Doris Lessing, winner of 2007’s Nobel Prize in Literature on the Internet:

“We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers”.

Ok. Sure why not.

Source: TechCrunch

As any student would know, Wikipedia is a no-no when it comes to referencing. The fact that the information on Wikipedia is compiled by the general public ensures there will be inconsistencies in its validity. It’s not to say that all that you find on Wikipedia is incorrect, after all, a lot of it is directly quoted from credible references but there certainly are some gaps.

The thing I like most about Wikipedia is the ability to research information in a clear, intuitive manner. But what if you want to use the information in a university assignment? Well there are a few things you can do. I shall go through these in-depth:

(For the purpose of this article, I shall use ‘market segment’ -see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segment- as an example)

References

You will notice at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, the ‘reference’ section. This contains references that were used in the composition of this entry on market segments. One of the references, for example, is:

Day, G. (1980) “Strategic Market Analysis: Top-down and bottom-up approaches”, working paper #80-105, Marketing Science Institute, Cambridge, Mass. 1980.

My suggestion if you would like to use a reference like this is to first Google it to see if it is available from a free source. In failing this, as a student you may have access to valuable databases of journal articles through your university website.

Also note, some of these references have a link to a PDF file of the listed journal article. This is really handy. Truth is, markers love you to reference academic journal articles!

External Links

One of my favourite parts of the Wikipedia page is the ‘external link’ section down the bottom. Here, you will find a group of links to various related websites. Websites which can of course be referenced. Well, provided they are creditable. An example of one of these links is:

Using market segmentation with digital marketing strategies [HYPERLINK]

Again, these links are generally to sites that have been used to build the Wikipedia entry.

Buzz Words

An overlooked part of the Wikipedia post is its buzzwords. By reading the entry, you are absorbing these words and discovering the definitions but they are handy for finding suitable references as well.

Lets say you have been reading this article on ‘market segments’ and you discover some information on ‘cluster analysis’. Well, by dropping this term into Google will open up a whole world of other sites that talk about ‘cluster analysis’ - sites that you could reference in your work.

Conclusion

I am sure what I have talked about is old news. But I am also sure many people out there are stuck when it comes to getting the most out of the usability of Wikipedia for research.

How does a sleepover at Ikea sound?

Sounds to me like the adult equivalent of staying a night in the toy store.

Well, as much as this is old news, it is new news to me:

“Later this month (July 2007), Ikea Norway will let shoppers sleep overnight in one of its two Oslo warehouses, an operation that will last a week. “It will be like an alternative hostel,” said company spokesman Frode Ullebust.

“There will be the regular dormitory with lots of beds stacked up together. We will also have a bridal suite, with a round bed and a hanging chandelier, and the luxury suite, where customers can enjoy breakfast in bed,” he said. Family rooms will also be available for parents and children to join into the Ikea fun. None of the guests will be charged for their stay”.

PJG

THE surfwear and streetwear company Billabong International has snapped up the Tigerlily swimwear and clothing business from Jodhi Meares, the former wife of James Packer.

Billabong, which has a market capitalisation of $3 billion, has not revealed how much it paid for the operation but it said the acquisition would be earnings per share positive in the first year.

However, market sources said Ms Meares would be paid between $3 million and $5 million for the company she built up over the past nine years.

Continue reading about Billabong’s take-over of Tigerlily

I am not much of a 50 Cent, let along, R’n'B fan but he certainly puts it well:

Q: “How are G-Unit Records doing in these times of file-sharing?

“Not so good….The advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt. Most of all hip-hop, a style of music dependent upon a youthful audience. This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”

“A young fan may be just as devout and dedicated no matter if he bought it or stole it.”

“The concerts are crowded and the industry must understand that they have to manage all the 360 degrees around an artist. They, (the industry), have to maximize their income from concerts and merchandise. It is the only way they can get their marketing money back.”

“The main problem is that the artists are not getting as much help developing as before file-sharing. They are now learning to peddle ringtones, not records..They don’t understand the value of a perfect piece of art.”

Cari Spivek thought it was wasteful that so many employees like her were driving to work in different cars. Her idea became the Google Shuttle, a private transit network made of biodiesel-powered, wi-fi-enabled, air-conditioned buses transporting employees from around the Bay Area to Google headquarters in Mountain View, south of San Francisco.At first it was used by a hundred employees from the entire area. But Google has been growing and now shuttles more than 1,200 Googlers every day, many from the Mission District, which has recently added a second bus.

Anyone who has ever taken a population class knows that every migration has a countermigration. In addition to all of the Google employees already living in the city and doing less environmental damage by taking the shuttle, many employees are choosing to move to the city because there is now a comfortable shuttle to take them to work.

Read the rest of this article here.

This following video clip agitates me off so much.

Boredom and lost productivity in the air will soon be a thing of the past with the introduction of Internet access on aircraft.

TechCrunch said on Thursday that American airline, JetBlue had announced that it would provide services restricted to Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerries to access BB mail and messenger.

However, it has recently came out that American Airlines will start offering complete web-access onboard followed shortly by Virgin America. There is again likely to be a catch; this time not with what you can access but with the cost-of-use. Both airlines, American and Virgin are likely to charge $10 per flight for the privilege to access the Internet in-flight. Personally, I’d pay it, but…

TechCrunch says “…it could be worth a lot more to them to offer it for free, and use it to build brand loyalty”. I agree, especially for airlines trying to win business clientele.

I haven’t heard any news of the Australian airlines - Qantas, Virgin Blue and Qantas-owned JetStar - planning to offer onboard net access. I think it would be a great move for Virgin Blue, seeing they’re increasingly attacking the business segment, to offer it.

Today marks the day of ‘posting random, statistic-driven images on the Pajago.com blog’. I think it should be marked as a public holiday! What do you think?

I made a couple of neat discoveries today; both at adsl2exchanges.com.au. First is a tool that allows you to see where the RIM’s ( Remote Integrated Multiplexer) in your area are located and how many available ports there are; the other, a heat-map of likely ADSL2+ speeds within your area. I believe both are quite reliant on user-interaction - a good way to go about things provided the information is moderated.

To view the RIM searcher, go to the left sidebar and click ’suburb’ view. Do what it asks to locate the suburb in question. You will see a Google Map littered with heat-blobs. Click on each and it tells you the RIM’s name and status. The Telstra exchanges are also marked by a little upside down tear-drop looking icon.

The speed heat-map can be found under ’states’ at the left sidebar. The more user-generated input here, the more robust the tool becomes. Very neat tool.

Go check it out.

PJG

I thought I’d hijack a post by Nick Gonzalez, of the Running with Foxes blog.

Having majored in economics, I’ve been a fan of Swivel from the start. They’re solving the problem of easily displaying data online, which I had to deal with myself as an intern at an economic development office back in college.

I’ve been perusing the site and came across this particularly striking graph that shows the gentle rise and fall of sales of vinyl, cassette, CD, and iPod sales as one format replaces the other (unfortunately itunes sales were not pegged). CD sales seem to have peaked after a steep rise out of the eighties and into the nineties. But the more interesting part is the decline in sales. Looking at the slopes and peaks for each of the formats, you can see that the peaks are becoming steeper and the transitions quicker. People are continually choosing the more portable format.

The decline in CD sales is happening, and it’s only a matter of time before CD’s are the domain of audiophiles (At least DJs still use vinyl). Eyeballing it, CDs seem to have another 10 years till they’re phased out of the mainstream, although it could come sooner.

I’d be interested to see how the same data compares for video sales.

Quite the interesting read. I’m interested to see the sales/adoption graph of each of the Apple iPods.

PJG