Comments on Classes and Article 6.

Good evening. This week 2 lectures on Databases and ERM programs were very interesting for me as the knowledge received can be easily applied in the real life. The new term for me was database warehouse - it was really interesting and useful to learn that these databases include kits of statistical programs, which are really necessary when you work with a huge amount of information. The second new term for me was ERM itself - but as I found out later I knew about existence of such programs and even wanted to learn one of them -SAP, as a lot of multinational companies use it and require their prospective employees to know basic features.

Article 6. Paradise By The Dashboard Light.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/erp/article.php/3702781

The article above gives us advantages of an improved version of Act 2008 software, which is small business customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation software from Sage Software. The most important feature of this software, which previously was available only to enterprise-level products, is dashboard. This option allows a user to see "charts, graphs and tables that give at-a-glance information about current activities and sales opportunities". Sage has provided six customizable dashboard components, which are: my Schedule At-a-Glance; top 10 Opportunities; Activities by User; opportunities by User: closed Sales to Date. These dashboards may be customized as per user's requirements if needed. There are plenty of other useful options that are described in the article, but I would like only to summarize the most important feature with the following comparison: "Imagine trying to drive a car without dashboard displays. You’d never know how fast you were going, when you were running out of gas or if the car was overheating. " The same for the business - and especially for small business - as it is usually forgotten in the fight for big companies' profits. This software cares about the most important issues that help to improve user's business at a relatively low price (see the article) and this is the most important advantage of its performance.

Individual Assignment no. 2

Question:

Are the sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo a type of informative or persuasive advertising or both? Give examples of ads that fall into each of these types and an ad that falls into both types. Why is it important to make a distinction between these two types?
Answer:
In order to identify what type of advertising are sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo we must to define the categories informative or persuasive advertising of first. To do it we need to mention first that both of them belong to Product-Oriented Advertising, where most advertising spending is directed toward the promotion of a specific good, service or idea. In most cases the goal of product advertising is to clearly promote a specific product to a targeted audience. Marketers can accomplish this in several ways from a low-key approach that simply provides basic information about a product (informative advertising) to blatant appeals that try to convince customers to purchase a product (persuasive advertising) that may include direct comparisons between the marketer’s product and its competitor’s offerings (comparative advertising).
From the definition above we can clearly see that sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo belong to informative type of advertising as they just give you the general information about the problem which interests the prospective customer in the given time (see example in the link – sponsored ads: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=The+Best+Diet+Pills+for+Sale&btnG=Search or the picture below as ads change all the time).

Sponsored search ads are limited to a number of key words and expressions on the screen and they can’t provide you enough persuasive information for making a choice at this point. But if the customer follows the advertised link to the advertiser’s web-site here he will be able to see persuasive type of advertising, located on the website (see example in the link – http://www.phenocerin.com/google/index.html?gclid=CMeOvKKt844CFQhtFQodpFuVEA).
I believe that it is not right to claim that sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo can be of pure persuasive type, but they can have some elements of persuasive type as shown in the first link (the last sponsored ads, stating “25lbs in 30 Days- No Diet”. It tries to persuade the customer that its kind of product has superior features and the web-site itself gives more persuasive information later as shown in example 2. So we can assume that some Sponsored search ads fall under both categories simultaneously.
From my point of view the importance of distinction between above mentioned types of advertising is in way how they affect customers and how customers react on them. If informative advertising is not considered like advertising, but like a help for the customer looking for a specific product, then persuasive advertising is perceived like subjective and annoying ads until the customer specifically looks for it. As those types of advertising also have different purpose (to give information for attracting the customer (informative) and to persuade to buy (persuasive)) they can be regulated by different way both by government and company legislation. Different price strategies for allocation of such types of ads may apply too.

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 5.

Good afternoon. From Mobile Communication and Database lectures the most interesting and unknown things for me were: 1) New possibilities of connecting PC and TV work and Iphone structure and features; 2) Existence of different database types and their drawbacks. I was also surprised that Microsoft Access can not be classified as database at all.

Article 5. Cell Phones of the Future

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/08/cellphones/index_01.htm

Please, notice - there are different 8 slides in the article - each on separate page).


The article shows us that future cell phones add more and more different functions and, in my opinion, they loose the possibility of being called the “phones” at all as their main function becomes unknown. You can watch movies on them (see the last slide), use as the jewelry investment or wristwatch, etc. Soon anything available in our imagination will be performed in these small devices. It is very interesting and exiting. Especially if we remind ourselves that 20 years ago most of the people could not even imagine that they would use phone connection without wire attached to it. With such technology development speed we just forgot about these times with great pleasure.

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 4.

Hello. The two new things from Software and Networking lectures for me were: 1) I didn't know that the device, which transforms analog signal into digital, is modem. What about when modem is used with digital phone lines? It still has to be present there. Does it have some other purposes then? 2) I knew about existence of client/server model of software communication, but never knew about other types possible.

Article 4.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201808208&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News
From the first sight this article does not seems to have a lot in common with our Internet topic. But let's take a deeper look on it. 20% of people claim that "they spend less time having sex because they're too busy online". Is not it horrifying? These simple data show us how deep Internet has penetrated in our life. Most of modern people even don't see any difference between online and offline life. Moreover some of them even replaced their offline life - they do most of the reading, shopping and even communicating online. I agree that it is easier. I do it by myself. I talk with my parents online, but I can't do it different way as they live in Ukraine. I'm really scared that in close future this "piece of hardware" can replace all the real human communication. Does it really have such abilities? For me - it does not. I do and will always believe that nothing can be better than sitting with your close friends together at one table and talking. It is the most valuable thing for me. What about you? Have you already exchange sex for Internet? :-))

Individual Assignment no. 1

Google AdWords is a quick and simple way to purchase highly targeted cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, regardless of user’s budget. AdWords ads are displayed along with search results on Google, as well as on search and content sites in Google’s growing ad network, including AOL, EarthLink, HowStuffWorks, & Blogger. With more than 200 million searches on Google each day and even more searches and page views on our ad network, exact Google AdWords ads reach a vast audience.
When user creates a Google AdWords ad, he chooses keywords for which his ad will appear and specify the maximum amount he is willing to pay for each click. The user only pay when someone clicks on his ad.
There's no minimum monthly charge -- just a $5 activation fee.

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive Google AdWords™ ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on user’s site, he'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance his content pages.
Simply put, Google provides the user with AdSense HTML ad code to place on the web pages on which he wants to display AdWords ads. Then, Google takes care of the rest by leveraging award-winning and proprietary Google search and page-ranking technologies to deliver relevant AdWords ads to those content pages.
The user gets paid whenever someone on his site clicks on one of the AdSense ads. Advertisers can also bid to appear on user’s site on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Both CPC and CPM bids compete in Google’s AdWords program to ensure that user optimizes his ad revenue.

Google’s income from Advertising:
($ in thousands, except per share amounts)

Revenue 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Q1 2007Q2
(unaudited)
Total ads. revenues 410,915 1,420,663 3,143,288 6,065,003 10,492,628 3,627,450 3,838,341
Y/Y Growth rate 514% 246% 121% 93% 73% 63% 58%
Q/Q Growth rate NA NA NA NA NA 14% 6%

Source: http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html
P.S. Sorry tried several times, but can't import chart here.

My opinion is that both these programs are the most beneficial for small and middle-sized companies. One if the reason is: the search for the products usually is done per key word, which is the name of the product – not brand. So companies with unknown brands (small and middle-sized) and not expensive products are searched. If people need product of a big sized company they go straight to its website as its repeats the name of the company and usually well-know.

The most important difference from TV advertising is in customer orientation of the services provided. The users will be offered the only type of advertising that they are looking for (not the whole range of different products like in TV advertising). The second advantage is that advertisers can limit their target auditorium to specified location (state, city, etc.) when is much harder to establish in TV advertising.

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 3.

Good afternoon! Today I would like to mention 2 new things learned from my classmates Hardware presentation and Software lecture. The first term I heard first is Virtualization, which "includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource." (Wikipedia source). The second new thing for me was the difference between machine languages of first and last generation, namely that you can understand the languages of last generation as they consist of plain English words.

ARTICLE 3.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9035459&intsrc=hm_list

As you can see from the article a new edition of Sports software - MagicSports 4.0 - was introduced targeting especially sports fans, who are too busy to watch every game, but still want to know all the details of favorite events. The software can analyze 4 types of games - football (new), soccer, baseball and sumo wrestling and using several special techniques (like four-star classification) creates 20 minutes final video. It offers number of convenient options like watching the game from the favorite point or moving back and forward, editing the game and creating own video, which can be shared with friends. The program is user friendly and easy to install.

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 2.

Hello! Today I would like to share my impression on the two last classes and tell you what was the most interesting for me. The first thing that I found new and pretty simple is the approach of solving of every kind of the problem from IT side. In the beginning it seems for you impossible to solve some sorts of issues, but if you classify them first as per categories given and then just apply one of the possible solution choices it becomes much easier. The second thing, which was new for me, is availability of different types of computers (huge classification) even though some of the names mean almost the same and you can't see the difference between them from the first sight.

ARTICLE 2.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20070904234014.html

You can see the direct connection of this article with class topic "Hardware" as it is one of the "input" devices as per general rule. But if to take a look on this keyboard I believe we can also say that it is "output" device as well: "Specially designed software will be able to change images on the colour screens depending on the program running." So it will give you some information depending on the task. This keyboard has already found its place in the market, but I personally don't see a lot of application for it. And what about you?