全通翻譯/翻譯社

蘋果靈魂人物賈伯斯原汁原味辭職信你看得懂多少？

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

Acer on the Brink?

Acer has been at the forefront of Taiwan's tech industry for years. However, 2011 saw the computer giant post its first loss in a decade.

Despite slashing 300 jobs in June, Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang has said breaking even this year has now become impossible. The admission came less than two months after Wang had predicted a full-year profit for 2011 — the latest in a series of wonky forecasts. Three times in 2011, the company has been forced to downwardly revise its shipping projections. Most recently, figures of 5-7 million in tablet sales were adjusted to around half that amount. Meanwhile, the company has been the fourth-worst performer on the Taiex, its shares plummeting 65 percent. Fourth also represents Acer's market share standing, with Dell and Lenovo knocking it back from second over the past year.

Improve Your Efficiency at Work

More haste, less speed. So the saying goes. Many people spend a lot of time working hard without achieving desirable ends. Do you feel the same way in your working life? If you do, reorganize yourself today and become highly efficient in the workplace.

Make a To-Do List

Improve Your Efficiency at Work
2011 全球產業大事件回顧

一月

賈伯斯談生死觀──原汁原味史丹佛大學演講片段精選

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Can Tim Cook Up the Perfect Apple Recipe?

The late Steve Jobs will be a hard act to follow, but Tim Cook could be up to the task. Things initially looked ominous with Apple's stock tumbling in the hours following Jobs' resignation as CEO of the corporation. However, the leap to an all-time high of US$413.23 in late September indicates confidence in Cook's abilities to steer the ship through choppy waters.

Cook is hardly wet behind the ears, having helmed the company for two temporary stints in 2004 and 2009 while Jobs took leave for cancer treatment. The Alabaman came on board in 1998 as Vice President of Operations, having previously excelled in roles at Compaq and IBM. Jobs — a notoriously tough interviewer — had quickly dismissed several candidates, but was immediately impressed with Cook. One observer says Jobs liked the way Cook seemed “unflappable” under pressure. Cook quickly repaid Jobs' faith, setting to work on Apple's manufacturing inefficiencies. He drastically reduced inventory levels, and streamlined Apple's supply chain by closing far-flung factories and moving things to Apple's doorstep.

Zara's Fast and Furious Formula

The name Zara was well known to shoppers in Taiwan long before it opened its flagship Taipei store last November. The 36-year-old Spanish retailer has been described by Louis Vuitton fashion director Daniel Piette as “possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world.” What's all the fuss about?

Zara's success is down to maverick entrepreneur Amancio Ortega, who founded the company in 1975. With an estimated worth of around US$31 billion, he is now one of the world's richest men. Ortega has succeeded through strategies that fly in the face of conventional wisdom, using a customer-oriented approach that follows rather than predicts trends.

Yani Tseng Smiles Her Way into Record Books

In 2011, Taiwan's Yani Tseng won the Women's British Open by four strokes. At 22 years old, she became the youngest player, male or female, to capture five major championships, beating Tiger Woods by two years. Currently No.1 in the Women's World Golf Rankings, Tseng has swept 12 LPGA Tour victories across the globe.

Tseng emerged as an amateur star in Taiwan at 15, joined LPGA tournaments at 19, and has become an unstoppable force. An aggressive player, she blasts off the tee and always finds the pin. She made a big splash by winning the McDonald's LPGA Championship during her rookie season, landing her the 2008 LPGA Rookie of the Year award.

Fire in the Clouds

It has been labeled the “iPad Killer,” but just how much of a threat will Amazon's Kindle Fire be to Apple's tablet?

While some analysts see the two devices as tilting at completely different markets, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes the Fire can ignite competition through one factor alone: price. “What we are doing is offering premium products at non-premium prices,” Bezos told Bloomberg ahead of the Fire's launch in September. “There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less,” he added in a letter to customers on the Amazon home page. “We are firmly in the second camp.”

How to Get On with Your Boss

Dealing with your boss can always be a source of anxiety. After all, your boss is largely in control of your fate at work. This person can hire and fire you, give you a raise or a promotion, and generally give you a headache. Good communication with your boss can help you minimize bad vibes at work and allow you to perform your job better. Here are a few simple tips to follow.

Be Prepared

Optimize Your Online Research

In an age when there seems to be more information at our fingertips than ever before, online research should be a piece of cake. However, the vastness of the Internet can sometimes mean sifting through pages of online text — a bothersome and time-consuming prospect. With the right tools, though, you can sort the wheat from the chaff to ensure efficient information collection and integration.

RSS Feeds

Robert Iger Brings Disney into Digital Age

When Robert Iger stepped up to the plate to assume the mantle of CEO of the Walt Disney Company in 2005, he vowed to revolutionize the struggling behemoth. The world's largest media conglomerate was in need of a face-lift, and Iger believed he had just the right strategy.

His first major move was the eye-catching acquisition of Pixar for US$7.4 billion in 2006. What was initially seen as a gamble is now considered a no-brainer. A similarly bold move was the takeover of Marvel for US$4.3 billion in 2009. However, more recently it is Iger's forays into the Internet and digital technology that have been at the heart of the biggest change in culture that Disney has ever seen. In embracing 3-D, online gaming and a move into mobile devices, Iger has had a battle on his hands convincing Disney's traditionalists that technology is the way forward. “I believe in respecting the tradition but making sure that it evolves,” Iger told Harvard Business Review. “If you're too adherent to tradition, you tend to be less innovative.”

聽懂《魔球》作者麥可‧路易士原汁原味演說片段

I think it really is true to say that there's no such thing as being too stupid to be able to play baseball, that it is the sport you can play with just minimal amount of mental activity. And it attracts people who are qualified, and those people are not well-equipped to run regressions analysis or to think creatively about data, or to ask interesting questions about how you go about gathering data from a baseball field. So, in order to do this thing that the Oakland was doing, you had to bring in a different kind of person — a person a lot like the kind of people who are in this audience and who often had no experience in sports but had a lot of experience with thinking about data.

I was watching the Oakland players come out of the showers, and it was the first time I'd seen the team without their clothes on, and it was a really unpleasant sight. And I was sitting there watching them, and I thought, if you line those naked bodies up against the wall and asked someone to identify what those people did for a living, no one would guess they were professional athletes. No one would guess they were professional athletes. Maybe hedge fund managers, but no one would guess they were professional athletes. So, with this insight — or what I took to be an insight — I ran to the Oakland front office, and I said, I just saw your guys — and a baseball uniform covers up a lot — and I just saw your guys without their clothes on and we got to have some talking to do, because this was weird; they just look — they all look so bad. And Paul DePodesta, who was the second in command — Harvard graduate in charge of R&D — said in a funny way that's exactly the point. He said, for a player to become a member of the Oakland A's, he has to be defective in some way.

Bone: If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

As Apple products have taken the world by storm, manufacturers of Apple accessories have also cashed in. One company that has ridden the wave and made a name for itself is the brand Bone. Since 2005, Bone has set up more than 5,000 points of sale around the world, generating hundreds of millions of NT dollars a year in revenues.

Reads Lin, founder of Bone, always felt like he was skating on thin ice. Before Bone, Lin had an MP3 player company that lost out in its competition with major corporations such as Apple. With not much competition in the market, Lin decided that making silicone cases for mobile devices might be a good business. So he founded Bone, making protective cases and accessories for the products of his old rival — Apple.

Six Surefire Tips for Improving Your Social Skills

In so many ways, social skills — or lack thereof — impact on our professional and private lives. The good news is that even if your social skills leave something to be desired, there are surefire ways to improve them and raise your EQ in the process.

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