More on the symbology

More on the symbology

Before it became the standard symbol for electronic mail, the @ symbol was used to represent the cost or weight of something. For instance, if you purchased 6 apples, you might write it as 6 apples @ $1.10 each.

A story tells us that the @ symbol was used as an abbreviation for the word amphora. Amphora was the unit of measurement that determined the amount held by the large terra cotta jars that were used to ship grain, spices and wine. Giorgio Stabile, an Italian scholar, discovered the @ symbol in a letter written in 1536 by a Florentine trader named Francesco Lapi.

Task 12.

A. Study the text below.

Tо access the Internet, you need an account with an ISP (Internet Service Provider). High-speed internet connections are called broadband or ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line). These allow very fast downloads of documents, music and even full-length TV programmes and films.

Some ISPs have their own content: news, information and so on, but many do not - they just provide a portal to the Internet. You log on by entering your password, and you can then surf to any site on the Worldwide Web.

If you're looking for information about a particular subject, you can use a search engine like Google. Selling goods over the Internet is e-commerce or e-business. With online shopping, customers can click on items and add them to their shopping cart before going to the checkout and paying for them with a credit card. Business-to-consumer, or B2C, is selling to the members of the public on the Internet. Business-to-business, or B2B, is the sale of goods, supplies etc between businesses, using the Internet.

Mobility is becoming increasingly important. If your laptop has a wireless connection, you can connect to the Internet and surf the web. You can also use a small computer called a PDA (Phonal digital assistant) or a smartphone (= a type of mobile phone) to do this.

B. Complete each of the following statements.

1 If you want to obtain up-to-date information about any possible subject, you need ________ to the Internet.

A accede В access С accession D acceleration

2. To be able to find the information you want, your computer needs to have a good ___________.

A search machine В search tool С search engine D search device

3. Buying things on the Internet is_______.

A e-shopping B e-business С e-buying D e-commerce

4. Shopping on some websites is like going round a supermarket with a cart and then going to the __________.

A checkout B check-in С check mark D check-up

5. People who use the Internet are becoming more and more_______- they want to be able to use it wherever they are.

A emotional B moving С mobile D motivated

TEXT 5: E-BUSINESS (SELLING ON THE INTERNET)

Should you sell your products and services on the Internet? Offering your customers this option may be an important service for your business and may bring you new sales from around the globe.

A few strategies for handling online sales are outlined below. If you think that selling via the Internet is for you, you'll want to stay abreastof the topic - keepupwith news in the traditional media and on the Web.

Use Email, Fax and Phone to Complete Transactions

A low-budget solution for Internet sales is to "sell" your product on your web site by inviting customers to complete the transaction using email, fax or phone (800 number). The disadvantage of this method is that customers may not send you all the information you need to complete the sale; obtaining the additional information could be time-consumingand costly. Also, since the customer would need to initiate a second step off-lineto make the purchase, your chances of sale are reduced.

Fill-in Forms

Adding forms (possibly using CGI [computer graphics interface] scripts or other techniques) to your web site allows your customer to quickly "fill in the blanks" of an order formfor your products at that moment online. Customers can place an orderimmediately while they're still excited about what they've seen on your web site. (You can build a databaseof order information from these sales for future promotions as well.)

Your web page designer adds the script to your web site, and your Internet Service Provider (ISP) sets up a system for sending you the information collected from your forms.

Shopping Cart Software

Shopping Cart software allows customers to make selections (by checking a box,for example) as they move from page to page on your site. At the end of shopping a completed order form is generated and displayed to your online customers. They either proceed to check outor they have the opportunity to revise the order until it's complete.

Secure Financial Transactions

Transmitting credit card information over the Internet remains somewhat of a barrier to Internet sales. Many ISPs offer secure network services to prevent customers' financial information from being easily stolen. SECs or Secure Electronic Transactions allow users to send a credit card account number to a merchant in encryptedor scrambledform. The merchant, using a special code, can electronically and automatically verify the validityof the card and the user with a bank.

International Sales

Web sites can be accessed from any place around the globe! Consequently, if you offer sales on the Internet, you'll need to determine how you will (or won't!) handle international sales. Shipping costs, customs forms,and monetary exchangeratesare just a few issues to consider.

Third Party Service Providers

You might consider employing a third party that specializes in collecting, processing and shipping Internet orders for your product. This will allow you to focus on other key business issues while still taking advantage of additional sales generated by the Internet. Evaluate the costs and benefits of such a service.

Building Internet Sales Takes Time

Remember that it may take time to build Internet sales. To organize sales on the Internet requires good planning, a well-designed web site, careful evaluation of your target market, and constant promotion of your web site. Some services and products may be more suitable for web sales than others. Customers will often visit your site several times before they make a purchase, so make your site interesting to visit and the one where it's easy to place orders!

Vocabulary:

stay abreast не отставать, идти в ногу

to keep up with news быть в курсе новостей

time-consuming отнимающий много времени

off-line автономно, без подключения

fill-in forms бланки для заполнения

CGI (computer graphics interface) интерфейс компьютерной графики

order form бланк заказа

online (работающий) в режиме онлайн

to place an order подавать заказ

to complete a transaction осуществить сделку

check box окошко для отметки; флажок (для указания включения/выключения требуемых опций, напр. «галочкой»)

to check out заканчивать работу

secure financial transaction безопасная финансовая операция

encrypted зашифрованный

scrambled скремблированный, засекреченный

validity действительность

shipping costs затраты на транспортировку

customs forms таможенные декларации

exchange rates курсы обмена валют

online order заказ по Интернету

Comprehension questions:

1. What are the methods of selling on the Internet? Describe them.

2. What do secure electronic transactions allow to the user?

3. What is necessary to organize sales on the Internet?

Task 13: Complete the following using the verbs and verb phrases in the box.

ensures A good e-business Website: 1..........with the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and HotBot. 2...........to other sites of interest. 3............ona 24-hour basis. 4.............orders and payments online. 5.............digital security for payments. 6..............the number of hits the Web site receives. 7..............registered visitors who return to the site. 8..............stock control electronically.

is linked

monitors

is able to receive

recognises and welcomes

is registered

manages

is managed

Task 14:

Complete these guidelines on designing a website with the correct form of the words in brackets

A website designer Jakob Nielsen says that effective websites must be designed according to the three Fs.

Functional

First of all, a website must be as ______________ (easy) to use as anyone else’s. Badly-designed sites don’t function as ____________ (good) as their competitors’ and so they lose a lot more business.

Fast

The second F is to be _____________ (fast) than the rest. Customers won’t want to use the website if downloading the site is ______________ (slow) than with other sites.

Familiar

The final F is familiarity. A site will be _____________ (popular) if it is similar to other websites and users know how it works and what it does.

Task 15:

A. Read the magazine article and choose the best title.

a) Advertising on the net

b) Getting rich on the net

c) Surfing the net

B. Read the article again and tick (٧) the information that you can find in the text.

a) Amazon has customers all over the world.

b) Jeff Bezos is visiting his companies in Europe.

c) His family were the company's first customers.

d) He started the company with his family's money.

e) Customers liked the Amazon website.

f) The company began with only ten staff.

g) Amazon now sells many different things.

h) Amazon closed one of its offices in 2008.

i) Jeff Bezos wants to travel into space.

Have you ever bought a book or a CD on the Internet?

If the answer is 'yes', you probably bought it from amazon.com. Amazon has more than 25 million customers in 150 countries around the world. The company employs 8,000 people.

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, set up the company with $300,000 that he borrowed from his parents. Five years later, the company sold $1.6 billion of books, and Тiте magazine chose Bezos as its Person of the Year. But this was only the start.

Online selling is a difficult business and most companies do not succeed. For Amazon, too, the first years were difficult, but Bezos did not give up. Why has Amazon been so successful? At the beginning, Amazon had no advertising. New customers heard of the website through word of mouth. They returned again and again because their experience was so positive. It's a friendly site, payment is easy and the books arrive fast.

Amazon continues to grow. You can now buy DVDs and videos, mobile phones and computers, clothes, toys and wine. Bezos and the company are worth billions of dollars. Bezos is only forty years old. What does he want to do next? 'I would love to go into space', he says. The last thing that he bought from Amazon was a book about rocket design.

TEXT 6: CREATING A WEB-BASED BUSINESS

Since 1996 or so, everyone with access to the Internet has had the opportunity to create an additional revenue sourcewith an online business. A web-based business can be very successful if you do it right. It's a way of making money without worrying about changing the economy, a boss or employees. All you need is a website, a merchant account, a bank account and your brain.

What you won't need

There are certain "no's" that you need to know to have a successful web-based business. To build the perfect online business you first need to think about the things you don't want or need before concerning yourself with what you need. Here are the things you won't need:

■ NO Employees: Employees require you to pay them, manage them and they need a place to work. To make things easier, stay away from employees, at least in the beginning.

■ NO Inventory: You should not have an inventory that you need to store it somewhere and storage space can be expensive. Also, you'll end up with tons of shipping and packing demands. If you sell products, make sure your supplier does drop-shipping to most places in the world. Another form of product is electronic products such as music, software and e-books.

■ NO Time: After your business has started, it should not require more than a few hours of your time to manage and maintain each month. The more you can automate things the better.

■ NO Location: Your business should not reside anywhere other than in cyberspace. A website will allow you to make business anywhere in the world. Your web-based business is making you money and you can maintain it as long as you can get Internet access a few hours a month.

What to sell?

Now that you know what not to have, you have to focus on what you need for your web-based business. First, you need to know what you are going to sell. You have three choices - physical products, services, and intellectual property.

Physical products are food, clothing, appliances, homes and nearly everything that can be touched. As inventory is not necessary there are a couple of ways to handle products without inventory - you can use companies that make drop shipments or you can manufacture on demand. You can print and bind books, copy videocassettes, or burn a CD or DVD as orders come in. There are some people that are successfully selling print-on-demand books.

You don't have as much gross profitper product, but you are saving money since you don't have to warehouse items,to maintain staff to package and ship products or fulfill any other demands. All you have to do is sell the product.

Service Businesses can also use Internet. There are some industries that have been gaining some success such as online tutoring,various types of consulting, language translation, computer programming including web design, and several others.

To have an online-only service business, you will need to be able to fulfill the service from your location. One cannot wash customer's windows in France if he or she is in New York.

Informational products are perfect for the Internet. This type of intellectual property can be writing, works of art, or software.

Creating the Perfect Web-based Business

Here are some quick steps for getting your online business up and running.

■ Get your idea into an electronic format.,

■ Research your competition.

■ Find a place to host your company web site. Look for an inexpensive hosting company that has great service.

■ Build an inexpensive, yet professional web site that is easy for your customers to use with a simple, but reliable shopping cart.

■ Determine your payment system. Most likely you will want a merchant account to handle credit card payments or you can try out PayPal or ClickBank.

■ Optimize your site for the search engines and be sure you are listed in all the major search engines.

■ Use pay per click (PPC) search engines such as Overture and Google Ad Words to build targeted traffic quickly.

■ Watch your bank account fill up.

Vocabulary:

revenue source источник дохода

drop shipment прямая поставка

cyberspace киберпространство

intellectual property интеллектуальная собственность

on demand по запросу

gross profit валовая прибыль

to warehouse items хранить товары на складе

service business предприятие сферы обслуживания

online tutoring онлайновое обучение

shopping cart тележка для магазинов самообслуживания (здесь программа для покупок в Интернете)

search engine поисковая система

Comprehension Questions:
1. What things are not necessary to run a successful web-based business?

2. What can be sold on the Internet? Describe the kinds of sales on the Internet.

3. What is drop shipping and why is it important for business?

Task 16:
A. You are going to read an interview with Richard Cable, a website designer. Before you read, match these words with their definitions.

1. rebuild. a) able to change in new situations

2. deadline b) time by which you must finish something

3. budget c) find the way around something

4. develop d) make something new

5. adaptable.e) make or do something again

6. create f) make or improve something

7. navigate g) amount of money available for something

B. Now read the interview and find answers to the questions:

1. What does Richard do?

2. What things does Richard like about his job?

3. What does Richard like best about his job?

4. What does Richard need to think when redesigning a website for a company?

(I=Interviewer, RC=Richard Cable)

I Richard, what’s your job?

RC Basically I’m a web producer. I go to companies and rebuild websites which are causing problems. I have tight deadlines and usually only have a small budget to develop a website.

I What do you like most about your job?

RC I like the atmosphere at work. It’s very informal and relaxed. People who work on website design are younger and more adaptable than people in other industries. I get a lot of experience in different areas of business, and I enjoy that. But the best thing about my job is relaunching a website and finding out that people like it.

I What questions do you need to ask when you redesign a website for a company?

RC First, why does the company need a website? What is its purpose? Who are its users? Is it for advertising selling products or for communication? Second, how will people use your site? Third, how much does the company want to spend on the website?

I What sort of companies can do well on the Web?

RC A lot of different types of companies do well on the Web. First, there are the news websites, such as CNN and the BBC. Then there are search engines like Yahoo! And Google. Next, information sites, for example, streetmap.com. And then there are e-commerce sites, selling things like books and CDs, for example, Amazon. Companies that do badly are usually offering goods and services that don’t work well on the Internet. For example, not many people buy shoes online because they want to try them on.

It’s Interesting to Know

TEXT 7: MASTERS OF INVENTION

Nolan Bushnell born in 1943 is the father of home video games. He built Pong in 1972, starting the video-game craze that led to today's powerful super-systems.

During the 1950'sand 1960's computers improved enormously. Still only big businesses, universities and the military had them. Then in 1972 the videogame craze began.

Computers were scaled down to small boxes, using electronic circuitry instead of the Mark 1's switches. They could do more than analyze data. They could play games.

The first big hit was a simple game called Pong. Two players sat in front of a television screen where a "ball", a point of light bounced back and forth. Using knobs on a cabinet, the players could hit the ball with inch-long "paddles" on the screen.

Nolan Bushnell grew up near Salt Lake City, Utah. He loved to tinker with machines and became an electrical engineer. He played primitive computer games that were even older than Pong.

"I built it with my own two hands and a soldering iron, Bushnell said of his creation of the first Pong game.

In 1972 Bushnell founded Atari Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif., to build Pong games. By 1975 there were 150,000 Pong games in American homes.

Steve Wozniak, born in 1950, and Steven Jobs, born in 1955, the young video game fanatics, working out of a garage, invented the Apple computer in 1976. The age of home computers was born

One of Atari's early employees 19-year-old Steve Jobs and his friend, Steve Wozniak, who worked for another computer company, both loved video games.

Jobs and Wozniak dreamed of a personal computer, one that could do more than play games. From this dream, the Apple Computer Company started in a family garage.

In 1977 Jobs and Wozniak sold their first Apple II, which launched the personal computer industry. By 1985 they had sold more than two million Apple II's.

The Apple II was more than a toy. People could use it to write letters, keep financial records and teach their children. And, yes, they could play games on it. The Apple II evolved into today's high-tech Macintosh computers. These computers popularized the use of the mouse, the hand-controlled device that moves the cursor on a computer display.

Comprehension Questions:

1. What was the first home video game? When and by whom was it built?

2. What corporation did Bushnell found to build games?

3. Who invented the first home computer? When?

4. What computer launched the personal computer industry?

5. Why was the Apple II so important for developing the computer industry?
Topic for Discussion:

TEXT 8

Read the text and answer the questions:

1. Do you agree with the author?

2. What can people do that computers can’t do?

3. What role does a computer play in your daily life?

KEEP CLICKING

Computers spoil your eyes, computers are bad for your nerves! Don't believe it! Why don't people criticize guns that kill much more people? "That's life", you'll say. Yes, but how can you blame such a wonderful thing like a computer, when you can't even use it properly? All evils imputed to computers are the results of our inexperience.

How can you blame computers for spoiling your eyes if you play Doom clones for hours? How can a computer be bad for your nerves if you cry out, "Damn, stupid piece of..."(you know what) every time it hangs because of your being not too smart to tell it what you want to be done.

Come on, lighten up, computer is just a piece of hardware and software mixed. And if you don't know or can't decide" how to make this explosive cocktail, ask yourself just one question: "Who is more stupid of you two?" Of course, I'm not a computer maniac beating everyone blaming an innocent machine. But there's one little thing people can't or don’t want to understand: computers are not able to realize ideas you don't have and undertake the projects you haven't mentioned. They are just tools in your hands. And the results of using them are the results of your being patient to tell that old "Buddy Wiener" in a really simple binary way: "Come on boy, do it!" Computers are of metal and plastic but if you don 't scare them by your aggression, they do what should be done.

HUMOR

Computer was given to man to complete him for what he is not; science jokes to console him for what he is. So keep smiling!

A. Is there humor in the workplace? Perhaps, engineering is too serious to be funny or is it not? Do you know any science jokes? Read one below and get ready to tell your favorite jokes.

An assemblage of the most gifted minds in the world were all posed the following question:

"What is 2x2?"

The engineer whips out his slide rule-(so it's old) and shuffles it back and forth, and finally announces 3.99.

The physicist consults his technical references, sets up the problem on his computer, and announces, "It lies between 3.98 and 4.02".

The mathematician cogitates for a while, oblivious to the rest of the world, then announces, "I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you, an answer exists!"

Philosopher, "But what do you mean by 2 x 2?" Logician: "Please define 2x2 more precisely."

Accountant closes all the doors and windows. looks around carefully, then asks, "What do you want the answer to be?"

Elementary school teacher from Columbus, Geòrgia, USA: 4.
B. Can you do a better translation?

a) OA programmers

OA young programmers began to work online,

One didn't pay for Internet. and then there were 9.

9 young programmers used copies that they made,

But one was caught by FBI, and then there were 8.

8 young programmers discussed about heaven,

One said, "It's Windows 95!",and then there were 7,

7 young programmers found bugs they want to fix,

But one was fixed by the bug, and then there were 6.

6 young programmers were testing the hard drive,

One got the string "Format complete", and then there were 5.

5 young programmers were running the FrontDoor,

The BBS of one was hacked, and then there were 4.

4 young programmers worked using only C,

One said some good about Pascal, and then there were 3.

3 young programmers didn't know what to do,

One tried to call the online help, and then there were 2,

2 young programmers were testing what they done,

One got a virus in his brain, and then there was 1.

1 young programmer was as mighty as a hero,

But tried to speak with user, and then there was 0.

Boss cried: "Oh, where is the program we must have?!

And fïred one programmer, and then there were FF.

ОА программистов

ОА программистов продукт решили сделать.

1 спросил: «А деньги где?» и их осталось девять.

9 программистов предстали перед боссом

1 из них не знал foxpro и их осталось восемь.

8 программистов купили IBM.

1 из них сказал «Мас — класс!» и их осталось семь.

7 программистов решили help прочесть.

У одного накрылся винт и их осталось шесть.

6 программистов пытались код понять.

1 из них сошел с ума и их осталось пять.

5 программистов купили CD-ROM.

1 принёс китайский диск — остались вчетвером.

4 программиста работали на «С».

1 из них хвалил PASCAL и их осталось три.

3 программиста играли в сетке в «DOOM».

1 чуть-чуть замешкался и счёт стал равен двум.

2 программиста набрали дружно «WIN».

1 устал загрузки ждать — остался лишь один.

I программист всё взял под свой контроль,

Но встретился с заказчиком и их осталось ноль.

О программистов ругал сердитый шеф,

потом уволил одного и стало их FF!!!

b) What if Dr. Suess wrote a manual?

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,

And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,

And the memory’s address makes your floppy disk abort,

Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menú item followed by a dash,

And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,

And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn't hash,

Then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,

Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,

But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,

That's repeatedly rejected by the primer down the hall.

And your screen is all distorted by the side effect of Gauss,

So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,

Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,

'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,

And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,

Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM

your ROM.

Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom.

А если бы доктор Суэз написал инструкцию?

Если вдруг пакет программный вас решится обобрать,

И от прерываний шина станет вдруг озорничать,

Если память с дисководом станут люто воевать,

Вам ни денег, ни железа, ни покоя не видать.

Если вдруг в меню стандартном ваш курсор начнет шалить,

И двойной щелчок иконку сразу может удалить,

И мозги у базы данных перестанут вдруг варить,

Это значит, все пропало, безвозвратно, может быть.

Если надпись на коробке может дельный дать совет,

И мышиный коврик даже подключиться в Internet,

А несносные программы вам откажут делово,

Видите ли, протокол им не подходит. Каково?

Если вид у монитора как в разбитые очки,

И по плоскости экрана расплываются значки,

Выключайте свой компьютер и идите погулять.

Я уверен, он не станет ладить с вами. Его...!

Если от резервных копий прохудится гибкий диск,

И ассемблерные вставки повышают резко риск,

Лучше вы сотрите память, отпаяйте ПЗУ —

Бесполезное железо вам, конечно, ни к чему.

Internet Abbreviations

E-mailers often keep their message brief by abbreviating frequently used phrases.
Below is the list of abbreviations commonly used on the Internet:

ASL? = Age? Sex? Location? B4 = Before ВАК = Back At Keyboard BBL = Be Back Later BRB = Be Right Back BTW = By The Way FAQs = Frequently Asked Questions IMHO = In My Humble Opinion L8R = Later LOL = Laughs Out Loud MOF? = Male Or Female? NM or N/M = Never Mind (or Not Much) NP or N/P = No Problem OMG = Oh My God UR = Your / You're W/ = With AFAICT = As Far As I Can Tell AFAIK = As Far As I Know AIUI = As I Understand It BST = But Seriously Though BTDT = Been There, Done That CUL See you Later F2F = Face to Face FOAF = Friend Of A Friend FYI = For Your Information GA = Go Ahead GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out IME = In My Experience IMNSHO = In My Not-So-Humble Opinion IMO = In My Opinion IOW = In Other Words IRL = In Real Life ISTM = It Seems To Me ITRO = In The Region Of IWBNI = It Would Be Nice If IYSWIM = If You See What I Mean JAM = Just A Minute KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid MOTOS = Member Of The Opposite Sex OIC = Oh, I See OTOH = On The Other Hand OTT = Over The Top RUOK =Are you OK? TIA = Thanks In Advance TNX = Thanks TTYL=Talk To You Later TVM = Thanks Very Much WRT = With Regard To WTH = What The Hell (similarly: WTF) YABA = Yet Another Bloody Acronym YHM You Have Mail

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

TEXT 1: MASTER OF THE MAINFRAME THOMAS WATSON JR.

by John Greenwald
As the eldest son of the president of International Business Machines, Thomas Watson Jr. grew up tortured by selfdoubt. He suffered bouts of depression and once burst into tears over the thought that his formidable father wanted him to join IBM and eventually run what was already a significant company. “I can’t do it”, he wanted to his mother. “I can’t go to work for IBM”.

Yet 26 years later, Watson not only succeeded his father but also would eventually surpass him. IBM is now synonymous with computers, even though the company did not invent the device that would change our life, nor had it shipped a single computer before Tom Jr. took over.

Under Tom Jr., Big Blue put its logo on 70% of the world’s computers and so thoroughly dominated the industry that even rivals like Univac – which built the first large commercial computer – were dismissed as merely part of “the Bunch”. And while newcomers such as Compaq and Microsoft brought the company to its knees in the 1980s, the colossus that Watson inherited and reinvented in the 1950s and ‘60s stands strong again today, the sixth largest US Company.

Tom Jr. needed six years and three schools to get through high school, and managed to graduate from Brown University only through the forbearance of a sympathetic dean. The young playboy rated the pleasures of drinking and dancing far above those of learning.

Watson enrolled in IBM sales school after college and hated that as well. He devoted more time to indulging his passions for flying airplanes by day and partying by night than to calling on credits.

World War II liberated Tom Watson Jr. from his demons. His success in promoting the use of light simulators earned him a job as aide and pilot for Major General Follett Bradley, the Army Air Forces’ inspector general. Watson flew throughout Asia, Africa and the Pacific, displaying steel nerves and planning skills.

After the war Tom Jr. went back to the IBM company. At that time IBM dominated the market for punch-card tabulators – forerunners of computers that performed such tasks as running payrolls and collating census data.

Back from the war, Tom Jr. saw IBM afresh and quickly realized that its future lay in computers, not a 19^th century information technology like tabulators. Even the first primitive vacuum – tube machines could calculate 10 times as fast as IBMs tabulators.

Tom Jr., who became IBM president in 1952, recruited electronics experts and brought in luminaries like computer pioneer John von Neumann to teach the company’s engineers and scientists. By 1963, IBM had grabbed an 8-to-1 lead in revenues over Sperry Rand, the manufacturer of Univac.

With IBM clearly on top in the early ’60s Watson took one of the biggest gambles in corporate history. He proposed spending more than $5 billion – about three times IBM’s revenues at the time – to develop a new line of computers that would make the company’s existing machines obsolete. The goal was to replace specialized units with a family of compatible computers that could fill every data-processing need. Customers could start with small computers and move up as their demands increased, taking their old software along with them. This flexibility inspired the name System’360, after the 360 degrees in a circle.

System’360, which revolutionized the industry, proved to be wildly successful. IBM’s base of installed computers jumped from 11,000 in early 1964 to 35,000 in 1970, and its revenues more than doubled, to $7.5 billion.

A heart attack forced Watson to retire at the age 57 in 1971, leaving him plenty of time for such adventures as retracing a flight across Siberia that he had made during the war. A lifelong Democrat (his father had been a Franklin Roosevelt confidant), Watson served for two years as Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to Moscow.

Thomas Watson Jr. died in 1993 in Connecticut at the age of 79.

From the Fortune
TEXT 2: INFORMATION FLOW IS YOUR LIFEBLOOD

by Bill Gates

Information work is thinking work. When thinking and working together are significantly assisted by computer technology, you have a digital nervous system. It consists of the advanced digital processes that knowledge workers use to make better decisions —to think, act, react, and adapt. Michael Dertouzos of MIT writes that the future " Information Marketplace " will require a large amount of special software and complex combinations of human and machine processes—an excellent description of a digital nervous system at work.

E)o you view information technology as a way to solve specific problems? Then you're probably only getting a fraction of the benefits that modern computers and software can provide. Instead, you should be creating systems that will deliver information immediately to anyone who can use it—"digital nervous systems."

As the boss of Microsoft, the world's most successful software company, I played a large part in the birth of the Information Age. In this book I explain the idea of a digital nervous system— the use of information technology to satisfy people's needs at work and at home, just as the human nervous system supports the human mind.

Like a living creature, an organization works best if it can rely on a nervous system that sends information immediately to the parts that need it. A digital nervous system can unite all of an organization's systems and processes, releasing rivers of information and allowing businesses to make huge leaps in efficiency, growth, and profits. I have a simple but strong belief: how you gather, manage, and use information will decide whether you win or lose.

Manage with the force of facts

The best way to put distance between your company and the crowd is to do an excellent job with information. There are more competitors today. There is more information available about them and about the market, which is now worldwide. The winners will be the ones who develop a world-class digital nervous system so that information can easily flow through their companies for maximum and constant learning.

I know what you're going to say: no, it's efficient processes! It's quality! It's winning market share and creating brands that are recognized! It's getting close to customers! Success, of course, depends on all of these things. Nobody can help you if your processes aren't efficient, if you don't care about quality, if you don't work hard to build your brand, if your customer service is poor. A bad business plan will fail however good your information is. And bad practice will spoil a good plan. If you do enough things badly, you'll go out of business.

But whatever else you have on your side today—smart employees, excellent products, loyal customers, cash in the bank —you need a fast flow of good information to make processes efficient, raise quality, and improve the way you put your plan into practice. Most companies have good people working for them. Most companies want to treat their customers well. Good, useful data exists somewhere within most organizations. Information flow is the lifeblood of your company because it enables you to get the most out of your people and to learn from your customers. See if you have the information to answer these questions:

• What do customers think about your products? What problems do they want you to fix? What new features do they want you to add?

• What problems do your partners have as they sell your products or work with you?

• Where are your competitors winning business from you, and why?

• Will customers' changing demands force you to develop new capacities?

• What new markets are appearing that you should enter?

A digital nervous system won't guarantee you the right answers to these questions. But it will free you from the old paper processes so that you'll have the time to think about the questions. It will give you the data to start thinking immediately, and to see the trends coming at you. A digital nervous system will make it possible for facts and ideas to quickly surface from deep in your organization, from the people who have information about these questions and, it's likely, many of the answers. Most important, it will allow you to do all these things fast.

From Business @ the Speed of Thought
TEXT 3: MOVE PEOPLE INTO THINKING WORK

by Bill Gates

The inevitable result of better computer systems is a smarter use of people's time. With intelligent software continuously searching through its sales data, following trends, and noticing what's selling and what's not, the British chain store Marks & Spencer can use its 500 to 600 buyers much more efficiently.

Instead of working through fat paper reports from the previous day to try to find out whether sales are going well, the buyers can use their time more efficiently, using what the latest data is telling them. If sales are going well, no human action is needed, but the system checks sales data and notices any items whose sales are higher or lower than expected. Reports on these items are created automatically and they are all that buyers must deal with.

Using software to handle routine data tasks gives you the opportunity to provide the human touch where it really matters. In a hotel, for instance, smart software can dramatically shorten the check-in and check-out time. Staff can then help customers rather than filling in forms, and guests will enjoy their stays more as a result.

Electronic commerce, though, brings new challenges. In a physical store a sales person can use clues such as the customer's questions, dress style, and body language to assess his or her interests. However, at a Web store no one sees the customer, and the goal is to let the customer do as much shopping as possible for himself or herself. Web store owners then have some interesting information to find out. Based on customer behavior, how do you construct a model of who the shopper is? It requires smart data analysis.

Digital tools for analysis are changing the nature of work. Knowledge workers can concentrate on unusual events rather than on the routine. Of course, people don't like allowing machines to take their decisions for them. But when a database gets big enough and complex enough, the computer can do the initial searching and sorting far better than a human being. We're simply not able to recognize patterns in large amounts of data. And the available data—in databases, file systems, message systems, and websites—is growing all the time. The only way we can get the full value of all this data is to use computer tools to find the useful information.

HarperCollins, the publishing company, uses a PC-based system to follow book sales so that it can print just enough books to meet demand. That way it won't be caught with large stocks of unsold books in stores, which publishers have to take back. After only a year in operation the new system has helped HarperCollins reduce returns of unsold copies of its most popular books from over 30 percent to about 10 percent. Each percentage point represents millions of dollars in savings.

Using software to find useful patterns in large amounts of data is called data mining. It can help to predict whether customers are likely to buy an item because of their age, sex, hometown, and other characteristics. It can also identify customers with similar shopping behavior, and customers with specific tastes, in order to provide improved individual service. An Australian health-care company used data mining to follow buying patterns and discovered a $10 million fraud.

The most common use of data mining is for database marketing, in which companies analyze data to discover customer tastes and then make offers to specific sets of people. For example, American Airlines uses information about the twenty-six million members of its frequent flier program—such as the car rental companies, hotels, and restaurants they use—to develop targeted marketing efforts that have saved more than $100 million in costs.

Data mining is part of customer relationship management (CRM), in which information technology helps companies manage customer relationships individually instead of all together. With the patterns revealed by data mining, you can present your products to a customer in a way that's most likely to increase your value to the customer, and his or her value to you.

From Business @ the Speed of Thought
TEXT 4: FINDING INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET
Many people have described the internet as a huge public library; a library open to anyone, twenty-four hours a day and with more information than any other library that has ever existed. But this analogy is erroneous. Libraries are organised so that information is easy to find, with uniform, centralised systems and ever-helpful librarians. The internet is a different story. Where do you start when you are trying to find specific information about a specialist interest or one particular piece of data for some academic research?

One good place to start is by clicking onto a site like www.intute.ac.uk. Here - instead of ploughing your way through lists and lists of possibly useful web resources - the donkey work has been done for you - subject specialists have selected websites and evaluated their potential for prospective users like you! Its impressive database holds more than a hundred thousand records and the service has been created by participating universities in the UK.

Subjects on Intute are initially categorised into four main topic areas: Science & Technology, Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences and Health & Life Sciences. Once you have selected the most appropriate topic area you can move nearer to your specialist subject through further subheadings or by using a search box. Additional services include a catalogue of new resources, a virtual training suite with tutorials on all kinds of specialist subjects, data tables, statistics, references, guides and much more.

With so much information in one place you might need to spend a little while exploring the site to see where your particular interests lie. But it will be time well-invested and once you discover where you need to be, you can bookmark the pages for easy future access.

Intute is not the only site of this kind. At www.scholar.google.com you can find academic literature on a wide range of subjects including theses, books and abstracts. The scholar site works through a search box but there is a very useful help section that can assist you in your efforts. www.scirus.com is a science specific search engine which scans more than 450 million science web sites enabling you to quickly find the most recently published reports and data with the minimum of effort. Microsoft Research and NASA sponsors the citeseer digital library where you can get help finding information about computer science, information technology and computer engineering. It can be found at http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/. The name is a pun. A 'sightseer' is a tourist who looks at the sights!

Another tip for finding information on the internet is by working out the name of an existing web site. If you don't know the name of the site, you can often work it out using this formula:

www.name of organisation.domain.

For example, www.britishcouncil.org. If you are right - all well and good; if you are wrong - then the internet will offer alternative suggestions.The main domain types are:

edu - educational institution in the USA

ac.uk - educational institution in the UK

com - commercial or personal

net - internet infrastructure

gov - government agency

org - non-profit organisations

mil - military institutions

TEXT 5: E-COMMERCE BECOMES MORE SOCIAL

The first generation of e-commerce sites, which hit the web in the late 1990s, were essentially digitised mail-order catalogues. Websites like Epinions collected user reviews and recommendations, but they did not sell anything-and many collapsed during the dotcom crash. Only Amazon brought together selling and social feedback, to great effect. By means of collective filtering, it made suggestions based on other buyers' purchases.

The second generation of e-commerce firms is quite different. Few emerged from Silicon Valley. Indeed, they tend to have offline roots, and sometimes seek to drive customers to actual shops. Many make their money from flash sales -brief offers of steep discounts on products -that are advertised to registered members.

The pioneer of flash sales, Vente Privee, grew out of the French apparel industry (the name means "private sale"). Even today, its centre of gravity is offline, says Jacques-Antoine Granjon, Vente Privee's boss, who founded the firm in 2001 along with seven partners. Hundreds of designers, photographers and hairstylists organise its online sales events. After a slow start, Vente Privee has been growing quickly. Its five local sites in Europe have more than 12m members and are expected to bring in about € 800m ($1 billion) in revenues this year.

Vente Privee's success has inspired others. The best known is Gilt Groupe, which emulates the sample sales of luxury retailers in New York, where it is based. Gilt wants to become a platform for all sorts of social commerce, says Susan Lyne, its boss. It recently launched several local sites in America, offering "deals of the day".

Gilt Groupe is straying into the territory of another clutch of city-based e-commerce sites, which facilitate collective buying. Every day these sites offer the service of a local business -a restaurant meal, a spa-treatment, the rental of an expensive car –at a discount of up to 90% (they generally keep half of the sale price). But a deal is struck only if a minimum number of members pounce. Buyers thus have an interest in spreading the word, which they do mostly on social networks.

Yet it may be a third generation of social-shopping sites that really deserves the label, says Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research. The latest batch of firms try to build their business on top of the “social graph”: the network of friends spun on social networks. They make use of virtual currencies and the growing popularity of smart-phones, which can track consumers’ location.

ModCloth, which sells clothing from independent designers, has an active forum on Facebook and lets customers vote on which products the site should stock. Lockerz, another upstart, pays members “pointz” if they watch videos with advertisements, invite friends and do things with them. They can then use this currency to obtain discounts. Similarly, Shopkick rewards consumers for offline activities such as visiting stores and scanning products with their smart-phones.

Whatever the fate of individual firms and sales models, e-commerce is bound to become more social, predicts Sonali de Rycker of Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm. Retailing has several persistent problems: the high cost of attracting visitors, the low probability that they become buyers and the difficulty of getting them to come back. Sociable e-commerce offers potential solutions to all of them.
From the Economist

LITERATURE

1. Andrew J. Dubrin R. Duane Ireland. Management and Organization. Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 1993.

2. American Civics. Orlando, USA.1994

3. Bill Gates. Business @ the Speed of Thought. Pearson Education Ltd. Harlow, England, 2008

4. Billings Henry F. Introduction to Economics. EMC Publishing Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1998

5. David J. Rachman, Michael H. Mescon, Courtland L. Bovee, John V, Thill. Business Today. USA, 1993

6. Clive Oxeden, Christina Lantham-Koenig. English File. Intermediate. Student’s Book. Oxford, UK, 2003

7. Cotton D., Falvey D., Kent S. Market Leader. Elementary Business English. London, UK. 2004

8. Dominick Joseph R. Dynamics of Mass Communication, University of Georgia, Athens, 1990.

9. Finance, Information and Business. New York, 1998

10. Jean-Louis Barsoux International Management.

11. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Harlow, England. 2009

12. Longman Dictionary of Business English. Harlow, England. 2009

13. Malcom Surridge, Tony Bushell, Philip Gunn. People, Marketing & Business. London, Uk, 1994

14. Nesterchuk G.V., Ivanova V.M. “The USA and The Americans”, 1993

15. Дроздова Т.Ю. и др. Everyday English. СПб., 2005

16. Журналы Economist, Fortune, Newsweek, 2005-2011.

17. Газеты: International Herald Tribune, Guardian, Daily Mail (2008-2011 гг.)

18. Карлова Е.Л. Be a leader! СПб, 2005

19. Смирнова Т.В., Юдельсон М.В. English for Computer Science Students. М., 2004

20. Тимошина А. А., Микша Л.С. English of Modern Economics. М., 1999

21. Шевелева С.А., Стогов В.Е. Основы экономики и бизнеса. М., 2000

22. Яшина С.Л., Закоморная Е.А. Английский для экономистов. М., 2006

	Главная \| Случайная страница \| Контакты \| Мы поможем в написании вашей работы!

stay abreast	не отставать, идти в ногу
to keep up with news	быть в курсе новостей
time-consuming	отнимающий много времени
off-line	автономно, без подключения
fill-in forms	бланки для заполнения
CGI (computer graphics interface)	интерфейс компьютерной графики
order form	бланк заказа
online	(работающий) в режиме онлайн
to place an order	подавать заказ
to complete a transaction	осуществить сделку
check box	окошко для отметки; флажок (для указания включения/выключения требуемых опций, напр. «галочкой»)
to check out	заканчивать работу
secure financial transaction	безопасная финансовая операция
encrypted	зашифрованный
scrambled	скремблированный, засекреченный
validity	действительность
shipping costs	затраты на транспортировку
customs forms	таможенные декларации
exchange rates	курсы обмена валют
online order	заказ по Интернету

ensures	A good e-business Website: 1..........with the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and HotBot. 2...........to other sites of interest. 3............ona 24-hour basis. 4.............orders and payments online. 5.............digital security for payments. 6..............the number of hits the Web site receives. 7..............registered visitors who return to the site. 8..............stock control electronically.
is linked
monitors
is able to receive
recognises and welcomes
is registered
manages
is managed

revenue source	источник дохода
drop shipment	прямая поставка
cyberspace	киберпространство
intellectual property	интеллектуальная собственность
on demand	по запросу
gross profit	валовая прибыль
to warehouse items	хранить товары на складе
service business	предприятие сферы обслуживания
online tutoring	онлайновое обучение
shopping cart	тележка для магазинов самообслуживания (здесь программа для покупок в Интернете)
search engine	поисковая система

I	Richard, what’s your job?
RC	Basically I’m a web producer. I go to companies and rebuild websites which are causing problems. I have tight deadlines and usually only have a small budget to develop a website.
I	What do you like most about your job?
RC	I like the atmosphere at work. It’s very informal and relaxed. People who work on website design are younger and more adaptable than people in other industries. I get a lot of experience in different areas of business, and I enjoy that. But the best thing about my job is relaunching a website and finding out that people like it.
I	What questions do you need to ask when you redesign a website for a company?
RC	First, why does the company need a website? What is its purpose? Who are its users? Is it for advertising selling products or for communication? Second, how will people use your site? Third, how much does the company want to spend on the website?
I	What sort of companies can do well on the Web?
RC	A lot of different types of companies do well on the Web. First, there are the news websites, such as CNN and the BBC. Then there are search engines like Yahoo! And Google. Next, information sites, for example, streetmap.com. And then there are e-commerce sites, selling things like books and CDs, for example, Amazon. Companies that do badly are usually offering goods and services that don’t work well on the Internet. For example, not many people buy shoes online because they want to try them on.