Rising Plastic Prices to Pressure Soft Drink Prices?

by dldamore

Bottle-grade PET is up more than 21% from a year ago and more than 24% since late September, according to ICIS, which tracks petrochemicals data.

via Plastic Prices to Pressure Soda Prices – WSJ.com.

*Full link is behind the great wall of subscriber

Wonder how much this will crimp margins for Coke and Pepsi.

Questions:

Will prices go up?

How much will prices increase?

Will unit sales decrease faster than prices rise?

Will revenue increase fast enough to increase profits or will customer decline to buy at higher prices?

Empowerment – Individual & Group

by dldamore

“When adults and kids see the power of self-direction and realize the benefits of mutual support, they tend to seek it out over and over again.”

via Seths Blog: Three ways to help people get things done.

People can inspire others. In doing so, it can create a sort of self empowerment that enables people to see and create at a higher level.

One of the things that has caught my fancy are tweetups (meetups with people one has met online, typically via Twitter). Some of the best conversations are had with people in these real life meetings. Some are just one-on-one, others are large groups, sometimes with as many as 25 or more people. Some of the best ones have just a few participants. Smaller groups usually create openings for each person to contribute. Smaller groups also foster a closeness and openness that large groups may crowd out. Some people are shy in larger groups and their thoughts and ideas are hidden from the conversation in such settings.

Google Reader Says

by dldamore

 

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Would have never guessed that I consumed that many. Now that I think about it, there was a time when I would read or view a few thousand posts a day. That went on for a few months. That was a time between jobs that lasted longer than I would like, lots of time was spent reading posts.

Note: Many of these posts were jobs. There was a time when using the RSS feature from indeed.com was very useful.

Reading Blogs

by dldamore

Several weeks ago I made the choice to read more blog posts. Before I could do that I had to clear out quite a few RSS feeds that were no longer relevant. Below is a chart of the recent activity in Google Reader. The blue bars represent posts that came in and the orange bars represent my use of Google Reader to consume content.

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Also, note the large increase in the number of posts that come in daily. More feeds have been added since many of the high volume low value feeds were removed.

How many blogs do you subscribe to?

How often do you read blogs?

Meetup Organization Tool – Tungle

by dldamore

At a recent meetup I met someone for the first time in real life. We only had time to exchange friendly greetings. There was an after party, but even there we were seated at different tables. Well, one way to actually have a conversation with this person is to invite them and two other people to meet for a tweetup. We have been following each other on Twitter for a while already. Since my suggestion to meet for a tweetup with two other people was public, someone jumped in and said they would like to be one of the two other people. So, we have three people with relatively unknown schedules. Mine is known to me and would likely be in conflict with most people during the week. My availability Monday through Friday is mostly in the morning. No afternoons and no evenings. So, there is a tool that at least 2 of the three of use are suing that would be perfect for finding common times of availability, that app is http://www.tungle.me/Home/. This should allow the third person to see when we are available so she can choose  a day and time that works for all of us.

Why Should I Follow People on Delicious and Create a Network?

by dldamore

Below is a screen shot of the recent bookmarks people in my Delicious network have created.

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There are more than sixty people I’ve added to my Delicious network. The real power comes when you follow people that are active in areas that interest you. Some examples might be Technology, Apple, Twitter, Social Media, Social Networking, Business, you get the idea. These people bring some of the best content from their areas of interest to their Delicious account. This effectively filters out all the content that is not worth saving and distributing. If you were a user that saved crappy links people would probably unfollow and think less of you. Most people will only save good or great content. By following smart and active people on Delicious, you get a great tool that is much like a search engine. There are also two other features that are useful to Delicious. The first is Fresh Bookmarks and the other is Hotlist. Consider joining Delicious.

Yes I am aware that there are rumors that Yahoo will shut down Delicious. You can get value out of Delicious today if you sign up. Getting value now, is more important than getting value in 5 years.

Google Knows What You Are Looking For

by dldamore

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When people share their website and email address they usually use some sort of space methodology to cloak the actual address or link. People don’t want spammers to find and gather up their email addresses. The above is an example search  for a website URL that was cloaked. Well, Google apparently can figure out what I wanted when it asks, “Did you mean: garyvaynerchuk.com.”

This makes it easier to get to where one wants to go. That was indeed the site I wanted to visit. Click, visit, enjoy.

Job Advice – Showing Up

by dldamore

A huge portion of success is showing up. Some people think that they are better off not showing up. That is a strategy that will lead to failure. When you don’t show up, you are seen as unreliable and as a liability.  It actually creates barriers to your success. People will not do anything for you if you build up a reputation like this (Exception: They will recommend you not be considered for a job or promotion).

Showing up means a lot, even if you are not the best. Once people know your strengths and weaknesses they will compensate for your weaknesses and help your utilize your strengths. Most people you work with will want to see you succeed.

Show up, it might be the best decision you ever make.

Barcode Payment System

by dldamore

The other day I read a blog post from the 37signals blog, Signal vs. Noise, about apps they are using. One that really caught my fancy was Cardstar, hadn’t heard of it before and it really solves a consumer problem.Itt eliminates those cards you have on your key ring and in your wallet. Those small cards are a pain.

The app creates a digital replica of the barcode that is found on the card the store gave you. When you need the card to get a discount, you open the app and have it display the appropriate barcode. You get the discount and don’t need to hassle with the cards.

Let’s take this one step further. A barcode that is used for mobile payments. Could see PayPal creating this type of functionality. Lower fees for the retailer on transactions would be a big selling point on getting this implemented. Credit card firms may also do this to make payments faster and more secure.

Security might be handled by using two 4 digit PINs. One as a user ID and the other as a security feature. The user ID would allow for more that one person to use the linked credit card or payment system. Purchases could be tracked by user and made into charts and graphs weekly, monthly or yearly.

Could see a secondary user being a child in some situations. Their PIN would have spending limits and it would be easy for them to see their spending balance as well.

*This is just a rough idea that came to mind during or after reading the paper this morning.

*Many people have their mobile phone with them at all times.