From: Top Business Degrees

Another interesting point in the infographic is that being a member of the Girls Scouts seems to drastically increase a woman’s chances of political office. It would be interesting to know if this holds true for males and Boy Scouts as well.

In 1930, BBBs developed Truth in Advertising Standards, something most consumers can appreciate. According to the inforgraphic, Harry S. Truman said of BBBs, “They have gone to work to clean out the shady areas in the commercial world.”

Eleanor Roosevelt said in 1951, “it’s a service I think we’ve all taken for granted.” In 2010 they helped resolve one million consumer complaints and provided four million reviews of businesses. With over 88 million instances of service in 2010, that statement may no longer hold true.

BBB 100th Anniversary [Infographic] compliments of Better Business Bureau

We’re all addicted to Facebook, and that’s a good thing – for Facebook. Now there are rumors flying about a historic IPO. At $10 billion, Facebook’s IPO would be the largest of any tech company in history, leaving Bankrate, Linkedin, Groupon and even Google in the dust by a wide margin.

Facebook will likely be valued at $100B, which will make it bigger than McDonald’s, our beloved Disney and Amazon. Mark Zuckerburg will be the largest shareholder with an estimated 24%, while co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin will own 6% and 5% respectively.

Here’s a look at how Facebook can leverage its 800 million users into a legendary IPO.

Created by: Accounting Degree Online

Which retail workers are merry, jolly and happy to serve you this holiday season? PayScale.com asked retail workers at various major outlets to rate their levels of stress and satisfaction on the job and came up with a happiness score for each group. It turns out that some holiday workers like their retail gigs much more than others – and pay and benefits don’t always make the big difference.

WEGMAN’s

Visit: http://www.wegmans.com/blog/

Wegman’s blog, dubbed “Fresh Stories,” is designed to keep customers informed and engaged. What makes the blog interesting is that you get an inside look at the journey food takes before it hits supermarket shelves, and eventually your table. Everything on the website reinforces the Wegman’s brand. You can learn about products, get recipe ideas, monitor the progress of store openings, and even pick up health tips. This is all done without beating readers over the head.
The blog is updated several times a month, which might go against the blogging adage that more is better, but when it comes to a company blog, I imagine most people prefer quality over quantity; you have better things to do than check in on a daily basis.

What truly sets the blog apart is the large range of bloggers that Wegman’s use, some have been with the company for decades, others are newcomers, each delivering an interesting perspective.

A Flickr stream of photos will make you feel as if you fresh picked the produce yourself. The Wegman’s blog puts the product first in a subtle way, all while giving the reader a local market vibe. And for anyone who has ever shopped at Wegman’s, you know that this is the same approach that has made the supermarket chain so successful. Kudos to the company for getting that messaging across on their blog.

ZAPPOS

Visit: http://blogs.zappos.com/

I know, you’re so used to seeing Zappos on a “best of” list that you are getting ready to click off this story. But wait! The accolades are well deserved. As a company that puts it’s customers (and employees!) first, the Zappos blog showcases a level of transparency rarely seen on a corporate blog. One day you’ll find useful shopping tips, the next, information on the company’s amazing adoption benefits for employees. Perhaps you will hear from upper management on why they are making a change to their backend system. Or maybe you just want to know what shoes are hot this season.
The Zappos blog was born in late 2007 but really found its legs in late 2008. If you are interested in improving your company’s customer service or just want to hook yourself up with a sweet pair of kicks, the Zappos blog is worth bookmarking.

FEDEX

Visit: http://blog.fedex.designcdt.com/

FedEx has a tremendous global reach, but the company is about more than just package delivery….and they want the world to know it. The FedEx corporate blog does that, dishing out small business best practices, a look inside of the company’s logistics, and even an eco-friendly section that is designed to make the company, and the world, a little more green. Team member stories make up a portion of the blog. Rather than read as overly-edited company fluff pieces, the stories have depth; character. FedEx’s philanthropic efforts get the spotlight center stage.

Overall the blog is professional and polished, but has just enough voice to make you feel as if you are reading an informal blog.

Which corporate blogs do you read on a regular basis — and what about them do you love?

Do you have your own blog? Get your blog reviewed and published at a PR6 site at Blogsearchengine.com, a perfect place to promote your blog

At first glance, Paypal sounds like an amazing service; transfer your points/gold/dollars/XP from one account to another in a matter of seconds, making it just as easy to buy from eBay as it is to open a small online store. But there’s a dark side to Paypal which has been emerging more and more as of late.

Services like Dwolla have emerged to compete with the behemoth, offering considerably lower fees and less inconvenient ‘validation’ time periods. The negativity surrounding Paypal extends further than just its terms and conditions — the company’s choices regarding socially relevant matters have been criticized as well. Here are four reasons Paypal doesn’t deserve your money.
 

“Funds Release” Time

Image Source

 
PayPal has recently implemented a policy which allows them to withhold merchants’ receipts up to 20% in a ‘rolling reserve’ (to cover chargebacks and refunds) for up to three months. Small businesses were outraged, but PayPal stood their ground and stuck to their canned email responses when contacted with pleading emails. Businessweek lambasted the new policy as ‘disruptive to cash flow’ and said it could put some companies out of business.

Although Paypal claims that it notifies its sellers of the policy 30 days before implementation, many upset customers claim that they weren’t contacted by Paypal whatsoever. Companies successfully using the service for years and years.

High Rates

Image Source

 
The more expensive the transaction, the higher the fee charged by Paypal. There’s a 2.9% transaction fee on each sale, plus a additional $0.30 per transaction. International sales, however, pay a 3.9% fee. It sounds small, but it adds up. A sale of $500 is charged a fee of $14.80. That’s fourteen cheeseburgers, a movie ticket, a lawn chair from Target, three large Red Bulls, or two whole lunch specials from the Chinese place. Three, depending on where you live.

The fees aren’t the only bad part; the way they came about were pretty shady. PayPal created the fees, available for viewing in their ToS section and nowhere else, without notifying anyone. They snuck them onto the website and quietly began charging unsuspecting customers.

Other services have popped up, charging smaller fees or none at all. Dwolla is one, and charges $0.25 per transaction, regardless of the amount. Dwolla is also interesting because they don’t rely on credit or debit cards linking to each account; they simply hook up your bank account directly to their service. WorldPay and SagePay also offer similar services.

Deplorable Customer Service

Image Source

 
 
Paypal is notorious for responding to customer concerns with cold, indifferent canned responses. Most importantly, it’s hard to find a phone number on their website, especially if you don’t have a PayPal debit card or aren’t a pro number. The premium number is costly to use. Multiple emails asking for help are answered with the same copy and paste response.

Although every company has a few unhappy customers, googling ‘Paypal sucks’ turns up a slew of angry blog posts by people Paypal has burned. Most complaints are about unreasonably banned accounts, transactions gone wrong which end up getting ‘rectified’ at the victim’s expense, and the dreaded ‘verification’ suspension Paypal seems to randomly place on accounts belonging to legitimate small businesses.

The impersonal responses are insulting and condescending, repeating the same vague phrases in every email. Chris Rossi, for example, was permanently banned after purchasing a programming service from a vendor. When he looked into the matter, it turned out that the vendor had been banned for the sale of pornography — causing every single person he had ever received money from to be banned as well, regardless of what the sale was for. All five emails from Paypal include ‘Your account has been permanently limited. Customers who are permanently limited for violating the Acceptable Use Policy are not permitted to open new PayPal accounts” and don’t address his long list of evidence in his defense at all.

Bad Decision Making

Image Source

Paypal is, overall, bad at making decisions. Internationally recognized as less-than-the-best, the company is prone to reversing transactions, charging fees, withholding money, and canceling accounts without notice or a response afterwards.

In 2010, Paypal suddenly reversed all exchanges marked as “personal” coming in or out of India. Without notification, they screwed over hundreds of people and many businesses who were left with overdrafted accounts — not only had many vendors already withdrawn the removed money, but others were left uncompensated for services they had already completed.

During the same year, donations to Cryptome were frozen and $5300 removed. PayPal refused to explain this action.

A few months later, two other legitimate and high-traffic accounts were closed without notice or acceptable response. Finally, the Wikileaks fiasco ensued in December 2010 when Paypal permanently banned an account taking donations for WikiLeaks. A PayPal VP eventually admitted that this was the result of pressure from the US State Department.

A government puppet with little to no respect for the customer, nor how he or she is treated, doesn’t deserve your money. Even if you settle for Paypal, the other services are at least worth checking out.

Despite all the hype, it’s not common knowledge what the cloud actually is. We all know that the cloud is exciting, but the whys and hows of it seem relegated to esoteric IT realms.

Perhaps one reason for that lack of public comprehension is that the cloud is so customizable. Take Egnyte, an SMB-oriented cloud platform that lets you store data, share files, centralize company information, open up cross-platform mobile access, and more. As a cloud-based service, Egnyte saves you the time and money associated with building out an IT structure, laboring to put a hacked file server back together and upgrading servers. Essentially, Egnyte gives you a flexible, cost-effective platform. How you use Egnyte is up to you, however, and that’s where it helps to know more about the cloud than the usual “get on it” mantra.

I caught up with Egnyte co-founder and CEO Vineet Jain, who helped design the powerful platform from the ground up, to de-fog some ideas around cloud computing. He talked about working around the psychological challenges that come up with using the cloud, its real security holes, in what direction the trend winds are blowing the cloud, and more.

Can you tell me a little bit about the challenges associated with using the cloud?

Even when I started the company, I knew that a pure cloud-based service will only go so far. That’s because you’re trying to address something that is traditionally run in your firewall in your local area network. A pure cloud-based platform for something that data-intensive will always have technical and psychological challenges.

The technical part is the latency challenge. When you’re dealing with extremely large files—let’s say you’re a web design firm and you work on Adobe Illustrator files or Photoshop files—when these files are hosted in somebody’s cloud server, in this case us, they will never match the speed you will get in your local area network. We’re dealing with the public internet (Ed.: which is slower than a LAN).

The other big problem always seems to be that when the internet service is down, if I am an SMB, I am dead in the water. I cannot access my corporate data. Even if that problem exists for only three minutes, it has a pretty significant impact on my business.

But the biggest problem I still see is more psychological. That is the perception that I, as a company, am not in control of my data because my files are hosted on somebody else’s server, in this case Egnyte’s. Even though that server may provide much better security and redundancy, there is still this sense that I am losing control of my data.

I think that is a psychological barrier that a lot of businesses are still exhibiting. They want something that they can touch, literally speaking, something that is locally available, for their peace of mind.

Image: B Rosen/Flickr

How did you adapt Egnyte to address those problems?

I was aware of this combination of problems from day one. After fourteen months in existence with a pure cloud file server solution, we introduced an adjunct product, sort of an extension. We call it the local cloud.

It’s a little bit of an oxymoron. Essentially, we give you a local copy or a local cache of your data, on commodity hardware, which will span all the way from a low-end computer hard drive–a low-level solution like a drop box–to commercial off-the-shelf network-attached storage (NAS) devices that you would get from the likes of Netgear, and including now virtual appliances that you could pretty much deploy in any existing piece of hardware.

The whole idea is that we have evolved cloud into a hybrid solution. It is attracting a much larger customer accounts than we would have been able to if we only had a cloud-based solution. People get the best of both worlds. They combine the ease of use of the cloud with the fast local performance of a LAN. Theyhave a local copy of their sensitive data and control access rights. My employees have a local cloud folder on their desktop that looks like an Explorer file folder, and they don’t really care how the files are being served. When they are sitting in the office, thefiles are served from the local cloud and when they are at home or remote, the files will be served from the cloud file server. Whether you access your files on the cloud or locally (unbeknownst to you), the same file access rules are enforced. We have taken away the complexity of giving you fast performance, as well as any-device,any-location access with this hybrid cloud solution.

How do you think people are using the cloud in one way that they’re not? Are there some technologies that people use off the cloud that you think should be migrated to the cloud?

I’d like to see people who are used to software that runs within the firewall using the cloud more. Quickbooks is an example. A lot of small businesses use Quickbooks. A few years back, I was at Intuit and they invited me to a usability session and would pay me $200 an hour for being there, and I thought, I’ll go and try it out. So they were teaching Quickbooks online as a substitution. Yet even today, Quickbooks is still selling more of the package desktop software than the online version. So why is online not taking off? For the amount of usability or the feature richness that the desktop version has, it’s still does not match what they have online. So in this particular case, the desktop or the old style still rules.

The cloud is a big change in peoples’ habits. For certain kinds of applications where they’re still not willing to go to the cloud. It’s a very interesting mix. It depends on which application, which area we are talking about, to say are people using the cloud properly or not.

It’s not simple answer is what you’re saying, right?

Right. When you look at Egnyte, what do people use Egnyte for? We have some people who use every nook and cranny of Egnyte, every feature, they use it as a full replacement for their web- and file servers. Some people use Egnyte for simple file sharing. They still have an internal file service, they still have VPN for remote access for their employees. But when it comes to external, project-based collaboration, they use Egnyte as an add-on to what they currently do. But they don’t replace other things they have. I could try to ask them “why are you wasting so much money doing it all yourself, you can put everything into my solution.” But it’s just a mindset, what is the comfort level? So it’s hard to say how I should advocate people to use the cloud, it’s very subjective.

You’ve talked about the fact that people get used to their desktops and servers, that they have psychological objections to the cloud. What are the actual security risks associated with the cloud? What should people be worried about?

There are several types of security. People should be worried about access security. Many cloud server solutions do not have the robust user access controls and audit reports required to enforce business policies.They should also be worried about transmission security. Not only is there encryption needed at storage, but there’s encryption during access,. The transmission should be secure with a mobile device as well as with a PC and wired network connection.

Another risk that I think people should evaluate is what happens if a provider is not online. The internet provider could go down, or the cloud service could be down.

As a customer, I would evaluate what your vendor’s service level agreement (SLA) is for uptime and availability. Our SLA is currently 99.97%, which means we will subject you to three hours of downtime in an entire year, which by the way is a very good SLA.

If you cannot access the cloud you should still have offline access to your files on your PC. Now I go back to my favorite thing to say, the world of cloud in our opinion is hybrid. That should be applicable to pretty much everything that you’re trying to use from a cloud provider. The hybrid technology provideslocal access if you cannot access the cloud. Of course, this goes both ways. The Cloud File Server provides access in thecase your local computer is damaged or stolen.

Are there any new trends in terms of cloud storage, or is the cloud the trend?

I know it sounds like you’ve been hearing it everywhere, but mobile is becoming so big that I have been surprised. We found that 40% of Egnyte users are sharing and accessing files with a mobile device.

You wouldn’t believe the number of potential customers who request the same capabilities—the same interface, the same access capabilities as your typical laptop—for their mobile devices.

I would make a distinction between a phone and a tablet. We are running into more and more situations where customers will sign up with Egnyte purely based on the fact that we will give you a rich application or app for mobile. My favorite buzzword is that this is the “applification” of the Web. It seems to be a bigger trend than just the cloud.

It is becoming so common that we have been trying as a service provider to keep on adding more and more capabilities to devices like a tablet, whether it’s an IOS-based, an iPad, Android-based or the upcoming HP Touchpad. Much to my surprise, people want to create content, they want to consume content, they want to do everything that they can do with a laptop.

I own an iPad, I have my Mac, but I still can’t for the life of me use my iPad for creating content. I use it for searching the Web or checking email. But when it comes to real stuff, I go to my computer.

Maybe I’m odd. The other day I was on a flight, and I would say 25% of people had their iPads out, and I peered—I shouldn’t have done that, I was in the middle—but the person on my right was writing a Word doc and the other was doing an Excel thing, I was like wow, with an iPad.

Image: Wagsomedog/Flickr

Is there something that you want to provide through Egnyte in the future that you haven’t gotten the chance to provide yet?

Yes, absolutely. The way I see the evolution of the cloud is that it being hybrid addresses the problem of the any-time access, the latency and all that stuff, and the peace of mind.

Currently big companies, Fortune 1000 types, are not subscribing to the cloud.

There are two reasons. One is that they have a lot of investment in their own data centers, and secondly there are a lot of appliance problems that the public cloud service does not satisfy.

I am placing a bet that you will see larger companies adopt some of the solutions like Egnyte if they can basically create a solution set where Egnyte will give you a control layer. What I mean by that is when you log into your Egnyte account you will see the file listing, but when you say open the file, there is no file in Egnyte. That file is going to be served from the data center that you currently own, your own storage, running behind your own firewall, and you will not miss a beat in terms of latency.

You will see a hybrid model where you would use a public service like Egnyte for the control layer, but the actual object, the actual physical file, would still be residing behind your firewall. You want the best of both worlds in that situation. It’s sort of the evolution of a private/public cloud in that sense. Specifically from a large company point of view, it’s what I see happening.

Do you have any other remarks?

The thing is evolving quite fast. Today there are many companies who have not embraced the cloud because they do not understand how their organizations will benefit. Delivering safe file sharing and access from any locationand devicewith minimal investment is a big opportunities for businesses.This is the reason so many large companies are considering cloud solutions, Drea, there is so much opportunity for Egnyte to grow.

Official bio: Vineet Jain is the CEO and co-founder of Egnyte. Prior to Egnyte, Vineet founded and successfully built Valdero, a supply chain software solution provider, funded by KPCB, MDV and Trinity Ventures. He has held a rich variety of senior operational positions at companies like KPMG, Bechtel etc. in the past. He has 20 years of experience in building capital efficient and nimble organizations.

In all likelihood, you’ve never heard of Altria Group, Inc., but you’re probably familiar with their former name: Philip Morris Inc. The mega-corporation changed their name in 2003, probably realizing that, in the public mind, the name was permanently stained with Big Tobacco associations: it evokes images of dirty lobbying deals, unethical advertising, suppressed scientific studies, and the 443,000 deaths tobacco causes each year.

After the Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement in 1998, which cost the tobacco industry upwards of $246 billion in settlements, and the passing of several anti-smoking laws and advertising regulations, Philip Morris decided to reinvent itself. The name was the first thing to go. A document from the early nineties shows that the company had considered this move for a while, with executives wanting to be able to market themselves as “a company with a bright future and relatively low risk” to investors. In addition, the name change allowed Altria to fly a little more under the public radar, after years of being vilified as a company that peddled addiction and death.

To be sure, Altria still makes cigarettes. Its tobacco division is still named Philip Morris, and according to a financial report filed in 2006, roughly 65% of Altria’s revenues come from tobacco products. Altria produces about twenty different cigarette brands, including: Marlboro, Parliament, Virginia Slim, Basic, Chesterfield, Benson & Hedges, and a number of international brands like Fortune, Sampoerna A, Champion, and Canadian Classics. It also owns John Middleton brand cigars, and in 2008 bought UST, a “smokeless tobacco” manufacturer that makes Copenhagen and Skoal chewing tobacco.

Altria also has major stakes in food and drink manufacturing. Until 2007, it owned Kraft Food Inc., after which Altria decided to “spin off” the company, selling it off to investors. It still retains ownership of General Foods Inc. In acquiring UST, Altria bought out Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, a maker of premium wines. It also owns 27% of SABMiller, an international beer brewing company that owns Miller, Coors, Blue Moon, and Castle, among many others.

In addition, Altria is one of OpenSecret’s “heavy hitters” in lobbying. It routinely spends over $10 million in lobbying efforts a year, though this is actually far less than it used to spend, particularly in the late 90’s. In the late 90′s, knowing that tobacco regulation reform was inevitable, Altria exerted its considerable influence to use FDA oversight to enhance its corporate image. In this same vein, Altria also supported the 2008 Tobacco Regulation Bill. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, Altria lobbyists worked to defeat legislation that worked in the public’s interest, such as food labeling, recycling, and reducing smoking in the military.

A look at the excellent website Muckety.com shows the web of influence that spreads out from Altria/Philip Morris’s executives. Members of its board of directors also sit on the boards of Virginia Electric and Power Co., Swiss Re, the New York Stock Exchange, HSBC bank, Marriot International, and Western Union. They’ve served in presidential cabinets and as executive editors on The Economist. They’re the chairmen and CEO’s of United Airlines, Chrysler, Citibank, and the Lehman Brothers.

Philip Morris, almost a decade after their makeover and name change, is still just as influential as it ever was. More than ever, the company resembles some kind of malignant tumor, growing and spreading in the unlikeliest of places.

LinkedIn’s IPO is already a mind boggling success (up over 100% in first few hours of trading). Here’s a look at the long road to today’s IPO.

Source: The Credit Score Blog

There’s been a lot of media-driven furor this year around the issue of humongous corporations weaseling their way out of paying taxes, with GE taking a brunt of the public assault. While with each passing month we hear of some new offender, one wonders how it is that these companies are actually able to do it. This infographic from Online MBA breaks down the factory-line process by which corporations ingeniously – and, most say, unethically – minimize their taxes.

[Source: onlinemba.com]