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Current Business News - Morgan Bell discusses trends in business

 
Find out which products are getting recognition in Australia and across the globe, how the Government impacts on business, and which trends are leading to financial success - this is an open discussion about money making ventures in the news, all comments and opinions are welcome!

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Current Business News

Strange Business Card Ideas

May 14th 2009 17:26
In these hard economic times every business is looking for a gimmick to distinguish them for their competition. The world of business cards is becoming a little kooky.

Take this idea for business cards made from beef jerky:

meat business card


meat business card


We start with 100% beef jerky, and SEAR your contact information into it with a 150 WATT CO2 LASER.

Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients: MEAT AND LASERS.

MeatCards website

Or how about using the humble clothes peg as a business card?

clothes peg business card


clothes peg business card


Then of course there is the stretchy rubber business card.

rubber business card

rubber business card


Or perhaps the "construct your own" toy car business card will send the perfect message to your customers?

toy car business card


More great business card ideas HERE.

For a discussion on the practicality of these sort of cards CLICKHERE.




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Yahoo tie-up with Microsoft, New York Times, Twitter

January 27th 2009 22:26
In an open letter to new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster outlined a four-part plan turning around the company.

1) Outsource search to Microsoft.
“Search has never been a core competency for Yahoo, and outsourcing will both generate shot-term cash and allow Yahoo to focus on content.”

2) Acquire a major print news company with global scale and stature in addition to a blog network experienced in creating short content to generate significant page views. In particular, he says that the New York Times and Gawker Media would fit this profile.
“These content acquisitions would allow Yahoo to own and distribute a collection of the best content on the Web in addition to generating short-form content to maximize page views and stickiness.”

3) Acquire micro-blogging and social feed aggregation technology companies, like Twitter or FriendFeed.
“The goal of these social broadcasting acquisitions is to help users share and create Yahoo content.”

4) Focus on producing and sharing the best content on the Web.

Gene Munster is a managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, specializing in Internet (US and China) & Digital Media.

Munster's Internet focus is search, media, and China, including Google, Yahoo!, and Baidu.com. In addition, Munster has covees the Digital Media, including Adobe, Autodesk, and Apple.

Munster has authored several key industry reports on technology and has been recognized by Wall Street with awards from the Institutional Investor (Home Run Hitter), Forbes (Top Stock Picker), and the Wall Street Journal (Best on the Street).

Munster is quoted frequently in key financial and technical news journals.

Carol Bartz, new CEO of Yahoo


Carol Bartz, 60, has been CEO of Yahoo for less than two weeks. She has already made the decision to freeze employee salaries. The decision not to provide annual salary increases was designed to strategically reduce Yahoo's costs without resorting to mass job cuts like Microsoft.

It is estimated that in the forth quarter of 2008 Yahoo laid off 10% of their employees.

Carol Bartz became CEO on Jan 13. She was chosen for her history running public companies, including 14 years as executive chairman of software company Autodesk.

Although having no direct experience of running an internet company, Ms Bartz is thought to have been selected due to her management capabilities and knowledge of the wider technology sector.

It has been suggested that she may have been selected to fulfil a more of a "caretaker" role, readying Yahoo to be sold to Microsoft.




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Recessions and Depressions

November 7th 2008 06:20
A depression is any economic downturn where real GDP declines by more than 10 percent.

A recession is an economic downturn that is less severe. As a rule of thumb recessions are often declared after two consecutive quarters of negative growth (or contraction) of gross domestic product (GDP).

The last depression in the United States was from May 1937 to June 1938, where real GDP declined by 18.2 percent.

The Great Depression of the 1930s can be seen as two separate events: an incredibly severe depression lasting from August 1929 to March 1933 where real GDP declined by almost 33 percent, a period of recovery, then another less severe depression of 1937-38.

The United States hasn’t had anything even close to a depression in the post-war period.

The worst recession in the last 60 years was from November 1973 to March 1975, where real GDP fell by 4.9 percent.

In the USA real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the third quarter of 2008, (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to advance estimates. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.8 percent.

The third-quarter "preliminary" estimates, based on more comprehensive data, will be released on November 25, 2008.

In Australia real GDP is estimated to have had a 2.0% growth rate this quarter.




Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Really Long Link




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Good news for the Australian Economy

October 14th 2008 07:09
Today Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced an emergency $10.4 billion Stimulus Package to guard the economy from a global slowdown and boost consumer confidence. The package is worth about 1% of Australia's GDP.

The decision has come hot on the heals of Rudd's guarentee of all Australian bank deposits for 3 years. Previously only a maximum of $20,000 per person was guarenteed. An increase to $100,00 was proposed by opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull but Kevin Rudd trumped that figure by offering "unlimited" security of domestic savings


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Michael Moore's thoughts on the $700 billion Bailout Proposal

October 1st 2008 05:55
Subversive documentary film-maker Michael Moore expressed the following opinions in a recent email to his website subscribers:

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door


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Indian Wedding Season increases demand for gold

September 5th 2008 14:08
India is the world's biggest buyer of bullion and the country's wedding and festival season has boosted prices every year since 2002 with September the strongest buying month.

India's wedding season runs from late September to December. Over the past decade, gold has risen by an average of 10.1 per cent from September through to December. Apart from weddings, Indian jewellers also buy the gold for the Hindu festival of Diwali, or the Festival of Lights


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The Young BizStar Competition - NSW Small Business September (LINK)

August 19th 2008 15:54
During the month of September, the NSW Department of State and Regional Development will be hosting Small Business September '08. Over 300 seminars, workshops, expos and award ceremonies will be held for businesses to help encourage innovation, create new possibilities, and business opportunities.

Some of the events being held include


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IBM acquires ILOG

July 29th 2008 17:12
IBM announced Monday that it plans to acquire business rules management software maker ILOG in a deal valued at $340 million.

Under the deal, IBM will merge ILOG into its WebSphere brand. This is a move to expand its middleware software footprint. Middleware is a layer of software that helps servers running databases and Web site software talk with servers running applications


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Put your business office online with Zoho for free

July 19th 2008 15:11
Zoho is a free web-based office suite similar to Microsoft Office which can store business documents online so you can access them remotely and share them online.

Visitors to Zoho.com can log in using their Google or Yahoo e-mail addresses, making it unnecessary for users to go through a lengthy registration process


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Oil Costs for Shipping May Reverse Globalisation

June 25th 2008 16:49
Oil prices are driving up the costs of shipping on the international seas and bringing outsourced business and jobs back to America. These rising energy costs are putting the brakes to rapid globalization. Manufacturers shifting work away from their foreign plants may even reverse the globalisation forged in recent decades.

The extraordinary rise in the price of crude oil is ruining outsourced business models everywhere and distance from your customer increases the cost of transport which has become a problem. Proximity has suddenly become more profitable and local solutions are looking less like the expensive option


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