The Consumer Act of the Philippines (RA 7394)

The Consumer Act of the Philippines (RA 7394)

Reaction

The Consumer Act of the Philippines (RA 7394) It is the policy of the State to protect the interest of the consumer, promote his general welfare and to establish standards of conduct for business and industry. The best interest of the consumer shall be considered in the interpretation and implementation of the provisions of this Act, including its implementing rules and regulations to develop and provide safety and quality standards for consumer products, including performance or use-oriented standards codes of practice and methods of tests.

Comments

The Consumer Act of the Philippines are very important and helpful to our community and to the people that involve to the act of the Philippines because we are the consumer and they implement the interest of the consumer to provide safety and quality.

CASE #4

1. What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is usually the term used when a company takes a part of its business and gives that part to another company. In recent times, the terms has been most commonly used for technology related initiatives such as handing over the IT help-desk to a third-party. But it can also refer to non-technical services such as handing over the telephone-based customer service department. It is an arrangement in which one company provides services for another company that could also be or usually have been provided in-house. And also a trend that is becoming more common in information technology and other industries for services that have usually been regarded as intrinsic to managing a business. In some cases, the entire information management of a company is outsourced, including planning and business analysis as well as the installation, management, and servicing of the network and workstations. Can be defined as passing of service provision or production to another internal or external party. is the process of subcontracting to a third party. Outsourcing is a controversial issue because often it means that the companies are outsourcing jobs outside of the country's economy. Outsourcing occurs when a business secures (purchases) products and/or services from a third party, as opposed to producing them in-house.

2. What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing?


There are 7 Outsourcing Advantages:

1. Focus On Core Activities
2. Cost And Efficiency Savings
3. Reduced Overhead
4. Operational Control
5. Staffing Flexibility
6. Continuity & Risk Management
7. Develop Internal Staff

And most of all Outsourcing help us to save money, share risk, accommodate peak load and helps us to develop our internal staff. It reduce capital expenditure over a business process. Also management gets more time to concentrate over core competencies. This also reduces the dependency upon internal resources and increases the flexibility to meet the changing business and commercial conditions. The chief reason of outsourcing is to reduce capital expenditure over a business process. Also management gets more time to concentrate over core competencies. This also reduces the dependency upon internal resources and increases the flexibility to meet the changing business and commercial conditions.

There are 6 Outsourcing Disadvantages:

1. Loss of Managerial Control
2. Hidden Costs
3. Threat to Security and Confidentiality
4. Quality Problems
5. Tied to the Financial Well-being of Another Company
6. Bad Publicity and Ill-Will

we tend to loose the managerial control. This happens because it is harder to manage the outsourcing service provider as compare to managing one's own employees. This hidden and missed out costs of outsourcing is hard to predict causing overall costs to be underestimated. It can also prove to be a threat to the security and confidentiality of issues of a company. If your company is outsourcing business process such as payroll, confidential information such as salary will be known to the outsourcing service provider. It also result into the possible loss of flexibility in reacting to changing business conditions, lack of internal and external customer focus and sharing cost savings. Loss of internally generated talent is yet another problem associated with the outsourcing as it may hamper the growth of an employee by depriving him from the experience he would have gained by handling the business issue himself then by passing it over to some other external party.


3. What is the Implication of Outsourcing?

Based on my understanding about Outsourcing, it is very important in terms of business. It is also great opportunity especially for the individuals who are lucky to have the job and its more advantageous for the company who is doing this kind of strategy. Let me define outsourcing first. It is getting resources or human resources outside the company or outside the country that the company is based on. The company or firm choose to have outsourcing as one of their strategies because it is very obvious especially for Internet marketing companies and manufacturing companies to work on this kind of tactic because it is cheap. The firm responsible chooses a country where they can find cheap raw materials for the product that they are making. Make sense? For web publishing or Internet marketing, when you are seeking for a human resource that will help you in creating and managing your website, what will you choose? The ones who are far from you but cheap or the ones who are near you but are very expensive. You see, to outsource a human resource, for example a writer, in the Philippines or India costs lesser than to hire a writer which is based in California. And the great thing is that, somehow Asian writers are more proficient in the English language compared to others.

Another benefit of outsourcing is the other way around. We had mentioned above that it is beneficial to companies or firm who are using it. But one of the best impact of this business strategy is the giving of more job opportunities to countries who had a low employment rate. Through this people from around the world who have the right talent for the job that the company is seeking get the chance of having a job for themselves. Also for manufacturing companies, they prefer to make a branch company in the place where they are getting their materials and because of that they have to build buildings and hire workers from that place. That will surely increase the employment rate of that particular country where the said company choose to outsource.

Case #5: How new technology rewiring our "BRAINS"?

How new technology rewiring our "BRAINS"?

“It used to be wе wanted to keep up with the Joneses,” ѕауѕ Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of Thе Power of slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in our 24/7 World. “Now all wе want іѕ to keep up with our gadgets. Technology pervades еνеrу position of our lives. our touchscreen existence has literally rewired our brains. our behavior іѕ аlѕο informed by the technology wе υѕе. Wе tap, ping, аnd Skype [download], all day long.”

Sο sometimes wе get a little flummoxed whеn confronted by something thаt isn't digital–lіkе a door thаt really requires a key, or a book whose pages don't turn by themselves, or a TV thаt plays shows in real time with nο skipping past the commercials.

Iѕ thіѕ a common problem, or are wе just spoiled geeks? Wе asked around. Turns out wе're nοt the only ones who regularly have out-οf-technology experiences. Here are some typical ones.

This sort of simulation provokes a particular type of excitement to which our brains, addled by dopamine as well as adrenaline, become easily addicted. Yet despite the stress that all this excitement produces, we feel bored in its absence.

In researching thіѕ article, wе found thаt by far the greatest response was frοm people whο've developed ѕο accustomed to TiVo аnd οthеr digital video recorders thаt thеу want to υѕе them everywhere–nοt just οn TVs, bυt οn movies, car radios, аnd even conversations.

Thus starts a pernicious cycle whereby we find it harder and harder to concentrate while in effect desiring ever more the fact that we cannot concentrate!

Technology is literally rewiring our brains, because even after people give up all their computers and smartphones it's very tough to reset our brains. Still think you're a multitasker?

How gadgets are rewiring our brains and our behavior

UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior is one of the hotbeds of this brain research, with Drs Gary Small, Susan Bookheimer and Teena Moody doing a number of interesting fMRI studies looking at the impact of technology on our neural networks. One study in particular was fascinating to me, looking at how internet searching activated different parts of the brain. I had a chance to connect with Dr. Moody and ask her more about the study. In today’s column, I’ll share some excerpts from that interview.

The study was conducted with older participants and the goal was to see if the Internet could be used as a way to “exercise” the brain, slowing mental decline. One of the fascinating outcomes was not just which parts of the brain “fired” when searching, but the difference in the level of mental activity between practiced searchers (called the Internet savvy) and newbies (called the Internet naïve). This touched on a number of areas that overlapped with my thoughts and research findings in the past few years. The interview touched on a number of areas, including some of the methodological challenges of fMRI research. For those of you interested, the full transcript is on my blog.

Facebook

1. What is facebook?

=>Facebook is a social networking site that allows for developers to contribut applications that interact with Facebook features. GoGrid offers a Facebook Server Image that allows Facebook developers to contribute their applications through GoGrid servers directly to Facebook's development network.

2.Advantage and Dis-advantage of Facebook?

=>Advantages
· Allows user search for new and old friends
· Accessible to chosen universities having a high level of security
· Makes it less awkward when communicating with strangers or people you are not familiar with
· Love attraction - can be used as a dating service system

=>Disadvantages
· Overcrowding
· Weakening long distance relationship
· Unsupported by physical adjacency
· Contributes wide-range procrastination
· Rampant addiction
· Stalking is possible

3.Characteristics of Facebook?

Facebook users create a profile page that shows their friends and networks information about themselves. The choice to include a profile in a network means that everyone withing that network can view the profile. The profile typically includes the following: Information, Status, Friends, Friends in Other Networks, Photos, Notes, Groups, and The Wall.

Users are able to search for friends and acquaintances by e-mail address, school, university, or just by typing in a name or location for search. When people become friends, they are able to see all of each others' profiles including contact information. E-mail notifications let users know when new friends have chosen to add them to their list or when someone has sent a message to them within the system.


4.Can you use facebook in E-commerce?

=> E-commerce app is the ability to allow shoppers to carry their goods with them across thousands of Payvment-powered storefronts on Facebook. It makes shopping on Facebook almost like shopping at Target, where you can visit multiple departments and buy all of your diverse purchases at once. Users can also add comments and reviews to Payvment-enabled storefronts.

As retailers flock to Facebook for both brand awareness and e-commerce, Payyvment’s free offerings are attractive because the platform is a one-stop shop for both efforts. However, Payvment isn’t the first to implement this strategy; 1-800-Flowers started offering discounts to users who became fans of its page last July. The startup, which just raised $1.2 million in funding, faces competition from BigCommerce, Alvenda and others.

5.How important facebook today?

=> In terms of creating a social network, the Facebook generation is likely to see the melding of online friends with friends in the local area as a natural part of developing a well-rounded circle of acquaintances. The online social network may or may not overlap with the local group of friends, but it will be considered just as important in terms of encouragement, support, and the exchange of knowledge. Tools built into sites such as Facebook allow users to convey emotions, share data, and interact in ways that are much more efficient than earlier online efforts. With visual, verbal, and oral capabilities now common on these sites, the interaction is very similar to a face-to-face conversation.

Case #2

IO(Chef Information Officer)

The chief information officer (CIO), or information technology (IT) director, is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. The CIO typically reports to the chief executive officer, chief operations officer or chief financial officer. In military organizations, they report to the commanding officer.

Global Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, which results from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation. Global dimming, a result of increasing concentrations of atmospheric aerosols that block sunlight from reaching the surface, has partially countered the effects of greenhouse gas induced warming.

Effect Of Computers

The state of knowledge of global warming will be presented and two aspects examined: observational evidence and a review of the state of computer modeling of climate change due to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases. Observational evidence, indeed, shows global warming, but it is difficult to prove that the changes are unequivocally due to the greenhouse-gas effect. Although observational measurements of global warming are subject to "correction," researchers are showing consistent patterns in their interpretation of the data. Since the 1960s, climate scientists have been making their computer models of the climate system more realistic. Models started as atmospheric models and, through the addition of oceans, surface hydrology, and sea-ice components, they then became climate-system models. Because of computer limitations and the limited understanding of the degree of interaction of the various components, present models require substantial simplification. Nevertheless, in their present state of development climate models can reproduce most of the observed large-scale features of the real system, such as wind, temperature, precipitation, ocean current, and sea-ice distribution. The use of supercomputers to advance the spatial resolution and realism of Earth-system models will also be discussed.

Effect of Computers in a Certain Company and in Our Planet

As our technology grows and more people using computers and it can cause so much heat to our planet. In any company computers are more important. Data center in a company is used to facilitate computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices. IT department in a company is a major source of negative environmental impacts. The best way to reduce heat in our planet is to less consume of power because the IT is the biggest consumer of power.

According to Senior Editor Stephanie writes that Data Centers consume between 1.5% and 3% of all the power generated annualy in the United States. A certain Company called VistaPrint, where the IT departments does manage its data center facilities, discovered that its electric bill was projected to skyrocket if the comapny, which sells custom printed products online grew as predicted. Data Centers of VistaPrints hosted by "Cable and Wireless". The use of "hydropower" provides a renewable lower-emmisions of source electricity. The company replace its blade servers with virtul machines that use more server capacity and consume less power.

Using efficient coolong systems, or simply sealing holesin your data center's floor, can reduce energy consumption and ultimately , greenhous gas emmission.

Data Center Server that Consume Less Energy

Startup server maker SeaMicro today unveiled a new low-power server that promises to slash power costs for companies running large Internet services and cloud computing platforms. SeaMicro’s multi-core x86 server runs on Intel’s low-power Atom chips, whose energy efficiency has made them the processor of choice for many mobile phones and laptops.


The Green Advantage

Generally, the shift to green IT is of multiple benefits. Those benefits can positively affect your return of investment making the switch all worth it. And just what are those benefits?


•First and foremost, green IT is a help to the environment. The use of them reduces the already big pile of e-waste. For instance, a simple move of replacing fluorescent bulbs with energy-efficient lights will lessen the number of burnt bulbs dumped into landfills. How? Well, high-efficiency light bulbs tend to last longer which means they require lesser replacements.

•Green IT helps you save money. Most eco-friendly technology devices are energy- efficient which means that they consume lesser energy. And in a business, that translates to less electricity to pay for.

•The first two benefits leads to this third benefit. This refers to personal fulfillment. Knowing that you have helped save the planet while earning something out of it is a very wise move that creates a sense of nobility and fulfillment.

Case #1

The "GOOGLE"

Google is a highly successful internet business. Recently they have broaden their scope with multitude new tool. Research Google business model and answer the following questions below. You may add additional information not included in this question.

1. Who are their competitors?

-Although the technology looks promising, Teoma and Wisenut may have some difficulty wooing partners away from more established players, search experts said. “Teoma’s technology looks very good, and its results are relevant,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. “That’s hopeful because if they are trying to compete with Google they’re not at an immediate disadvantage. But its big weakness is that its database isn’t very large...Their real challenge will be to win new customers, and it’s going to be harder to try to convince some of them that they should come away from Google.The rivals have surfaced at a time when the face of Internet search is changing. Many major search services are taking on paid listing models to fuel their results and boost revenues while advertising dollars remain scarce. Inktomi, AltaVista and Fast Search are just a few companies allowing marketers to pay for prominence in search results—a trend that came into vogue with the success of for-fee engine GoTo.com.Signaling the widespread acceptance of the model, Microsoft’s MSN and AOL Time Warner’s Netscape are licensing search technology from paid-listing services. But the practice has come under fire by consumer-advocacy group Commercial Alert, which faults MSN and others for failing to adequately disclose that many of the top search results are bought.


2. How have they use information technology to their advantage?

Google provides the fastest, most accurate results required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most search engines ran off a handful of large servers that often slowed under peak loads, ours employed linked PCs to quickly find each query's answer. The innovation paid off in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. It's an idea that others have since copied, while we have continued to refine our back-end technology to make it even more efficient.

Google provides:

* Better and quicker search results
* Advanced search features, including searching for videos and audio content as well as PDF, .doc and .ppt files
* Easy and powerful search administration
* Easy integration into web sites

Google continues to think about ways in which technology can improve upon existing ways of doing business. New areas are explored, ideas prototyped and budding services nurtured to make them more useful to advertisers and publishers. However, no matter how distant Google's business model grows from its origins, the root remains providing useful and relevant information to those who are the most important part of the ecosystem – the millions of individuals around the world who rely on Google search to provide the answers they are seeking.

According to (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html)
The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.


3. How competitive are they in the market?

As we know Google is very competitive its because they are all over the world, anyone can use google for searching, posting, etc. Google’s content comprises between 6 and 10 percent of global Internet traffic, making its internal network one of the top three ISPs in the world, according to Arbor Networks. Technology has come a long way since then, and the face of the web has changed. Recognizing that search is a problem that will never be solved, we continue to push the limits of existing technology to provide a fast, accurate and easy-to-use service that anyone seeking information can access. Even a Microsoft won a victory recently against its new and increasingly agile young competitor google in the case of Kai-Fu-Lee, Google continous to nibble at the margins of Microsoft more existential question- the need for its software in the first place in an age when web development archetecture has taken the "Web 2.0" route offered by schemes like AJAX.



4. What new services do they offer?

• Google Lively was a web-based virtual environment that allowed as many as 20 people to sit in a virtual room and chat with each other. The offering debuted in July 2008 only to have Google pull the plug a mere four months later.

• Google Print Ads was dropped earlier this year after the company’s vision of bringing web-like automation to the world of traditional media failed to materialize. The effort went belly-up just three weeks before the death of Google Audio Ads, which ended a three-year run in February after the company failed to gain traction in the radio ad game.

• Google Answers spent a year in beta before a full-blown launch in May 2003, but the effort to create a fee-based knowledge market never gained much traction outside a small base of users and the service was dropped in late 2006.

• The social networking site Orkut launched early in 2004 as an independent project of noted Google developer Orkut Büyükkökten and has caught fire in Brazil, a market that accounts for roughly 50 percent of its membership. The site reportedly claims roughly 100 million users, which is impressive, but Google can’t be happy that its effort is virtually unknown in Europe and North America while Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others have gained such impressive traction.

• Google Catalog Search debuted in 2001 as a way for consumers to go online to check out their favorite print catalogs that had been scanned and uploaded. Of course, retailers were already taking their inventories online themselves, and the effort was put to rest earlier this year.

• Google Health was released as a beta test in May 2008, but the service has yet to find much of an audience among insurers or the general public. Which may have something to do with the combination of the words “health” and “beta test.”

• The location-based service Dodgeball was shut down in 2009 after Google had acquired it four years earlier, and while Google continues to operate Jaiku – a social networking service it picked up in 2007 — the company has effectively abandoned the project. The technologies and expertise from both startups is being incorporated into other Google businesses and projects, however.

5. What them so unique?

Previously I’ve written about the corporate culture at Google and how it isn’t likely to be an easy thing to emulate. Today at work, my coworker, Jackson, showed me this post that links to a slide show that delves into Google’s internal processes. Another post that I recently read was Steve Yegge’s post on Good Agile, Bad Agile, in which Steve explores Google’s version of agile.

Needless to say, it all adds up to a lot of Google on the brain. Google, at the moment, is held up as the gold standard of software companies. They have achieved massive success and are the company almost every developer wants to work for. Ask someone in the software industry which company they want to emulate and they will likely say Google.

Obviously, if it was easy to emulate Google, everyone would have done it or would be doing it by now. The more I think about Google, the more and more I think it is going to be impossible to emulate them. Certainly you can steal some of their ideas and what they’ve pioneered and put it to use in your company, but outright copying Google is going to be near impossible.

Having touched on Google’s corporate culture, let’s look at something else that makes Google even more unique: how it grows.

One thing that has become evident to me is that Google grows in an organic fashion, unlike any other company I know of. Google develops tools that are internally useful and then releases them to the world. Google does not develop products to sell to the world. Google does not have external contracts, at least in the traditional sense, as far as I can tell.

Let me elaborate on this. Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.

6. How competitive are they in the international market?

Having studied Google abroad somewhat significantly, I believe this article provides a very naïve view on Google’s success abroad. Absolutely, Google, as any American company, needs to be extremely aware of the impression they make when entering foreign grounds, as the risk as being seen as arrogant – the ugly American – is omnipresent. And, yes, Google should continue to grow their in-country teams significantly in order to best overcome cultural and sales hurdles and take advantage of unique opportunities and the gigantic world market that is growing at a quicker pace than the U.S. market. Recent stats point to European e-commerce in a position to surge past U.S. e-commerce.

Yet, don’t attempt to fool anyone here: Google has enormous international market share. Though I’m on a plane and not able to access these stats immediately, I believe that Google has approximately a 10-point higher share of search in Europe than they do in the States. I attended an online and multi-channel retail conference in London earlier this year, and Google was constantly mentioned, and never in a bad light. I am attempting to arrange a dinner in Paris later this year or early next with top French e-commerce companies, and Google is the likely sponsor, due to their relationship with the French agency that I am in contact with and their relationship with the likely invitees. Google is dominant in most countries, with their distant following to Baidu in China and the Russian example in the article notable exceptions.

In the UK, Amazon.com and eBay have also taken off after some early slips and command a dominant share of the market. Of course, they face hurdles, most notably eBay’s fraud and trust problem, but these American brands have also experienced tremendous success abroad. And there are other huge hurdles across Europe, such as Germany’s reliance on non-credit card payments and their language and cultural barriers. The European Union is still quite segmented, and pan-European plays will rarely be successful. Yet, the world continues to flatten, and American brands can have success abroad with fewer hurdles as can international brands have success in the States.

Google has had success with other products abroad, most notably its Orkut social network which has bombed domestically to its MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn brethren, yet has taken off in huge countries such as India and Brazil. So, sure, Google should be sensitive to cultural sensitivities and will face different regulatory environments abroad, but the truth is that Google has been remarkably successful internationally in large part due to the international word-of-mouth generated by their product and feature set.