| Three Success Stories on Quicker, Cheaper Ways to Serve Customers
CompuCredit needed more timely access to information and better tools that its staff could use to make faster and more accurate decisions. The IT team met that need by consolidating credit card databases, streamlining and standardizing data ETL processes, and moving query and reporting activity from the primary Oracle database to a Netezza data warehouse appliance that produces results an average of 150 times faster. SMB Business Management SoftwareDownload this white paper to learn about the benefits of having one integrated Business Management Software Suite. .
Latin Business Index
The new president's early months in office can include Oval Office meetings, phone conversations, and visits to the region. But he or she should not be pressed to map out a ten-year strategy for the future in the first days on the job. Indeed, the greatest contribution to building a solid policy is laying a foundation of mutual respect and consultation. In the meantime, our neighbors should not wait until after our presidential election for their "marching orders." They should embrace an opportunity to shape the new U.S. president's perceptions of the Americas and offer their own ideas to construct a new framework for U.S. engagement. The new U.S. president should find a way to consult regularly with our key Latin American neighbors, starting with his Brazilian and Mexican counterparts.
Nintendo Half-Year Profits Double on Demand for Wii
Nintendo reported that its net profit in the fiscal first half to September more than doubled from a year earlier on the high demand for its Nintendo DS portable game and Wii standalone home-use video game consoles. Nintendo expects to sell 28 million Nintendo DS portable game consoles and 17.5 million Wii consoles this fiscal year. Free Report from Keynote Systems 2007 Trends and Observations of the Mobile and Connected World examines how technologies, from the Web to the mobile phone, are specifically impacting key vertical industries, from financial services to new media. Download yours here. .
Blood, Tears, Toys and NGOs
They are poor migrants from China's countryside, and they endure work days averaging 11 hours, six to seven days a week, to earn take-home pay of $100 or less a month. In China, a truly frightening number of such workers suffer from occupational diseases and industrial injuries. As just one example, a survey of hospitals in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province revealed that in a recent year they had dealt with more than 40,000 fingers that had been chopped off by machinery. Another Chinese source states, more alarmingly, that in the factories of Shenzhen in a recent year 17,000 limbs were severed. The neglect of safety standards in these factories used to be more severe before the big brand-name corporations that contract out their production to China-based factories came under attack in the 1990s in an anti-sweatshop campaign by Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Chase Paymentech Makes Gift Cards Easy for Small Businesses with All ...
DALLAS, Nov. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Chase Paymentech, the world's premier provider of payment services, announced today the introduction of an integrated, All-In-One payments package that provides small and medium-sized businesses with payment card processing and business growth services, including a "ready-to-market" gift card package. This new package will help ensure that smaller businesses can provide their customers the same payment choices as national retail chains. With the run-up to the 2007 holiday shopping period, letting customers use card-based payment methods - including the increasingly-popular gift card option - will provide a boost to merchants' bottom line. Gift cards are proven to increase merchant sales while increasing merchant profitability and are considered an increasingly essential tool for driving key holiday sales.
New Game Puts Geography on the Map
One of the most popular videogames on the Internet right now is about as low-tech as a high-school social studies quiz. The free game, Traveler IQ Challenge, has become an unlikely hit by getting players to locate Kinshasa, Moscow and other cities and attractions by clicking on a crude, two-dimensional world map, and scoring them based on the speed and accuracy of their responses. Created as a marketing gimmick in June by TravelPod, a travel Web site owned by Expedia, Traveler IQ now has more than four million people a month who play it on sites across the Internet, including Facebook's popular social network. Traveler IQ is part of a wave of what's known in the industry as "casual" games -- low budget, easy-to-play titles like card games and puzzles -- that lack the visual flare of slick new products for the Xbox 360 and other game consoles.
New products from Scottsdale entrepreneurs
Scottsdale entrepreneurs just keep the new products coming. Here is a sampling of what some of them have been working on recently: Dolls give big, wrap-around hugs Gloria Mecca received the first shipment of her Heavenly Hug dolls from the manufacturer in late December and is selling them on her Web site and at two stores in Scottsdale. Mecca designed the doll to comfort children or anyone who needs a hug from an angel. Made of a soft terrycloth fabric, the washable doll is two feet long and has long arms that can wrap around its owner. .
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