College

Where do I begin to start? When starting fourth year I don’t know what I was expecting, after studying in Finland for the year which I thoroughly enjoyed. I must admit it studying in Finland was definitely more enjoyable than my fourth year so far.

In Finland we had such a vast range of courses to choose from and we were definitely spoilt for choice. Not only have I taken part in courses that will benefit my future career but also courses that I personally have an interest in. Allowing me take control of my own learning. This unfortunately is something we can’t do in DKIT at the moment. I feel from my studies I have greatly improved my research and time management skills, public speaking, and matured my views on business by looking at it from other culture’s views. I also feel that now I have returned to DKIT for my final year, I am more disciplined and able to study in a more independent way than I did prior to going on Erasmus.

One of my favourite classes we took part in was Culture management, the class was taught by a lecturer called Rosli Kamarul-Baharin who is from Malaysia and within the class there were students from more than ten different cultures. I can honestly say that I will probably never be in a situation like this again where I can learn about different cultures and backgrounds from the people who actually live and experience it every day rather than an Irish Lecturer explaining it from a book which would be the situation for this type of course if I never had been giving the opportunity to study abroad.

But if nothing else I think this semester will only make the Christmas holidays more enjoyable. I never really thought the midterm was a benefit to students but this year it was decided not to take a midterm. Something I do not agree with, I feel it has made the semester feel a lot longer as it was nearly the equivalent of a 4 month period. We have been worked a lot harder than previous but I do feel it is something I will appreciate in time. We have been studying a wide range of subjects and I feel each subject will definitely be a benefit to us when we begin our careers next year.

Ecommerce

Using my mobile, internet, mp3 I think I would be lost without this technology but I enjoyed learning how it all works and how it has progressed over a short period of time.

The mobile phone is one product that has taken off since the 90’s and continued to grow. It would be hard to find a single person that doesn’t have a mobile. But not only do people have phones they have now become part of our daily lives, with people feeling lost or that their missing something when they forget the phone or even if the battery has gone dead. The mobile phone is the most successful mobile device on the market today. Your mobile can now be personalised to your own personal likes, it’s always on with some people never switching the device off, the phones interface is both part of the physical world and virtual and there is unlimited usability. We can send sms, email, mms, buy and sell products, receive advertisements and off course communicate with people throughout the world. All this from one little device that can actually be purchased for very little cost.

The wireless revolution is one that really intrigues me. We have gone from accessing the internet on dial up at slow speeds to broadband to high speed wireless. We can now go the areas that include hotspots and can connect to the internet for little or no charge. This is far from the days of waiting for your dial up to connect. But this change is all about the new mobile society. We now have the need to be on the move at all times and we now require are devices such as laptops and PDA’s to be able to work on the move.

However this is new technology and there are many obstacles such as lack of hotspots, consumers confused with different products, security, availability and for business the question of how they can make money from wireless technologies.

However when will it all end what possibly more can they develop that will help us enhance our lives even more all I can say is watch this space.

Social Networking

I will be the first to admit I have become very addicted to social networking. I was someone who had never been interesting in the whole online community but after studying abroad for the year I have come to realise the advantages of sites such of Facebook. We were meeting new people every day from across the world and for the first time , people were asking for your facebook details instead of your number to keep contact. I think for the purpose of keping in contact with friends abroad facebook is a must. However I do have to admit I believe it has also become a way of communicating with friends at home. This has led the personal touch been lost, picking up the phone to speak to someone proves to be more of a effort when you can just easily leave a generic message on their homepage.

However face book is only one of many communities online that people can take part in. It has no geographical boundaries; it creates a “Weee-ness” among a group of people with similar interests. A very famous group include Harley Owners Group for the owners and people who have a great interest in Harley Davidson.

Wikipedia is another form of an online community. It is renown throughout the world especially by students who can easily access it huge database with little or no effort. It covers huge range of topics that are created, updated and monitored by people who have a great interest in the specific topic. However because it is so easy to edit or create a topic with the author not having to verify their work, means that articles aren’t always reliable. Specific pages have been targeted such as the FAI with inaccurate information had been published.

NAMA

National assets management agency
For such a hot topic I feel there is actually very little know in the subject. So im going to use this blog to educate both myself and readers,

So what is NAMA and what are the objectives of NAMA.

1; to take "bad" loans from the banks
2; restore the bank’s balance sheets to good level
3; restore the banks credit rating (this enables cheaper interbank lending)
4; free up lending to Small to medium enterprises
5; free up lending for mortgages

NAMA will achieve the above by:

"buying" the "bad" loans from the banks at a reduced price.(between 50-70% of their original value.) NAMA can't pay too much for the loans as the assets that are guaranteeing these loans have reduced in value.
NAMA will pay for these loans by issuing government bonds to the banks in return for the loans these bonds can then be cashed in with the European Central Bank.

Final NAMA will sell the property that they have loans for. Hopefully the market will be after improving and when they sell the properties "NAMA will make money for the taxpayer"
However there are some cons to the implementation of NAMA:

The banks will be left short of money on the loans when the transfer them to NAMA:
The customer is going to be the one to pick up the shortfall by way of higher interest rates and extra charges.

If the European Central Bank comes to cash in these bonds and the property market has not recovered it will be left to the taxpayer to foot the bill.
If the builder can't pay the interest on their repayments now how will he pay them next year in NAMA, again the taxpayer to the rescue.

If NAMA eventually does make a profit out of its property portfolio there will be a list of people that will have to be paid for their "services rendered" while the whole NAMA thing was going on. The taxpayer will probably be lucky here if a loan isn't taken out to repay all these nice people for their "work"

I must thank lucky-colm from boards.ie for their explanation of NAMA, I found their rationalisation of NAMA the most clear in all of my research on this topic.

The Adult Industry

I can honestly say the adult industry isn’t a topic I thought I would ever be discussing. After looking at this industry I now believe that the adult industry is the pioneer of using the web to their advantage to gain huge profits. They were light years ahead of other industries and have been using techniques over the last ten years that others are only beginning to take on board.
It may be a taboo subject and its contents are a bit x-rated but the techniques the industry has being using show how innovative the industry is and why they are so successful.
Advances in technology have only enhanced the industry success they are the market leader in the use of web cams, streaming, live chats, sign up’s all of which other industry are now using but long after the adult industry started.
They were first to the market to use cost per click, banner ads, video on demand billing, pop ups, spam. All of which they have been able to use to help create revenue and make the industry one of the most profitable in the world
I think any industry that wants to be successful should look at the adult industry and take on board some of their techniques. They have been able to make huge profits by introducing methods that are very cost affective to perform for e.g. a web cam has little start up costs but can reap huge rewards.

The Adult Industry

Religion

For something that has been around since the beginning of time Religion still seems to be a touchy subject for so many people. Especially more than ever since the recent reports of the church scandals in Ireland which has been the topic of many conversations around the world in the last few weeks

I must admit I enjoy learning about other religion. Most of us live our lives according to a religion that we personally didn’t choose to follow but that was one chosen by our parents. So having the opportunity to learn about other religions is something I really enjoy. It shows that today we are able to accept that there are other cultures and traditions and other religions do play a vital role in many people’s lives. I think now more than ever we accept people believe differently to what we feel is the norm and many religions can live toghether in harmony in a society that previously would be dominated by one major religion.

Below is a list of the world’s most dominate religions and an approximation of their followers.
• Christianity: 2.1 billion
• Islam: 1.5 billion
• Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
• Hinduism: 900 million
• Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
• Buddhism: 376 million
• primal-indigenous: 300 million
• African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
• Sikhism: 23 million
• Juche: 19 million
• Spiritism: 15 million
• Judaism: 14 million
• Baha'i: 7 million
• Jainism: 4.2 million
• Shinto: 4 million
• Cao Dai: 4 million
• Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
• Tenrikyo: 2 million
• Neo-Paganism: 1 million
• Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
• Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
• Scientology: 500 thousand

SEO

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Search engine optimisation is an interesting topic and I am glad I got to cover it. I had always wondered how it was decided which link were displayed first when searching for something online. I had actually believed it was something that companies paid for as it is usually the big companies that appear first. However I now realise that it depends on searches. With the most searched terms appearing higher up the page. It was interesting to learn that Google is consistently checking pages to keep it up to date at all times.

It was also great to know that businesses can make changes to their pages to help get them to no. 1. Using key words, including titles in bold writing and Google ad words throughout your site means that each time a term is searched i.e. DkIT not only is the homepage identify also all the other pages of your site that include the term.

We also discussed the different techniques used by people to unfairly increase their position. I.e. hidden text, writing in white font so it’s invisible to users but not to Google so when someone searches the term even though they don’t see it Google still brings the user to the page.

I was glad to know this kind of practice is frowned upon and people who decide to us these techniques are reprimanded by been blacklisted by Google. A famous example of this is BMW.

SEO is essential for all businesses to understand. It is good to know after covering this topic that it is not just the big companies who can be no.1 but any small company using the correct techniques can also win the race to No.1

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