Salesforce.com is opening its free social-networking service for businesses.
The service is called Chatter, and it works a lot like Facebook for businesses. Employees will be able to sign up with a company e-mail account and create a profile like they do on Facebook, then can use the space to exchange messages and share files.

Chatter has been available to paying Salesforce customers since July, but in December the company announced it would open it up to any business users at no charge, and that transition kicks in on Monday. Salesforce hopes the free service will convince businesses to its full suite of CRM and other business services.

Chatter works on PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, and BlackBerry devices, with plans for an Android application later this year. Users can update their status messages for other followers to see, but for now, Salesforce.com isn't building in instant messaging.

With Pioneer no longer making TVs, Sharp has secured a license to use Pioneer's Elite brand name on its own forthcoming high-end LCD TVs sold in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, as part of Sharp's agreement with Pioneer, the Elite-branded LCD sets will also be marketed through Pioneer's Elite brand dealers. Currently, Pioneer uses the Elite brand to market a line of high-end audio/video receivers, Blu-ray Disc players and speakers.

Egypt has cut off nearly all Internet traffic into and out of the country and disrupted cellphone service as it struggles to contain protests.

The continuance of the World Team Cup is assured. The Austrian energy drink POWER HORSE is joining the 34th tournament as its namesake main sponsor. The event will run from 15 - 21 May 2011 traditionally taking place in the Rochus Club in Duesseldorf. From now on the tournament will be named the POWER HORSE World Team Cup. POWER HORSE has been active in the sports section in recent years. Last year the company acted as a sponsor to the Polo European Championships and also sponsored the Austrian Football Club Linzer ASK. On the occasion of the Football World Championship in South Africa, the Manchester City player, Emmanuel Adebayor, who was nominated African player of the year in 2008, was signed up as a brand ambassador. Apart from activities in the field of sports sponsorship, POWER HORSE also promotes product placements in addition to classical media and promotions at the POS. The brand's appearance in the Angelina Jolie-Film WANTED and co-operation with 20th Century Fox with regard to the action-movie A-TEAM will remain unforgettable.

Indian tycoon Ahsan Ali Syed confirmed Thursday he plans to buy indebted Primera Liga side Racing Santander, reportedly for 30-40 million euros (40-54 million dollars).
Syed made a bid in August last year for English Premier League club Blackburn Rovers but failed to reach agreement in negotiations for a reported 300-million-pound ($480 million) takeover.

All across Europe, from Brussels to the Balkans, a new generation of WikiLeaks-style websites is sprouting.

Like their forerunner, the fledgling whistle-blowing sites are a chaotic mixture of complex systems engineering, earnest campaigning, muckraking and self-promotion.

And though their goals are varied, the activists behind the sites told Reuters that they share one major concern: they all vow not to repeat mistakes they believe were made by Julian Assange, the controversial WikiLeaks creator.

The proliferation of websites to encourage, facilitate and shelter leakers is so anarchic that two aspiring anti-corporate leak sites are both claiming rights to the rubric “GreenLeaks” and muttering about legal consequences if the other side doesn’t back down.



The most ambitious and potentially far-reaching WikiLeaks spinoff to surface this week is Domscheit-Berg’s OpenLeaks, which its founder describes as a mechanism both for putting together leakers with knowledgeable recipients and for linking leak-consuming organizations to each other.

The burgeoning Wikiworld has been eagerly anticipating Domscheit-Berg’s next project since his falling out with Assange last year. The two became estranged following an e-mail exchange in which Assange summarily suspended Domscheit-Berg as WikiLeaks co-spokesman for allegedly leaking information to the media about growing concern among other WikiLeaks activists about Assange’s private life.

Domscheit-Berg subsequently quit WikiLeaks, denouncing Assange for “acting like an emperor or slave trader.” He took with him other more shadowy figures who had been important collaborators with Assange in creating key elements of WikiLeaks’ leak-handling systems architecture.

One of the defectors was a programer known to most insiders simply as “The Architect.” Described by colleagues as at least as brilliant at programing as Assange, The Architect was the principal designer of the systems WikiLeaks used to produce Assange’s greatest public triumphs last year, the distribution of hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government reports.

In a conversation with Reuters on Thursday from Davos, Switzerland, where he appeared on a World Economic Forum panel devoted to “Confidentiality and Transparency,” Domscheit-Berg said his WikiLeaks experience had convinced him of the wrongness of Assange’s view that the website should publish raw information and let others sort through it. (Assange’s approach subsequently appears to have matured, as demonstrated by WikiLeaks current snail-like release of its cache of 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.)

Domscheit-Berg said WikiLeaks taught him that huge efforts have to be made to authenticate, analyze, filter and if necessary redact leaked secret documents before making them public. He said that WikiLeaks also demonstrated that a top-down group like WikiLeaks, which Assange by his own account rules like something of an absolute monarch, might not be the best model to undertake painstaking pre-publication reviews of complex, and potentially damaging, data.

He said his concept is to create a new network through which leakers of any kind — government, corporate, environmental, whatever — could make confidential submissions to groups that could make use of them. OpenLeaks itself would not evaluate, let alone publicly release, the information. Instead it would convey it from leaker to leakee.

Chocolate Wars raises the question of the piety of the Quaker families — the Cadbury and Rowntree and Fry clans that dominated the British cocoa business. They concocted chocolate drinks as alternatives to gin and rum. These good Quaker folk wanted to change the world. For the most part, they failed, though they grew rich trying. The world turned Ms. Cad bury’s relatives and their business into just one more mass-market consumer-products company that was forced to put profit ahead of principle. Ultimately, Cadbury was eaten by the biggest processed-food company in the United States, Kraft Foods Inc. The story begins in the mid-19th century when Richard Cadbury, a devout Quaker opposed to war, oppression, alcoholism and what he considered useless entertainments such as art and music, sent his youngest son, John, to London to study a new tropical product, cocoa, that would be a way to make money. The Quakers had nothing against piling up fortunes and, indeed, poured many of their own into model towns and societies devoted to rescuing the fallen and the drunk.

The Quakers succeeded admirably. As Ms. Cadbury notes, in the early 19th century, 4,000 Quaker families ran 74 Quaker British banks and more than 200 companies. “As they came to grips with making money, these austere men of God helped to shape the course of the Industrial Revolution and the commercial world today,” the author says.

Well, yes, but the conventional history of the chocolate biz and of the industrial revolution is not the whole story. Falling prices in the 19th century, cheap labour driven to cities by recurrent crop failures and various blights, not a little exploitation of labour in prison workshops and availability of cheap inputs from colonies had a lot to do with the success of Europe in dominating the world for the 19th century and half of the 20th.

The problem was that cocoa grows mostly in west Africa, which is a very hot place. Tending the trees and harvesting the cocoa pods was given to African slaves sold by Portuguese merchants operating from the port of Sao Tome. The Portuguese traders and plantation owners were at the time essential to the business. Ms. Cadbury describes the moral issue, which became a very practical dilemma when the British press raised the question of Quaker hypocrisy:

A delicious chocolate bar rested on the unspeakable misery of African slaves and the head of the company, said critics. George Cadbury, a utopian idealist in Britain who built communities for his workers, was just a ‘malevolent cocoa magnate,’ they charged.

It all came to a head in a case for libel brought by Cadbury against a major newspaper, The Standard, which ended in a verdict for Cadbury, which was then awarded the nominal sum of one farthing as compensation for losses.



Read more: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2010/11/26/book-review-chocolate-wars-by-deborah-cadbury/#ixzz1CPLmLdx1

Reliance Home Video is releasing Abhinav Kashyap’s Dabangg on popular video sharing site YouTube. Produced by Arbaaz Khan’s Productions and directed by Abhinav Kashyap, Dabangg will be the first Indian film to be released on YouTube in India on advertisement supported model.

The full movie will be showcased on youtube.com/dabanggthefilm starting January 27, and will be available for free viewing to audiences in India. Users will also be able to enjoy short clips from the movie like popular scenes, songs and other exciting footage from the makingof the movie.

City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta.
The "Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One" scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area. The new mega-city will cover a large part of China's manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Mozilla and Google took steps toward giving people more online privacy but each said hurdles remain to creating simple "Do Not Track" buttons for Web browsing software.

Mozilla proposed adding a signal to its popular Firefox browser to let users automatically ask websites not to track their online activities.

Websites would then decide whether to grant the desire or continue to gather data for purposes such as targeting Internet advertising.

Firefox users would be able to broadcast that they want to opt out of third party, advertising-based tracking by setting browsers to transmit a "Do Not Track HTTP header" with every click or page view.

Connect.

Facebook Inc. has introduced a new advertising program that will take users "likes," check-ins and other actions and make them into revenue-producing advertisements.
The program would put Facebook users' posts on the right column of Facebook screens, which is set aside for targeted ads, and the posts would get a "Sponsored Story" label.
The tool would, for instance, give regular check-ins greater visibility and ensure they don't disappear as fast as the regular feed.

There are now four types of sponsored stories:
Likes: When people like something on your page, which can be used in an advertisement.
Wall Posts: Same goes for wall posts. Anything posted on a wall is open to be sponsored.
Check-ins: When people use Facebook Places to check in to a location, that information can be displayed in an advertisement. As Advertising Age noted, "If Starbucks buys a 'sponsored story' ad, the status of a user's friends who check into or like Starbucks will run twice: once in the user's news feed, and again as a paid ad for Starbucks."
Custom apps: Interactions taken on custom applications -- for example, taking a quiz or poll can be sponsored.

1. Lok Sabha, or the House of the People, has currently 545 members. It includes 529 representatives of the states, representatives of union territories and representative of Anglo Indian community. How many members are nominated by the President of India to represent Anglo Indian community?


2. The prolific writer, philosopher and social worker, he was born on May 28, 1883 in the village of Bhagpur near Nasik. This freedom fighter established an organization by the name of Mitra Mela.

3. This state of India derives its name from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘peerless’. Occupying an area of about 78,438 sq km, it was earlier known by the names such as Pragjyotisha and Kamrupa.

4. Formed in 1942 by the Indian nationalists in Southeast Asia, the aim of this organization was to overthrow the British rule in India. It mainly consisted of Indian prisoners of war, which were captured by Japan.

5. Born in September, 1825, this great leader was the alumnus of the Elphinstone College. Regarded as ‘The Promise of India’ by professor Orlebar, he was one of the founder members of the Indian National Congress.

MicroMentor.org is a free online service that connects small-business owners with volunteer business mentors run by Mercy Corps, a nonprofit humanitarian agency.
To find a mentor, go to the website, create a brief profile and a specific mentoring request. The request is then listed in the mentoring opportunity database, where volunteer mentors can offer to help (you can also request help from specific mentors). The site has more than 3,500 entrepreneurs and 2,600 business mentors enrolled, and it has made more than 2,250 matches. It also offers advice and information on mentoring relationships and how to make them most effective, as well as a number of success stories.

Volunteer mentors can also sign up on the website—and there are dividends. MicroMentor reports that participating businesses had a 75 percent increase in median annual business sales and an 87 percent survival rate year over year.
“This is a way for small-business owners to get meaningful advice,” says Andrea Long, spokeswoman for MicroMentor.org. “And because you can have more than one mentor, you can create a virtual advisory board. That gives smallbusiness owners the tools they need for success.”

'India Positive' is initiative by Daily News Analysis (DNA) to promote a more positive feeling feeling towards the country within India.
The campaign launches today on Indian Republic Day across prime TV channels and in DNA. The initiative would be driven heavily across both ATL and BTL mediums in the days and months to come. Log onto www.dnaindia.com/indiapositive

Name her.

According to Reuters, the cup will be available only for iced coffee, iced tea and iced tea lemonade drinks in the United States and drinks will top out at 230 calories. That certainly differentiates them from their competition:

A Five qts quiz from my side....

1. This businessman was one of the close associates of Mahatma Gandhi and Kesoram Cotton Mills was one of his first ventures. Who is he?

2. In which industry are the FiFi Awards very important?

3. He was born in 1940 to a successful Muslim jeweler's family in Chittagong, then a part of colonial India. While teaching at a local college in the early 1960s, he noticed a need for a packaging plant in eastern Pakistan and established one with the help of his father and a loan from the state. In 1965, he left to study at the University of Colorado and Vanderbilt University under a Fulbright Scholarship.

4. Which City is also known as the Rickshaw Capital of the World. Approximately 400,000 cycle rickshaws run each day?

5. As astronomer and mathematician he directed an early observatory located in central India, made major contributions in these fields. He discovered the solution for quadratic equations that, along with his knowledge of algebra, was used to determine that both Mars and Venus followed an oval epicycle rather than a purely circular one. Who is he?

It all started five years back as a time pass activity, soon it turns into an obsession, an obsession that gave me name, friends and yes of course my future wife (yes finally Sid & Nid are getting married).
The blog has seen enough up and down correlating with my personal life, so till 2009 it went quite smooth before I hit a low on my personal front which forced me to post a crap on the last Valentine day.
I quit blogging and yes quizzing too, but then someone decided to jump in and bizdom saw a new light in their hand.
I rejoined them and we relaunched ourselves last 15th of August, since then we are growing both in the terms of good posts/comments and yes web traffic too.
Thank you all.
Please keep giving us feedbacks to improve us further….

7UP becomes simpler—not in terms of the recipe, but visually. The citrus flavoured soda brand decided to drop some elements of its previous logo and make it look bolder and fresher. The new identity was launched only in selected markets, and is not announced to be introduced in all the countries where the soda of PepsiCo’s brand is available. The countries, which got the famous refreshing drink in ‘a new outfit’ are Germany and Canada

Identify

• The channel will air shows like Firangi Tadka (produced by BBC Worldwide Productions India), Chef Se Hai Muquabla and Ready Steady Cook (Endemol India), Sirf 30 Minute and Sanjeev Kapoor’s Kitchen among others. 
• FoodFood is a joint venture between Astro and Turmeric Vision (TVPL), company owned by Sanjeev Kapoor and wife Alyona Kapoor. 

• Suniel Shetty also endorsed Ford Endeavour.
• Sangam Suiting has several brands such as Savana, Wills & Scott, Cavalier, Signet and Linovita under its fold. It recently launched a new anti bacterial and anti moisture range Glacier.

The Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints that a poster campaign for the drink was misleading, advertising the drink as ‘nutritious’ when the 500ml drink contained more than a quarter of the recommended daily intake.
The soft drinks giant’s poster campaign ran with the tag line ‘enhanced hydration for the nation – delicious and nutritious.’
But while the sugar content of the drink is documented on the label, the advertising watchdog said that they considered consumers would not expect a ‘nutritious’ drink to have the equivalent of four or five teaspoons of added sugar.
Coca-Cola defended the use of the contentious word, saying the product contained ‘nutritionally meaningful quantities of several nutrients’ including vitamin C and four B vitamins.
But the ASA said the use of the word nutritious was misleading and said the advertisement should not appear again in its current form.


Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/853103-coca-cola-ad-banned#ixzz1BUMu8FdB

If there are two subjects that get people (especially girls) excited it has to be chocolate and love and Greek chocolate brand Lacta have tapped in to them both to create this amazing Facebook campaign which created huge engagement and boosted their likes by 300%. Users were asked to tag themselves in an app that reproduced a virtual chocolate bar with the name of their loved one on it. The messages were shared to the wall with the photo as well as appearing in their photo albums with the person’s name tagged. The impressive thing about this campaign was not just the fact that it increased likes and had huge user participation but also the fact that the photos live on forever as virtual adverts in user’s photo albums as well as many users adding them to their profile pictures. Stick with the video for the boring first 30 seconds to get to the good Facebook stuff…

Kareena Kapoor has been roped in as the brand ambassador for the Samsonite.

Whats happening?







mail to bizdomonline@gmail.com

Design for what?

• "The spirit of 'Rise' is based on the three pillars - Accepting No Limits, Alternative Thinking and Driving Positive Change.
• Mahindra's new brand positioning is created by New York-based global advertising agency StrawberryFrog.

Name him.

Carte Blanche is the name of the new James Bond novel, which has been set amid the skyscrapers and blue waters of Dubai and is due for release in May.
The first James Bond novel to be written by Jeffery Deaver is to be titled Carte Blanche, with a release date of 26th May 2011. Deaver has written more than 28 thrillers including The Bone Collector and Garden of Beasts, which won the UK based CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award for best thriller in 2004.
Deaver said: "In the world of espionage, giving an agent carte blanche on a mission comes with an enormous amount of trust and constantly tests both personal and professional judgement. Part of the nonstop suspense in the novel is the looming question of what is acceptable in matters of national and international security.
Unlike Sebastian Faulks' Bond novel Devil May Care, publisher Penguin's fastest-selling adult novel, Carte Blanche will be set in the present day, including an updated version of Fleming's favourite car, a Bentley Continental GT.

Identify these people

Mail to bizdomonline@gmail.com

Playboy Beverages, the drinks arm of the men’s magazine Playboy brand, has launched its energy drink into the UK market following success in the US — where it was launched in 2007 — Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The drink is made with ginseng root, guarana extract and Damiana leaf to boost energy levels and is said to have subtle notes of fruit and vanilla.


It will come in 250ml cans, featuring the Playboy bunny icon, in both regular and sugar-free variants.

“We’re pleased that Playboy Energy Drink will now be available in the UK and are confident it will enjoy the same success with consumers and retailers that it has seen in other markets around the world,” said Sarah Haney, senior vicepresident of global licensing at Playboy Enterprises.

The drink was launched before Christmas by Playboy Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk and Kelly Brook, who has been signed up as the drink’s UK ambassador.

Where will you find this picture

Identify this CEO

Flipkart has launched its brand new logo (plus brand colors) and while the company has moved from being an online book store to selling mobile phones as well as music, games etc, the big news is that Flipkart will very soon (as early as this week) announce the expansion into the entire range of consumer electronics – i.e laptop, TV etc etc.

Flipkart has seen consistent growth in the traffic and lately has started using adwords to drive traffic to the site. The early days of organic growth probably reached its maxima and Flipkart now wants to compete with eBay (s ) of the Indian online world (that pegs a question – Is there a ceiling to online book selling in India?).

The Indian School of Business (ISB), today announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Coca-Cola India to establish the Coca-Cola ISB Retail Academy at the ISB campus in Hyderabad.

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