PC vendors seek profits in recycling
(InfoWorld) - Technology vendors have long used Earth Day as an excuse to polish their environmental records every April, but in 2007, many companies are finding they can generate revenue through the practice.
In the past year, PC vendors like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple have expanded their programs to take back their customers' obsolete computers for free recycling. And cell phone vendors like Motorola and Nokia this week offered their customers greater incentives to return old equipment.
This is not just charity work, analysts say. In addition to improving their public relations, those companies can also generate new cash.
Some PC vendors earn growing revenue by selling parts as they see rising global demand for plastics, components, scrap, and refurbished PCs, according to a report from David Daoud, an analyst with IDC. Some vendors also use take-back programs as a way to convince customers to buy new PCs more often.
One of their biggest challenges is finding a better way to collect the flood of obsolete hardware. Just 7 percent of consumers put their used PCs into municipal recycling, while 34 percent donate them to friends and family, and 35 percent store them in an attic or garage, IDC said. The corporate world is nearly as bad, recycling only 30 percent of their PC assets through official channels, compared to donating 70 percent of them to nonprofit groups and employees.
In 2006, that picture started to change, Daoud said. The percentage of recycled PCs rose significantly, as companies cut the number of computers they tossed in the trash and saw a tight shrink in the demand for donated obsolete technologies.
One reason for the shift is greater awareness of other options, supported by Web sites like MyGreenElectronics.org, which lists the location of nearby recycling centers sorted by zip code. And the EPEAT government IT procurement site helps institutions buy PCs that are manufactured with less of the lead, copper, and cadmium that fills up toxic landfills.
Another reason is the growing realization in corporate boardrooms that companies can combine profit with social responsibility, said Bob Houghton, president of Redemtech, a firm that helps connect companies disposing of their old IT assets with recyclers seeking raw materials.
Most large enterprise companies have strict rules for IT procurement and deployment but only vague guidelines for hardware retirement and disposal, he said. Many of those companies are glad to make grand statements about upholding their environmental responsibility, but the message often gets lost by the time it reaches IT directors with limited budgets. Generating revenue from the process can change the whole equation.
"A sustainable IT operation has to be financially advantageous for the company and its shareholders. If you can do that, it becomes very easy to do. Otherwise, it's just risk avoidance," Houghton said. "Ultimately, being 'green' saves overhead, saves money in terms of lifecycle cost and extending your infrastructure, and the board benefits from what it wants to do with social responsibility."
IT vendors are lining up to help their customers find these savings. Sun and AMD say their servers and chips will reduce users' carbon footprints, the carbon dioxide emissions caused by electricity generation that can lead to global warming. Fujitsu and Salesforce.com say they are cutting their own carbon footprints through improved office and factory practices. And LANDesk Software says it can save customers up to $75 per PC every year with an application that puts idle computers into low-power sleep modes sooner.
Profit opportunities in e-waste recycling will continue to grow fast. The 490 million PCs retired worldwide between 2000 and 2005 will rise to 955 million retired between 2005 and 2010, according to an IDC forecast.
AMD Bumps Up Opteron Speeds (PC Magazine)
PC Magazine - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) this week released an upgrade to its Opteron family of dual-core server processors, which is intended to boost speed and pave the way for its quad-core release later this year.
Dedicated Server
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Race #2 - Blog Starter Kit
linux serverPort the Blog Starter Kit described and demonstrated at: http://www.shankun.com/Default.aspx so it runs on a Linux Server by either (a) porting the existing code or (b) writing new code.
Carry-On Glock
I don't know how you can be so stupid as to try to bring a gun on the plane. You really have to be too stupid to breathe. David Huckabee, a son of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, was arrested at an Arkansas airport Thursday after a federal X-ray technician detected a loaded Glock pistol in his carry-on luggage. "I removed the bag ... (Read on Source)
NumeriX SUPERCHARGES its Award Winning Analytics Product (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance)
NEW YORK, LONDON & TOKYO----NumeriX, the independent market leader in pricing and risk analytics, announced the launch of NumeriX Portfolio 2, the next-generation, multi-user, front office pricing platform.
Microsoft clarifies virtualization licensing - for now
(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has clarified how licensing for its current version of Windows Server works when paired with virtualization software. However, customers may face a whole new set of licensing rules once the next version, Windows Server 2008, is released later this year.
In a white paper called "Licensing Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 to Run with Virtualization Technologies," Microsoft outlines clearly how to license the current version of Windows Server -- Windows Server 2003 R2 -- for specific third-party virtualization technology, including VMware ESX, VMware Vmotion and SWsoft Virtuozzo. It also explains licensing for Microsoft's own System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
The document can be found on a Web page that also includes previously released virtualization calculators that help customers determine the cost of Windows Server licensing in various virtualization scenarios.
Virtualization has complicated server OS pricing because it allows more than one instance of server software to run on a single server, while traditional OS pricing has been per server, assuming that only one version of an OS can run on one piece of hardware. Virtualization allows software to be emulated via a virtual machine, and so run without having to be physically installed.
But even if Microsoft has done enough to clarify how its current version of Windows Server should be licensed for virtualization scenarios, customers could find themselves needing new guidelines once Windows Server 2008 is released, something Microsoft expects to do by the end of the year. Formerly code-named Longhorn, the next version of Windows Server will have virtualization technology built in, which could preclude the need for third-party virtualization software.
"We believe most customers will choose to use Windows Server virtualization, which comes as a role within Windows Server 2008," said Microsoft spokesman Patrick O'Rourke. "But customers still have the option to use third-party server virtualization software on Windows Server 2008."
Pricing for Windows Server 2008 has not yet been announced.
According to the Microsoft white paper, current virtualization pricing for Windows Server 2003 R2 is as follows: Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition (SE) allows a customer to run only one instance of the software in either a physical or virtual way on a server. Users need to assign an SE license for each running instance of Windows Server on a system.
Customers have more flexibility with the enterprise and datacenter editions of Windows Server 2003, however. They can run one physical instance of Windows Server and up to four simultaneous virtual instances with one Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition license, and can run unlimited physical or virtual versions of the software when Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition is licensed for every physical processor in a server
Windows Server 2008 is currently available in a beta 3 version.
Re: Calling Java class files from PLSQL
Forms [32 Bit] Version 6.0.8.11
PL/SQL Version 8.0.6.0
Imported Class File(Package) is as follows:
FUNCTION new RETURN ORA_JAVA.JOBJECT IS
BEGIN
cls := JNI.GET_CLASS('com/optiosoftware/ecompresent/oracle/wf/OracleECPWebService');
mid := JNI.GET_METHOD(FALSE, cls, '<init>', '()V');
args := NULL;
RETURN (JNI.NEW_OBJECT(cls, mid, args));
END;
The Procedure that I use is as follows:
PROCEDURE getcontent IS
raisedException ORA_JAVA.JOBJECT;
data_type ORA_JAVA.JOBJECT;
content_data ORA_JAVA.JOBJECT;
num PLS_INTEGER := 2;
retval ORA_JAVA.JOBJECT;
BEGIN
data_type := ORACLEECPWEBSERVICE.new;
content_data := ORACLEECPWEBSERVICE.new;
retval := ORACLEECPWEBSERVICE.queryContent(data_type,content_data,num);
EXCEPTION
WHEN ORA_JAVA.JAVA_ERROR then
message ('Unable to call out to Java, ' || ORA_JAVA.LAST_ERROR);
ORA_JAVA.CLEAR_EXCEPTION;
WHEN ORA_JAVA.EXCEPTION_THROWN THEN
raisedException := ORA_JAVA.LAST_EXCEPTION;
message('Java Exception : ' || Exception_.getMessage(raisedException));
ORA_JAVA.CLEAR_EXCEPTION;
END;
The Error I get is as follows:
Unable to call out to Java, Invalid object type for argument 1.
My question is how do I assign a value 'QScannedInvoices' to the 'data_type' object and
the value 'Status' to the 'content_data'object ?
Appreciate any help with regards to this. Thanks.
New EU rules to slash mobile phone calls abroad come into force (AFP)
AFP - New rules aimed at slashing the price of mobile phone calls made abroad in the European Union came into effect on Monday, with EU regulators promising to monitor whether companies are complying.
TruePresence Named a Top 100 Low Investment Franchise by Franchise Market Magazine
... territory from which they can develop their business. Combined with a full suite of web design, search engine marketing, email marketing and online advertising tools, the TruePresence franchise model gives ...
Pena clears trade waivers
According to a major league source, Wily Mo Pena has cleared trade waivers, meaning any team is free to negotiate a deal with the Red Sox for the outfielder before the end of the month. The fact that he cleared trade waivers does not mean the Sox can option Pena to the minors. He is still out of options, and would have to clear the standard ... (Read on Source)
The Rich Pom Awarded International Website Accreditation for Online Trust and Security
The Award-Winning Work from Home Website, The Rich Pom, has added another feather to its already impressive bow by collecting the Trust Guard Logo for Online Safety and Security. TheRichPom.com continues to go from strength to strength and has been featured on national TV, Radio and in numerous wealth-creation magazines. (PRWeb Sep 28, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/U2luZy1TcXVhLVByb2YtTWFnbi1UaGlyLVplcm8=
Adobe teams with Business Objects to fight Microsoft (InfoWorld)
InfoWorld - Adobe Systems is teaming up with Business Objects to add business-intelligence capabilities to rich Internet applications (RIAs). The companies plan to announce a partnership at the Adobe MAX 2007 North America user conference, which kicks off Monday in Chicago.
Green Movement 2.0: Finally Here - But Why Did It Take So Long?
Did you hit any garage sales when you were growing up? Most likely you didn't do it to save the planet but rather to make money or shop for bargains. Regardless of the motivation a secondary result, one with far grander, long-term benefits, is that a lot of old items sold were kept out of the trash.
Email Courses and Autoresponders
It is far easier to convince a first time visitor to give you their email address, than it is to give you their credit card number. By offering a free gift in exchange for permission to send emails, y...
Writing About Technology - Surefire Infoproduct Winner!
Anyone who has picked up a copy of "The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package" will know I'm a big fan of using the "piggybacking" approach to discovering highly successful, in-demand topics for e-books and information products. By piggybacking, I mean...
Indian iPhone to land in September?
Reports indicate that an Indian iPhone could be just around the corner, allegedly available in September between Rs 27,200 and Rs 28,000. According to the Business Standard, Vodafone is expected to have the 8GB iPhone during the first week of September, with the 16GB version to surface in the middle of 2009. The news reportedly comes from Apple sou...
The DVD Decision
CD-ROM Drives triggered a revolution in the computer industry, but the only real change we’ve seen since their arrival is increased speeds. And speed only matters if you’re transferring vast quant...
Dennis Barrick Onboard at Bliley Technologies as New Global Vice President of Marketing and Business
ERIE, Pa. (July 28, 2008) — Bliley Technologies, Inc., a global supplier and leading provider of crystal-based frequency control solutions for over 75 years, has hired Dennis Barrick as the company's ... [WebWire - Monday, July 28, 2008]
[in WebWire® - Electronic Design Automation]
A Multipronged Approach to Greener IT
Kilpatrick Stockton's IT team takes a multipronged approach to a greener law firm, with Web and videoconferencing to reduce travel; a software-based cost recovery system; systems to manage copiers, printers and scanners and other hardware; server virtualization; and e-billing.
Chertoff Misleads on Laptop Searches, Feingold Charges
In an interview with Wired.com, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff blatantly mischaracterized when border agents can search Americans' laptops, Sen. Russ Feingold charges. The Wisconsin Democrat says Congress needs to step in to protect Americans from intrusive searches of their electronics.
Akademy 2008 - Day 1
Akademy 2008, the annual KDE desktop summit, officially kicked off on Saturday, 9th July in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium, with a schedule packed full of talks, discussions, and development.
8-Year-Old Shooting Victim May Have Saved Baby
From the moment her nine nieces and nephews were born, Nacole Polk loved to hold them -- to the point where her older siblings often had to force her to put them down. Just before the 8-year-old was shot Sunday morning, she may have saved her 1-year-old nieces' life by doing just that. (Read on Source)
Fly's brain 'senses swat threat'
Researchers in the US believe they have solved the mystery of why flies are so hard to swat - planning and intelligence.
Optimum7 Redefines SEO to Include Conversion Optimization
Optimum7 is pleased to announce the inclusion of Conversion Optimization as an integral and essential component of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Typically, SEO companies offer programs or individual packages designed to improve the visible search engine rankings for targeted keywords as dictated by the relevancy to the individual website. (PRWeb Sep 19, 2008)
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/seo-conversion/optimization-services/prweb1349034.htm
DBTS Executive VP Joins Byte Back
... youth throughout the Washington, D.C. area. Byte Back's classes range from beginning computers to web design and network administration. Byte Back's students obtain jobs, raises, and promotions as a result ...
In Depth: 8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast
Firefox has been outperforming IE in every department for years, and version 3 is speedier than ever. But tweak the right settings...
Driving business value through IT during tough times
... AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, ...
The Importance Of Background checks in Corporate Risk Management
Employers understand the importance of reducing liability in the form of employing wrong people. Towards this end, many companies ensure that they find out all about the person's past before taking that person in. It would have been tough finding information about people just a few years ago. However, technology has advanced to such an extent that conducting these background checks on people is as simple as clicking the mouse and getting the details on your computer screen. Although all the records are found online, there are many unlicensed services that claim to provide access to all the records at cheap rates. When trying to find criminal information about others, you do not want to end up in the hands of a criminal, who provides you incomplete data or completely inaccurate data. This is where it is important to find the services of a licensed professional that can conduct this screening for you. Background checks provide all the information about a person, including their address history, phone numbers, court records, criminal history and driver license details. The data in these reports will make it clear to the employer whether the applicant has given the correct details or not. Thus, it provides an insight into the character of the person and how honest the individual is. Through these background checks, employers can gauge the sincerity of the applicants. Ensuring the applicant is not convicted of any major crime in the past is the main reason these checks are conducted. Article Source: Background Check Also visit: www.ezcheckwriter.com
Janet Rogers<br> Author at <a href="http://www.backgroundcheckgateway.com ">free background check</a> and <a href="http://www.backgroundcheckgateway.com/">public records</a><br> for almost 3 years about author
Advanced analytics - cross-campaign, channel and media tracking
Posted by willcritchlow
Display advertising intrigues me - the best bits (like the Sony ad below) have the capacity to inspire, but measuring their success can be harder.
One of the best sessions I attended at SMX Advanced back in the summer was the advanced analytics panel (thanks Rand, for persuading me it was going to be worthwhile!). It covered some fantastic tips on advanced methodologies and metrics for search analytics. It was the inspiration for this post, which is going to cover some slightly different areas. Although we primarily deal with SEO and search advertising, we do a little online display advertising and have recently found ourselves thinking about measurement metrics for PR and offline advertising:
- Tracking the spread and effectiveness of viral, buzz or online PR campaigns
- Online metrics for measuring the effectiveness of offline and / or display advertising
- Measuring the mutual uplift between natural and paid search, online and offline display advertising and PR
So, I'm going to talk about some of the ways that we do these things (or that we are thinking about doing these things) but I'd also like to hear your thoughts and experiences....
Tracking the effectiveness of online PR
When I'm not writing here, I'm one of the directors at Distilled - and one of our products is Reputation Monitor which is a tool for monitoring what is said about you, your company or your brand online. None of us do very much plugging of our stuff here on SEOmoz, so I hope you'll all excuse a self-promotional paragraph. We built it because it was impossible to build a workflow around Google Alerts and watching loads of different RSS feeds of different sources of data meant loads of overlap. We also wanted to be able to add more filtering based on how confident we were that a particular story was or wasn't about the target being monitored (you can see how this would be a problem for us - most mentions of "distilled" on the internet are not about us!). We are working on a bunch of enhancements at the moment, but in my sole self-promotional paragraph, I'm going to end with a call to action to try it out (there's a free trial).
With it in hand, we discovered that there were other applications to areas outside reputation monitoring (such as the link building tips Tom wrote about a while back and tracking the success of viral / buzz / online PR campaigns). The way it is set up makes it particularly good at following mentions of unique phrases in viral content or in tracking links to particular pages.
When running campaigns for traffic, you would obviously track the effectiveness via analytics - and when doing linkbait for SEO purposes, you would be mainly looking at the links gathered, but when you are doing it for branding / PR benefit, the spread of the idea can be positive even if they don't link (and therefore don't send you traffic / SEO benefit).
Obviously knowing raw mentions is a pretty clumsy metric, so we are working on two enhancements to this figure:
- Visibility: how many people are likely to see / have seen that page
- Influence: essentially a measure of who is in the list of people that see the page
For the second, we have a much harder task - we are considering a variety of different metrics on a range from easy to automate to very hard to automate... Various inputs we have thought of include:
- Links (especially from powerful sites) to that page - note that this requires waiting a bit - nothing gets links immediately
- Links to the site generally - from other influential places (to do this properly would require a kind of 'influenceRank' much like the trustrank in linkscape)
- Regularly being at the root of spreading stories (i.e. temporal link analysis)
- Number of comments on the story in question and other pages on the site
- RSS subscribers (if data is available)
Online metrics for measuring the effectiveness of display advertising
I was recently impressed, confused then saddened (in that order) to see the mobile phone operator (cell network for the north Americans) Orange running a massive advertising campaign in the UK (outdoor, display, newspaper / magazine, TV, transport network) with a call to action of Search Online for "I am". I was impressed that they would have something so measurable as a call to action, then confused that they didn't pick a phrase they ranked organically for (when you pick the phrase, surely SEO is easy?!) and saddened (for them) to see that it appears to have failed. For another example of a Google Trends fail, check out this comparison of hd-dvd and bluray.
With some advertising campaigns then, you can measure something specific like unique searches.
Other times, you might include a different kind of unique call to action (such as a unique URL or phone number). If you go down this route, don't forget to give people a reason to go to the URL you pick - if you use www.yourbrand.com/letmetrackyou no-one will do what you want them to. You either need to tell them there is a special offer available or (better) direct them via a dedicated URL (don't forget to 301 redirect though).
What about measuring the less direct elements, however? There are a lot of advertising campaigns that have huge branding goals. Here are our thoughts on measuring this:
- Branded search spike (either for the company, product or ad strapline)
- Tracking social network mentions (e.g. Twitter, Facebook Lexicon)
- General discussion (on blogs etc. - see tracking online PR / buzz above)
Mutual uplift between natural and paid search, online and offline display advertising and PR
At ad:tech in London last month, I attended a session where Ogilvy were talking about their 'real women' campaign for Unilever-owned Dove (I love this ad, despite not being in the target market). P&G were there and mentioned that they have complex econometric models for decoupling the effect of large numbers of inputs to estimate the mutual uplift from the interplay of their various ad channels. If that last sentence is gobbledegook to you, it is to me too...
I asked them if they could clarify, but sadly they declined.
So I'm left wondering how we should go about doing this kind of thing. How can we measure the effect on our PPC advertising of display (online display is hard enough, but what about offline display?).
This is where I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments... Any of you who work at more integrated online and offline agencies care to comment on best practices?
I feel that those of us with deep online and search experience should be able to add something to this process, but there is no point reinventing the wheel - it's far better to know what's out there before we start.
Technorati Tags
analytics, pr, social media, measurementChandrayaan-1 Closer to the Moon; Snaps First Lunar Shot
Following the fifth and final orbit raising maneuver which put Chandrayaan-1 closer to the moon, the spacecraft snapped the first picture of its final destination. This clear, crisp image of the moon bodes well for spacecraft's mission to map the entire moon's surface with its Terrain Mapping Camera. And all systems are go [...] (Read on Source)
name: MAGPIE