Day 3 --- 6/25/10

Another interactive class has already started... but I'm improving on my arrival.

Major topics of discussion for the day:

- Retail markets
- Technology
- WWW
- Social networking
- Software trends and issues

We discussed the articles we all contributed for the class. I contributed the first two articles for discussion.

The first article was about Internet marketing trends. I briefly mentioned the reason why I chose the article for discussion. I felt this article was reflective of how important Internet marketing has become in real estate. The article explains how important managing the digital footprint of businesses. Effective Internet marketing requires proper management of the online digital presence.

The ever expanding use of social media and mobile marketing is also another indicator of how internet marketing is evolving. Geomarketing (targeting marketing efforts to local searches) and video blogging (Vlogs) are also shaping the trend of internet marketing.

The second article was about network security issues and trends in network threats. Having seen how important online presence is in the real estate business and taking in to consideration that fact that web based applications are gaining traction in replacing individual computer applications, it is equally important to focus on the emerging network related threats.

New threats are increasingly targeting networks mainly through Non-vulnerability Based Attacks (NBA... silly me...I thought NBA meant nothing without Kobe somehow in the mix...). The article discusses Web Application Firewall (WAF) that compliments the traditional individual computer protection tools to deal with NBA ad other emerging threats.

The other articles dealt with topics including the mall vs lifestyle center issues...