The media with connecting their peoples

I have to be honest, the headline is a bit hypocritical. I spend most of my time helping businesses embrace the opportunity to understand customer needs and engage with them in ways that they appreciate and value. Contrary to popular belief however, everyday consumers aren’t flocking to social media to build relationships with their favorite brands or local businesses. The truth is that consumers are using the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, et al. to connect with friends and family. But, that’s not all. People also follow those who help them better understand the world around them, share their interests, or introduce moments of desired distractions.

As consumer use of social media matures, their expectations grow. Your challenge is whether or not your organization can not only meet their needs, but anticipate and exceed them. This is the time to stop looking at social media as merely media in social channels and to start getting to know customers and their priorities and designing programs and a supporting infrastructure that socializes customer and employee facing roles, departments, and functions.

How to connect with people through social media

So you have a Facebook fan page, Twitter account or other social media tool and you’re wondering what to post and how to get your fans and followers to engage in a conversation with you. This is the article for you…

Make a plan

Social media is typically spontaneous. People usually post things as they happen – like a news outlet of sorts. That doesn’t mean you have to constantly be checking and posting to your social media apps. With some careful planning and some secret tools – like HootSuite – you can create a months worth of posts more and schedule them in advance. This is an incredible time saver and it enables you to reach visitors in different time zones or keep your fans engaged while you’re on vacation. You can still post spontaneously, and use the scheduled content as a backup for when you’re too busy to keep up or your creativity is momentarily tapped.

What trends do you foresee in social media activism?

With all the information and noise making it harder and harder to get the attention of social media users, I think things will become even more targeted and focused while really looking to make change. It’s very difficult to make a difference using one channel over another, so integrating communications and targeting people in the places will be even more essential. I think social really needs to continue to adapt to changing times and decreased attention spans by being flexible and easy to integrate.

How did you use social media to respond post-Sandy?

I see my job during these disastrous events as a person who keeps the media covering stories and I peruse our channels for mentions of wildlife in distress. We tend to get a ton of questions online and I try to use our online communities to solve problems and help people help wildlife when we can’t directly help them.

Experience of eCommerce in worldwide Market

I recently had a project come up and spent a lot of time testing different platforms to find one that could handle digital products the best. For various reasons I settled on Bigcommerce and began building out the store. I knew from reading the Ultimate Big commerce review that I shouldn’t expect great things from their existing templates and that turned out to be true. They were pretty generic and didn’t suit my needs, so I began adapting a new one to the platform.

That’s when the fun began. To put it nicely, the Bigcommerce platform leaves a lot to be desired for programmers and developers. The only real documentation that they provide hasn’t been updated since 2009 and is missing just about all of the variables. It’s useless as anything more than a basic overview of the system and Bigcommerce uses a massive number of variables in their template designs, which means that you’re going to need to know what they are and how they work. There are a number of “Advanced Tutorials” published in their knowledgebase and on the forums that help developers work around some of the items normally covered in documentation, but that just means you have to spend a lot of time searching rather than getting work done. Fortunately a developer named Spring Merchant has created a template variable search on their website which is helpful, but not official or complete. I don’t understand why Bigcommerce can’t provide a complete list themselves. I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent trying to find variables and figure out why it is they they do or do not work. If you ask design or programming related questions when you contact support, even if they are specific to Bigcommerce variables, they copy and paste the “Sorry, but we can’t support custom development” response in the live chat window. I would agree with this policy if they provided decent documentation.

I’ve been in communication with several people at Bigcommerce regarding these issues and after long delays between responses I was told that they are making improvements and that I should post my suggestions to ideas.bigcommerce.com. A quick review of the top issues indicates that there are a lot of other people out there who share my concerns, many posting them years ago, but without any movement from Bigcommerce. Out of the 20 items on the first page only two are in development; one of them has been without an update for almost three months and the other missed the estimate for implementation.

It’s no secret that we don’t like many of the ecommerce platform review sites out there. Most are scams. The review sites simply award the best spots to the company that pays them the largest lump sum, or the highest affiliate fees. Example: “Zippy Cart” – one of the largest ecommerce review sites in the world is simply a “pay-to-play” site where whichever shopping cart pays the most gets the better rating. Their rankings are absurd. Pinnacle Cart #1, Shopping Cart Elite #4, and NO mention of Shopify or Big Cartel? It’s ridiculous. I suspect sites like that semi-blackmail companies… ‘sponsor a review’ or ‘pay for editorial time’ otherwise we won’t review your platform. I hate that crap.

Anyways, I say all this mostly because I feel like ranting. It’s my blog and I’m allowed to rant every now and then. But also because I’m sick of people thinking that’s how this site works. We do not accept lump sums of money to increase a carts ranking. We get emails almost every day from marketing and affiliate departments, even some pretty well known CEOs offering us very good money to either rank their cart, or move them from #6 to #2 or whatever. We refuse every time.

The whole point of this site is we are an UNBIASED review site. This isn’t a full-time job for us, we review and post articles in our spare time.  We do this for fun, and we do it to warn people of the bad online store builders (OS Commerce!) and tell people about the good ones (Shopify, Bigcommerce, Corecommerce, etc.)

Name of Business with app name

Naming your business is an important branding exercise, but if you choose to name your business as anything other than your own personal name then you’ll need to register it with the appropriate authorities.

This process is known as registering your “Doing Business As” (DBA) name.

Patter for iOS is a messaging application that lets people chat with friends privately or in public chat rooms. As the name implies it is the iOS version of the Patter web application built by @duerig.
The primary goal for my app is to support, promote, and enhance the Patter web application…the mothership as it were. Some secondary goals for me are to learn the App.net API better and to be more involved in the community. I also hope it can be an example of an interesting way to build on top of the API.

Currently, the app is more tailored to somebody that has already used Patter but I hope to make it clearer for those who have little or no exposure to Patter or even, for that matter, to App.net.

What qualities make a great app?

I like apps that are immediately obvious how to use and are uncluttered in appearance. I like apps that have a bit of personality and character embedded throughout their interface. I want to be able to get a laugh or two or see something unexpected.

With just about every app I’ve made I try to add in a few little Easter eggs just for fun. With Patter for iOS I decided early on to add something fun or unexpected with every release. I’m trying to do it in such a way that if you aren’t really looking you’ll never notice or be bothered by them, but, if you dig around a little, you will be able to find this whole other world inside the app that you never noticed before.

What is a “Doing Business As” Name?

A fictitious name (or assumed name, trade name or DBA name) is a business name that is different from your personal name, the names of your partners or the officially registered name of your LLC or corporation.

It’s important to note that when you form a business, the legal name of the business defaults to the name of the person or entity that owns the business, unless you choose to rename it and register it as a DBA name.

For example, consider this scenario: John Smith sets up a painting business. Rather than operate under his own name, John instead chooses to name his business: “John Smith Painting”. This name is considered an assumed name and John will need to register it with the appropriate local government agency.

The legal name of your business is required on all government forms and applications, including your application for employer tax IDs, licenses and permits.

Do I Need a “Doing Business As” Name?

A DBA is needed in the following scenarios:

Sole Proprietors or Partnerships – If you wish to start a business under anything other than your real name, you’ll need to register a DBA so that you can do business as another name.
Existing Corporations or LLCs – If your business is already set up and you want to do business under a name other than your existing corporation or LLC name, you will need to register a DBA.

Automobile industry

The automotive industry is the largest private investor in R&D in the EU. The ACEA members together spend over €26 billion every year on R&D, or about 5% of their turnover. These figures, resulting from a recent ACEA survey among its member companies, reflect the great importance that the automobile manufacturers attach to R&D efforts to keep up their competitiveness and long-term viability. Main areas of automotive R&D investment are environment, road safety and production efficiency.

Overall automotive R&D investments are even higher. According to the EU Industrial Investment Scoreboard, the sectors ‘automobiles and parts’ and ‘commercial vehicles and trucks’ represented R&D investment of €32.8 billion in 2008. The actual number will be greater, as these categories do not include all automotive supplying sectors. The Scoreboard ranks the pharmaceutical sector second with €19.8 billion and the telecommunications equipment sector third with €12 billion.

Chart of the week: driving car sales:

Carmakers have had a pretty torrid time since 2009 – GM’s bail-out and Toyota’s product recalls come to mind. So another global slowdown is hardly what the industry needs.

Should the industry pin its hopes on emerging markets? Where are the car sales coming from?

According to Scotia Bank’s December autos report, 2012 will be the year that EMs overtake developed markets in car sales. According to the bank:

We project that car sales in developing nations will expand by 7 per cent in 2012, climbing to 31m units and exceed volumes in the mature markets of Western Europe, North America and Japan. A decade ago, developing nations accounted for less than 20 per cent of global car sales.

The shift to EMs is clear. And, as expected, China is large part of that growth. Even luxury car sales are holding up in China, as Bentley can attest.

Forecast car sales data from IHS Automotive predict that China will be buying over 11m more cars in 2018 than in 2011 – more than a third of the growth in sales over that period.

The comparison with north America is most revealing. The forecast total China car sales in 2018 of 29.6m is more than 10m greater than North America, on 19.3m. China will account for 28 per cent of the world’s car sales in 2018, whereas north America will represent 18 per cent.

But one factor that is missing from all the car sales data is car production: who is making the cars, and where is the demand? The US buys more cars than it produces, making it a driver of growth. China, for years a factory for the world, is now joining the US as a net importer. The chart below shows total sales minus total production for US and China for 2010 to 2018.

The US and Canada are together a net importer, with sales outnumbering production by 2m-3m each year. But China, which in 2010 bought only 253,000 more cars than it made, will see sales outpace production to the point where it is over 2.3m, close to the north America 2018 figure of 2.7m.

In other words – China will join the US as a big net importer of cars, as well as the biggest market in total. That’s good news for Japan and South Korea, and for the crisis-hit European Union economy, which remains a big net car exporter despite its other challenges.

Indian Budget, How useful for Indian consumers

The optimists hoped that it might show the Indian economic miracle was back on track. Pessimists feared it would show a country descending into wild populism ahead of a general election due by mid-2014. In the event India’s budget day on February 28th was barely enough to stir India’s octogenarian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, who sat in parliament with his arms folded and eyes closed, as his spritely colleague, Palaniappan Chidambaram, the finance minister, trod a terribly fine line.

Most will have to pay at the old rate though the small taxpayers — those whose income is between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh — get relief through a tax credit of up to Rs 2,000. This will benefit 1.8 crore people. Falling in the ambit of the rich tax will be 42,800 large tax payers.

While imposing the 10% tax surcharge on those with incomes above Rs 1 crore, the finance minister invoked the Azim Premji 'giving away' spirit. However, though he did leave the rich a little less rich, it wasn't as if he was distributing largesse to other taxpayers.

Following are highlights of the budget: 

• ·         India faces challenge of getting back to its potential growth rate of 8 pct 
• ·         India faces challenge of getting back to its potential growth rate of 8 pct 
• ·         India must unhesitatingly embrace growth as highest goal 
• ·         India faces challenge of getting back to its potential growth rate of 8 pct 
• ·         India must unhesitatingly embrace growth as highest goal 
• ·         Growth rate under UPA was highest 
• ·         Between 2004 and 2008 and again in 2009-10 and 2010-11 the growth rate was over 8% 
• ·         There is no reason for gloom or pessimism 
• ·         Global economic growth declined 

Growth: For growth He said that India faces challenge of getting back to its potential growth rate of 8 pct. India must unhesitatingly embrace growth as highest goal.

Current Account Deficit: India's greater worry is the current account deficit - will need more than $75 billion this year and next year to fund deficit.

Power and Energy sector: This sector Proposes zero customs duty for electrical plants and machinery.

Agriculture: To allocate 801.94 billion rupees to rural development in 2013/14.

At least, however, a sense of restraint is now in place. That much Mr Chidambaram has achieved. Whether he made any difference to the bottlenecks that are holding back growth is far less sure. On the Goods and Services Tax, vital to sorting out the public finances in the long term, he promised he would bang heads together. He committed to looking at ways of getting the private sector in the coal industry, which is state owned and producing far too little of the black stuff. The truth is, though, that on meaty problems such as these he simply may not have enough time before the general election to make a big difference.

In just over a year, perhaps less, a new government, and perhaps a new finance minister will be in place. And for all Mr Chidambaram’s efforts, the commitment to economic reform among the political class may be skin deep. As he spoke in the chamber, most spending rises were cheered and met with a thumping of desks, not least by Sonia Gandhi, the dynast who heads the ruling congress party. Mr Chidambaram’s pledges on improving the investment climate and attracting manufacturing investment, however, were met with icy silence.

Electric bikes

If you’ve not ridden an electric bicycle yet, chances are you know someone who has. Or maybe someone rode past you on one and you thought it was a conventional bike. Changes in permitted power output means you’ll likely be seeing more, and better, electric bikes coming your way (or riding past you).

If you’ve been lured by an electric bike, my colleagues and I would like to hear from you, as I’ll discuss a little later. But first, for the uninitiated, let’s start with the basics: what is an electric bike?

An electric bike has motorised assistance that allows the cyclist to ride further with less effort. Think of it as having a reliable tailwind to help you on your way up hills.

A change of gear

Motorised assistance will cut out at 25km/h. You can go faster than 25km/h, but you need to be pedalling – the battery will not provide any extra push.

While some countries, and some states of the US, allow electric bikes of up to 1,000 watts, any bicycle powered by an auxiliary motor that exceeds 250 watts in Australia will be classified a motorbike and must be registered and ridden by a licenced rider.

In addition to further clarifying the definitions of electric bikes, the government’s changes to permitted power outputs have brought Australia inline internationally.

While 50 watts more may not seem a big increase, it’s potentially a game-changer for electric bikes.

For riders, it means going up hills will be a little easier, with extra torque, although the top speed will still cut out at 25km/h and the distance you can ride with electric motor assistance will be about the same.

Get in touch

Our findings will assist to develop future policies aimed at increasing the safety and sustainability of the transport system, including electric bikes.

Whether the electric bike provides a stepping stone from the car to a pedal bike remains to be seen. But the individual benefits that can be gained by reducing people’s reliance on cars and increasing their physical activity will also help reduce congestion and vehicle exhaust pollution on our roads.

While some bicycle models are clearly electric bikes with a battery pack plain to see, many of the models are not visibly electric and are difficult to differentiate for other road users.

As with all cycling activity, the question of safety also impacts electric bike riders and feeds into the issue of adequate and connected bicycle facilities on and off roads, as well as behavioural issues with other road users.

Ashu Francis: Oil Industry

Ashu Francis: Oil Industry: The petroleum industry includes the global processes of  exploration ,  extraction ,  refining , transporting (often by  oil tankers  and...