Business - page 6

It shouldn’t be a surprise really I predicted this many months ago here.  The USPS is one of most pathetic and mis-managed entity.  A company that has always been the same and never evolves.  You would think overtime as a business they would adapt to changes in the economy and introduce innovated technologies and ideas to mail easier and smoother…, however, its the same system only more expensive now.  Each year, as rates continue to increase, customers find cheaper and more affordable options.  It’s almost not even worth it anymore – 50 cents to send a small letter is about 50% overpriced.

As customers sending mail declines the USPS continues with operations and fail to adjust their staff and vehicles to manage less mail.  The infrastructure of delivering mail has been established for many years now…. so how in the hell are you losing money USPS?  It’s all overpriced profit with billions of pieces of mail sent every year! Not to mention all the other revenue streams you have like mail boxes and expedite services.

Honestly, we as customers need to look at this and say when do we just say no and let them fail.  I just tired of hearing all the complaining when I can easily calculate all the profit they are making.  They are just taking advantage of the the people and the system by continually asking for a stamp raise every year.  Perhaps the best option is just to let is burn to the ground and let innovation and entrepreneurs create a new more profitable system.

FACT:  The USPS posted a 9 BILLION dollar lost last year.  The USPS is requesting a 5%+ postage rate increase.

With all the talk about making liquor sales private and them losing money, Washington State Liquor Control Board is now building more luxurious liquor stores.  45% larger than the normal liquor stores they also include in  televisions (broadcasting messages) and a very nice wine tasting bar.  The new liquor stores are very much luxurious.  The stores also feature twice as much liquor which is about 2000 options. 

Don’t believe us?  Got check it out today it is located at:
4100 S.W. Alaska Street

Here is the problem with the Washington State Liquor Control Board and the business they are in. First, they continue to lose money which makes sense because every business the Government tries to run – loses money. That is a given. Second problem with the Washington State Liquor Control Board is that they should only be in control of safety issues and regulations only. They shouldn’t be in the retail business. We need to liquidate the Government’s involvement in a lot of things and anything they do that loses money, over spends, and could be managed and ran better privately should be done as fast as possible. There is no reason to continue on this path. It’s a complete failure not to privatize the retail portion of liquor distribution.

The Seattle Times had a picture of Gerry Ketchum, a Work First program supervision looking at the empty cubicles in his Belltown offices. He looks so lonesome. Maybe they can tape in some music like, “Are you lonesome tonight or something”. He says its like a ghost town and he just stops and wonders where all these people went. Well for sure they went on unemployment for the next year or so and they are not hurting. Obviously the world is still turning and the sun still keeps coming up so we will survive . He should realize DSHS has gotten so big that no one is accountable to anyone and it’s time to revamp the whole DSHS Agency.

I do not have a dog in this fight. I have never applied for welfare or food stamps. But when you look at people who you know that are on welfare and in subsidized housing it hurts. They are doing way better than I am in my old house and I worked all my life. That’s upside down to my way of thinking. You look at the gangs of young people hanging out everyplace and they certainly are not looking for a job. Who would hire them with their hat on sideways, pants on the floor, and ring in their nose. I live right beside a “welfare house” apartment. The residents are drunks and druggies and fairly young. They should not get a “stay at home check” so they can party 24/7. It’s a terrible dead end life but Seattle DSHS is making it possible. If these people had to get up every morning and go to a cafeteria type place for their breakfast, they would be way better off. Serve them up a good one. Make them help with clean up. Then they can go where ever they want until lunch and can come back and eat again. Have a dormitory type place where they can go sleep. The only requirement is they must be drug and alcohol free. You don’t help these addicts by giving them money. You do not feed their children. You simply are enablers.

The State has laid off 13% of their workers and said that was 4,700 job cuts. If that is the case then they had 36,153 workers. When you consider that only a few of these workers actually do something like repair offices or haul something the big majority just sits and decided who to hand taxpayers money to.  From many many stories the Seattle DSHS Agency is not following through on cases, and handing out money that can’t be accounted for, kids are being left in danger and more and more people are given checks and subsidized housing, with almost no questions asked. Look at the latest nightmare that DSHS created and now taxpayers will have to pay the damages, not the workers that caused it. (Read Here) It’s a horrible story about DSHS placing children in bad environments.  Wouldn’t you think the safest and most common sense approach would be a another family member (Grandma or Aunt Mary in Florida).  I know DSHS hears some terrible stories but every family has a good citizen and/or a couple happily married who would accept their own blood.   Did you know DSHS gets paid per investigated complaint and/or action?  Take note, DSHS is a messy Agency that needs a lot of work and as long as they are paid for complaints and doing action they will never care about the outcome.  It’s will always be in the best interest to find fault and spend our money on worthless programs that do nothing to correct society problems.

The United States Postal Service posted a loss of 3.1 billion dollars for the months of April – June 2011.  Total losses for the year are now at 5.7 billion dollars.  Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe, keeps saying that aggressive actions are being taken to reduce their costs due to less customer demand but obviously his “aggressive actions” are not enough.  I do know, however, that every year the postal rates continue to increase more and more.  Did you really think that you could continue raising your stamp rates and expect the public and technology to just stand by the sidelines doing nothing?   

The reality is technology destroyed the United States Post Office and it maybe to late to save it.  Banks have setup free payment options that make it extremely easy for everyone to get their bills paid ontime. Many digital PO Boxes are now available where your physical mail is delivered to them and with just a click of a mouse you can shread, read online, and/or forward your mail back if wanted.  The monthly cost is very small for the service. The Internet has setup their own payment options (like Paypal) which allow people to send money to an email address instead of the post office.

Our mailing and payment technology only continues to get better while the USPS continues to operate with an older mindset.  In short, like any business you must grow and adapt to public wants and newer creative technology.  Newer and better services are created because the current one in place lacks features or has become outdated (and increasingly expensive).  That is how our capitalistic World works folks.  They have failed due to their lack of technology upgrades (and services they could have provided to the public).  Since they had a monopoly pretty much in the postal niche they could have really capitalized on it – but they didn’t.

I’m sure their solution to this problem will be to raise postal stamps again.  They will also try to limit the days mail is delivered which will cause more damage for them.  What they should be doing is investing and building out better technology.  They need to create services like the ones above that let businesses (local or international) open PO Boxes in any state for a monthly fee.  It should allow customers/companies access to their mail online without having to go to the mail box.  Do they realize how much money they would make with a service like that?  Less gas, employees, trucks, and billing (it’s automated!).  How about a monthly service that pushes all your physical mail to your email address?  Millions of people (maybe hundreds of millions) would order that service for $12 bucks a month.  It would save people time, gas, miles, money, envelopes, etc plus it would be more secure.  Hell think if you made that service a global service where international companies could order one (capturing global currency revenue).  That is some serious hands free and automated revenue.  Many parents have a hard time packing up the kids just to go the post office or store and the monthly fee is easily worth it for them.

There is still opportunities available to make it work for the USPS.  However, technology will destroy them if major innovated changes are not made quickly.  Out the old and in with the new!

Bart Centre was so sure he wouldn’t be called to heaven today so he started a business to feed the pets of the people who ended up in heaven. Since the Rapture didn’t happen his post-Rapture care for pets left behind probably is not to popular today. He called his business Eternal Earth-Bound Pets USA.

As of May 10 he said he had 250 clients and I would imagine since then would be the busy time.  The cost for his service was $135.00 for the first pet and $20.00 for each additional pet. A rescuer would come to your home within 24 hours and get your pet. It didn’t say but I would imagine you needed to leave your door unlocked because all your friends and neighbors would be in heaven. How about the store that sells the pet food he needs, wouldn’t they be in heaven too? What if at the last minute he was saved and we had to face him up there? I would be pretty ticked off if that happened.

Well I am sure he is entitled to a big bail out of some kind. Just say his business failed and don’t say what kind and I am sure the Federal Government would write him a check for a million or more so he could figure out a new business.

The fools that signed up with him are still better off than the ones who gave all their property and money away. His fees were non refundable and I doubt anyone could find him today anyway.

Google has introduced a key algorithmic alter to its lookup engine, delicate in nature and maybe unnoticeable to quite a few end users, but 1 that need to significantly enhance the high quality of Google’s lookup outcomes.

With this particular transfer, Google is focusing on content material farms — a popular title for reduced good quality internet sites whose primary objective would be to appeal to lookup site visitors by piling up (largely) ineffective content material, ordinarily by both creating significant quantities of low-quality text or by copying it from internet websites with first content material.

Google doesn’t go into particulars in the alter which need to effect 11.8 % of Google’s queries (presently only inside the U.S., with strategies to roll it out elsewhere more than time), however it does say that it’ll impact the ranking of lots of web-sites to the internet.

“This update is developed to minimize rankings for low-quality websites — internet sites that are low-value add for customers, duplicate content material from other web pages or web-sites which are just not rather helpful. In the exact same time, it’ll supply greater rankings for high-quality web-sites — internet sites with unique content material and info for instance investigation, in-depth reviews, thoughtful evaluation and so forth,” clarify Googler’s Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts in a weblog convention.

Though the alter will certainly have numerous web-site entrepreneurs up in arms, complaining that their web site was unfairly ranked reduce than prior to (we’re positive that in some instances they are going to be proper), it is a extremely welcome 1.

The recognition of Google’s lookup engine is nevertheless 2nd to none, but Google continues to be plagued by black hat Search engine optimization procedures and content material farms for any although now, with the complaints from customers gradually mounting more than time.

If Google manages to place an finish to content material farms or a minimum of substantially minimize their affect in lookup outcomes, it’ll be an significant stage in regaining the believe in of its numerous end users.

End users in China are reporting that use of LinkedIn continues to be blocked all through the nation. By all indications, it appears the favorite profession networking web page has run afoul of your country’s notorious Fantastic Firewall.

Based on LinkedIn’s Hani Durzy, the corporation is conscious of the blockage in China and it is “currently within the method of investigating the scenario additional.”

The shutdown follows days of requires a “Jasmine Revolution” in China, to the design from the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Use of Twitter and Facebook continues to be blocked all through China for a while; Chinese web end users looking for to make use of Twitter have already been pressured to accessibility the internet site via difficult-to-use Virtual Personal Networks (VPNs).

Even so, Chinese dissidents have an additional method of accessing Twitter… LinkedIn.

Utilization of LinkedIn, that is totally integrated with Twitter, was by much the simplest approach to accessibility Twitter in China. Messages may be quickly study and posted by means of Twitter by way of LinkedIn.

1 Chinese Twitter person who accesses each Twitter and LinkedIn by means of a proxy posted photographs to Twitpic that appear to verify a Chinese LinkedIn outage.

Incorporating credence for the LinkedIn-shutdown-to-block-Twitter technique will be the information the Chinese government has began censoring the identify of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman from lookup outcomes within the wildly well-known homegrown Twitter/Tumblr clones Sina Weibo/QQ Weibo. Weibo indicates “microblog” in Chinese.

Huntsman faces prevalent expenses in China of assistance for that Jasmine Revolution immediately after a citizen journalist spotted him viewing a pro-democracy protest from inside a crowd this previous Sunday. Like any very good American overseas, Huntsman was standing outdoors a McDonald’s.

Based on The Wall Road Journal, Chinese dissidents have already been disseminating calls to protest and organizing activities through LinkedIn. Reuters notes the LinkedIn outage could damage the firm’s odds at an IPO:

“If the disruption for LinkedIn is long lasting in China, it could damage the company’s potential customers at an IPO being a ban would exclude the provider from your world’s biggest World-wide-web market–about 450 million customers and developing.”

“It undoubtedly could be a damaging when it comes to the company’s long term development and profitability,” stated Jay Ritter, a professor of finance in the College of Florida.

“This is some thing exactly where traders would get it into consideration and be prepared to pay out a bit reduced cost per share.” Thankfully for LinkedIn, China’s Web censors are notoriously fickle: Web sites blip on and off the Wonderful Firewall regularly, without any prior warning. Associated: Quickly Company’s Anya Kamenetz lately interviewed LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman. Study far more concerning the social networking web site as component of our Most Modern Businesses of 2011 challenge.

Apple on Thursday early morning unveiled a brand new line of high-end laptop computer systems that is about two times as quick because the older era, based on the organization.

The MacBook Professional laptops obtain a pace increase from quicker Intel processors, which may achieve “Turbo Boost” speeds of 3.4 gigahertz. In non-geek communicate, that signifies the computer systems can total 3.4 billion calculations per 2nd.

Apple says it is employing the “fastest dual-core processor readily available.”

The laptops also are the very first computer systems to function Intel and Apple’s “Thunderbolt” technologies, which is often a new approach to connect cameras, camcorders along with the website link towards the laptop or computer — an option to USB ports, that are ubiquitous right now.

Apple says these new ports are a lot quicker than current options.

“Ultrafast and ultra flexible, the Thunderbolt pipeline is a lot more than twelve instances quicker than FireWire 800 and as much as twenty occasions quicker than USB 2.0, and it provides unprecedented growth capabilities. It adjustments what you may do on the notebook,” Apple says in its marketing supplies.

The brand new laptops also have USB and FireWire connections.

The MacBook Professional computer systems — a number of the most pricey laptops in the marketplace — begin at $1,200 for any 13-inch design and go as much as $2,500 for any pc having a 17-inch display, when measured diagonally.

The computer systems include Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors. Their speeds assortment from two.0 to 2.7 gigahertz but can leap to 3.4 gigahertz, the corporation says. Apple claims these processors make the brand new MacBook Professional two times as quickly at processing information and 3 instances as quick at rendering photos.

Yet another new characteristic from the laptops — which, from images, search nearly identical to their predecessors — will be the addition of the FaceTime video clip digital camera. This can permit MacBook Professional customers to perform video clip chats with individuals on cell phones and iPods that assistance Apple’s FaceTime video clip chat app, which can be comparable to Skype. Formerly, iPhone four FaceTime customers could only chat with each and every other — not with individuals who had been employing laptops.

“FaceTime for Mac can make it simple to speak, smile and chuckle with pals and loved ones on their iPhone four, iPod touch or Mac,” Apple says in an advert for its FaceTime app for your Mac, which expenses 99 cents.

Some Apple followers had been in the beginning disappointed through the specs with the new laptops.

“I need to say it seems to be like they just needed to obtain this out from the way and transfer on towards the true major occasion, the iPad two. iPad will be the long term,” 1 commenter wrote in the weblog Apple Insider.

An additional complained that Apple up-to-date the MacBook Professional collection as an alternative to the MacBook Air, which can be a lighter laptop computer that boots up immediately.

“I’m positive several will probably be thrilled through the velocity, but I am majorly disappointed. … My hopes for any MacBook Professional Air are actually dashed…. Possibly subsequent yr …,” an additional commenter on that weblog wrote.

Other people weren’t wowed through the computers’ display resolution.

“Reeeaaallly disappointed with all the 1280×800 resolution? Why??” wrote a commenter in the Unofficial Apple Weblog, or TUAW.