k8atdkit

Wait til I tell you this....

2009-12-05T05:52:00.000-08:00

Wait til I tell you this....
Right we have this cleaning lady that comes in to our house and does a bit around the house, like the ironing ,hoovering and dusting etc anyway about four weeks ago she was in Dunnes Stores in Navan doing a bit of shopping.She came to the till to pay for her groceries, left the shop to where the car was parked outside and was approached by Eastern Europeans asking for direction. There was two woman and a man who held a map looking for a building and Anna(the cleaning lady) didn't have a clue where they wanted to go and decided to signal them to the nearest shop, they hurried on and Anna thought nothing of it. Last week she got her credit card and the bill was for 7000 euros all spent in Dunnes Stores Navan!!! She got to look at the security tapes in the store and out in the car park and the three people that stopped her asking for directions were behind her in the Que watching her put her pin in and when she was helping them with directions the two woman opened her bag and took put her card out of her purse and made an imprint with Playdoh of her 12 digit numbers and went back into Dunnes to shop....scandalous I tell you

mobile commerce

2009-12-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there was a van the held books. It traveled the length and breath of the land .............is that not mobile commerce????
No, according to my lecture notes is" the use of the Internet for purchasing goods and services and also for transmitting messages using wireless mobile devices"(source: lecture notes)
Recently I have seen a massive change in the mobile phone era with the amount of applications and services that are available for the mobile Internet. i.e the mobile phone. I remember the time when I first seen a mobile phone, it had a postage size screen and didn't even have predicted text and the actually size of it well lets just say that a PC speaker would feel modest. The service industry I feel has particularly benefited from this app boom as it is just another channel of communication for their customers to access wherever they go. It is possible to make a reservation for a restaurant on your mobile while booking ticket for a show tonight, there is even some rumors that with a mobile you can control your lights and heating in your house to come on when your away.
Now that there is so much app choice is it possible to customize your mobile Internet from our jean pockets or in the case for the ladies, from their huge bottomless bags. Parents can track their children from their phones using a tracking device just in case there is a mix up between the library and the junior disco.
From a female point of view the mobile Internet could replace our credit cards and even our LOYALTY CARDS!!!!!! Our mobile phones they will be the technology assistants attached to us knowing and meeting our every need from day to day.
However I am still a bit weary of the security and privacy as this needs to be still perfected. Maybe it could link our customized mobile with others of the same and blind dating could go a step further than Cilla Black.

does religion have a place in society today?

2009-11-28T06:51:00.001-08:00

I do believe that religion has a place in society today but only a small part compared to centuries before. I feel the more we adapt to technology and the introduction of globalization we find it harder and harder to get any modern meaning out of religion and can only see the conflicts it causes nowadays. Its important to realize that religion has been around for so long that it must have been some benefit in the past, and that the most obvious effect it has on people is answered their big questions about life and its meaning giving peace of mind and a purpose. Another question it addresses to its followers is the issue of afterlife but its always answered based on perception of that one particular person so religion doesn't really satisfy that question. Is it really believable that as soon as you died you would go to a fluffy white palace where your every want is met and you mingled with famous deceased people....? If its all about perception to answer this gem then wouldn't one persons perception differ than yours. Would you be more willing to risk it all to have a good time without cares or responsibilities if you could be sure that would wouldn't be punished. However on the other hand maybe you wouldn't take those risks but concentrate on the greater goods and selfless acts of good deeds such as helping the elderly and the sick but surely a non-religious person thinks about this issue also so its nothing got to do with religion but just the human conscience. So the route I've taken is the human conscience and how it is independent of religion. I believe that people's behavior is independent of religion due to the fact that religious people don't behave any better than non-religious folk, that the difference between good vs evil has nothing to do with religion but the conscience of a human being.
In my opinion I think that religion serves only one aspect to human nature in modern times and that is that people feel reassured by the ides that there is a presence up above looking out for them and giving them guidance when needed.
I dont judge a person upon there religion if anything I ask the blunt straight forward questions however I actually despise those the are so deeply involved in their religion that they judge pity and try and change others to their religion.

NAMA- what's is all about I ask you!

2009-11-16T07:11:00.000-08:00

So here is my low down with this NAMA explainations... politicians take note...
The reason why the government is setting up the National Asset Management Agency is because its the best option of ensuring the stability of the financial system, the protection of depositors and ensuring that banks were freed up to lend to the real economy. The government's advisers were the Central Bank, the Financial Regulator and the NTMA and came up with this way to deal with the riskiest loan portfolios on the balance sheets of Irish banks. NAMA will buy the riskiest loans in the banks portfolios from the participating banks. This will ease pressures on the banks giving them access to cash and assets like they had before.
NAMA have the commercial powers of a financial asset management company to establish subsidiaries, to operate through agents, to buy and sell assets, to manage loans and work with borrowers, and to take full and determined action in relation to debts owed.
The report goes into more detail and boring jargon but the following are the main aims:

Total lending to the SME sector by the banks which participated in the review remained at €34.5 billionRequests for new credit were predominantly for working capital/ cashflow reasons to address reductions in revenue.The review concluded that formal lending policies have not changed but that the application of policies on the ground has resulted in a more cautious approach to lending.The cost of new credit to SMEs decreased in the period reflecting reductions in base rates. For more boring information see:
http://www.nama.ie/Publications/2009/NAMAFAQs.pdf

how the sex industry changed the internet as we know today

2009-11-12T04:29:00.001-08:00

What has my mother and the online sex industry have in common?

well in short they are both pioneers.... of course in very different contexts.....

When I told my mother that we are doing a topic on the online adult industry, words like "oh lord", "that's disgraceful" and "what will they teach yous next"and when I told her that she had something in common with the topic I had to calm her down with a glass of water(as she doesn't drink-pioneer) and explain that the online adult industry are pioneers as well and she wouldn't have her VHS to tape corrie or be able to watch Brad Pitt on the DVD Player without their product innovations. The following facts show that without the business and technology aspects created by this industry, the world wide web would never of grown so big.

Easy-to-use payment systems, sign-ups, fee -based subscriptions and online security

The next time my mum does her grocery shopping on Tesco online she will notice the easy and quick the process of the conversion-based performance systems is, allowing Tesco to serve their customers through secure e-business models without them ever leaving the home. All of these technology innovations were developed by the adult online industry due to the fact that most of these entrepreneurs concentrate on profit ,cost cutting innovations and serving the customer's desires. The adult sites learned to use the minimum amount of technology to deliver their product. Thus what follows is the more mainstream websites adapting the same business models to reduce their customers acquisition costs. For example Oxendales,Ticketmaster and The Irish Times. The e-business payment systems that are so common today would still be in the early stages of developing,security and highly unstable.

Annoying Spam

The adult online industry perfected the spam culture turning it into a profitable business through the following ways: advertising,banner ads,ads associated with words,traffic for cash ads and pay per click ads as well as performance based advertising and pop-up and pop-unders console advertising windows that I have to say are so annoying but highly effective marketing and mouse-trappings. The adult industry would go to great lengths to keep their customers and potential customers on their site for a long a possible by distracting them with new offers. This business model is used quite a lot with the more mainstream website as they realize that their competition is only a click away and its better to have the customers stay on their site than leave so upon crossing the entry and exit of a website a visitor will undoubtedly find it difficult to leave due to the site taking control of the visitor's browsers to deliver ads to replace each one the user has closed. For example Yahoo! ,Excite and Alta Vista.

Streaming Videos

Forget YouTube, TV Shack and OV guide with their video streaming even though mum hasn't a clue of what those are, in fact she thinks that bebo(which she calls eBay) is the entire Internet and people can see her through the web cam unless its facing the wall!!!!anyway these X-rated sites were perfecting the techniques of streaming videos as well as other things has brought about businesses using this method giving their customers the latest information and entertainment. The adult online industry was the first to use streaming that did not require a browser plug -in which brought about the Adobe bought flash video and RTE real player. To think that global breaking news wouldn't be as current as it is now with out this product innovation from this industry.

Live Chats,Web cam/video conferencing

This era of the Internet has brought a more interactive and humanistic approach to online businesses, like before this all stemmed from the online adult industry. They broke down the barriers and limitations of watching adult videos to actually being able to chat and interact using the most up-to-date technology. This drove the development of real-time chat, web based videoconferencing and live Web cams, thus in turn created a huge profit for this industry. Upon this spark other industries adapted this to suit their needs and the most recent technology developed is the VOIP(voice over Internet protocol) examples Skype and MSN.

Web Analysis software and optimization

The adult online industry should be praised where praise is due, as the businesses all joined together and aimed each to build massive site traffic by sharing top sites links, linking customers to generate traffic and were the first to develop an affiliate revenue-sharing model among themselves, resulting in the industry being highly profitably and successful rivaling others. The adult sites are the pioneers of a multimedia site,Geo- location software and adult check age verification systems so....

......Like it or not the online adult industry is big and here to stay and it will continue to shape the non porn people lives and technologies for the future PS. My mum still isn't convinced ah well cant win every debate.

who created the world wide web

2009-11-11T01:48:00.000-08:00

The man behind the curtain...

Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web after graduating from Oxford University in England in 1976. Among rag weeks and student nights he managed to build his first computer out of a television(x factor wasn't invented then). TBL didnt stop there in 1994 he founded the W3C which creates web standards and improves the quality of the web especially for people with disabilities. This selfless man made this idea free (no patent/no royalties) so that it can be easily used by everyone.

What I find fascinating about my good friend TBL, because lets face it we would be still discovering the wheel withour him, is the way he looks at life...
"told how essential it was to believe in all kinds of unbelievable things" (sourse: Wikipedia)

social networks/social media

2009-10-22T04:51:00.001-07:00

Social Networks
According to Nielsen Online, social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular kinds of online activities- believe it or not!!!!
whats even more astonishing is that 67% of the world online population are now visiting them. Social networks are now visited more often than personal email is read.(http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/13/social-network-design-examples-and-best-practices/)
So what is it all about - social networking is the grouping of individuals into particular groups of common hobbies or linked interests e.g college or work. However there is increasing popularity with online communities through websites(social sites) as there is no geographical boundaries and the ability to produce and gain knowledge easily. Its a means to meet like minded individuals and share experiences, develop friendships and network accordingly. To sign up to these social networking websites is very easy then your virtual community experience begins.......in time being a member of this elite group will benefit you and the community as information is shared but only if the members or supporters are encouraged to submit content.
Social Media
From a company/business side it is very important to develop a online community for supporters to follow your brand- a brand community. It can build towards the customer relationship side of your business while also concentrating on the human factors associated with the brand. There is a need for these followers of your brand to move away from mainstream content and communicate with the personal voice of the brand. e.g Harley Davidson-Harley Owners Group.
This is a more dynamic and flexible way of branding and moves away from the traditional branding activities as the business lets its supporters own, maintain and love the brand.

search engine optimization/marketing

2009-10-01T04:15:00.000-07:00

Greets!!! awww now we are getting into the good stuff- How do search engines work? eeemm its quite simple actually like a spider crawling over you while you sleep, the Google bot/spider crawls over your site within hours of you publishing it to the internet. This spider I have named Charlotte is very intelligent as she takes the general gist of what the site is about and returns to the Google layer for analysis. She returns also if there are any updates to the site.
The result is that if the public type in a word or phrase in Google, the information Charlotte got from the site and many others will be displayed in list form-organic listing( on the left hand side of the Google page,the first being what Google thinks is the most relevant to the search word or phrase and the second site being the second most relevant etc). That's why Google's ranking mechanism is the best in the world. Its simple OR IS IT!!!
Website designers that are clued into Charlotte's process subtly or sometimes not, designed and updated their website such that it is likely to show up on the organic listing for relevant user queries.... ooohhh that's bad for Charlotte and Google because it makes the job more complex and confusing.
So the black list was invented for those websites who confused Charlotte.A website is penalized or blacklisted by search engines because they abused techniques for getting high rankings. Thus the flow of people looking at your site is damaged because Google decided to excluded the website from search lists.ooohh Charlotte -1/Bold Websites- 0
Kate Finlay's guide to not being a bold website:
1) avoid hidden or invisible text instead focus on one or two keywords
2)avoid keyword stuffing,bounce pages or other cloakroom techniques instead regularly check your stats for popular phrases.
3)avoid page jacking and spam instead make it Text Rich(avoid multimedia)
Finally to optimize your website to its best potential for it to be ranked on the organic listing include key phrases in the page title,in the heading on the page, in the regular text on the page and the bold text on the page.
So where does that leave us now? To implement a search engine marketing strategy you already have my new found knowledge and wisdom of search engine optimization(SEO) and how it works all you need now is to decide upon choosing paid for listings(right hand side of the Google page) or organic listings(left hand side of the Google page).
Paid for listings is guaranteed and instant advertising which is context and geographically targeted but its costly and requires daily management to prevent click fraud.
Organic listings has low costs and is perceived as a quality endorsement however its highly competitive among popular phrases and there are no guarantees.
To conclude which ever you decide marketing online can add value to the marketing/communication plan and allows for an increase in competitive advantage. Depending on your target market younger audiences are influenced to an even greater degree than older audiences if you advertise online.
slan

e-biz- Im a wiz

2009-09-17T04:22:00.000-07:00

Hi again, the focus of this blog is on e-business(or is it e business? must ask lecturer) I have shopped, bet,auctioned and compared items online so I could say I have had the practical work done for this subject. However I was unaware of the different business models that are on the internet

virtual storefront
marketplace concentrator
transaction broker
auctions

and so on.. there is a lot more out there than facebook ,you tube and yahoo Thank God!!! and I hope e-business will open up the world of the internet and business for me.
I do have a lot more to learn within e-business in terms of advertising the "how" and "why" of it and also how web standards works. It will be an interesting subject -slan

Post a letter anyone? no didnt think so

2009-09-10T04:19:00.000-07:00

Hi my name is Kate Finlay and this is my very first blog. Has anyone ever wondered when enough is going to be enough?
I currently have 2 e-mail account, a facebook account and a bebo account, a photo-bucket account(a place to store photos to allow relatives to view them around the world) banking online and now a blog.
I know that's not too bad ,I know people that have a lot more accounts to prove to themselves that they are important and have the urge to post every thought that come through their mind...

Cant wait for florida. So much shopping to be done:)
(taken from someone's actual facebook account)

Is anyone else a little overwhelming by this "age of technology". Im not an 80 year old women living with cats I'm 21 years old!!!!!! and sometimes I feel Im spread to thin digitally(such a thought!!!) I wonder if we will suddenly think its hip and cool to post a letter again deeming it "rustic" doing so?
... just a small note that I havent kept a diary a.k.a blog since I was 9 I hope the content will be slightly more interesting ... we shall see- slan