JASE Marketing blog

This picture, taken from an AdRANTs article, brings to mind a few funny, and true, points not the least of which is to not neglect what got you where you are now.

No matter what your profession of choice, at some point in your career you were a sponge. You would spend countless hours researching, learning from others, and soaking up every little morsel of information and experience you could find.

Don’t let that stop. The ability to continuously absorb and process more information is one the fascinations of the human brain that we shouldn’t abandon.

Feed your mind. Study. Research. Watch others. Continue your intellectual and professional growth at all costs. Don’t fall behind because the results could be ruinous for your career.

Tags: AdRANTs, career, learn, research, study

The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit industry group that pushes for the adoption and interoperability of open-source software, has named an executive of the giant systems integrator Unisys as its new president.

Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager of open-source business at Unisys, is taking over the role previously held by Dominic Sartorio, an employee of SpikeSource, which makes a platform for testing, packaging and maintaining applications.

The OSA describes themselves on their website as an organization that is leading companies dedicated to making enterprise-class open software solutions work together. We help customers put open solutions to work by enabling application integration, certifying quality solutions, and promoting cooperation among open solutions developers.

The OSA is also announcing the arrival of four other members:

– Scott Barnett, chief operating officer of Bluenog, a start up that offers a software package combining content management, BI (business intelligence) and portal technology, will be OSA’s marketing chair.

– Gopi Ganapathy, CEO of Essentia, provider of software and services for commercial open-source companies, will serve as community development chair.

– Mike Moody, vice president of engineering at the open-source BI vendor Jaspersoft; and Uwe Vielle, a senior architect at Unisys, will work on interoperability issues.

Tags: Anthony Gold, Bluenog, Dominic Sartorio, Essentia, Gopi Ganapathy, Jaspersoft, Mike Moody, Open Solutions Alliance, open source, OSA, Scott Barnett, SpikeSource, Unisys, Uwe Vielle

We wrote on our blog last month of two dangerous viruses that have been spotted in the wild that target Apple’s Mac OS X operating system.

Apple has since released this alert on their support website:

Products Affected
Consumer Software, Mac OS

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult. Here are some available antivirus utilities:

Intego VirusBarrier X5, available from the Apple Online Store
License: commercial

Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh, available from the Apple Online Store
License: commercial

McAfee VirusScan for Mac
License: commercial

Read Apple’s alert here.

Tags: Antivirus, Apple, Intego, Mac OS X, McAfee, Norton, Symantec, virus, VirusBarrier, VirusScan

Ever wonder if you’re in the minority on what choices you make for computers or operating systems? Or if the web  browser you like is the most prominent? Net Applications has produced their numbers for 2008 under their Market Share reports.

Before heading off in your own cloud with this information, use these statistics intelligently. Know your audience. Know their tendencies and know their needs. Their inherent requirements may not align with the bulk of the Internet travelers.

Operating System Market Share

Operating System	Total Market Share
Windows	90.91%
Mac	7.89%
Linux	0.75%
iPhone	0.22%
Playstation	0.04%

…

Browser Market Share

Browser	Total Market Share
Microsoft Internet Explorer	73.04%
Firefox	18.83%
Safari	6.25%
Opera	0.70%
Netscape	0.61%

Source: Net Applications Market Share

Tags: Apple, Chrome, Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer, iPhone, Linux, Mac, Market Share, Microsoft, Mozilla, Net Applications, Netscape, Opera, PlayStation, Safari, Sony, Sun Microsystems, SunOS, Windows

“Cloud computing” has become a major buzzword in the last few months. Along with many other large players on the Internet Microsoft has developed technologies such as Live Mesh that allow us to interact with and store data in the (Internet) cloud. Google Docs is another great example.

The concept is wonderful - my information accessible anytime from any place. But the concept does force out risks that are normally contained by traditional storage practices.

Who has access to my information that I’m now storing out in the cloud?
What if access to my information is compromised?
Can the transfer process of my information be cracked and stolen?
Can the storage of my information be hacked and stolen?

Just like any other new concept that we consider putting into place, please do your research. Weigh the risks against the advantages of using the cloud computing technologies for your particular needs. Don’t rely on other studies because your processes and requirements are unique.

Tags: CEO, clould computing, Google, Google Docs, JASE Group, Keith Parnell, Live Mesh, Microsoft

WHEN: Friday December 5th at 6:00 PM.
WHERE: Colley Avenue, Norfolk, VA in front of Blair Middle School.

This is a wonderful, family friendly event. Hear the First Presbyterian Church of Norfolk choir sing, enjoy hot chocolate, coffee, cookies, cake and fun.

Please bring a gift to be placed under the tree to support The Dwelling Place, a home For battered women & children.

The Dwelling Place is asking for the following:

• Household Items
• Paper Towels
• Toilet Paper
• PineSol
• White “kitchen” size trash bags
• Laundry detergent (powder)
• 30 gallon size trash bags
• Office Supplies (available at Wal-Mart)
• Box/copy paper
• Manila 1/3 size cut office folders
• Post-it/Stickies
• Children’s Coats

Source: destinationGhent

Tags: Blair Middle School, Christmas tree, Colley Avenue, Dwelling Place, First Presbyterian Church, GBA, Ghent Business Association, Norfolk, VA

We ran across this funny video on YouTube making fun of the allure of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and Second Life.

Tags: facebook, Friendster, myspace, Second Life, social network, video, youtube

Qik announced on Wednesday that its popular mobile video streaming product is now available for the OS 4.5 version of the Blackberry Curve 8310, 8330 and Pearl 8130.

These models had some incompatibility problems with the initial launch of the BlackBerry version of Qik, forcing Qik to make some changes to its BlackBerry client. The tweaking is now done and all you 8310, 8330 and 8130 owners can join your Bold, 8320 and 8120-owning brethren in some Qiking fun.

This new version of the BlackBerry Qik is in Alpha and is available for download now from Qik’s website. Drop us a line in the comments if you will be Qiking any of your Thanksgiving or Black Friday weekend adventures.

Source: Boy Genius Report

Tags: 8130, 8310, 8330, BlackBerry, Curve, Pearl, Qik, video recording, video streaming

We’ve had so many questions lately from various institutions and organizations about performing a SWOT Analysis for their initiatives. This is great. We’re glad we are being asked. But we are finding that further discussion is uncovering a few misunderstandings of the exact the purpose of a SWOT Analysis, what you can expect as a report from the SWOT Analysis and how it can be used in support of a full-blown Marketing Plan.

Here is a re-post of a July 10, 2007 blog entry from our old blog. This should get us started again on the right foot and at least on the same thinking level.

As always, you can contact us to get more information: marketing team [AT] jase group {DOT} com

SWOT Analysis, is a strategic planning tool used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving that objective. The technique is credited to Albert Humphrey, who led a research project at Stanford University in the 1960s and 1970s using data from the Fortune 500 companies.

Simple rules for successful SWOT analysis:

• Be realistic about the strengths and weaknesses of your organization when conducting SWOT analysis.
• SWOT analysis should distinguish between where your organization is today, and where it could be in the future.
• SWOT should always be specific. Avoid grey areas.
• Always apply SWOT in relation to your competition i.e. better than or worse than your competition.
• Keep your SWOT short and simple. Avoid complexity and over analysis.
• SWOT is subjective.

Some of the problems that you may encounter with SWOT are as a result of one of its key benefits - flexibility. Since SWOT analysis can be used in a variety of scenarios, it has to be flexible. However this can lead to a number of anomalies. Problems with basic SWOT analysis can be addressed using a more critical POWER SWOT.

Internal and external factors:
The aim of any SWOT analysis is to identify the key internal and external factors that are important to achieving the objective. SWOT analysis groups key pieces of information into two main categories:

• Internal factors The strengths and weaknesses internal to the organization.
• External factors The opportunities and threats presented by the external environment.

The internal factors may be viewed as strengths or weaknesses depending upon their impact on the organization’s objectives. What may represent strengths with respect to one objective may be weaknesses for another objective. The factors may include all of the 4P’s; as well as personnel, finance, manufacturing capabilities, and so on. The external factors may include macroeconomic matters, technological change, legislation, and socio-cultural changes, as well as changes in the marketplace or competitive position. The results are often presented in the form of a matrix.

References & credits:
Marketing Teacher
Wikipedia

JASE Marketing
www.jasegroup.com

Tags: Albert Humphrey, JASE Group, Marketing, marketing teacher, opportunities, Stanford University, strengths, SWOT, SWOT analysis, threats, weaknesses, wikipedia

We give thanks this day for the many blessings and riches God bestows on us. Today especially we enjoy spending valuable time with our families to absorb these blessings.

From our family to yours on this blessed day we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving Day.

Tags: family, God, JASE Group, Thanksgiving

Your digital life, always with you

Tags: Access, cloud computing, Live Mesh, Mac, mobile phone, share, Sync

The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project on Tuesday released Fedora 10 with a wide range of improvements in areas such as virtualization management, networking, boot time and security.

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.

Fedora 10 Release Notes are here.

Tags: Fedora, Fedora 10, Fedora Project, Linux, networking, Security, virtualization

I twittered this earlier today: I’ll give you $500M of my stock for your product that’s not worth that. But wait, neither is my stock. Who does that sound like?

I’ll give you one guess who it was. That’s right. This was the Facebook executives’ offer to the Twitter executives about a potential buy out. Good for Twitter for rejecting that silly offer.

Tags: CEO, facebook, JASE Group, Keith Parnell, Twitter

Introducing Opera Mini 4.2, the most popular mobile phone browser in the world.

Opera Mini enables you to take your full Web experience to your phone. Stay in touch with your friends on Facebook, search with Google, get your e-mail on the go, do your online banking. There are no limits — Opera Mini is the quick, easy and secure way to get any Web page you want.

To download Opera Mini directly to your phone, please visit operamini.com using your existing phone’s Web browser.

Tags: Email, facebook, Google, Nokia, Opera Mini, Sony Ericsson, web browser

AOL has just launched AOL Sync, a new tool that keeps your contacts and calendar in sync between Windows Mobile, Outlook/Outlook Express, and AOL. The service works over-the-air so you only need to set it once in order for it to work.

With AOL Sync, you can synchronize your AOL Address Book and AOL Calendar data with your desktop apps, PDA, and mobile devices, including both Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

This service is made possible thanks to AOL’s new partnership with Plaxo, a company that provides address book synchronization tools.

At the moment, only the address book sync portion of AOL Sync is live, but the Calendar support is being worked on for the future.

You can try the new service here.

Source: Channel 10

Tags: AOL, BlackBerry, Channel 10, Microsoft, Outlook, Outlook Express, PDA, Plaxo, Sync, Windows Mobile

Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit has announced 75-percent-off pricing for Office 2008 for Mac: Special Media Edition during the Black Friday sales period that kicks off the holiday shopping season.

The discount will be available online during Thursday and Friday only from Apple, Amazon.com and BestBuy Online. Apple will also offer the deal at its retail stores on Friday.

For customers that miss the Black Friday sale, the software will be sold at 50-percent-off retail prices through the end of the year.

Source: www.macnn.com

Tags: Amazon, Apple, BestBuy, black friday, Mac Office, Macintosh, Microsoft

WCTY TV 48, Norfolk’s Neighborhood Network, recently featured JASE client, Keep Norfolk Beautiful during their daily programming of the Norfolk News Now show.

The television segment presented by NNN reporter John Linka can be seen in the video below. JASE’s web design and development work is mentioned around minute 2:22 of the video.

Holly Carson, Education Coordinator at Keep Norfolk Beautiful, recently had this to say about JASE’s work for the organization.

The needs of Keep Norfolk Beautiful and the residents we serve had grown beyond the abilities of our previous website. We needed to upgrade to a site that was more visually motivating, could offer more user-friendly functions for our visitors, and be managed by staff to provide up-to-the-minute information.

One example is our news page. The management is much simpler, and provides us the ability to embed images and include hyperlinks, which was not possible in our previous site. Though this may seem like a small change, it’s given us the ability to link our visitors to a wider array of information options, expanding our ability to provide them the direction or information for which they are searching.

Working with JASE has afforded Keep Norfolk Beautiful the ability to serve residents in a more efficient and effective manner. The staff of Keep Norfolk Beautiful has learned much through the experience and will carry that with them in future developments. We are very happy with how well our new website is working for us.

Tags: Education Coordinator, Holly Carson, JASE Group, John Linka, Keep Norfolk Beautiful, Norfolk News Now, Norfolk's Neighborhood Network, TV-48, WCTY

In this age of sprouting social media, social networks and easy-to-use social communities, are we really practicing what we preach? Do we use social media to communicate and even more importantly to interact with our customers?

We should. Now, more than ever before, we have the tools to increase bi-directional and multi-threaded interaction with our closest and also the most distant customers.

We should be thinking of new ways everyday via social media to let our customers know they can rely on us to deliver on our brand promise to them.

Tags: brand, customer, jasezone, social community, social media, social network

Users don’t care about the difference between rich Internet apps and desktop apps. They just want software that is simple to use no matter where you lead them.

Do you agree? What feedback do you receive from your user base?

Tags: desktop application, ease of use, internet application, software

OSX.RSPlug.D and OSX.Lamzev.A have appeared this week wreaking havoc on several Mac OS X machines. Don’t be fooled into believing the myth that your Mac OS cannot be infected by viruses. Be safe - install antivirus software on your computers. All of them.

Here is a bit of info from ZDNet to kick off your research.

The Trojan — called ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ by Intego, the Mac security specialist that discovered the threat — is a variant on an older piece of malicious code but with a new installer, Intego said.

“It is a downloader, and it contacts a remote server to download the files it installs,” Intego said in an advisory. “This means that, in the future, the downloader may be able to install payloads [other] than the one it currently installs.”

OSX.Lamzev.A is a hacker tool designed primarily to allow attackers to install backdoors in a user’s system, according to Intego. However, the company dismissed the tool as a serious threat because a potential hacker has to have physical access to a system to install the backdoor.

Tags: Antivirus, Apple, backdoor tool, Mac OS X, OSX.OLamzev.A, OSX.RSPlug.D, trojan, virus, ZDNet

Once you own an iPhone, you discover that it’s more than a phone. It’s a way of life.
Take a look at some ideas to help you get the most out of your iPhone, wherever you go.

This is a very cool portal that Apple has developed for its iPhone customers. You can find applications and activities to involve your iPhone for Around Town, World Travel, At Home, Getting Things Done and Fun & Games topics.

Tags: Apple, Around Town, At Home, Fun & Games, Getting Things Done, iPhone, iPhone Your Life, World Travel

Source: Downtown Norfolk

Tags: Downtown Norfolk, Grand Illumination Parade, Holidays in the City, Norfolk, Olde Towne, Portsmouth, Santa Claus, VA, Waterside

Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer for Microsoft announced Wednesday on the IEblog that we should see a full release of Internet Explorer 8 during the 2nd quarter of 2009.

“We will release one more public update of IE8 in the first quarter of 2009, and then follow that up with the final release,” Hachamovitch said.

The current version of IE8 is Beta 2, which was released in late August this year.

Tags: IE8, Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft

A couple of members of the JASE team attended the CAO Vision presentation event last evening at Emerson’s Cigars of Norfolk at Town Center in Virginia Beach. We met some new friends and talked cigars, life and social media, of course. Our friend @KG4ZXK was there also.

The event was hosted by Emerson’s Cigars of Norfolk, presented by CAO Cigars and catered by Paradocks Grille.

Tags: CAO Vision, cigar, Emerson's Cigars, JASE Group, Paradocks Grille, social media

JASE Group CEO, Keith Parnell, speaks out on his blog a few weeks ago during baseball season about a surprising source of maintaining the company brand.

While catching up on some work items this afternoon I have tuned in to an Atlanta Braves game streaming through MLB.tv. Very convenient, very nice service by the way.

But my quick comment for this blog entry is about branding. Many guys that wear sports-type sunglasses with baseball hats throw the glasses on the brim of the hat when they’re not in use.

One of the players was spotlighted by the commentators for placing his glasses on the back of his baseball hat. Again, very common but in this case it was a requirement by the Braves manager, Bobby Cox. Bobby doesn’t want in anyway the Braves logo on the front of the hat covered or blocked from view.

Who would have guessed that a baseball manager could be such a brand police? I like it.

Tags: Atlanta Braves, baseball, Bobby Cox, brand, CEO, JASE Group, Keith Parnell