Jessie Lin

What’s more exciting than Black Friday this time of the year?

This year, Wal-Mart has decided to go about the popular Black Friday a different way: by announcing the deals on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day at 8 p.m. This is the earliest Wal-Mart has ever revealed its deals, compared to the 10 p.m. last year. This decision was apparently made in response to the customer feedbacks of wanting to shop earlier. According to Duncan MacNaughton, Wal-Mart’s chief merchandising officer, this year’s deals will be “some of the most aggressive” the retailer has ever had.

Black Friday has always been the craziest shopping day in the United States history. Conflicts regarding customers not being able to purchase their desired goods have happened more than enough. As the lineup is often formed a day, or even two days before the actual Black Friday opening, Wal-Mart is smart by releasing the deals earlier than others. This way, customers can not only preview the deals earlier and have more time to decide what to purchase, but also let them shop and go to bed earlier. Wal-Mart has made a smart move this time, and whether it will be successful or not will be shown after Black Friday.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/08/news/companies/walmart-black-friday-deals/index.html?iid=HP_MP_River

Furniture giant IKEA expressed regret and remorse that it benefited from the use of forced labour in the communist East Germany.

The use of forced prison labour in the 1960s was quite common, with IKEA being one of the many companies that utilized it. The company recently released an offiicial report stating that East German prisoners, with many of them being political dissidents, participated in the manufacturing of the goods that were supplied to IKEA 25 to 30 years ago. The managers of IKEA were also aware of this matter and tried to prevent it, though was unsuccessful.

Jeanette Skyjelmose, an IKEA manager, showed great regret and stated that “The use of political prisoners for manufacturing was at no point accepted by IKEA.” She said that the control system back then was at no comparison to the one today, leading in such tragedy. The chairman of the victims’ group UOKG, Rainer Wagner is thankful for IKEA to take the lead on this and pleads IKEA and the other companies to consider compensating these prisoners as most of them suffer form both psychological and physical disorders.

The exploitation of prisoners is not rare, and has not only happened in East Germany. Peter Betzel, the head of IKEA Germany said the company will continue to investigate this matter and support the rest of the prisoners in the future.

How can the Hostess Twinkies CEO triple his salary while filing for bankruptcy at the same time? And even worse, blaming the union workers for his failure?

As people are frenzying over the discontinuation of the good old Twinkies snacks, perhaps not a whole lot have paid attention to its CEO  and his tripled salary of $2.55 million. In response to Chris in Paris’s blog on the America Blog, I think it is critical for consumers to have the chance to witness this side of the news.

In our society today CEOs are often seen as “Gods and Goddesses.” Corporates pay them insane amounts apparently expecting some Steve Jobbs magic. This is usually not the case, however, and many examples of failures are present. While only the 1% are by their own set of rules, the rest of the people are often being exploited, vulnerable and defenceless.

Something has to be done. It is ridiculous what CEOs are able to do these days and someone has got to stop them (just like the Tea Party example mentioned in Chris’s blog). The government can demand moderate salaries for executives in companies that receive federal fundings or subsidies. And if a company does not have any form of funding from the government, it can qualify by providing a specified executives’s salaries summary to the government.

http://americablog.com/2012/11/hostess-twinkie-ceo-salary.html

RIM is trying to make its way back in the cellphone market with its new free call feature on BBM.

Despite continuously losing market shares to smartphone giants like Apple and Samsung in the past few years, RIM still has a great advantage in developing countries where texting is an expensive luxury. In countries like South Africa, 98% of the BlackBerry users use the BBM feature regularly, sending texts and pictures and participating in group chats. With that being said, it is crucial for RIM to hold on to these customers when its rivals are taking over in the more developed countries.

So far this feature is only available in the “Beta Zone” for BlackBerrys running newer versions of RIM’s software. Though functioning just like a phone call, it will only work through the connection to a localized WiFi network.

The viability of this so-called new feature however, is questionable as it is already overdone. Applications like the popular Skype and Whatsapp, and Iphone’s fairly new feature iMessage have long been present before RIM’s BBM.

BBM used to be RIM’s point’s of difference. Now, even with the additional its new feature of free calls, it is merely a point of parity.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/mobile/rim-adds-voice-feature-to-bbm/article5274314/

Humans are about to view the Earth in a whole new way.

UrtheCast, the Earth video camera, is about to launch the world’s first high-definition video platform of Earth that is streamed from space. With the help of prominent aerospace partners RSC Energia and RAL Space, UrtheCast is building two cameras onboard the International Space Station. This revolutionary device will allow videos of Earth be streaming across the globe. Not only can it be accessed on the web and smartphones, it can be used in aid of educators, environmental services, and humanitarian relief organizations.

Wade Larson is UrtheCast’s director, co-founder, and executive vice president. As a Sauder graduate, Larson has over 17 years of space experience at the Canadian Space Agency and at MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Corporation. One might ask why he would quit his job and take the risk to invest in something that has never been done before. The answer is simply because it is his true passion and he sees the magnificent success in the future.

In the beginning of 2013, one medium-resolution and one high-resolution camera will be launched to space by the Soyuz Mission and be mounted to the underside of the Russian segment of the Space Station. In the beginning of 2012, people will be able to see the stories of earth like never before.

http://www.urthecast.com/

Energy Aware is a company founded in 2005 that is based in Vancouver, BC. Seeking to connect people to resource conservation, the company is working on being the most innovative developer of the “residential demand-side management products.”

So what’s so special about this green company? It is founded by our very own Sauder graduate, Janice Cheam. During her senior year at the Sauder School of Business at UBC, she had the opportunity to take part in the “New Ventures” course, which is a 4th year senior class where Sauder and Engineering students come together to create a practical business plan with an actual prototype. From there, she started to participate in various business competitions, and through that received her first funding of her company.

Today, Energy Aware’s The PowerTab is selling in five major countries in the world under the condition that the smart meter is already installed, though it is still unavailable in BC. It is an in-home display device that provides customers wireless real-time information on power consumption and electricity rates. This user-friendly product gives homeowners instant access to the information they need to make choices about their energy use.

The company has just doubled its office space and is hoping to grow to a 100 million company in the span of five years.

http://www.energy-aware.com/

Did the privilege of convenience turn into an invasion of privacy?

In John Lee’s blog on “Is Google As Great As People Gather,” people are forced to really think about what they are giving away as they perform a simple “google search” online. Google’s monopoly over the internet search engines has gathered so much power that no matter what surfer people are using, they still refer to the verb google for nearly every moment when a curiosity needs to be fulfilled. The new feature on google allows users to store and centralize their personal information. The question now arise, is this too much? Has Google finally crossed the line?

Privacy issues like this have been popular topics in our society today, with facebook topping it off. What Google and facebook have in common is that they gather information across their services and inform companies what people search for. With that being said, however, many users are also using these systems under the knowledge that their privacy could be invaded. Therefore, the new privacy setting on Google really could not have been developed without the invisible support of the users.

The new search feature on Google has been said to cross the line a little bit, but can the society today really live without this kind of convenience? Did not this kind of specialized feature get developed out of people’s need for constant convenience? Where to draw the line is yet to be determined.

While I stumbled upon Anna Zhao’s blog on “Stuck In A Consumerist Society,”  it suddenly struck me on what our society has become, on what we have become. The power of media, of marketing, has led the behaviors of consumers to a whole new level. It is not simply about what we need and what we want anymore, but rather about the revolution of our wants.

The example of the iphone used in Anna’s post is perfect, as a newer version of it comes out more than every year. What are consumers, including me, chasing after? A slightly faster speed? A bigger screen? Or is it the square edges instead of the round? The truth is, even though these features are nice to have, consumers really are going after the “name” that symbolizes the latest version, that symbolizes innovation. 

Businesses know very well this weakness of consumers, utilizing it as far as from fashion to technology. However what really drives this phenomenon going are the consumers. Consumers are helplessly stuck in this cycle of consumerism of buying and purchasing, with most of them being reluctant to get out of it. So what can we do to help put a halt to this consumerist society? Pehaps that is solely up to the consumers themselves.

The two-tier wage scales that have been around the US are coming back to Canada.

The two-tier system is usually implemented when the employer wants to compensate seniors and establish a merit pay wage structure without increasing the overall wage costs, or simply to reduce the overall wage costs of the company. Recently, the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers union) agreed to deals with Ford and GM of a lower hiring rate- $20 an hour instead of $24 currently- and a total of ten years to reach the top salary scale of $34 instead of six.

Two-tier wage deals were seen mostly during the recessions in the early 1980s and early 1990s as a popular resolution when the economy is down. Former CAW president Buzz Hargrove said that unequal deals have become “more the norm than the exception.”

Two-tier systems can often be a backlash to the workers. There have been many cases where the systems have eventually faded away as the economy improved. However, at a time like this with the sluggish economy, it can take awhile for the deals to unwind.

On the other hand, George Smith, labour expert at Queen’s University thinks not, stating ““I think it might be better that companies and unions and employees live to fight another day and are able to adapt to the market conditions.”

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/two-tier-wage-scales-on-the-increase-in-canada/article4564862/?service=mobile

A huge step towards the improvement of gender equality or a backlash of the rising economy?

Under a proposal by the European Commission, Europe’s listed companies will be forced to reserve at least 40% of their non-excutive director board seats for women by the year of 2020 or face some harsh fines. Countries like Britain and Sweden which currently have no hard limits are strongly opposed to this legislation. The legal adviser Pedro Oliveira at Business Europe also noted “One-size-fits-all quotas interfere disproportionately with the freedom of companies and shareholders to organise their own affairs.”

EU data showed that in January, women represented as little as 13.7% of board positions in large listed companies. Does this fact justify the legislation of quotas? Many will argue that this will merely cause another uprise of inequality, yet the gender imbalance issue has been present for so long that enforcing the legislation of quotas is the only effective way for companies to take an actual look at women. As France has already increased the women on board from 10% to 22% in 2011 and Italy from 3% to 33% by 2015, there should be no problem for the EU to reach the 40% quota by 2020.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/65f494e6-f5e7-11e1-a6c2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28puSD0IY