Some time ago, I demonstrated our protocol system to an organization. Everybody was happy. The FC manager the HR manager the IT manager, even the General manager was happy (in organizations you have many managers). Except for one lady that was (of course) manager of the protocol department. She asked me a question: Do you think that you can have all these protocol books inside a computer? (I hoped she meant electronically). This is my work of years (20+) and nobody can do it.
Monty Python sketch, first broadcast in 1970. In the sketch, two customers are trying to order a breakfast from a menu that includes the processed meat product in almost every dish. The term spam (in electronic communication, and as of 2006, general slang) is derived from this sketch.
It features Terry Jones as The Waitress, Eric Idle as Mr. Bun and Graham Chapman as Mrs. Bun. The televised skit also featured John Cleese as The Hungarian, but this part was left out of audio recordings of the sketch.
Only three and a half minutes long, it builds up into a semi-argument between the waitress who has a menu limited to having Spam in just about everything ("Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, sausage, eggs and Spam"), and Mrs. Bun, who is the only one in the room who does not want it (despite there being some items mentioned that do not actually include Spam, she nevertheless asks for an item without Spam in it).
At several points, a group of Vikings in the restaurant (referred to as the Green Midget Café in Bromley) interrupt conversation by loudly singing "Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam." They are interrupted by the waitress several times, but they resume singing more and more loudly until at last the song reaches an operatic climax.
In the end credits, every member of the crew has either Spam or some other food item from the menu added to their names.
Well, to tell you the truth, I don't remember the times that friends or customers called me saying: "Hi, I want a website with a simple but really cool design, maybe with a product gallery and also an e-shop, maybe also a forum would be nice and of course I want to update it myself and not to forget RSS for the news."
Nice approach. The customer / friend knows what he/she wants. And then you get to the point telling him that it would cos X thousand euro. If he/she will not hang up instantly it's your lucky day. "So much? I expected something less, something like 300 euro". Then you hung up the line.
A nice 300 euros website background
Lets evaluate the meaning of the 300 euro cost for a website. - 1 hour of a web designer costs from 18 to 30 euros > average: 24 - 1 hour of a developer costs from 25 to 42 euros > average: 33.5 So approximately you have around 10 working hours for both of them (almost five from each) to build a brand new and also unique website. No further comment! :)
In marketing and advertising, what you pay is what you get!
It is said by Peter Drucker "Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost centre". Marketing is the essential element for a company in order to transform the products or services to necessitates for customers and finally to transform the investment to profit. Companies are adjusting their marketing mix strategies to reflect anticipated market differences in the EU market. The condition of four P's (4Ps) has major impacts and finally dictates if a company will be healthy or not.
Price - Promotion - Place - Product
The World Wide Web (WWW), as a market, is rapidly moving through the stage where the novelty of buying on the web is giving way to a more sophisticated customer who has more and constantly improved demand for product and for services. In the market and especially in the Internet Market the space for small and medium companies, not only exists but also encourage this fact. Let us not forget that Amazon.com has achieved to harmonize the four Ps and maybe in few years more than 50% of consumers will trust companies like this one.
The piso is usually denoted by the symbol . This symbol was added to the Unicode standard in version 3.2 and is assigned U+20B1 (₱). Due to the lack of font support, the symbol is often substituted with a simple P, a P with one horizontal line instead of two (available as the peseta sign, U+20A7 (₧), in some fonts), PHP, or PhP.
Let us have a look of this nice landscape located in Sweden. There are three colors. Yellow, Green and Blue. The trees are in three different positions, in the Blue, in the Green or in between. Yellow is the basis for all. Let us now make the following connotation:
Yellow = Knowledge
Blue = Experience
Green = Revenues
The basis of all is Knowledge. But targeted knowledge. Achieving certain goals and being in top means that the knowledge you acquire you also prove it in your daily work, and also your daily life. Appreciation is coming only after hard work and reading. Especially in the IT field, a blessed field, that each day new things are explored and coming to us, via e-collaboration and communities, to stay away from IT daily news and tactics, will lead you out of the market. Youngsters have the passion and the powers to work allot, but they are not well paid. On the other hand, experienced on IT, are getting more revenues, but also bored. There is no intermediate state. The solution is one, you should have dreams but also be patient and work hard, and when you achieve the first step, think of your past, and how you got here.
I often pick up the telephone and listen to the almost same story:
"Hi, I have a company named XYZ and I want a website, but please I need it fast. Can I have it in two-three days?".
First time this happened, and I said ok, we will do it (since I like to cope with difficult deadlines), there was a major crisis in my office. I had to buy at least 15lt of Coca Cola, and a new coffee machine. I think one of my developers mixed Coca Cola and Coffee finally. Of course we made something nice (as always) but, the problem is again on the customer side.
Let us take Cinnamon as an example. About 80% likes cinnamon, but if it isn't in powder, then it is really difficult to spread it over a cake. What I mean is, you may have the perfect product, the ideal company that would be both mostly appreciated by customers. But if you don't pay attention to the image and the market positioning, then a website or an advertisement, may produce negative influence.
After about a month in my new apartment, I realised that I was not alone. It was past midnight and I was lying on my bed watching television, having enjoyed some local specialties, acquired from the neighbourhood. The plate was still on the nightstand. And there I saw something next to me. It was a little shade, which moved really fast and disappeared as soon as I realised its existence. And then I knew I was not living alone. There was a pest in the house. And it was no insect, like the ones I was used to. This pest was a mammal, namely a mouse... Full document... by Dimitris Kourkoulis (an Apogeer).
Comment: in Apogee we always make your life more interesting...
The five senses, some centuries ago it was considered evil to explore... Today it is considered as the only way that we may explore the world...
Education. First of all it is something that we get from the day we get borne, realizing the worlds through it, going from the unstructured (family) to the structured (school) and then in between we decide what we want to achieve. An architect, a dentist, a mathematician, an Information Systems specialist and so on, is a reflect and a filter of others would want us to be and finally... we select. If our selection is based on conscious then the theoretical base that we will get from the schools and universities will be just the basis of what we will do in the future. I say just the basis because, imagine a youth getting in the university. Though, the books and material that will get is out dated. Diplomacy perhaps, in most universities they teach materials of the 19th century. Where is the present? Of course somebody would say, these are methods proven... but work is something that is dynamically changing each day due to the modern factors of communication (Internet), where universities and schools can not follow.
I strongly believe that education should now-days be more dynamic, challenging and based on the present era. Otherwise, the only use for university title, is to use it under our cv to convince that we know our job that we learned via experience ...
The principle benefit of and reason to outsource is that it allows a firm to focus its activities on its core competency. Simultaneously, the firm outsourced to will be acting in its core competency. That provider firm brings a number of advantages to the performance of its task including access to state-of-the-art technology; economies of scale with regard to hardware, software, and personnel; and aggressive use of low-cost labor pools. The outsourcing firm focuses on broader business issues, or maintains a clearer strategic focus, while operational details are assumed by an outside. Outsourcing can deliver considerable savings on office space, general overhead, company cars, pensions, insurance, and salaries. Since it is their core competency, providers are more likely to remain abreast of technological innovations in their field. The outsourcing firm then gains easier access to expertise and new technological developments.
Providers can be more flexible with regard to workload than an in-house process; this can allow a firm to turn a fixed cost into a variable cost through outsourcing. They are more inclined to be flexible because of their customer/supplier orientation, an orientation that may well be absent in an in-house arrangement. In summary, outsourcing is thought to be beneficial because of economies of scale, improved access to new technology, and the flexibility inherent in the outsourcing relationship.
(23/08/2007) "As of today, thanks to the EU's continued pressure, consumers can now fully assess what's on offer across Europe as regards the new Eurotariffs for mobile roaming," said Viviane Reding, EU Telecom Commissioner. "I note with satisfaction that all mobile operators now appear to comply with the law, and that also the few black sheep we noted three weeks ago have returned to the fold in the meantime. However, the fact that the picture is now complete does not mean that the job is done. Together with the national telecom regulators, the Commission will now look into the quality, transparency and consumer-friendliness of the new roaming offers. In autumn, this will allow us to assess whether there is now more competition in the roaming market and whether consumers actually get a better deal."
The Commission's website, launched on 2 August, lists the Eurotariff on offer per operator in all 27 EU Member States (see IP/07/1202). The table is based on responses to a questionnaire sent in mid-July to 95 mobile operators in the EU. Initially the Commission received 74 responses. Some operators only later informed the Commission about their offers or corrected the information they had sent. Today, with the last two operators - Estonia's EMT and Cyprus' Areeba - having communicated their offer to the Commission, the EU-wide overview is now complete. Read the full story.
