Lessons learned from this project

For this my 6th and final blog post, I would like to take the time to discuss the information and knowledge I feel I have acquired by writing this blog, I will also mention some of my previous blogs posts and how they have been invaluable in helping me to become a better blogger.Writing this blog has helped me to gain an insight into the world of journalism and showed me the importance of meeting deadlines and also the importance of making your blog posts as interesting as possible in order for people to read them, it is also just as important that you have an interest in what you are writing on, for example in one of my previous blog posts the value of information in sport it was a lot easier for me to get my point across as i had an interest in what i was talking about and I believe the more passionate you are about a subject the better your posts will be. Also by talking with my group members sad111403808, sad111405462 and sad111408478 and reading their blog posts and indeed other blog posts within my topic i felt that it was easier to come up with ideas for future blogs and showed me the importance of effective group work. This project also showed me the importance of clarity and grammar when blogging, the easier it is to understand something the easier it is to get information from a post, and this is what i tried to do with all my blog posts make them easy to understand and interesting. I have also learned about the value of referencing by showing where you got your information it is easier for people to see how you came up with ideas and facts and also shows others that the work you did was in fact your own and not plagiarized.  I hope people have found my blog posts on the value of information both informative and interesting and thank you to everyone that has took the time to read them.

image links:

Having the right knowledge when launching products

When companies are launching new products and brands it is important that they are aware of their competitors,their target market,costs of production and how much they have to spend on advertising, in essence they need to be aware of numerous aspects of information in order for their product to be successful. Their are numerous examples of brands that have failed due to not having all of the information they needed or failing to implement the information they had acquired successfully, examples of failures in the drink industry include Guinness Breo and Tanora when they changed their original flavour, one of the reasons for both these failures was a lack of market research in regards to the taste of both of their products,this shows the importance of getting information from the public when launching new products. Even brands that are succesful need to be aware of the relevant information when  entering new markets,not understanding or having a lack of information on the local language,traditions and practices can have disastrous effects on the success of your product in the region, examples of failures include Pepsi and KFC both messing up their slogans when entering the chinese market, kfc’s slogan “finger lickin’ good” when translated meant “we’ll eat your fingers off” and pepsi’s slogan “we bring you back to life” when translated meant “we bring your ancestors back from the grave” both advertising campaigns had to be pulled and show how it is vital that you are aware of the importance of advertising and the effect it can have on peoples perceptions of your brand.Other things that need to be taken into account when launching new products are the costs of production and the target market you want to attract,most new new companies will lose money in the short term or else have very small profits so they need to make sure their manufacturing costs are not too high because if they are it will delay the product being profitable or in some cases could potentially cause the product to fail,the pricing strategy is also very important if the price is too high customers could be put off, if it is too low it might be deemed an inferior product. As i have said the target market is also important, if brands want to appeal to younger people and teenagers for example the most important aspect of their marketing campaigns has to be the effective use of social media in order for them to succeed, Facebook is becoming increasingly important when brands are trying to attract customers due to the number of people on it, especially young people, so having an active presence on these sites is vital. Perhaps the most important thing  when launching new products or businesses is the ability to be aware of gaps in the market,if your competitors are not doing something then you should be able to capitalize on it, Ryanair was able to do this by identifying that costs of flying were too high and that if they introduced a low cost carrier airline they might be able to challenge more established brands such as Aer Lingus,not only have they been able to challenge them they are now one of the most profitable airlines in the world.I hope i have identified in this blog the various types of information that brands need to be aware of when launching new products as by having more information you are more likely to succeed.

references:

http://www.oddee.com/item_97732.aspx

Search Engines

In this blog i will be focusing on web search engines which are one of the main ways in which people get information today, Google is the worlds largest search engine but there are many others such as Bing and Yahoo which are popular. Search engines are retrieval mechanisms that perform the basic retrieval task,the acceptance of a query, a comparison of the query with each of the records in a database,and the production of a retrieval set as output.The main use of search engines is to provide access to information on the world wide web,which are stored on many different servers.As i have mentioned Google is the worlds largest and most used search engine and there are a number of reasons for this such as:

• less spam on their webpage,it has a clear white screen that doesn’t have as many links as their competitors.
• its acquisition of companies like Blogger and YouTube have made them more popular.
• better ranking on search results than competitors.
• faster than most of its competitors.

A lot of search engines use a best search process and present search output in order ranked by relevance this is calculated based on factors such as how many search terms were found in a document and how often they were found in a document.Different search engines give different weightings(rankings of importance) based on some of the factors i have mentioned. PageRank is used by Google in order to give weightings to various websites and is one of the reasons why their search engine is the most popular. An awareness  of the strengths and weaknesses of different search engines is important when using the internet in order to gain information, as it can play a vital role in the time you get the information and the quality of the information you get.

References:

Rowley j. Farrow j. organizing knowledge, an introduction to managing access to information, third edition.

Getting the right information

In this blog i will be focusing on the gathering of accurate information,this is vital for everyone especially businesses. By gathering accurate information decision making is made a lot easier and the likelihood  of mistakes being made is reduced, when businesses are investing or spending money on various ventures they need to make sure there money is not being wasted “whatever technique is being used to value an investment the vital first step is to collect the right information” (Hares, Royle,1994).Hares and Royle also state that there are 3 main points to information gathering which if properly considered,will lead to a high quality of information gathered and save valuable time in that only relevant information will be sought, they are:

1. Identify the costs and benefits that matter – the aim is not to waste time on data that is not relevant to the investment decision.the question is therefore what information needs to be gathered.
2. Properly evaluate those costs and benefits which are relevant to the investment decision – these can be difficult to predict, particularly if the investment is radically different from any other project undertaken.
3. Continually monitor  the costs and benefits –  all to often decisions are taken on investments and the results are not monitored when the investment has been spent and the project completed to check whether the decision was the right one.From an investment point of view,was the information gathered on the costs and benefits correct?

The importance of getting valuable information when making investment decisions is shown in programs such as dragons den, finding out what information is important and relevant can have major financial implications on people and businesses so it is important that they get the right information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQTzLJCUtjk

References:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQTzLJCUtjk

Hares,J. Royle,D.1994. measuring the value of information technology,guildford,john wiley and sons ltd.

value of information in sport

Information is increasingly being used in sport in order for teams to gain an advantage over their competitors,statistics to analyse every aspect of a game including players performances are now available to teams.A famous example of statistics being used in sport is the “moneyball concept” which refers to the Oakland A’s baseball teams use of sabermetrics (analysis of baseball stats) in the 2002 Mlb season.Due to the team having a budget of 41 million which was considerably lower than most teams in the league they had to find other ways in order for them to challenge teams with higher budgets, so they used statistics that were usually ignored by baseball insiders such as on base percentage and slugging percentage to determine how efficient and valuable a player would be to their team,because these stats were usually overlooked the A’s were able to put together an effective team for a fraction of the price of other teams (the New York Yankees spent over 3 times as much yet only had 1 more win in the entire season).This shows the value of information in professional sports and the effect it can have if used correctly.the story of the oakland A’s season was later made into a film starring Brad Pitt and the following clip helps to explain the concept further. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNlCBy07z08.
Statistics are used in most professional sports now, in the last 15 years they have become increasingly popular in football,Prozone is used by many professional football clubs including 15 of the 20 premier league teams, this statistical tool can analyse up to 2500 player actions during a single game including how many sprints a player makes in a game and for how long these sprints last for each time, it can also determine what a player does in different areas of the pitch and how effective he is in terms of passing and shooting in different areas of the pitch,it can also help in determining a players fitness and give managers insights into when they need to be rested, it has even helped to find when a player was carrying an injury, due to the fact his high intensity ratings were down by about 50% compared with the seasonal average (the story of prozone:2010:26),Prozone is also increasingly used by teams in order to sign players as they can type in what characteristics they are looking for in a player into the system this can help them to find like for like replacements or help them to change their style of play.
Fantasy football is used by fans in many sports now,it is particularly popular in american football where it is estimated to be a billion dollar industry played by 27 million people,the aim of fantasy football is to score more points than your friends or members of the public based on certain statistics such as touchdowns thrown/caught,yards gained and points allowed on defense. Fantasy football is helping to create interest in statistics among fans and is helping to increase the popularity of the sport among the general public which leads to increased revenue for the NFL and television networks,specific programming such as NFL RedZone have benefited enormously from fantasy football and cable networks have struck pricey deals to air programs such as this.

These are some of the ways statistics are being used by professional sports teams in order to gain an advantage and how sporting statistics have become an extremely profitable industry.

references:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNlCBy07z08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRj17CRmOdY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball
http://www.foxbusiness.com/2012/08/31/fantasy-football-drafts/
Hall,D.(2010),the story of Prozone,Four Four Two,may 2010,p 24- 27.

value of information

According to Koniger and Janowitz “information is only valuable to the extent that it is structured. Because of a lack of structure in the creation, distribution and reception of information, the information often does not arrive where it is needed and, therefore is useless”. for information to be used properly it needs to be presented in the right medium, in time and be understood by whoever is getting it in order for it to be correctly used. Rowley and Farrow also state that there are 7 r’s of information management.

reading: collecting relevant knowledge.

recognition: information absorbed into the cognitive framework of the individual.

reinterpretation: the conversion of knowledge into a form that can be easily communicated.

reviewing: the conversion of public knowledge into validated knowledge.

release: making public knowledge available to the organizations and people who might find it of value.

restructuring: organizations may select certain bits of data that they judge to be of specific interest in meeting their objectives.

retrieval: collected information can be used as a resource by individuals to retrieve relevant knowledge.

 

image links: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401201000214

references: Koniger P.; Janowitz K. drowning in information, but thirsty for knowledge, international journal of information management, Volume 15, Number 1, February 1995 , pp. 5-16.

Rowley j. Farrow j. organizing knowledge, an introduction to managing access to information, third edition.