Journal articles on the topic 'Groupon (Firm)'

Synopsis Groupon, an online coupon company, was one of many companies that considered an initial public offering (IPO) during what might be a second technology/internet/social media IPO boom in 2011. Some companies chose to postpone their IPOs, while others took advantage of the media attention focussed on technology companies, and in particular, social media firms. Should investors hop on the tech IPO bandwagon, or hold off to better evaluate the long-term prospects of tech companies, and in particular social media companies? Would the valuation of Groupon justify an investment in IPO shares? Research methodology The case was researched from secondary sources, using Groupon's IPO filing information, news articles about the IPO and industry research sources, such as IBIS World. Relevant courses and levels This case is appropriate for an advanced undergraduate or MBA corporate finance or investment elective. Most introductory finance classes do not have the time to cover later chapters in a finance textbook, where information about IPOs is generally found. It could also be used at the end of a core finance course, where the instructor wanted to introduce this topic through a case study of a hard-to-value internet-based company to illustrate the difficulties in setting IPO prices. The case could also be used in an equity analysis class, an entrepreneurial finance class or an investment class, to spur discussion about valuing an internet company and choosing appropriate investments for pension fund investing. This case could also be used in a strategy class, focussing on the five forces question, and eliminating the valuation question. Theoretical basis There is a great deal of literature about IPOs and their long-term performance. An excellent source is Jay R. Ritter's research, http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter, which has a longer time period and more data than could be contained in this case. IPO puzzles include persistent undervaluing of IPOs; in other words, the offer price is lower than, and sometimes substantially lower than, the first day close price. A second issue is the generally poorer long-run performance of companies after their IPO when compared to similar firms that did not do an IPO.

The Wooster Group's Hamlet created a space between the 1964 Richard Burton film, Shakespeare's text, and the live event. Cook shows how understanding mirror neurons illuminates the Wooster Group's production.

Purpose: The study aims to identify the main directions of intragroup cooperation, along with crucial areas of cooperation in business groups, and develops theoretical models of cooperation in a business group. Methodology: The qualitative approach is applied in the study that is based on the cross-case analysis of four business groups operating in Poland. Findings: Results indicate that business groups cooperate mainly vertically (cooperation between the core company and affiliates) in operations. Horizontal (among affiliates) and vertical cooperation in other areas – marketing, R&D, finance, and human resources – are not so intense. The study enables us to propose a theoretical framework of cooperation models in business groups based on two dimensions – the direction of cooperation and the number of cooperation areas. It leads to the identification of four models: two-sided loose cooperation, two-sided tight cooperation, multi-sided loose cooperation, and multi-sided tight cooperation. Implications: Identification of main directions of cooperation in business groups, along with areas of cooperation have implications for both researchers and managers. Findings of the study and the theoretical framework of cooperation models in business groups can be used as a basis for the further theoretical exploration of the organization and functioning of business groups in the economy and a strategic decision guideline for managers. Originality: The literature focuses mainly on the interorganizational cooperation between dispersedly owned standalone entities. Studies on intraorganizational cooperation in business groups are limited. The study aims to provide a better understanding of cooperation between entities in business groups.

Credit institutions often refuse to lend money to small firms. Usually, this happens because small firms are not able to provide collateral to lenders. Moreover, given the small amount of required loans, the relative cost of full monitoring is too high for lenders. Group lending contracts have been viewed as an effective solution to credit rationing of small firms in both developing and industrialized countries. The aim of this paper is to highlight the potential of group lending contracts in terms of credit risk management. In particular, this paper provides a theoretical explanation of the potential of group lending programs in screening good borrowers from bad ones to reduce the incidence of non-performing-loans (NPL). This paper shows that the success of firms involved in selected group lending programs is due to the fact that co-signature is an effective screening device: more precisely, if lenders make a proper use of co-signature to screen good firms from bad ones, then only firms that are good ex-ante enter group lending contracts. So, the main argument of this paper is that well designed group lending programs induce good firms to become jointly liable, at least partially, with other good firms and discourage other – bad-firms to do the same. Specifically, co-signature is proven to be a screening device only in the case of a perfectly competitive bank sector.

Abstract When do rebel leaders “sell out” their constituents in the terms of peace by signing agreements that benefit group elites over the rebel constituency, and when do they instead “stand firm,” pushing for settlement terms that benefit the public they claim to represent? This article examines variation in the design of civil war settlement agreements. It argues that constituents, fighters, and rebel elites have different preferences over the terms of peace, and that rebel leaders will push for settlements that reflect the preferences of whichever audience they are most reliant on and accountable to. In particular, leaders of groups that are more civilian-reliant for their military and political power are more likely to sign agreements that favor broad benefits for civilian constituents, while leaders who do not depend on civilian support for their political and military power will sign agreements with fewer public benefits. We test this argument using original data on the design of all final peace agreements reached between 1989 and 2009, and several proxies for the group's level of reliance on civilian supporters. Using a variety of statistical tests and accounting for nonrandom selection into peace agreements, we find strong support for our hypothesis.

The Science Museum Group's archive for the Electricity Council, held at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, includes films sponsored by the British Electrical Development Association (EDA). The three earliest films in the archive date from 1934 and share a director in Alexander Esway. During content development research for the collaborative exhibition Electricity: The Spark of Life and research into Esway's films for a paper given at the Material Cultures of Energy BFI film workshop Picturing Energy: Approaches to Energy Films, questions arose about the lack of attention shown to commercial and industrial films included in Rachael Low's definition of ‘quota’ films and also about Esway's significance as a film-maker and his place in the history of British industrial films. This article provides information about the three films, the man who directed them and the context of what was happening in both the electricity industry and the film-making world at the time, including why the EDA decided to use film in its publicity campaigns. It attempts to discover whether Esway has been unjustifiably neglected by film historians, with his career a footnote to those of his more famous peers, and questions whether his work for the EDA forms part of a body of commercial and industrial films that need to be re-evaluated.

AimsThis study was carried out as part of the Pathology Benchmarking Review and it audits the implementation of the guidelines for the reporting of blood films published by the International Consensus Group for Haematology Review.MethodsEach laboratory completed a questionnaire about the number of blood counts and blood films performed. Information was collected on the criteria that were used for preparing a blood film and whether they had followed the guidelines of the International Consensus Group.Results74 National Health Service organisations (151 laboratory sites) participated in the study. 24 laboratories had implemented the guideline, 21 with local modification, and 3 without modification. The reasons that prevented the full implementation of the guideline included the inability of laboratory information systems to be modified to include the guideline rules, the laboratory not agreeing with the guideline criteria, and the staff time required to implement the guide to justify the perceived local benefits of implementation.ConclusionThis is the first study that has assessed the implementation of the International Consensus Guidelines at a national level. Many laboratories had experienced difficulty in implementing the consensus guideline partly due to the complexity of the guideline. As a result 21 of the 24 laboratories that had attempted to implement the guideline had made local modification to the guideline. Since it was not possible to estimate the impact that local modification of the guideline would have on the percentage of blood films it was not possible to establish a benchmark of practice following implementation of the guideline.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse film festival spectators on the basis of their motives for attending as well as other variables linked to cultural consumption, the evaluation of the event and certain sociodemographic characteristics of attendees. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected at the Valdivia International Film Festival, the case study. In order to achieve the goals of the paper, a variety of statistical methods and techniques were used. First, principal component factorial analysis was applied to identify the underlying motivational dimensions. Second, the authors adopted cluster analysis based on the dimensions pinpointed in the factorial analysis in order to segment festival attendees. Finally, analysis of variance and χ2 analysis were applied to establish each group's profile. Findings – The empirical research reveals three motivation factors (discovery, entertainment and cinema) and three discrete groups of spectators, labelled as socially indifferent, film lovers and enthusiasts). They present different profiles from a consumption viewpoint. Research limitations/implications – The results provide useful insights into cultural policy and management of this kind of events, and even for those in charge of tourism policies in the city and the region. Originality/value – The paper aims to contribute to the literature addressing festival motivation for the specific case of a film festival, a field for which there are almost no studies into motivation, in a given geographical area South America which is active in creating festivals.

Previous experiments using the minimum-effort coordination game reveal a striking regularity—large groups never coordinate efficiently. Given the frequency with which large real-world groups, such as firms, face similarly difficult coordination problems, this poses an important question: Why do we observe large, successfully coordinated groups in the real world when they are so difficult to create in the laboratory? This paper presents one reason. The experiments show that, even though efficient coordination does not occur in groups that start off large, efficiently coordinated large groups can be “grown.” By starting with small groups that find it easier to coordinate, we can add entrants—who are aware of the group's history—to create efficiently coordinated large groups. This represents the first experimental demonstration of large groups tacitly coordinated at high levels of efficiency.

This paper is motivated by the apparent belief that IPOs are underpriced on the initial listing day and thereafter underperforms compared to the market benchmark. While evaluation of the listing day performance seems straightforward on surface, it actually invokes several complications for the subsequent performance measurement. This paper focuses on the evaluation of price performance of IPOs up to a period of 36 months including the listing day. It also examines the usefulness of IPO characteristics at the time of issue to seek an explanation for the post-issue price performance. The paper presents fresh evidence on IPO performance, i.e., short-run underpricing and long-run underperformance for 92 Indian IPOs issued during the period 2002–2006. It is reported that on an average the Indian IPOs are underpriced to the tune of 46.55 per cent on the listing day (listing day return vis-à-vis issue price) compared to the market index. Another contribution of this paper is the evaluation of the long-run post-issue price performance of Indian IPOs. The long-run performance of IPOs up to a period of 36 months are measured by using the two most promising evaluation techniques, i.e., wealth relative (WR) and buy-and-hold abnormal rate of return (BHAR), both being adjusted with market index, CNX-Nifty. Further, the results evidence that the underperformance is most pronounced during the initial year of trading, i.e., up to 12 months from the listing date followed by over�performance. To get possible explanations for long-run underperformance for Indian IPOs, factors like underpricing rate (listing day return), offer size, leverage at IPO date, ex-ante uncertainty, timing of issue, age of IPO firm, rate of subscription, promoter groups retention, and price-to-book value (as proxy for growth) are considered. Evidence is found, that initial day return, offer size, leverage at IPO date, ex-ante uncertainty, and timing of issue are statistically significant in influencing underperformance. However, there is no evidence favourable to the age of the IPO firm, rate of subscription, promoter group's retention, and price-to-book value impact on the long-run underperformance. The empirical results suggest that the investors who are investing in IPOs through direct subscription are earning a positive market-adjusted return throughout the period of study. But investors who have bought shares on the IPO listing day are earning negative returns up to 12 months from the listing date and expect to earn positive market-adjusted return thereafter. For future research, we suggest the extension of this analysis for additional explanatory variables including issue fundamental characteristics of IPO firms. The scope of the research study could even be improved by extending the time period of study prior to 2002.

A growing body of literature increasingly supports the notion that serotonergic dysfunction may play a role in violent behavior. These findings come from animal and clinical research that probes serotonin activity through selective animal breeding techniques, central nervous system measures of serotonin, and now the indirect assessment of central serotonin function by using whole blood serotonin. In this study, 20 men arrested for murder and referred for a mental evaluation provided blood samples to measure their whole blood serotonin. The results from these men were compared with those of a 93-person reference group. Statistical analysis confirmed an increased level of whole blood serotonin in the pretrial murder defendants. The murder defendants' mean blood serotonin level was 0.41 SD higher than the reference group's. This study also found elevated whole blood serotonin among men who self-reported at least one episode of fire setting or juvenile arrest.

ABSTRACT In-depth understanding of the factors that facilitate group learning and group performance is critical for firms given the preponderance of group-based work in modern organizations. A firm's management accounting system (MAS) can play a critical role in the development of group learning. This paper discusses the role of MAS on an important driver of group learning; i.e., the group's transactive memory system (TMS). TMS refers to a shared memory system whereby group members obtain mutual awareness of relative expertise of individual group members based on interactions between members. Significant extant research reveals positive effects of TMS on team performance. We posit that MAS can influence the development of TMS; for example, MAS can facilitate encoding, storing, and retrieving information for TMS development (the information effect). MAS can also assist in increasing employee motivation to effectively contribute to and utilize TMS (the motivation effect). We discuss these two effects of MAS on TMS and provide implications and directions for future accounting research.

The researchers in Interpreting Studies have underrated the importance of interpretation strategies in interpretation courses at the university level in the Iranian context. As a mixed-method study, the present study mainly aimed at discovering the subtitling strategies used in interlingual subtitling and bilingual subtitling by translation students. The researchers selected 30 homogeneous students majoring in Translation Studies which were divided into two experimental groups. During the treatment phase, the researchers worked with each group's students on subtitling strategies on a comedy film, following Peterson's (2005) strategies. The results of the post-tests confirmed that there was a significant difference for interlingual subtitling since the students’ scores increased significantly from the mean score of 24.53 to the mean score of 27.66 as well as for bilingual subtitling since the students’ scores increased significantly from the mean score of 22.80 to the mean score of 27.13. However, the results revealed no significant difference in students' interpretation scores for interlingual and bilingual subjects. The results of the interviews also supported the effectiveness of audio-visual activities on oral translation. Translation students should pay attention to how they foster their interpreting competence and find the type of subtitling that is more beneficial.

For short term applications (less than three years), it may be possible to replace traditional long term packaging materials such as titanium with a biocompatible polymer such as PEEK. This paper investigates the use of commercially available thin films to decrease the water vapor permeation rate through the walls of a PEEK package. It was found that most physical vapor deposition (PVD) and plasma assisted chemical vapor deposition (PaCVD) coatings tested did not provide a significant improvement in lifetime, due to the porosity of the films produced. This is mostly linked to the morphology of the films (i.e., growth in columns which are poorly bonded together, creating a porous structure) and is exacerbated by the high surface roughness of the machined substrates. Applying a lacquer before coating reduces this effect significantly, and we found that the time constant of our coated packages was improved by a factor of 2.3. Based on the findings of our group's previous work and this paper, the maximum achievable lifetime of PEEK packages with a thin film coating and desiccant is presented. As an example, a coated cylindrical PEEK package (using atomic layer deposition, ALD) with a uniform wall thickness of 2 mm, an internal cavity size of 1.5 cm3, filled with 20% of desiccant, has a lifetime of 18.8 mo (27.2 mo with 30% of desiccant). This would be sufficient for a range of applications and provide a cheaper and more versatile packaging alternative to traditional packages.

Title Bangkok beer & beverages: in pursuit of growth. Subject area Entrepreneurship, Strategic management, Importer/Distributor, Marketing, Environmental forces, Wine, Thailand. Study level/applicability Senior undergraduate or graduate MBA students taking a course in entrepreneurship, strategic management, marketing or small business management. Case overview Bangkok Beer & Beverages (BB&B) Company is an importer, distributor and marketer of premium spirits and wines in Thailand. The case takes place in April 2007, after the public announcement of BB&B's distribution agreement with Fosters Group of Australia to distribute the Group's Penfolds brand throughout Thailand. Coinciding with this milestone of BB&B is the rising interest in wine and the announcement by the Thailand Government to impose stricter regulations for the distribution and promotion of alcoholic beverages to curb consumption in response to demands made by several public interest groups. Within this backdrop, Pongchalerm Chalermsaphayakorn, co-founder and CEO of BB&B, was working with a team to consider future opportunities to pursue for sustainable long-term growth. Expected learning outcomes This case problem can be used to increase students' understanding of: how an entrepreneurial firm attempts to build/develop organizational capability; how decision-makers should assess the impact of, and respond to, the threat of significant and uncontrollable changes to the business macroenvironment; a firm's market position and the identification of strategic groups in an industry; and evaluating different growth opportunities and the implications on a firm's mission. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

ABSTRACT: Recently the FAA relaxed restrictions on the use of drones or Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) for commercial purposes. Markets for commercial drone use are in the technology trigger phase of the Gartner Group's Hyper Cycle, with developments occurring rapidly in real estate, agriculture (farming), the film industry, insurance, and other areas. Examination and inspection applications of drones have been proposed in heavy industry and cell tower inspection. Previous research suggests an incremental structure for implementing technological innovations such as continuous auditing (CA). In this paper these proposals are expanded to include the additional requirements to add drone technologies. This structure is extended here by (1) defining the use of drones in audit environments, with emphasis on the continuous versus occasional use of drone technologies, (2) extending the technical adoption architecture to include the use of drones, and (3) considering the types of drone usages amenable to both internal and external audits. A specific architecture is proposed here to prototype inventory counts in large warehouses or open-air inventories and that satisfies the suggested requirements. Additionally, this proposal adds value to the current research by extending the discussion of technology adoption in the Alles, Kogan, and Vasarhelyi (2008) paper to include the use of drones in many different audit environments by enumerating the usage types of drones in audit settings and by considering the prototype of such a system.

The OECD has emphasized that regions need to boost their growth by placing local resources and means in circulation in order to benefit from their competitive advantages. It encourages the search and analysis of those regional key factors that are driving development in the regions. Local authorities can boost their region with the use of territorial capital and the promotion of entrepreneurship. One of the ways how to do this is to buy food from local producers. Giving preference to local suppliers, even if it means spending a little more, can actually benefit a region’s finances. When local governments spend their money on locally owned firms, those firms in turn rely on and generate local supply chains, creating an “economic multiplier” effect. Each additional dollar that circulates locally boosts local economic activity, employment and, ultimately, tax revenue. In Latvia, since 2014, attention has been focused on increasing the consumption of local food. Improvements in regulatory enactments have been made, which stipulate that green public procurement criteria should be used in food procurement, where one of the criteria, the supply distance, directly contributes to this aim by giving preference to the local producers. The research aim is to analyze the data of local government food procurements carried out in Latvia from 2010 to 2018 and to evaluate the share of local suppliers in these procurements. The food procurement winners were divided into four groups: agricultural producers, food processing companies, wholesale companies and retail companies. The study evaluates how each group's share in total food purchases varies over the years, and how procurement volumes vary depending on the winner's belonging to the one of the groups previously defined. Such an analysis shows the proportion of local producers in procurement, but does not fully reflect on the volume of local production, as it is not possible to obtain data on the share of production which producer purchased from others to provide the necessary volumes of food, and there is no data on the origin of products supplied by wholesalers. The following research methods were employed to carry out the present research: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the monographic method, statistical analysis and the graphic method.

The investigation of personality traits of patients suffering from migraine headache with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is an important line of research, and differentiating syndromes in treating this disease is one of the characteristics of Chinese Medicine (CM). This study presents the MMPI-(Chinese edition) responses of 80 Chinese subjects with migraine and 40 non-headache healthy control subjects. Among them, migraine fire syndrome (MF) group consisted of 45 subjects (10 men, 35 women); migraine Qi stasis syndrome (MQ) group, 35 subjects (8 men, 27 women). The healthy control group was divided into healthy Qi stasis syndrome (HQ) group, 9 subjects (2 men, 7 women); and healthy normal (HN) group, 31 subjects (7 men, 24 women) according to CM diagnostic criteria. Statistical analysis was performed by pairs among four groups. The results revealed that both MF and MQ groups' MMPI profiles were significantly higher than that of the Normal (HN) group, and formed a 1.2.3.7 type slope. Profile deviation in the MQ group was slight, but in the MF group was serious and accompanied by a significant rising scores in F, paranoia (6), schizophrenia (8) and social introversion (0) subtests; HQ group's MMPI profile had a similar deviation as in the MQ group. The results suggest that CM migraine syndromes have an exact expression on MMPI profile, and that MMPI as an effective diagnostic method could be applied for CM syndrome discrimination. The "deviation of migraineurs' personality" may not be a special characteristic held only by migraineurs. The existence of different syndromes in migraine is one of the reasons that different scholars have reported different results on migraine by means of MMPI.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firms can use social media such as Facebook to recruit top job prospects. Design/methodology/approach – In the context of a fictitious event presumably sponsored by a potential employer, a sample of university students became members of a new private and secret Facebook user group dedicated to this event for a period of four days. They were exposed to event sponsorship activation messages varying systematically with respect to the mode of processing (i.e. passive or active) and their focus (i.e. the brand or the event). Findings – The results show that their expectations as regards the salary that they would require to become employees were higher in the active mode of processing. Also, their attitude toward the sponsor as an employer was more favorable when the activation messages focussed on the brand rather than on the event. In addition, further analyses showed that the effects of message focus and mode of processing on the attitudinal responses toward the sponsoring employers were mediated by the degree of elaboration and richness of social interactions of the Facebook group's members as well as their attitude toward the activation messages. Practical implications – Managers seeking to gain a recruiting edge through their social media presence should use online messages that stimulate more active processing and that have high entertainment value since this leads to more favorable responses toward the employer. These messages should insist more on the brand than on the event that is sponsored. Originality/value – This study is the first study to foray into the usage of social networking sites for recruitment purposes. It represents one of the few research efforts to monitor the interactions of users in a social media platform by means of a controlled experiment performed in situ through the creation of an ad hoc Facebook group.

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, there has been greater audiovisual collaboration between Latin American and Spanish filmmakers and producers. The year 1998 saw the creation of Ibermedia, a program that brings together Spain and Latin American countries to collectively encourage coproductions. While it is true that the participation of Spain, a country in which Ibermedia has headquarters, and the stipulation that Spanish actors be used in the group's productions gave the impression that it was a neocolonial project, in its twenty years of existence, Ibermedia has led to continuous production of Latin American films. This essay is the first of its kind, tracing the influence of Ibermedia in the development of Uruguayan cinema in the period 1998–2018. Using data from Ibermedia and the Uruguayan Cinema and Audiovisual Institute (ICAU 2008), it is clear that Ibermedia's contributions have not only encouraged sustained film production in Uruguay and boosted the cinematographic careers of two generations of directors, but they also contributed to the passing of the 2008 film law and the creation of the ICAU. However, this study also shows that the Uruguayan coproductions financed by Ibermedia take a long time to be released and, with some exceptions, perform poorly at the box office, although they earn important awards and nominations. Desde la última década del siglo XX, existe una mayor colaboración audiovisual entre cineastas y productores latinoamericanos y españoles. En 1998, surgió Ibermedia, un programa que nuclea a países latinoamericanos y España que participan de un fondo común que fomenta coproducciones. Si bien es cierto que la participación de España, país en el cual Ibermedia tiene domicilio legal, y la condición de utilizar actores españoles dieron la impresión de que se trataba de un programa neocolonial, en sus veinte años de existencia, Ibermedia ha propiciado una producción continua de películas latinoamericanas. Este ensayo es el primero de su clase, que traza la influencia de Ibermedia en el desarrollo del cine uruguayo en el período 1998–2018. Utilizando datos de Ibermedia y del Instituto de Cine y Audiovisual del Uruguay (ICAU 2008), es posible ver cómo los aportes de Ibermedia no solo alentaron una producción uruguaya sostenida que ha impulsado las carreras cinematográficas de dos generaciones de directores, sino que también contribuyeron a la aprobación de la ley de cine del 2008 y la creación del ICAU. Sin embargo, este estudio también pone en evidencia que las coproducciones uruguayas financiadas por Ibermedia se demoran en ser estrenadas y, con algunas excepciones, tienen un débil desempeño en las taquillas, aunque consiguen premios y nominaciones de importancia. Desde a última década do século XX, ocorre maior colaboração entre cineastas e produtores latino-americanos e espanhóis. O ano de 1998 testemunhou a criação do Ibermedia, programa que reúne a Espanha e países da América Latina para incentivar coletivamente coproduções. Enquanto é verdade que a participação da Espanha, país onde o Ibermedia possui residência legal, e a estipulação que atores espanhóis possam ser usados em produções do grupo dão a impressão de que o projeto seja necolonial, em seus vinte anos de existência o Ibermedia levou à produção contínua de filmes latino-americanos. Este ensaio é o primeiro de seu gênero, traçando a influência do Ibermedia no desenvolvimento do cinema uruguaio no período de 1998 a 2018. Usando dados do Ibermedia e do Instituto Uruguaio de Cinema e Audiovisual (ICAU 2008), fica claro que as contribuições do Ibermedia não apenas incentivaram a produção sustentada de filmes no Uruguai, como também impulsionaram as carreiras cinematográficas de duas gerações de diretores. Eles também contribuíram para a aprovação da lei cinematográfica de 2008 e a criação do ICAU. No entanto, este estudo também mostra que as coproduções uruguaias financiadas pela Ibermedia demoram muito tempo para serem divulgadas e, com algumas exceções, apresentam um desempenho ruim nas bilheterias, embora recebam importantes prêmios e indicações.

This Research is entitled The Analysis of the Financial Performance Companies which Included in groupan index to LQ 45 And JII by using ROE and ROAat IndonesiaStock Exchange in the Year of 2010. As for target of this research to know the difference between the mean of Return Equity on ( ROE) and Return On Assets ( ROA)of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have large asset and LQ 45 which have small asset, of the public companies is merged into go to group of JII whichhave large asset and JII which have small asset, and of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have large asset and JII whichhave large asset and also of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have small asset and JII whichhave small asset and of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have large asset and JII whichhave smallasset and also of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have small asset and JII whichhave large asset .The research method used is case study of the public companies which is merged into go to group of LQ 45 and JII ( Jakarta Islamic Index ) which are listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange. Analysis of the different test using the criteria of asset ownership, meaning the companies split in two groups of assets, the company went public that beraset beraset small and large. Where restrictions on the size of a company, obtained from the calculation of the average assets held by the sample firms went public in each group of assets While companies taken as sample is companies which enlist in two period of the announcement of Indonesia Stock Exchange or one fullyear of (2010) and data used in this research is data of secondary in Web IDX.Based on the hypothesis test results concluded that there are significant differences between the ROA average of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have large asset withthe average ROA of the public companies is merged into go to group of JII whichhave large asset or which have small asset. As well as that there are significant difference between the average the ROA of the public companies is merged into go to group of JII whichhave large asset with the average the ROA of the public companies is merged into go to group of JII whichhave small asset.While for the group of LQ45 indexthere is no significant difference between the ROA average of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have large asset with the ROA average of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have small asset. Meanwhile, for the ROE average in general there is no significant difference between of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45orthe group ofJII, except between the ROE average of the public companies is merged into go to group of LQ 45 which have large asset withthe average ROE of the public companies is merged into go to group of JII whichhave large asset.

Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multihoming (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multihoming, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own platforms, or they attempt to prevent their current complementors or consumers from multihoming. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of such strategies in the context of the online daily deals market. We first develop a game-theoretical model that takes into account multihoming on both sides of the market and strategic behavior of all participants—consumers, platform firms, and merchants. We then derive hypotheses and empirically test them. The empirical analysis leverages a policy change of Groupon that reduced information transparency and weakened LivingSocial’s ability to identify popular Groupon deals and poach the corresponding merchants. Our results show that limiting information transparency reduced multihoming: after the policy change, LivingSocial copied fewer deals from Groupon and increased its efforts to source new deals. Consequently, industry-wide deal variety increased. We also observe a seesaw effect in that reduced merchant-side multihoming led to increased consumer-side multihoming, thereby strengthening LivingSocial’s market position on the consumer side. Overall, after accounting for changes in both lifetime value of the customer base and acquisition cost of merchants, Groupon’s policy change reduced LivingSocial’s profitability. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Japanese Biotech Firm Develops Cheaper, More Efficient Biochip. TCM Chain Clinics to be Established in Hong Kong. General Biotech Co. Wins Taiwan's National Biotech Prize. India's Wockhardt to Double Turnover from Biotech Products. Moscow-based Firm Acquires Tata Group's Pharma Sector. Biotech International Further Acquires Subsidiary. New Medical Portal Launched in Singapore.

PurposeTo explore the emergent characteristics of IT portfolios in business-to-business (B2B) firms. The goal is to develop a model that clarifies what interaction capabilities B2B firms develop and to what form of IT this corresponds to.Design/methodology/approachWe apply an a priori conceptual framework that is based on the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group's theoretical focus on business relationships. The framework depicts the business relationship as dealing with uncertainty and equivocality as well as building and upholding reliance and trust. We utilize a case study approach involving a focal firm and ten of its customers and suppliers. Building on 60 interviews, field observations and archival data, we analyze interviewee responses and the complementary data to evaluate the role of IT in supporting or automated various aspects of organizational relationships.FindingsResults show how “high tech” and “high touch” relate to different interaction capabilities, which firms develop based on the characteristics of their business relationships. Although IT is associated with “high tech” and “high touch” interaction capabilities, some forms of IT are deployed to support the former, while other forms support the later. Both forms of technology-enabled interaction capabilities require investment, and firms must balance investment costs against the value created by improved interaction capabilities.Originality/valueOur findings emphasize the interorganizational perspective (dyadic or network) rather than a solely organizational perspective for understanding IT portfolio development. This perspective is presented through an emergent tech–touch interaction capability model that shows how B2B firms can align their IT portfolio based on the specific characteristics of their business relationships.

CZECH SURREALISM AND CZECH NEW WAVE REALISM: THE IMPORTANCE OF OBJECTS AbstractThis article examines a major difference between French and Czech Surrealism as exemplified by their attitudes to film. It engages in a close analysis of three films by documentary-influenced Czech New Wave directors whom the Prague Surrealist group admired: Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer and Jan Němec. The analysis focuses on the way in which objects in these films can take on multiple meanings depending on their context. It concludes that such objects suggest a broadening of possibilities in everyday life and in this respect correspond to both Surrealist goals and to the experience of living in a society in the process of political liberalization. The Paris Surrealist group's favourite Czech New Wave film was Věra Chytilová's highly experimental Sedmikrásky (Daisies, 1966); the Prague group, by contrast, preferred the documentary-style approach of Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer...

Information Technology Propels SingHealth into the 21th Century. India's Top Biotech Firm Receives Award for R&D. Biotech Company BresaGen Clones Australia's First Pig. Taiwan's Biggest Conglomerates Jump on Biotechnology Bandwagon. Roche Launches Brand Name Drug in China. NexMed Files New Drug Application for Sexual Dysfuction. Australia's Analytica Collaborates with Chinese TCM School. Taiwan Sinphar Signs MOU with US Nutraceutix. Hyclone of US Helps China's Institute Commercialize Calf's Serum. Barenburg of US Offers Free Grass Seeds to China's Largest Cow-Raising County. India's Candila to Introduce New Products. Tata Group's Rallis Downsizes. Indian Institutes Develop New Artificial Heart Valve Prosthesis. DuPont to Expand Operations in India. India's Aurobindo Pharma Offers AIDS Drug at Reduced Price to Local Market. Chiron and Rhein Biotech Jointly Develop Combination Pediatric Vaccines. Thai Company Aims to Create Herbivorous Pig. New Venture for Zydus Cadila. Takeda Chemicals Licenses Simulations Plus' Pharma Software.

ABSTRACTIn the Laser Chemistry Group's program aimed at understanding the basic mechanisms involved in the fabrication and characterization of integrated circuits, we have converted an infrared laser-based, thick film trimming technique, which is over 15 years old, to UV light. It is known that excimer lasers can be used for microfabrication of semiconductors and ceramics. Much cleaner ablations than those obtainable with the infrared lasers have been demonstrated in a large variety of materials. This, together with the fact that excimers with repetition rates over 1 kHz are presently on the market, leads us to propose that better accuracies and smaller drifts, should be achievable using excimer laser-based thick film hybrid circuit trimming. Results of XeCl laser trimming of over four hundred resistors, including temperature coefficient of resistance measurements and life tests at elevated temperatures, demonstrate that UV trimming is a factor of 10 better than the presently used infrared process.

The fansub group is called by New Weekly Magazine as China's greatest cultural exchange and educator in nearly half a century. The New York. Times also referred to China's fansub group as "a group that breaks cultural barriers." It is such a group in the gray area of copyright that has become a special and popular platform to provide netizens with translation of foreign film and television dramas to meet the needs of the audience, but can the fansub group escape the censorship of copyright? This article reflects on disputes between fansub group and copyright, Taking YYets Fan-sub Group as an example, analyze the historical development process and future development direction of the fansub group in China, and explain whether the translation of the fansub group's copyright constitutes piracy. Where should fansub group as a pioneer in breaking cultural barriers go? The purpose of this study is to explore the current situation of fansub group and the impact of copyright monitoring. Therefore, this study hopes to illuminate the influence of fansub group as a carrier of cross-cultural communication in Chinese society, and to sort out and analyze the process of legalization of fansub combination so as to make it a potential in the market.

Infinity Business Group, Inc. (IBG), a company specializing in the collection of bad checks, was incorporated in 2003. IBG recorded its collection fees as Accounts Receivable even before the Not-Sufficient-Funds checks were collected, a method not in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles; accordingly, IBG’s auditor should not have issued unqualified opinions on the financial statements during 2003-2008. A $23 million write-off of Accounts Receivable in 2009 had a devastating effect on the company and it declared bankruptcy in 2010. In 2019, the Bankruptcy Court ruled: (a) the auditor’s unqualified opinions violated the U.S. Securities Exchange Act, and the auditor was forced to plead guilty to one felony count of securities fraud; (b) IBG’s CFO was dishonest when he responded to an inquiry from a lender about the Accounts Receivable; (c) Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc. (MK), a brokerage and investment banking firm contractually affiliated with IBG, encouraged IBG to discontinue using the improper accounting method; (d) IBG’s President Cordell made a misrepresentation to MK in 2007 when he stated that all of the questionable Accounts Receivable had been written off; (e) in 2008, MK became aware that IBG might change the accounting method; (f) MK never encouraged IBG managers to breach fiduciary duties to IBG; (g) MK did not owe IBG fiduciary duties, but even if it did, there is no evidence of a breach because MK encouraged discontinuance of the improper accounting practice; (h) some of the managers and directors of IBG were innocent, they did not participate in daily operations of the company, and they did not have control of the company; and (i) notwithstanding the fact they did not commit securities fraud, some of the “innocent” managers and directors failed to discharge their duties to IBG by advocating for the continued use of the improper accounting method. On appeal in 2021, the District Court affirmed the Bankruptcy Court, holding that: it did not make any legal errors; the Bankruptcy Trustee did not adequately prove damages caused by MK; and the Bankruptcy Trustee’s claims were barred by the Doctrine of in Pari Delicto.

Engagement in any capacity with mainstream media since mid-2001 has meant immersion in the cross-platform, multimedia phenomenon of Harry Potter: Muggle outcast; boy wizard; corporate franchise. Consumers even casually perusing contemporary popular culture could be forgiven for suspecting they have entered a MÃbius loop in which Harry Potter-related media products and merchandise are ubiquitous: books; magazine cover stories; newspaper articles; websites; television specials; hastily assembled author biographies; advertisements on broadcast and pay television; children's merchandising; and theme park attractions. Each of these media commodities has been anchored in and cross-promoted by America Online-Time Warner's (AOL-TW) first instalment in a projected seven-film sequence—Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.1 The marketing campaign has gradually escalated in the three years elapsing between AOL-TW subsidiary Warner Bros' purchase from J.K. Rowling of the film and merchandising rights to the first two Harry Potter books, and the November 2001 world premiere of the film (Sherber 55). As current AOL-TW CEO Richard Parsons accurately forecast, "You're not going to be able to go anywhere without knowing about it. This could be a bigger franchise than Star Wars" (Auletta 50). Yet, AOL-TW's promotional strategy did not limit itself to creating mere awareness of the film's release. Rather, its tactic was to create an all-encompassing environment structured around the immense value of the Harry Potter brand—a "brand cocoon" which consumers do not so much enter and exit as choose to exist within (Klein 2002). In twenty-first-century mass marketing, the art is to target affluent consumers willing to direct their informational, entertainment, and consumption practices increasingly within the "walled garden" of a single conglomerate's content offerings (Auletta 55). Such an idealised modern consumer avidly samples the diversified product range of the parent conglomerate, but does so specifically by consuming multiple products derived from essentially the same content reservoir. Provided a match between consumer desire and brand can be achieved with sufficient accuracy and demographic breadth, the commercial returns are obvious: branded consumers pay multiple times for only marginally differentiated products. The Brand-Conglomerate Nexus Recyclable content has always been embraced by media industries, as cultural commodities such as early films of stage variety acts, Hollywood studio-era literary adaptations, and movie soundtrack LPs attest. For much of the twentieth century, the governing dynamic of content recycling was sequential, in that a content package (be it a novel, stage production or film) would succeed in its home medium and then, depending upon its success and potential for translation across formats, could be repackaged in a subsequent medium. Successful content repackaging may re-energise demand for earlier formatting of the same content (as film adaptations of literary bestsellers reliably increase sales of the originating novel). Yet the cultural industries providing risk capital to back content repackaging formerly required solid evidence that content had achieved immense success in its first medium before contemplating reformulations into new media. The cultural industries radically restructured in the last decades of the twentieth century to produce the multi-format phenomenon of which Harry Potter is the current apotheosis: multiple product lines in numerous corporate divisions are promoted simultaneously, the synchronicity of product release being crucial to the success of the franchise as a whole. The release of individual products may be staggered, but the goal is for products to be available simultaneously so that they work in aggregate to drive consumer awareness of the umbrella brand. Such streaming of content across parallel media formats is in many ways the logical culmination of broader late-twentieth-century developments. Digital technology has functionally integrated what were once discrete media operating platforms, and major media conglomerates have acquired subsidiaries in virtually all media formats on a global scale. Nevertheless, it remains true that the commercial risks inherent in producing, distributing and promoting a cross-format media phenomenon are vastly greater than the formerly dominant sequential approach, massively escalating financial losses should the elusive consumer-brand fit fail to materialise. A key to media corporations' seemingly quixotic willingness to expose themselves to such risk is perhaps best provided by Michael Harkavy, Warner Bros' vice-president of worldwide licensing, in his comments on Warner Music Group's soundtrack for the first Harry Potter film: It will be music for the child in us all, something we hope to take around the world that will take us to the next level of synergy between consumer products, the [AOL-TW cable channel] Cartoon Network, our music, film, and home video groups—building a longtime franchise for Harry as a team effort. (Traiman 51) The relationship between AOL-TW and the superbrand Harry Potter is essentially symbiotic. AOL-TW, as the world's largest media conglomerate, has the resources to exploit fully economies of scale in production and distribution of products in the vast Harry Potter franchise. Similarly, AOL-TW is pre-eminently placed to exploit the economies of scope afforded by its substantial holdings in every form of content delivery, allowing cross-subsidisation of the various divisions and, crucially, cross-promotion of the Harry Potter brand in an endless web of corporate self-referentiality. Yet it is less frequently acknowledged that AOL-TW needs the Harry Potter brand as much as the global commercialisation of Harry Potter requires AOL-TW. The conglomerate seeks a commercially protean megabrand capable of streaming across all its media formats to drive operating synergies between what have historically been distinct commercial divisions ("Welcome"; Pulley; Auletta 55). In light of AOL-TW's record US$54.2b losses in the first quarter of 2002, the long-term viability of the Harry Potter franchise is, if anything, still more crucial to the conglomerate's health than was envisaged at the time of its dot.com-fuelled January 2000 merger (Goldberg 23; "AOL" 35). AOL-TW's Richard Parsons conceptualises Harry Potter specifically as an asset "driving synergy both ways", neatly encapsulating the symbiotic interdependence between AOL-TW and its star franchise: "we use the different platforms to drive the movie, and the movie to drive business across the platforms" ("Harry Potter" 61). Characteristics of the Harry Potter Brand AOL-TW's enthusiasm to mesh its corporate identity with the Harry Potter brand stems in the first instance from demonstrated consumer loyalty to the Harry Potter character: J.K. Rowling's four books have sold in excess of 100m copies in 47 countries and have been translated into 47 languages.2 In addition, the brand has shown a promising tendency towards demographic bracket-creep, attracting loyal adult readers in sufficient numbers to prompt UK publisher Bloomsbury to diversify into adult-targeted editions. As alluring for AOL-TW as this synchronic brand growth is, the real goldmine inheres in the brand's potential for diachronic growth. From her first outlines of the concept, Rowling conceived of the Potter story as a seven-part series, which from a marketing perspective ensures the broadscale re-promotion of the Harry Potter brand on an almost annual basis throughout the current decade. This moreover assists re-release of the first film on an approximately five-year basis to new audiences previously too young to fall within its demographic catchment—the exact strategy of "classic" rebranding which has underwritten rival studio Disney's fortunes.3 Complementing this brand extension is the potential to grow child consumers through the brand as Harry Potter sequels are produced. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone director Chris Columbus spruiks enthusiastically that "the beauty of making these books into films is that with each one, Harry is a year older, so [child actor] Daniel [Radcliffe] can remain Harry as long as we keep making them" (Manelis 111). Such comments suggest the benefits of luring child consumers through the brand as they mature, harnessing their intense loyalty to the child cast and, through the cast, to the brand itself. The over-riding need to be everything to everyone—exciting to new consumers entering the brand for the first time, comfortingly familiar to already seasoned consumers returning for a repeat hit—helps explain the retro-futuristic feel of the first film's production design. Part 1950s suburban Hitchcock, Part Dickensian London, part Cluny-tapestry medievalism, part public school high-Victorianism, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone strives for a commercially serviceable timelessness, in so doing reinforcing just how very twenty-first-century its conception actually is. In franchise terms, this conscious drive towards retro-futurism fuels Harry Potter's "toyetic potential" (Siegel, "Toys" 19). The ease with which the books' complex plots and mise-en-scene lend themselves to subsidiary rights sales and licensed merchandising in part explains Harry Potter's appeal to commercial media. AOL-TW executives in their public comments have consistently stayed on-message in emphasising "magic" as the brand's key aspirational characteristic, and certainly scenes such as the arrival at Hogwarts, the Quidditch match, the hatching of Hagrid's dragon and the final hunt through the school's dungeons serve as brilliant advertisements for AOL-TW's visual effects divisions. Yet the film exploits many of these "magic" scenes to introduce key tropes of its merchandising programme—Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, chocolate frogs, Hogwarts house colours, the sorting hat, Scabbers the rat, Hedwig, the Remembrall—such that it resembles a series of home shopping advertisements with unusually high production values. It is this railroading of the film's narrative into opportunities for consumerist display which leads film critic Cynthia Fuchs to dub the Diagon Alley shopping scene "the film's cagiest moment, at once a familiar activity for school kid viewers and an apt metaphor for what this movie is all about—consumption, of everything in sight." More telling than the normalising of shopping as filmic activity in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the eclipse of the book's checks on commodity fetishism: its very British sensitivity to class snubs for the large and impecunious Weasley family; the puzzled contempt Hogwarts initiates display for Muggle money; the gentle ribbing at children's obsession with branded sports goods. The casual browser in the Warner Bros store confronted with a plastic, light-up version of the Nimbus 2000 Quidditch broomstick understands that even the most avid authorial commitment to delimiting spin-off merchandise can try the media conglomerate's hand only so far. Constructing the Harry Potter Franchise The film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone constitutes the indispensable brand anchor for AOL-TW's intricate publicity and sales strategy around Harry Potter. Because content recycling within global media conglomerates is increasingly lead by film studio divisions, the opening weekend box office taking for a brand-anchoring film is crucial to the success of the broader franchise and, by extension, to the corporation as a whole. Critic Thomas Schatz's observation that the film's opening serves as "the "launch site" for its franchise development, establishing its value in all other media markets" (83) highlights the precariousness of such multi-party financial investment all hinging upon first weekend takings. The fact that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone broke (then standing) box office records with its 16 November 2001 three-day weekend openings in the US and the UK, garnering US$93.2m and GBP16m respectively, constituted the crucial first stage in AOL-TW's brand strategy (Collins 9; Fierman and Jensen 26). But it formed only an initial phase, as subsequent content recycling and cross-promotion was then structured to radiate outwards from this commercial epicentre. Three categories of recycled AOL-TW Harry Potter content are discernible, although they are frequently overlapping and not necessarily sequential. The first category, most closely tied to the film itself, are instances of reused digital content, specifically in the advance publicity trailer viewable on the official website, and downloads of movie clips, film stills and music samples from the film and its soundtrack.4 Secondly, at one remove from the film itself, is AOL-TW's licensing of film "characters, names and related indicia" to secondary manufacturers, creating tie-in merchandise designed to cross-promote the Harry Potter brand and stoke consumer investment (both emotional and financial) in the phenomenon.5 This campaign phase was itself tactically designed with two waves of merchandising release: a September 2000 launch of book-related merchandise (with no use of film-related Harry Potter indicia permitted); and a second, better selling February 2001 release of ancillary products sporting Harry Potter film logos and visual branding which coincided with and reinforced the marketing push specifically around the film's forthcoming release (Sherber 55; Siegel, "From Hype" 24; Lyman and Barnes C1; Martin 5). Finally, and most crucial to the long-term strategy of the parent conglomerate, Harry Potter branding was used to drive consumer take up of AOL-TW products not generally associated with the Harry Potter brand, as a means of luring consumers out of their established technological or informational comfort zones. Hence, the official Harry Potter website is laced with far from accidental offers to trial Internet service provider AOL; TimeWarner magazines Entertainment Weekly, People, and Time ran extensive taster stories about the film and its loyal fan culture (Jensen 56-57; Fierman and Jensen 26-28; "Magic Kingdom" 132-36; Corliss 136; Dickinson 115); AOL-TW's Moviefone bookings service advertised pre-release Harry Potter tickets on its website; and Warner Bros Movie World theme park on the Gold Coast in Australia heavily promoted its Harry Potter Movie Magic Experience. Investment in a content brand on the scale of AOL-TW's outlay of US$1.4m for Harry Potter must not only drive substantial business across every platform of the converged media conglomerate by providing premium content (Grover 66). It must, crucially for the long run, also drive take up and on-going subscriptions to the delivery services owned by the parent corporation. Energising such all-encompassing strategising is the corporate nirvana of seamless synergy: between content and distribution; between the Harry Potter and AOL-TW brands; between conglomerate and consumer. Notes 1. The film, like the first of J.K. Rowling's books, is titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the "metaphysics-averse" US ("Harry Potter" 61). 2. Publishing statistics sourced from Horn and Jones (59), Manelis (110) and Bloomsbury Publishing's Harry Potter website: http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harryp.... 3. Interestingly, Disney tangentially acknowledged the extent to which AOL-TW has appropriated Disney's own content recycling strategies. In a film trailer for the Pixar/Disney animated collaboration Monsters, Inc. which screened in Australia and the US before Harry Potter sessions, two monsters play a game of charades to which the answer is transparently "Harry Potter." In the way of such homages from one media giant to another, it nevertheless subtly directs the audience to the Disney product screening in an adjacent cinema. 4. The official Harry Potter film website is http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com. The official site for the soundtrack to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone is: http://www.harrypottersoundtrack.com. 5. J.K. Rowling." A page and a half of non-negotiable "Harry Potter Terms of Use" further spells out prohibitions on use or modification of site content without the explicit (and unlikely) consent of AOL-TW (refer: http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/cmp/te...). References "AOL losses 'sort of a deep disappointment'." Weekend Australian 18-19 May 2002: 35. Auletta, Ken. "Leviathan." New Yorker 29 Oct. 2001: 50-56, 58-61. Collins, Luke. "Harry Potter's Magical $178m Opening." Australian Financial Review 20 Nov. 2001: 9. Corliss, Richard. "Wizardry without Magic." Time 19 Nov. 2001: 136. Dickinson, Amy. "Why Movies make Readers." Time 10 Dec. 2001: 115. Fierman, Daniel, and Jeff Jensen. "Potter of Gold: J.K. Rowling's Beloved Wiz Kid hits Screensand Breaks Records." Entertainment Weekly 30 Nov. 2001: 26-28. Fuchs, Cynthia. "The Harry Hype." PopPolitics.com 19 Nov. 2001: n.pag. Online. Internet. 8 Mar. 2002. Available <http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2001-11-19-harry.shtml>. Goldberg, Andy. "Time Will Tell." Sydney Morning Herald 27-28 Apr. 2002: 23. Grover, Ronald. "Harry Potter and the Marketer's Millstone." Business Week 15 Oct. 2001: 66. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Dir. Chris Columbus. Screenplay by Steve Kloves. Warner Bros, 2001. "Harry Potter and the Synergy Test." Economist 10 Nov. 2001: 61-62. Herman, Edward S., and Robert W. McChesney. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism. London: Cassell, 1997. Horn, John, and Malcolm Jones. "The Bubble with Harry." The Bulletin/Newsweek 13 Nov. 2001: 58-59. Jensen, Jeff. "Holiday Movie Preview: Potter's Field." Entertainment Weekly 16 Nov. 2001: 56-57. Klein, Naomi. "Naomi KleinNo Logo." The Media Report. ABC Radio National webtranscript. Broadcast in Sydney, 17 Jan. 2002. Online. Internet. 19 Feb. 2002. Available <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8:30/mediarpt/stories/s445871.htm>. Lyman, Rick, and Julian E. Barnes. "The Toy War for Holiday Movies is a Battle Among 3 Heavyweights." New York Times 12 Nov. 2001: C1. "Magic Kingdom." People Weekly 14 Jan. 2002: 132-36. Manelis, Michele. "Potter Gold." Bulletin 27 Nov. 2001: 110-11. Martin, Peter. "Rowling Stock." Weekend Australian 24-25 Nov. 2001: Review, 1, 4-5. Pulley, Brett. "Morning After." Forbes 7 Feb. 2000: 54-56. Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury, 1997. Schatz, Thomas. "The Return of the Hollywood Studio System." Conglomerates and the Media. Erik Barnouw et al. New York: New Press, 1997. 73-106. Sherber, Anne. "Licensing 2000 Showcases Harry Potter, Rudolph for Kids." Billboard 8 Jul. 2000: 55. Siegel, Seth M. "Toys & Movies: Always? Never? Sometimes!" Brandweek 12 Feb. 2001: 19. ---. "From Hype to Hope." Brandweek 11 Jun. 2001: 24. Traiman, Steve. "Harry Potter, Powerpuff Girls on A-list at Licensing 2000." Billboard 1 Jul. 2000: 51, 53. "Welcome to the 21st Century." Business Week 24 Jan. 2000: 32-34, 36-38. Links http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harrypotter/muggles http://www.harrypottersoundtrack.com http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2001-11-19-harry.shtml http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8:30/mediarpt/stories/s445871.htm http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/cmp/terms.html Citation reference for this article MLA Style Murray, Simone. "Harry Potter, Inc." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/recycling.php>. Chicago Style Murray, Simone, "Harry Potter, Inc." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/recycling.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Murray, Simone. (2002) Harry Potter, Inc.. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/recycling.php> ([your date of access]).

Until the 1980s research into computer technology was developing outside of a context of media culture. Until the 1970s the computer was seen as a highly effective calculator and a tool for the use in government, military and economic life. Its popular image from the 1940s to 1950s was that of a calculator. At that time the computer was a large machine which only white lab-coated engineers could understand. The computer was studied as a technical instrument, not from the viewpoint of the user. The peculiar communication between the user -- engineers at this point -- and the machine was described in caricatures like those in Electric Media (Brown & Marks 100). Many comics handled the issue of understanding. In one cartoon one engineer asks another: "Do you ever feel that it is trying to tell us something?" And in Robert Sherman Townes's novel "Problem of Emmy", the computer (Emmy) acts out of control and prints the words: "WHO AM I WHO AM I WHO AM I?". In these examples the man-machine relationship was taken under consideration, but the attitude towards the relationship was that of a master-tool way. The user was pronouncedly in control and the machine just a passive tool. After the 1980s the image of the computer was turning into that of a playful toy and a game machine, thanks to the game houses' and marketing departments' efforts. Suddenly the player was playing with the computer, and even fairly often got beaten by it. That definitely raises feelings towards the machine! The playing situation was so intensive that the player did not often pay any attention to the interface, and the roles were not so clear anymore. This was a step towards the idea of natural communication between human and machine. Later science fiction influenced depictions of virtual reality, and haptic interfaces mediated the ideas into reality. In this paper I will discuss the man-machine relationship from the viewpoint of interface design. My expertise is in electronic games, and thus I will use examples from the game industry. This paper is a sidetrack of RAID -- Research of Adaptive User Interface Design, which was going on at the University of Lapland, Finland in 1995-1999. The RAID project was about research into adaptive interface design from the viewpoint of media archaeology, electronic games, toys and media art. Early Visions Already in the 1960s, MIT professor J.C.R. Licklider wrote about man-machine symbiosis. He saw that "man machine symbiosis is an expected development in cooperative interaction between men and electronic computers". He believed that it would lead to a new kind of cooperative partnership between man and machine (9). Licklider's visions are important, because the relationship between man and machine was seen generally differently at those days. At the time of the first mainframe computers in the 1940s, man and machine were seen as separate entities from the viewpoint of data processing. The operator put in data to the machine, which processed it by its own language which only the machine and very few engineers could understand. Fear -- a fearful affection -- has affected the development of machines and the idea of man-machine relationships throughout the decades. One reason for this is that the ordinary person had no contact to the computer. That has led to fears that when cooperating with the machine, the user will become enslaved by it, or sucked into it, as in Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times (1936). The machine captivates its user's body, punishes it and makes its movement impossible at the end. Or the machine will keep the body's freedom, but adapt its functions to work by the automatic rhythm: the human body will be subordinated to the machine or made a part of it. What Is the Interface? In reality there still is a mediator between the user and the machine: the interface. It is a connector -- a boundary surface -- that enables the user to control the machine. There has been no doubt who is in charge of whom, but the public image of the machine is changing from "computer as a tool" to "computer as an entertainment medium". That is also changing the somewhat fearful relationship to the computer, because such applications place the player much more intensively immersed in the game world. The machine as a tool does not lose its meaning but its functionality and usability are being developed towards more entertainment-like attributes. The interface is an environment and a structural system that consists of the physical machine, a virtual programming environment, and the user. The system becomes perfect when all its parts will unite as a functional, interactive whole. Significant thresholds will arise through the hapticity of the interface, on one hand questioning the bodily relationship between user and machine and on the other hand creating new ways of being with the machine. New haptic (wearable computing) and spatial (sensors in a reactive space) interfaces raise the question of man-machine symbiosis from a new perspective. Interfaces in a Game World In games the man-machine relationship is seen with much less emotion than when using medical applications, for example. The strength of electronic games is in the goal-oriented interaction. The passivity of older machines has been replaced by the information platform where the player's actions have an immediate effect in the virtual world. The player is already surrounded by the computer: at home sitting by the computer holding a joystick and in the arcades sometimes sitting inside the computer or even being tied up with the computer (as in gyroscope VR applications). The symbiosis in game environments is essential and simple. During the 1980s and 1990s a lot of different virtual reality gear variants were developed in the "VR boom". Some systems were more or less masked arcade game machines that did not offer any real virtuality. Virtuality was seen as a new way of working with a machine, but most of the applications did not support the idea far enough. Neither did the developers pay attention to interface design nor to new ways of experiencing and feeling pleasure through the machine. At that time the most important thing was to build a plausible "virtual reality system". Under the futuristic cover of the machine there was usually a PC and a joystick or mouse. Usually a system could easily be labelled as a virtual theater, a dome or a cabin, which all refer to entertainment simulators. At the beginning of the 1990s, data glasses and gloves were the most widely used interfaces within the new interaction systems. Later the development turned from haptic interfaces towards more spatial ideas -- from wearable systems to interaction environments. Still there are only few innovative applications available. One good example is Vivid Group's old Mandala VR system which was later in the 1990s developed further to the Holopod system. It has been promoted as the interface of the future and new way of being with the computer. As in the film Modern Times so also with Holopod the player is in a way sucked inside the game world. But this time with the user's consent. Behind the Holopod is Vivid Group's Mandala VGC (Video Gesture Control) technology which they have been developing since 1986. The Mandala VGC system combines real time video images of the player with the game scene. The player in the real world is the protagonist in the game world. So the real world and the game world are united. That makes it possible to sense the real time movement as well as interaction between the platform and the player. Also other manufacturers like American Holoplex has developed similar systems. Their system is called ThunderCam. Like Konami's Dance Dance Revolution, it asks heavy physical involvement in the Street Fighter combat game. Man-Man and Man-Machine Cooperation One of the most important elements in electronic games has been reaction ability. Now the playing is turning closer to a new sport. Different force feedback systems combined with haptic interfaces will create much more diverse examples of action. For example, the Japanese Konami corporation has developed a haptic version of a popular Playstation dance game where karaoke and an electronic version of the Twister game are combined. Besides new man-machine cooperative applications, there are also under development some multi-user environments where the user interacts with the computer-generated world as well as with other players. The Land of Snow and Ice has been under development for about a year now in the University of Lapland, Finland. It is a tourism project that is supposed to be able to create a sensation of the arctic environment throughout the year. Temperature and atmosphere are created with the help of refrigerating equipment. In the space there are virtual theatre and enhanced ski-doo as interfaces. The 3-D software makes the sensation very intense, and a hydraulic platform extends the experience. The Land of Snow and Ice is interesting from the point of view of the man-machine relationship in the way that it brings a new idea to the interface design: the use of everyday objects as interfaces. The machine is "hidden" inside an everyday object and one is interacting and using the machine in a more natural way. For example, the Norwegian media artist Stahl Stenslie has developed "an 'intelligent' couch through which you communicate using your body through tactile and visual stimuli". Besides art works he has also talked about new everyday communication environments, where the table in a café could be a communication tool. One step towards Stenslie's idea has already become reality in Lasipalatsi café in Helsinki, Finland. The tables are good for their primary purpose, but you can also surf the Internet and read your e-mail with them, while drinking your tea. These kind of ideas have also been presented within 'intelligent home' speculations. Intelligent homes have gained acceptance and there are already several intelligent homes in the world. Naturally there will always be opposition, because the surface between man and machine is still a very delicate issue. In spite of this, I see such homogeneous countries as Finland, for example, to be a good testing ground for a further development of new man-machine interaction systems. Pleasure seems to be one of the key words of the future, and with the new technology, one can make everyday routines easier, pleasure more intense and the Internet a part of social communication: within the virtual as well as in real world communities. In brief, I have introduced two ideas: using games as a testing ground, and embedding haptic and spatial interfaces inside everyday objects. It is always difficult to predict the future and there are always at least technology, marketing forces, popular culture and users that will affect what the man-machine relationship of the future will be like. I see games and game interfaces as the new developing ground for a new kind of man-machine relationship. References Barfield, W., and T.A. Furness. Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Brown, Les, and Sema Marks. Electric Media. New York: Hargrove Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Burdea, G., and P. Coiffet. Virtual Reality Technology. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994. Greelish, David. "Hictorically Brewed Magazine. A Retrospective." Classic Computing. 1 Sep. 1999 <http://www.classiccomputing.com/mag.php>. Huhtamo, Erkki. "Odottavasta Operaattorista Kärsimättömäksi Käyttäjäksi. Interaktiivisuuden Arkeologiaa." Mediaevoluutiota. Eds. Kari Hintikka and Seppo Kuivakari. Rovaniemi: U of Lapland P, 1997. Jones, Steve, ed. Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997. Kuivakari, Seppo, ed. Keholliset Käyttöliittymät. Helsinki: TEKES, 1999. 1 Sep. 1999 <http://media.urova.fi/~raid>. Licklider, J.C.R. "Man-Computer Symbiosis." 1960. 1 Sep. 1999 <http://memex.org/licklider.pdf>. Picard, Rosalind W. Affective Computing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1997. "Return of the Luddites". Interview with Kirkpatrick Sale. Wired Magazine June 1995. Stenslie, Stahl. Artworks. 1 Sep. 1999 <http://sirene.nta.no/stahl/>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Sonja Kangas. "From Haptic Interfaces to Man-Machine Symbiosis." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/haptic.php>. Chicago style: Sonja Kangas, "From Haptic Interfaces to Man-Machine Symbiosis," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/haptic.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Sonja Kangas. (1999) From haptic interfaces to man-machine symbiosis. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/haptic.php> ([your date of access]).

The contemporary supermarket is a work of classification and cataloguing as marvellous as any museum. Barcodes are hallmarks by which its computer systems could know, in their own electronic language, every possible product of a certain kind afoot in the nation. It is a rather special institution in this respect -- a huge fund of contemporary synchronic cultural memory, a database and storehouse of collected human tastes to which individuals turn to seek out their own. However, this means that just as Wittgenstein demonstrated the impossibility of a purely private language, there can be no such thing as a purely private taste. Taste is demonstrated by choosing from a range of public items, that is, products. Therefore let's bracket the liberal concept of sovereign personal taste for now and beat a different track: the supermarket is the site of aggregation of multiple discourses by which the individual is sewn into and sews the fabric of collective life. Techniques used to sell food today, such as freebies (like plastic toys), free offers, forms of gambling, and images of healthiness, convenience, celebrity and enhanced relationships, appeal to -- must appeal to for commercial reasons -- shared values. It is inviting to view the supermarket as an emblem of a postmodern condition. The gaggle of images and words that line its aisles defy unity, play fast and loose with reality, create a simulacral space of copied quotes and sight bites that is coterminous with radically decentred selves. It conforms to the Jamesonian topography of a culture that has lost it -- that sense of real placed history that identity used to be tied up with. But my aim in this essay is to critique such a rhetoric of loss. Discourse remains the province of the self-imaginings of social groups in spite of the diversity of images in circulation. And although the media through which group solidarity is transmitted change with technological developments, the fact of such transmission does not. Hence, by looking at the imagery used on food packets, I will analyse the way that one rhetorical strategy used to sell the food we find on supermarket shelves -- nationalism -- is part of a longstanding cultural trajectory by which citizens of a nation imagine their relationship with their land. This, however, involves the equation of 'the nation' with the ethnic imagery of the group that dominates its political apparatus and territory, a process of circumscription that I shall ultimately suggest has political ramifications, especially in the context of nations like Australia which were formed by largely European settler colonisation of the land. Nationalism, then, is a strand of marketing rhetoric used most often, but not exclusively, for the promotion of products in the country of their origin. As such it grafts a tradition of art commemorating place and ethnic identity into the seemingly unlikely genre of the product label. Indeed, for Benedict Anderson the sociopolitical sentiment of nationalism requires forums and images through which to articulate itself, or more accurately, to imaginatively create its auratic object of adoration -- as nationalism is itself innovative (Anderson 15). It also depends upon technologies that can produce a sense of simultaneity between dispersed people who will never meet each other. The distribution of the packaged 'gifts' of a land to 'its people' provides one such opportunity for the transmission of sacralised images of land and the solidarity of its inhabitants. So the genre of the label that comes with a specific distribution and selling system provides the technical medium, and the land, its produce, its people and their relationships in ecosocial community, form the imagery. A limit case example of pride in the gifts of the land can be found on the label of New Zealand's Steinlager: "New Zealand's Finest ... World's Best Lager ... Brewed with the finest New Zealand Hops, Yeast, Barley and Pure Water ... Since 1854". It embodies a series of associations found in other examples: the products of the land are associated with firstly, high quality, and secondly, natural purity. New Zealand seems to be repeated with two slightly different senses. In its juxtaposition with "the world", the two places centre on the finished product of lager, which is presented as a literally world-beating national product. The last line of the label reads "Brewed and Bottled by New Zealand Breweries Limited", the company name both emphasising the agency of New Zealand people in processing ingredients taken from their land's soil, and the legally New Zealandian status of their enterprise. The second sense implies the physical basis for all this: the giftedness of the land which subtends an economy and a culture. "Since 1854" brings these components together on the axis of continuity, making the origination of national production temporal as well as spatial. In other words this benign relationship of production becomes part of national heritage. A certain double sense is in play. Land is both a nation comprising citizens and physical resource; the word that perfectly fuses the sense of the former's political proprietary relationship with the latter into a working unity. Accordingly many packets transfigure the legal requirement to mention the place of production into an attention-grabbing declaration of country of origin whilst also referring to the physical land. The latter may be parsed into two general categories: imagery of animals, plants, landscapes, the elements, etc, and rustic images of human management of the land. So Bulla ice cream advertises its Australianness to a pastoral backdrop; Saxa salt, which has been "Australia's own ... Since 1911", is being hauled by a hat-wearing Aussie man and loyal horse; Bundaberg caster sugar is both "pure Australian" and "Australian made" thanks to the blessing of the (Australian) sun. And other products, such as Australian Natural Foods Non Dairy Soy Mango Smoothie and Pureland Organic Tofu make links between nation and nature through 'land-based' company names similarly buttressed by images of Australian agricultural landscape and the Australian made hallmark respectively. The three conceptual categories often found in correlation with the concrete particulars of 'the land' -- healthiness, purity and naturalness -- are well represented in the packets analysed here. A series of metonymic implications is set up between the terms. They are all potential qualities of the land that are realised in the products it yields. Pureland and Australian Natural Foods juxtapose nation and healthiness closely and the pastoral visions of Bürgen and Dairy Vale have the approval of the National Heart Foundation. Bundaberg and Pureland make the most direct appeals to purity, but concepts such as Bulla's "Australian made real dairy" and Devondale's "choice grade" and "premium Australian" also convey a certain sense of uncorrupted pedigree in their products' provenance. Most products seem to evoke naturalness pictorially, with green rolling landscapes and cows feeding on the verdure featuring particularly highly. Thus at this point a critique of capitalist industrial culture is possible. The missing links are the contemporary factory and office: the places of the processing and assembly of the product physically and discursively; the places where the fruits of the land meet their packaging and are primed for the marketplace. The gifts of nature become commodities but are inscribed as the gifts of nature still, such that the point of sale obfuscates the point of production: profit. The whole enterprise seems to be based on a principle of distantiation. Because of urbanisation, the vast majority of people live away from farm land, and because most food is not consumed by the local communities that produce it, but is produced for larger markets, it is packed and written upon for transport to strangers who will buy it and perhaps also an idealisation of the land. Yet they aren't strangers. This mediation of group solidarity by food-as-commodity does not tear social bonds apart, it forms them. It forms ecosocial community just as it provides a projection of one. And the very invocation of group loyalty as the reason for buying means we should question, as John Frow has done, whether the commodity is always simply a token of abstraction in conceptual opposition to 'the gift' (Frow, "Gift and Commodity"). It is not simply the case that capitalists dupe consumers into thinking of commodities in gift-like terms. Indeed, the discourses of the land we find on supermarket shelves go back a long way in Western culture. As Raymond Williams says: "in English, 'country' is both a nation and a part of a 'land'; 'the country' can be the whole society or its rural area. In the long history of human settlements, this connection between the land from which directly or indirectly we all get our living and the achievements of human society has been deeply known" (1). The majority of the packets analysed extend the pastoral tradition of European art, a tradition which determines the "innate bounty" (33) of the land as the province of benign, 'total' social relations as reflected in the "timeless rhythm" of the authentic agrarian life (10). But the pastoral tradition is itself a media technical one. Williams points out that "a working country is hardly ever a landscape. The very idea of landscape implies separation and observation" (120). The same is true of pastoral in its nationalistic guise. It is transmitted by books, paintings and packets, is predicated on such a 'separation and observation'. The idealisation of the common land that subtends 'us' may be an attempt to bridge that distance, yet it is, ironically, transmitted through inscribed objects that create bonds between spatially and temporally dispersed people. It achieves what Anderson calls "unisonance", "a special kind of contemporaneous community which language alone suggests -- above all in the form of poetry and songs" (132). So, if the supermarket turns inner desire outward to the realm of public items that provides its possibilities, nationalistic desire moves in the same way, both inside and outside the supermarket context. There is no purely internal or purely external nation, just as there is no private language. Rather cultural memory, whether transmitted by a food packet or a poem is a thread transmitted through selves, language, technological milieux, and groups of people. Thus as Thongchai Winichakul succinctly states, "a nation is not a given reality. Rather it is the effect of imagining about it" (14). "We can know about it as long as we employ certain technologies to inscribe the possible sphere. In turn, such technologies create the knowledge of it, create a fact of it, and the entity comes into existence." (15). The contemporary food packet is one such media technology as certainly as a book or a song, and all media inscriptions of the possible sphere of 'the land' are lived ecosocial experience of the land. They make the land a unity by fusing its first physical sense with its second sociopolitical one. Invocation of the land as a prior given that subtends and provides the continuity of a sociopolitical group that has power over its resources, nests the historical contingency of that power relationship into a secure vision of the provenance of nation with the self-origination of 'its' land. That natural element, free, pure and healthy, is the one in which the group's ownership rights are rooted and legitimated. However, in fact, any nation is itself an historical innovation, an inherently unstable ideological product of strategy, technique, rhetorical and material. Nation-states are not naturally correlative with the land, nor are the ethnic groups that politically dominate the nation. They arise where other socio-economic political organisations existed before; they emerge. In The City and the Country Williams's main concern was to point out an alternative class-based history of the real and largely exploitative management of the land, a history that is actively occluded by idealised renderings of the countryside. Here in a parallel way but without room for explication, I want to suggest an alternative history of the management of the land that is indissociable from the emergence of the modern Australian nation -- a race-based history. Thus, here's the rub: the totems of pastoral that are equated with Australianness in the packets I have referred to, are European. The 'food packet' pastoral idealises group totems such as to transform historically contingent relationships of certain ethnic groups with the land into naturalised ones. The cows of Bulla and Devondale, the pastures of Dairy Vale, Bürgen's wheat, the agricultural infrastructure, the men imaged and their modes of management of the land, are European in lineage, and so is most of the food they sacralise as 'Australian'. These things are not natural to the land but were introduced, as was a related political and economic infrastructure that created 'Australia'. And there is a whole history to this appropriation of the land that is not active in the rhetorical force field of the European Australian pastoral, just as the living cultural memories of Aboriginal peoples disposed by the creation of the Australian nation-state are not. ... In "Australia Day at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy", Felicia Fletcher and John Leonard mention how representatives of Aboriginal countries in Australia assembled at Parliament House eat food to sustain themselves in their bid to right this dispossession: "vegetables are cooked in the coals, bread is toasted over the fire, endless cups of tea are poured, pots of three dozen eggs are boiled again and again to keep up the strengths and spirits of the people" (16). However, they add, quoting the group rather than a specific individual: "'It's nice, but at home we'd have a nice bit of kangaroo tail in the fire -- you've got to know how to do it properly -- and damper'": a different memory of and relationship with 'the land' (in both its senses). To conclude, the memories of the land create it at the time of commemoration. How we commemorate it is a present-day matter of great communal and political significance. Plates 1 Ducks Nuts 7 Bürgen High-Bake Heritage White bread 2 Steinlager Beer 8 Devondale Extra Soft margarine 3 Bulla Real Dairy Ice Cream 9 Bundaberg Caster Sugar 4 Saxa Table Salt 10 Dairy Vale Skim Milk 5 Pureland Organic Tofu 11 Devondale Cheese 6 So Natural Mango Smoothie 12 Edgell References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Fletcher, Felicia, and John Leonard. "Australia Day at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy." Meanjin 58.1 (1999): 10-17. Frow, John. "Gift and Commodity." Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. ---. "Toute la Mémoire du Monde: Repetition and Forgetting." Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. London: Chatto & Windus, 1973. Winichakul, Thongchai. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Guy Redden. "Packaging the Gifts of Nation." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/gifts.php>. Chicago style: Guy Redden, "Packaging the Gifts of Nation," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 7 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/gifts.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Guy Redden. (1999) Packaging the gifts of nation. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(7). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/gifts.php> ([your date of access]).