Google recently gave the press its first peek at Chrome, which it will offer for free to challenge Microsoft Corp, whose Windows runs on nine out of 10 computers.

Chrome is being designed for speed and ease, and will boast super-fast boot times. It is a browser-based system that runs only Web applications, instead of those installed on the PC. It will not support hard drives. On a Chrome platform, data is primarily stashed online, though some will be stored on the PC via flash memory. That means Web access is a must and widely used programs such as Apple’s iTunes or Microsoft Word in their current form won’t work on Chrome PCs. “Where Chrome OS is interesting is in secondary PCs,” said Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata said last week. “Over time as networks get better, get ubiquitous, get faster, more and more things can be accessed through a browser.” Though it’s too early to say for certain, the cheaper class of laptops might spur yet more price-based competition for an industry struggling to prop up margins in many major markets. Haff estimated a Chrome device would cost substantially less than some current netbook models, after eliminating the cost for Windows and a hard drive. Many netbooks are currently priced in the $300-$400 range.

No one is claiming that Chrome is for everyone, but Google argues that because consumers mainly use their PCs for Internet tasks, their software should be rooted in the Web. “Is that a new paradigm? I think it is,” said ABI research analyst Jeff Orr. “It’s pretty much changing the way people use their machine.”

Orr said markets like Western Europe, where netbooks first caught on and which has good broadband connectivity, should be more receptive to Chrome PCs.

“The first step is going to be awareness, letting people know that this is an experience that will be different… Beyond that it’s going to be more of a function of building trust.” Google has said it was working with PC vendors including Hewlett-Packard and Acer, and chipmakers such as Texas Instruments and Qualcomm to build Chrome devices. Upward of 30 million netbooks are expected to be sold this year in a category that didn’t exist a few years ago. With low-power processors and limited memory, the devices are mainly good for simple tasks such as Web browsing and email. The vast majority of netbooks run Windows and feature Intel chips, and many have sizeable hard drives. Linux-based systems are available on netbooks, but analysts say consumers have been reluctant to use Windows alternatives. Chrome would certainly represent a change from the familiar Windows environment. It will look like a browser and run from the cloud (a network), where Web applications such as Google Docs and the photo-sharing site Flickr can replicate some of the things that locally installed programs do.

Google said Chrome will run on both Intel Corp’s x86 chip platform or ARM chips, which are the standard in smartphones but are starting to turn up in netbooks. Windows PC operating systems don’t currently work on ARM chips, so Chrome could provide a boost to the fledgling ARM netbook category, analysts say. A product that just hit the market provides a glimpse at what a Chrome PC might look like. Boston-based start-up Litl has released what it calls a “Webbook,” a simple laptop with limited storage. The product has generated buzz, but its $699 price tag makes it relatively expensive.

The Litl operating system is focused on the browser. Users keep their content organized on a series of cards.

“We decided to do a fresh take on what a computer would be like if it was totally for and of the Web,” Litl founder and Chief Executive John Chuang said in an interview last month.

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I am writing this post from the condo where my family and I are vacationing in Florida. This is a family Thanksgiving/Christmas present, and, I must say, a welcome break from the cold and dreariness of Wisconsin in November. My family and I have been coming to this part of Florida for many years and love every chance we to come here. We are located across the street from the public beach, access, which limits the hassles we have of finding a parking place, etc…. All we have to do is bring down the beach stuff and a cooler if we wish, and we are all set. The temperatures have been in the low to mid 80s this week, with the water temperatures (Gulf of Mexico) in the low 70s. This is truly a piece of paradise, and I would love the opportunity to live in this area full time. Thankfully, for me, there is a thriving IT infrastructure in the area, and IT related jobs are plentiful…….

At the depth of the global economic crisis, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) was in trouble. With factories operating at just a fraction of capacity, Morris Chang—TSMC’s silver-haired founder—laid off hundreds of staffers, ordered the remaining workers to take unpaid leave, and took other cost-cutting steps such as dimming the lights in hallways. “It was terrible,” Chang says in his office on the eighth floor of “Fab 12,” a vast facility that serves as TSMC’s headquarters.

These days, things look far better. TSMC’s plants are humming again, and its Taipei-listed shares are up 41% this year. But Chang is chastened. The era of easy double-digit growth for chipmakers “isn’t there anymore,” he says, taking a puff on his ever-present pipe. “We need to find new areas.” TSMC is stuck in a maturing industry, and its primary business of making chips for other companies is likely to grow just 8% annually in coming years. So Chang wants to boost TSMC’s presence in solar power and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The two have technological overlap with chip production, but they offer far better margins and more potential. “They are going to be fast-growth industries,” Chang says.

Executives across Taiwan’s tech industry are making similar strategic shifts. Shi-Wei Sun, chief at chipmaker United Microelectronics (UMC), in August launched a division focusing on solar and LEDs. Peter Chou, CEO of smartphone maker HTC, is reducing his company’s reliance on Microsoft Windows-based handsets, adding more phones using Google’s Android operating system. And Au Optronics (AUO) is plotting a move beyond its traditional LCD displays, which require investments of billions of dollars every few years for companies to stay ahead of rivals. “Coming out of the recession, AUO is a completely different company,” says C.T. Liu, chief of AUO’s consumer display business. First up, he says, will be e-readers and electronic paper, newfangled displays that can be rolled or folded. Both technologies will let AUO capitalize on its display-making expertise.

Why the urgent shifts? While Taiwan plays a vital role in the global tech industry, it is strongest in low-margin businesses such as PCs and components. That has created a dead end for many manufacturers, which face constant pressure from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL), Sony (SNE), and other big customers to cut prices. “The business model is kind of hitting the wall,” says Bill Wiseman, a partner with McKinsey in Taipei. So companies are preparing for the post-PC era by diversifying into other, more mobile devices and building up their own brands.

True, things aren’t exactly dire for the island’s tech titans. The Taiwanese benchmark index of electronics stocks is up 76% and, thanks largely to strong demand from China, orders keep coming for more chips, PCs, and other devices. Taipei has become one of Asia’s most livable cities: With so much of its heavy industry now on the mainland, the air is much cleaner than in years past. And with relations between Beijing and Taipei on the mend, increasing travel and trade between the two sides will speed integration and further lift the Taiwanese economy. Taipei’s Songshan Airport, for decades a sleepy terminal for short hops across the island, now buzzes as the hub of direct flights to mainland cities. Chinese authorities “are much friendlier” toward Taiwanese, says HTC Chairman Cher Wang, who recently jumped on a plane in Chengdu at noon and was back in Taipei by 3 p.m. “They feel that we’re brothers who used to have a dispute but now are settling,” she says.

Still, as last year proved, things can turn south quickly, something many Taiwanese tech companies fully understand. So Acer, which last summer passed Dell to become the world’s No. 2 PC company (behind Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)), is moving into products such as smartphones and other mobile devices. Vizio, produced by Amtran Technology—a 15-year-old company that got its start making PC monitors—is now a top-selling brand of flat-screen TVs in the U.S. And notebook maker Quanta Computer is mulling production of devices such as cameras, gaming machines, and medical sensors. “Quanta will become a brand new company from now on,” vows Chairman Barry Lam.

Taiwanese companies seeking to diversify might want to follow Simon Lin’s lead. He is CEO of Wistron, the manufacturing arm of Acer that was spun off in 2002 when Acer decided there was no glory in being a contract manufacturer. Wistron still shares with Acer a drab office tower in the low-rent Taipei suburb of Hsichih. The neighborhood is no match for Hsinchu, the giant tech park where TSMC has its digs, but it fits with Wistron’s low-key, low-cost image. The company, which had revenue of $13.5 billion last year, has already expanded far beyond PCs, making TVs and BlackBerry smartphones.

More ambitious diversification is coming soon. Lin, fresh from a Taipei meeting with Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, says the devices Wistron makes in the years ahead will have to connect to the Internet but won’t necessarily be computers. Lin also wants Wistron to develop businesses such as equipment repair and recycling, which is sure to pick up as more governments mandate clean disposal of old tech gear. To that end, Wistron in October invested $8 million in a company that recycles computer motherboards. Within a few years, Lin predicts, Wistron could have a $1 billion business in tech recycling. “No one has a crystal ball to say how long [the PC business] will last,” he says. “But we are not sitting here just waiting for the sunset of the PC industry.”

While PCs may rebound next year as the economy picks up and companies upgrade to Windows 7, they will surely be a smaller part of the tech mix as the market shifts. And the island’s electronics makers will thrive in that post-PC era, says Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, who grew up in Taiwan before moving to the U.S. “If every cell phone in the world becomes a mobile computer, if every TV becomes a connected TV,” he says, “holy cow!”

Each of these individuals gave good examples, and helped me to relate the field of marketing to what we are doing in class.

The 7-11 franchise has finally begun to cater to the wine lovers of the world and has started to offer their own private label wines; all starting at $3.99.  This business move seems to be doing quite well for the company, especially in this down economy.   Private label products were strong sellers for many food retailers even before the economic crisis hit.  Last year, 7-Eleven launched the 7-Select line of staples including cookies, candies, chips and beef jerky.   Who would have thought these would pair so well wit wine?!

It makes me wonder what wine they might pair pork rinds with, but that’s another post for another time….

Judging by the traffic at his Web site RetirementJobs.com, research director Robert Skladany says the number of people who were already retired and now are back out in the labor market looking for jobs has roughly doubled in a year.

There are also a growing number of job seekers who are over 50 and unemployed but don’t consider themselves retired, and of older workers who still are working but have delayed their retirement dates as they’ve watched the values of their 401(k) accounts drop. Current workers between the ages of 55 and 70 expect to keep working until they are 70, and workers over the age of 66 expect to keep working until they are 76, according to a new study by insurance giant MetLife.

But those workers face an inhospitable job market. “[There's] a disconnect between those in their late 50s and 60s who aspire to continue working and the realities of a job market that tends to treat many older job candidates as, at best, irrelevant,” the MetLife study concludes. It’s no surprise that the job market is weak—nationally, there are six people looking for work for every unfilled job out there. But for older workers, the outlook is much, much worse. It takes older job seekers roughly seven and a half months to find a new job, compared with six months for younger workers, according to Labor Department figures. At Senior Job Bank, another Web site focused on matching workers with jobs, there are 100 would-be employees browsing for every job that is posted, according to publisher Gene Burnard.

And the geographic outlook doesn’t help. Florida, California, Arizona, North Carolina—all of those places where retirees move to enjoy the warm weather—are experiencing higher-than-usual unemployment, says Skladany. The best job markets now are in Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, and North Dakota, which are not exactly hot retirement destinations.

I believe that those who making hiring decisions needs to look at those applicants who may be older, because of their range of experience and expertise. These workers are often less adverse to go looking for benefits that are more important to younger workers, like vacation time, and 401 (k) plans. Instead, they may look for a part time job or a job with flexible schedule, where they may not need to work 30-40 hours a week.

The hunt for another electronic device to replace the printed book continues, this time with bookstore giant Barnes & Noble getting in on the act.  I admit that I am a reader, maybe not as much as i once was, but I am a reader nonetheless.  Come the end of December, I look forward to reading whatever I want, whenever I want, but that’s another post for another time…..

According to the article, “Gray letters on a gray screen. A keypad that some users found lacking. With the Kindle e-book reader, Amazon.com (AMZN) simply didn’t set the bar that high. On Oct. 20, book retailer Barnes & Noble (BKS) raised the standard considerably by announcing its own e-book reader, the nook.”

The nook still may not be the game-changer that e-book advocates hope will attract legions of new readers, but it has its attractions. Priced at $259 (the basic Kindle is $279), the nook has two screens instead of one—a screen for the book itself and another iPhone-like touchscreen that lets users type on a virtual keyboard, skim and browse book covers, and add their own personal touches, including pictures, music, and personal documents.

Like the Kindle, the nook has wireless Internet capability for downloads. Both devices can hold a similar number of titles (1,500 for Kindle, 1,700 for nook), but B&N claims to offer more than 1 million e-books (that includes over 500,000 titles in the public domain and free for the asking). Amazon’s Web site says 350,000 titles are available for the Kindle.

I understand that there is a sense of “efficiency” in not having to lug a suitcase full of books with you on vacation, but I fail to see how devices like the nook and the Kindle will stay in the lives of mainstream readers….. As for me, I’ll stick with the traditional book….

Bloomberg is set to acquire Business Week in a deal that combines the best of rapid update (Bloomberg) and print media (Bloomberg). This will effectively end Business Week’s 80 year run.

The interesting part of this whole story, to me, is that Bloomberg is owned by none other than Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire turned mayor of New York City. Terms of the sale announced Tuesday were not disclosed. Citing unnamed people privy to the negotiations, BusinessWeek pegged the acquisition price at $2 million to $5 million in cash.

Bloomberg also would be responsible for paying other costs, such as severance pay to any of the roughly 400 BusinessWeek employees who might be laid off, the magazine’s Web site reported.

Bloomberg LP, a privately held company started by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, expects to take control of BusinessWeek by the end of the year. That ends BusinessWeek’s 80-year run as part of McGraw-Hill Cos., which also owns the Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency.

This acquisition is indicative of the types of mergers and acquisitions that are going to need to happen if some of the older, more established, print media want to remain competitive in an ever-increasing digital market and lifestyle.

Time will tell if more mergers and acquisitions like this one will become the norm in the business world….Stay tuned!

In a recent edition of Newsweek, there was a rather long article about top companies going green, and how well they scored. HP narrowly beat out Dell for the top technology spot, and I think that HP’s recent successes in the business arena in terms of market share, sales, customer loyalty, etc, has been the recent why they are number one in so many of these types of rankings or other polls of this nature.

This article was not just limited to the technology field; every sector of the economy was sampled and the top vote getters were posted, along with the rationale of WHY they earned the score they ended up with.

Green business has become a hot topic of late, and I believe that “going green” will become the catalyst for growing new businesses and increasing the global economy as well.

This was a very interesting article to read, and gave a good snapshot of what various companies and sectors are doing to answer the “green” question.