Mobile Commerce

The use of the internet for purchasing goods and services has evolved, not only this but the transmitting of messages using wireless mobile devises has also became more popular. Overall mobile commerce has developed and is still developing. When you look around a public area, you will notice that nearly everyone has mobile phones, it would be seen as being uncool not to have a mobile phone today. Mobile phones have changed dramatically over the past ten years. I remember getting my first phone,it was bought for me for my confirmation "nokia 3210" it was a brick of a phone all i really used it for was making the odd phone call and sending the odd message. I have to day i did use to run down my battery with loads of games of snake, legend of a game. It was a phone was basic, not like the phones you can buy today. Today you get to choose from a range of applications, blue tooth, infrared, 3G, internet, the mega pixel of your camera and so on. When my phone was bought for me, it had no camera, and i think the only application that was out was blue tooth. It just shows how times are changing...
Nowadays businesses are using this technology to their advantage, they are not relying on sending out special offers by post but they are although, texting their customers with these offers, Example phone companies, club offers etc. When i get continuous texts from clubs, it annoys the head of me, but this offer still sticks in my head. I would usually get texts from my mobile phone provider reminding me to top up, and telling me what the latest offer is with them.
Shoping centres are also getting in with the game, i was in marshes a few weeks ago and i hadn't realized but my blue tooth was on, and a message appeared on my phone asking me did i want to be connected with the marshes shopping centre, i said no, but it just shows that m commerce is being used evey where and my everyone today.

Online adult industry

I have to admit, this was not a topic that i thought we would be covering in e-business class, i was very shocked when Colin handed out the relevant notes. I didn't know how to react at first, but i knew whatever we would talk about in class would be interesting,that it would cause a bit of controversy within the class and it would be statistics that i had not known before.This is what group discussions are all about! Everyone in class had their own opinions on this topic, some people were for and some were against. I didn't know but the online sex industry is worth a fortune €57 billion to be precise. I have to say i never thought it was as popular as this.But then again allot of people do not admit to searching, downloading and watching porn. Every body at some stage of their lives has came across porn, some people frown upon it, and some people don't. i look at it like this, it is everybody's own choice. I also think that it is an industry that provides work for people, and in todays economic down turn. Only for this industry, the internet would not be developed the way it is today.Although i am not against the adult industry i do have to stress that i am not condoning child pornography because personally i think this is vile. I just think that adult sex sites are doing any harm.

Is there a place for religion in modern society?

I have to say i do think there is a place for religion today! I am speaking from a personal perspective. I am going to be honest, i don't attend mass every sunday because i am usually working, or out the night before, and i know that should be no excuse.I might not attend mass every sunday but i do still have my faith! I believe that a person should not have to go to mass every sunday to be a believer in god. I was always brought to mass every sunday when i was younger! My mother would also be a stong believer in her faith. I do try to say my prayers every night, and i do try as much as i can to attend mass in special occasions, for example Holy week, good friday, chrismas etc. I always turn to to my faith when things are tough and i always say my prayers before i put pen to paper in my exams! I know people have chosen not to follow their faith with the contreversy over the sexual abuse of children in Ireland with Dublin being a main area. I do not condone this sexual abuse of children but i do think that people should not become non believers and turn against what they have been taught, and what they know soo well!

Twilight

Twilight, is fantastic... And anyone who says otherwise, they have to be crazy. I have to say i give the books and film 10/10. I will give an over view of what twilight is all about/ She use to live with her mother and then she moved to Forks, Washington to her father were she didn't expect much to happen. It was a small town that everyone knows everyone! When she got there it was just a regular town with regular people until she met the Cullen's. One of the Cullen's in particular caught her attention, Edward Cullen. He is a vampire, like all of his family, No one else in the town was aware of this but Bella was able to figure this out from a couple of experiences she encountered with him, and from her wolf friend Jacob. Up until Bella moving to Forks, the Cullen's did not associate themselves with any of the mortals. When Bella came along things changed, for some reason Edward was drawn to Bella , and he could not stay away from her, and the same went for Bella, they fell in love, and they didn't care what anyone else thought of it. I know that all this seem all a little far fetched but it it is such a great range of books, and the words create a story in your head, you can just picture this storyline happening in front of you. Stephanie Meyer the writer of Twilight is a fantastic, she creates these pictures in your head, and you may find this hard to believe but Stephanie dreamed of this storyline,and developed into the best selling novels around this year. the films are just as good, and i highly recommend people reading these books and going to see the film! Roll on The Eclipse, it will be the next Twilight film on the screens!

social networking

Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision.I am going to base my blog on one specific social networking site, i am sure everybody is familiar enough with it because nearly everyone i know is on it both young and old "FACEBOOK".I will although name the rest of the social networking sites that i am familiar with, Bebo, Twitter etc! I know there is allot more out there, and from my picture you can see that there is soo many out there! but they are the main sites that i would be familiar with because I am a member of all three.Social networking is also known as virtual communities, the idea of this growing phenomenal, is a sense of togetherness for all involved! Virtual communities link sooo many people together, and the idea behind it is the linking of people that have the same interests and that want to stay connected with people.
Now i am going to speak to you a bit about facebook. At present there are over 300 million people worldwide signed up to facebook! Bebo use to be the craze but i have found that people have replaced their bebo pages with facebook pages, myself included! Facebook is not only used for personal use, corporate businesses are also setting up facebook pages in order to get themselves out there, id say they choose to do this because they know that facebook have by far the largest amount of users. I feel this is a very smart and cost effective way to create brand awareness and a cheaper form of advertising that any other media platforms used. As part of our ebusiness course we were also asked to set up a blog, this is also a form of social networking. I have to say i do enjoy updating my blogs because it is very like updating your diary. Although it is a diary that can be read by all. The difference between blogger and facebook is, anyone can look at your blog page even if they are not following you, You do have the option of making your page private from non followere but sure what would the fun be in that!
Unlike facebook, you must be friends with the person you choose to leave a comment to. I do feel that it is good that anyone can log into your blog page and leave a comment without signed in first, because i feel it is good to get oppinions of other people about particular topics. I have to say i love this new craze of social netwoking and how it has got soo popular! It helps you stay connected with everyone, and it is fun to be on, there are soo many applications you can add, Farm town was my favourite, I have not got into farm ville though, i know if i do i would never get any work done this year! When i was in France on my erasmus year abroad it was great to have and i don't know what i would have done without my social sites. It was easier for me to drop a comment on someones facebook rather than phone them, it was allot cheaper and from my page everyone was able to see how i was getting on in France with changing my status every so often and new photos i had uploaded and photos i had been tagged in. Anyone that has not yet set up a facebook page i do highly reccomend you get onto www.facebook.com ad get yourself signed up! i should work for facebook! haha

NAMA

I have to say, like everyone in my e-business class, I had to do my homework on writing up a blog about NAMA. I am going to give you my understanding of NAMA. NAMA stands for The National Asset Management Agency. It is a new scheme that has been designed to relieve the banking sector of up to 90 billion worth of property loans. They say it is set to “cleanse” five financial institutions, them being AIB, Anglo Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, EBS Building society and Irish Nationwide. When I use the term cleanse I mean to get rid of the bad debts and toxic loans that was taken out during the property bubble. This scheme was passed by the Governmental body to relieve Irish banks of the bad debts and give them a chance in the economic times that are presently in. The bank says that this is the only chance they have to get the bank’s lending again and to stimulate economic growth. There is a great amount of controversy over NAMA, and whether or not it is a good thing in today’s economic crisis. I do feel it is a good thing because if the legislation is passed, the Government will pay the banks €54 billion in the form of bonds, or IOUs, in exchange for the loans. Nama will then manage these loans on behalf of the State and try to “achieve the best possible return” for taxpayers, according to Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan. So this will also mean that repayments that are made by banking customers but it will be payed into the new NAMA scheme. Although there is allot of information about NAMA out there, people do not believe that this will work. From what I have read I do feel that it will but there is the "but factor" this all depends on the future direction of the property market. Under Nama, the Government is assuming that the average value of the bank borrowers’ property portfolios has fallen by 47 per cent. The current market value of the assets is estimated to be €47 billion, although it could be more or it could be less. But the State is paying €7 billion extra for the loans. it is making the assumtion that prices will go up again. I do feel that from researching NAMA, I have gained a better understanding on the new bill that will be passed. In my views it should be passed otherwise we will never get out of the financial difficulties that we are in today! The government got us into this rut, and in my opinion it is about time they found a way to relieve us from this financial strain Ireland is under.
People also pose the question of how will Nama shape the company in years to come.
Nama means the economy’s prospects remain inextricably linked to the fortunes of the property market. It may take decades for the economy to be fully “cleansed” of these bad debts. The legacy of the property bubble means that taxation is likely to increase and Government spending continue to be constrained for years to come. Here are some of the references i used in gaining a better understanding of this subject:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0917/1224254726800.html
http://www.ireland.com/home/Government_unveils_Nama_Bill_to_establish_new_agency/maxi/fast/news/irnews/238120

Participating in the rookie challenge!

One of the days in college, we had a vister in class, this was a very special visitor, it was a Duck and Emma Brobazon, she came into our E- business class to give us information on the rookie challenge I knew straight awa7y i wanted to participate in this event. After class i asked around the class to see if any of my class mates were interested because teams must be of groups of four. I was very lucky cuase the few people i had asked first were up for it! Catherine, Jonathan, Emma and myself, went straight down to sign our selves up. We seen it as a great opportunity to build on our CV and gain some experience. When we signed up we were given our first task this task was "using mister rubber duck" who came into visit us in class with Emma. Think of a business idea using this duck to generate revenue. Our idea was to start up a forum for schools and colleges all over, This was a chat service, our target market was paricularly aimed at first year students who find it hard to settle into school/college and who find it hard to adjust to the transition from primary to second level education and fom second level schools to third level colleges! This service offers the students the chance to send us instant messages during college hours, and emails. They will have the option of not giving out their personal information if they don't feel they want to. We all got a text that sunday evening to tell us that we got through to the next round, i have to say we were all chuffed. Our second challenge was given to us on Monday morning at nine 0'clock and i have to say we never laughed soo much! We were given a bag full of both worthless items and items that were worth something and told that we had to sell thes goods in an innovtive way. We got to work straight away. Although we had to first do our presentations for Helen whites class, and then we got the permission to go straight to work! We sold all our items and made a fantastic profit of 51 euro! :P Our most innoveative sale had to have been the tile that we had to sell, we thought of selling it on its on, but thought every group will do this so we used a photogriphy book that had also been gien to us, and recognised the theme of "a penny for your thoughts, printed this out and cut out the pictures and made a collage of all these people! We made a fantastic 2f euro from our innovative thinking and superb art work! haha Well done team! We were told as soon as all teams had presented that we were through to the next round! Delighted we were so we went straight to work at with our final task, using a disposable product come up with an innovative idea. Our idea was an online book shop within the college. This e book shop would offer a better return on investment than the college shop and also we would offer something completely different a swapping service for books of similar value with a small fee attached! We didn not win the rookie challenge, but in our minds we did. We got further than someone who did not do the rookie challenge and we had some craic! :P we celebrated that evening in The Lisdoo in Dundalk! :P QUACK QUACK

The Rookie challenge

The Rookie challenge takes place every year in Dundalk Institute Of Technology campus, it is a way of encouraging students to looking into starting up their own business.
This years rookie challenge had taken place from Friday 6th November 2009 to Wednesday 11th of November. It was arranged and run by Emma Brabazon who was the winner of last years Rookie challenge who won a fantastic prize fund of 2,000 euro and Ronan .The rookie challenge Was set up by the student enterprise at DKIT and funded by Dundalk credit union This challenge also has associations with The Regional Development Centre(RDC), Louth County Enterprise board Novation and of course Dundalk Institute Of Technology. This years Rookie challenge was slightly different, it was a 3 day task rather than its usual 4 day challenge. This years rookie challenge had the following tasks:

Task one - Generate a business idea from the concept/use of a rubber duck

Task two- Given a bag of useless items, and trying to generate as much profit as possible

Task three- From the use of a disposable product, come up with a business idea that will generate revenue.

There was a team of three groups that made it to the final and the winners of the 2009 rookie challenge was Team Hardcore. The price given was 1000 euro investment into their business idea and a net book to each team member. Well done team hardcore!

Search Engine marketing

This week we were asked to give our views on search engine marketing, I will start off by giving my understanding of SEM, it is a paid type of marketing for websites. When i think of SEM i think of the monitoring and maintaining of pay-per click campaigns, an example of this would be google adwords. In SEM there is two types of listings that are found when you enter your desired search engine. The first one i will talk to you about is "organic listings", these are found on the left hand side of your page and they are innexpensive in that when someone enters your site, you do not have to pay a fee. They are ranked according to how many times the page is opened, ie a page that is opened more often will be ranked up higher than a page that is rarely opened. Organic listings are the most popular listings around and they have many advantages, one being 80% of users are more likely to click. The other type of listings is the "payed for listings"these are the complete opposite to what i have been talking about, you must pay search engines, to list your website and they are the listings that are found on the right hand side of your desired search engine page,

E- Business

This is my first time doing this module, I have been studying e-business for two weeks now. Sofar i think it is very interesting and I think it will be very beneficial as today being the 21st Century, everything is done in cyber world. I do look up allot on the internet, either by booking flights online, purchasing items (books- amazon) , Chatting to friends ( Facebook, Twitter, Skype) and also am on internet banking. It also gives us the chance to see how business is done over the net, and it will be good for us as it will give us tips, steps in how to set up our own business online, rules and regulations to abide by. I like the way in class that it is not just lecture based that there is also the practical end to it, ie. setting up your own blog and continuously updating it etc.
I think overall i will find this module very interesting, and i look forward to learning more about e-business.

My achiements from my year abroad!

My year abroad is over, i spent a fabulous year in Lyon, France, met loads of new friends from all over the world. It was emotional leaving Lyon, although it is great to get back to Dundalk and be back with all of my old classmates! The highlight of my year abroad has to be me going to Paris, it was just breath taking. You would have to visit Paris to be able to witness the feeling i felt. Not only was the attractions the highlight, but to travel there on my own. I know people might say, sure all you had to do was get the train but it was a differnt feeling for me, cause this was the day i knew i felt i achieved something significant from doing my year abroad. As a person i have always been the type not to do things on my own, i was very dependent on others but this day i had not depended on anyone, i booked my own train tickets and there i was, off to Paris, it was like a wee adventure for me. At long last i knew i was independent. I did meet an old school mate once i got there but it was doing this on my own that was the biggest achievement for me, i t was very neve racking, but i got through it and i loved every minute of it!! From that day on, i knew that i could do anything if i just stopped relying on other people. Another big achievent for me was actually going on my year abroad, because i was always the one in class in second year continuesly changing my mind, most of me wanted to go but then there was a part of me that had allot of other mixed feelings. Once i got over there, i honestly thought i wasn't going to last but i did, and i couldn't have done this without the help of my class mates that had also went to France with me, they were absalute legends.
This year should be great, it is my final year, It will be very challenging but i know that all the hard work that i will put in this year will hopefully pay off.