by Erik on July 3, 2009
in Alternative Energy, Asia, Business Logic, Economy, Green Tech, IBM, Jobs, Markets, New Tech, Obama, Recession, Technology, Unemployment, Weekly Roundup
For Modest Earners, Relief Repaying Student Loans – Repaying a student loan could soon be a little less painful. Starting this week, anyone with a federal student loan can apply for a program, run by the Department of Education, that caps monthly payments based on income, and forgives remaining balances after 25 years. Those choosing to work in public service could have their loans forgiven after just 10 years.
New Grads May Have Leg Up On Older Job Seekers – Recent college graduates are finding out that an economic downturn is not the best time to be searching for work. But they do have a leg up on older job hunters: It’s a lot easier for a 22-year-old — unburdened by mortgage and kids — to go to where the work is.
IBM Reinvents the 401(k) – Staffers were nervous when Big Blue replaced its pension plan with a souped-up 401(k). Now, the plan could be the new gold standard.
U.S. Job Losses Rise and Unemployment Reaches 9.5% – The American economy lost 467,000 more jobs in June, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent in a sobering indication that the longest recession since the 1930s had yet to release its hold. “The numbers are indicative of a continued, very severe recession,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “There’s nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession.”
A Day With 400 Tweets Starts With Simplicity – A Comcast Social Media Associate has plenty of advice to give on using Twitter and other social networking sites, as do other always-on pros and amateurs. Their tips will help you minimize your time and effort while maximizing your social bliss.
Q&A: Rising Unemployment Clouds Outlook – The increase in the unemployment rate to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent doesn’t bode well for a smooth transition to economic recovery. Economists expect unemployment to continue to rise into 2010, and possibly longer. Here, a look at what some leading economists say lies ahead as the fall season approaches, when retailers typically expect a boost from back-to-school shopping.
Green Power Takes Root in the Chinese Desert – As the United States takes its first steps toward mandating that power companies generate more electricity from renewable sources, China already has a similar requirement and is investing billions to remake itself into a green energy superpower.
Economist: Stimulus Appears To Be Working – More jobs were lost last month than expected, but the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package promises to create 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer. Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, says that without the stimulus, the numbers would be worse.
Obama Disappointed By Jobs Numbers – President Obama said Thursday he is “deeply concerned” about unemployment. The remarks to The Associated Press came after the Labor Department said U.S. businesses shed 467,000 jobs in June and that the unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent.
Madoff Likely Won’t Be Serving Time In ‘Club Fed’ – Anyone who thinks convicted swindler Bernard Madoff will serve easy time in a “Club Fed” minimum-security prison should think again. He is unlikely to land in a cushy cellblock, and he will need to watch his back, consultants and former inmates say.
NPR has an interesting article on the switch from land-line telephone companies to wireless. This reminds me of the AP piece that talked about how cell-only households now outnumber traditional phone households.That statistic points to problem in our current method of landline national polling for elections, which was brought to everyone’s attention in 2008. As technology improves, we must ensure that industry follows suit, even if we’ve been doing it one way for years. The old adage: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” does not hold true in the Internet age.
[note: why could I only find that AP article archived on the Utah Daily Herald site? I know it’s archived elsewhere. Google let me down for the first time in my life!]
When was the last time someone called at an inconvenient hour to ask if you want to switch long-distance telephone companies? What used to be a frequent annoyance now appears to be a thing of the past because the long-distance telephone business has undergone some big changes.
On AT&T’s Web site you’ll be hard-pressed to figure out the company even offers long-distance telephone service. That’s a big change from the 1990s when Ma Bell’s pitchman Cliff Robertson was on television attempting to woo customers back from Sprint and MCI.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, the long-distance business reached its peak in 2000, when it raked in over $109 billion. By 2007, revenues were down to $58 billion.
Really interesting article from Deloitte’s Lang Davison about the “problem” with traditional business metrics. Relates back to the Shift Index I spoke about earlier.
During a steep recession, managers obsess over short-term performance goals such as cost cutting, sales, and market share growth. Meanwhile, economists chart data like GDP growth, unemployment levels, and balance-of-trade shifts to gauge the health of the overall business environment. The problem is, focusing only on traditional metrics often masks long-term forces of change that undercut normal sources of economic value. “Normal” may in fact be a thing of the past: Even when the economy heats up again, companies’ returns will remain under pressure.
via Harvard Business Review
I was having a discussion the other day with one of my employees about the benefit of twitter and how it can be utilized in a business setting as a value-adding marketing tool. He was not so convinced. He could only see twitter as a way to tell people what you were doing at any given moment. “I’m sitting on my couch” or “I’m going to the bathroom!” were his tweet examples to show the inanity. He was all about what you could do with Facebook – in his eyes – a much richer experience.
I think the twitter and micro-blogging phenomenon is a lot more telling about social media in general than most would give credit for, and if you can find a way to use this tool to your advantage, you’re instantly ahead of the pack. At least for now.
What can you do with 140 characters or less, the length of each tweet? A lot, restaurants are discovering - everything from posting daily specials to luring followers with offers of free appetizers to offering a glimpse of kitchen life. It’s all good for business.
“It’s instant and free marketing,’’ said Chris Barr, a manager at L’Espalier, which joined Twitter this month.
Restaurants are starting to sign on by the dozens, inspired, perhaps, by the success of Kogi, a Korean barbecue taco truck in Los Angeles that gained national notoriety by tweeting its whereabouts. In February, Newsweek called it “America’s first viral restaurant.’’
[via The Boston Globe]
