Business

Web 2.0 can help companies located in the same region share haulage space when transporting consignments. Pooling benefits the environment, reduces CO2 output and saves costs — experts put the figure at around 15 percent.
“Have you got a spare seat on the journey to Berlin?” Many weekend commuters use opportunities to travel together, instead of [...]

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Mayo Clinic endocrinologist James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., has continued his research in environment-changing innovations with a six-month study of a real-life office that was re-engineered to increase daily physical activity or NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). The study began in late 2007 and ended in 2008 at SALO, LLC, a Minneapolis-based financial staffing firm. Of the [...]

Shalini Kesar, a computer scientist at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, has devised an antifraud strategy for business. Writing in the International Journal of Business Information Systems from Inderscience Publishers, he suggests that managers should be made aware of security issues and send out cues to junior staff that they have this knowledge.
Combating digital [...]

According to the 2000 census, Americans office workers spend an average of 52 hours a week at their desks or work stations. Many recent studies on job satisfaction have shown that workers who spend longer hours in office environments, often under artificial light in windowless offices, report reduced job satisfaction and increased stress levels.
How can [...]

Many software designers intentionally create unnecessarily complex products that do less to serve their companies and customers than to advance their careers, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Management Insights, a regular feature of the [...]

Microsoft made a mistake with its investment in Facebook. Just because Google has made a business out of Internet advertising doesn’t mean that a traditional software company is going to do well here, too.
Facebook is likely to be seen as Microsoft’s ace in the Web 2.0 Wars. Google gave birth to the “online OS” by [...]

OLPC is a lost cause. It’s amazing how an otherwise interesting project with headline-grabbing mission could spiral out of control with disastrous results. The project has always had noble intentions. I can’t fault it for that. Any time an organization is giving back to the community and contributing back to society, it’s a good organization [...]

Google Inc., expanding its efforts at providing software that helps users create and post their own materials on the Internet, has acquired a California startup that develops online collaboration tools known as wikis.
The announcement came Tuesday through separate postings at Google’s and JotSpot Inc.’s Web journals. Terms were not disclosed.
JotSpot chief executive Joe Kraus said [...]

Microsoft Corp. today plans to release a renamed, updated version of its small-business accounting program that it said makes better use of online services.
The Redmond company also plans to debut a new, free version of the program for simpler or smaller businesses.
The free product, called Office Accounting Express 2007, provides full cash- and accrual-based accounting, [...]

Nestor E. Arellano of IT World Canada writes:
If you seek to create a consolidated e-government service network, coveting your neighbour’s IT assets may be a good way to begin, according to one high-profile American CIO.
Teresa Takai, CIO of the State of Michigan, said one way she keeps her network up to date is by [...]

If you listen to Intel’s press releases, everything is rosy and with the launch of quad-core processors in the fourth quarter of this year, everything will be back to rights in the world. Too bad the approximately 10,000 employees to be laid off next Tuesday won’t be around to see it happen.

I’ve spent a few weeks thinking about Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, the premise of his popular new book and his suggested implications for business in the future. Finally, a few days ago I read Lee Gomes’ terrific column in the Wall Street Journal where he debunks some of Anderson’s statistical analysis, which really helped [...]

Affiliate sales account for over one billion dollars in revenue last year, according to the folk at Marketing Sherpa, so why on Earth would I suggest that maybe, just maybe, affiliate programs aren’t a smart basis for a sustainable online business?
In a word: differentiators. Successful businesses in the long term have “sustainable differentiators” so that [...]

Maybe it’s just that I’m a huge fan of the World Cup and have been known in the past to shut down my business during the last few games of what is easily the most popular sporting event in the world, but I am appalled by the sophomoric response of the Boing Boing team to [...]

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it on the weblog run by the Google AdWords folk, but apparently, yes, coming to a site near you - very soon - will be advertisements that will include video content, all as part of the AdWords network (e.g., if you’re subscribed to Google AdSense and [...]

It’s an all-too-common phenomenon at workshops, seminars and trade events, and even creeps into the most critical of business meetings: Boring PowerPoint Syndrome. I predict that even Gnomedex will suffer from this dreadful malady!
You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Those interminable dull slides that have 8-15 bullet points on them, each smaller than [...]

AOL, once THE largest ISP in the world, has been shrinking over the past years as more and more people get access to other avenues to the Internet. AOL itself hasn’t helped matters, with its isolationist and sometimes bizarre ideas of what customers will accept. Today’s news doesn’t sit well.

Microsoft Corp. today announced it has acquired Vexcel Corp., a worldwide leader in photogrammetry, imagery, and remote sensing technologies. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
This deal, the second in the past six months for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth business unit, was done to enhance the talent, technologies, products and services dedicated to fulfilling Microsoft’s [...]

Gee, do you suppose someone on staff just counts poorly, or could this be the result of plain ol’ corporate greed gone wild? The Associated Press (via BusinessWeek) reports:
A judge has approved a $2.65 billion class-action settlement of claims that advertising revenue was counted in a fraudulent manner prior to the merger of America Online [...]