Salesforce.com has reached a deal with Google that will allow customers of its Salesforce Group Edition platform to use the latter’s Adwords platform, enabling them to associate ads with specific search terms and place them in relevant search results. The information on potential customers obtained through these ads will be automatically included in Salesforce.com’s CRM application, streamlining the process even further. The five-user edition of Salesforce Group Edition has a list price of $1,200 per year.

The recent agreement with Salesforce.com further facilitates Google’s access to corporate clients and reinforces the pay per use business model.It is very probable that the partnership is only beginning and that future steps will reinforce both companies’ positions in the software business.

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Title: A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
Date: May 7, 2007
Abstract: Pew Internet has published a study on Americans’ use of new technologies. Users were divided into three major groups: the first comprises the most frequent users, which represents 31% of the population; next are those considered moderate users, a category encompassing 20% of those surveyed; and finally, the largest group, users who are fairly unfamiliar with ICTs, amounts to nearly half of the American population (49%).
The category that includes the most avid ICT users also contains a subcategory called Omnivores, or in other words, those who squeeze every last drop out of the resources offered by Web 2.0. This category includes just 8% of the population and is made up of people that use websites and blogs as communication tools and often use new technologies for connecting with their friends.
Then there are the Connectors, users who actively participate in online life without being content creators; the Productivity Enhancers are those who see the Web as a way to increase their professional and personal productivity; and then, of course, you have the Lackluster Veterans, who are familiarized but not passionate about technology.
For the second category, which encompasses the moderate Web users, the analysts at Pew Internet have grouped together both those who use the Web from time to time and those who have made a considerable investment in technology but do not consider being connected a decisive factor. One of the most noteworthy items in the study is that 49% of Americans say they use the Internet sporadically. For these users, technology does not play a central role but they do occasionally take advantage of its benefits.

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Manufacturers release servers with increasingly faster processors, more memory and greater storage capacity, all of which leads to an increase in their power consumption. The problem is that it also drives up the cost of energy. At the moment, according to numerous analysts, providing electrical power for devices consumes 10% of a company’s overall IT budget, but in the next five years this percentage will shoot up to 50%. Nonetheless, a study by The Green Technology Initiative shows that just one out of five IT managers currently knows whether the company’s machines get turned off at night. Large manufacturers, on the other hand, do seem to have taken note of the magnitude of the problem. Google and Intel have launched an ambitious program, Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which aims to make computers 90% energy efficient. The program is already supported by Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo and Microsoft.

Articles in Financial Times and New York Times
News in Navegante

The blogosphere is becoming a virtual career center for job hunters. Companies, particularly in the US, are increasingly turning to blogosphere for recruiting potential candidates. Take Ryan Loken for example, a recruitment manager for Wal-Mart who spends one to two hours a week combing through the blogosphere and has already filled 15 vacancies thanks to blogs. In Spain, companies do not follow this trend, though some recruiting companies, such as Catenon, have a specific department created for this purpose.
Backgrounds in new technologies are the most highly sought after on the blogosphere (41%), followed by banking and engineering. One of the reasons for this interest is that the frequency with which users post and respond to the comments, the author’s knowledge of the subject and the number of visitors being brought in, give insights about job candidates they simply cannot get from personal interviews.
 
News in The Wall Street Journal and Actualidad Económica (payment service)

IESE professors Xavier Oliver and Jaume Ribera will be among the speakers at the program entitled “Desarrollando la creatividad y la innovación en la empresa” which will be offered this November at the IESE campus in Barcelona. The purpose is to help managers identify their innovation management capability as a starting point for a transformation program within their companies. Among other benefits, it will be helpful for choosing and effectively managing strategic plans and innovation projects.

More information (In Spanish)