Social and business networks

In the last ten years the functioning and strategies of companies, as well as ways and means by which each person does their work have changed radically thanks to the possibilities and tools that have been offered online.

Organizations in general have tried to keep up and leaving adapting to technological changes and trends that they have made, so that they can remain competitive in an increasingly demanding and dynamic.

But no they succeed or all of them are willing to let the new tools take over their work environment and that often do not feel ready, do not know how to handle and do not fully trust the benefits that they can provide, there is a certain fear of risk of implementing these new tools, unknown and so radically different from what used so far.

This applies, for example, online social networks, some companies have become his most loyal allies of work and others do not even want to mention. A new survey by Accountemps found the feelings being experienced finance directors of organizations on this issue, are concerned that the use of social networking is a waste of time, but recognize that this brings benefits such as improved customer service.

The survey was conducted by an independent firm to Accountemps from over 1400 CFOs of U.S. companies with twenty or more workers.

Virtual Business

virtual worlds like Second Life are a new medium with many opportunities to do business and make contact with customers, yet many companies still give back. The next five years virtual worlds will be essential to brand building of large companies. Classic business models do not work in this context, companies that want to position themselves must have a long-term strategy.


An article carried out by the consultancy Deloitte has concluded that virtual worlds like Second Life, normally associated with teenagers or Internet fans are growing in popularity very quickly and that their full potential has not yet been taken into account by most companies

These virtual worlds have created a new way for people to socialize, entertain and, of course, makes economic transactions. It is estimated that some 50 virtual worlds that have already signed up 178 million people. Second Life has been that has set in among the users. And despite that is still seen by many as merely a sophisticated way to play, the truth is that business is already being done and working in Second Life.



Companies such as Coca-Cola and Sears, have created virtual shops to test there products. The prestigious INSEAD business school has developed a virtual campus to replace classroom training. In short, more and more companies use these "parallel worlds" to enter in touch with your customers or to improve their internal operations.

However, the study warns that many companies exploring these new media can be quite daunting as its traditional approach is not sustainable in the long term. Because, although such self-organized communities can be potentially a very lucrative business, the classical models can not, under any circumstances, get all your party.

Innovate

We can say that there throw imagination and innovation.

"Virtual worlds present opportunities that businesses should know sooner or later," says Kamale Lardo, the report's author, said in a statement. "The inevitable changes that will bring virtual worlds will redefine the way companies interact with their customers and facilitate more sophisticated modes of interaction between organizations," he adds.

In the past year, many executives have had to make the decision to start your business career in places like Second Life, either for business, pure and simple, either to accompany a marketing strategy. It is not easy making this decision, says Deloitte, or measure their true potential. Perhaps this is why many of them were established with great media noise, have left too quickly, even seeing their number of subscribers increased steadily.

The study predicts, in any event, within five years, these worlds will begin to dominate and lead the brand building larger companies. This means that they are already positioned there will have some competitive advantage over those who take the decision to gamble in this way in the coming years.

Having a strategy

Expand the business into a virtual world is not without risks (many of them similar to what we find in the real world), especially with regard to brand and reputation.

The dramatic fall of the dot-com "in 90 should serve as example to know what to do and what not to explore this new medium. Virtual worlds have been created, also great excitement, a lot of hype and disappointments. Deloitte is time to enter a stage of maturity and productivity.

"Although the number of active visitors of virtual worlds has yet to reach critical mass, who explore and understand this context today will win the loyalty of its customers tomorrow," says Lardo. "To develop a strategy targeted at customers in this new environment, companies must first understand the marketplace and its users," he concludes.

Deloitte recommends that companies adopt a long-term strategy based on three phases. The first step would be to decide what is the reason to bet on this medium. At this point, the company has come to know well its technology foundation to keep abreast of new trends. It is also necessary that the strategic objectives of its implementation are based on measurable outcomes, such as the number of visits or appearances in the media.

The second phase, the report says, should be conducting a pilot project selected as the best option. In this case, the technological cost and risks are lower than those supporting a pilot project in the "real world."

Finally, after six months testing the operation of the pilot project, the company should make the decision whether to fully implement and continue operations, or not.

Online businesses also require a long-term

Perhaps the best way to approach the subject of the Supernova conference taking place in San Francisco on an annual basis, whether to consider the type of audience that, according to organizers, are addressed: technology executives, business strategists, entrepreneurs, investors daring, political, service providers and analysts, among others.

The main concept intended to discuss and explain, and around which try to integrate into the world of business, government institutions and technology leaders, is the decentralization caused by connectivity every day more and more global, pervasive and ubiquitous, that takes place through computers and other communication devices interconnected throughout the world.




Such phenomena are by collapsing the old industrial model and changing the world as we knew it, because businesses are distributed and shared more and the users acquire a major in the same never experienced before, using tools like blogs, recommendation services web page and cyber-connected networks.

Big numbers

In 2007, Americans bought over the network products and services worth U.S. $ 127,000 million, representing a 25% increase over the previous year, according to a recent article in Managing Technology accounts for some of the topics discussed at the last Supernova conference, held during days 16 to 18 June.

To be important, however, represents less than 4% of total retail sales in the U.S., although it should also have other online services: for example, Google admitted that last year more than 16,000 million dollars and most of them came from its advertising services.

What we have been discussing in the Supernova is that, despite the great potential of the Internet market, these figures reflect, very few companies have actually had success in developing new effective ways to make profits online. Most companies have seen on the net, at best, simply another means to insert in her traditional advertising models.

Explorers

Eric Clemons, professor of Wharton SchoolSaid that there are many sources of value and untapped business niches on the Internet, particularly in the area of online services. As a business model actually developed and operated online, as opposed to using the network as a means to implement the old models, described, among others, two examples: Gaia Online and Photoshop Express.

The first, Gaia Online is a virtual world created several years ago by a Japanese comic book artists. More than 300,000 daily users enter the same by participating in role-play multi-player, create their own avatars and interacting with each other through forums. About five million users, most of them teenagers and young adults, come every month to this page, which gives an idea of its success.

The developers began seeking small donations from users to keep the site active, and the answer was that they were three times more than they had anticipated. Then they came up with the idea of giving users the ability to buy (and sell) virtual products. Where does Gaia real incomes? To sell, the price is nothing virtual $ 2.5 each, limited editions of virtual goods have value for users to become old and start to dwindle. To this we must add also the sale of real and hats and shirts based on some of the most popular virtual items.

Then there is advertising, which has begun to experience Gaia for about year and a half, by original actions such as his association with New Line Cinema. Users of the virtual world of Gaia have to perform some activity of the same to get a trailer to a film promoted by this company. And this is, in the words of Executive Craig Sherman of Gaia Online, "to create experiences that are fun and meaningful to the Gaia community as well as beneficial to sponsors."

For its part, Adobe has long put up a different action by no less successful, made available to the public, and amateur photographer in particular, completely free of charge, a simplified, yet effective, its flagship product: the tool Professional Photoshop image processing. The popular version is called Photoshop Express offers users the ability to upload, edit, store and share their photos, as well as integrate with other services like Facebook, Photobucket or Picasa.

Do the benefits of all this to Adobe? Sales of premium and professional services in addition to potential customers from the mass public to its free services, advertising, and agreements whereby computer manufacturers buy licenses for the software components pre-installed Photoshop Express.

In line with these initiatives and this new vision of business online, include the intention of the company Sun Microsystems to continue releasing products (as they have been doing with Java or Solaris). During the Supernova conference, the company president, Jonathan Schwartz, was to present a world map showing which dots (increasing by 100,000 per day) the density of downloads ZFS, a file system released. Schwartz concluded: "Each of these points is a potential customer."

How will companies in 10 years?

The technology will advance and workplaces will be very different in 2018 about how they are now. That is the prediction made by a group of experts assembled by the Human Resources Management Worforce portal that also give a warning for companies to begin to take note.

The conclusions of this expert panel are dominated by the feeling that the job will be temporary and "village" for teams still more mobile and flexible.

They believe that the figure of "freelance" win integers. Furthermore, with regard to management style, say that social networks will change the "command and control" style prevailing in favor based on collaboration and teamwork.



Participants in this panel include amounts in human resources experts from companies such as Yahoo, Ernst & Young, Infosys Technologies and SAP. Furthermore, had the expert opinion of the American academic world.

One of the predictions in which almost everyone agreed it was about the explosion of social networking and other collaborative technologies such as wikis (web pages can be edited by many volunteers).

In fact, "collaboration" and relationships are two words that are going to sound in the workplace over the next two decades. Of course, these places will be increasingly physically and geographically distant, but very close and connected technologically.

Adaptive structure

The structure of the work will be more "adaptive," with more informal managers. In addition, the use of virtual teams will grow, with many people communicate via video, email and text messages, as submitted by the representative of Infosys in the panel.
In fact, the work seeing the faces of peers could be in danger of extinction, as face to face contacts will be increasingly scarce.

"Our communication is so dependent on email or SMS," says Nandita Gurjar, Infosys, in the journal Worforce Management "that no one will talk on the phone anymore."

Participating experts showed differing views on what effect the arrival of Generation Y or employees of the "millennium" (those born in the years 80) to work. Some predict that will contribute to the boundaries between private life and working life are diluted. Others, however, anticipate that the presence of this group have a large effect and talented people will continue to work hard and prosper in organizations.

Business Travel

There was also some disagreement over the number of business trips to be made by 2018. John Haggerty, Cornell University, says that will be made less. By contrast, other participants predict that companies will demand managers with a more global experience, so you are going to have to travel far from their country of origin.

Where there was unanimity that itself is increasingly moving to put more emphasis on ethical leadership and corporate responsibility. In 2018 this will be reflected in increased training and recruitment that is made will take into account both aspects significantly. Indeed, the recruitment process will become more virtual and for that very reason, also be global.

The SAP representative insisted that there will be a transition from a leadership based on order and control to styles that prevail in collaboration and dialogue. Therefore, organizations are going to be forced to think differently about the kind of leadership they need, and about the capabilities that they should have.

The benefits that employees have a few years, this panel of experts said that will be more creative and personalized, and that would include the care of dependent people or pets, among other things unthinkable today.

All participants agreed in pointing out that Human Resources will play a greater role than at present. In this regard, the representative of Ernst & Young predicted that the term "Human Resources" disappear, and suggested names like "personal" or "employee relations."

¿Less than 2 months? Failure of Microsoft

Spent less than two months since its launch and Microsoft announced yesterday that it canceled the production of their cell phones Kin, designed for young users of social networking sites. In the technology company said it was to focus on the Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft went on sale two types of kin in U.S. last May 13 between 50 and worth $ 100 and planned to market the device in Europe in recent months, something that no longer occur. The company, however, continue to work with the Verizon telephone company to conduct the inventory of existing U.S. Kin

"We made the decision to focus on the release of our Windows Phone 7", Microsoft said in a statement released yesterday, which said the team dedicated to Kin will become part of the staff working in the development of Windows Phone 7 (WP7), which hit the market in October.

According to technology website Gizmodo, Microsoft's decision was based on poor sales of Kin. From MSNBC, media, formed by Microsoft and NBC Universal, Kin scored a "white elephant" because, despite its functionality and access to social networking sites, use rates were as high as those of cell high-end but without offering the same services.

The company said Kin advances will be applied in the next WP7, with which Microsoft hopes to compete with the iPhone, Blackberry and other phones of the so-called "smart."

Marketing en Facebook

magina be able to reach current and potential customers through the largest network in the world, with about 400 billion users and growing.

That is the proposal made by creators of Facebook to trademarks, an offer that had roots of urgency to improve the economic figures of a gold mine that was not even a really profitable exploitation route.

The network aims to be an alternative for companies that still believe that marketing and advertising options are limited to mass media such as radio, television, newspapers and magazines and even the Internet, but also associate it with traditional media is ie web pages of newspapers and magazines.

Facebook


First, companies need to understand that to succeed in these areas need to think beyond the term "campaign", and that success in social media is based on creating continuity with consumers.

Therefore, we must seek to be reliable and be perceived in this way in front of customers openly.

Facebook has chosen to compete with Twitter by enabling a "public search" by changing their privacy policies-a plus for advertisers, but not for users.

It has also implemented a strategy of "Open Graph", integrating features of Facebook directly on other websites, conceptually similar to Google AdSense, based on keywords or phrases.

He also completed the migration to a system of "Likes" or better known as the "I Like" application that allows Internet users to tell if they like the content or an advertiser's product.

A more than interesting for brands considering that Facebook now accounts for 7.5% of surfing time people in the United States with 134 billion airtime per month.

The trend is in line with other social channels are doing. For example, Twitter has its function Promoted Tweets, an advertising platform aimed at organizations interested in using the microblogging social network to develop their business strategies.

Continuing with Facebook, another point to emphasize is related to their ability to influence, particularly through public figures deemed "influencers." Reach these people leads to better results and a high "Share of Voice."

Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis, add other concepts such as sharing, the sharing of content, "clicks, how many people do you click to content," engagement, "how much time interacting with the scope, content, and how inspired they are to spread and share content.

These benefits are just some of the possibilities that remain to be announced on the social networking world.

Business Intelligence for success

Citius, Altius, Fortius! (Faster, higher, stronger). The motto of the Olympic Games helps us reflect on our business objectives at this time. Because. confess, we live in times of change exponential sales cycles vary, the market is more aggressive, changing consumption patterns before they finish analyzing sales. We must go further, to adapt, evolve. But how? Using common sense business intelligence tools.

Information Today

These days a company can not afford, for example, errors like a sales campaign die before birth, for not taking into account all the information needed to direct market their product right.


For the Commercial Division of a company the challenge is clear. Analyze what to sell, when, to whom and how. Decisions, along with other areas of the company, including Marketing, based on information from various sources, internal and external. All these parts, well geared, can make good decisions in less time.

Today we are not surprised continuous change and the speed at which it occurs. We live in times where the information is growing so rapidly that a newspaper publishes information in a week that was accessible by a person of the eighteenth century in his life.

Thus, the volume of information generated by companies is doubling every two years. What can we do to manage it? The natural solution is to rely on powerful and sophisticated tools, the so-called business intelligence, allowing us to make better decisions using the huge volume of information also is necessary for our business. The technology allows, and in many cases, the pocket too.

In the case of the commercial area is particularly critical if we consider that both business decisions (target market, prices, margins, distribution of accounts) as the analysis of results (sales funnel-sales-funnel, milestones achieved, percentage of achievement of objectives) and response to alarms (minimum sales threshold, threshold margin, market share) should handle massive amounts of information from various sources throughout the company.

Intelligence, "the Director or the platform?


Rhetorical question if ever there was, as the business intelligence tools provide the information but intelligence, industry knowledge and experience of the business address that selects the direction to follow in terms of information.

I will give two examples, of which you can learn to fix the concepts we are discussing:

1. Imagine a company that quarterly sales report is remitted to a commercial director role, document the numbers of the best commercials are underlined with a fluorescent marker. Is it enough to track quarterly sales, without detecting any internal or external alarm this time? What if the director wants to analyze the same information by customer, by sector, see the trend in the next quarter based on the above? Will the information in time?

2. Now let us take the example of a company whose sales have dropped, but does not know why. If it needs to analyze your target market if the price of their products is competitive, if your bank is sound and its position within the market. For this purpose, using business intelligence tools define a plan in two phases: situation analysis and monitoring of the plan of action.

To track, define the desired objectives and measures to achieve. The Commercial Director is updated, reliable, allowing you to check daily if the plan is working and otherwise react. A plan like this has allowed the recovery position in the market, increasing sales by 35% and 10% margins.

Evolve

The business intelligence tools, or Business Intelligence, opens the door to a new style of business that can make the most time, allowing further improve our decisions, since the quality of the information that we do grow exponentially.

The market requires a Commercial Director to evolve, to squeeze the most out all the necessary information to make decisions that your company needs, and for this, your best ally is the business intelligence tools. Give it up can mean huge losses of market share in times that we can afford.

Let us not miss the train of success. Do we have available all the necessary tools to make our business decisions?

Changing rules in the music business

Sudden technological changes, are accompanied by uncertainties, risks and changes in rules.
Take for example the music market. In recent times, the advance of the sale of online music is advancing steadily. Within this market we found today, three different models:

• The buying unit where people decide to buy a track or entire album, and only pay for it.
• That is done by subscription, where you pay a monthly fee and in return you can download a certain number of songs
• The real-time playback, which pay a monthly fee and you can hear the entire quantity of items you want (but no transfer of ownership).





What will be the dominant model?. We must not neglect the sale of music through traditional channels and formats, much less a free trade possibilities (namely, Kazaa, eMule, Morpheus, etc.).

We must also consider changes in actors. As technology advances and allows authors to produce their own albums, what is the role that they will comply with the record companies?, Do they have the same power as the current one?, "Will also compete with current players selling music online?

It is clear that the business is transfigured by the day. This implies a major strategic challenge for those involved, because of uncertainty about the dominant design that will prevail in the near future.

Many more questions remain unanswered. If there is anything we can ensure, is that the technological changes, as mentioned in the example, come to change the rules forever.

MySpace beats Yahoo and online advertising

While the statistics provided by comScore highlights the rapid growth of MySpace, analysts say the social networking site has struggled to get ad rates and the highest possible price similar to Yahoo.

Yahoo! lost the top spot of advertising presence in the U.S. market at the hands of MySpace and companies to which it belongs, Fox Interactive Media for News Corp, according to new data reveal the industry.

The cluster of sites of Fox Interactive, led by MySpace, recorded 56.8 million advertising views in June compared to the Yahoo group sites, which totaled 53.1 million views, according to data released this week by the firm of Internet audience measurement comScore.



publicidad onlineBut while the statistic highlights the rapid growth of MySpace in terms of audience advertising, analysts say the social networking site has struggled to get ad rates to the highest possible price similar to Yahoo, famous for attracting major advertising rates.

"Social media gets all these ad impressions but not necessarily with the dollars," said Colin Gillis, analyst at Canaccord Adams. The cost per thousand (CPM) page views are significantly lower than that of Yahoo, said.

A MySpace executive said they are closing the gap with rivals such as Yahoo, AOL Time Warner and Microsoft Corp's MSN after the renovation of its home page in June, which has attracted sponsors like Sprite renowned and Wendy's.

"Our CPM has grown significantly," said Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing at MySpace, on the surging growth in June. "Category by category, year after year, we grow in double digits," celebrated.

According to comScore data for advertising impressions, June was the first month that Fox Interactive beats Yahoo, whose views of advertising fell nearly 12 percent since May.

While it may be too early to conclude definitively that MySpace surpassed Yahoo, comScore data shows that Yahoo's stock on the market for displays has trended downward since July 2007.

Yahoo questioned comScore's measurement methodology.

"We believe that there may be problems with the measurement that could be distorting to Yahoo and we are reviewing comScore's methodology and working with them to solve these problems," said a statement by spokesman Adam Grossberg.

Innovation: invest more, is it better?

A study by Booz Allen Hamilton said that investment in R & D does not mean innovation. It casts doubt very established that investment in R & D is a good indicator of innovation success and, therefore, it automatically has to innovate more to think about spending more. Further details of the study are:

Be quinnovacionand invests less bad, but being the most, gives no security to be good. Of the 1,000 companies surveyed, 10% with the lowest investment rate out clearly hurt sales in gross margins, profits and returns for shareholders. On the other hand, 10% more investment in R & D is slightly better than the rest, but was not statistically significant.

At one point, the number of innovations that a company may develop commercially is limited. Why not hold a patent with the results. Probably there is a limit beyond which the benefit of the projects be used by others.

Yes there is an association between the ratio of R & D on sales and gross profit, although profit is reached. Firms with greater R & D sell higher margin products, but after deducting general and administrative costs, marketing, etc ... are not significantly more profitable.

Against the common belief that smaller firms are better able to innovate for its flexibility, the results indicate that economies of scale are useful. Larger companies invest a smaller proportion of their sales on R & D, without necessarily having significantly worse outcomes.

Teens and Internet

Sulake Corporation, the creator of Habbo.es one of the sites most popular teen world, has published the results of an international study conducted in 22 countries (42,000 users) which shows that 90% of teenagers around the world feel that the Internet is the medium that most used and most valued services of the network are instant messaging and email.


Blog de negociosInternet is the most important means of communication.

According to the results from the study, the main reason for using Internet is socialization, being able to get in touch with friends is also important. Instant messaging is the most popular service among teenagers between 14 and 18, while the use of e-mail is more valued among those over 20 years.

66% of users think that television is an important communication and fewer than half see the radio as such.

54% of teens think that magazines are an important means of communication but not so with newspapers, less than 40% of respondents are considered of interest. The importance of newspapers grows with age, surpassing radio and magazines as they are reaching age 22.

Mobile phone use

85% of users have their own mobile. The study demonstrates that in addition to making calls, almost all adolescents who have also used wireless phone to send SMS household goods. The SMS are used in Europe than in the United States and Canada. In addition, more than half of young people also use their mobile phones to take pictures through its integrated camera. Nearly a third of Habbo users listen to MP3 music through their phones.

In Britain and Italy is extremely popular use of cameras integrated into mobile phones and the ability to play music in MP3 format. Browsing the Web with the mobile is still somewhat rare, except in Japan, where 43% of teenagers use mobile phones for this purpose. Only 6% watch TV through these terminals.

Cultures and subcultutas

While the youth of the world is about values, beliefs and attitudes similar, however, form an extremely heterogeneous group. In fact, the major subcultures identified in the study, just under half of adolescents. The results show that, in general, young people have a positive self image, become identified in some cases with the success and popularity. More than half of consumers consider themselves as some "adventurers", reflecting the importance to adolescents around the world to get new experiences and fun times. Only in Norway and Japan, the number of "adventurers" was slightly lower than in other countries, but even so, 40% of them belonged to this group.

Half of teens are considered "athletes." According to survey data, 46% of Habbo users create "staying on top", 40% feel "artists" and 36% are "interested in the environment." More than a third of young people consider themselves "technology geek" and only 16% underestimate their personality. 14% consider themselves "hippies" or "Gothic."

New technologies, new business

The Brazilian Mauricio Machado, 35, always wanted to combine his passion for literature with a good deal, and he got on the Internet. In mid-2005, and after the collapse of Banco Santos Brazil, where he worked in the international arena, the company created Integrare Machado Publishing, a publisher of books páginque, as its name implies, incorporates in its chain to authors, readers and booksellers, and also is linked to social responsibility, all on a virtual platform. "It's an old dream of mine and my family," says Machado. "We believe in making a different publisher, with a business plan that did not exist in Brazil."

This is key to using the Internet as a platform for its operating model. Through its website Authors can track the sales of its items (the information is renewed monthly), monitor their marketing campaigns and even to know what cities have sold more books or what the preferred age range. For their part, readers who buy them may have access to digital conversations with the authors that last 20 minutes on average, meet their careers and even informed of the annual agenda of events and visits within the country if they want to keep track of them or go to his talks. Meanwhile, booksellers can also feed back more information, short stories in digital video where the authors explain the contents of their books for the bookseller can offer more certainty to the public indicated. In addition, sellers of fish have a space on the page with links to their websites so that readers see prices or buy the publications that are offered online.

The CD is no longer business in Britain

The CD is no longer heard as before. At least that is happening in Britain, where the musicians get more revenue from internet and radio, recorded music sales. This was announced by the alliance MCPS-PRS, Which handles copyright in the music industry in the country.

The cold numbers show that during 2007 in the UK, the radio and Internet downloads for a profit totaled 707.5 million euros. According to the agency states in its websiteIn 2007 alone increased by 54% the turnover of the online downloads.

Radios and televisions, along with internet, contributed € 195.7 million, up 8% over 2006, with significant growth of online downloads, whose turnover increased by 54%, led by the iTunes platform. However, the MCPS-PRS said that revenue from Internet (€ 12.6 million) still remain a small weight in total of this group.

Physical products like CDs and DVDs, which had always been a major source of income for musicians in the country, contributed € 191.1 million last year 11% less than last year.

"Much has been written about the state of the music industry, but these results show the good health of the sector, an increase of revenue in most areas," said CEO of MCPS-PRS, Steve Porter.

The alliance said the sharp fall in CD sales was partly offset by the sale of other physical products such as USB drives with built-in songs.

Google's mobile phone is not multitouch, because Apple does not want

The main complaint from critics of the Android G1, the first mobile phone designed by Google, manufactured by HTC and distributed exclusively for the United States by the German T-Mobile, has already been answered: if this phone that wants to be the future is multi- touch, as if what is Apple's iPhone is only because the finder does not want to anger the company that runs Google Jobs.Estrategia Steve

It is considered multi-touch to any touchscreen phone that is able to process orders received from its sensors several fingers of the user ... at a time. That ability is what allows, for example, zoom in and zoom photos on an iPhone using the thumb and forefinger of one hand.

And no one understood well until now why Google had resigned to making your touch phone was also multi-touch. Now, a report in a specialized account how American's own brand of apple begged the Android development team that did not include this capability in the design of its new generation of mobile phones (which the G1 is just the first member .)

The main reasons why the giant gave information on the Internet without question appear to be two. First, both brands share the common goal to overthrow Microsoft. And second, that Apple is preparing a legal barrage against those who dare to use that technology in other devices.

Apple itself warned of the consequences in the final presentation of business results in a message that everyone understood that was directed at Palm, to use multi-touch technology in its new Intelligent Mobile Pre. "We will use every weapon at our disposal," said then one of its top officials.

The e-learning revolution

The concept of Information Society was created from the central role that was taking the information into the new routines of individuals, companies and countries, driven also by new technologies and the potential of internet and various electronic media.

The e-Learning has become a real and very valuable option for many companies and universities as well as employees and students in the world who have found a way to continue their education costs and saving time and allowing greater flexibility better suit their lifestyles.

To this is added the possibility for people to interact with other cultures and to build web content, which means that there is an enormous wealth of sources and a relatively quick update content.

It is, on the one hand, distance education self-directed, which is one in which there are separate training materials, when the user logs on and is content, materials and assessments, and, second, distance education directed that is where we exploit different tools such as chats, forums and video, and built various learning activities.



estartegia de elearning
In the U.S., for example, according to a study by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the growth of American student incorporating online education exceeds 10% annually.

Save time and money

In times of economic crisis many companies and universities have to cut expenses while working and, therefore, what they should do is get a lot less. The e-Learning becomes easy for the student because it is in their own time and less cost, but at the same time, for companies and universities and that means training and education, respectively, of an easier way for people who are hiring and receiving throughout the year, virtually without removing them from their jobs or their country of residence.

On one side are the universities, who are increasingly migrating towards providing most of its distance learning programs and even have races now face that have online activities, and, secondly, there are enterprises in which there are different forms of e-Learning as the company's own content that are closed to the public and administered by human resources, continuing professional development of employees, and courses of welfare for workers and their families.

He explained to Tendencias21 Bodil Maul, manager of corporate accounts Netting Solutions with extensive experience in implementing e-Learning solutions for multinational companies, "Today, many multinationals have e-Learning programs as part of its training strategy and some have their own platforms (LMS) and content developed internally and others choose to outsourcing. "

Ninette Gaxiola, corporate education coordinator Netting Solutions company that provides solutions for audiences in Latin America, North America and Europe, said in turn to Tendencias21: "The e-Learning, understood as the possibility of incorporating new information technologies and communication in the processes of production, transmission and management of knowledge gives us the opportunity to perform this task in a more effective, cost effective and tailored to the needs of a society in which 2.0 technology allows us to cooperate actively. It is not only to make available to staff online courses, but to identify and build, with the support of experts, the strategy that meets the needs of each group integrating the most useful technological elements for each goal and each occasion. "

"Something fundamental is to have a strategy that you know exactly why you want to use this medium of education and training, and, likewise, have clear metrics to evaluate their impact on the organization and its users," says Maul.

The mobile world

And is that e-Learning is part of a set of technologies, media, tools and strategies in today's world, a "mobile world" in which people are "on the go, do not stop, but continue their work from wherever they are. Many large companies globally accepted and even offer their employees the option of working from home, and expected everything to be faster and more efficient, no matter where or how.

Keep in mind that a large variety of these electronic tools not only work on computers, but also from mobile devices, which really makes many people to access them and can work in their training from the most unexpected places.

Today, people want flexibility and speed, you have the option to bring all its business at the leading lifestyle, work and take advantage of free time while traveling, and being able to simultaneously combine personal and educational activities that contribute to the improvement.

In short, there are many choices you have those who really are willing to learn without being affected daily activities and free time. It's a moving world where more and less important where, when and how.