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Brazil Counteracts Currency War

By RD Bentley on August 5, 2011 in

The weakened U.S. dollar has firmly affected currency rates in other countries around the world. In Brazil for example, the Super Real has gained 50% over the dollar in the past three years.

While not intending to alarm its foreign trading partners, Brazil has enacted the Buy Brazil Act, which is equivalent to the “Buy American Act”, instated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, has initiated several measures, including $16 billion worth of temporary tax cuts for certain sectors.

Brazilian Minister Fernando Pimentel defended the act in a statement: “We’re implementing, with many years of delay, the Buy America Act. That isn’t protectionism”.

The real fear for Pimentel is the increase of imports from China. Brazil faces a painful predicament —  while the economy keeps expanding rapidly, imports are outpacing the expansion. This has troubled the Brazilian business community.

The de-industralization of Brazil has concerned officials.

As the U.S. economy appears to be deteriorating back into recession levels, other countries are preparing to jump on the bandwagon to lower their currencies. The currency wars have escalated to a new stage.

Fed Chairman Bernanke addressed the U.S. economic situation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at a symposium. Bernanke said that if necessary, options would be available to provide additional stimulus. Is Bernanke alluding to hopes of QE3?

Additional stimulus could further contribute to the currency wars. As quoted by Minister Pimentel in the MercoPress: Who can compete with the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve?

Photo Credit:

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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eReader Sales On The Increase

By RD Bentley on August 4, 2011 in

A recent Pew Internet report has confirmed that the market share for eReaders has doubled — from 6% in November of 2010, to 12% in May of 2011.

The report claims that since the beginning of tracking in April 2009, this is the first time that the e-book reader has reached double digit sales in the United States.

What’s an e-book reader? The Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble NOOK are basic examples, while there are many other types of eReaders on the market. The e-book reader is primarily a portable electronic device which is designed to read electronic books, newspapers, and periodicals. The obvious advantages of the reader over a book are weight, convenience, and portability.

Tablet computers such as the iPad, have not been selling as well as eReaders in the previous months. There was a difference of four percentage points in the report. However, this does not imply at all that the iPad is not selling well, because it has become a very hot seller for Apple. It simply means that more eReaders are being sold than tablets.

The eReader price wars are bound to weigh in on the sales of the reading device. Price drops have continued, most likely due to the posing threat of the digital tablet. Barnes & Noble recently announced the price drop of the Nook, with Amazon quickly responding to the challenge.

The iPad could potentially become a major problem for Amazon. While the iPad is still fairly expensive, its versatility is very attractive to buyers. The price difference between the two could prove to be an advantage for the Kindle.

Photo Credit:

Image: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Three Tips To Make Your Computer Faster

By RD Bentley on August 3, 2011 in

You are enjoying the day browsing online, but for some odd reason your computer won’t let you on Facebook. Sometimes it lets you on Facebook and you keep getting pop-up dialog boxes. Your laptop just simply refuses to work with Facebook anymore. Is your computer operating too slowly?

Here are three tips that are guaranteed to make your personal computer much faster:

Download and install Google Chrome
1. Why use Google Chrome? There are many reasons to use Google Chrome, and for many the number one reason is speed. If you have used Internet Explorer during your computer experiences, you’ll be delighted to know that there is an alternative available — a faster alternative. It’s called Google Chrome and it’s free for the download.

I’m not knocking Microsoft Internet Explorer at all, in fact you can use both web browsers using separate windows. There may be some instances where Internet Explorer works better for you. If you spend a lot of time on Facebook and are not pleased with performance, I strongly suggest that you try Google Chrome. It works!

The Google Chrome browser helps load pages more quickly. There is a big difference. At first it may seem a little awkward if you’re used to IE, but you can work with both browsers until you get the feel of Google Chrome.

Delete files using Disk Cleanup
2. You should delete your files using Disk Cleanup at least once a day. Unnecessary files can take a toll on your computer’s speed, especially storing photos on your hard drive. If you aren’t sure how to get to this, follow these steps:

Start → Accessories → System Tools → Disk Cleanup

After opening Disk Cleanup, check mark the files that you wish to clean. Most of these files aren’t necessary to keep and can be erased, but if there is reason to keep them don’t check mark them. Take caution and read the descriptions to know what files you’re trashing.

Once check marking the files you wish to clean, hit OK and then hit Delete Files. And you’re done. Since deleting your files often is recommended, you might want to right click on Disk Cleanup from the start menu and click on “Pin to Start Menu” or “Pin to Taskbar” for easier access to it.

Store files using a Flash Drive
3. Having too many files on your computer can really drag your system down. You can free up space on your hard drive by transferring your files to a flash drive.

Saving your files to a flash drive is an easy process. All you need to do is plug in your flash drive to the computer, select the files you want to transfer (multiple files can be selected at a time by holding down the ctrl key and clicking on the files), right click on them, hover over Send To, and hit Removable Disk (make sure you send it to the drive being used by your flash drive and not some other device). Once you send your files to a flash drive you can delete them off your computer by right clicking on them and hitting Delete.

Putting your files on a flash drive not only speeds up your computer, but also keeps your files safe if your computer crashes or gets a virus. It’s also handy to have them on a flash drive to access them from other computers.

There is another option for storing files if you are always on the run and you have hundreds of files that need a home. That option is called Amazon Cloud Drive.

Amazon allows you to store all of your files on the cloud. This includes: pictures, music, videos, documents and more. Your cloud will come with 5 GB of free storage—enough space to store up to 1000 songs. There is no charge for the service at this time. Upgrades come with a fee but the prices are very reasonable.

Photo Credit:

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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A Closer Look At Cybercrime

By RD Bentley on August 2, 2011 in

Mikko Hypponen: Fighting viruses, defending the net

It’s been 25 years since the first PC virus (Brain A) hit the net, and what was once an annoyance has become a sophisticated tool for crime and espionage. Computer security expert Mikko Hyppönen tells us how we can stop these new viruses from threatening the internet as we know it.

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The Future Of The Long Tail Strategy

By RD Bentley on August 2, 2011 in

Reflections on the idea of The Long Tail. The concept was made popular by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine and the author of Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

There are a few key points that Anderson makes throughout the book. Basically, the main theme analyzes the one-hit culture and the general trend to move away from that culture. The hypothesis that Anderson has brought to the table has proven to be valid.

Eric Schmidt of Google argues that the vast majority of revenue remains in the head. Schmidt said in an interview — “You need the head and the tail to make the model work.”

Anderson studiously suggests that there is limited shelf space at retail stores, limited hours of programming on TV, and limited movie choices at theaters. The ethos of the average consumer has always focused on the idea that if a bulky box store doesn’t carry a product, then the product is somehow not worthy of consideration. That’s not the case in the Long Tail world.

Nevertheless, what if there is a demand for products that do not set on the shelves of big box stores? It’s not infrequent to see niche products that find their way into the marketplace on a daily basis.

On television, e.g., you have reality singing programs that are incredibly popular. The performers are usually not that well known, and are normally categorized in a niche role.

American Idol, a program which seeks new solo recording artists, has become one of the most popular series in the history of American television. Again, it’s all about the niche game. While American Idol performers do sing mainstream cultured covers to gain broad attention, new titles are specifically written to showcase the talent of that particular artist.

This is what Anderson is referring to; the ongoing quest to find new material. The internet culture offers technology that provides the audience with a rich variety of alternatives. Scarcity is no longer an issue. While some would find this wide array of choices a bit overwhelming, the majority of consumers today strongly desire to sift through thousands of opportunities.

The one-niche product is the new standard. The niche product doesn’t have to be embraced by every circle. And why should it?

Take a look at iTunes, RealNetworks, Netflix, Yahoo!, and Amazon for example. Their strength lies in the numbers, and these companies are very much aware of that fact. More choice equals better customer satisfaction. That translates to more profit.

As Anderson distinctly points out in his works, liquidity is the key factor. If you want to write a book, Amazon now offers a service to self-publish your book. It’s that easy. If you want to record a hit song, iTunes makes it possible for you to do just that. If you want to deliver your talent to the world, simply grab a camera and showcase your performance in a YouTube video.

The psychology of selling is as unique as the Long Tail concept itself. Just look at campaigns that are used today to sell products. For instance, you have the popular author Seth Godin. He has been known to give away books or portions of books at least, because he is aware that if he eventually attracts an audience, his faithful followers will return and purchase his best sellers.

As reported by All Things D, you have Amazon practically giving away Lady Gaga’s album, Born This Way.

What’s happening here? Amazon is promoting one of its products, the Amazon Cloud Player. The strategy has been used before — just get the audience in the door and keep them there.

While some areas of the music industry have suffered by the internet age, other areas have flourished. There’s no question about it, sometimes the competition can be brutally fierce.

The future of the Long Tail business strategy continues to be about having more of less…

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Weibo: China's Style Of Tweeting

By RD Bentley on August 1, 2011 in

Sina Weibo literally means “Sina microblogging” in the Chinese language. More commonly called Weibo, it claims 90% of the market share and includes more than 140 million users. Weibo is the most popular microblogging site in China.

Weibo is very similar to Twitter. Some call it a hybrid between Twitter and Facebook. You can share your intimate information with 140 Chinese characters. Some Weibo sites have photos and videos.

Weibo was launched in August of 2009 by the SINA Corporation (NASDAQ:SINA). SINA is an online media company and MVAS provider in the People’s Republic of China and for the global Chinese communities.

By August of 2010, there were 466 mainstream news agencies and 41 government departments that used Weibo.

China’s Weibo has become as popular as Twitter and Facebook has in the United States. Weibo claims 56.5% of the market share of active users, competing with Tencent and Baidu. Weibo has 5,000 companies and 2,700 media organizations that have climbed aboard.

To give an example how rapidly social media has spread around the world, Weibo had reached 40 million users in a little more than a year. No other media can even come close to this powerful stream of social networking.

To those who argue that China has not yet won the battle over censorship, social media has begun to break down those gigantic barriers hidden behind the Great Wall. The high-speed train crash in Wenzhou (Zhejiang province) in July proved that the censhorship bastion can be shattered into a million pieces.

Social media has even created an impact on the Communist Party in China, and has adequately affected the media. Citizen journalism has become quite a competitor to traditional jornalism because of the speed and the sheer volume of netizens on any given day. Since the train crash occurred, 26 million posts have been made about it!

We have finally reached golden the age of microblogging, the magnifying glass that has effectively eroded Chinese censorship.

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Protecting Children Or Spy Bill?

By RD Bentley on July 31, 2011 in

The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (H.R. 1981) will require ISP companies to store internet data for up to a year. The proposition is that the act would protect children from pornographers. The House panel has already approved the bill.

The ISP snooping bill will give access to your emails, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, IP addresses, and who knows what else is on the list.

Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) sponsored H.R. 1981.

Opponents believe that the law would permit the U.S. government to further become a police state. This is another move by Congress to initiate an extension of power on Americans’ right to privacy.

Retrieving public data isn’t necessarily a recent advancement. For years the government has obtained information from your social security card, your phone bill, drivers license, etc. There have been tools in place for some time now.

Laws were enacted when George W. Bush was in office to obstruct terrorism, only now they’re saying it’s to protect the community from child pornography. The truth is — the Patriot Act was going to die this year if nothing was done about it, and now government has just extended the same policy. U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren voted against the measure.

Whatever the case may be, Big Brother has been listening more than you think.

You would expect the military to gather intelligence when there is a real threat to the nation. Is spying on innocent citizens helpful or healthy for the nation? Who’s going to pay for all of the manpower and equipment? The debt ceiling nation?

Wired Magazine gave us clues about expenses in 2007:

Despite its ease of use, the new technology is proving more expensive than a traditional wiretap. Telecoms charge the government an average of $2,200 for a 30-day CALEA wiretap, while a traditional intercept costs only $250, according to the Justice Department inspector general. A federal wiretap order in 2006 cost taxpayers $67,000 on average, according to the most recent U.S. Court wiretap report.

Photo Credit:

Image: SOMMAI / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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The Scientist That Sparked The Electronic Revolution

By RD Bentley on July 30, 2011 in ,

Arguably, John Bardeen changed the world more than any other scientist in the latter part of the 20th century. Bardeen and a few of his very bright friends came up with the invention that sparked the electronic revolution, and their invention would propel the computer age further along than any of them could ever have imagined.

How come you’ve never heard of the great John Bardeen? This is a phenomenon within itself. It may be because John Bardeen was an unassuming person, and the media outlets may have overlooked his magnificent contributions to the science community, probably due to his unselfish character.

True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen was the title of a book written about John Bardeen. The one remark that said it all — Bardeen deserves more public recognition than he received during his life.

Before the transistor, vacuum tubes had widely been used in electronics. They were big, bulky, short lived, and burned out too often. In 1945, AT&T saw the need to replace the vacuum tube with a more viable option. AT&T set out to pull a team together to solve the problem. AT&T asked William Shockley to start a research department.

On December 16, 1947, a critical experiment was going to be carried out by two great scientific minds — John Bardeen and his friend Walter Brattain. William Shockley, the man who the two had been working with at Bell Labs, would get credit as well, even though he played a limited role in the discovery. In fact, Shockley wasn’t even present when Bardeen and Brattain became aware of their victory. However, Shockley demanded that his role should receive public recognition.

Bardeen got very angry over Shockley’s undeserving credit, especially when the September edition of a magazine came out, with the prominent figure of Shockley on the front cover.

From November 17 to December 23 of 1947, the Brattain and Bardeen team would conduct experiments to discover why Shockley’s previous attempts had failed. William Shockley could not get his amplifier to work, of which he had used silicon in the process. The team would switch from silicon to germanium. The spark of genius was about to change the world.

On December 23, 1947, Bardeen and Brattain without Shockley, successfully invented a point-contact transistor that amplified. The first working solid state amplifier had come to fruition. The transistor is one the greatest inventions of the 20th century.

What can we say about the importance of the transistor? The transistor is virtually in every electronic device on the market. For more than sixty years, the transistor has transformed the world of electronics. The transistor has been called “the fundamental building block of the information age”.

In 1956, John Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with William Bradford Shockley, Jr. and Walter Houser Brattain. In 1972, Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer. Bardeen even became the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field! The first Nobel was for inventing the transistor. The second Nobel was for developing a theory of the mechanism underlying superconductivity.

On December 14, 2006, the American Physical Society honored Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain by presenting a plaque to Bell Labs.

John Bardeen belongs to a group of elite scientists of the modern age. In 1972, John Bardeen accomplished a feat that no other physicist had done previously, not even Albert Einstein — he won his second Nobel Prize in physics.

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Don't Forget The Flash Drive

By RD Bentley on July 29, 2011 in

The back to school rush is right around the corner. It’s that last minute scavenger hunt to search for all the school supplies your child needs. Pencils, tablets, ink pens, binders, calculators, folders — it can be frustrating!

One item that you better not forget is the flash drive. The Kingston DataTraveler G3 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive (White & Blue) Model DTIG3/16GBZ is one of the best. These are highly recommended by many school kids. In fact, they are sold at some schools!

Amazon also carries the popular Kingston Digital DataTraveler 101 Generation 2 – 32 GB Flash Drive DT101G2/32GBZET.

The SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB Cruzer USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ36-016G-A11 is another excellent choice.

These Patriot Xporter XT Boost 8GB Flash Drive (USB 2.0 Portable) Model PEF8GUSB
 USB sticks are extremely popular with the techies. Over 1,000 reviews on this one.

Mom should buy at least two of these jump drives, thumb drives, or whatever you choose to call them. USB flash drives are great to store pictures, music, documents, and all your other treasured files in the palm of your hand. They are incredibly simple to use, at school and at home.

Flash drives are probably not used enough. Photography has been made so easy with the point and shoot camera. It’s not uncommon to take hundreds, if not thousands of pictures in a short time. Many computer users make the mistake of not storing their precious photos on the flash drive, until they get a virus. Ahh, but then it’s too late. If you’ve ever been in this situation, you know the importance of investing in a flash drive.

Now it’s time for the first day of school. Do you have all of the school supplies? Are you ready for school?

Photo Credit:

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Choosing The Right College Degree

By RD Bentley on July 28, 2011 in
Degrees

Success is not always measured by the biggest paycheck but getting a degree that is applicable does matter. Here are degrees that pay the most cash. It seems that engineers make the most, but there is plenty of opportunity at all levels.

Find a college degree that involves what you enjoy doing the most. You’ll be much happier if you do something that you’re best suited for.

See full methodology for the college salary report. Find your career profile today!

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