Is technology making us a more happy or less happy society?

Is technology making us a more happy or less happy society?

It is very hard to be sure if technology makes us more or less happy since this conjecture depends from person to person.

Given that it is our conscience and mentality that controls our way of viewing the world and as such our emotions will have always to points of view of this question, one more happy and one less.

When we look at the point of view that is telling us that technology brings more happiness, the pillar points to that decision will be that technology brings more comfort, that you can reach other parts of the world and contact people with a facility that formerly was not possible to use and taking this into account we are obliged to agree that all that advantages are really a motive to embrace technologies and be more happy.

We know that is true, that the fact of be able to effectuate business from the comfort of your home without leaving your family is better that any thing else, or access knowledge with a click is impressive and pleasant.

It is true as well that technologies provide a huge impact in our health as the cut of carbon emissions is in due to the creation of hybrid cars and less pollutant machinery.

In other hand the technology can be unpleasant and make people less happy.

As in some situation people tends to become more solitaries a dependent of the technology cutting their relation not to the world but with human relations.

In my opinion technology make us happier as give us advantages and tools to improve our quality of live.

Is clear for me that technologies give social innovation that fulfill and met our necessities giving in this way freedom to enjoy the life.

What role can new technologies play in the development of social innovation?

What role can new technologies play in the development of social innovation?

In my opinion the new technologies can play an important rule in the development of the social innovation, as the quickly evolution and expansion of the new technologies had made a much more faster development of social innovation.

What is meant here is that with the new technologies and its rapid and explosive evolution it had provided a new order of evolution inside social innovation.

In our days it is maybe possible to affirm that the advance of the social innovation, is intrinsically linked to what happens in the evolution of new technologies.

The fact that through new technologies we ca be in touch with some one half way in the world is a social innovation that witch we cannot highlight their importance.

The advance of social innovation in terms of distance learning, healthcare or a fair trade among everyone is something that had improved our life and our notion of social innovation.

The importance of the technology inside social innovation had change the entire concept of the word.

Today huge amounts of money are devoted to improve and innovate technologies in order to create a better quality of life, evolution and innovation of the society.

Social innovation is what we use to answer the necessities of the world, to create new ideas and new technologies are the tolls that we use today to reach the answers. One of the good examples that we have in our days of technology working to create social innovation is with the appearance of smart phones witch possibility the access to bank accounts in rural areas or other is the fact of the increase of e-commerce made by rural companies.

In sum my opinion is that in our days the new technologies play an important if not vital to the development of the called social innovations.  

What do you understand by the concept of ’social innovation’?

What do you understand by the concept of ’social innovation’?

Social innovation is the concept that tries to find new tools to satisfy the needs of society, it is the strategy that goes beyond what already exists by thinking out of the box in order to create innovations that produce benefits to the society, whether in a social or in a complete new interactive level of knowledge. It is a conjecture of small modifications within the social organization of communities.

Social innovation is what we can call of “world evolution”, as it can be described as a concept that never stop searching new ways of evolution, as the society is in constant necessity to create new entities.

If we go back in history we will easily find Social innovation, from the discovery of the wheel in the pre history era all the way to the World Wide Web in our days.

The development of social innovations is today more noticed that was before as we devote most of our resources to the development of new technologies.

Social innovation is the piece in society that have been pushing us to meet the “unmet” necessities of the world, by completing in each generation the necessaries changes in our social concept of the world.

In sum, as said by the Oxford Business school, “Social Innovation are ideas that work”, by using creativity and invention to create new ideas with utility in the work market and in the world to in this way achieve social goals.

Is Amazon’s cloud drive a threat?

Is Amazon’s cloud drive a threat?

Amazon’s cloud is a tool that will aloud its customers to have more option at their fingertips, as with the appearance of Amazon’s cloud the clients are able to stream music directly to their MP3’s from a online personal drive provided by Amazon where the first 5 gigabytes are free.

In my opinion the Amazon’s Cloud does not imply a threat to the consumer’s point of view as it will bring more competition to the market, but if we analyze from the point of view of the competitors it can be seen as a danger since it threatens the stability of the market.

The Amazon’s cloud drive was an impetuous bet by Amazon to launch an online securely store witch the success can be huge. This will trigger a race that will be beneficial to all, as a battle between companies normally accelerates the process of evolution of their targets and drops the prices down.

What regards to the idea, it is itself brilliant as the fact that you can be able to stream music anywhere in the world and without the need to be stored in your personal device but rather in an online server, means we will save hours of uploading music to your mp3 or that will opening new ways of business to explore. In terms of privacy and share of profits, piracy would probably become more difficult to police within the web, therefore this fact should be developed further.

However it can become a threat to competitors such as Google and Apple as they will need to innovate soon in order to stay in the race, but as was mentioned before normally that race is beneficial to the general public, as they will be pushed to give more than less and present more to beat the adversary company.

I thing that the Amazon’s cloud will bring more benefits that threats as will create a wave of creativity among companies.

What strategies should the film industry be adopting to address, and exploit, new technologies and platforms?

What strategies should the film industry be adopting to address, and exploit, new technologies and platforms?

The film industry has been having a very close relationship with technologies since its creation, sometimes even becoming pioneer in using certain technologies before every other industry. Either by sponsorships of products showed in films, or with the technology used to create it the truth is that film industry always has been in the leading of technology use.

For me the strategy to follow is to give people something that will be impossible to them have at home, being always in the vanguard of the technologies even if this means spending millions in the development of new technologies in order to reach a unique performance that later will bring more income.

The film industry is losing around 500 millions dollars every year with the digital infringements, therefore one of the main concerns relates to the piracy that is the responsible for the loss of millions of dollars to the industry. The question then is how to stop piracy?

The way to stop this is my opinion goes with the assistance of technologies by creating new forms of unique projections which are harder to copy, as it is the case for example of 3D images that provides to the viewers great cinematic images capable to capture their attention.

But 3D is not an option any more, as there are already 3D TV’s able to produce the same kind of cinematic projection closing the gap that existed between cinema and the viewers at home.

Other the concerns about the illegal download goes to the fact that most of the people go to illegal websites just because is easier to download; in order to answer that Warner is joining facebook to distribute films into the web with better quality and easy access.

In my opinion that partnership is the step to follow as by entering into a market like the streaming video websites that is something that wasn’t fully explore by the film industries can reveal to be a multimillion profits industry.

However sooner or later the piracy or the technology would catch the industry what is in the end something good as it will force the industry to adapt and in this way create more technologies to stay in the race. In sum the only strategy that I see to the industry is a strategy of anticipation in what concerns to the innovation of technology.

Why should we care about what happens to net neutrality?

Why should we care about what happens to net neutrality?

Taking the definition previously mentioned into account, I believe that we should care about net neutrality, as the creation of rules to control the web will contribute to the reduction of our freedom of speech and creativity on the web, which in my personal opinion is what makes the web such a brilliant tool of communication.

However some critics affirm that the creation of rules and the fact that we remove net-neutrality will not end our free of speech or creativity in the web, as we will only regulate the web in a way to protect the industry from piracy and stop the hackers to operate effectively.

I see myself forced to agree to that something must be done to stop the piracy and even protect the children from the dangers of the net, is understandable that our first thought is to end the net neutrality but the major question relies on who will be responsible to control the web who will detain the power to control our line of speech or our speed of access.

If to solve the children protection we can use parental controls to stop piracy is not that easy without have a set of rules to control the web but this will be the best way to deal with the situation?

When we have concrete cases like China where the government controls the web and the people don’t have the freedom to post whatever they want, and even if we get a set of rules that not contrary the human rights who will be uncharged of such responsibility and how get rules that go with the will of all cultures. 

In conclusion what we can retain is that the net-neutrality is an ideological subject about witch we need to relay since its decision can lead to the end or not of our freedom of expression on the web.

What exactly is ’net neutrality’?

What exactly is ’net neutrality’?

Net Neutrality is the idea of Internet surfing, where all users have no restrictions in the Internet service and governments, or any kind of platform do not hold any power to regulate the flow of information and modes of communication in the web.

In other words is related to how people use the Internet and to safeguard what make the Internet a unique tool of communication.

The concept of Net Neutrality tried to safeguard designs of Internet where no flow of information ca be prioritize over other and where every one had the same capacity of access to Internet.

In the end Net Neutrality reflects the possibility to have choice over what is worth to be seen on the web, in this moment this free choice belong to the user, but if no one reinforces Net neutrality other scenarios can be possible.

Without Net Neutrality what can happen is that we could have no longer free will to choose what we see on the Internet as our Internet provider can have the power to block the access to a determinate search engine or webpage.

The consequence of an inexistence of Net Neutrality is the possibility of our Internet Provider to sign contracts with search engines for example and block our access to the other because is more lucrative for them, keeping like that the choice of what can be seen on internet not to the user but to the Internet Provider.

The Net Neutrality is in sum what keeps our freedom of expression on the Internet and freedom of choice. According to Eric Schmidt CEO of Goggle this is all about “creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight”.

What are the elements that can be assessed, or which are taken into consideration, when valuing any ’dot-com’ company?

What are the elements that can be assessed, or which are taken into consideration, when valuing any ’dot-com’ company?

First of all, it is important to define what is a dot-com company. Dot-com company is a company that operates the majority or its complete business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the domain, ".com".

The major difficulty in evaluating these companies relies on the fact that in the majority of cases there are no tangible assets to be assessed, no product that can be tested within the selling market and its shares do not reflect their actual value. Also, because there are historical of valuations inside this type of business, companies can only speculate their value rather than have it spread between shares. When the business is based on a completely intangible service, there is no basis for an assessment of how business is likely to be sold.

However the more acceptable way to assess and proceed to a valuation would be trough checking the traffic that goes into the site per day, or how much adverting can generate. What to me seems hard to evaluate in this cases is the durability of the business as the technological world is in constant change and what is far visit and used today, can be forgotten on another day by any new technology. Is then essential to understand that dot-com companies are always shifting in order to meet the market needs or sinking due to rise of new ideas.

Some companies are very good examples of a previous high market value such as My Space or Bebo, that after a short period of time lost a great market share due to the rise of new competition, such as facebook. Other companies, such as Google, are constantly reinventing and creating new complements to the core business in order to meet the market demands, such as google shopping, google books, gmail, google phone etc.

What is urgent to understand in what refers to dot-com’s is how we can predict its durability and analyze if the bubble involving the business is still growing overall or is about to burst. According to Alan Patrick, co-founder of technology consultancy Broadsight, we are now assisting to the beginning of a new dot-com bubble that in accordance with him develop in 10 stages.

1-    Arrival of a new thing that no one knows how to valuate’

2-    Smart people identify the bubble

3-    Startups with founders deemed to have “pedigree”

4-    Flurry of new investment

5-    Companies start getting fund without having product

6-    MBA start up firms

7-    Big flotation happens

8-    Banks investing pension money

9-    Taxi drivers advice on what stock to buy and

10- New things start buying old companies.

This time social media websites are more valued and Facebook is probably its face and is what is conducted the bubble that according with experts is possibly waiting for phase 9 and 10, what makes hard to evaluate when the bubble will burst. Is that uncertainty and lack of knowledge about these new trends that makes it difficult to evaluate and is the most probable that we will only consider when the bubble burst.

However is true that the dot-com are today stronger that they have ever been before as web users look to them as a new way of communication, what gives them a power that they had before making a more stable investment.

Is Apple giving newspaper companies’ good value?

Is Apple giving newspaper companies’ good value?

Newsprint companies are having problems with apple regarding the profits around applications for Ipad or Iphone. The main issue is that newspaper companies can sell their apps, and the readers can subscribe to their newspaper from their devices but Apple does not share the market information about such clients and also requires a big share of the profits just for having the app functioning.

If a newsprint company is having the costs of develop an Ipad application by covering all the salaries and costs and then on top of that have to share 30% of all their profits with apple and even like that they still can’t access the list with the names of the ones that are reading or buying your Ipad application, the question remain if it is really worth it.

If is correct to affirm that newspaper companies save money from printing materials and all the wages that come with the old fashion way it is than true that the fact that they need to share the profits without having any benefit from that by using apple apps does not reflect much of a saving or even does not reflect any market strategy development, as the newspaper companies still don’t know who their clients are.

That makes clear that Apple is not giving a fare value, but than what should news print corporations need to do?

It is obvious that is their duty to try to get to their public without losing money. The art of printing news is obvious dying, I think that we will watch to their slowly disappearance, and as consequence the companies needed to start getting into the new ways of spread their news by using the new technologies. It is evident that the key to their salvation is online newspapers and in a long way run the release news through Apps. I don’t think that the problem of the valuation that apple is doing with the newspaper companies is related to the 30% of profit share but with the reluctance from Apple to release the list with the clients that are reading through the news app and their lifestyle.

When analyzing the percentage of profit that apple is giving to newspapers we can easily check that apple is not giving a good value to the newsprint companies, so in my opinion that list is vital to the companies to tackle the 30% spent on Apple via advertising and other items for knowing who your audience is and redirect your attention to a direct marketing focus.

Has music any value any more?

Has music any value any more?

This question is pertinent on our days as the sales in the music industry are coming down, illegal downloads have been increasing and record companies have been losing market share.

But this means that music has no longer any value? By value, there are two essential differences to be detailed: market value and social value.

It is necessary to understand that the value of the music as a social tool is different of its value in terms of profitability. If we mean music value taking into account its profitability, it is correct to affirm that the music industry has been losing its place among the top business, in part because of the illegal downloads or easy access to low cost music (as for example in the website legalsounds.com) as people prefer to have a digital copy of the album instead of buying the CD what cost 10 times more.

The decrease of a demand for CD’s had force the music industry to reshape and adapt to the current trends. With applications such as ITunes, Freebird or websites like Amazon.com and Play.com convenience is not an excuse for illegal downloads. The use of ITunes facilitated things to the buyer as he no longer needs to bother about going to a store and queue to have their CD, or search for the CD in store when they can stay a home and search online for the album and with a click download the album or just single tracks. CD has become a collector’s item, as the customer would only buy the CD if really admired the artist and wants to keep as a valuable memory.

It has becoming a common practice to some new bands to release their music for free in the web and simply sell the cover image of the CD. This strategy will prevent illegal downloads and will provide the band a little more knowledge about its fans, as you need to disclosure personal information before downloading the tracks. Such strategy is used by the bands to save the integrity of their music and run from the piracy but doing some times more money that would be doing with a normally release. And to the buyer they had necessary ingredients to retain a hard copy.

Now in what concerns to it artistic value I think that its value is the same or even more important as music spreads today thought diverse media channels in an incredible speed. The number of Internet downloads are increasing and new artists have been rising through Internet channels such as Mikka, Katy Perry or Justin Bieber.

Some critics say that music has lost its value, as people do not appreciate the rhythm, but rather the pyrotechnic shows and artist extravaganzas.  I am obliged to disagreed as for me the performer and the music are only one and  on top of that, there is a huge number of artists such Adele or the composer Ludovico Einaudi that have become successful using only the power of the music.

In sum is true that music in terms of commerciality had slow down but not in what concerns to its artistic value as more are accessing and enjoy the power of music even if they don’t give the same profit to the performers.