Month: November 2012

The blog post titled “Goodbye Rogers” by Chris Umiastowski intrigued me in a number of way. Firstly i can sense from the title and after reading the article that he does not seem to like Rogers that much. But why? It seems that Rogers overcharges him for the landline and he could get  a better deal for his Internet in another company called TekSavvy that was also owned by Rogers. To me it seems that Rogers are having a monopoly on the telecommunication line and internet connectivity. For an example in the telecommunication  line in Canada, there are few giants corporations of what i believe oligopolies of company that running the show. Based on this link (http://www.rogers.com/cms/investor_relations/pdfs/At_A_Glance_Highlights-Rogers_Communications.pdf) Rogers is probably the most used wireless and telecommunication line. Fido is also one of the bigger companies that provides similar service. However as a Fido user i am rather dissatisfied with the connectivity and data plan that they offer and when compared to my friends who uses Rogers, their connection seems to be better. What is puzzling here is that both of the companies are owned by Rogers. Is Rogers trying to ensure its dominant by buying over other companies and making sure that companies services are not as good but cheaper than theirs? What is certain is that more customers are becoming more frustrated with Rogers services. 

Based on Loh, Wil Fred blog “Hurricane Sandy : An Unexpected Financial Crisis“, Hurricane Sandy has destroyed countless homes and reaped numerous lives in North America. Besides that, it has also caused the Wall Street to close for a full two days. As Wall Street closes down for a couple of days, the shares and stocks began to tumble and this has caused a rather severe financial crisis. This coupled up with the damages that Sandy has caused are the Financial Crisis that was described by  Loh, Wil Fred. However, although the total damage that Sandy has caused surpasses billions of dollars, i believe that it is not all bad news. According to the article “Against the Hurri-Keynesians” by Mark Thornton, the damage caused by the natural disaster could boost up the wage and demand for labor. This would prove to be a good thing for the economy and finance of the country because of the decrease in unemployment and increase productivity in the economy. Nevertheless, the silver lining to the disaster is not always applicable and with a natural disaster a country could also fall into bankruptcy.

http://mises.org/daily/2959

Based on Lau, Longwei post titled “Dell: No Longer Unique?” there are many questions that are remain unanswered for Dell in the future. As mentioned by him in his post, Dell is no longer the only company that uses virtual integration as a strategy; other players in the PC industry such as Lenovo are using the similar strategy to gain market share and more profit. What is clear here is that, it is time for Dell to start of a new strategy. The virtual integration strategy that kept the turnover rate of Dell low must now be reconsidered in order to progress and to improve their company. Dell should start researching about their point of difference and point of parity of their company and others in order to start making changes to their strategy.

Moreover, it is mentioned that tablets and smartphones are now possessing a huge market share in the electronic device market. If Dell were to think of making a tablet and launching it into the market, the tablet should follow cost leadership strategy. The reason is because of the numerous other competitors in the market such as Apple, Google, Blackberry and etc. The other reason would be that Dell is new to the Tablet industry and so in order to gain more popularity and recognition it must start as a cost efficient product first.

http://nicosiamoneynews.com/2012/11/15/mobile-devices-spur-dell-contraction/

This short article about reverse Brain Drain intrigued me. It is said in this article that India is currently facing a reverse Brain Drain where the intelligent people from India who fled to another country due to its economic meltdown are coming back there. Now, people are coming to India to further their studies and to find jobs. This situation is very different a decade or two decade ago where the economy was at slump and many of the intelligent graduates left to other countries to find opportunities there as they saw their future being bleak back at their hometown.  Currently, with the reverse Brain Drain India is gaining because now not only do they have more intelligent workers but they are more experienced as they have lived in overseas and have more potential to help out in the economy of the nation. So the two underlining questions here are that is brain drain a natural process that occurs in each country? or is brain drain a process that will eventually be beneficial for the country?

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-reverse-brain-drain-in-india-has-begun-/600146

Energy Aware Power Tab is a device which enables its user to check on their power consumption and see how much are they spending on their electricity. It needs the aid of a   smart meter or an electric meter which uses wireless to transmit information about the consumption of electricity to the tab and the tab will then show the amount spend with the current usage of electricity.This device will certainly come in handy for household to know the exact amount of electricity that are spend each day and also be a tool to help them to reduce the consumption of electricity by reducing wasteful acts that increases the usage of electricity. However, one would wonder whether the usage of the Power Tab is an effective device where electricity is cheap and abundant. How would the Power Tab help in reducing the wasteful act of household if the acts can be ignored as negligible cost. I believe that although the cost of an increasing consumption will not act as an incentive for the household to reduce their consumption, the awareness of the act will and with that it is hoped that there will be a more efficient usage of electricity

. http://www.energy-aware.com/

Recently after hearing about Urthe Cast in class i have decided to check out its official web page and managed to understand better about its function how the idea of satellite imaging of earth in a new way can make profit. Urthe Cast is a company that will install a couple of cameras on a the Russian section of the ISA and capture images of earth in a new defined way. The idea of capturing images and videos of earth and making them into a profit is really interesting. What is more interesting is how the top management of the company manage to come up with the idea. When first viewed of the videos that was promoted on the website, it was mind boggling and the thought of the cost of making this happen is unthinkable. Besides that, the method of it selling the data from its camera could possibly be a threat to Google and they might come up with similar ideas to counter Urthe Cast. Nevertheless, so far such news are not heard of. With the launch of Urthe Cast it is certain that it will trigger a new spur of innovation around the world.

http://urthecast.com/