Entries By Tag: Business

Can IE9 regain the lost market share?

With the release of the newest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari forcing the boundaries of the web, Internet Explorer has lost plenty of market share. ... read more

Microsoft's internal war: Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista

When two important products of the same brand enter in competition with one another, the outcome, no matter the result, for sure will be satisfactory for the "mother company". ... read more

A look at Enterprise 2.0 through Social CRM

Current national or multinational corporations use a a wide-spread organization model, involving several layers of employees. Generally, this extension is governed by the top-to-bottom rule, which works by disseminating information on a need-to-know basis from higher levels of management to lower ones. In this way, normal average workers function according to a set of basic information, without ever grasping where the overall company is headed, or even why. Consequently, people in higher positions of management spend their time planning and processing info, mostly oblivious to trends and actual customer preferences, that could have been easily understood by engaging workers and customers into actual conversations ... read more

Cloud computing: To each his own part of the cloud

Cloud computing has been with us for a while now, but it started just recently to draw attention to it, particularly because of the large scale Internet applications that client-oriented companies have built as services. Or what we now call SaaS, or software as a service. [...]

From social networks to virtual servers for data storage, anything goes in the cloud. Unfortunately, it still goes in the cloud literally for government policies regarding this matter, in about every industrialized country there is ... read more

The new Browser War: Google goes Machiavelli on Microsoft

It's been a busy season for the major players on the web browser market, with Mozilla Corp. launching Firefox 3.5 on 30 June, and Microsoft releasing its 8th edition of IE in March. While the former included native integration of audio and video, more privacy features and an overall performance improvement, the latter added accelerators, improved privacy protection, and a compatibility mode for pages designed for earlier version of IE. Along came Google ... read more

Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google. What's in it for each?

Previous days have found the web filled with rumors, either reliable or not so truthful, about Microsoft finally having closed a partnership deal with Yahoo. Although everything has been confirmed by officials from both parties, the mystery still remains as everybody is now wondering ... read more

Why is online advertising better

Marketing, PR and advertising firms are struggling to stay afloat of the new wave of challenges, that came along with the global financial crisis. This is true for US, and it's true for almost every developed or emerging economy - which of course includes Eastern Europe, and Romania in particular. Marketing departments are currently "optimizing" their budgets, to deal with the crisis, and a key note of their optimization strategies is "re-focusing on more efficient channels, such as the internet advertising". Why is internet advertising so efficient, and why is it suddenly regarded as a safe and desirable investment? ... read more

Office Web Applications and Azure - Microsoft's new bet

Microsoft has demonstrated in more than one occasion that they can take a raw idea and bring it to its maximum market potential. They did come up with quite a few great ideas themselves - but arguably the most impressive feature that Microsoft has illustrated over the years is the capacity to re-pack an already proven concept into a better shape, that ultimately wins the market. This happened with DOS, Office, Windows, Internet Explorer, XBOX - and might also happen with the new services that MS has recently launched: Office Web Applications and Azure. ... read more

Monetizing social websites: Trick or treat?

Big social networks (such as Facebook and MySpace) that are currently money consumers, rather than income generators,  are beginning to think about monetizing the huge traffic slices that they've obtained during the past years. But their problem is that nobody likes to pay for something that they've got in the past for free.

Considering that applications such as Facebook, Skype and YouTube were not planned to bring in cash from the beginning, it's rather understandable that the users received the monetization attempts with a bit of distrust and annoyance. On the other hand, there are social networks that were monetized from the beginning, and that enjoy a great deal of success. ... read more

Yahoo!, come out, come out, wherever you are

In May this year, there was a lot of ruckus caused by a news from the Ziarul Financiar, a local daily paper focused on economical and financial issues. The news stated that Yahoo! will open an office in Bucharest during the third quarter of the year, between August-September.

Well, everything is nice and fine, and I'm sure everyone is interested in seeing as quickly as possible Yahoo! on our native lands, but...I'm not seeing anything yet. No news, no gossip, no rumors. After the news landed, everything turned still and quiet. ... read more

Microsoft: Antivirus or not?

For the past few years, Microsoft has been subject to some pretty harsh comments and disputes over its embedded (or not) antivirus solution for Windows OS users. With several attempts throughout the years, consisting of the MSAV from the MS-DOS 6 (1993) until the forms of Windows Live OneCare, the Microsoft mogul didn't really enjoyed much appreciation from the public, as regards to antivirus facilities.

In 2003, after Microsoft acquired the intellectual property rights over the RAV Antivirus from the Romanian company GeCad, things started to spur once again. ... read more

Google office in Romania

On January the 15th this year, Google officially registered at the Romanian Trade Office, the branch Google Bucharest SRL, with the stated activity of “consultancy and providing other software products”. The commercial society is held entirely by Google international Inc., with headquarters in Mountain View, California.

If we know that the local branch has only 5 non-Romanian employees, it is difficult to tell what Googlers have in mind with this branch. While they have previously denied any plans of setting up a business in Romania, now they have already a steady office. When asked by local reporters about their future development plans, the local representatives retained any comments. At present, Kent Walker is the VP and the general consultant of the firm, while John Herlihy is the VP responsible with the online sales of Google in Europe, Middle East and Africa (the EMEA region). Also, Nikesh Arora is the VP in Google Inc. and president of EMEA operations. ... read more