Blog
An Early Peek Into the Vlogosphere
On 27, Apr 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
In January of this year, the first video blogging (or vlogging) conference was held in New York City. But, unsurprisingly, most people attended vloggercon 2005 online. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an estimated 8 million Americans have blogs and 32 million have read a blog, up 58 percent from just 10 months earlier. Technorati, a blog search engine and measurement firm, reports roughly 23,000 new blogs are created every day.
WalMart moves into high-end CE with celebrity branded private label
On 23, Apr 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Quincy Jones branded stereo exclusively distributed through WalMart. Why this is important is that WalMart is suddenly worried about reaching high-end consumers. Apparently, low-end consumers are not spending at much at WalMart now that gas prices are going up. Even the everyday low prices that WalMart is famous for cannot get low-income customers to spend money they don’t have. Which is a problem with their business model as opposed to say, Target’s. Link to article (you must subscribe to WSJ online to view)
RFID-based loyalty key fob program
On 11, Apr 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
The smart card manufacturer CardXX has begun a sampling programme of RFID-based key fobs for the retail point-of-sale transaction market, and is working with a number of platform solutions providers to produce the unique, branded and distinctive key fobs in various form factors for loyalty and prepaid programmes. The key fobs being offered for testing purposes have been designed to provide retailers with branded “key chain shelf space” that provides contactless functionality for customer loyalty and gift programmes, in a bid to help them move away from the continuing battle for plastic card space in the consumer’s already-bulging wallet. This article is copyright 2005 TheWiseMarketer.com. Consumer acceptance Recent market trials by MasterCard, Visa and American …
Pez ‘n’ Play
On 04, Apr 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Pez dispensers are about to go digital, in a deal with gadget design firm Lincoln West Studios, which plans to market MP3 players shaped like traditional Pez dispensers and capable of “wearing” any of the snap-on plastic heads that adorn the originals. The Pez MP3 will hit the shelves sometime this summer, featuring 512 megabytes of capacity, an LCD screen, USB slot and ear-bud headphones, priced at $129. Lincoln West plans to test the waters with an initial production of 1,000, sold through its Web site. Designer Patrick Misterovich says he was inspired to create the Pez MP3 after following a competition by the maker of Altoids to come up with new ways to use …
Non-linear tools that bridge the brain gap
On 04, Apr 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
A number of software companies have developed programs that offer users different ways to visually organize their knowledge, and Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows says while Personal Brain and Grokker are mesmerizing, they’re too “right-brain” for his taste. He prefers instead MindManager (Mindjet.com) and ResultsManager (Gyronix.com) — two programs that emerged from the “Mind Mapping” movement started back in the 1960s. MindManager creates a sort of outline to organize everyday information by taking one central idea and then presenting related ideas as spokes radiating out from the center. “The subideas can have their own connections and nodes, and all parts of the maps can be easily linked to relevant side material — e-mail, Web pages, …
Accountability drives growth
On 04, Apr 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Stanford Graduate School of Business professors Antonio Davila and George Foster say that startup firms that act quickly to put in place operation budgets, cash budgets, and financial monitoring systems to measure profitability, customer acquisition costs, etc. have higher growth rates in terms of revenues and head count. These kinds of measurement systems actually seem to fuel growth. Davila says, “Management systems are the foundation for growth. As an executive in one of the companies we worked with described it, ‘management by personality’ only works up to a certain point. After that, you need to put systems in place.” Stanford Graduate School of Business Feb 2005
