Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 12/22/06
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“CONSUMER TECHNOLOGIES ARE INVADING CORPORATE CUNNING”
Portions of an article from The Economist 12/19/06 print edition
“In October, shortly after taking over as head of information technology (IT) at Arizona State University, Adrian Sannier gave the nod to his contact at Google, the internet giant known for its search engine, and with one flick of the proverbial switch 65,000 students had new e-mail accounts. Unlike the university’s old system, which stores e-mails on its own server computers, the new accounts reside on Gmail, Google’s free web-based service. Mr. Sannier is not forcing anybody to change but has found that the students, many of whom were already using Gmail for their private e-mail, have been voluntarily migrating to the new service at a rate of 300 an hour. Crucially, they can take their “asu.edu” e-mail addresses with them.
“The service, part of a bundle called ‘Google Apps for Your Domain’ that also includes instant messaging (IM) and a web-based calendar, has not even been officially launched yet. It began running in a test (or ‘beta’) form in August. But Dave Girouard, the boss of Google’s small but growing enterprise division, says that ‘tens of thousands of organizations have already up to use Google’s web-based tools in place of traditional in-house e-mail systems and other software.
“Using Google’s services has several advantages for companies. Most employees already know how to use web-based software, and thus do not need training. They can access the services through any web browser, regardless of what kind of computer (or telephone) they use. Like the consumer service, the corporate product is free. (Mr Sannier pays for support–“less than $10,000”-but most organizations do not.) And in-house IT staff need do absolutely nothing, since the data and software reside on Google’s server computers.
“For Mr Sannier, however, a bigger reason than money for switching from traditional software to web-based alternatives has to do with the pace and trajectory of technological change. Using the new Google service, for instance, students can share calendars, which they could not easily do before. Soon Google will integrate its online word processor and spreadsheet software into the service, so that students and teachers can share coursework. Eventually, Google may add blogs and wikis – it has bought firms with these technologies. Mr Sannier says it is ‘absolutely inconceivable’ that he and his staff could roll out improvements at this speed in the traditional way – by buying software and installing it on the university’s own computers…
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8450071
“THE GIFT RIGHT OUT”
by James Surowiecki
Portions of an article in THE NEW YORKER of 12/25/06:
“…recently millions of Americans, instead of trudging through malls in a desperate quest for the perfect sweater, have switched to buying gify cards. The National Retail Federation expects Americans will buy close to twenty-five billion dollars’ worth of gift cards this season, up thirty-four per cent from last year, with two-thirds of shoppers intending to buy at least one card; gift cards now rival apparel as the most popular category of present. This is, in part, because clever corporate marketing: stores like gift gift cards because they amount to an interest-free loan from customers, and because recipients usually spend more than the amount of the card – a phenomenon that retailers tenderly refer to as ‘uplifting’ spending. But the boom in gift cards is also a rational response to the most important fact about Christmas gift giving: most of us just aren’t that good at it.
“We all know that bad gifts inflict a cost – just think of the rigid smiles that greet an unwanted floral tie or Josh Rouse CD – but it’s surprising how big that cost can be. Since the early nineteen-nineties, Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, has been doing a series pf studies in which students are asked to put a value on the presents they receive. Waldfogel’s main finding is that, in general, people spend a lot more on presents than they’re worth to those who receive them, a phenomenon that he calls ‘the deadweight loss of Christmas.’ A deadweight loss is created when you spend eighty dollars to give me a sweater that I would spend only sixty-five dollars to buy myself. Waldfogel estimates that somewhere between ten and eighteen per cent of seasonal spending becomes deadweight loss, which means that billions of dollars a year is now going to waste…
“Does our incompetence at gift giving matter? Many would say no. Waldfogel, after all, measured the value of presents in purely monetary terms – he explicitly told his subjects to ignore sentimental attachments. But sentiment obviously has a tremendous amount to do with how we respond to gifts. A study by economists Sara Solnick and David Hemenway shows that we value unrequested gifts more than presents we ask for, because we assume that the former show more thought. And we also go to great lengths to demonstrate that a gift is more than a dollar sign: we snip off price tags, clip the prices off book jackets, and ask for receipts that hide the cost of the present…
“…But Waldfogel’s studies also suggest a very different solution: if most of the presents we buy are going to be less valuable in monetary terms than in sentimental ones, then there’s no reason to believe that the more expensive gift is a better gift. In fact, the more we spend at Christmas, the more we waste. We might actually be happier – and we’d certainly be wealthier – if we exchanged small, well-considered gifts rather than haunting the malls. Calculating the deadweight loss of Christmas gifts is a coldhearted project, but it leads to a paradoxically warmhearted conclusion: the fact of giving may be more important than what we you give. Start with “Bah, humbug” and you somehow end up with “God bless us, every one.”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061225ta_talk_surowiecki
“TOP TEN PHOTOS OF 2006 FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS”
To see the spectacular photos, click on
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061219-top-photos.html
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