September 16th, 2009

U.S. News’ Best Places for Tech Jobs

By Jackie Berg, Marketing Specialist

Using Onboard Informatics data, U.S. News & World Report introduced another set of its influential Best Places lists. The newest edition offers the Best Places for Tech Jobs for all the engineers and IT experts out there looking for a new gig.

“It’s a recession, so few things are booming and no city is exactly thriving. But within the tech industry, some cities clearly have more job opportunities than others. Although tech employment overall has suffered along with the rest of the economy, there’s been variance: High-tech manufacturing jobs have been shed more rapidly, while IT service jobs—in engineering and in software services, for instance—have fared better. And one future bright spot: Over the next three years, the federal government is projected to make 11,500 new hires in information technology jobs, according to a report by the Partnership for Public Service.”

Check out which cities made the list and how U.S. News narrowed down the initial list of 2000 cities.

Tags: Best Places, Best Places to Live, relocation, technology, technology jobs, US News.

September 15th, 2008

Lessons from a Genius

By Ira Monko, Product Manager

A genius is a person of great intelligence who shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work. Geniuses always show strong individuality and imagination, and are not only intelligent, but unique and innovative.

Source:  Wikipedia

Apple’s iTunes has dominated the online music retail market selling more than 5 billion songs since its inception.  The latest version , iTunes 8, includes a new feature called Genius.  Genius will find similar music based on the charactertistics of songs you select.  Ironic because this is hardly unique and innovative.  The Music Genome Project has been doing this since January 2000.  However Apple may succeed where the others aren’t.

Pandora, built using the Music Genome Project, is a free service  which generates most of its revenue through advertising.  They have been very successful at building a following with more than 1,000,000 registered users and an Alexa traffic rank of 757 (on 9/9/08).  Unfortunately they may close their doors soon because they can’t afford to pay the royalties on songs.

Apple on the other hand avoids royalities by adding value to the content, music, which the consumer already owns.  In addition to suggesting other music from the consumers library they will upsell songs & albums from iTunes therefore generating more revenue.

Apple’s genius isn’t in being unique and innovative.  But rather using proven technology to improve upon the user’s experience which will contribute to their success.

Tags: iTunes, technology.