[Devils Workshop] “Steve Jobs sick leave takes toll on Apple’s health” and 2 more...

Steve Jobs sick leave takes toll on Apple’s health
Survey Monkey – Online tool to conduct FREE Market Research
How to ensure your passwords stay safe

Steve Jobs sick leave takes toll on Apple’s health

Posted: 19 Jan 2011 07:30 AM PST

When someone utters the word "Apple" most times you think of the name "Steve Jobs". The Apple CEO – Steve Jobs has a brand value which is synonymous with Apple. Apple has been smart to push Steve Jobs as their main spokesperson because Steve Jobs is a name everyone trusts and there is also the 'Wow' factor attached to him. Steve Jobs has been called a visionary and a creative genius. A couple of days ago Steve Jobs decided to take a leave of absence to deal with health issues. He had done this before in 2009 to get a liver transplant.

The immediate effect on Apple was seen on its stocks. They fell over 5% in one trading day. The fall was probably not as dramatic as imagined before, probably because the announcement of Steve Jobs taking a leave was done on Monday when the markets in the U.S were closed.

5 day chart of Apple stocks on Nasdaq

Will Apple keep innovating with Jobs on leave?

The main question is not about Apple's stocks but it's vision. Apple in that way is a one man show when it comes to showing vision. Apple does have its top executives and programming heads giving lectures or giving demos about their products. It is all done by Steve Jobs. If Steve Jobs is not with Apple, will it survive?

The next few months will see Apple unveiling iPad 2 and other products. This will give us a good idea on how well Apple copes without Steve Jobs' creative genius.

At the moment it looks like Apple health will be also tied to the health of its CEO Steve Jobs.

Do drop in your comments.

-- This Post Steve Jobs sick leave takes toll on Apple’s health is Published on Devils Workshop .

Survey Monkey – Online tool to conduct FREE Market Research

Posted: 19 Jan 2011 05:35 AM PST

Did you ever feel the need to ask your friends and colleagues about their opinion on some product?

Real-life Example:

Suppose if you are looking to buy a new Smartphone!

My Case:

I was looking for a new smartphone for myself and faced with tremendous confusion..

The Process:

I consulted many of my friends for their opinion on certain brands and models.

The Result:

The pattern I used to collect their opinion was somewhat haphazard. I ended up in an opinion-bin with lots of random opinion.

The Solution:

One of my friend's always keep saying, there is nothing you can't find on Google! Yeah, he proved right even this time, I searched and found the website "SurveyMonkey.com" which lets you create surveys for free and post them directly to your friend lists on Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook and other social networking websites.

All about SurveyMonkey

The website is all about doing Market Research in a formatted and organized way with even input data being validated.

Chose what kind of answer you are expecting by selecting the type of question.

One feature I must share is the question Logic which can be added to any question. The question Logic saves time by not asking questions which are not necessary. For example – If there is a market research on Nokia E5, ofcourse you would be looking for specific opinion from people who have actually used the mobile phone and not just from every passer-by. So if there is a question which asks "Did you use or presently use Nokia E5?"; for people who answer 'Yes' would be asked further specific questions or else the general questions would follow and finally the survey would end.

Safety of your data is guaranteed by SurveyMonkey which holds the US Federal Law Section 508 compliance certification. Data is carefully kept and is available in a PDF format also.
Generate charts, prepare real-time reports using the Survey results and even share them with your friends.
Now what? Do you want Survey Monkey to even write the questions for you? Obviously it can't, but it can definitely help with the available Question templates. Howz that?

Few of the above features are available only in the Paid plan which is available for as low as Rs. 415 per month (annual payment). To view the plan details, click here.

LINK: SurveyMonkey

-- This Post Survey Monkey – Online tool to conduct FREE Market Research is Published on Devils Workshop .

How to ensure your passwords stay safe

Posted: 18 Jan 2011 10:30 PM PST

When I first started using Online Banking, I was not really sure about what all kind of Viruses and Malware can affect my privacy. However as soon as I came to know about Malwares which can even steal what you type using your keyboard (called Key Loggers), I started looking for an Anti-virus which can protect me even against this kind of threat. This was when I found out that Anti-virus software are unable to scan for more than 20-30% of the malwares. My search ended at a small tool "Key Scrambler" which I found to be promising.

Key Scrambler works by encrypting the key strokes at the Kernel and decrypting them back at Application level. This gives no place for the Key Loggers to trace the original keys you pressed. The Free version of this tool let you protect your passwords and important data from Key Loggers but only for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Flock. The Pro and the Professional version let you protect a host of applications on your PC.