Robert Cefail's World of Business

The $100 Laptop begins production- by Robert Cefail

2007-07-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

The $100 Laptop- by Robert Cefail

The $100 laptop promises to bring big changes to developing nations
and further narrow the "information technology" divide between
developing nations and their more well heeled counterparts.

I well remember the naysayers a couple years ago at Slashdot
that soundly criticized this project a couple years ago. Well
cheers, Chris Blizzard persisted. Hats off to you for this, Chris!!

Full story is here

Check out the video below:

Here's some snippets with a few Robert Cefail comments:

Five years after the concept was first proposed, the so-called $100 laptop is poised to go into mass production.

Hardware suppliers have been given the green light to ramp-up production of all of the components needed to build millions of the low-cost machines.

Previously, the organisation behind the scheme said that it required orders for 3m laptops to make production viable.

The first machines should be ready to put into the hands of children in developing countries in October 2007.

"There's still some software to write, but this is a big step for us," Walter Bender, head of software development at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), told the BBC News website.

The organisation has not said which countries have bought the first machines.

Silencing critics

Getting the $100 laptop to this stage has been a turbulent journey for the organisation and its founder Nicholas Negroponte.

Since the idea was first put forward in 2002, the low-cost laptop has been both lauded and ridiculed.

Intel chairman Craig Barret famously described it as a "$100 gadget" whilst Microsoft founder Bill Gates questioned its design, particularly the lack of hard drive and its "tiny screen".

Other critics asked whether there was a need for a laptop in countries which, they said, had more pressing needs such as sanitation, water and health care.

Professor Negroponte's response has always been the same: "It's an education project, not a laptop project."

Clickable guide: XO laptop

The view was shared by Kofi Annan, ex-secretary General of the UN. In 2005, he described the laptop as an "expression of global solidarity" that would "open up new fronts" for children's education.

And as time passed, even some of the critics have changed their stance. Earlier this month, Intel, which manufactures what was considered a rival machine, the Classmate PC, joined forces with OLPC.

Functional design

The innovative design of the XO machine has also drawn praise from the technical community.

Using open source software, OLPC have developed a stripped-down operating system which fits comfortably on the machine's 1GB of memory.

"We made a set of trade-offs which may not be an office worker's needs but are more than adequate for what kids need for learning, exploring and having fun," said Professor Bender.

The XO is built to cope with the harsh and remote conditions found in areas where it may be used, such as the deserts of Libya or the mountains of Peru.

Professor Negroponte first proposed the laptop in 2002

Intel and OLPC join forces

For example, it has a rugged, waterproof case and is as energy efficient as possible.

"The laptop needs an order of magnitude less power than a typical laptop," said Professor Bender. "That means you can power it by solar or human power."

Governments that sign up for the scheme can purchase solar, foot-pump or pull-string powered chargers for the laptop.

And because it may be used in villages without access to a classroom, it has also been designed to work outside. In particular, the green and white machines feature a sunlight-readable display.

"For a lot of these children it's their only book and we want them to have a first class reading experience," said Professor Bender.

Name drop

The XO will be produced in Taiwan by Quanta, the world's largest laptop manufacturer.

The final design will bring together more than 800 parts from multiple suppliers such as chip-maker AMD, which supplies the low-power processor at the heart of the machine.

"This is the moment we have all been waiting for," Gustavo Arenas of AMD told the BBC News website.

"We certainly believe very strongly in the mission and vision of OLPC so finally starting to see it come to fruition is not only gratifying, it is also rewarding."

Test machines, on which the final design is based, are currently being put through their paces by OLPC.

"We keep laptops in the oven at 50 degrees and they keep on running," said Professor Bender.

Field testing is also being done in countries such as Nigeria and Brazil.

However, the names of the governments that have purchased the first lots of machines have not been released.

The XO currently costs $176 (£90) although the eventual aim is to sell the machines to governments for $100 (£50).

Robert Cefail on Blogging for profit

2007-07-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Like almost any other form of online marketing, blogging has been getting a really tarnished reputation for people using their blogs to try to make some profit.

Check out what this slashdot comment says about Microsoft trying to use bloggers for marketing purposes:

Stony Stevenson writes "In an effort to inject Microsoft's latest slogan, 'People-ready business', into popular usage (and no doubt raise its Google page rank), Microsoft asked a passel of A List Bloggers to write blurbs on what this meaningless phrase means to them. Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Fred Wilson, Richard MacManus and a handful of others happily agreed to churn out some mush for Microsoft, which it later used in banner ads. What it really meant to these guys was income. Redmond paid the bloggers for every user who clicked through to the PRB microsite. That caused other bloggers, lead by Gawker chief Nick Denton, to rightfully question their ethics. A spitball war has been raging ever since."

Robert Cefail says:

Big companies trying to influence bloggers to help them market all their products all the time, but influencing search engine results is also part and parcel of what a lot of bloggers are trying to do, whether they admit it or not.

I don't know why people are so upset about this, when adsense ads and even more different types of advertising based on links are all over the place on blogs.

Blogs are a great tool for marketing, and communicating your viewpoint to others, but this shows that you should think twice before you make your advertising hidden, as opposed to just honest ads and shameless plugs. Hey speaking about a shameless plug, check out http://robertcefail.org
for all the latest info about making money on the internet!!!

Does that upset you? Probably it wouldn't. Its hidden advertising that has people so up in arms. Until next time,

Robert Cefail

Poor Privacy for Google- by Robert Cefail

2007-06-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

A very poor report on Googles use of privacy came in a couple days ago, which is pretty bad for the search giant. The full article is here:

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/06/googleprivacyreport

Here's a couple of tidbits with my comments:

Privacy International, a U.K.-based civil liberties organization best known for its Big Brother Awards, graded the privacy and data-retention practices of 28 major online companies, including YouTube, Microsoft, eBay, MySpace and Yahoo, and found most had some privacy lapses.

Robert Cefail adds: And this is pretty bad because some of these other companies aren't known for great privacy either. As a marketer I do have some mixed feelings about this because I want to be able to find customers and target the kind of customers I am looking for, but there is a line that shouldn't be crossed.

But the report, released over the weekend, was particularly tough on Google, which alone earned a black mark for "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy."

Simon Davies, Privacy International's director, said in an interview that the rating in part reflects Google's power and reach, which require it to meet a higher standard than others.

"One of the points we are making is that Google is the new Microsoft," Davies said. "Five years ago, Microsoft was rightly perceived as the evil empire. But Microsoft has turned the ship around somewhat, and it doesn't require much tweaking to embed privacy infrastructure into planning processes."

Davies added, however, that he believes the firestorm over Google getting the lowest mark of any company is overblown. "The most important conclusion is that privacy invasion is endemic," he said. The group has called for a July 23 privacy summit in San Francisco, where it hopes the largest internet companies will meet to create standards for online privacy.

In a written statement, Google sharply protested its ranking, saying the findings weren't shared with the company before publication.

"User trust is central to our business and that is why we aggressively protect our users' privacy," the statement said in part. "We stand by our record for protecting user privacy and offering products that are transparent about what information is collected and empower users to control their personal data."

Google employee Matt Cutts, the public face of Google to web designers, defended the company's refusal to turn over search-engine queries to the government when other companies complied and for Google's recent announcement that it would remove some identifying information in its logs after 18 to 24 months.

The report adds heat to a long-simmering debate over Google's thirst for user data and how that squares with the search and online ad giant's commitment to its infamous motto, "Don't Be Evil."

Google's dominance of online advertising and search gives the company such power over the internet that it needs to be more transparent, according to Jeffrey Chester, who heads the Center for Digital Democracy and helped author the Federal Trade Commission complaint against the Google-DoubleClick acquisition.

"They need to create an opt-in system with full disclosure," Chester said. "They won't lose market share and could make themselves the hero of the online world for decades."

Currently, Google retains reams of data on users, tying internet queries to cookies for users without accounts for years, and aggregating data on registered users across Google's services which now include email, word processing, website traffic analysis, as well as search. Google also opts new users into its "Web History" tracking system that lets you review all your past Google searches, and for those with the Google Toolbar, Google will capture the URLs of your entire web travels.

Critics say this information will be used to manipulate individuals or be subpoenaed by the government, while Google maintains the data helps its engineers tweak and personalize its services.

Robert Cefail adds: This issue is at the heart of the technology/privacy debate, because searches generate a LOT of data about you, but also, like amazon's recommending process, can generate highly targeted advertising, suggesting you buy something you didn't even know you wanted yet, and connecting you to companies you didn't know you wanted to do business with yet, but some computer "knows" you do. These algorithms get better and better all the time, and it is not necessesarily a bad thing, but it is a brave new world type of idea and people are understandably a little afraid of it. But it is Government getting their hands on this data that is the real scary idea, because as we have seen throughout history, that data has too much potential to be misused.

Google's privacy practices and hunger for user data is already under scrutiny from federal regulators who are reviewing Google's proposed $3 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, an online ad giant that serves multimedia ads on thousands of websites and tracks users across a large swath of the web. In response to a formal complaint to the FTC from several privacy groups, the commission is looking into the privacy implications of merging the companies' massive databases of surfers' online habits.

Google initially said that move was intended to comply with European data-retention rules, but experts say those rules apply only to communications, such as e-mail headers and phone-call records, not search queries. The European Union's independent privacy commission is looking into Google's data practices with an eye to whether the company is violating other data rules that strictly limit the storage, sale and reuse of personal data of Europeans.

So, you might want to use scroogle.org a little more, or at least clear your cookies more frequently. I will be looking for some useful things to help with protecting your privacy on line, and if you have some good resources, you can send them to me and I'll post them if I like them.

Until Next time,

Robert Cefail

The Sales Funnel to ROI

2006-07-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask any internet business owner if he wants a better Return On Investment with his Google AdWords campaign, he will surely answer: "Yes, you bet!" But how does one achieve this better return? Well, it's not as hard as you might think. And it certainly is not as "mysterious" as it may first seem. It all has to do with what I call the "Sales Funnel".

In an article which I published in April 2006, I provide more detail about what a Sales Funnel is and its value to the business in terms of ROI. Here's a brief excerpt:

"Any business has to attract new customers somehow, get them excited, and get them to buy, to be crude about it. The bigger the dollar amount you are asking people to spend, the more work you have to do to get them into the buying mood. For a lot of businesses, just getting them to be able to call a salesperson is a huge step."

As this article continues, I break down further the exact component parts of what this Sales Funnel is and how it can be of value to you.

Check it out.

Pixel Advertising

2006-04-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

The next great wave of advertising new and bright ideas has hit. It's Pixel Advertising and it's amazing how effective it is. This whole idea is fully discussed in the article entitled: "Pixel ads -- The New Advertising Craker Jacks Box", in which I am quoted. In this article, this whole advertising concept introducted by In Touch Media Group with the formation of the web site at www.pixelbay.org is fully discussed. It really is amazing that advertising has advanced so far, so fast. Read more here.

Lead Generation

2006-04-23T17:50:00.000-07:00

Here's one. It's all about quality, not so much quantity in the marketing lead generation field. This is where getting out one's message really means something, and where one's marketing communication actually arrives in the hands of a real prospect at a real email or physical address. There is a great article that expands on this whole area right here.

The Super Blog

2006-04-19T00:44:00.000-07:00

In an age when marketing one's product can make the difference between success and failure to selling one's product, it becomes all the more important to have the cutting edge tools in the trade. One of these tools is the weblog, but what if we could take that concept "one step further". The concept is fully explored in the full article entitled: "How To Get Great Publicity -- The Super Blog Secret". Here's a brief excerpt:

"Apparently there are large article sites, Nickerson calls them “content hubs", that are repositories for tens of thousands of articles. One can also refer to these sites as "super blogs". Reporters, authors, and writers submit content to these sites allowing limited or full use of the articles. Tens of thousands of users access these hubs to supply their own sites with content. Once an article is placed in a content hub the piece can be picked up by hundreds, if not thousands, of sites with the article proliferating across the internet."

But as I explain in this article, there's a little more to it, especially if you want to capitalize on the concept to gain great publicity. It is a great article for any marketing or publicity specialist to read and fully examine. More >

The New Internet Realm

2006-03-28T23:15:00.000-08:00

The internet on the world wide web is moving to a whole new realm. Of course the world wide web was already revolutionizing the way people communicate, but now with Digg.com, Slashdot and now scooop.net, the news outlets as a form of publishing media has been transformed from a one way conduit of information into a mult-input exchange of information where the end-user helps decide what is newsworthy and what is not. Even personal blogs (like this one) are changing the face of the public opinion in a way that only the old style media news outlets once could. And there is every indication this is only the start.

Surveying What People Really Want

2006-03-20T19:08:00.000-08:00

As mentioned previously, part of the trick of having a successful business plan, is to find out what is in fact needed and wanted by your target audience or marketplace and providing that service to the your public. How one goes about finding this information out can be elementary as asking one individual a few simple questions about their likes or dislikes in a particular area, but more usually involves a more extensive series of questions which are crafted and designed to find out very specific things about what the public thinks on a particular topic. One sees something similiar to this when news media outlets do "public opinion polls" done around election time to get a feel for the political views of the general public. But this is not the same type of thing. Unlike the political public opinion polls, a properly done business survey is actually seeking to find out what the public needs and wants in the goods and services that so that business can "better provide" those goods and services in the future. So instead of simply measuring the popularity of a particular political viewpoint or individual, one is seeking to find out how to better service and fulfill the needs of the public. And believe me, that's worth something.

Successful Business Planning of Robert Cefail

2006-03-14T17:25:00.000-08:00

One of the most important things that anyone must know in coming up with a successful business plan, is to always provide a useful service that is in fact needed and that the general public finds valuable. Many of the successful business ideas that I have been working on, can be found at the Robert Cefail postings at the Marketing World News site.