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The Easy Part of e-commerce

Written by Christine:

E-commerce is an appealing option for many businesses. After all, your online business is operational 24-7 and your market is worldwide.  Also the cost of running an e-commerce business is relatively minimal as opposed to renting a space, paying employees etc. How appealing is that!

According to the site www.howstuffworks.com,  three easy processes involved in an e-commerce set include

  • Creating your web site
  • Taking the orders
  • Accepting payment

There are many software options for creating an online store. Here are a few brands.

·         Viaweb

·         Intershop

·         Microsoft Site Server

·         iCatCommercePublisher

·         Mercantec-Softcart

·         Inex Corp

·         I-Central Shop Manager

·         Pandesic

·         Open Market

If you are not particular tech savy, another option would be to hire a company to build your e-commerce site for you.

While you are creating your site, consider having a link (most commonly placed in the footer) to an affiliate marketing program. Again there are quite a few software products that provide this feature. Basically you would have a team of affiliates who would make product referrals on their own blogs or websites. They would be paid a commission. Affiliate marketing software will enable you to track your affiliates and monitor their activity.

SPIGIT-Collaboration and Innovation through Social Networking
Written By Christine:
 

There are numerous companies these days bringing the same offering to consumers- social networking capabilities.  They all sound exactly the same, promising that their product will increase your brand recognition and grow a community around your company.  At the most fundamental level, social networking is about bringing people together, but for what exact purpose? People can flock to your site, create a profile, upload an avatar, and then what?

Spigit is a company that offers a social networking product with a unique but useful twist. The point of this product is to bring people together and get them to work at innovating. Users contribute ideas. The software’s algorithm measures how much the user is contributing.  Another important feature of Spigit’s product is that other people can vote on the ideas.

Through the voting process, each idea cultivates its own quantitative value.  The beauty of this is that investors can see which ideas are worth their money.

This software is primarily geared towards internal uses within a company. It attempts to bring employees together in a constructive way to drive innovation.  The multifaceted benefits associated with Spigit’s products make it a compelling addition to almost any company structure.

SHARE POINT SOFTWARE (basic benefits and product line)

Written By Christine:

Share Point is a family of Microsoft products that serve to organize and centralize company information (documents etc.).  As an organization expands the number of documents and the collective intelligence grows along with it.  Having documents stored on individual computers becomes counterproductive as other people need to access them for collaboration.  A common occurrence within organizations is for different staff members to be working on the same document and not even realize it.

Also, as an organization grows, it becomes important to house its collective intelligence in a repository that is easily accessible.  Collective intelligence basically refers to the information that is needed for the business/organization to function and thrive. 

So basically Share Point serves to organize and house documents and information in a way that allows employees to interact with them in a dynamic fashion.

The four categories of Share Point Products are as follows

1.       Windows Share Point Services (WSS)

2.       Microsoft Office Share Point Server (MOSS)

3.       Microsoft Search Server (MSS)

4.       Microsoft Share Point Designer (SPD)

One of the main benefits of these Share Point products is that they are modular and can be easily adapted to just about any existing structure.

AFFILIATE MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE

Written by Christine:

Although e-commerce is typically categorized along 6 main areas: e-tailing, Electronic Data Interchange, e-mail/fax, Business to Business, and security for online transactions, another dimension to consider are enhancements such as affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing is basically an online commission based system.  Affiliates are basically individuals with a blog or website where they can embed a button or a link to the seller.  They earn a percentage of the sale or action for the customers they refer.

Through an affiliate marketing program, businesses are able to reach new customers with a relatively low level of effort. Likewise, affiliate marketers are given lucrative opportunities for additional revenue streams from their own personal computers.  In fact, some individuals are able to make a very comfortable living off their affiliate marketing sites.

Having a virtual store front is one thing, but to have a team of affiliates actively recruiting customers to your site is a force to be reckoned with!  As easy as this can be, it is still important for businesses to uphold the integrity of their product or service.  After all, affiliate marketing is still a word of mouth system, which really depends on happy and satisfied customers who are more than willing to provide excellent testimonials.

e-commerce- The 6 areas
Written by Christine:
 
The basic concept behind e-commerce is basically just buying and selling over the internet. However, there are about 6 areas that basically define its comprehensive scope.

1. E-tailing: Rhymes with retailing right? E-tailing, of course is basically the realm of virtual storefronts, a muti-billion dollar source of income world wide. With an online presence, businesses can be available 24-7 and have market access to the entire globe.

2. Market Research: Market research has never been easier. Companies can easily collect demographic data through online applications such as user-registration and polls among others.

3. EDI: This area basically involves the business to business exchange of data, using a format such as XML. An example would include ebXML.

4. E-mail and fax: This aspect of e-commerce is basically how business communications are conducted.

5. Business to business buying and selling: Although it is common to think of e-commerce as a relationship between businesses and customers, it also encompasses commercial activities between businesses e.g. wholesalers and retailers.

6. The security of business transactions: This is an important element in the world of e-commerce. Without this component, who would even think about doing any kind of business online? In order for e-commerce to remain lucrative, online security for business transactions is an absolute must. Many sites display an SSL seal or certificate to insure users that top level security for their information is provided. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, “a protocol for managing the security of a message transmission on the Internet.”

AFFILIATE MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE

Written by Christine:

Although e-commerce is typically categorized along 6 main areas: e-tailing, Electronic Data Interchange, e-mail/fax, Business to Business, and security for online transactions, another dimension to consider are enhancements such as affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing is basically an online commission based system.  Affiliates are basically individuals with a blog or website where they can embed a button or a link to the seller.  They earn a percentage of the sale or action for the customers they refer.

Through an affiliate marketing program, businesses are able to reach new customers with a relatively low level of effort. Likewise, affiliate marketers are given lucrative opportunities for additional revenue streams from their own personal computers.  In fact, some individuals are able to make a very comfortable living off their affiliate marketing sites.

Having a virtual store front is one thing, but to have a team of affiliates actively recruiting customers to your site is a force to be reckoned with!  As easy as this can be, it is still important for businesses to uphold the integrity of their product or service.  After all, affiliate marketing is still a word of mouth system, which really depends on happy and satisfied customers who are more than willing to provide excellent testimonials.

CRM and Social Networking

written by Christine:

The concept behind CRM is a very broad one. It seems that most people do not associate CRMwith social networking. Part of this is because social networking is commonly associated with youth culture sites like Facebook and Myspace. However more and more businesses are starting to embrace social networking for their marketing and customer service needs. Social networking applications can be used for customer facing purposes and internal purposes as well (e.g. focus groups, market research, customer databases) According to Wikipedia, customer relationship management involves “ all aspects of interaction a company has with its customer.” It’s focus can include sales or service. It can include “ways to personalize online experience…[and] ways to help companies understand and anticipate the needs of current and potential customers.”

Wikipedia also goes on to note that “Many CRM initiatives have failed because implementation was limited to software installation without alignment to a customer-centric strategy.” This brings up the very fundamental, but important question of what it is that customers want from a given organization. Although CRM is associated with technology, it is imperative that companies generate innovative, practical and effective strategies for applying these tools to best serve their target market.

What’s for breakfast and more

For many years my breakfast consisted of a Venti Bar Drink from Starbucks like so many Americans. I love Starbucks as much as anyone but these days I get a tall drip and that's about it. First and foremost your health and the quality of your living being and ends with what you think and what you put in your mouth. Things accumulatively affect you over time. You might feel fine after Starbucks but slowly the caffeine and the sugar begin to make your body a nervous mess filled with toxins. It's not just Starbucks it's the fallacy you don't need breakfast. We've all heard it's the most important meal of the day.

If you look at the world's most successful people most likely they have nutrition and doctors who prepare their menus and what they eat. If you feel good 90% of the time and are happy with your life and are filled with joy then you don't need to worry about anything. Nutrition plays a large role in success and I can speak from personal experience when trauma occurs you will survive and prosper much better when you take care of yourself. When I speak of trauma that can mean anything for the purpose of this blog I'll relate it to 9-11 and the .Com days when I and many others lost their jobs and businesses from the down fallen economy.

If you're thinking well I'll stop at Mc Donald's on the way to work your one step closer to killing yourself. Admittedly I eat at Mac Donald at least one a month probably for the same reason as many others that we grew up with it and there is something comforting about that red haired man. Mac Donald's is just manifested a menu people wanted. Cheap and tasty food. Never mind the fact it kills you literally. Yes there are a few good items on the menu but overall we all know its crap.

The answer in my opinion is not a simple one and requires you understand your unique needs. I'm going to discuss my this based on my experiences. I still drink coffee in the morning but I winged myself slowly from a Venti 21 once one of the most caffeinated coffees on the planet to a tall which is 12 ounces. But the emptiness in my stomach in the morning which was previously filled with coffee and half and half was still lingering. I tried some 600-700 calorie pastries at Starbucks which didn't work obviously.

For me I wanted to fill full and be calm not jittery distracted, nervous or ADD like being unable to focus. If you have every experienced anything of these kinds of symptoms you might blood sugar problems. There are supplements you can take which will help your body regular blood sugar which believe it or not directly affects cognitive function. How your brain processes your experience in life. If your brain is failing even 1% you're going to be missing out. If your brain is malnourish your experience in life will take a great toll. We've all seen someone on the corner talking to themselves on the street. That's an extreme case of cognitive failure maybe as high as 30%. This is from years of trauma which have accumulated toxins.

When you experience stress like when a wild animal is chasing down the street your body release stress hormone which helps you body survive. However in the past 100 years we haven't had to worry about in most cases animals trying to eat us. In fact we don't have to worry about much of anything really. However developing social structures and the race to create wealth has left many people in debt and trying to fill an empty void by killing themselves by cheating every corner they possibly can. Fear and Greed have ended all great empires. Except now we have the internet and mass media educate ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with accumulating wealth but you should take care of yourself while you work on that. I start the day with a few vitamins mainly targeting on maintaining cognitive function so my clarity is at its peak all day. I get my coffee from Starbucks like everyone else. Then after that I start off with some oatmeal. Um yes oatmeal. If you're overly nervous you can vanilla, blueberries and walnuts in there mix it up and cook it up in the microwave. If you know anything about the brain you know that all of these are good for cognitive function and real natural vanilla acts as a nerve tonic to release more dopamine in the brain giving you a calm feeling. It's almost as good as Zanax. In fact if you can't sleep at night drop a table spoon of vanilla in warm milk small serving. If you're extremely neurotic or toxic it will not work the first few nights. It will work eventually.

Everything in your life including how you feel your personality is a result of conditioning. From the moment you popped out of your mothers whom you have been conditioned to be a girl or a boy and to eat and to live your life a certain way. We're all different but we're all a product of our conditioning one way or the other. If you're not in good health, overweight, don't feel good most of the time then the good news is all you have to do is restore yourself by going back your original design. You're born to feel joy and feel good most of the time. Feel bad when you're supposed to not for no reason.

We feel bad because we accumulate negative toxins from what we think and what we eat. Nature Health a vitamin company suggests there are 100 times more toxins in our food then our grandparents had to deal with. If you think negatively and most people do, then you release negative feeling proteins in your blood. You feel bad and you don't know why and you don't know why you need that coffee and cigarette makes you feel just a little better. Or that donut with the sugary coffee every morning. It just makes you feel better from already hard enough day approaching.

The greatest discovery I made was when I realized all my vises, coffee, smoking crappy food everything that brought me comfort was slowly killing me and my cognitive function. In fact in my life's challenges accelerate so fast I was drinking two pots of coffee and smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day. As my therapist told me my life was a mess and nothing I could do could stop it. Every cell in your in your body has been conditioned to need those things. Receptors in your cells crave the bad foods negative thinking dramatic situations anger and complete madness. In a lot of cases most people have very little control over who they are and they are simply a product of their conditioning. Of course they pass that condition on to their young who also suffer from the same dilemmas. So how do you snap out of that?

Now that we established you're conditioned yourself to be who you are no matter who good or bad you do have liberty. The freedom to choose. You can change your diet and everything about you all at once and probably die of a heart attack two weeks later like you always hear on TV. We don't understand what happened he just went on a diet and started exercising. You got their slowly and steadily you must get out of there slowly and patiently. That means don't change everything at once and change it slowly. If you drink 3 cokes a day replace one with a water for a week. If you don't exercise in the morning walk around the block every morning but that's it. Build the habit first then increase your tolerance. Eat oatmeal in the morning one a week until you crave it over the stuff.

It might sound crazy but after two years I prefer sparking water over any carbonated drink. I prefer good foods over anything else. I crave walking in the morning just as much as did smoking. I crave carrot juice in the afternoon. I'm in the best shape of my life my mind is clear and I don't take things personally when I see someone acting toxic or lost their mind because their brain chemistry is tweaked. 30 % of all people suffer from some cognitive loss according to leading Neurologists. You have some friends who are a little off, or need more help than others. You got it.

A healthy life means more joy from life, more money and more compassion for yourself and others. It means a less toxic body which will less likely create cancer or other common heart and brain issues in old age. In the Johnny Cash song God's ganna cut you down, there is the most uncertain truth that we're going pass and I don't know about you but I want to have lived as much as possible.

Who am I? Well I'm not a doctor but I have experience good and bad in my life which have lead me to the doctors who practice general medicine. They practiced on me and didn't poor job only making my symptoms worse and having no positive effects on me. My therapist looked me dead in the eyes and said "wow your life is a big mess". That sprang the day I would fire him and start looking for real answers. I found a book by Dr. Daniel Amen who practices out of 6 clinics across the country which he owns. He practices modern day medicine. Your doctor if you have every spoke to them about the health of the brain works off a document on mental health written in the 60's! Although I didn't need a visit with this doctor I read two of his books and treated my own symptoms just like he said I could.

Instead of therapy I started taking lessons for singing, piano fencing and other things physical activities. When he explained what smoking did to my mind I quit smoking cold turkey after 10 years. I quit drinking so much and changed my diet and started the process. It's important to note that I did this over 9 months to create a measure impact in my life. The business works better I work better. I just feel good most of the time. I appreciate life more and in return it gives me more. The theory of attraction at work. Amen's is not the end all do your own research and feel good 90% of the time it's your life and your experience and you can have just about anything you want. It begins with you.

 

Artificial Intelligence AI

Stephen Spielberg finished a movie a few years ago title AI. I watched this film by myself for the first and only time and I cried like a baby. The story in short in cases a young boy who is the product of a company to replace a real boy was in a comma for the Parents who characters raise the robot boy. The parents have a suitable replacement for their son who is in the hospital. Right until the real boy wakes up from the comma and comes home and has conflict with the AI boy who was of course manufactured. In the story there are an entire suite of robots looking and resembling human life. The story focuses on the this AI young boy who wants nothing more than to find the mother who abandoned him shortly after her real son comes home. The story is complete with a touching ending.

So when can we expect AI to reach a level where we create machines that interact with us with true consciousness. The answer may be never however on the other end of AI are the movies where machines take over the world and all hell breaks loose. Don't worry between Arnold and Kenyo we still have a chance. AI is fundamental flawed in creating truly intelligent machines. AI is more like a sock puppet. It looks like it's real and it has human like qualities and behavior. However there is just an animator who pulls strings and allows the creature to come to life. If this then do that. That's about as intelligent as the machine can be right now.

Jeff Hawkins who you may know better as the inventor of Palm and Palm related technologies wrote a book called On Intelligence. He describes in detail why AI and neural networks will never create truly intelligent machines. First they are NOT modeled after the human brain which is truly the biggest mystery. The brain can look at a pencil and know it's a pencil in less than 100 steps. A computer although it can perform 100,000,000 calculations in the time it takes our brain to calculate would require millions and millions of steps to accomplish the same task. If you changed the shape of the pencil and put Mickey Mouse ears on the pencil. You would be back to square one unless you have a brain.

So from a programmer's perspective the only way AI will take over the world is if there is Man a human being behind all the activity to make truly intelligent decisions about how things need to be handled. So what makes Man so special? Well besides the breath of God that gives us life we have a Neo Cortex which is a new addition to the old brain. At some point we were not smarter than any other mammal in this world. One day our brains developed several new layers in the outer cortex all at once which haves us the capacity to store memory equivalent to terabyte of data give or take.

What our brain stores is memories which haunt us but seriously more importantly we store patterns about what we experience. Based on these patterns our brains can reliably predict the future. Once you continue your experience in a certain area you achieve grand mastery. This means you have so much experience you brain can reliably predict more scenarios that will come up using patterns. You become the answer guy or gal because your Neo Cortex has so much data to work with.

When I worked as a support engineer I took so many tech support calls I got to the point where I could tell what someone's issues was with the software with their opening greeting. I entered on the lines of what I had been calling precognition. This happened to me as well with solving business and software bugs you know before you know. Although I knew I was not special but that my mind could solve an issue in only a few steps and therefore I had all knowing confidence.

If we touched in to metaphysics for just a second it could be believed that these patterns we carry with us leave our energy once we die and the physical matter that makes our bodies is recycle back in to the earth one way or the other. However some people would argue that they are able to retrieve some experiences from past lives. Even Einstein believed in reincarnation at some level most people and religions also cannot eliminate this as a possibility. If patterns could be retrieved from past lives and somehow replant in our Neo cortex would have incredible wisdom to and experience to draw from. No Hawkins's doesn't touch on this subject at all however we can deny all accounts of unexplained behavior or the universe's influence on our life experience.

 

Why VB6 and Classic Asp developers should move to .Net 3.5

If you are VB6 developer or classic Asp developer and have not moved to the .Net platform you're putting yourself in danger of not making it in this business. I remember when I first downloaded .Net and thinking my god they have changed everything. Change is scary and if you are VB6 developer then you know how easy the debugger and everything is for that matter.

Why is VS 2008 more like VB 6 the previous versions? The debugger in VS 2008 is improved more like the debugger in VB6. That one feature alone will probably add 10k to my salary alone this year. The deployment is easier and good number of the bugs in previous versions of .Net are resolved in .Net 3.5. This is good time to make a move if you are going to make it. Alternatively not would be a good time to start doing loans or another career if you're not. Classic technology is not going to be in demand and legacy applications will be replaced in newer technologies by cheap labor.

Offshore help

Offshore developers with Master's degree in engineering are about 10-30 dollars an hour as consultants. What does this mean for you? Well if you were smart and could pull it off you could outsource your work and just live the good life. Seriously if you IT team does not us offshore work to do the "grunt work" you could be wasting your time. The global supply chain will not change for you. You can not ignore this anymore. The work will not come back. They do it just as good and they do it cheaper than any American could. The advantages you have are that you live in a free country and most likely always have. The trust and safe feeling you have here in the country gives you the freedom to innovate. If things like 9-11 happened every day you would not have this freedom.

Basically since half the planet is in total chaos and starving to death or dying from AIDS we still have some distinct advantages. So what does VS 2005 have to do with world affairs? Well the world is getting flatter as Tom Friedman puts it. Your computer that you were reading this one was probably built by 40 different countries and 1000's of people who are not in the U.S. cheap very qualified developers are available at the fraction of the cost. I employ several developers across the world from India and Russia. I have had mixed results. However most of the effort has been better than what I have seen with American developers. They are hungrier and usually more humble about the work.

They way we positioned ProjectThunder was that it would be company with some bold personality. It's an advantage for now. I have more time for my client with cheaper labor. It's not that we saving money we are growing faster and providing more value to our clients than we could have otherwise.

How to move forward.

My thought has always been to move slow and steady. You have to put all your attention in to your work. It almost becomes a spiritual experience to quiet all thought and mental noise and work or write software. I remember as a younger man I was so starved for that I would totally loose myself in work. The challenge with .Net is simply to put first things first and start conditioning yourself for new things. Think of it as sitting down in front of a piano or other instrument that you have never played before. You will not sound like Mozart when you play for the first time. You have to take lessons and INVEST in yourself. Before you know you will playing tunes by Ray Charles. Learning is the key to extending your passion for life. Learning will sharpen your mind and keep you wise in to your old age says Neurologist Daniel Amen. After reading Amen's book about the brain I quit smoking, starting excising and started music lessons. I felt too .Net was leaving me behind. I couldn't keep up it was depressing and along with other drama in my life situation. I compared it loosing my connection with God. Since programming and being my groove at the time was the closet thing to a spiritual practice I had. Without it I felt lost and hopeless.

So the bad news is that it is hard word but the power of actions over time is your weapon for learning new things. Just like the piano learn 30-60 minutes a week. If you can do 15-20 minutes a day. Your are better off doing 5 minutes a day as long as you do it all the time. Why is that? You will be condition your mind to build a habit. Like any habit it will CATCH On. So even if in 6 months you only spent 5 minutes a day learning about .Net eventually like a kite catching the breeze you will too. Like flying a kite you will sail to the top very quickly. Because like a bad habit you will crave new learning like heroin, seriously. You are who you are based on your sum conditioning. If you know how the brain works you know that it is not that much different than any drug. Think of it like a runners high. It is not judgmental about age, race or sex. Although you need certain amount of cognitive power to write software.

If you are not there anymore you will know in your heart but you can apply this practice to any career or anything you still passionate about. They told us that our house and our car purchase would be our biggest investment but the truth is, we ourselves are our biggest investment. I don't just mean your college days. Everyday should include learning or sharpening the saw as Dr. Covey states. Leading Neurologist Amen's also states the brain is the one organ can get better over time where as other organs will get old and stop working. Luckily the brain cells that matter do regenerate when you ACTIVATE them by engaging in learning new and challenging things. Just remember "an inch is a cinch and a yard is hard".

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