Google

Working in one of those companies where the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Believes that Internet can cause productivity of employees to decrease (yeah I know…. it sounds stupid doesn´t it ????) . I did not have much access to a lot of sites such as hotmail, facebook, etc… Thank God they did not included Google and Wikipedia. I can tell you that most of my quick desired information needs, that do not require a lot of detail, I can get them from this two sites

SEARCH ENGING
The WWW is absolutely H U G E ! ! ! and trying to get some information that you need can be absolutely frustrating and time consuming, considering my curious profile, the five year old span of attention that I have, and the fact that most of the times I will always lose track of original objective. That is why I always use Google whenever I need to find something, every time I have a question, I will just “Google it” and get the first few links, read the extract of the site and see if it has what I´m looking for, and it is a lot faster than asking humans that most likely will try to explain something they are not even sure they know. I even use it if I have some orthographic question and will punch the word and see the famous message " Quizás quiso decir: SYMPATHY “ then I go feel very stupid, but will get it right and not lose that much time ;)


GOOGLE MAPS

It is not only super cool that you can actually see the street where you live at (this is a real photograph of my street taken from Google Maps…)



But it is really usefull when you come from Mexico to Madrid and everybody will just give you the address and then expect you to make your way by yourself, so they will tell you…. “Meet me at LATERAL in Velazquez”… Yeah, like that is going to solve my life…. And if you ask a cab and he happens to listen to your Mexican accent and you will go first to “El Escorial” and end up paying 54 Euros for a supposedly 5 minutes ride. So you go to Google Maps, punch in the address, and there you go… You get this…





GOOGLE SITES
I think this is a really productive functionality that I did not know previously. This is a workgroup site that has a calendar, hosting documents, task manager (To Dos), Information about the team amongst others. Usually if you are in a big Corporation you will have a lot of tools such as MSOutlook or similar tools that can help you with this, but if you are for example a student at IE you have no idea how powerfull this is. For example, we have already done two projects with this functionality and this tool probably increased our productivity by more than 30% compared to what I have heard of other teams. We made a specific TO Do List and everybody knows what they need to do, when do they need to have it done and they can post their answers or working documents in the same site so everybody knows what each person is doing. Also we use it to host working papers and final documents and different versions, and on top of it we can track changes online… yeah!!! It´s that cool.

Microsoft..... love it or hate it...

I think Microsoft is the best example of a person, entity, company or whatever you want to make an example out of it, that generates pure and simple envy.... Yes, you heard it.... E N V Y... You do not have to like someone to recognize he´s a genius. This guys started as programmers of a set of rules or instruction codes that helped us, stupid humans, to control a very simple and primitive computer. The amazing thing is that leyend speaks that when they sold the program to the guys that made the computers, they didn´t even have it finished, hahahaha.... I don´t pretend to give you an explanation of the mission, vision, business model, etc... (you can get those directly in Microsoft´s page or look for the blogs on my classmates, some of them just love to explain business models)

But what I would love to say about their business model is the passion when they created their first modo, believe, mission statement or whatever... "a computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft Software¨... well this guys believe it and guess what, preatty damn close, don´t you think?

They started out with an Operating System, evolved and evolved and evolved, and after analyzing the needs of people they came up with a suite of products that really made sense, and if you stop and think about it, you can see that it was based on the most simple ideas and personal needs... A SW to create documents, alias text editor, a very big and usefull program that combined the potential of a calculator and the usage of texting, a data base manager, amongst others... if you see, this where very everyday common needs.

To make a long story short, this guys have been criticized, have been the target of numerous lawsuits, accused of practically being the devil on earth... but guess what, they are still here. Microsoft is in my opinion the best example for my too eager peers at IE, that disregard any enterpreneural idea just because ¨That already exists¨or ¨there is too much competition...¨ This guys, in my opinion demonstrate that you do not have to have the ¨BEST¨product, that you can compete in a tank full of sharks, that you can work against all odds, and still be succesfull.

Foursquare: How I love simple ideas

It´s has always amazed me that if you stop and think about it for a minute, you will find that here are always opportunities to generate business, and a lot of people can come up with terrific ideas, but there are so few of them that can really make them reality. Just think how many times you have heard “Well… that´s not new” or “I know X and Y companies that do the same thing”, or “I already thought of that”…

Well my response to that people is: “Then why don´t you…..”

Most good business ideas are simple, like this guys at foursquare which is a site where you connect with your friends and basically tell them where you are. For example you want to say that you are in “CORTE INGLES”…. We all know that there are a lot of them throughout Spain and sometimes there are two or three at the same neighborhood, such as Salamanca in Madrid, so you login to foursquare and can specify in which “CORTE INGLES” are you can tell whomever you want to go there, and they can even get a map of specific location.

So, the business idea is simple and appealing to many people

1 People like to be located: A lot of people could argue that they do not wish to be so easily located, and that it is even dangerous, or that it disturbs their privacy rights, etc.. but as my grandpa used to say “don´t like it, don´t use it…“ but you need to understand that there is always market for everything, and not because you do not like something, it means that everybody is going to hate it. (ask Marilyn Manson ;) )

2 People like to be connected: Social Networks are here to stay, whether you like it or not… The number of people connecting through social networks is increasing in an exponential ratio… So if you like to be connected, and you like to be located…. You see why this idea is getting more appealing by the minute…

3 You can always make business out of people’s needs… For example you have to give your profile, and every time you give a recommendation it is being recorded, and your friends accepting or commenting on your recommendations are also being recorded… just imagine the potential of this information in an aggregated manner NOT IN AN INDIVIDUAL MANNER (since I am studying at IE and here quoting and the usage of information is a HUGE DEAL… this last statement in point number three is my complete assumption and I have absolutely no idea if they use this information for business purpouses)

4 It is a great way for companies to reward their customers… Companies want to grow on mobile customers and the whole p2p world (person to person), hence foursquare gives the opportunity to businesses to deliver “special offers” to customers and it is a really really cheap way to get to this segment.

5 It is fun… how can I differentiate my business and at the same time ease my introduction into this really complicated market… just make it fun, really try it… it´s fun… If you are interested go and try it… u have nothing to loose…
I can go on and on and on, and it is not my purpouse to make a thorough analisys of this company but to make a point that simple ideas are always a good idea and technology enables you to make some of them a reality.

Evolve or risk being left behind…

Un Chilango en Madrid...

Es curioso como estás acostumbrado a ciertas cosas que no te das cuenta de lo absurdas o completamente ridículas que pueden sonar, hasta que te vas a vivir a otro país. Es como la pinche constumbre que tenemos los Mexicanos de decir todo en diminutivo.

“Al ratito te caigo”

“Me das un vasito de agua”

“Me haces un Favorcito” (aunque suene medio a albur jajaja)

No tengo la menor idea de por qué, pero ahora que lo pienso suena ridículo y hasta medio teto. Y ese tipo de cosas todavía las puedo pasar, digo el ser sobre educado no te hace pasar osos o meterte en problemas, pero otras frases verdaderamente te pueden hacer pasar un oso como el siguiente ejemplo:

Arnoldo: “ Disculpe, me podría regalar una coca de dieta”

Mesero en tono de Benancio: “Que queeeé… pero jodér tío, pues aquí no regalamos nada, si lo que usted quiere es una coca pues tendrá que pagarla”

Jajajajaja no manches me di cuenta de lo estúpido que puede sonar una frase así, digo en México estamos acostumbrados a que sabes que no lo está pidiendo de regalo y que la va a pagar, pero si haces la traducción a ingles te das cuenta de lo sumamente absurdo que es…

“Hi, excuse me would you be so kind to give me a diet coke for free”… Ahora ves lo estupido que puedes sonar sit e vas a otro país y no te das cuenta de las costumbres tan arraigadas que tenemos…

Y lo que también está muy cagado es que son literales como no te puedes imaginar …

Arnoldo: “bueno bueno, entonces me vende una coca de dieta”

Mesero en tono de Benancio: “Pues yo no se si usted está de dieta, pero aquí no hay cocas de dieta, lo único que hay es coca light”

Ya se, es absurdo pero es real…. Poco a poco les iré describiendo las peripecias que vive un Chilango en este país.

Saludos

Yo