Simrat Tatla's Blog

The first company that popped into my head while trying to think of an entrepreneurial company was one that we had recently discussed in my Organizational Behaviour class (yes, believe it or not, some things from OB do stick with you). This company, called Terracycle was created by Tom Szaky in 2001, who was at the time only 19-years-old.

Terracycle uses garbage, actual garbage, such as used candy wrappers or dead cell-phones and uses them to produce all different kinds of products like backpacks, pencil cases, picture frames, even a skunk odour remover to be sold at stores like Target. On Terracycle’s website, people can sign up as “collectors” to send in garbage to this company to help contribute in creating these products. According to Terracycle’s website, there are currently  12,600,092 people collecting trash, 1,856,928,277 units of waste collected, 186 products produced from waste, and $1,482,635.23 raised for charity.

Check out the main Terracycle website to sign up and send in your trash!

http://www.terracycle.net/

Garbage such as used juice boxes are made into re-usable bags.

According to this article,http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/toshiba-unveils-glasses-free-3-d-tv/article1740745/, Toshiba has developed a 3-D TV where you no longer need glasses to enjoy the 3-D effect. For me personally, I think this is a bit of a stretch. Sure, there will be plenty of people willing to spend the high price to purchase these TV’s, but in

Toshiba 3-D TV

my mind, I cannot get over how quickly technology keeps advancing. New TV’s, new smartphones, new laptops all come out within the same year and a year later there will be upgraded versions that you will need to get to replace the “old” product that you bought only a year previously. All these companies like Toshiba or Apple  make tons of money as consumers keep falling for the trap of needing to have the newest technology around (I will admit to being one of these people). However, sometimes I feel as if these companies should just slow down and not keep bombarding us with new technology after new technology before allowing us to enjoy and get used to one product. Is there ever going to be a limit to developing new and advanced technology? When will enough be enough?

Is it possible,or for a better word should I say is it realistic  for a country to completely shut off it’s uses of fossil fuels and run solely on renewable energy sources? In the case of Denmark, this Scandinavian country is considering in ceasing all uses of fossil fuels by 2050. At the moment 80% of Denmark’s energy sources come from fossil fuels. The plan is to reduce their use of fossil fuels to 15%. Call me crazy but I think that’s a big change in 40 years. Currently, Denmark does use some wind farms for some energy sources, but would it be possible to use these for the majority of their energy use? In Denmark’s case I think this goal may be attainable, however if a country as big as Canada, or the USA tried to phase out fossil fuels entirely, I do not think it would work. This video gives more information on Denmark’s potential to run on wind power.

While in my usual state of procrastination, I was watching t.v., when this commercial of these two businessmen sitting on the beach  comes onto the screen. They’re talking about random rates of chance such as “there is a 2.2% chance of being stung by a jelly-fish at the beach”. When all of a sudden, an enormous monster foot emerges out of the water and steps onto the beach. I was strangely intrigued by this commercial. The commercial was for the Standard Life financial services institution. I don’t know if it’s just me but I would not have expected a finance commercial to be that interesting.  I found an article online that mentioned Standard Life was in the process of creating another commercial this time with aliens. In the article, Standard Life’s Vice-President of external communications and public affairs said that in order for people to recognize their company they needed to be more bold. I agree that the commercial I saw was memorable and eye-catching, however I think it would get old pretty fast. I think that Standard Life is on the right path of creating a better image for themselves, but is bold always better?

Buying my MacBook Pro was definitely a bitter-sweet moment for me.

I was pretty excited that, being a university student, I was eligible for the student discount  and the free 8GB iPod Touch deal that Apple was offering(you initially had to pay the full $219 for the touch but a mail-in-rebate would give you your money back).

The city that I live in (Abbotsford) doesn’t have an Apple store where I could go to purchase a discounted laptop, so the most convenient way to buy a Macbook was online. After picking out my Mac and the additional add-ons, I was under the impression that the $1600 shown was the price I had to pay. It wasn’t until after I gave my credit card information that Apple emailed me saying that the total was actually $1800 including taxes.

I though it was very unethical for  Apple to mislead a customer into thinking that the price stated online was the total amount the customer had to pay and not clarifying that the taxes still needed to be instated.

Here’s the website where I made my purchase. The free iPod touch deal is now over, however, the discount for university students still stands.

http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/campaigns/back_to_school

Facebook becomes most trafficked site, beating Google.

Researchers from comScore Inc. have stated that people in the U.S. spend approximately 41.1 million minutes on Facebook and 39.8 million on Google. As Facebook fanatics would say, if Google had a Facebook profile, Facebook would have more “friends”.

Google, however, doesn’t lack the presence of their own social networking site, just a successful social networking site. Orkut, which was quite ineffective in the U.S.,  was Google’s attempt at creating a networking web page.

To compete with it’s rival, Facebook, Google is in the midst of developing a new “social networking feature”. By spending $182 million on Slide Inc. to help get this site up and moving, Google is expecting to get back in the race against Facebook to be the most trafficked site.

I’m all for taking risks, but how is Google so sure that this site will be any different from their past failed attempts? Is it worth it for Google to spend almost $200 million on establishing a site that has to compete with Facebook’s 500 million users?

http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Google+launch+social+networking+feature/3528629/story.html

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