Black Friday Security Pitfalls

Even though Black Friday has passed, these seem like good rules to follow on any day of the year to avoid having anyone steal your financial information.

1. Don't click on the link. If you are forwarded a link from a facebook friend about an "awesome" deal, don't directly click on this link. It is easy for someone to hack into your friend's accounts and you may become a victim as well.
2. Beware of Online Ads. Don't click on online ads pretty much ever. Not a good idea.
3. Keep an Eye on Your Card. If you have the opportunity, swipe your card yourself. It cuts down on the opportunity of your card going into the wrong hands and being copied or clones.
4. Don't Miss Coffee and Shopping. Never buy anything online when you are on a network at a public place such as Starbuck's. People have greater access to your computer and therefore your personal information.

Facebook is now #3

Facebook's estimated worth is now bigger than ebay's making it the third largest US internet business. To me, that is pretty impressive. Facebook's wealth is estimated to be about $41 billion where ebay's falls short at $39.3 billion. Facebook falls short to Amazon estimated at $74.4 billion and Google at $192.9 billion.

“There is certainly good cause for Facebook to have a tremendous valuation,” said Augie Ray, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in San Francisco. “It has in fairly short order -- just a couple of years -- gone from being a very niche site to one where the majority of Americans spend a great deal of their online time.”

My thoughts still remain true... Facebook is slowly taking over the world.

Amazon.com has its sights on Diapers.com?

It is said to be in the works that Amazon.com is going to buy Quidsi Inc., the owner of Diapers.com and Soap.com, for $540 million.  The deal may be made as early as today.Quidsi, which expects to ship 500 million diapers this year, will help Amazon cater to new parents and gain expertise in warehouse management and low-cost shipping.
It seems to me that when Amazon.com isn't the best online retailer in that particular sector, they will step in and buy the company. “It’s a business Amazon was in, but one they weren’t a leader in,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners LP in New York. When they see a specialty company dominating a category, “they’ll step in and buy it.” It seems like a good plan to me if you can accomplish it. You eliminate competition while simultaneously growing your business. Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, 46, bought Zappos.com Inc. last year for $1.2 billion to expand sales of shoes and clothing and gain share against other e-commerce providers such as EBay Inc.
It has also been reported that Quidsi also received a purchase offer from Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to Fortune, which reported the Amazon deal on Nov. 6. Personally, I hope Amazon beats Wal-Mart out on the purchase. I don't think that Wal-Mart needs to get any bigger than it already is.

Facebook Sues Faceporn...

Well this is certainly an interesting topic... Facebook filed a lawsuit against Faceporn in court on October 15th in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Facebook is claiming that the porn site essentially copied Facebook to build an X-rated social network. Faceporn "blatantly copied the Facebook logo, site and Wall trademark." Screen shots filed with the lawsuit show some Facebook-like elements, including Wall postings and a similar blue-and-white color scheme. Instead of poking, Faceporn users can apparently "send a flirt," according to the screen shots. Facebook asks the court to order Faceporn to hand over its Web domain and all revenue to Facebook.
Actually, Facebook has gone to court before to prevent social-networking sites from using elements that it considers to be Facebook's property, including the words "book" and "face." In August, the company sued a startup called TeachBook, claiming that its use of the word "book" violated Facebook's trademark. Teachbook doesn't look much like Facebook, but it does give teachers a way to network online.
"We don't believe Faceporn should be able to trade on our name and dilute and tarnish our brand while doing so," Facebook spokesman Simon Axten said Friday via e-mail. "Where there is brand tarnishment, dilution, or confusion as there is with Faceporn and Facebook, we must enforce our rights to protect the integrity of our trademark."

Smelly Printing?

A Printer That Can Print Scents?? What an awesome concept! Scientists from the Keio University in Japan are developing a printer that can print scents onto the paper. As of right now, they can get the printer to print out scents but there are a few kinks in their plan. First, the scent doesn't say on the paper for much longer than a sniff or too. Second, they have yet to develop how a printer will hold and print many different scents at one time.
But think... the possibilities are endless for something like this! They could print menus with this printer and you would be able to smell the dish before ordering it. They could print cologne or perfume ads with this printer so you wouldn't have the annoying flap in magazines to smell them.
I'm pretty excited about this, but I doubt we'll see anything like this being mass produced anytime soon.
It's just like those billboards that were supposed to give off the smell of a steak if that's what was being advertised on the board... I have never seen one of those!

Happy Birthday Windows 7!

Windows 7 turned the big O-N-E this weekend and it is certainly a celebration for Microsoft. When Windows 7 was about to come out, Microsoft was afraid of bragging about it too much because of the Vista debacle. But a year later, Windows 7 is a phenomenal success that has eclipsed expectations. It continues to earn the title of fastest selling operating system in Microsoft history. In the one year since its release, it has sold 240 million copies and claims that 93% of new PCs come with Windows 7 pre-installed. Now the Windows users that are still using XP should jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon since it has proven itself. Excluding all of the cool features that Windows 7 has, XP is a lot less secure than Windows 7. It was created nearly 10 years ago and half of the viruses and other security issues that we face today weren’t even thought of when XP was released. So let’s help Microsoft celebrate to Windows 7’s birthday and all switch to it!

6 Social Media Mistakes That Can Get You Fired

I know lots of people blog about Facebook, but this topic was especially interesting to me. A year ago at the company I was interning with, we had a meeting where we discussed if we should check an applicant on Facebook before hiring them and monitoring our current employees. I am strongly opposed to the idea. I spoke my mind that Facebook is a "social" networking site, not a "what I do at work" site. Management still does not check Facebook or other social media sites at that company.

In the CIO article that I read, it lists 6 mistakes that people make on social networking sites that could get them fired or not hired to a job all together.

1. Post negative comments about your job or your company
2. Defending your employer in an online dispute
3. Discussing private and/or security-related company matters
4. Disguising your identity and  pretending to be someone else
5. Offering up too much information about your personal life and recreational activities
6. Posting questionable pictures 

All of these seem pretty self-explanatory to me but apparently most people don't get the "Facebook" talk all the time like us MBAs do, right? People need to get a little smarter about what they post on social networking sites. One example that the CIO article gave was when a female employee was actually friends with her boss and posted not so flattering comments about her boss. "The woman updated her status to read: OMG I HATE MY JOB!! My boss is a total pervvy (sic) w**ker, always making me do s**t stuff just to p**s me off!! W**ker!" The boss responded: "I guess you forgot about adding me on here? " and ended with "Don't bother coming in tomorrow. And yes, I'm serious."" Now that does not seem very smart! You should really remember that you're friends with your boss.

The article states that 7% of all organizations have fired someone for activity on social networking sites, while 20% of employers have disciplined employees for activities on social networking sites.

Okay... I want to hear your stories. Anyone have anything happen to them or a friend because of something they had posted on a social networking site?

Verizon iPhone? Not anytime soon

I have personally heard many Verizon users be hopeful that the rumors were true that they would soon be able to purchase the iPhone through Verizon. Verizon's CEO put an end to those rumors when he said, "It'll likely arrive one day, but not as soon as we'd like." Verizon is hoping the their LTE or Long Term Evolution network will sway Apple to come to Verizon. According to a recent study, more than half of Verizon subscribers will switch to the iPhone if given the chance. Now that is a lot of people! Also, it has been mentioned that many current iPhone users are tired of AT&Ts poor service and are disappointed that they will not be able to switch to Verizon anytime soon. It will be a bad day for AT&T when Verizon users finally get access to the iPhone. AT&T really does need to do something about their service or should we say lack there of. It is completely ridiculous that on a Saturday night at LSU you can't get a text out, and God forbid a call. They should start the change now so they won't lose all of their iPhone users who only put up with AT&T's service because of the iPhone.

Not another social networking site!

Onto my next blog...

So apparently from cio.com's Google Gets Serious About Social Networking, Google will be adding a "social layer" to it's suite. I mean really. Do we really need another social networking site? I already waste enough of my time on Facebook, I don't need another site to help me procrastinate. It is not yet known if Google will somehow form some kind of alliance with Facebook or develop an entire new site of its own.

Another fun thing that I learned while on this website, there was a link to a site that listed Ten of the Strangest Social Networking Site. And here they are...

1.  stachepassions.com
2. vampirefreaks.com 
3. ziitrend.com
4. eons.com
5. lineforheaven.com
6. matchadream.com
7. intellectconnect.com
8. divorce360.com
9. redkaraoke.com
10. ncludr.com

If you check out any of these, please check out #1. Absolutely the best out of this list.
Have fun and start creating your profiles if any of he above interest you.
Happy blogging!

Texting Gone Wrong

Texting teens get the wrong number -- a REALLY wrong number

I came upon this article because it was posted at the top of my TigerMail account. It is an article from CNN.com where two teenagers in Montana accidentally texted the Sheriff instead of their drug dealer when trying to buy marijuana. They miss-dialed the the phone number by one number. The sheriff turned over the case to a narcotics officer who set up to meet the two boys later that day. This will go on the kids records but they will not face any other consequences. They sheriff said that the parents will discipline the children.

Now this is absolutely ridiculous! Shouldn't you make sure you have the right number before you try to text your drug dealer? This is a perfect example of how much technology has changed the world as we know it. I can only assume but you used to hear about people dealing drugs on the corner. I don't think I have actually ever seen that happen. I would then assume people moved towards calling a certain person on their cell phones. And now, people are now texting their drug dealers.

This wasn't an assigned article but I thought it was super intersting and somewhat amusing. Hope someone else will too! Enjoy!

iPods and Halos

The first article I read today was "iPod Touch Gains Retina Display, Dual Camera" from CIO.com. I'm not really sure why these additions to the iPod touch are huge breakthroughs since they are already a part of the iPhone 4. It should have been a given that the iPod touch was going to get these upgrades as well. It is pretty interesting that the iPod touch is outselling Nintendo and Sony in the portable gaming industry. I never really thought of the iPod touch as a gaming device. I just thought of it as a music playing device. So much for an iPod just playing music.

Another article I read because the title caught my eye was "The Halo Effect of Microsoft's Halo" from businessweek.com. Since my undergrad degree was in management, I have studied the halo effect in multiple classes. I'm not sure the author actually stuck with the halo effect topic throughout the article though. By definition the halo effect is when one trait of a person/thing is influenced by the perception of another trait of the person/thing. Maybe the article is meaning that Halo the franchise is causing a halo effect of Microsoft in the gaming industry. Halo is Microsoft's only successful game at the time. I think it is really interesting that Halo is exclusively for the Xbox only. I'm not a big game but I thought that usually games are made for all of the gaming systems. I didn't realize until just now when I looked it up that Microsoft is the maker of the Xbox. It totally makes sense now that Halo is only made for the Xbox. Even though I don't have an Xbox and probably won't ever play Halo, I am interested to see if this game lives up to the rest of the Halo franchise.