Theo's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Blog

Barcodes are optical machine-readable representations of data, which are mostly known to be used in stores. The first scanning of a barcode was in June 1974 for the purchase of a pack of Wrigley Company chewing gum, and now it is essential for thousands of products in a store to have barcodes. However, barcodes never crossed my mind until I picked up a Milkis from a T&T Supermarket.

What made this soft drink stand out compared to thousands of others? It was because it had a unique barcode, which was designed by a Japanese company known as Design Barcode Inc. Yes, you could always depend on the Japanese to make the littlest mundane thing into something interesting enough to make customers smile. In my opinion, the point of marketing is to sell a certain product and make it stick in the minds of consumers. This is an excellent little big marketing strategy, because consumers will remember products according to their unique barcode. You may not notice it, but barcodes could be a form of advertisement. This may even make consumers want to go hunting for a collection of these. I guess some big ideas are small!

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After reading the blog “High Yen, EU Debt Crisis Crimp Exports” by Tsuyoshi Hamanaka, and his blog source, I find Tsuyoshi’s arguments logical, but it’s off topic, focusing on the wrong issue.

I agree with Tsuyoshi that employees are getting laid off because of new technology. With fast new innovations, a person in the technology field probably has to revisit textbooks every two years. I also agree that technology has reduced employment need.

Even though Tsuyoshi has great opinions, he is shifting away from the real focus which is how debt in European countries diminishes the exportation of Japan, which in turn boosted up the Yens’ currency compared to that of Euros or American dollars. In my opinion, this should have been the main focus. In his blog he interpreted this as the high yen causing Japan to export less, which from my understanding is not the case.

I believe Japan isn’t in crisis (“Like America!”); it’s in an economic slowdown. Japan’s one of the hardest working countries in the world, and even after countless earthquakes, and WW2, they are still on top of the economic ladder. I’m sure they’ll easily recover, and then lead us into a robot revolution!

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Ingenious marketing leads to an innovative revolution. Everyone knows that when you’re working in a job or busy studying you don’t have the time to go shopping for groceries. Homeplus or Korea’s Tesco is the first company to create a successful virtual market. In South Korea, a lot of people commute to and from work day and night and have little time to go shopping. So, Tesco has created a virtual store in the subway where commuters can purchase goods by scanning QR Codes with their smart-phones off a virtual wall. The groceries are added to their virtual cart and are delivered to them not in days but in an amazing hour or two.

This is a good marketing plan because it opens doors to more jobs in Homeplus as deliverers, and hardworking people can easily spend their time on something else. But, how well did it do? The result of this initiation let to a 130% increase in online sales in its first three months, which is more than double of its original sales online. Yeah, I can’t believe this isn’t a movie and I’m seeing this in actual reality. Enjoy a short video which explains their idea.

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A company that I consider to be entrepreneurial is Facebook, a company that started out with nothing but codes and becoming a social network with over 800 million users as of September, 2011. This company exhibits various entrepreneurial characteristics:

1. New Innovation: An entrepreneurial business has to have an innovative product/service. Facebook was the first social network to base service on the personal lives of users, allowing them to stay connected and up to date with friends.

2. Innovation that Grows: An entrepreneurial business’ innovation has to grow. The time it took you to read this sentence, Facebook already has 50 new users. That’s a fast growing innovation.

3. Losses/Risks: Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, went through difficulty to get where he is today. He got suspended from Harvard University for invading personal privacy, he was sued for stealing the idea, he had to lay off best friends, etc. The creation of Facebook is very controversial which you should read on. Zuckerberg also took risks by rejecting Microsoft and leaving Harvard.

As you can see, an entrepreneurial business is one that pioneers with an innovative product/service not knowing where it will lead the business.

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In the business blog “What’s the difference between a consumer and a shopper?” by Jeff Beer, he blogs about an interview with Marcus Evans, a managing director of Integer Canada, on Evans’ opinions on the marketing industry. According to Evans, a consumer buys a product without knowing why, and a shopper buys a product with incentives such as ads or prices. Reading this blog, I was baffled and at the same time questioned some of his logic.

What I found surprising was the number of advertisements we come across every day. According to Jeff Beer, “Thousands upon thousands of marketing messages slap our eyeballs all day, every day and, accordingly, we’ve become pretty good at ignoring them.” I didn’t believe it so I did a little research and most sources say we come across about 5000 advertisements a day – that is about one every 18 seconds. However, there were things that I disagreed on.

I disagree with Evans that consumers and shoppers are different, because there are hundreds of different definitions of what a consumer is. In my opinion, consumers/shoppers are motivated not only by ads and price, but also cultural biases.

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You are probably wondering what the title means? Well, India has churned out the world’s cheapest tablet, the Aakash which runs on the operating system Android 2.2. How cheap? Appealing to millions of people in India who can’t afford an iPad 2, the Aakash tablet is sold at the subsidized price of $35 to students, and later in stores for only $60. If it’s this cheap, shouldn’t there be strings attached? The Aakash tablet probably doesn’t have the specifications most tablets have, like games and thousands of apps to download, but it has all the necessary educational tools a person who isn’t looking for entertainment needs.

The Aakash is not for entertainment, but for learning purposes. In India the majority of students can’t afford a laptop or tablet, so with the Aakash, the poor has access to the digital world (Internet, Word, PPT, etc.). However, at this price the reliability and durability of the Aakash is put into question. Aakash has only been in the market for less than a month, and the majority of users has found it very usable, and there has been no problems as of yet.

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WORD COUNT: 190/200

After reading the blog “Dealing with Climate Change…Ineffectively” by Brantford Ho, and the blogs source “A Clunker of a Climate Policy” by Jeffrey D. Sachs, I found Brantford’s perspective on the topic logical and well thought.

The article is about a program federal program known as “Cash for Clunkers” which seeks to lessen CO2 emissions by giving individuals an incentive of up to $4,500 to trade their old cars for safer fuel efficient cars. However, economists, such as Jeffrey Sachs, argue that this program is costly and also states “that we should rely on price signals, rather than subsidized programs.” In Brantford’s blog, he says their points are valid but doesn’t agree with either side. He also has his own recommendations of implementing taxes on the externalities such as CO2 emission.

In my opinion, I think that Sachs’ argument is backed up is strongly backed up with evidence. However, I think his just a critic. He dislikes the program, but he himself has no better alternatives to reduce CO2 emissions. Brantford on the other hand has a good recommendation which I think would reduce CO2 emissions. Funny isn’t it how we spend so much more just to make it sustainable.

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When it comes to choosing a job, you want to choose a job that makes you want to go to work every day. A job that makes you wants to get up at six in the morning. One of the best companies to work for according to Forbes is Google, the technology giant. There are many perks for working for Google like free meals, gyms, pools, video games, and even slides as stairs. So ask yourself, do you want to be in a cubicle or alive in a workplace like this:

With a fun workplace like Google, they also have salaries which are above the normal wages. Salaries range from $143,000 to $241,000 per year. Even new recruits get around $140,000. In my opinion, working for Google is like a dream job.

However, getting to the heaven of jobs doesn’t come easy. Google gets over a million resumes a year, and they only accept about four to six thousand of these. That is about 0.04% to 0.06% of the people who want to work at Google. After that, you have to go though about 7 interviews in order to get hired.

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Due to problems at RIM, the Canadian manufacturers of BlackBerry, BlackBerry services collapsed on three continents: Africa, Europe, and Asia. BlackBerry tweeted on Twitter about the problem, but a spokesperson from RIM was not available and they have not explained the issue of this failure yet.

BlackBerry is used by millions of people, and especially business people. With the collapse, millions of users were unable to connect to the web, messaging, or send e-mails. This is crucial since business people depend on BlackBerrry for communication and work related aspects.

RIM’s BBM, a free instant messaging service that saves on text messaging costs, was also cut off, which caused annoyance for users. BBM is what makes a BlackBerry unique to other phone products. BlackBerry cannot lose the BBM edge, because without it, competitive smart-phones from Apple and Google can easily take over.

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How long does it take to start a business when someone’s ready to be in charge or when a company wants to expand to other countries? It varies between countries because of policies and laws, but why is this important. Companies need to know how much time it takes until they can start generating profit and what the opportunity costs of starting a business in one country compared to another. Starting companies is usually quick and takes about days. This map shows the time it needs to complete the procedures that make the business legally to operate.

What if the company is going bankrupt and isn’t making a profit, and wants to close a company? Well, it takes years compared to the days of starting up. This is a huge weakness because a company won’t be generating profit, while debt and taxes will be increasing with sunk costs in the variable. Closing companies is usually long and may take more than six years. This map shows the time it needs for a business to legally close.

In my opinion, before making a decision on starting a business, having a solid business plan is essential to a successful business.

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Is it fair to compare Google with Isaac Asimov‘s Multivac? I would say yes. Google owns 80% of Internet servers, and is best known for its search feature, and its various high powered features (Google Maps, Google Scholars, Google+, etc.). Google also generates the most traffic out of all sites according to Alexa Rankings.

13 days ago, Google opened a new feature known as Google Flights ✈ which allows you to search for information on flight schedules in the US. This makes traveling in the US easier for business people who are time limited. I personally tried it out myself and it took a few simple steps, then prices and times of various schedules pop-up. I haven’t been a deep user of Google besides using its search feature, so I dug around and found many useful features.

These features, such as Google Ad Planner or Google Finance, are very useful to us business people. And best of all, they even have a Flight Simulator on Google Earth, and Google Sketch-up to build 3D models. In my opinion, anyone in the business will be relying on Google a lot more in the future. I bet Multivac can’t even compete with that.

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After getting into Sauder, I decided to watch shows that are business based such as Dragons’ Den, a TV show about investors investing in entrepreneurs. One thing that amazed me was how investors took advantage, and the majority of times, forced entrepreneurs to give up 50% of their liquidity. Not sure whether it was due to pressure or a desperate need for support, but entrepreneurs would agree to give away 50% liquidity.

In my opinion, giving up 50% of your business is not worth it. They seem greedy, and sharing 50% of all your work and the potential it has to someone who has a bigger wallet is just not worth it. Watch these entrepreneurs give up 50%:

Once investors gain most of your liquidity, you won’t have the power within the business. An example would be Steve Jobs. It didn’t matter if he was CEO of Apple; he still got fired from a company that he founded, because his liquidity was lower than the investors. In the end he was rehired, because the investors noticed that they weren’t buying the company, but they were buying Jobs’ genius. There’s also gossip of Jobs leaving Apple. Please, don’t leave us!

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It’s been over a year since BP “accidentally” helped the Black Sea and Dead Sea give birth to a disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. BP, which stands for British Petroleum or Blatant Polluters, have taken up the responsibility to clean up their mess, but still, till this very day, scientists are seeing huge environmental disasters. Over the past year, this disaster has raised public attention and awareness on the ethics of BP, which has lowered its reputation. BP should change their logo cause recent conclusions by investigators show the true colours of BP, which isn’t green.

This week Wednesday, federal investigators concluded a report on the oil spill. They concluded that BP, who was running weeks behind schedule at the time, wanted to pump the oil and get it to the gas stations as fast as possible so they took shortcuts. They broke seven violations of federal regulations and more when they decided to skip the safety measures. This conclusion shows that BP doesn’t have the good of the environment in mind.

The sad fact is that they are still in business after breaking laws and causing a huge environmental disaster. BP, which now stands for Beyond Prosecution, was rich enough to take the financial hit from the oil spill. Well, at least they drill their pockets deeper than they do the earth.

In my opinion, companies who have horrible business ethics shouldn’t be allowed to be in business. They are short-sighted and only care about their own gain. So how exactly bad is their business ethics? Tony Hayward, former president of BP, said at the time of the spill that the company would survive. That’s like hitting someone with your car and saying, “don’t worry, my car is fine.” That’s how bad it is.

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Welcome to Theodore Lau’s Supercalifragis… Darn, I forgot how to spell it myself. Well there’s always Wikipedia to help me. And, copy, paste, and done. Welcome to Theodore Lau’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Blog! I know some of you are wondering what the title means or if supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is even a word. Well I’m going to break the title up and explain it elementary style.

So first of all Theodore Lau is me. A little about myself is that I am a first year commerce student, I play DOTA and Starcraft, I watch a lot of TV shows especially children cartoons, and my favourite food would be anything as long as it doesn’t empty my pocket or make me sick.

Second part is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. This word came from a song in Mary Poppins, a 1964 musical movie. It’s the word you get when you put super, stupendous, wonderful, extravagant, awesome, and a bunch of exciting words together in a blender and mix it. According to the movie, it’s “something to say when you don’t know what to say.”

The last part blog means a place where I will be putting up what I think is interesting and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Sometimes I want to share something, sometimes for class, sometimes random, and sometimes I just want to talk smack. So without further ado, welcome to Theo’s supercalifragilisticexpialidocious blog.