Millenium bank is the latest bank to come in Romania. They got the licence (the BNR approval is no longer necessary) a few days ago and they started to recruit the core team.
Please note that Millenium BCP is european and comes from Portugal – in 2006 they wanted to buy BCR (the largest commercial bank in Romania). Millenium BCP is also the largest private bank in Portugal and in Europe they do business in Luxembourg and France (retail banking).
The new website will be millenniumbcp.ro and if you read this, you should probably prepare for a pitch
Manafu wrote a post here about the Romanian online advertising market in 2007. I’ll try to blog on every answer in the same order he presented it in the original post:
Rachad El Jisr
BMG Publisher, Founder iMedia:
- “Around 10 million euro. To be on the safe side: 8 million euro” Comment: Rachad El Jisr is able to gather valid data from the market. He first says 10 million and this is what the briefings at iMedia show – because he is not 100% involved online, he preferred to stay on “the safe side” and say 8 million. The figure comes also from the plans/talks they have with the agencies.
———————– Orlando Nicoara
General Manager, MPI:
- “somewhere between 6 and 10 mil, as we speak the market is not very “clear”, we’re waiting for stronger signals” (original: “undeva intre 6 si 10 mil, deocamdata e cam “ceata” pe piata, asteptam sa se mai ridice”) Comment: after Orlando quit his job at Netbridge he obviously started to lose his direct connection with the advertising market. Using phrases like “not clear” or ” waiting for stronger signals” shows his own insecurity on the matter. His answer “between 6-10″ also shows uncertainty on this field that he used to control. This time of the year, Orlando is not oriented towards selling the online campaigns but to develop new websites for MPI. Also, there is no important direct feedback from the agencies.
———————– Calin Fusu
Neogen General Manager:
- “I’ll say 7 million, 4 remain to the intermediaries ” – (original – “incerc un 7 milioane, din care 4 raman la intermediari ”) Comment: Calin betrays the fact that he is a fan for the CPC campaigns. His tone confirms that he is both a “rebel” on the local online market and not a big lover of the online agencies and brokers. When he says “4 million remain to the intermediaries” he refers to the fact that around 30% is often kept by the online broker and around 30% by the agency “selling” to the online broker – Calin doesn’t like these type of sales and he has reasons as he is more like a publisher. The figures can’t be very precise as Calin has no direct contact with the agencies.
———————– Radu Ionescu
Managing Partner, Kinecto
-”I’m in with 10-11 mil” (original: “baga-ma si pe mine cu 10-11 mil”) Comment: Radu Ionescu is connected to some people who buy online advertising and he had the chance to find some inside budget plans for 2007. We can also notice that he is very often optimistic – as he is not involved directly in the key areas of the industry nor has direct contact with the agencies, we cannot value this information.
———————– Doru Panaitescu
New Media Manager, Initiative Romania
- “8,5, 9 milioane euro net” Comment: Doru Panaitescu recently left ARBOmedia and these were the last figures he had from the inside. This interview came quite unexpected for Doru and he mentioned the 8,5 figure (as he remembered the last inside predictions) and after that probably said 9 because of his experience in selling. Doru is also an optimistic person and the figures reflect this but he is not anymore connected with the agencies. He’ll be a very interesting character to look after as he still has some connections in ARBO that will help in his activities later this year.
———————– Mirela Ciucur
Chief Internet Evangelist, Vodanet
- “from our estimations, based on what was performed last year and what do we have till now, we anticipate kinda 7-8 million EUR) (original: “Din estimarile noastre, bazate pe ce s-a performat anul trecut si ce informatii avem pana la data aceasta din piata, anticipam cam 7-8
milioane EUR.”) Comment: She had an elaborate and complex answer masking the fact that she is not a technical person and more PR oriented. The number is artificial and presented in a politically correct way – due to the recent movements at Vodanet (Boom) I estimate that only a few people there that can access the figures and predict budgets and I’m sorry to say that Mirela is not one of them althoug Vodanet still has some connections in the agencies.
———————– Calin Rotarus
Sales Director, ARBOmedia
- “10 mega” Comment: Calin seems very confident in his answer (he used “mega”) and probably has serious reasons to be so. His first predictions this year were around 8,5 and as I met him I asked him why is the difference. He answered me that ARBOmedia had a meeting with the agencies a few weeks ago and they had to recalculate the initial numbers in order to make a new prediction. Although Calin is also very optimistic (his nature as a sales manager) ARBOmedia seems to be the only player that can provide a credible prediction.
———————– Razvan Varabiescu
General Manager Media Direction
“9 milioane:)” Comment: This is the prediction of one of the most calibrated Buying Director in Romania. He is connected to the pulse in the agencies and has direct access to the budgets but tends to be discreet with the figures. When he says “9 million” and smiles, we probably can expect that he means 20-30% more.
This is just a text analysis made very late in the night after a long day so if you feel the need to comment, please do so!
Today I attended the Digital Marketing Forum and again I had a very long day.
Topics: new media and marketing evolution, new media tendencies, the mobile marketing, research, demographic studies, online branding, Search Engine Optimization, blogs, Text Ads, Viral campaigns.
Some of the speakers:
* Wim Vermeulen, Ogilvy Central & Eastern Europe
* Felix Tataru, Managing Director, GMP
* Ciprian Stavar, Internet Advertising Bureau Romania
* Andreea Zega, Orange Romania
* Cristi Parvan, Zenith Media
* Mugur Patrascu, iLeo
* Mircea Kivu, Ipsos Interactive Services
* Cristofor Iosub, Ogilvy One
* Adrian Alexandrescu, OgilvyOne
* Cristian Mezei, Kondiment
* Madalin Matica, DotCommerce
* Doru Panaitescu, New Media Initiative Romania
* Razvan Varabiescu, Media Direction
* Calin Fusu, Neogen
* Bogdan Nitu, Webstyler
* Calin Rotarus, ARBOmedia
* Nina Bratfalean, Porsche Romania
This was the first major event of the year and I’ll have to congratulate the organizers – these type of events are very useful for the online advertising industry
Late night this Friday I packed my backpack and went to Sinaia ad the ASLS guys invited me to host a workshop over there. The road was quite empty at 21:00 (when we left Bucharest) and we were there in no time. Although I had my laptop on all the time, I discovered that ZAPP has to improve the signal on the road to Sinaia.
After a quick byte and the fun long talks we had till 5:00 am , we decided to rest and as I had some urgent business I plugged-in in order to sent some e-mails. At 7:00 am I was ready to go to sleep after I blogged a little on Sorin’s page.
Indeed, it was a very short sleep as I woke up at 10:00 and the morning breakfast. At 11:00 we started the first workshop about mass-media, media control and ngo public relations. Quite fun and interactive and the guys seemed thrilled to see my drawings
At 14:00 we had our traditional lunch and made a short fun movie and one hour later we were back in the training room, this time talking about branding Romania, media subversions, threats and opportunities on the global market. We played movies, we talked a lot and had tons of fun till 20:00 – the NLP techniques helped me get my energy bar up and I got a good feedback in the end. I don’t plan to become trainer but It feels good to know that the 22 guys in the room didn’t fell asleep during my presentations.
At 22:00 we were back in the car and back to Bucharest as we had to prepare for this week and for an important event this spring.
Back home I discovered 1.500 unread e-mails in my inbox (spam is cool deleting) and over 500.000 pageviews sold by ARBOmedia – a massive online campaign at UltraPro for their IT shop.
I opened my computer this morning and I saw nothing about the BRAT meeting last night. I figured out that everybody is in silentio stampa after the long talks they had last week.
Gemius, Weborama and Spring were competing and due to the pressures in the market things changed in the last minute (everybody was watching BRAT’s every step and maybe some of this pressuse was caused by my blog posts).
The winner was Spring GMBH – Calin Rotarus (ARBOmedia) told me he was very happy for them (maybe because they are german)
Spring has a very interesting technical solution called pixelBOX or springBOX:
spring’s primary product it the springBox 2.0 framework. The springBox 2.0 solution is a modular, distributed, high performance, high-availability website-measurement and analysis-framework. Reports are generated and displayed near real time. It can be scaled to handle up to more than 25.000 requests a second on a single node and provides advanced fail-safe features. It is made up from the following components: the “springBox” which provides the different sensors for the actual measurement and pre-aggregation of the data and the “collector/unique client resolver” which collects and analyses the data gathered from the springBoxes, aggregates the data over time and into a unique client context, and provides management-components, interfaces to external databases and administrative interfaces for the management of all components. The questionnaire dispatcher that allows the coordination of questionnaire delivery and sampling. Due to its unique modular structure the springBox framework can be easily tailored to the specific needs of any organisation. It can be integrated easily into already existing infrastructures offering interfaces to OLAP-systems, different reporting engines, profiling systems and ad-servers.
With more than 20,000 measured page impressions per second, springBox 2.0 is feasible even for the largest websites and maintains measurement services even under highest load. Due to its elaborate technology, springBox 2.0 measures the core measures of your website and is currently the standard for internet measurement in 4 European countries.
With its modular architecture springBox 2.0 adapts to your demands regarding load and functionality and it can be seamlessly integrated into your already existing datawarehouses and reporting systems.
The bad news seem to came for the bigger websites – Neogen or Softpedia will have to pay around 16.000 EUR every year (quite high if you ask them).
The good news comes for the smaller independent websites (mainly from ARBOmedia) as ARBO plans to help them do the study – Calin Rotarus told me that he find my proposal very interesting.
Many friends told me these days that they really love me there at BRAT and I’m sorry I missed the talks they had last night (the meeting was over quite late).
Now, my eyes are on Spring GMBH because it seems that they could really use some money (their website news section was last updated in 2005).
Sorin Tudor noticed a study made by Synergize & Catalyst and published yesterday in Cotidianul. The study missed “myJob.ro“, one of the major recruiting websites in Romania and there are several clues that made me to believe that all the numbers are fake and this is an attempt in order to influence the market – Catalyst started a marketing campaign for a career event later this year and in my opinion this signal is not very healthy for the HR specialists…
This evening I had the chance to taste wines from Chile. MISIONES DE RENGO is imported in Romania by Vino Vero and I had the chance to meet some of the stakeholders. Of course, his Excellency, Carlos Guillermo Parker Almonacid (the Ambassador in Romania) had an interesting speech as Sergiu Nedelea (the local Sommelier) presented the premium wines. My favorite was a Sauvignon Blanc with floral and fruit flavor (quite special for a Sauvignon) – the smell turned my evening into a genuine celebration of good taste.
I enjoyed the event together with Vlad Tocae as I discovered that he is also a wine lover and we had a very interesting conversation about the online. The results you’ll see in a few years
As usual, the last to leave were me and Cezar (as the event was under Vinul.ro umbrella).
I’m happy to announce the new Ferrari Fan Club blog. We hope that this will be one of our major blogs on Ferrari and the F1 community as the 2007 season is about to begin. The page will have over 10 permanent contributors, all passionate and very fast – one of the leaders we have is Ionut Bratu and he will change gears during this season.
The online Ferrari fan club community is quite limited at this time but I’m happy to say that we have among us two Ferrari owners.
In the end, I just want to say that my goal is to have Magda and Corina blogging on the red cars. If not, I’ll be forced to reconsider our partnership and contract with ARBOmedia
A few years ago, this was the first viral campaign that reached me online. “All your base are belong to us” was a self-propagating message and for the first time in history had a rapid spread across the net and around the world as it drawn mainstream media interest.
I remember that I was one of the people involved – at that time, 2001-2002, I was a web designer and I stumbled upon this website. It was fun and indeed it opened my mind to the infinite possibilities you can explore on the Internet. I remember faking some of the pictures you can see online and even introducing the hidden paragraph “all your base are belong to us” in the pages ordered by my clients.
Today I had to prepare a paper about the viral campaigns and I remembered this.
Notable references in popular culture – from Wikipedia:
* On February 23, 2001, Wired provided an early report on the phenomenon in an article entitled “When Gamer Humor Attacks,” which covered everything from the Flash animation to its spread through e-mail and Internet forums to T-shirts bearing the phrase.
* In the March 12, 2001 edition of FoxTrot, Jason Fox (the nerdy youngest child) began to shout, “All your base are belong to us!” confusing his parents. Bill Amend has been known to incorporate “geek culture” into his comic strips, such as the MMORPG World of Warquest.
* On March 21, 2001, online parody news source The Onion jumped in to the fray with an article titled “Congress Adds ‘All Your Base Are Belong To Us’ Amendment To Bankruptcy Bill”, written in a style that conformed to the original gaffe-fueled fad. Stating that the U.S. House of Representatives had voted to do so “Seeking to increase fiscal accountability among citizens who have no chance to survive make their time,” in a measure disputed by opponents as “potentially set up U.S. the bomb.”
* On January 6, 2002, an episode of the television show Futurama (“Anthology of Interest II,” episode #403) featured a segment in which a robot from the arcade game Berzerk said, “All your base are belong to us.”
* On April 1, 2003, in Sturgis, Michigan, seven people aged 17 to 20 placed signs all over town that read, “All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time.” They said they were playing an April Fool’s joke by mimicking the famous Flash animation that ubiquitously depicted the slogan. Not many people who saw the signs were familiar with the joke, however. Many residents were upset that the signs appeared while the U.S. was at war with Iraq, and police chief Eugene Alli said the signs could be “a borderline terrorist threat depending on what someone interprets it to mean.”
* In February 2004, an automated news ticker on News 14 Carolina, a North Carolina cable channel, was hacked to display the message on television.
* When Google launched Google Base in October 2005, the phrase was twisted into “All Your Base Are Belong To Google” by search industry watchers such as John Battelle. Furthermore, in Google’s Hacker Translation, the “Personalized Home” link has been translated into “4LL `/0|_||2 B453,” which is Leet for “All Your Base.”
* On June 1, 2006, the video hosting website YouTube was taken down temporarily for maintenance. The phrase “ALL YOUR VIDEO ARE BELONG TO US” appeared below the YouTube logo as a placeholder while the site was down. Some users believed the site had been hacked, leading the host to add the message “No, we haven’t been hacked. Get a sense of humor.”
* In July of 2006, Livejournal.com changed one of its 404 error pages to an AYB reference
* In August of 2006 Google referenced AYB while announcing the publishing of a dataset of five-word sequences for use by the general public saying “All Our N-gram are Belong to You”.
And here is a video that made this movement so famous:
As I wrote here a few days ago, I saw Serban Ciusca (President ARBOmedia Group Romania) at the official TV launch and party.
In Germany, ARBOmedia sells Euro D and EURO STAR, 100% owned by the largest media group in Turkey, Dogan Yayin. Channel D was created in 1993 in Turkey and in co-operation with Burda and Rizolli they have 23 magazines, 8 daily papers (Hürriyet and Milliyet are the most popular), 3 film and TV-Production companies, 5 TV-transmitters as well as euro D and EURO STAR.
With nearly 7,000 coworkers the Dogan Yayin is the largest medium company in Turkey and today they started to broadcast in Romania (Kanal D).
Due to the close relationships ARBOmedia AG has with Dogan Yayin, there have been some talks with the local agency in Romania… but maybe we’ll talk about this some other time
Alexander Sigl 33, becomes member of the board of the ARBOmedia AG. As an executive committee diversification he is responsible for all new business fields of the ARBOmedia group. Alexander Sigl takes over the executive committee position additionally to its function as a managing director of ARBOvision.
After successes in Germany (two years ago with ARBOvision) Alexander Sigl opened the markets successfully with its team of 16 expelled specialists both in Czech republic and in Romania. Due to the collected experiences with co-operation partners such as T-Com, Dell, Kabel Germany and/or medium partners such as Ringier, Hubert Burda Media, group of publishing houses farmer, RTL Group decided to implement the ARBOmedia “erfolgsmodel” in 2007 in another 2 countries.
My previous post here managed to bring me some e-mails in my already full inbox.
First a request via e-mail from Arina Ureche (General Manager BRAT) asked me to delete a paragraph. Yesterday I met one of the BRAT founders and explained me how hard it was for them to set up the organization. At that time, the American know-how kicked in and people managed to get along. Now, the Internet project is more colorful and as I heard one of the companies already had a thought of retiring the offer for the study.
The second interesting mail came from ARBOmedia saying that they won’t pay for the study nor share costs – of course this is just an e-mail exchange so this is not official. I figured it out that they probably will pay for the study and after that will retain monthly fees from the publishers.
THE GOOD NEWS is that in their contracts with the publishers the 9.2 paragraph states that the publishers have to decide together with ARBOmedia the company who will perform the study. This probably means that every publisher in ARBOmedia has the right to express their preference for the company conducting the study/costs/etc. in order for ARBO to vote for a certain company. Till now, ARBOmedia asked the publishers only a website list to be included in the study.
THE BAD NEWS is that the independent consultant, mr Manuel Sala, Technical Manager at OJD Interactiva (spanish ngo similar to BRAT) came from a market much different to the one we have here. The FACTS are that in Spain there are NO audited demographic studies, NO user profiles and NO geo tracking. No, why is this guy a consultant for an audited demographic study?
The new system of audit for electronic means is not based on archives of log of servant as it came making until now. From now on, the audit will be made through the inclusion of a code (TAG in ahead) in the pages of the own means, which will make a request to the main servant of measurement, entering this way the traffic generated from the same pages unloaded by the users.
This TAG, consists of few lines Javascript and it does not have any graphical representation in the pages since it gives back an image it is transparent and it can be including anywhere of the page between
and .
A direct implication of the new system, that is once implanted, does not make lack daily send logs of servant by FTP, with the consequent consumption of resources in bandwidth time. (Don’t even want to know about THEIR FIRST SYSTEM )
Another advantage of the system, is that we can almost resist the information in real time through the user interface who will arrange itself to accede to the statistics of site. (Woow! )
An important improvement with respect to the previous system, is that new very useful statistics are included, like the one of unique users, listing of sections of site, etc. (no comment )
Imagine the brain damaging technology they have over there to show the unique users but let’s hope that the spanish consultant told BRAT more about the organization and shared some know-how from other areas.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens on the 22nd this month
Sportswomen have sprinted out of the shadow of their male counterparts to inspire with their own triumphs. Early pioneers fought sexist attitudes and lack of support to pave the way for today’s female sporting champions.
Who do you think is the greatest? Click here and vote for Nadia Comaneci!
Since I was at the Parliament this evening (for the ARTmania exhibition), I dropped by the party organized by Dogan. Backstage I could see Leonard Doroftei (Boxing World Champion) and probably he was the one of the few genuine stars (there were also Gheorghe Hagi and Elisabeta Lipa, both international figures).
I won’t talk about the local stars (since you don’t know them, you won’t miss them ) but I’ll try to post some interesting facts regarding the industry:
1) Uscat & Trofin from TVR are probably negotiating with Dogan (I saw them with the Turkish boss) and I wonder when their actual contract expires;
2) Since I sat at the table with Turkish staff I could see that they appreciate the belly dancing representations – they had “Fire of Anatolya” on the stage;
3) Serban Ciusca from ARBOmedia was there and also talking with some key persons – I wonder if the company had talks with Dogan in order to sell the tv advertising.
4) I know that you’ll hate me and this has nothing to do with the blog but the famous author Mircea Cartarescu doesn’t wash hands (if you know what I mean ).
I’ve also met “Zare” (some of you know him) and I was surprised when he told me he’s reading my blog. He had an incident with the president Basescu a few months ago and since then he told me that he is more and more into online activities.
Finally, the only thing I can say is that I’m happy for Nana since she’ll host her own tv show (I was surprised both to meet her this evening and to find out about this).
The exhibition Self-Timer, to be shown at MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), Bucharest, organized by ARTMANIA Foundation in collaboration with FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, the Embassy of Finland in Romania and MNAC, provides a first, comprehensive insight into the photographic and filmic work of five young artists from Finland. Their works focus not so much on great political and social themes. The artists capture their times in personal, everyday events, portraying the reality of their lives and their relations with the external world, or they formulate subjective emotions and personal issues in fictional narration reflecting societal reality. In photography and film they rely on the force of visual staging and a highly aesthetic visual language where appearances can prove deceptive.
Yes, I was at the Palace of Parliament this evening and enjoyed the exhibition. Congratulations to Codruta Vulcu for setting this awsome site in Bucharest.
I attended this morning his presentation at SNSPA as Dan Petre invited me a few days ago. Wally Olins focused his first part of his interesting speech on branding and brands – the second part was more appealing to me as he talked about country branding. I found very interesting the branding project they have going on in Poland and the 9 year project that is about to begin. He also mentioned that before starting the project they needed a 3 year study (the long time due to the political factor in Poland).
Wally Olins also mentioned that the opportunity for branding Romania is still out there and he underlined this idea later the day at his book launch.
Yeap, I bought the book (On Brand) and I couldn’t resist having it signed by the author – the evening event was quite crowded as all the local branding industry was there (the 3 competing companies): Aneta Bogdan (Brandient), Bogdan Branzas (Branzas Design) and Stefan Liute (Grapefruit).
By the end of this month a company will be chosen in order to mine the Romanian Internet. The companies competing are Gemius (Poland), Spring GmbH (Deutschland) and Weborama (France) – rumours point to Gemius being the “lucky” winner (Paragraph deleted – request via e-mail from Arina Ureche – General Manager BRAT).
These days, every BRAT member is creating his list of websites. We are represented by ARBOmedia so I already submitted my list. The BRAT study will be paid and although they say the amount is yet unknown (as the company conducting the study is not elected) the sums will be at least 500 EUR/year for a 500.000 pageviews website and no more than 10.000 EUR for a 50.000.000 pageviews website.
Of course, they plan to have some steps:
• 0,5 – 1 million views/month
• 1 – 5 million views/month
• 5 – 10 million views/month
• 10 – 50 million views/month
NOTE – I have the information above from an e-mail received from ARBOmedia.
Because of the contract that ARBOmedia has with the site owners, they say they’ll split the costs which is a good thing. This means that actually ARBOmedia will have to increase their selling power as they’re about to pay over 100.000 EUR for the 169 websites (if all the publishers will agree which I doubt).
On the other hand we have the same smiley faces at Netbridge because they sell 106 websites (Boom) and they still have to recover from the crash they had last year. They could raise serious problems for the BRAT projects as they already have the tools for the study and probably they already have the needed marketing informations on the Romanian users.
Overall, I’m sure that everybody will pay because of one important reason: BRAT is an independent organization.
- Country information has been updated as of 8 February 2007.
- In the Government category, the “Capital” entry has been greatly expanded and now contains up to four subfields, including significant new information having to do with time. The subfields consist of the name of the capital itself, its geographic coordinates, the time difference at the capital from coordinated universal time (UTC), and, if applicable, information on daylight saving time (DST). Where appropriate, a special note has been added to highlight those countries that have multiple time zones.
- The Transnational issues category now has a “Trafficking in persons” entry. Human trafficking connotes modern-day slavery and this important new field will include information on the most egregious countries (Tier 2 Watch List and Tier 3) as listed in the US State Department’s annual report.
- A new Appendix G lists Weights and Measures . The appendix includes information on mathematical notation and metric interrelationships, as well as over 400 examples of standard conversion factors.
-Revision of some individual country maps, first introduced in the 2001 edition, is continued in this edition. Several regional maps have also been updated to reflect boundary changes and place name spelling changes.
You can also take a look here:
- GDP (purchasing power parity): $197.3 billion
- we have $27.88 billion reserves of foreign exchange and gold
- 9.33 million labour force
- we have 57,470 Internet hosts
- there are 4.94 million Internet users (2005) – please note that ARBO reports 3.71 while PricewaterhouseCoopers says 5.50 (2006) and Trafic.ro 7.00 (oct. 2006).
I’ll be watching the CIA page for their next update regarding this matter.
Zghihara, Novac, Cramposia, Babeasca Gri, Babeasca Neagra, Babeasca Rose, Busuioaca de Bohotin, Feteasca Alba, Feteasca Neagra and Feteasca Regala. Francusa. Galbena de Odobesti. Grasa de Cotnari. Negru de Dragasani, Sarba and Tamaioasa Romaneasca – Catalin writes here about the Romanian wines and their ancestral secrets…
The iPhone launch – a great PR campaign based on competitive intelligence
When the iPhone was launched I wrote that it’s just a nice pocket pc. The product will be available much later this year and I wondered why the rush with the great launch.
Well, probably because until the product will be on the market, many mobile phone producers will have similar gadgets in the stores. There are rumors indicating that APPLE had briefings regarding the LG PRADA launch in February (the first real new generation mobile phone). The product is similar to the already well-known iPhone and will be in the stores in a few days. Based on the huge wave of sympathy, Apple announced a revolutionary phone but in fact they just shown an unfinished prototype (not authorized by the FCC, with both battery and software problems) but they received all the credits and all the media coverage. Meanwhile, there are companies loosing money because they already have a functional product and because iPhone announced the $599 – for the 8 gig and $499 – for the 4 gig. The initial plans for the new LG PRADA were to set a superior price as their product is setting new trends but the iPhone launch managed to change the marketing plan in the last month.
The LG PRADA cellular is also a touchscreen handset and is able to combine internet access with the mp3 music – the gadget is smaller than the Apple iPhone, measuring 98,8 × 54 × 12mm (iPhone measures 115 x 61 x 11.6mm). PRADA LG also has a 3 inch display with a 200×400 resolution while iPhone has a 3.5 inch display and resolution of 320×480. PRADA supports tri-band EDGE (900/1800/1900) and has a 2MP camera flash LED, a microSD slot, a 800mAh battery, 2.0 Bluetooth and also support USB.
The interface is based on Macromedia Flash and the software also includes a music player (MP3, ACC, ACC+, WMA, RA), and a video player (MPEG4, H.263, H.264). The phone also has the tools for displaying ppt, doc, xls, pdf, or txt files.
The new LG PRADA will be available in Europe to the end of February with prices beginning from 600 euro (approximately).
Now, if you develop a revolutionary product that will be ready next year and if you have information that the competition will launch the same thing next month, my advice is to go out there today and announce the big event – of course you don’t have yet agreements with the dealers, the FCC approval, the registered mark, but you can call it iCocaCola and can announce the “right price” so that the guys who lunch next month to encounter severe loses. Your stocks will also climb high in the sky while the rival will fall.
In 2002 Steve Jobs was considering the possibility of a mobile handset as an attempt to break into the technology markets. Because the mobile phones with built-in music features had begun to threaten the iPod’s dominance, Steve Jobs saw in phones a new business opportunity. VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTICE IS THAT Apple launched in 2005 an unsuccessful attempt to make iPod-compatible phones with Motorola.
Considering the facts above and if we exclude the great PR campaign, who is really bringing on the market a revolutionary phone: LG or Apple?
On thing is for sure: Apple will be remembered as the company who introduced this type of revolutionary product on the market and Apple shares jumped more than 6% on the day of the iPhone launch, while the stock of rival smart-phone makers plunged.
I called this post the iPhone hoax because:
- The product doesn’t have the FCC approval and Apple can’t force this authority to grant the approval until June;
- The product is not yet finished;
- The “iPhone” trademark is already registered by Cisco;
- Similar products are available on the market;
- specialists claim that the stock market was manipulated;
- Steve Jobs was not sincere in his promises;
- Other reasons that cannot be published
As a philosophy teacher, he posted the pictures on the Internet in order to start a public debate about Eastern-European hypocrisy and fake Victorian morals.
As we speak Gramo’s family is seriously harassed by the ex-communist scandal tabloids in Bucharest and their life is turning upside down as the main TV stations broadcasted without persmission personal photos of the couple. The scandal reached the University of Bucharest where Gramo is being investigated (the staff is still dominated by the old ex-communist professors).
Today, Gramo will be attending the university senate hearings and he risks being fired because of his personal blog. I decided to post this message and say “I support Gramo” and I also invite all my readers and friends to write about this and be there for the two Gramos!
SentiVinum is a wine that involves feelings and emotions.
Beginning with this month, SentiVinum will be a brand managed by Vinul.ro online magazine and I assure you that this is a world premiere!
The wine will be sold only online and in 4-5 luxury wine stores.
Of course, this is off the record, the press release will be available soon.
In a few minutes/hours netBridge will announce click2boom – a banner exchange program meant to compete with ARBOexchange (the service offered by ARBOmedia). The new click2boom will use the boom server and will be available on over 90% of their websites.
Because I like the guys at netBridge, I didn’t register click2boom.ro (since I had this information) but maybe someone will if you don’t hurry up
This is not a message from the future. Please read the following news very carefully – you’ll find the explanations at the bottom:
ARBOmedia forecasts that the 2007 advertising spend will come close to $1 billion (€700 million), representing a growth rate of 5.7%, double the growth rate of 2006.
The Internet spend is predicted to grow the most in percentage terms, 35%, to €26 million, but it represents only 4% of the total spend. TV still rules the roost and is expected to garner 48% of the market with a €333 million spend.
Explanations:
The statements above were made by the ARBOmedia Czech representatives
Czech advertising growth rate forecast is to double in 2007 and the advertising economy there continues to boom. The same trend will come in Romania in the next years – if sources in ARBOmedia Romania estimate a 8,4 million EUR market in 2007, by 2010 the local figures will probably be similar (proportional) to the ones they have in Poland and Czech Republic.
This is how a state (UK) protects the local business and this can be a model applied all over the world. Imagine that their advice will probably reduce the vulnerability risk (not only from terrorist threats but also from economic espionage). Note that this center was much needed as the threats regarding the UK based companies multiplied in the last years.
The center is government authority and set up by the MI5 (british intelligence).
The National Security Advice Centre (NSAC) and the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre (NISCC) have merged to form the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI). From 1 February 2007, CPNI will provide protective security advice to businesses and organisations across the national infrastructure. Its website presents a range of security advice including information on the threats, security planning, methods of attack, protecting your assets, publications and research. – MI5 Press release
The Central Intelligence Agency publishes and updates the online directory of Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments weekly. The directory is intended to be used primarily as a reference aid and includes as many governments of the world as is considered practical, some of them not officially recognized by the United States.
This page will be updated this week as the Romanian Min. of Foreign Affairs (Mihai Razvan UNGUREANU) was asked to resign the qovernment. Probably the CIA operator will not use the DEL (delete) key as rumours indicate UNGUREANU filling the Ambassador to the US position (published at the bottom of the page). So the analysts think that this will be just a cut/paste operation
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” – (original – “incerc un 7 milioane, din care 4 raman la intermediari 
