Sony moves to sell cable tv via the internet

This past Tuesday Sony stated that it would start testing a "cloud-based TV service" later this year. The service would include a package of live television channels, on-demand TV episodes and a digital video recorder. This kind of bundle is similar in idea and price to the subscriptions sold by Comcast, DirecTV and Verizon FiOs, but is delivered through an existing Internet connection. This would give a larger variety of options customers. A consumer could buy broadband from an existing provider like Comcast or Verizon then choose from any virtual cable providers including Sony. This would allow live streaming on many mobile devices as well as television screens.


http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/07/technology/enterprise/sony-tv/index.html?iid=SF_T_River

022114 EconBlogPost- Facebook/ Whatsapp

       Over the past few days Facebook has continued to expand in communication and messaging. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg purchased Whatsapp for $19 billion. According to OnDevice Research, Whatsapp is the most popular messaging app for smartphones. Facebook's messageing app is the second most popular with Whatsapp being number one that list. This purchase will only strengthen Facebook's position in the world of instant messaging. Whatsapp is similar to traditional text messaging, it allows people to connect by using their cellphone numbers. But instead of paying for messages, WhatsApp sends the messages over mobile broadband. This kind of messgaing has become very popular, but they are not interested in driving revenue away from Whatsapp. Mark Zuckerburg said, "We are not looking to drive revenue from WhatsApp in the near term, instead focusing on growth." He also said he doesn't anticipate trying to aggressively grow WhatsApp's revenue until the service reaches "billions" of users. As Facebook continues to grow and dominate in the market for communication and messaging, we can wonder what others changes will come in the near future that will benefit our need for easy communication.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/19/technology/social/facebook-whatsapp/index.html?iid=s_mpm

       This week in class we discussed the circular flow model and the Free Enterprise System. The circular flow model represents the exchanges, interactions and transactions between consumers and producers. It is useful in economics to track transactions and to help improve the interactions between consumers and producers in the future. The second topic we learned about was the Free Enterprise System. The Free Enterprise System is another name for Capitalism. In this economic system anyone is free to start a business. It is based mainly on private ownership and the freedom of businesses to produce whatever they would like. In a free enterprise system, there is balance between consumers and producers. You support whichever products and producers you choose.

020614 EconBlogPost

        This week we talked about Karl Marx, and Adam Smith. We also discussed different economic systems as well as their strengths and weaknesses. We split into groups and were each assigned a person, either Marx or Smith. We researched about them, their beliefs and their ideas. We then presented them to the class through a dialogue. I enjoyed doing this, because it helped me to understand more about the different economic systems and also the opinions/beliefs of Marx and Smith. I think this topic will relate to other topics in the future, because there will always be discussion and debate over which economic system will work best in different situations.