Month: September 2011

Since ipad 2 was launched a year ago, there have been many companies like Samsung, Blackberry, Hewlett-Packard that joined the tablet competition and none of them could steal Apple’s spot as the king in the market. However, two days ago Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world has announced that it will enter the tablet market with its first tablet ever, Kindle Fire which is priced at $199, two times lower than that of the cheapest iPad. With this competitive price and Amazon’s very own online data storage, the Kindle Fire can potentially be a dangerous threat to Apple’s iPad.

As new technology is coming out everyday, there is a very low chance that people can tell the differences between similar products, like in this case of the tablets market. People often would just go for the product with the highest popularity which they assume it will suit them the best and have the safest guarantee. If a product wants to launch off with a blast, the point of difference of the product has to play an extremely importantly role.  Thus it can open its own market with few or no competitors and attract a brand new group of customers.

Article: Amazon’s new tablet: On Fire

Comments on Melissa Chau’s Blog and Helena Wong’s Blog

Not needing to stuck in the traffic on the way to work and having the most flexible working schedule ever and , working at home might be a perfect scene to work to many people. However, either from an employee’s or an employer’s point of view, there are actually a lot more downsides of it than its benefits. Isolation from the group, difficulty in the company’s management control, distractions in the house, the lack of integration and trust and the list goes on, thus I certainly agree that people should go to a “workplace” like an office to work.

Companies like Google and Microsoft, they have maintained a very good work/life balance for their employees by providing loads of benefits to them. Yet, usually this would only happen in such big companies with huge amounts of profits and budgets to spend, because employees’ benefits is like a long term investment of a company and results may not be immediate. In general, home is a place for a family to gather, not for work and work should stay at a “workplace” and the trick to find the balance between the two is to make the employees feel like home at work.

Article: The downside of working from home from The Globe and Mail

Commented on: Taline Ainein’s Blog and Rachel Li’s Blog

Near the end of 2009, Toyota, known as one of the most reliable and safest passenger car company recalled there was a “sticking gas pedal” problem with millions of its cars. In fact, the issue had been happening with its cars sold in Europe since the summer of 2009. However, according to the Toyota official since there was no accidents that were directly caused by the problem, the first step that Toyota has chosen to solve the problem was to make a new design for its new cars which was a ridiculous “solution” I would never expect from such a company with a high reputation and reliability internationally.

Even though Toyota is basically known as selling cars with an affordable price with “minimal” features, its safety standard has always been one of the main reasons people worship it. However, in this case it shows that Toyota cares much more about its “customers” than its “users”. Eventually Toyota has solved the problem by extending the warranties to all its problematic cars; however, people’s impression to it has already changed either because they didn’t seem to put business ethics as their top priority or they acted too slowly to show that they do.

News Article: Toyota Has Pattern of Slow Response on Safety Issues

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