Revving Eco-Friendly Auto Research

Cars in all shades of green are a red-hot topic for the automobile market, and (in my opinion) they make for seductive headlines.  Speaking for myself I’m constantly distracted by news articles featuring shiny auto show concept car images and stories touting the newest manufacturer’s plans to jump on the plugged-in-hybrid-nontraditionally-fueled-gazillion-mpg-bandwagon. If you want to delve beyond the occasionally distracting article breaking up your regular mix of headlines and more closely follow this market, then check out Green Car Reports which, as the name suggests, is a veritable hoard of relevant industry news.  Unfortunately the site is a bit cumbersome to browse, and it lacks an advanced search page, with only a lonesome Google custom search box at this moment, but considering the concentration of all topics related to the green auto business (the News section currently has 270 pages of articles with 15 headlines per page), it’s a forgivable sin.

Navigation tip:  type the keyword infographic in the search box and you can view a handful of reports and articles that include eye-catching high-resolution images of interesting data spreads, for example, people in which cities are spending the most on fuel?  Just like the industry its following, this site may need some tweaks and upgrades, but it’s definitely headed in the right direction.

bizologie Favorite Apps: Google Catalogs

Shoppers and Tech Lovers rejoice! Today Google has launched their  Google Catalogs app which allows you to browse all your favorite catalogs in one spot. I'm really excited to see this service as I recently downloaded the new Ikea catalog to my iPad and it's great to flip through and keeps my counters clear of catalog clutter. Google Catalogs has already partnered with several of our favorite stores including: Anthropologie, CB2, West Elm, Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom, Sephora and many more. And while it's obviously convenient to flip through your favorite catalogs without waiting on the mail, they've incorporated some pretty cool features. There are features you'd expect like the ability to zoom in on products and connect to the website or find them at local stores. But then there are some really cool features like being able to take the products you like all from different catalogs and create a collage of your favorites. You can share your collage with friends or check out collages other people have created. I think this is a great feature, especially if you're looking for design inspiration for your house. You can also search for particular products across all catalogs. Once you've added a catalog to your favorites, you'll be notified every time a new one comes out. So on the one hand, Google Catalog is "green" which is nice, but also dangerous for our pocketbooks!

Google Catalogs is currently available for iPad and coming soon to Android tablets--which seems a bit ironic. Check out the video below for an introduction:

bizologie Favorite Tools: MailTester

In the past we've talked about different tactics you can use to track down CEO email addresses. But unfortunately, sometimes they're just next to impossible to find. So when sleuthing doesn't work, it's time to just start guessing. And MailTester helps you confirm your guesses. If you know the format for a particular company's email addresses, such as [email protected], you can just plug in what you think it might be into MailTester and they'll let you know if you're right. If you don't know the format at all, go to the company's website and check their "contact us" page. From here, you'll at least know the @anycompany.com part and then you can use that to start testing various possibilities. Chances are, you'll eventually hit the right one. Common email formats I've had luck with include:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

MailTester works by looking up the SMTP server responsible for the e-mail address, and trying to establish an SMTP connection."It then tries to send several commands, almost as if an e-mail is going to be sent. When enough information is gathered, the connection is aborted."

MailTester isn't successful every time as "some servers only connect to the internet at specified times to retrieve the e-mails that are queued at a secondary SMTP server" and "some SMTP servers don't give any information about the validity of an e-mail address". However, I'd say my success rate using their service is at least 80%.

Happy sleuthing!

Venture More Than A Guess

Want to know which industry sandboxes the venture capital firms are playing in?  Then download a MoneyTree Report, a three-part match made in free-data heaven among PricewaterhouseCoopers, the National Venture Capital Association, and Thompson Reuters.  Every quarter Thompson Reuters surveys the VC institutions on their cash-for-equity investments in growing private companies, and then PricewaterhouseCoopers packages the data with a neat bow and puts it online for the enjoyment of all. You can download the most recent quarterly report which gives aggregate trends and analysis, and you can custom search historical data by factors including region, industry, financing sequence, etc.  If you want data from the current quarter at the company-name level, the site prompts you to cough up your information on a registration page, but that seems like a small investment when considering the potential for information return.

P.S.  It’s easy to overlook the News block at the bottom of the MoneyTree homepage, but it has a small selection of articles with exciting titles like, “US technology M&A insights 2011”.

Research on Main Street

Marcy Phelps the founder of Phelps Research just released new book Research on Main Street: Using the Web to Find Local Business and Market Information. Businesses need local information about their customers and competitors,  but that information is usually the trickiest to find. Research on Main Street is a guide to finding market information about places—including counties, cities, and even census blocks using free and low-cost online resources. Now those are the kind of resources that bizologie likes!

The book offers techniques and strategies for approaching location-specific research, including advice on how to tap local sources for in-depth information about business and economic conditions, issues, and outlooks.  The author also incorporates advice from her fellow business researchers throughout in the Tips from the Pros sections in each of the 9 chapters.

Be sure to sign up for ResearchNOTES a free monthly email bulletin with more valuable tips and sites for internet research and check out Marcy's blog at MarcyPhelps.com

Is Your Business Good Enough?

Does your business need a moral makeover? Or, are you trying to research issues in business ethics?  If so, then the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE) is a great place to start.  For those considering a makeover, the IGE has a branch devoted to corporations called (unsurprisingly) the Center for Corporate Ethics, which offers an array of services including  assessments, training workshops, consulting, and customized codes of ethics.

For those interested in researching ethical situations, (or if you want to see how your business stacks up), then there are two places on the site to visit:

1) The IGE’s Dilemmas page presents real-life scenarios, excluding their resolutions, to initiate pondering and deep water-cooler conversation.

2) We saved the best for last.  The IGE’s Publications page  includes many free in-dept analytical articles, book excerpts, Executive Briefings, and White Papers to help individuals and institutions gain valuable knowledge to augment their moral compass alignment.

bizologie Favorite Tools: PDFUnlock

So you've found the perfect report, article or chart in PDF format and you'd like to use a section of it in an email. Only problem is, the creator has it locked. To quote Liz Lemon, blurg. Good news! The folks over at PDFUnlock have you covered. Simply upload the PDF you'd like to unlock and they'll take care of it for you. Reports under 5MB are free to unlock. It won't work if the original owner has it locked and password protected, but it's been my experience that most locked PDFs I've come across on the web aren't password protected. PDFUnlock has made my life easier on several occasions. Know about a free tool that's made your work life easier? Tell us about it in the comments.

Small Business Computer Support

Small businesses need computer support but can't afford to hire a full-time IT staff or outsource a full staff. According to Inc. Magazine the average cost of full-time tech person is $80,000 and it's much cheaper to outsource but that can still run $30,000 a year. What is an SMB to do? For just $15-$30 a month PlumChoice provides tech support for one Mac or one PC plus any connected devices like scanners, printers. Users can call in and get phone support and PlumChoice can login to their systems remotely.

Keen on CoStar

Today bizologie is spotlighting CoStar Group Inc., and no, we’re not talking about Hollywood.  CoStar is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ:  CSGP) that deals in commercial real estate intelligence.  CoStar bills itself as, “the number one provider of information, marketing and analytic services to commercial real estate professionals in the United States as well as the United Kingdom.”  We like them because they are a great resource for free industry news. Visit the Headlines page and you are automatically directed to CoStar’s national-level commercial real estate news, where you also have the option to browse for news stories from a wide range of cities across the US (point in case Las Vegas) via an alphabetical dropdown menu.

Don’t have time to visit the website daily?  Sign up for their free Advisor Newsletter where you can select your metro area(s) of interest and have a weekly update sent to your email inbox.

Casual Friday: Making You Mirthful- Part Two

TGIF again!  Now for the resolution of the comic cliffhanger from last Friday's installment of business themed comics.  Here's another series of five excellent suspects.  Bring on the PowerPoint fodder! 6.  Fat Cats by Charlie Podrebarac

7.  Joe Vanilla by Mark Litzler

8.  Retail by Norm Feuti

9.  Working Daze by John Zakour & Scott Roberts

10.  Working It Out by Charlos Gary

This one's from Retail:

What are the Analysts Asking?

If you don't have investment bank analysts reports at your fingertips, how can you find out what the analysts think about companies? Check out the quarterly analyst calls. These conference calls are held with the securities analysts covering the company. The company reports on their earnings and other developments. There is also a Q&A section so you will have the opportunity to find out what the analysts want to focus on and what questions they have for the C-suite. The SEC requires the calls be open to the public and companies post the recording on their investor relations pages. Sometimes the calls are linked from the events calendar. The recordings are freely available, but you will need a subscription if you want the transcripts of the calls so you can read them and search by keyword. LexisNexis has the transcripts in Financial Disclosure Wire (FDWire).

Looking for a new job? Maybe it's time to BranchOut

You've probably got a LinkedIn page for connecting with your professional contacts, but what about tapping your friend network when you're in the market for a new job? BranchOut is a new service that turns your Facebook page into a professional networking page by carving out only your professional information to make a business profile via Facebook that only includes information about where you and your friends (and their friends) work and leaves out non-job-obtaining information like the fact that you totally heart Twilight and that you've recently found a cow wandering on your farm. It will also automatically import your resume information from LinkedIn. Once it's set up, you can see how many degrees you are from the place you want to work by checking out not only where your friends work, but also where their friends work. I'll admit that at first I wondered why anyone would need this when we've already got LinkedIn but I can see how it would be especially helpful if you've got more contacts on Facebook than LinkedIn assuming you don't necessarily add all your friends to your professional contacts via LinkedIn. The video below is a pretty good explanation of how BranchOut works.

Casual Friday: Making You Mirthful- Part One

TGIF!  Because I’m in such an effervescent mood, I wanted to incite rampant mass happiness (Ok, maybe just a snicker or two) with business-themed comics!  Here are the links to five terrific titles to get you through the work day.  Stay tuned for the second installment coming next Friday. 1.  9 to 5 by Harley Schwadron

2.  Bottomliners by Eric and Bill Teitelbaum

3.  Business Casual by Joe Combs

4.  Dilbert by Scott Adams

5.  Farcus by David Waisglass & Gordon Coulthart

This one's from Business Casual:

P&G's Growth Factory

In the following video from Harvard Business Review, Scott Anthony, managing director of Innosight and author of the HBR article "How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate," outlines a proven model for new business creation. Products and brands discussed include the Gillette Guard, Swiffer and Pampers.

Emerging Markets Free Resources

At the Special Libraries Association conference this year, I saw some great presentations. One of my favorites was from Karen White the Senior Librarian & Team Lead at USAID. The United States Agency for International Development provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States. Karen's presentation on researching emerging  markets was chock-full of excellent free resources for examining these growing markets. Country Commercial Guides from the United States Commercial Service and the US Department of Commerce is my favorite new resource. Create an account (free to US students and researchers), then select your country/region of interest and choose from 18 industries. It's a short report, but it covers the market size, imports, exports, and information on the opportunities in the country and even banks that are loaning to US companies. 

Doing Business 2011 from the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank compares business  regulations that enhance and constrain business activity in 183 economies.

Global Competitiveness Report is put out by the World Economic Forum. Their Global Competitiveness Index is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness. The pillars include infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, labor market efficiency, technological readiness, business sophistication, and innovation. I liked the country highlights that provide a nice breakdown of countries by stage of development.

Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International ranks more than 150 countries in terms of perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys. The map is the featured image here.

A couple blog were also recommended to keep up on the news in emerging markets: the  Financial Times' beyondbrics and Euromoney Emerging Markets.

Thank you, Karen for giving us some great free resource to check out.

Trendwatching's "Trend Briefing"

Trendwatching.com just released their "Trend Briefing" for July 2011. Lots of cool stuff on the list this year. Some of our favorites:

• The Happy Apps--"a downloadable set of tools that allow you to experience mood-enhancing treatments through your iPhone or iPad. Included in the package are The Light Therapy Box, The Color Therapist, The Happy Sleep Toolbox, and the Help Yourself Happiness Guide"
• RememberMe is a collaborative project between TOTeM (Tales of Things and Electronic Memory) and Oxfam, that infuses personal history into donated items by enabling people to attach stories using RFID tags.
• Men are Useless sends essential grooming products to customers every month in the UK, while new-on-the-scene GlossyBox allows beauty-conscious women to sample luxury product miniatures.
• PepsiCo has just introduced a ‘Social Vending Machine’; it gives consumers the option of gifting a drink to a friend, which they can redeem at participating machines with an SMS code.

Short & Sweet Google Tool

Maybe I'm the last person to know about this, but my friend just told me about the Google url shortener. It works like other shorteners, you just paste in the URL you want shortened so it can easily be shared, emailed, or tweeted. But leave it Google to take it a step further. Goo.gl also provides analytics and a QR code for each link.  Login to your Google account, enter the URL and follow the Details link to get to the QR code and the analytics. Nothing they are doing is new, but it's all in one place and the analytics for the QR code are easy. I love it!

Sunlight & Spending

It’s time for businesses to consider ditching those fluorescent bulbs in favor of sun lamps, because a scholarly study conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta and the University of Winnipeg in Canada, published in the November 2010 Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, has some compelling statements on the matter. In the study titled, “The effect of weather on consumer spending,” the authors cited years of similar research which shows that- as we all know from our own lives- exposure to sunlight can improve our moods, and that people in a good mood are more likely to spend money. They then built on these studies to propose that, “the effect of weather – and, in particular, sunlight – on consumer spending is mediated by negative affect. That is, as exposure to sunlight increases, negative affect decreases and consumer spending tends to increase.”

After performing a series of mixed methods studies, they stated, “we find that participants exposed to artificial sunlight are willing to pay significantly more for a variety of products than participants exposed to regular lighting only, and that this effect is mediated by negative affect.” They went on to suggest that retailers should consider both incorporating natural lighting and/or artificial sunlight, and also increasing lighting levels on days in which the weather is bad in order to reduce negative feelings and increase spending.

On the flipside, the researchers acknowledged that they conducted their study during the cooler half of the year, and also considered that “the effect of more sunlight on retail sales becomes negative when the weather is already warm (e.g., during the summer).” This just reinforces my hypothesis that the only stores seeing increased sales from consumers who are overexposed to sunlight are the ones selling aloe and painkillers.

Photo credit : (cc-by-nc-nd) Bruno Monginoux / www.Landscape-Photo.net : nature and urban photography, free stock photos

The Gas Can and the Egg

Ever wondered about the gas prices in other countries?  Perhaps Moldova or Cameroon, or Norway?  While answering a research question for a student, I stumbled on an enormous and freely downloadable report of gas prices for over 170 countries put out annually by GIZ- Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, which (if the Google translator is correct) roughly means German Society for International Cooperation. “’International Fuel Prices’ is a long-time effort of GTZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development to provide decision-makers with global data on fuel prices. The worldwide comparability of fuel prices helps implementing a rational energy pricing policy.”

Apparently the Germans are as good at engineering reports as they are cars.  The full version of the 2009 report is 114 color pages packed with charts, graphs, maps, benchmarks, etc.  If you need the most up-to-date data, then download the sample report of the current year, which includes a brief executive summary and two massive charts listing retail gas and diesel prices for the majority, if not all, of the 170 countries.

And you can play along too!  At the bottom of the reports page, you’ll find this message and link:  “Your Contribution - International Fuel Price Survey:  In order to broaden the database and to provide data series throughout the year we decided to invite the public to participate in our study. Please assist us by completing the form on our special webpage.”

Being curious, I followed the link, which takes you to the Sustainable Urban Transportation Page, where at the bottom of the front page, you can click another link to provide information about your city.  Then you are transported to a form where ou are asked for the following:  “Who can help us? You can.  And it's quite simple. By filling in the latest fuel prices - fuel (regular and premium) and diesel fuel - as well as the price of a medium-sized hen's egg, you can contribute to keeping our database up-to-date.”

This request seemed so left-field to me that for a moment I thought they were kidding (“We want a shrubbery,” anyone?) until I read in a later paragraph the explanation that, “The price of a medium-sized hen's egg is of great value to us in assessing local purchasing power.  All reported prices should reflect "normal" conditions; one-day price spikes or purchases at top-end supermarkets shouldn't find their way into our database.”  Learn something new every day!

IBISWorld Fatest Growing Industries

Last Wednesday we covered the dying industries so I thought we would cover the fastest growing industries this week for balance (and it's a little cheerier). These 10 industries have been able to grow by leaps and bounds even during the recession and the forecast is for continued growth through 2016. Internet growth, environmental issues, cost cutting and evolving technology are the four main drivers. The only industry that really surprised me was Corrections Facilities, but apparently the growth is coming from privatization of these facilities. Top 10 Fastest Growing Industries:

• Voice Over IP Providers
• Wind Power
• E-commerce and Online Auctions
• Environmental Consulting
• Biotechnology
• Video Games
• Solar Power
• Third-Party Administrators & Insurance Claims Adjusters
• Correctional Facilities
• Internet Publishing and Broadcasting