, monitoring trends, researching 3rd party platforms that support both services, and using several different accounts of each. Depending on what type of benefits your company is looking for, the results were as follows:

Category

Result (Winner)

Traffic and User Metrics

Facebook has advantage due to its large size and traffic volume.

Viral Marketing Benefits

Twitter has slight advantage because it must have a large amount of followers to gain significant viral marketing results.

Social Media interactivity

Facebook had the advantage because the “wall” feature makes it naturally interactive.

Website Traffic Driving Platform

Facebook declared winner because the internal characteristics of the site act as a standalone website (i.e. users can post videos, links, etc)

Means of Market Research

Twitter has the advantage of allowing people to more efficiently search for information related to industry specific trends.

Direct Internet Communication from human resources, client contact, and a sales management perspective

Facebook has the advantage of Facebook chat, allowing instant messaging between users

Business to Business Marketing

Twitter has the advantage because it allows more viral marketing flexibility, which is core to B2B branding

Business to Consumer

Facebook facilitates the building of a large network of followers in a relatively short amount of time to help market a product or service.

The Future of Social Media

The Millennial Generation has become immune to traditional means of advertising. We don’t regard radio, print or banner ads, and are able to fast-forward through commercials on TV. This implies that future social media advertising will have to become part of the online experience, rather than distracting from it. Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer, has outlined several trends to look for in the future. She believes that the strongest business models will begin to incorporate analytics, and that TV and search will become more social. She states that:

“The voice of the consumer is only going to get louder and stronger. It will shape what social media is and what it will become. Not too long ago, a company might have made major changes to its products or services based on a few focus groups, some financial planning and a degree of gut instinct. Social media has already changed all that. And more changes will come.”

There are also new technologies being developed that will surely shape social media as we know it. For example, Arduino is a small circuit board that is low cost and easily implemented. It is capable of connecting real life to social media, allowing for automatic tweets when things happen in your everyday life. One man has used it to create a device that tweets when someone passes gas and a small bakery in London has created a system that tweets what is fresh out of the oven. While these seem rather irrelevant, the fact is that people are able to create these things in their spare rooms and garages, the systems aren’t being developed in R&D labs.

Another interesting innovation is Optical Pattern Recognition & Augmented Reality. 3 years ago, Google acquired NevenVision, a company that provides Biometric Face Recognition technology. It is now using that technology in Picasa in hopes of aiding users in organizing their photos without doing any work. Basically, it would be like posting an album on Facebook and having the computer go through recognize the faces of your friends and automatically tag everything for you.

Perhaps the most far-fetched concept in the workings is that of mind reading. It would be like instant tweeting, your thoughts straight to the computer, or being able to think “Facebook” and in your head you can see all of your friends updates. This technology is in an extremely experimental stage, but there are proofs-of-concept.

Sources:

http://www.slideshare.net/DigitalInfluence/business-impact-of-social-media

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080219_908252_page_5.htm

http://www.jazzou.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=451

http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/

http://mashable.com/2009/06/01/social-media-future-tech/

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007513

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegrees.com

http://www.thedailyanchor.com/2009/02/24/the-future-of-social-media-advertising/