Key Trends That Will Raise Financial Services PPC in 2012

In the Financial Services category, 2011 will be recalled as a year of fickle swings. The stock market has seen massive by the day swings, and has been teetering on a worldwide crisis.

What does all this, as well as the uphold development of search, mean for SEM in 2012? There are four fundamental trends that will ride the market next year.

Focus on Quality vs. Quantity

As market forces, such as the housing market, joblessness, and the credit crunch proceed, marketing has had to halt and think about the consumers they are appealing. Online applications have been a good way for consumers to remain anonymous, and not face an in-person rejection for credit.

Brands in 2012 will look for ways to not only look out their price per application, but also look for gainful, high quality customers who they can cross-sell additional products. This will be done by:

Customized experiences based on deeper keyword explore into descriptive tail terms. For instance, searches for “Android App Developer” have risen every year since 2010, and are forecast to attain a new peak this year; still only 1 in 10 paid search ads addressed credit in their ad copy. • Incorporate analytics beyond the initial finsihed application. To identify the correct consumers, brands will look to tie customer activity data back to a keyword, campaign level. For example, consumers who seeked for “checking account” have a conversion rate of X, and the number of products they hold is Y, and their average lifetime value is Z.

Improvement in Running Integrated Digital Campaigns

Without question, search is becoming more disconnected across devices, apps, websites, and social. However, with all the fragmentation consumers have more options than ever, and brands have more places to be found in order to be successful.

Google’s Zero instant of Accuracy study signals that on average for banking products consumers are utilizing 10.8 sources of data prior to making a purchase, and that number is 11.7 sources for insurance. Our own financial services customers have seen a 9 percent grow in search assists year over year, validating the increase in research that consumers are conducting.

Brands in 2012 will draw together consumers’ digital touchpoints through attribution, and improve realize how consumers are attaining their buying decisions.

Mobile Continues to Grow as a Major Player

This year our financial services clients mobile traffic was upward above 1,200 percent! This trend is extending to rise very rapidly. Competition is also up in this area with CPCs up 139 percent.

Financial services companies will take better pros of this trend in 2012 by breaking out campaigns to target mobile and Oerating System particularly. Consumers expectations will be a mobile particualr experience from keyword, to ad copy, to landing pages. If those expectations aren’t met, then it will wallop the brand consideration going forward.

Brands will also get more corporate alignment that smartphones aren’t used the same way as traditional digital media. This will create a new center on the way mobile is evaluated. It will be watched as more of a explore and location based device (find a branch, ATM) that isn’t held against the standards of desktops.

Tablets Are Important, and Not the Same as Desktop or Mobile

Tablets are frequently considered to be the same as smartphones, but the only existent resemblances are that they are increasing rapidly (95 percent impression volume rise) and they aren’t the similar as desktops. In 2012 brands will move tablets into their own bucket of performance, and optimize them uniquely. For financial services companies this is the perfect place to evaluate consumer quality, and set a unique CPA based on the consumer demographics.

Summary

Financial services brands will have more stuffs to attain their consumers in 2012. This comes just in time when these brands require tools to compete in these economically hard times – a time when ritual paths of evaluating performance no longer implement and consumers are disconnected in their research process. Vigorously search marketers will flourish.

How to Use Internet Technology to Turn Your Marketing Business Around to Success

The internet service providers in my area are now delivering flexible internet packages that give me access to stratospheric download speeds. So what? I hear you cry. Tell us, what does that have to do with your marketing business? Sit down, get comfortable, and I’ll explain.

So my marketing business, like most these days, is all about the internet. My clients want to define online markets, take their share of the action and make money from it – which of course means I make money too.

Previously, defining a market was as much a matter of hard slog and lucky guesses as it was any real guaranteed algorithm. These days, though, I don’t have to define markets for my clients. I can create them using something we call “social media marketing” – which is exactly what its name sounds like, only (sorry, I am nothing if not a typical marketing dude!) not quite...

See, the new form of marketing is not marketing at all. Social media “marketing”, which wouldn’t work if the internet service providers in my area didn’t supply the kinds of download speeds that make modern social media interaction possible, is all about putting client’s brands out there as though they were people, and encouraging real people to interact with them over the social media sites.

I use my client’s brand personas to recommend things, share links and join conversations. The people in their social media groups start to relate to them as friends, other people join in as friends and all of a sudden we’re having conversations that establish us as a permanent part of a massive collection of people with similar interests.

That’s where the real marketing gold lies – in not marketing, and letting everyone else do it for you. The internet service providers in my area are supplying connection speeds that let me create brand evangelists for all my clients products: and I just sit back and watch the traffic roll in!

The increased power of modern net connections has broken down barriers between sites, brands and users to the point where a mounting influence on a social media site has a direct effect on the frequency with which a web page gets indexed by web bots. Noticed the numbers next to some site results on Google yet? They’re “plus ones”, which is Google’s version of a Facebook “like” (n.b. for all budding online marketers the only thing you need to know is this: whatever Facebook does, get involved. Your entire market share is in there somewhere) – and they have a direct effect on page rankings in Google’s SERPs.

Online marketing is no longer only about old school optimisation. That still happens though – and the tools with which you make it happen are also being made more sophisticated by the new power of the net. Competitor analysis, for example, would be impossible if the internet service providers in my area were not pumping a massively quick connection into my home office environment – allowing me to access programs running on other people’s servers in real time to do complex calculations about how many local and global searches are affecting both my client’s keywords, and their competitor’s.

Photo courtesy of Bill Frymire.

Ernst & Young sued for Lehman Brothers Fraud

Accounting firm Ernst & Young was sued by New York state prosecutors on Tuesday, accused of helping to hide financial risks at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc before the Wall Street firm's 2008 collapse.

The civil fraud case seeks $150 million in fees that the accounting firm collected, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.

The lawsuit also seeks investor damages and other relief in what is one of the biggest government cases involving an accounting firm since Arthur Andersen was criminally indicted in 2002 over the Enron scandal.

Ernst & Young was Lehman's outside auditor from 2001 until the investment bank filed for bankruptcy in September 2008.

Ernst & Young was not immediately available for comment on Cuomo's lawsuit, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court.

Cuomo said that for more than seven years leading up to Lehman's bankruptcy, Lehman engaged in fraudulent accounting transactions that were explicitly approved by the auditor. Cuomo said he is seeking the return of more than $150 million in fees that Ernst & Young collected for its Lehman work.

"This practice was a house-of-cards business model designed to hide billions in liabilities in the years before Lehman collapsed," Cuomo's statement said. "Just as troubling, a global accounting firm, tasked with auditing Lehman's financial statements, helped hide this crucial information from the investing public."

The firm has said previously that it believes its work as Lehman auditor "met all applicable professional standards" and that accounting issues were not to blame for the bankruptcy.

The audit firm has been under scrutiny since a court-appointed Lehman bankruptcy examiner released a scathing report in March on the investment bank's accounting methods. The report concluded that Ernst & Young was "professionally negligent" in its oversight.

The examiner said Ernst & Young failed to challenge accounting gimmicks that gave the appearance that Lehman was reducing its overall leverage levels in 2008, when in reality it was not.

via Reuters

GoDaddy.com Is For Sale For USD1 Billion

Internet domain name registry GoDaddy.com has put itself up for sale, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The privately held company could fetch more than $1 billion in an auction, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

GoDaddy has hired investment bank Qatalyst Partners, the Journal reported. Private equity firms are expected to bid.

The company declined to comment.

GoDaddy is the world's largest domain name registrar. The company was founded by Bob Parsons in 1997, and says it has more than 43 million domains under management.

The company posted revenue between $750 million and $800 million in 2009, the report said.

GoDaddy has made a name for itself by running racy television ads to promote its brand, some of them featuring race car driver Danica Patrick.

Recommended reading:
* xxx Porn Domain
* Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Names Ever
* Egypt first to apply for Arabic Internet domain name

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Camelicious - Latest Camel Milk Brand

The camels know the drill by heart. Just after dawn, they file on their own -- always in groups of 12 -- into metal stalls for milking. Workers attach automated pumps. The milk flows into a system of chilled pipes that empty into a sealed metal vat.

The next stop someday could be markets in Europe, and possibly beyond, under ambitious plans backed by Dubai's ruler to expand the reach of the playfully eccentric brand name Camelicious. DID YOU KNOW: There is another existing brand of camel milk called Jabalicious Camel Milk.

European Union health regulators in July cleared the United Arab Emirates to become the first major exporter of camel milk products to the 27-nation bloc. If onsite inspections and other EU tests pass muster, the first batches of powdered camel milk could be heading to European shelves next year -- and at some point possibly to Asia and America.

"We know this isn't what you'd call a mainstream product in the West," said David Wernery, legal adviser for the Camelicious brand, whose parent company goes by the more staid name of Emirates Industry for Camel Milk & Products. "We're thinking about health food stores and alternative markets. It's probably going to be a niche thing at first."

It would be something of a coming-out party for the small but passionate community that describes camel milk in awed tones.

It has at least three times more vitamin C than cow's milk and is considered an alternative for the lactose-intolerant. Researchers have studied possible roles for camel milk in fighting bacteria, tumors and diabetes, as well as traditional uses such as a treatment for liver disease across the range from central Asia to North Africa.

For Dubai's ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, a Camelicious foothold in Europe would mark a pet project growing up.

Wernery's veterinarian father, Ulrich, made a pitch about a camel dairy to Sheik Mohammed a decade ago.

"I told him, `You race camels. Why not milk them?'" said the elder Wernery, who first became enamored with camels while working in Somalia in the 1970s.

The sheik didn't give an immediate answer. So Wernery went ahead and created a small pilot dairy in 2000 with about a dozen camels outside his research and animal care clinic in Dubai. Three years later, Sheik Mohammed called. He was ready to fund the dairy.

At the time, Dubai's growth was starting to swallow up the desert in huge bites. Sheik Mohammed has always liked the bold stroke. Being patron to the region's first modern camel farm fit nicely as a sideline venture.

David Wernery and his mother cooked up the name Camelicious. Their initial worry: That the "normal customer" might find camel milk, well, "disgusting."

"Hopefully (this was) negated by the reference to delicious," he said.

The company, which began operations in 2006, quickly stood out on the dairy shelves with its logo: a bug-eyed cartoon camel with violet-hued sunglasses. And new flavors were added -- now up to chocolate, saffron, date, strawberry. Its official corporate image, a camel silhouette under a sliver moon, is on its other products, including camel milk chocolates and laban, a traditional yogurt drink.

"We're still doing market surveys in Europe," said David Wernery. "We really like the cartoon camel logo, but we wonder if that's the right image for a health food product. We're still working on it."

Then there's the taste. The milk from camels eating the desert brush can have a slightly salty flavor. The Camelicious herd gets hay and treats of carrots and dates -- which all serve to soften the taste for more Western palates.

"They eat anything," said David Wernery. "They are very, very easygoing. And smart, too."

Really? The lumbering "ships of the desert" are not as cloddish as they seem?

Not according to the elder Wernery, who is a walking encyclopedia of all things camel after decades of research and observation. His view: Camel society has a quiet dignity and order. At least for the ladies.

"Shhh," said Ulrich Wernery one morning as he watched the female camels stride in for milking. "They really don't like sudden movements or loud noises."

The camels pick their own leader and always follow the "alpha camel" into the milking pens. They also always file in the same order.

The average camel produces about 2.6 gallons (10 liters) of milk a day -- lower than the cows from major Western diaries that can give five or more gallons (nearly 19 liters). The imported Saudi and Sudanese camels, however, are typically better at milk production. The Gulf camels have been bred for speed for racing instead of milking over the ages.

The 700 camels being milked at the Camelicious dairy on Dubai's outskirts give about 1,320 gallons (5,000 liters) a day. Some is bottled for local markets, and smaller amounts are freeze-dried into a just-add-water powder for chocolate production. This is also how Camelicious plans to ship to the European market.

"Sure, we've given some thought to maybe one day having a camel dairy in Europe -- a place like southern Spain perhaps," said David Wernery.

"But that is far down the road. Right now, we're just concentrating on our plans to get a foothold in the export market." That also requires more camels.

Buyers for the dairy often turn up in camel markets across the Middle East and North Africa. They try to keep a low profile, however. It's hard to bargain for a good price once it's known they have the backing of Dubai's Sheik Mohammed. (A second, rival camel dairy in the Emirates has no current plans for export.)

"We just want to spread the news about camel milk," said the younger Wernery, whose office is around the corner from two skeletons of the one-humped local camel and its two-hump cousin in central Asia. "We think people will be pleasantly surprised."

They already have an ally in America.

From North Carolina, a natural medicine practitioner, Millie Hinkle, has carved out a role as a leading advocate for camel dairy farming. The latest step for her Camel Milk USA was to help win federal approval for test kits to test camels for diseases such as tuberculosis.

Hinkle estimates there are more than a dozen small camel dairies across the United States, with interest even being shown by traditional Amish farmers. She knows well that camel milk is truly the fringe of the fringe for American consumers. But so was sushi and kiwi fruit at one time.

"We are still so in kindergarten with camels," she said. "Give it time."

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Changes to Lease Accounting rules

U.S. and international accounting rule makers are planning to propose an overhaul of lease accounting as soon as Tuesday, in a move expected to affect some $1.2 trillion in leased assets.

Traditionally, accounting rules have given companies a lot of leeway in how they record leases for assets ranging from store locations and restaurant equipment to airplanes and machinery. As a result, only certain types of leases appear on the balance sheet, while a majority of a company's leases can often be kept off the balance sheet and hidden from an investors' view.

But the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets U.S. accounting rules, and the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, which writes accounting rules for more than 100 countries, will aim to change all that this week by proposing to bring many of these assets onto corporate balance sheets.

"It's something that needs to be done," said John Hepp, a partner in accounting firm Grant Thornton's professional standards group. "Lease accounting is broken."

Lease accounting has hardly been changed in the last 30 years, so FASB and IASB have suggested that the changes would make accounting more consistent and better reflect the economics behind a lease transaction. It could also clear up some confusion between similar transactions that are accounted for as financings or leases.

Under the changes being contemplated, companies would likely have to recognize a liability for future rental payments and an asset for the right to use the asset they are leasing. Many of those leases now are classified as "operating leases" and exist off the balance sheet.

A FASB spokeswoman declined to comment on the final proposal, but said that the boards do expect to release it next week.

"Operating leases have long been considered one of the major off-balance sheet obligations, so there was this view that in an operating lease, the lessee has incurred an obligation and that it should be reflected on the balance sheet," said Janet Pegg, an accounting analyst at UBS Investment Bank.

TO LEASE OR NOT TO LEASE?

Leases are used heavily in industries like retail, where retailers lease most of their stores and airlines, where carriers lease most of their planes.

Analysts at Credit Suisse estimated in 2006 that the total off-balance-sheet lease liability for S&P 500 companies was $396 billion, with the retail and restaurant industries facing the biggest liabilities.

While some investors may welcome the change to lease accounting because it will provide more clarity, many companies are fearful that the change will force their balance sheets to balloon overnight, and change all sorts of leverage and debt ratios, forcing them to renegotiate covenants with their lenders. Credit rating agencies, for the most part, already make calculations to compensate for off-balance-sheet leases, but they could also be changed.

"They're trying to put the value of the lease on the books and the obligation of lease on the books," said Jeffrey Taylor, an Arizona-based author of two books on lease accounting.

"It doesn't really change net worth, but I guarantee it's going to change return-on-asset formulas, return-on-equity formulas and debt servicing," he added.

The FASB and IASB decided to address both lessee and lessor accounting as part of the proposal, so companies like CIT Group Inc and Wells Fargo that operate leasing companies could also be affected.

"People in the leasing industry think if they can't keep things off the balance sheet and operating leases disappear that it's going to devastate not only equipment leasing, but also real estate leasing," said Taylor.

"You'll probably see a lot of people get out of the leasing business and I do see a consolidation of what kind of equipment might be leased,... but I can't see in my mind how changing lease accounting is going to push a company over the edge."

Taylor said he would expect lenders to work with companies affected by the change and that some companies may also want to restructure some leases due to the change.

The accounting proposal would be open for public comment and go through a revision process before becoming a formal rule. The new standard would likely not take effect for several years.

What is lease accounting

The accounting profession recognizes leases as either an operating lease or a capital lease (finance lease). An operating lease records no asset or liability on the financial statements, the amount paid is expensed as incurred. On the other hand, a capital lease is recorded as both an asset and a liability on the financial statements, generally at the present value of the rental payments (but never greater than the asset's fair market value). To distinguish the two, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) provided criteria for when a lease should be capitalized, and if any one of the criteria for capitalization is met, the lease is treated as a capital lease and recorded on the financial statements.


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HondaJet - Honda first venture into aviation

Honda has been showing off its first ever aircraft which the company expects to be taking off by the end of the year.

The HondaJet is the first venture into aviation for Honda, more commonly known for its cars and motorcycles, with the brand saying that it incorporates many technological advances in aviation design.

Among them are engines that are mounted above the wing instead of below, which Honda says significantly reduces drag (improving fuel efficiency), cuts noise pollution on the ground and creates additional space in the aircraft cabin.











Like the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, it also features a composite fuselage, which is both lighter and stronger than the traditional alloys used for the main section of the aircraft.

Inside, the HondaJet is decked out with a leather interior, with "exceptional leg room" and "unique lavatory features" in chrome and blue.

Honda says that the factory for the new jet will be completed in early 2011 so that the aircraft can be delivered to its first customers in the third quarter of 2012 with a price tag of $US4.5 million ($5 million).

The new jet was on display at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh runs through August 1 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA.

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BlackBerry Messenger blackout in Saudi Arabia and UAE

More than a million BlackBerry users may have key services in Saudi Arabia and the UAE cut off after authorities stepped up demands on smartphone maker Research In Motion for access to encrypted messages sent over the device.

BlackBerry Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf Arab region but because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be tracked locally.

"Certain BlackBerry services allow users to act without any legal accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns," the United Arab Emirates' Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a statement.

The UAE said it would suspend BlackBerry Messenger, email and Web browser services from October 11 until a fix was found, while industry sources said Saudi Arabia had ordered local telecom companies to freeze Messenger this month.

Sunday's moves cap wrangling with regulators over the issue, which first surfaced in 2007.

India raised similar security concerns last week, and Bahrain in April warned against using BlackBerry Messenger to distribute local news. As far back as 2007, France cautioned officials about using the services.

Indian security officials were concerned that BlackBerry's encrypted data could be used to coordinate acts against the state. They have clamped down on mobile phone operators in the wake of 2008 attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai.

The UAE, home to Gulf financial hub Dubai, said it would halt BlackBerry services until an "acceptable solution" was developed and applied.

Users of the device said that could mean disruptions for companies and individuals who rely on the services, including almost 700,000 in Saudi Arabia and some 500,000 in the UAE.

"It's a final decision but we are continuing discussions with them," Mohammed Al Ghanem, director general of the UAE's TRA, told Reuters.

"Censorship has got nothing to do with this," he said, calling it instead a suspension due to RIM's lack of compliance with UAE regulations.

Authorities noted there is no such problem with services on smartphones from Nokia or Apple's iPhone.

"This is an issue for RIM since all email traffic goes through its Network Operating Centers," said James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic Equities. "Nokia and Apple do not route traffic in this way."

RIM officials were not immediately available to comment.

The Canadian company has more than 41 million BlackBerry subscribers, meaning the Gulf bans could affect fewer than 3 percent of its users.

"The UAE market in and of itself is not significant to RIM. A bigger concern would be if it runs into similar issues in a large market such as China, which has similar security concerns, as Google is well aware of," Cordwell said.

USER UPROAR

In Saudi Arabia, BlackBerry handsets have become the must-have gizmo for Saudi youth, enabling them to connect with members of the opposite sex in a deeply conservative society.

"About 80 percent of Saudi-based BlackBerry users are individual users and 20 percent are enterprises, while these ratios are basically reversed in developing nations," said one industry source.

"This problem would not have emerged if the bulk of BlackBerry users were enterprises."

The governor of Saudi Arabia's telecom regulator declined to comment. An Interior Ministry spokesman could not immediately be reached to comment.

In the UAE, which is slowly emerging from an economic slowdown brought about by the global financial crisis and Dubai's property crash, some worried the move was aimed at curbing free speech.

"If you want to eavesdrop on your people, then you ban whatever they're using," said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT. "The basic problem is there's encryption between the BlackBerries and the servers. We find this issue all around about encryption."

Wrangling over the issue included an incident last year in which a state-controlled local service provider, Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat), introduced what it called a software upgrade. RIM said it was an unauthorized "telecommunications surveillance application.

"I think there will be such an uproar, it probably won't happen and a solution will be found," Irfan Ellam, Al Mal Capital telecoms analyst said, referring to the mooted BlackBerry services ban.

"BlackBerry is seen as essential by many companies, so if you want to attract business to your country, it doesn't make much sense to ban these BlackBerry services," said Ellam.

He said RIM had been asked to set up a proxy server in India to allow the government there to monitor traffic from a security perspective and the same approach might resolve the issue in the UAE and elsewhere.

"The UAE is asking them to have a server here and they are offering solutions other than that," a UAE source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

"BlackBerry appears to be compliant in similar regulatory environments of other countries, which makes noncompliance in the UAE both disappointing and of great concern," UAE's regulator said.

RIM shares rose last week on speculation that it might unveil a new touchscreen BlackBerry this week to compete more effectively with the iPhone and models.

Recommended reading:
* Blackpad BlackBerry Tablet
* BlackBerry users in Dubai tricked by Etisalat


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India's Rupee Symbol

The dollar is $. The Euro is €. The pound is £. But the rupee was stranded without a symbol, until today.

The Indian Press Information Bureau, for the first time, released images of the newly selected symbol. According to the Associated Press, ministers made the executive decision at a cabinet meeting after considering five finalist symbol options, all of which it was said, drew inspiration from “the letter R”” in the Roman alphabet and “Ra” from the ancient Devanagari script used in Hindi.

Formerly, the Rupee was indicated by abbreviations, hardly official enough for the currency of one of the world's fastest-growing economic forces. It prompted more than 3,000 design submissions to aid this cultural and historical event.

Udaya Kumar's design was ultimately the symbol chosen. Kumar, a post graduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology, now not only gets accolades for contributing to India's culture, but also will receive a cash prize of 250,000 rupees (now with symbol attached).

Indian Rupee Symbol – How to Type it?

Indian Rupee symbol has been announced and has been sent to the government for approval. And if you are wondering how will you type the rupee symbol using your keyboard, well it might take a year or so to get the symbol in action (to gain acceptance in India) and two years for international acceptance.

Technically speaking, the symbol will be first sent to Unicode Consortium’s technical committee, in order to include the same in Unicode database.

The symbol will also be included in the Indian Standards, viz. 13194:1991 – Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII), through an amendment to the existing list by the Bureau of Indian Standards. The ISCII specifies various codes for Indian languages for processing on computers along with the key-board lay outs.

While the Government of India can mandate hardware manufacturers to include the symbol in keyboards, it can also be accessed through assigned keyboard combination or via the operating system’s Character Map, post approval from the Unicode Consortium.

Maybe, to get the official Rupee symbol, you would have to wait for the new keyboards or hack from a typographer.

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Microsoft job cuts 2010

A new round of Microsoft layoffs is, indeed, happening on July 7, as long-rumored and expected. According to various online comments — all anonymous from those infamous “people knowledgeable about the situation” — the latest round is going to be less gruesome and more broadly spread than last year’s two waves of cuts that totaled more than 5,000 people.

There has been a growing stream of comments on the Mini Microsoft blog and gathering reports (direct and indirect) from individuals in the trenches today. It looks as if Microsoft’s Central Marketing Group (CMG), Enterprise Partner Group (EPG), the SharePoint/Office team and the search/advertising teams all have made cuts. Most of the rumored cuts have been in the marketing/sales organizations. People just buy MS stuff. Who would have guessed that MS had a marketing dept? I never really saw them marketing things.

(The usual caveat, re: Mini Microsoft: Given the anonymous comments, it’s impossible to tell whether folks who are reporting in are real Microsoft employees or not. But based on other sources I’ve got — not to mention the relatively high accuracy rate last year, in terms of Mini Microsoft comments regarding which teams/products/projects got cut — , it sounds like the reports there are in line with what’s actually happening.)

So far, there’s no word on what the final tally is likely to be or whether there will be a follow-up Round 2 this year, like there was last year.

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White people for rent in China

In China, white people can be rented.

For a day, a weekend, a week, up to even a month or two, Chinese companies are willing to pay high prices for fair-faced foreigners to join them as fake employees or business partners.

Some call it "White Guy Window Dressing." To others, it's known as the "White Guy in a Tie" events, "The Token White Guy Gig," or, simply, a "Face Job."

And it is, essentially, all about the age-old Chinese concept of face. To have a few foreigners hanging around means a company has prestige, money and the increasingly crucial connections -- real or not -- to businesses abroad.

"Face, we say in China, is more important than life itself," said Zhang Haihua, author of "Think Like Chinese." "Because Western countries are so developed, people think they are more well off, so people think that if a company can hire foreigners, it must have a lot of money and have very important connections overseas. So when they really want to impress someone, they may roll out a foreigner."

Or rent one.

Last year, Jonathan Zatkin, an American actor who lives in Beijing, posed as the vice president of an Italian jewelry company that had, allegedly, been in a partnership with a Chinese jewelry chain for a decade.

When is being foreign a career advantage?

Zatkin was paid 2,000 yuan (about $300) to fly, along with a couple of Russian models, to a small city in the central province of Henan where he delivered a speech for the grand opening ceremony of a jewelry store there.

"I was up on stage with the mayor of the town, and I made a speech about how wonderful it was to work with the company for 10 years and how we were so proud of all of the work they had done for us in China," Zatkin said. "They put up a big bandstand and the whole town was there and some other local muckety-mucks."

The requirements for these jobs are simple. 1. Be white. 2. Do not speak any Chinese, or really speak at all, unless asked. 3. Pretend like you just got off of an airplane yesterday.

Those who go for such gigs tend to be unemployed actors or models, part-time English teachers or other expats looking to earn a few extra bucks. Often they are jobs at a second- or third-tier city, where the presence of pale-faced foreigners is needed to impress local officials, secure a contract or simply to fulfill a claim of being international.

"Occasionally companies want a foreign face to go to meetings and conferences or to go to dinners and lunches and smile at the clients and shake people's hands," read an ad posted by a company called Rent A Laowai (Chinese for "foreigner") on the online classified site thebeijinger.com.

It continued: "There are job opportunities for girls who are pretty and for men who can look good in a suit."

People like Brad Smith. When Smith -- the nom de plume of the Beijing-based American actor -- answered CNN's phone call on a recent morning, he was standing outside a meeting room at a Ramada Inn in Hangzhou, a city about 100 miles outside of Shanghai. Today's job: Pretend to be an architect from New York and give design plans for a new museum to local officials.

"They have not told me what my name is today. I think it is Lawrence or something," said Smith -- unlike some jobs, no fake business cards were given to hand out.

Earlier that morning he went over his script with his Chinese "business partners" at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. "It says, 'Good morning distinguished leaders. It is my privilege to participate in this program'," said Smith, who asked that his real name not be used for fear it could jeopardize future jobs.

If Smith is asked a question, he is told to pretend to answer as his "translator" pretends to understand.

Occasionally, these jobs can go awry. Smith said 18 months ago Beijing police showed up at his apartment after a financial company he worked at for a couple of months in Xi'an, a city in western China, allegedly swindled millions of yuan out of clients.

"That company said I was the guy in charge," he said. "I didn't even remember the company's name. After that, I decided I was never going to use my passport again with these fake companies. The small gigs are much less dangerous." Sometimes companies will hire Caucasians simply to sit in the office a few hours a day near the window where clients and customers can see them.

White women are also a hot commodity, sometimes to pose as phony foreign girlfriends, or, in the case of Vicky Mohieddeen, to pretend to be an oil tycoon.

Mohieddeen, who is Scottish, took a job in 2008 to attend what she describes as some sort of "oil drilling conference" in Shandong province for 300 yuan ($44). Several busloads of foreigners, with nationalities ranging from Pakistani to Nigerian, were trucked to the event, she said. They were greeted by brass bands and feted with a sumptuous dinner.

"I was like, 'Yeah, we have a lot of oil in Scotland.' I didn't know what to say. It was a bit nerve-racking. We were guests of honor of the vice mayor. We were put in a nice hotel. It was quite fancy."

For Mohieddeen, who had just arrived in Beijing at the time, the experience, albeit bizarre, was an introduction to a side of China most foreigners will never see.

"It is part of what China is all about, you know," Mohieddeen said. "There is quite an elaborate fantasy world going on here where if everyone buys into it, it does not matter if it is the truth. Those kinds of experiences give me a fuller understanding of the way the culture works."


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HP to cut 9000 jobs

Hewlett-Packard plans to cut 9,000 jobs over the next few years as it ramps up its use of automated data centers and other technology, the company announced Tuesday.

The world's largest computer company said it will invest $1 billion in building up its automated commercial data centers over the next few years. As a result, HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) will take a charge of about $1 billion in its financial filings, expecting the investment to pay off in annual savings of about $1 billion.

The move will improve profits and shareholder value, Tom Iannotti, a senior vice president and general manager at HP, said in a company press release.

The company "will not be providing geographical locations of the job cuts at this time as final decisions have not been made," an HP spokeswoman said.

Make money with Pawpaw

This is article about how Thomas Pennington Lucas, a botanist make money with tropical remedy made from pawpaw (or fermented papayate ointment). This product has been around for decade and has since became a trusting product. In this case, age does matter. The reason for its popularity is the natural virtues of the pawpaw. Celebrities and women around the world strengthen it popularity and improve sales.

Fortune does grow on trees

It's the cure-all product that is a favourite of stars and celebrities across the globe.

Cate Blanchett, Miranda Kerr and Rose Byrne are never caught short without the distinctive $5 red tube.

An ever-growing legion of fans claim it heals all kinds of ailments, including boils, burns, mosquito bites, sunburn, cuts, chapped lips and cracked skin.

Little do they know the century-old tropical remedy, Lucas' Papaw Ointment, is the product of a Brisbane family.

Its secret formula has been passed from generation to generation in the Lucas and Talbot clans.

Kevin Talbot, a 74-year-old fourth-generation producer, now heads the operation.

He is fiercely proud of his family business and just as protective.

As he stood in the Acacia Ridge factory on Beaudesert Road, where his daughter Lynette, son-in-law David and son Graham also work, tears welled in his eyes when he spoke of the family firm.

"We're so proud. It's amazing," he said.

"Lucas Papaw has more than a cult following now. Everyone wants it."

The grandfather-of-three laughed at suggestions the small red tube, synonymous with the ointment, has become a fashion statement for celebrities and women in Australia and across the world.

The reason for its popularity, he said, is the natural virtues of the pawpaw.

"It just works," he said.

Mr Talbot's great-grandfather, English surgeon and botanist Thomas Pennington Lucas, discovered the healing capabilities of the pawpaw upon migrating to Australia in 1876.

"He thought they were doing too many operations in England and he wanted to find an alternative," Mr Talbot said.

It was in the Sunshine State where he perfected the formula for the fermented papayate ointment.

The Queenslander-style house pictured on the red packaging is in fact Dr Lucas' Vera Papaw Hospital, built on the corner of Moray and Sydney Streets in New Farm.

"Here patients were treated only with Dr Lucas' pawpaw remedies, which at the time included throat lozenges," Mr Talbot said.

It became impossible for the family to continue Dr Lucas' work in the special hospital once he passed away.

"But it was possible to make it available for public benefit," Mr Talbot said.

Bickfords Australia was the first company to distribute the ointment, before it gained worldwide attention.

Although not all tradition has been lost.

"We still peel the pawpaws by hand," Mr Talbot said.

The factory, steeped in history, stands on land near Dr Lucas' first Acacia Ridge pawpaw plantation.

The enamelled cast iron bowl used to mix the ointment by hand when Mr Talbot's mother ran the business from a wooden hut, since replaced by the factory, still sits in the warehouse.

"I hope to pass this business to my grandchildren," Mr Talbot said.

Meanwhile he is content mixing papayate just as generations before him have.

ABACUS 2007-AC1 fraud

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc of committing fraud in a complicated transaction involving securities known as collateralized debt obligations. The particular deal that Goldman entered into with Paulson and others was called ABACUS 2007-AC1.

Here's how the ABACUS 2007-AC1 deal worked, according to the SEC's complaint:

1) Hedge fund manager John Paulson tells Goldman Sachs in late 2006 he wants to bet against risky subprime mortgages using derivatives. The risky mortgage bonds that Paulson wanted to short were essentially subprime home loans that had been repackaged into bonds. The bonds were rated "BBB," meaning that as the home loans defaulted, these bonds would be among the first to feel the pain.

2) Goldman Sachs knows that German bank IKB would potentially buy the exposure that Paulson was looking to short. But IKB would only do so if the mortgage securities were selected by an outsider.

3) Goldman Sachs knows that not every asset manager would be willing to work with Paulson, according to the complaint. In January 2007, Goldman approaches ACA Management LLC, a unit of a bond insurer.

ACA agrees to be the manager in a deal, and to help select the securities for the deal with Paulson. In January and February 2007, Paulson and ACA work on the portfolio, coming to an agreement in late February.

Goldman never tells ACA or other investors that Paulson is shorting the securities, and ACA believes that Paulson in fact wanted to own some of the riskiest parts of the securities, according to the complaint.

4) Goldman puts together a deal known as a "synthetic collateralized debt obligation" designed to help IKB and Paulson get the exposure they want. IKB takes $150 million of the risk from subprime mortgage bonds in late April 2007. ABN Amro takes some $909 million of exposure as well, and buys protection on its exposure from ACA Management affiliate ACA Financial Guaranty Corp in May 2007.

Goldman's marketing materials for the deal never mention Paulson's having shorted more than $1 billion of securities. Goldman receives about $15 million in fees.

5) Months later, IKB loses almost all of its $150 million investment. In late 2007, ABN is acquired by a consortium of banks including Royal Bank of Scotland. In August 2008, RBS unwinds ABN's position in ABACUS by paying Goldman $840.1 million. Most of that money goes to Paulson, who made about $1 billion total.

Secret of how rich people get rich

How do rich people get rich? By turning money into more money or simply money make money. An upcoming book by Kaye Thomas explains in plain English the secret of successful investing: Turning money into more money. Below are some simple rules in successful investing and multiplying your fortune.

While everyone goes through good times and bad times, the 1980 Harvard Law School graduate suggests sticking to four main rules for success:

1) Create and maintain a regular programme of saving, in an amount that makes sense relative to your income level and financial goals.

2) Create and maintain an appropriate division of your money between bonds and stocks, in a ratio that makes sense in relation to your time horizon and risk tolerance.

3) Within each division, create and maintain good diversification.

4) Keep investment expenses to a minimum.

“Every investment has two sides. A great deal for one side is a lousy deal for the other, and no one wants a lousy deal. When investment looks amazingly good, ask yourself why would offer to enrich you at his expense. Ask yourself why isn’t everyone buying this investment if it’s so great. The better an investment looks, the more likely there’s a hidden catch,” Thomas writes.

“Disastrous investment results can nearly always be traced to a violation of one or more of these rules,” he says, adding that the easiest way to follow these rules is to invest in low-cost index funds.

So now you have no excuses.

Why product and brand failed

Famous companies do have its share of product and brand failures. These failures occur on an ongoing basis to varying degrees within most product-based organizations. This is the negative aspect of the development and marketing process. It is a fact that fewer than 10% of all new products/services produce enough return on the company's investment to survive past the third year. Read also Top 10 Technology Product Failure

In most cases, this “failure rate” syndrome ends up being a numbers game. There must be some ratio of successful products to each one that ends up being a failure. When this does not happen, the organization is likely to fail, or at least experience financial difficulties that prohibit it from meeting profitability objectives. And it can become fatal for a start-up company. The primary goal is to learn from product and brand failures so that future product development, design, strategy and implementation will be more successful.

Studying product failures allows those in the planning and implementation process to learn from the mistakes of other product and brand failures. Each product failure can be investigated from the perspective of what, if anything, might have been done differently to produce and market a successful product rather than one that failed. The ability to identify key signs in the product development process can be critical. If the product should make it this far, assessing risk before the product is marketed can save an organization’s budget, and avoid the intangible costs of exposing their failure to the market.

Defining product and brand failures
A product is a failure when its presence in the market leads to:

* The withdrawal of the product from the market for any reason, such as obsolete design;
* The inability of a product to realize the required market share to sustain its presence in the market due to poor sales or flooded with cheaper competitors products;
* The inability of a product to achieve the anticipated life cycle as defined by the organization due to any reason; or,
* The ultimate failure of a product to achieve profitability. For example, over budget of advertisements and marketing cost.

Failures are not necessarily the result of substandard engineering, design or marketing. Based on critic’s definitions, there are hundreds of “bad” movies that have reached “cult status” and financial success while many “good” movies have been box office bombs. Other premier products fail because of competitive actions. Sony’s Beta format was a clearly superior product to VHS, but their decision to not enable the format to be standardized negatively impacted distribution and availability, which resulted in a product failure. The “Tucker” was a superior vehicle compared to what was on the market at the time. This failure was due to General Motors burying the fledgling organization in the courts to eliminate a future competitor with a well-designed product posing a potential threat to their market share. Apple has experienced a series of product failures, with consistent repetition as they continue to fight for market share.

Product failures are not necessarily financial failures, although bankruptcy may be the final result. Many financially successful products were later found to pose health and safety risks. These products were financial and market share successes:

* Asbestos-based building materials now recognized as a carcinogenic—Insulation, floor tile and “popcorn” ceiling materials produced by a number of manufacturers.
* Baby formula that provided insufficient nutrients for infants resulting in retardation—Nestle’s.
* The diet medication cocktail of Pondimin and Redux called “Fen Phen” that resulted in heart value complications—American Home Products (http://www.settlementdietdrugs.com/).

What successful products may be next? Frequent and high dosages of Advil are suspected to correlate with liver damage. Extended use of electric blankets are suspected by some to increase the chance of cancer. The over-the-counter availability and high use of Sudafed is feared by some physicians and is currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Product failures and the product life cycle
Most products experience some form of the product life cycle where they create that familiar—or a variant—form of the product life cycle based on time and sales volume or revenue. Most products experience the recognized life cycle stages including:

1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity (or saturation)
4. Decline

In some cases, product categories seem to be continuously in demand, while other products never find their niche. These products lack the recognized product life cycle curve.

Failure, fad, fashion or style?
It is important to distinguish a product failure from a product fad, style or a fashion cycle. The most radical product life cycle is that of a fad. Fads have a naturally short life cycle and in fact, are often predicted to experience rapid gain and rapid loss over a short period of time—a few years, months, or even weeks with online fads. One music critic expected “The Bay City Rollers” to rival the Beatles. Do you know who they are? And the pet rock lasted longer than it should have, making millions for its founders.

A “fashion” is what describes the accepted emulation of trends in several areas, such as clothing and home furnishings. The product life cycle of a “style” also appears in clothing as well as art, architecture, cars and other esthetic-based products. The “end” of these product life cycles does not denote failures, but marks the conclusion of an expected cycle that will be replaced and repeated by variations of other products that meet the same needs and perform the same functions.

The benefits of studying failures
Gaining a better understanding of product failures is important to help prevent future failures. Studying the history of product failures may generate some insight into the reason for those failures and create a list of factors that may increase the opportunity for success, but there are no guarantees.

Examples of product failures
The following is an abbreviated list of product failures that may provide insight that will help to identify product and brand success factors:

Automotive and transportation

* Cadillac Cimarron
* Pontiac Fiero
* Chevrolet Corvair
* Ford Edsel
* The DeLorean
* Crosley
* The Tucker
* The Gremlin, the Javelin and a complete line of other models by American Motors
* GM’s passenger diesel engine
* Mazda’s Wankel rotary engine
* Proton Juara
* Firestone 500 tire
* Goodyear tires used on the Ford Explorer
* Concorde—supersonic airliner

Computer industry

* IBM’s PCjr—introduced in March 1985
* Apple’s Newton
* Apple’s Lisa
* Coleco’s Adam
* Percon’s Pocketreader—hand held scanner, now operating under the company name PSC
* Bumble Bee’s software version of the book “What Color is Your Parachute”
* OSX

Entertainment

* Quadraphonic audio equipment
* World Football League
* Women’s National Basketball Association
* World League of American Football
* United States Football League
* “He and She,” “Berrengers,” every spinoff done by the former cast of “Seinfeld,” and dozens of other television shows each year.
* “Of God’s and Generals,” “Heavens Gate,” “Water World,” “The Postman” and other movies—with a disproportionately high number produced by Kevin Costner.

Food and beverage

* Burger King’s veal parmesan
* Burger King’s pita salad
* McRib—and still being tested and tried
* Nestle’s New Cookery—but a successor, Lean Cuisine, is a big hit
* Gerber’s Singles—dinners in jars, for adults—early ’70s
* Chelsea—“baby beer”

Photographic and video

* Polaroid instant home movies
* SX-70 (Polaroid instant camera)
* RCA Computers (Spectra-70)
* Video-disc players
* DIVX variant on DVD

U.S. currency

* Susan B. Anthony Dollar coin—niche in San Francisco, Las Vegas
* Two-dollar bill
* Twenty-cent piece

Malaysia currency

* Two-ringgit bill
* One-ringgit coin

Other products

* DuPont’s CORFAM —synthetic leather
* Mattel’s Aquarius
* Timex’s Sinclair
* Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo (1979)
* Sparq portable mass storage
* Rely tampons
* Relax-a-cizor—vibrating chair
* Louisiana World Exposition—and its gondola

Common reasons for product failures
In addition to a faulty concept or product design, some of the most common reasons for product failures typically fall into one or more of these categories:

* High level executive push of an idea that does not fit the targeted market.
* Overestimated market size.
* Incorrectly positioned product.
* Ineffective promotion, including packaging message, which may have used misleading or confusing marketing message about the product, its features, or its use.
* Not understanding the target market segment and the branding process that would provide the most value for that segment.
* Incorrectly priced—too high and too low.
* Excessive research and/or product development costs.
* Underestimating or not correctly understanding competitive activity or retaliatory response.
* Poor timing of distribution.
* Misleading market research that did not accurately reflect the actual consumer’s behavior for the targeted segment.
* Conducted marketing research and ignored those findings.
* Key channel partners were not involved, informed, or both.
* Lower than anticipated margins.

Using these potential causes of a product or brand failure may help to avoid committing those same errors. Learning from these “lessons” can be beneficial to avoid some of these pitfalls and increase the chance for success when you launch that next product or brand.

Originally published on Bplans.com.