Scavenger Hunt Project
1. According to the Census Bureau Website, the Median Family Income for Nassau county, New York is: $36,369
Address: Median Family Income
2. I chose Staples Inc as my company. The net income of Staples for the recently ended fiscal year was: $59,712,000.
Address: Net Income of Staples
3. Staples Price Earnings Ratio was 137.92, its industry PE ratio was N/A, therefore making the comparison of the two 0.00.
Address: Price Earnings Ratio
4. On February 6, 2002 Staples' stock was 16.97 at 3:59 PM. This was a change of -0.67 and a percent change of -3.80%, when compared to the prior day's close of 17.64. The high was 17.70, the low was 16.66. The stock's volume was 5,389,700.
On June 6, 2000 Staples' stock was 14.06. The high was 14.81, the low was 13.75. The volume of the stock was 6,805,300.
Address: Staples' Stock Values
5. The 30 firms that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average are Alcoa Inc., American Express Co., AT&T Corp., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., Citigroup Inc., Coca-Cola Co., E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Eastman Kodak Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., General Motors Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Home Depot Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., International Paper Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's Corp., Merck & Co. Inc., Microsoft Corp., Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., Philip Morris Cos. Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., SBC Communications Inc., United Technologies Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Walt Disney Co.
Address: Dow Jones Industrial Average
6. The closing price of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 6, 1983 was 50.00. The high was 50.00, the low was 49.00. The stock's volume was 60,300.
Address: June 6, 1983
Its current closing price can be found on: (on 2/7/02 at 12:34 PM the closing price was 53.92)
7. The top three ways to avoid Identity Theft are:
1. Destroy papers you don't need: credit-card and ATM receipts, checks or deposit slips, health insurance benefit statements, paycheck stubs, tax records and preapproved credit-card offers. Buy a shredder and use it.
2. Do not carry your Social Security number with you, never give it out unless absolutely necessary and do not have it printed on your checks.
3. Check your credit report each year. Investigate any accounts you did not apply for directly. To check your credit, contact one of the three major agencies: TransUnion 800-888-4213 (www.tuc.com), Experian 888-EXPERIAN (www.experian.com), or Equifax 800-685-1111 (www.equifax.com). There is a fee for this service.
8. Comparing Amazon to Barnes & Noble : The first thing I noticed about these two websites was that their layout is very similar. Judging from its website, Amazon is obviously very concerned with appearance. Its website is very cluttered and requires a lot of reading and "admiring" to find what you are looking for. I did not like the fact that its search button was on the far left of the website. The first thing you see when you enter Barnes and Nobles is the search button. Convenience and ease were certainly not the main goals of Amazon when designing its website. Most people go onto websites to get what they want and leave as soon as they can. This was much easier to do on the Barnes & Nobles website due to the lack of clutter. Sure, hearts and pictures are pretty, but are they necessary? In a society where people are trying to do ten things at once, websites should be something we can master without really wasting too much of our energy. I searched for my favorite book, Anna Karenina, on both sites and Barnes & Nobles came up with much more choices clearly listed. Amazon gave me three actual books and about 6 other pieces of literature that I did not ask for. This is why I prefer the Barnes & Noble website, although not as attractive as Amazon's, it was practical and enabled me to find what I wanted very quickly.
9. Although my company, Staples, also recruits here, I chose Smart & Associates, LLP ( www.smartassociates.com).
10. The service activity from Villanova's Campus Ministry that immediately appealed to me was the Bigs & Littles Program. I am a part of Project Sunshine on campus, and every so often we have kids come to campus. These are my favorite days because we are able to help these children in so many ways. I would love to become involved in the Bigs & Littles program here.
The Villanova Bigs
and Littles program was established in 1987 by Campus Ministry to provide
developmental opportunities for children in the South Philadelphia area.
The over-all objective of the program is for the "Little" to create a
healthy relationship with a Villanova student that is capable of addressing the
child's spiritual, social and interpersonal needs.
The main responsibilities of the Villanova "Big" are to make weekly
contacts by visit, phone, or letter with his or her "Little" and to
take the Little on monthly trips with the group. Bigs are also expected to
be active in developing solid connections with other Bigs by attending meetings
and participating in fundraisers.
11. a. Gardner Group Intraweb- We examine four areas of rapid technology development that exploit the capabilities of interactive e-channels: Web-based self-service, data mining, personalization and e-cash.
Personalization. Personalization in the form of customized portals (e.g., MyYahoo) and news notification against personal profiles are already mainstays of many Web offerings. However, most of today's personalization is human-driven, requiring users to explicitly state or select their preferences, or businesses to define rules to drive the customization. An emerging set of capabilities (based on machine learning and data mining) enables data-driven personalization, whereby the system learns the user's preferences automatically based on behavior such as click-through patterns or length of time spent in various areas of the site. In particular, real-time data mining enables a context-rich and immediate response and adjustment to customer behavior rather than relying solely on offline historical data. An early example of automated personalization is Amazon's use of collaborative filtering to provide its "users who bought this book also bought …" feature.
b. Article:
12. a. WAV- Dumb and Dumber is one of my favorite movies.
b. MIDI-A really good file we heard in class!
c. MP3- Gigi D'agostino!
d. GIF-
13. Download Free Programs for your computer!
Music Match is a lot of fun!
Purchase MusicMatch Jukebox Plus by Mail
14. a. Walter S. Mossberg is the author of The Wall Street Journal's weekly column on Personal Technology. On December 21, 2000 Mossberg's column featured two new portable CD/MP3 players, the Philips Expanium and the Pine D'music SM-200C. The major problem of the Philips Expanium is that there is difficulty navigating because it does not display any song information. The Pine D'music SM-200C also has a major problem. It's problem is that it causes skips in MP3-CDs and that it can play 5-10 seconds of static before starting a song.
b. Wall Street Journal News Folder- here you can find the articles I have found on my topic so far.
Topic: 1. What, if anything, are corporations/wealthy individuals (e.g., Bill Gates) doing in terms of helping charitable causes (e.g., AIDS research, aid to third world countries, etc.) and/or their local communities (e.g., sharing their executives with small businesses/schools, local sponsorships, etc.)? Do you think this is something these firms and individuals should be doing? As a shareholder of one of these companies, would you be pleased knowing that corporate funds are being used for such endeavors? Do you think these firms or individuals ever have other than an altruistic motive for getting involved in such activities?