In today’s society, network effects are prevalent on the internet. Leading search engines and software designers work to out compete each other for potential users. This is evident in the competition between Google and Microsoft. For many years, Microsoft was at the forefront of software design, and has attempted to broaden its […]

Recently everyone has been made aware of the victory of Sony’s Blu-ray over Toshiba’s HD-DVD and even some students wrote articles about this event. However what most students don’t realize is that this situation is just a repeat of the VHS vs. Betamax format battle which […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/technology/techspecial/09socialprise.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=popularity&st=nyt&oref=slogin
As the NYTimes article discusses, online social networking has slowly been making its way into offices around the country. At first the business world pooh-poohed the features of MySpace and Facebook as a trendy teen phenomenon, but as they become more popular and widespread businesses are beginning to understand the value of online social networking […]

Google recently announced that it would be changing its AdWords program policy in the United Kingdom and Ireland by allowing companies to bid on trademarks of another company. Already standard in the United States, this policy change will benefit advertisers who can use other companies’ trademarks for their own use at the expense of the […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/technology/07soft.html?fta=y
In its recent attempt to takeover Yahoo, Microsoft has just lowered its buyout offer from a value of $31 a share to a value of $29 a share, due to a drop in the price of Microsoft’s own shares. Yahoo, again, rejected Microsoft’s bid because shareholders believe that Microsoft’s offer undervalues Yahoo. Essentially, […]

Few weeks ago, we learned about how each websites are linked to others and how we rank these websites by giving websites authority scores. We also learned what web advertising is and how it works. There was an article that talked about how AOL re-strategizing […]

             Microsoft has been acting as a monopoly in operating software industry for the past two decades. Its OS is called Windows and more than 85% of the computers are based on this OS. The latest version is Windows Vista which came last year with many fancy features and Windows 7, the code name Blackcomb, […]

Information Cascades cause all kinds of problems. Even when every participant acts rationally on his or her own behalf, they very frequently result in socially unfavorable outcomes. However, if a participant is able to recognize the existence of a cascade, acknowledges that it may lead to an unfavorable outcome, and blindly follows suit […]

Several years ago when websites offering free user content were created, they were supported on the advertisement revenue model whereby the company would get a few cents every time a user clicked on an ad. Now days, advertisement technology is much more advanced and content managers are always trying to develop new systems where the […]

Sources:
http://www.iter.org/a/index_nav_1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
ITER, for those who aren’t studying Fusion power plants, is an international research/design proposal involving several countries from around the world. Its goal is to build and operate a 1/5 size fusion reactor to prove that fusion can be done and is worth perusing as a source of power. Supposedly, every gram […]