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Using eDreams

May27

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eDreams has grown to become the biggest e-commerce travel company in Spain and one of the leaders in Europe. They offer customers over 60,000 flight routes from more than 100 airlines, and over 150,000 hotels in 30,000 destinations around the world, as well as vacation packages and car rentals. They do this through their highly developed search engine and booking technologies.
Their goal is to offer the widest choice of flights, hotels and tailored holiday packages at the most competitive prices. But apart from helping customers to plan their travels, they also offer online marketing and advertising services to other businesses.

In July 2010, the European private equity house Permira became the company’s majority shareholder. And, a year later, in July 2011, eDreams merged with GO Voyages and acquired Opodo and Travellink to found the ODIGEO group. Serving 14 million customers each year and across 28 countries, ODIGEO is one of the leading online travel groups worldwide.

 

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AREAS OF ACTIVITY

Travel Agency
Customers can plan their holidays with the highest level of convenience and flexibility by using their Internet search, comparison and booking engines. Their flight search engine enables users to conduct selective searches across all airlines, both low-cost and traditional. It also combines flights from different airlines to give customers the most competitive price for their chosen route.

But they are not just all about flights. As a comprehensive online travel agency, they also offer a huge selection of hotels to choose from, as well as the option to personally select a flight and hotel package. Furthermore, customers can book car rental and insurance through them too.

Worldwide, customers can book online both from a desktop computer or with their mobile phone or tablet devices

Marketing and Advertising services

Being a major e-commerce player in Southern Europe, each day they draw over 100,000 people to edreams.com. And, twice a month, they send an email with their best deals to over 300,000 English speaking customers. These figures have caught the attention of a growing number of companies in the tourism industry. So today over 500 companies use them as an advertising platform for their campaigns.

Customer Feedback

They listen to what their customers tell them. In fact, one of the things that distinguish them from other online travel agencies is their bank of reviews. They collect and publish opinions from all customers travelling with them so that others can then make an informed decision about their airline, airport or hotel.

 

References

Experience with Lucy Language Translator

May25

What is Lucy Language translator?

For secure, cost-effective international communication

 

Lucy software was founded in 2006 with the goal of providing superior language services to globally operating companies that have multilingual challenges.

Lucy translator puts an end in the division between language and technology, providing software solutions and end-to- end translation services.

The Lucy team is made up of seasoned proffesionals including consultants, trainers, transport management expersts, ABAP developers, Basic expers and top SAP translator each with up to 25 years of domain experience.

 

GETTING TO KNOW LUCY LT

It offers a full spectrum of services that meet all needs for multilingual international companies. Lucy provides machine translation solutions for internationally active corporations, language service providers and government institutions who are willing to:

  • Communicate internationally in multiple languagesasdsfgghkghjkgjkgk
  • Reach audiences in additional languages
  • Cut translation costs
  • Reduce translation time

Lucy’s language translators main goal is to help it customers to communicate more effectively in the international markets.

 

POSITIVE ASPECTS

  •  It is secure 

    In the business world, most of the information that is used by companies contains confidential financial and organizational data. Because of that Lucy, uses a secure intranet environment in order to avoid the risks of making internal information publicly visible.

  • It supports multiple text formats Microsoft Office formats( dicx, xlsx, pptx) to XML, HTML and HTML5.
  • It offers a large number of language combinations

    Language_matrix

    Language direction matrix

Lucy Language Translator translates in 36 language directions. Moreover, additional translation directions can be added. Recently a conversion of language variants (Continental Portuguese- Brazilian Portuguese) has been added.

  • It is fast which makes users save significant time
  • It is efficient
    Has a minimal hardware footprint making running costs very low when compared to many other solutions

The Lucy software 4 step approach assures its users a quality result:

  1. Lucy has built up a worlwide team of highly skilled individual translators and partners. The team delivers quality as a matter of course.
  2. Double check of translators by senior linguists with outstanding knowledge of SAP terminology.
  3. Automated check for consistency of entries in the SAP proposal pool
  4. Synchronizing of terminology between SAp texts and offline materials such as trainig content with the Lucy Software Term Synchronizer.

REALTIME TRANSLATOR

Lucy LT gives its users the opportunity to translate both texts and web sites in real time.

 

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References:

WC plan introductory post

Dic13

Chanel

I have decided to talk about the French fashion designer Coco Chanel and about the way that luxury brands promote themselves online. Social media has become a huge issue and challenge for luxury brands as luxury, is always closely related to; influence, relationships and references . It is true that in this social media revolution a luxury brand that ignores social networks will sistematically turn back to the eighteen century.

According to Coco Chanel’s life it is the story of one of the most powerful and fascinating women entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born on August 19, 1883. Several years passed before the girl started her first job. She began working as a shopkeeper and sometime later she would try to sing and dance, hoping to success in the theaters. Unluckily, these attempts did not bring her any luck, but at this moment was when she acquired the nickname “Coco”. Her nickname was given by her audience when she used to sing.

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She would soon find a person who would help her change her whole life. This Englishman helped Chanel open her first shop in Paris in 1910. One she had started in the world of fashion there was nothing that could stop her. But not everything in the life of Coco was marvelous as after the Second World War she had no other option but closing her salon. Years past and she continued being part of oblivion. Luckily, at the age of 70, Chanel made a triumphant return to the fashion world.

Apart from designing dresses, Chanel has also being known for her perfume and jewelry creations. Her first perfume was designed in 1921; it was a mixture of 128 ingredients blended by a chemist. Chanel Nº5 was one of the first synthetic perfumes sold in the market. The bottle where the fragrance was kept was a simple square bottle which had nothing to do with the fanciful flagons used at that time. Here we have one of the various Chanel Nº5 perfume commercials, starring Nicole Kidman.

 

 

Contact between luxury brands and their clients.

For a luxury brand being online is not a huge effort to maintain in contact with their customers. Potential luxury brand clients are usually more present on social networks than the average population. However luxury brands such as Chanel prefer to connect with clients through TV advertisements, rather than depending so much on social networks. In the case of Chanel, it uses social media going through privileged relationships with certain fashion and luxury bloggers. This way of giving information through blogs is pretty used by luxury brands. In the case of Chanel’s Twitter, for example, they use it to simply relay information and not usually to answer people’s questions. Therefore, the 64% of all the online information about this brand comes from blogs.chanel4

This high fashion brand, opened up to social media within well-tuned operations that maintained its exclusive reputation. As I said before, this brand began by choosing a few select bloggers, this people received special invitations to try products before they were launched and later share their opinion and experiences via their blog. In 2007, for example, for the launch of the Coco Mademoiselle campaign, Chanel invited 15 international fashion bloggers to spend a luxurious day with the brand managers.

How should luxurious brands behave online?

For most luxury brands, customer service ought to be equally luxurious and therefore carried out in their boutique. One possibility that certain brands, such as Chanel, have opted for, is to send information which could be of great help to their customers. For instance, if a person tweets that she thinks her Chanel bag is fake, then Chanel will tweet back the process that should be carried out to verify it.

Certain brands have decided to aggregate content about their brand in a blog, while others prefer to broadcast fashion shows or behind the scene interviews to offer their customers a continuous glimpse about their fashion brand. Remaining exclusive online, for luxury brands is not really a difficult task. Usually, people that decide to follow a brand by Facebook or Twitter are directly letting the brand know their wish of obtaining information about their luxury brand. It is important then, that brands aim to please their online fans with the quality and interest they would like their brand to continue having.

While some brands have found and advantage on using online communities to promote their brand, other have decided to create their own platform for specific purposes which are usually product innovation and service. This allows the brand to control their image as well as the content published in the platform.

To conclude, luxury brands have always developed their brand image by maintaining it visible for those few who can afford such luxuries. With the raise of social networks, they have tried to maintain their exclusivity, choosing people that could represent their brand in an efficient way, such as selected bloggers. But the online engagement of luxury brands is a bit different to normal brands as they don’t usually communicate with their customers in such a direct way but through brand advocates.

References:

Free topic post

Dic10

adidass

Nowadays Adidas is a brand that represents competence in all sectors of sport around the globe. The founder of Adidas was called Adolf Dassler and with a simple and brilliant idea he made his sport brand one of the most valued ones. Adi Dassler’s main objective was to provide every athlete the best possible equipment. It all began in the year 1920 when Adi Dassler made his first shoes using some poor materials which were still available after the First World War. In 1949 Adi Dassler decided to register Adidas in the commercial register in Germany. The first official name of the company, back then, was “Adolf Dassler Adidas Sportschunhfabrik”. After a period of 70 years the Dassler family turned their small company into a huge corporation.

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Adidas creator, Adi Dassler

The Adidas Group has over 42.000 employees worldwide, with more than 3.000 employees working at the headquarters in Germany. Between those employees in Germany, we find designers, product developers, experts on biomechanics and experts on technological material. It is here where Adidas maintains the only shoes production facility. The distribution of Adidas is nowadays grouped in four regions: Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America. Today, the Adidas brand is Europe’s biggest supplier on sport footwear.

Adidas breakthrough came when Germany won the Soccer World Cup in 1954. In the final against Hungary, the German team was wearing boots screw-in-studs by Adidas. At this time Adi Dassler started promoting his products in order to make the public aware of his innovations. He started then using well known athletes for advertising his products. Adidas marketing communication efforts are focused to achieve three pillars: energize, globalize and contemporize. This brand has used several advertising media to promote its products in the marketplace. This different advertising media are: print media advertisement, cover advertising, infomercials, online advertisements, public transport advertisements, celebrity advertisements etc.

Here we have an example of the last one, where celebrities such as Leo Messi appear. The ad translates humor and freshness and as a result we have an advertising campaign that clearly communicates Adidas street relevancy.

 

 

Adidas has also made use of social networks in order to promote its products and as an example we have its own YouTube channel, where they let us know about all their innovations. It also has an Adidas Twitter account for Spanish customers (@ adidas_ES), where they launch information about new products, events, promotions, and everything related to Adidas clubs. Furthermore, it even has a Facebook account with over 20,000,000 people liking it. In its official webpage we find everything that we would like to know about the German brand; promotions, news, developments etc.

According to the logo of Adidas, at the very beginning Adi designed the 3-Stripes mark which some Adidas sport shoes still have on them. His aim was to create a symbol that could be immediately recognized when using it in athletic competitions.

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Adidas typical Three stripes model

Later in the late 60s he decided to create a new identification for the Adidas brand. So, in 1971, the Treefoil was born, out of more than 100 ideas. It still had on it the previous 3-Stripes design.

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Adidas Treefoil

In 1998, the merger between Salomon and Adidas originated a new logo. This new Logo incorporated the two typical colors of both brands: blue for Adidas and red for Salomon.

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Mixed logo between Adidas and Salomon

 

Adi Dassler died in 1978, at the age of 78. His name and developments will definitely continue helping athletes in their efforts to push themselves to the limit. After his dead, his son Horst Dassler took charge of running the company and in 1987 it was transformed into a corporation. Today, the Adidas product range extends from footwear and apparel to accessories for all type of sports, being the priority ones: football, running, basketball and training.

To sum up we could say that Adidas went from being a very small company to be one of the best known corporations worldwide. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the founder of this German brand, he achieved his goal of bringing athletes their needed sport equipment. But maybe, this success would not have been the same if the corporation had not been released by advertising and social networks. Since, nowadays one of the most direct ways to reach consumers is through Internet and social networking.

 

 

References:

Blogger’s Code of Conduct

Nov12

Tim O’Reilly, an author, online publisher and conference producer, was quoted in a BBC article about “Blogger’s Code of Conduct “in reply to a sequence of disturbing comments which appeared to come from cyber-bullying weblogs. A week later O’Reilly decided to put forward a draft to which people could subscribe to. Finally, the lecturer came through, with a summary of the main points of the discussion.

In regard to his very first intervention, after discussing about this matter, lecturers came up with some ideas about what a code of conduct should include.

First of all they talked about the fact of taking responsibility not just for each one’s own words, but for the comments we allow in our blogs. This is not about promoting censorship but about distinguishing acceptable and unacceptable content, and behaving responsibly on any blog we participate.

Apart from that we find the idea of labeling our tolerance for abusive comments, by suggesting every blogger to specify their level of discourse in advance, in order to avoid as many offensive comments as possible.

The next step, would be considering the fact of eliminating anonymous comments, as there is a huge number of people who say things that they would never dare to say when they are identified. Related to this, we have the rule based on ignoring trolls and avoiding controversy  as some times those people  don’t even deserve to stand up to them. In addition to this, taking the conversation offline, and talking directly or finding an intermediary would be a great solution, so as to solve confrontations or misunderstood. We should bear in mind, that writing comments in a public forum is a horrible way to have a discussion full of emotions.

It would not be a bad idea either, telling badly behaved people, about their  nasty attitude towards someone else and therefore not remaining silent. Last but not least, we cannot forget about not saying things we wouldn’t say in person. We should simply have to control our anger and frustration, in order not to see us in the duty of having to apologize for our disastrous attitude.

In regard to “Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct”, Tim mentions six principles which should be carried out, with the purpose of encouraging both personal expression and constructive conversation.

He insists on taking responsibility for our own words, not saying anything online that we wouldn’t say in person, connecting privately before doing it publicly, taking action when we believe something is unfair, not allowing anonymous comments and ignoring the trolls.

To finish, O’Reilly summarizes all on his “Lessons Learned so Far”, dividing it into 6 points. The first one is based on the poor choice of “badges”, it’s important to put as much attention to images as to texts, as these can also contribute to a negative reaction by many people.

Secondly, he affirms, that the “code of conduct” needs to be much more modular, it is not just about the image transmitted, but the assertions and associated images, which actually led to express values, that a site would not like to express.

Thirdly, he suggests some moderation mechanisms instead of policies, to promote or demote comments, and therefore make a difference between valuable and invaluable comments.

Fourthly, he affirms that anonymity has certainly a place, but that place will necessarily need to be designed carefully. After this, he insists on the fact that a code of conduct should be revised by lawyers.

And finally, he remembers, that civility still matters. He emphasizes that even if we love intense and passionate discussion, we should not give space to insulting or no substance comments.

 

 

References:

Mandarin Chinese: Business Language

Nov11

Most Useful Business Language After English

By John Lauerman

Mandarin, China’s official tongue, is also the top language worldwide for business other than English, according to Bloomberg Rankings.

Mandarin, spoken by 845 million people, scored highest in a ranking of languages, excluding English, based on business usefulness. The ranking scored languages according to the number of speakers, number of countries where the language is official, along with those nations’ populations, financial power, educational and literacy rates, and related measures.

French, spoken by 68 million people worldwide and the official language of 27 countries, was ranked second, followed by Arabic, which is spoken by 221 million people and is official in 23 nations. Mandarin is unlikely to supplant English soon as the primary language of business, said Leigh Hafrey, a senior lecturer in communications and ethics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.

“In much the same way that the dollar remains the preferred currency, English will remain the preferred language for the foreseeable future,” Hafrey said in a telephone interview.

Mandarin speakers can gain an advantage in doing business in China, Hafrey said.

“Speaking the language confers a huge advantage for anyone who wants to do business in a non-English-speaking country,” he said. “It gives you flexibility, knowledge that you need, and personal connections that can make a difference in the speed and effectiveness of your negotiations.”

Spanish, the official language of 20 countries and spoken by 329 million people, came in fourth, the rankings showed.

Spanish was the top foreign language studied in U.S. college classrooms in 2009, according to research from the Modern Language Association in New York. Chinese tallied seventh by the number of U.S. students enrolled in classes that year, after Spanish, French, German, American Sign Language, Italian and Japanese, according to a December 2010 report by the association. Arabic was eighth.

* http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-30/mandarin-chinese-most-useful-business-language-after-english-1-.html

The New York Times

Nov10

 

 

The New York Times (NYT) is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 108 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. Its website is the most popular American newspaper website, receiving more than 30 million unique visitors per month.

The print version of the paper remains the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States; it is the third largest newspaper overall, behindThe Wall Street Journal and USA Today, though its weekday circulation has fallen since 1990 (as have other newspapers) to fewer than one million copies daily. Nicknamed «the Old Gray Lady», and long regarded within the industry as a national «newspaper of record», The New York Timesis owned by The New York Times Company, which also publishes 18 other newspapers including the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. The company’s chairman is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose family has controlled the paper since 1896.

Costs of Shoring Up Coastal Communities

Nov10

Though reports are still preliminary, coastal researchers say that when Hurricane Sandy came ashore, it washed enormous quantities of sand off beaches and into the streets — or even all the way across barrier islands into the bays behind them.

But even as these towns clamor for sand, scientists are warning that rising seas will make maintaining artificial beaches prohibitively expensive or simply impossible. Even some advocates of artificial beach nourishment now urge new approaches to the issue, especially in New Jersey.

Readers Respond: Password Hygiene and Headaches

Nov10

My article on Thursday about password hygiene prompted many e-mails from readers, some detailing their own struggles with online security, others ready with tips the experts missed.

One reader, Sean Hulbert, e-mailed to say he had spent 20 years in the security industry and occasionally “taunted hackers” to crack his passwords. “To this day, I have not been hacked,” he wrote. His secret? The Alt key.

In addition to the experts’ tip that a long passphrase — such as a song lyric or movie quote — should be used instead of a password and using only the first letter or letters of each word in the phrase, Mr. Hulbert said he makes his password stronger by translating the result using the Alt key. For example, assuming the site allows passwords with special characters, he might take this line from the film “The Princess Bride” — “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”— and convert it into the 15 character password: “HmNiImYkMfPtDie.” Holding down the Alt key (on a Mac) as you type would make that password: Óµ˜ˆˆµÁ˚ƒ∏†Îˆ´.

Hack that!

Another reader, Roger Bohl, wrote to say he memorizes the same basic password for every online account but tweaks it for each account by adding two or three letters based on his own simple algorithm. For example, he may start with “HmNiImYkMfPtDie” as his password for every account. Then he may add three or more letters based on the name of the vendor but amended slightly — maybe three letters down from the alphabet. So for Amazon, he may convert Ama to Dpd (“D” being three letters down the alphabet from the letter “A”, “p” being three letters down from “m” and so on) to make it: HmNiImYkMfPtDieDpd. For Chase, it might be: HmNiImYkMfPtDieFkd.

“Not unbreakable,” Mr. Bohl conceded. “But better than using a common password and easier to use than a list — and you don’t have to carry it with you.”

Many readers expressed frustration with the suggestion that they needed different passwords for every single site.  “Your suggestion to never use the same password twice is impractical,” wrote Daniel Dunn. “Why not, instead, reuse the same password in contexts where it really doesn’t matter if I am hacked?”

Indeed, while many experts advise against it, some concede that they will use a “throwaway” password for sites that do not store personal or financial information, like a recipe forum.

“I use a common browser/e-mail/password combination for what I perceive as low or no risk uses,” wrote Steve Patriquen. “I then ratchet up on complexity of my security based on the escalating risk.”

David Ziegelheim appreciated the tip about using different Web browsers for different Web activities, but thought it could be taken one step further. “It should really be coupled with a recommendation to delete all cookies on a regular basis,” Mr. Ziegelheim wrote. “For a browser dedicated to financial transactions the cookie should be deleted minimally every time the browser is closed.”

 

Those most critical of the article were — unsurprisingly — password protection software vendors like AgileBits, which sells 1Password software. A

gileBits took issue with the fact that both cybersecurity experts cited in the story, Jeremiah Grossman and Paul Kocher, said they did not trust password protection software because they did not write it themselves, and because if their computer is stolen, hackers could access all their passwords.

“There is a very, very small

handful of people who can get away with saying that they will only trust a password management system that they build themselves,” the company wrote in a blog post. “You should definitely not trust a password management system that you develop yourself.”

As for what happens to passwords if a computer is stolen, AgileBits said it designed its 1Password software with that possibility in mind. “We’v

e made it very, very difficult for password cracking systems, such as John the Ripper, to recover your Master Password.”

The only people more angered by our password guide than AgileBits were devotees of Bruce Schneier, the security technologist and author.

“I remain skeptical of any article in t

 

his space that doesn’t quote or at least refer to Bruce Schneier,” one reader wrote on Twitter. (Indeed, it should be noted that Mr. Schneier designed Password Safe, a password management software that, like LastPass, SplashData and AgileBits, stores passwords in an encrypted file that you can unlock with one master password.)

Finally, many readers (and even my editor) said that after hearing aboutmy own harrowing experience with my computer’s webcam, they too were now covering their webcam’s lens with masking tape.

* http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/readers-respond-password-hygiene-and-headaches/?ref=technology

Twitter Professors

Nov10

Never before in history has it been easier to glean from the knowledge of others who will give it away to you for free. It’s equivalent to getting higher education. I’m talking about Masters level stuff. And it’s all available right there on Twitter. I call the people I follow who contribute above and beyond the basic answer to “what are you doing?” my professors of Twitter.

Many of them don’t even know it and that’s the beauty. There is no course outline, no costly tuition (yet anyway), no declared major, and you can take as many electives as you want. There’s also no hard and fast list of required experience to be my personal Twitter Professor and tenure is non-existent. I do have very simple guidelines I keep in my head when designating my Twitter Professors:

1) RT really smart stuff from the people they follow saving me from sifting through even more of a stream of Tweets.

2) Have insightful Tweets in and of themselves (not just links).

3) Inspire me to engage in conversation with them or with others.

4) Write really great articles/blog posts on subjects I want to learn about or point to interesting articles I would never have read otherwise.

5) Expand my world experience through their stream of Tweets.

Usually, it’s a combination of many things and there is no way to quantify it, there’s no real formula and there’s no one particular Tweet that I can pull from to summarize their contributions. I just feel out the people I like to follow most.

*http://mashable.com/2009/02/16/twitter-professors/