Casual Friday: Candy Cane Mania

Behold the humble candy cane. With no fat or cholesterol and containing only about 55 calories, it's a pretty great holiday treat. More than 1.8 billion of them will be made for the holiday season,  easily beating out the 150 million chocolate Santas produced. National Candy Cane Day is celebrated on December 26th, of course, and consumers will spent about $200 million on candy canes during the holiday season. So, let's take a look at some ways to celebrate. Our friends at Pinterest have all things candy cane from recipes to decorations:

You're probably looking for a way to spruce up your holiday look for the office party. Why not candy cane eye shadow?

And after all that holiday shopping, not to mention a little stressful family time thrown in, you're probably going to be ready for a drink. The Four Seasons to the rescue with this recipe for a Candy Cane Cocktail:

Ingredients

1 candy cane, crushed, for garnish

2 ounces strawberry vodka

4 dashes white creme de menthe

2 1/2 ounces cranberry juice

Ice cubes

Directions

1. Place crushed candy canes on a small plate or saucer. Wet the outside rim of a chilled martini glass with water. Holding the glass by the stem, rotate the rim to coat with candy.
2. In a cocktail shaker, combine vodka, creme de menthe, cranberry juice, and ice; shake until well combined. Strain into prepared glass; serve immediately.

2011 IT Skills and Salary Report

If you work for a technology company or do research on the tech industry, you will want to check out the 2011 IT Skills and Salary Report from TechRepublic. The report contains detailed salary information for over 100 popular certifications, salary breakdowns by state and region, comparison data from 2011 and 2010, which certificates command the highest salaries, satisfaction of IT professionals, and much more. When you sign up for the free report TechRepublic gives you instant access to:

• 10,000 articles: Field-tested how-to's from in-the-trenches IT pros
• 50,000 white papers: Decision-support resources for IT managers and CIOs
• 1,200 Downloads: Powerful tools to simplify IT operations
• 127,000 technical Q&A and discussions: Highly engaged IT peer community
• 40 newsletters: Timely, focused e-mails on a variety of IT topics

University Presidents' Salaries

When we think of the phrase executive compensation, the first thing that probably comes to mind is all things banking and corporate.  Hence it's englightening to see the data compendium that one of the major trade-pubs for our nonprofit industry, The Chronicle of Higher Education, created when they trained a spotlight on the biggest fish in their university ponds- the presidents. We give them kudos for the sheer volume of research work.  They found out how much these .edu CEOs make, plus how that salary compares to the average professor's compensation for that institution, plus what percentage that salary is of the total institutional budget, plus they repeated the process 519 times.

To see The Chronicle's impressive interactive infographic (try saying that five times fast) then follow this link to the chart, which also features a series of tabs that break universities down by category.

If you want to know whether the bigwig of your alma matter is in the 99% or 1% as it were, then we recommend purchasing a subscription to the Chronicle.  To whet your appetite, here's a peek at the tip-top of that compensation list.  (Tip:  They culled this salary data from the Guidestar website, which we have also blogged about before here.)

Professional Associations Spotlight: Grocery Manufacturers Association

In our continuing efforts to provide our readers with free business resources, this week we came across the Grocery Manufacturers Association. The GMA "is the voice of more than 300 leading food, beverage and consumer product companies." Their members include several well-known food and beverage companies like Coca-Cola, Conagra, Del Monte and Hormel. But also other members from other industries like logistics, research firms, retail stores and restaurants. You can see a complete list of their members here. GMA has several freely available research reports covering topics like Shopper Marketing, Logistics and Consumer Product Fraud. There's also a recent report entitled "Economic Impact of the U.S. Grocery Manufacturing Industry".  This is a really great report that covers the economic impact down to specific industries like Grains, Sugars, Fruits & Vegetables, Dairy, etc. It also provides labor statistics like average incomes and "Value Added per Worker".

PowerPoint Plug-ins

This month's Inc. magazine featured two plug-ins to help you with your PowerPoint presentations. These inexpensive plug-ins can pump up your presentations with design and teamwork. I'm really excited about  LiveLoop. I am always working on presentations in teams and the LiveLoop plug-in allows unlimited number of people to to do real-time collaboration inside PowerPoint. Try it out for free, but after 3 presentations you'll pay $9 for unlimited saves. Let Professor Hans von Puppet tell you all about it!

After your one-millionth PowerPoint presentation it can be difficult to make it feel new and fresh.  The VisualBee plug-in offers 150 templates to mix things up. You put in the text and then VisualBee does the design. It changes the fonts and colors and even adds images. About 50 of the templates are free but subscriptions start around $10 for access to more options.

bizologie Favorite Apps: EasyBib

One of our new favorite apps is EasyBib. If only it had been around when we were in grad school! EasyBib allows users to "create accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations in seconds by scanning a book bar code or by typing the name of a book." Once you've scanned your book, you can either email it to yourself or upload it to EasyBib's bibliography management site.

EasyBib works with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, though their notes say it works best with iPhone 4. EasyBib is available free in the AppStore.

Factiva

Factiva is a global information resource providing full-text access to top local, national and international newspapers - most notably, The Wall Street Journal. This one amazing resource contains over 8000 publications with content from 200 countries in 26 languages. Use the Simple Search to find articles on a topic or use the Search Builder option to create more in-depth searches by limiting to specific publications. You can also easily browse this week’s popular newspapers using the News Pages. This database is a subscription database, so check with your local library to see if you have online access with your library card or contact Factiva for an individual subscription. Check out this video tutorial to see how Factiva works:

All The Money In The World...

...has been visually distributed in one awesomely massive chart, courtesy of Randall Munroe's profoundly entertaining & enlightening web comic XKCD.  (That's your cue to bookmark it.) He says on the poster, "Nearly every amount has a cited source- when possible, a scholarly work or government publication," and- in a move that captures our librarian hearts- he offers a link to download the impressively long list of references here.

P.S.  This is not a poster for perusing on your smartphone.

P.P.S.  We hope you had a Thanksgiving holiday as happy and fullfeeling as ours!

That's What iPad Apps Are All About, Charlie Brown

If there are two things I love, it's Christmas, Charlie Brown and technology. Wait, that's three things. Just in time for the holidays, Loud Crow Interactive brings us this wonderful iPad app featuring "A Charlie Brown Christmas". It's a digital book featuring narration by Peter Robbins, the original voice of Charlie Brown. The app lets you decorate your own Charlie Brown Christmas tree, participate in the lights and display contest and features music and sound effects from the original television special. It's available in the App Store for $6.99. And judging by the promotional video, it looks like it just may be worth the money.

Social Media and Customer Complaints

Everyone has seen the vents and rants on Facebook and Twitter but do customers really expect companies to respond? Are companies using these venues to answer complaints? eMarketer's recent articles When Consumers Tweet Complaints, Should Brands Respond? and How well Do Companies Respond to Complaints? look at the bigger picture of social media and marketing and how complaints online are being addressed or not. "According to customer experience research company Maritz Research, nearly half of consumers who tweeted a complaint directed toward a brand expected the company to respond—or at least to read their tweet. However, only a third of those consumers received a tweeted response from the mentioned brand." Interestingly, older customers 55+ expect a company to address their online complaints everytime. Younger customers and those more active on Twitter believed that companies would not respond. It seems they have they have lowered their expectations based on experience.

Companies should be paying more attention to their social media outlets and answering questions and complaints more often. "Consumers are overwhelmingly positive when brands take the time to actually respond to them on Twitter. The Maritz study indicates that 86% of Twitter complainers would have liked or loved to hear from the company regarding their complaints—and out of those who heard back, 75% were satisfied with the company’s response."

Obviously, complaints can help the company improve service but companies are also discovering that participating in this type of  online conversation can help build relationships with customers. For instance Virgin Airlines tries to respond to every question or complaint tweet @VirginAmerica. Abby Lunardini, vice president of corporate communications, told eMarketer in a September 26, 2011, interview that customers were surprised to learn that someone in the airline industry was listening and responding to the online chatter and she believes that the engagement is improving service and leading to customer loyalty with more customers choosing to fly Virgin Airlines again.

Who Says There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch? Well, Mint.com, actually.

Check out this interesting video from Mint.com, which shows how much money people spend on food and dining each month. Their information is gathered from anonymous Mint users. Some of the facts about money spent in specific areas goes by pretty quick, but it's an interesting visual of how it all adds up.

Business Research Meets…Purses?

While the bizologie authors all exhibit a weakness for Coach handbags, this entry is not a game of  guess your clients’ income by who’s not wearing a fake.  Recently I had an excellent interaction in a Coach boutique which I visited to exchange a bag, and the sales associates referenced an online consumer forum multiple times during my time there, e.g. “Oh I think the talked about this color on The Purse Forum.  They’re major enthusiasts on The Purse Forum.  They’re way ahead of the game on The Purse Forum”.  This intrigued me, so the next day I visited TPF and found a market research gold mine. Now when most people use the term gold mine, they mean “everything I wanted in one spot.”  That’s more likely the other gold analogy, the one involving pots and rainbows.  TPF, in terms of business research, comes across as a literal gold mine, with a lot of nonrelevant (to business researchers that is) information to be found throughout, and the occasional vein of free-focus-group-qualitative-information-gold.  These are serious Coach connoisseurs who are not only giving impromptu product reviews, but also candidly answering topics like:  “Do you no longer like Coach?  If, so, then why?”  (Answer: Lots of them move on to higher price point brands like Hermes or LV).  Or, “For those who own more than a handful of Coach bags, why do you buy?  (Answer: Thrill of the hunt; they often re-sell their stash on ebay and purchase their new must have).

Obviously one could create an account, insinuate themselves into the forum’s culture, and ask incognito questions.  And obviously the Coach employees are monitoring TPF, which begs the question of precisely who starts some of these more probing threads.  Hence TPF (which also discusses scads of other handbag brands and other luxury goods) and other comparable consumer forums are definitely something to consider for people doing qualitative-type business research, especially for the aforementioned luxury/consumer goods.  So long as the researcher is respectful of that community’s enthusiasm and expertise, they might find themselves a gold nugget or two.

Follow IDC Analysts on Twitter

If you've never used IDC before, it's a great database for keeping up with market intelligence for the IT world. Unfortunately, it's pretty expensive so your organization may not have access. However, lots of IDC analysts are on Twitter and following them can still help keep  you in the loop for anything from Big Data to Social Media to Apps. You can follow specific IDC analysts or industries or even different countries.

Consumer Opinions & Attitudes About Energy

The Energy Management and Innovation Center in the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin recently released their first Energy Poll. The groundbreaking poll measures and reports on consumer opinions and attitudes toward energy consumption, pricing, development and regulation. This look at public perspectives on energy can be used to inform and guide discussion, business planning and policy development. According to the Texas Enterprise "mapping how attitudes change over time is part of EMIC’s vision for the poll. It plans to repeat the survey every six months... [and] will use some of the answers to generate an 'energy sentiment index' — a single number to sum up consumer confidence about energy."

Findings from the first report show that respondents aren't feeling very optimistic about energy policy. A whopping 43% feel like we are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to energy issues that face our nation. And, 41% expect the situation to get even worse in the next 25 years. Consumers are most concerned about consumption of foreign oil, improving energy efficiency, and developing renewable energy. The good news is that the overwhelming majority of consumers (80%) are interested in learning more about how to conserve energy in their own homes. Many of them are planning on making changes in the next 5 years. Just over 30% plan to use "smart meters" and/or buy a hybrid car. A surprising 21% even plan to install solar panels in the same time frame.

Business Videos- Part Two

If you took the time to look through YouTube's business education channel from the Part One companion post, then you might already expect that this second segment on educational business videos is a profile of the KhanAcademy.  The KhanAcademy videos can all be found on YouTube, but seeing the sheer volume and breadth from the KhanAcademy mother ship is impressive.  It's even more impressive considering its founder Salman 'Sal' Khan, (who has three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard) made the vast majority of them as he discusses in the FAQ. A 501c3 non-profit, the KhanAcademy is making the world a smarter and better place by spreading knowledge via freely available 10-20 minute short tutorial videos on a wide array of academic topics, including a significant concentration on (unsurprisingly) business finance.  Want lectures on topics concerning the 2009 financial crisis, or need a well-rounded view on the American-Chinese dept loop, or can't remember how to derive market capitalization?  Sal's videos provide those answers, albeit you might have to stare at his notes carefully because his handwriting is sometimes a bit messy.  Great knowledge doesn't have to come in a shiny package though, so that's hardly a reason to avoid brushing up on some business basics.  We at bizologie say kudos to Khan!

Casual Friday: Dollar Origami App

Need a party trick for the weekend? Impress your friends with dollar origami. Make a shirt, a ring, a duck. Learn how with the iPhone or Android app. It'll run you about a dollar :) Fold away!

The Business of Halloween

Happy Halloween from bizologie! According to a recent Harris poll, younger Americans, ages 18-46, rank Halloween as their third favorite holiday behind Christmas & Thanksgiving. 90% of all American kids will be trick-or-treating tonight and even 15% of us will dress up our pets--though we certainly don't know anyone around here who would do such a thing. Blink. Blink.

Before you grab your plastic pumpkin and flashlight to head out for the evening, let's take a look at the economic impact of Halloween:

• According to the National Retail Federation, the average American will spend $72.31 on costumes, candy and decorations. That's up from just $66.28 last year.
• Total Halloween spending is expected to reach $6.86 billion.
• Halloween accounts for 23% of annual candy sales for the year according to the National Confectioners Association.
• Morningstar reports an increase in commodities like cocoa, sugar, dairy and peanuts, but luckily these price increases haven't been passed on to consumers just yet. Hershey expects to raise prices early next year.

On behalf of everyone here at bizologie, we wish you a safe and Happy Halloween!

bizologie's own April Kessler, Starfleet Librarian

Business Videos- Part One

On a large scale, we have generally mentioned YouTube in scads of posts throughout this blog, and on a small scale we have promoted the UT Business Librarian Channel and its tutorials on finding focused information in specific databases. Today, this post covers some of the metaphorical gooey middle of general business instructional videos that can be found by browsing in YouTube.  How do you find them?

• Select the Browse button next to the search box.
• Choose Education from the navigation bar that loads beneath the Browse button.
• Choose Business from the subsequently loaded Category dropdown menu.
• Filter by different topics that live under the Business umbrella, including things like Finance, Innovation, and Supply Chain Management.

Whether you’re looking for a refresher on Finance 301 or insights on emergent markets, you’re bound to find a useful video.  After all, staying informed of business principles and abreast of business practices is the best way to ensure a solid foundation for conducting high caliber business research.  Below are a few good videos to consider watching.

Stanford: China New Media & E-Commerce Investment Outlook

University of New South Wales: Online Trading: Creating Efficiency with Double-sided Markets

Duke University: Introduction to Energy Entrepreneurship

Stay tuned!  Next week I’ll profile another excellent compendium of business videos.

SLA Texas Chapter's Speed Dating with Technology Tools and Applications

On Friday, October 28th, the Texas Chapter of Special Library Association will present "Speed Dating with Technology Tools & Applications". Librarians from varying backgrounds (Oil & Gas, Law, Art, Business, Venture Capital, Journalism) will present a wide range of databases, web tools and apps. We hope to see you there, but just in case, below you'll find a list of our presentations as well as web links to the apps, websites, etc.

• Energy Industry Intelligence on the Go!--Energy industry intelligence on the go! Oil Daily, Natural Gas Week, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and 11 other newsletters now available via our iPhone/iPad application. Presented by Betsy Harris from Energy Intelligence.

• It's Time to Put on Your Goggles! Using Google Goggles for Research--Have you ever had trouble identifying a painting? Would you like to translate text instantly without typing a thing?  Learn how to do these things and more in this presentation about the Google Goggles app. Presented by Karen Holt from The University of Texas at Austin

• SharePoint Options to Improve Access to the Library--Using SharePoint to create Information Centers for Library Products and Legal Practices. Presented by Terri L. Lawrence from Winstead.

• Flipboard App for iPad--Flipboard is a digital social magazine that aggregates web links from your social circle, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and displays the content in magazine form on an iPad. Presented by Laura Young from Austin Ventures

• Mailtester Web Tool--Mailtester allows users to confirm email addresses. Mailtester is perfect for helping track down addresses for CEOs or other company executives. Presented by Laura Young from Austin Ventures.

• Storing Documents--DocumentCloud is a Web-based tool for cataloging, annotating and sharing documents. Originally designed for journalists, it has excellent privacy settings and also excellent tools for publishing documents publicly. DocumentCloud provides a free service for journalistic organizations, but the DocumentCloud server software will be released free once the project is complete. Presented by Daniel Lathrop from the Dallas Morning News.

• Shortcuts for the iPhone--Learn shortcuts for creating webclips, how to move icons, organize home folders, use voice control, and more! Presented by  Barbara Fullerton from Morningstar, Inc.

Casual Friday: What’s in a name?

Answer:  A mouse click!  What if you’re trying to commercialize the next best thing since sliced bread,  you’re having a hard time figuring out your soon-to-be-a-household-name moniker, and you can't afford the services of Strategic Name Development as described in Laura's older post?  Enter the Casual Friday version of 'What's in a name?', in which you need only visit Company Name Generator.  How do you think we came up with bizologie?  (kidding!) Just hit the Generate button over and over, and let the spiffy code do all the work of making a name and checking to see if its .com address is available.   Or if you prefer to be deeply devoted to your domain’s derivation (I can’t resist consonance), go to the Advanced page.  There you can play a game not unlike Wheel of Fortune.  Enter the consonants and vowels you want and choose their arrangement pattern before clicking Generate.  If that’s still not enough, select the More Options button, choose from categories of prefixes and suffixes, and let the generator Frankenstein them into often hilarious results.