Information warehouse

Brief profile of Virgin Atlantic Airways

geophil9 — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:42:42 +0000

Founded in 1984 the Virgin Atlantic Airways falls under the Virgin Group, it services routes between the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and North America, its aircraft call the London Heathrow and Gatwick airports home.They specialize in ferrying passengers, cargo and mail under the Type A Operating License, issued by the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority. Virgin Atlantic undertook its inaugural flight between Gatwick and Newark on a leased Boeing 747-200 (G-VIRG) following a switch in names from British Atlantic Airways. And the airline soon hit a cloud with a profitable lining, after which it unveiled a second Boeing 747 servicing the Gatwick to Miami route, and from that point the sky became the limit. In 2002 it became the very first airline to romp in an Airbus A340-600, in 2003 alone Virgin Atlantic served 3.8 million flying passengers and a year later hit the 4.6 million passengers mark earning them an admirable second spot relating passenger miles among UK airlines. Virgin offered one of its Boeing 747 for a research tests of jet biofuels, it flew from Heathrow to Amsterdam using 20% biofuel power from one of its engines.

Brief overview of crowdsourcing

geophil9 — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:16:37 +0000

Various concepts that draw on the wisdom of the crowds have sprouted as the internet continues to open new frontiers. Crowdsourcing works with the power of captive audiences to source fresh products or service ideas, scientific breakthroughs or branding messages. The lure of prizes or other incentives is used to inspire competitive participation from all those involved, and contests relating to crowdsourcing have a viral effect due to referrals. Sites such as Innocentive and Open Pitch are good examples, Innocentive draws on the innovative power of over 100,000 scientists in pursuit of meaningful breakthroughs in many aspects including irrigation and mining among others. Open Pitch is a vitual advertising agency platform and unlike other sites it keeps user submissions confidential as a way of protecting the intellectual property rights of its users. Listenerdrivenradio.com allows listeners to assume control of a radio station by compiling the radio station playlist either through their iPhone or directly online.

Viral marketing

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:57:12 +0000

Social networks not only allow people to connect on a social level but they also provide marketers with a fertile ground to promote their respective brands, and this can be done through self replicating processes. And such campaigns can take many forms such as ebooks, word of mouth, text messages, interactive Flash games and brandable images. The notion behind the use of the term viral marketing is that when a target ad reaches a receptive user the individual is thereby infected (influenced) and as a result will communicate the message with others, thus infecting them and the cycle revolves (in an epidemic sense). The result achieves a brand awareness effect which in turn could assist in driving sales, experts in these areas have gone further to indicate that it is possible to identify and target ‘the hubs’ or focal point members who can be used to drive a successful viral campaign, also known as alpha users.

Other forms of viral marketing are multi-level marketing which involve the marketing of products by participants targeting those around them, and also offering them a chance to join in and market the same products so as to grow the circle of distribution – in the end bringing hefty benefits to those in the top hierarchy. The World Wrestling Entertainment in 2007 promoted the return of Chris Jericho using binary code videos containing encrypted messages, the campaigns spread their viral tentacles to the internet through many (now defunct) websites. Another strong example was the BMN films campaign aimed at propping the career of Clive Owen, it managed to attract up to 55 million capture viewers, while YouTube and Facebook platforms were employed successfully to promote Cadbury’s Dairy Milk through the Gorilla advertising campaign.

Sporting Portugal Football Club in 2007 put together an impressively innovative campaign designed to convince fans to book season tickets, a video beamed on their website required visitors to input name and phone number prior to playback, it then showed the team’s coach Paulo Bento, with the players in the locker rooms while he makes a phone call to the site visitor asking them to buy season tickets to enable the start of the season. Seamless synchronization of the video and the phone call, captured the imagination of multitudes of people resulting in staggering page views and calls (200,000) in a 24 hour period. The viral marketing expansion loop cannot be sustained indefinitely but good campaigns can guarantee expansive action and the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Paypal etc, enjoy strong loops.

Google search

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:54:29 +0000

Mind boggling query stats epitomize what the larger-than-life search engine, Google has achieved on the world wide web over many years, the Google search service also comes with additional features such as time zones, forecasts, stock quotes, earthquake data, maps, movie show times, sports scores, airports and home lists among others. Google employs a priority ‘Page Rank’ system desired to thwart attempts by spammers to game the system in a bid to attain top spots. In essence, Page Rank is a patented system which employs the Google algorithms to ascertain appropriate ranking of web pages, as they fit on a respective query string. A recursive score is automated for web pages against the strength of their linkages, these links are human generated and in addition Google determines ranking based on some two hundred confidential criteria.

Customization by users of the search engine is also enabled as they can set the default languages according to their preferences, the deep web relates to the amount of data that is unreachable through links and is partially covered by most search engines, including Google itself – the invisible web as some prefer calling it brims from end to end with library catalogs, official legislative documents of governments and phone books among other types of query sensitive content. The field of search engine optimization hit gold as a result of people clamoring for the enviable Google top rank in an effort to channel more traffic to a particular site. Elements such as ‘on page’ factors play a crucial role in search engine optimization efforts and these relate to body copy, H1 heading elements, title elements and image alt attribute values, while off page optimization entails dealing with issues around anchor text and page rank; this is often done through embedding keywords on several parts of a page in careful moderation because excessive flooding will achieve no meaningful result.

Google search engine breaks text queries into a sequence of search terms based keywords, phrases delimited by quotation marks or qualified terms, and these pertain to the Google Basic Search while the advanced search provides more fields and qualified terms such as date based retrieval criteria. Transforming of queries expands the search results and they filter through processes such as term reordering which assists in work reduction, it is invisible to the user but nonetheless relevant, while stemming is used to keep a manageable yet precise range of variants, thereby tweaking the quality element of a given search result.

The domain name system

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:51:50 +0000

The translation of domain names into binary markers for the purpose of addressing and identifying the devices from anywhere in the world is the responsibility of the Domain name System (DNS) a hierarchical naming system for internet resources or other private network, essentially they translate computer hostnames into IP addresses (e.g from www.earthday.com to 217.55.189.176). Authoritative name servers of domains are designated for mapping domain names to IP addresses, the distributive nature of the mechanism helps in making the system fault tolerant and to eliminate the need for persistent consultation and updating through the central register. The internet derives a lot from the DNS beyond the provision of keyword based redirection services in that it stores various types of information such as the mail servers rendering email for internet domains. Furthermore, identifiers like the RFID tags, UPC Codes, intel characters could make use of the Domain Name System.

The internet protocol suite application layer entails the BGP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, IMAP, SMTP, TLS/SSL, XMPP, Telnet, Megaco, SNMP, IRC among others, while the Transport layer includes TCP, UDP, DCCP, SCTP, RSVP, ECN, etc. The Internet layer – IP (IPv4, IPv6), ICMP, ICMPv6, IGMP, IPsec, etc, – the Link layer – ARP, RARP, NDP, OSPF, Tunnels (L2TP), PPP, Media Access control (Ethernet, MPLS, DSL, ISDN, FFDI), device drivers plus many more. The domain naming practice dates back to the ARPAnet era, and the system had considerable variations as each computer on the network accessed the HOSTS.TXT file from the SRI, and through the HOSTS.TXT file allowing mapping of numerical addresses to names. However, a system making use of a hosts file are limited in that address changes prompt host updates of all computers in communication with it.

Clearly, this became impractical with the massive growth of networking, necessitating the need for a new system that records any changes in a single place enabling other computers to receive notification dynamically, thus seamlessly enhancing the network. The dominant DNS software on the internet is the BIND, and a ‘tree’ of domain names exists in the domain name space, any given leaf in the tree incorporates a resource and files containing domain name information. Trees are sub-divided into zones and the DNS Zone is made up of inter-connected nodes that are served by an authoritative nameserver. The maintenance of the DNS is done by distributed databases using the client server model, and the nodes play the role of nameservers, the pinnacle of the hierarchy is served by the root nameservers.

FIFA World Rankings

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:48:01 +0000

Strong performance by a national senior men’s team against other international opponents is rewarded with enviable positions on the FIFA world rankings, which are based on a points system. The international football governing body’s ranking system takes into account matches played in the last four years as opposed to the previous system whereby matches in the last eight years were put into consideration, thus rendering the rankings less reflective of a team’s actual strength. Since late 1992 the FIFA World rankings have been published regularly to provide comparisons of the 208 FIFA member national teams. In the early days the ranking system awarded respective teams a single point for a draw or three for a victory, but this system proved ineffective, and as a result the point ranking was sealed by a factor of ten while other factors such as number of goals scored or conceded – or whether it was a home or away fixture plus the match importance element was put into play.

Fixed results allocation for wins or draws were no longer applicable, in some cases even a loss earned points and the Team of the Year and Best mover of the Year were introduced. After the 2006 World Cup held in Germany, the evaluation period was minimized from eight to four years as a measure of increasing the system’s accuracy, the goals scored and the home away advantage ceased to play a role, and the match factor was also revised. Prior to these changes weaknesses or inaccuracies in the system had been prevalent, with one too many shocking results that put the world rankings to utter shame as highly ranked national teams experienced upsets from hell at the hands of rank minnows. Prompting widespread discontent at the ranking system as countries such as the United States which were not as strong comparatively at the time found themselves sitting in enviable ranking spots.

The coveted number one position of the FIFA world rankings has been the domain of mainly European teams such as Italy, Spain, Germany and France among others, and also South American powerhouses like Brazil and Argentina while regions which include Africa and Asia are yet to impose their presence on the prestigious best team slot. Brazil have graced the position a number of ocassions, and once stayed for a considerable length of time leading the entire world for nearly seven years. In essence, the rankings are aimed at reflecting the progress and current form of national men’s football teams, but FIFA also uses them to seed nations in tournament draws, and they also serve to determine the winners of two annual awards for outstanding performance in the world rankings.

Evaluating Windows Vista

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:46:02 +0000

Desktops, media centers, tablet PC’s and laptops are the natural habitats for an operating system, and Windows Vista is the latest offering in a fine line of operating systems, it was officially made available internationally on the 30th of January 2007 and was made available immediately from the Microsoft site. Its predecessor, the Windows XP enjoyed a lengthy term of up to five years before Windows 7 was introduced on the 27th of July 2009, the longest in the illustrious and proud history of Microsoft Windows operating system releases. Vista ushered in fresh features such as an improved graphical user interface and visual style known as Windows Aero, a refined search utility, multimedia tools like the Windows DVD Maker plus transformed networking, audio, print and display sub-systems, home network connectivity functions have also been expanded.

Software developers will find the inclusion of the .Net Framework as a move in the right direction, it allows them to write applications without the need for the APIs, but the real focus for Microsoft on this OS was directed on bolstering security elements which were less than ideal on the Windows XP. Microsoft announced it is throwing a lot of weight behind broad security issues when developing various software, however, Vista has not been free of criticism as discontent surfaced in connection with its high system requirements, stringent licensing terms and the incorporation of new digital rights management technologies, the number of authorization prompts for User Account Control, coupled with compatibility problems with a number of pre-Vista hardware and software. However, Windows Vista is enjoying massive user support up to 360 million internet users making it the second most popular operating system on the internet, while Windows XP still rules the roost claiming a lion’s share of the market.

Windows Vista is also known by its code name of Longhorn faced delays in its release date owing to the deliberate focus placed on the security aspects as updates were being built to the Windows Server 2003, some features such as WinFS that were initially earmarked for inclusion were later dropped as the fine tuning process took a serious turn, and the Security Development Lifecycle was welded into the system to fortify the system security attributes. Many volunteers and companies took part in the Vista beta test program in mid 2005 and a number of Community Technology Preview (CTP) were released to beta testers and Microsoft Developer Network subscribers. The OS came out at the back of a six billion dollar price tag and it came with a new Windows shell brandishing a brand new range of organization, navigation, and search capabilities.

Elements of resumes and CV’s

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:43:04 +0000

An individual’s relevant job experience and education are critical elements that must be properly documented, thus providing potential employers a glimpse of a candidate’s suitability – this is done through a resume. While a curriculum vitae (CV) aids in the provision of your life and qualifications summary, it is by far more comprehensive in its coverage and is suitable for academic or medical careers. Educational credentials outlined in a curriculum vitae are much more in-depth than that of a resume which are aesthetically tweaked according to the position applied for, on the other hand a curriculum vitae should have a detailed listing of all terms of employment, academic credential, publication, publication, contribution or significant achievement.

CV’s are largely expected to be factual and free of any opinionated qualities regarding the candidate and an unsophisticated approach of a bulleted list of skills and other professional points should preferably be avoided. A clear outline of achievements instead of duties is more appropriate for the career history, with the recent history receiving greater attention, while academic qualifications, professional qualifications (NVQ’s and memberships of professional organizations) must appear in a chronological list, and space should not be wasted on trivia. Curriculum vitae can be made of varying lengths but in particular post secondary teaching, research and academic administration maybe of any length, and as an applicant you must desist from pejoratives (derogatory remarks) against third parties mentioned in your curriculum vitae. Countries usually have their own preferences like in India where lengthy documents are favored, in the US photos are discouraged to avoid any kind of discrimination, while Korea favors photos of the applicant and other more personal details.

Principally, resumes are short and sweet containing details relevant to the positions being applied for, and a number of them contain keywords which enable potential employers to make informed decisions. The key to resume construction is providing adequate, accurate and concise account of applicant’s employment history and skills. Resumes by their structural nature may start with a statement regarding a personal goal, and then a list of most significant achievements or characteristics laid out in an appropriate fashion, while a curriculum vitae on the other hand tends to make omissions of a candidate’s relevant information. You may use reverse chronological order to outline your experiences that can cover up to 15 years, by so doing the main body of the document covers the professional experience section, detailing your recent experience and chronologically rewinding through past experience, and builds credibility.

Elements of business plans

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:40:39 +0000

Defining the goals of a business provides any organization with a clear pathway towards attaining its set targets, be they financial or non-financial. Target goals for organizations are not only internal but also external particularly for external stakeholders like investors and customers, while non-profit organizations’ external stakeholders include donors and their clients. A business plan not only states the goals but the reasons why they are viewed as achievable, and the road map towards their implementation – it is a mission statement for the non-profit and some government agencies. Marketing plans are another form of business plans and they aim at boosting perception and branding. Internally focused business plans deal with the intermediate targets need to attain external goals, like the provision of new services, IT system, organizational restructuring or the introduction of new product lines. Success of a business plan is measured through its balanced scorecard or list of success factors, which transcend non-financial targets

Separate departments outline their goals through operational plans and specific projects are catered for through project plans, and strategic plans define generalized guidelines relating to internal goals. Formatting of business plans relies on its specific targets and audience, for example, a business plan for a company that deals with debtors will aim to clarify the issue of repayments. A business plan for a new business venture that requires equity financing must outline current resources, upcoming growth opportunities and its competitive edge, thus enabling a high exit valuation. Different aspects of a business contribute varying strategic angles to an entities’ overall business plan such as finance, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, marketing and human resource management.

In principle, business plans offer an easy to understand and yet attractive overview of a company’s objectives and the technical parameters at which it aspires to achieve its goals. You can structure your business plan in any way you choose but the typical format includes an executive summary, business description, business environment, analysis, industry background, competitive analysis, market analysis, marketing plan, operations plans, management summary, financial plan, attachments and milestone. It is critical to draw well balanced cost and revenue estimates to avoid the predicament of revenue shortfalls and cost overruns usually precipitated by biased optimism and strategic misrepresentations. Investors can be well informed of any negative elements to a business through an externally targeted business plan by listing all legal concerns and financial liabilities.

Domain names hierarchy

geophil9 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:38:30 +0000

The very first set of domain names are known as the top level domains (TLDs), the generic top level domains (gTLDs) (e.g org, com and net domains) and the country code top level domains (ccTLDs). Domain names are pertinent in myriad networking contexts, application specific naming and for more obvious purposes of addressing – apart from first level domains there are second level and third level domain names and they are critical to end users for among other things the creation of publicly accessible internet resources. In the domain name system host names are leaf labels and they appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), a domain name serves as a means to indicate ownership and identification labels, thus short and memorable names are more desirable.

Characteristically domain names can contain only ASCII letters, numbers and the hyphen (-) and the full stop (dot, .) separates DNS labels, and to cater for other non-English languages whose characters are rendered incompatible such as Asian languages which may require multi byte characters, a group of top level domains under testing to deal with the issue under the internationalized domain name (IDN) system. Another variation is that the underscore character is utilized to make certain that a domain is distinguished from a host name, and such domain names are in some instances used were hostnames are needed. Registration of domain names through a registrar does not necessarily translate to legal ownership but only exclusive rights of use, and due to heavy numerical differences between websites and servers the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) stipulates that the client informs on the name under utilization, and to ensure a single server with one IP address lists various sites for different domain names, known as virtual hosting.

In the early days the country code top level domains (ccTLD) used the two character territory codes of ISO-3166 country abbreviations, and seven generic top-level domains (gTLD) representing a number of categories of names and multi organization were initiated (gov, edu, com, mil, org, int and net. Thirteen more gTLDs were implemented by June 2009 and ccTLD’s stand at 248 domains, while second level domains (SLD) consist of names that are essentially to the left of com, and net among other top level domains (e.g en.example.net, example belongs to the second level domain). And third level domains are immediately to the left of a second level domain and fourth and fifth level domains are also possible, an example of fourth level domain name is fbo.state.oh.net.