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Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Go on the Social Media Offensive
A lot has changed in social media over the course of 2010 -- the first year that social has been fully and comfortably embedded in the marketing mix. According to KickApps CEO Alex Blum, many companies should take a more aggressive approach to social media in 2011.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/olRGBh8CI4Q/
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Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The True Meaning of HDTV
Found this apt comic in the Christian Science... Read more
Source: http://www.businesspundit.com/the-true-meaning-of-hdtv/
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Android Market Gets Video Previews
According to a post on the AppsFire blog, the feature is now available through the Market API (application programming interface), too.
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Android Market Update Continues?
In mid-December, Google announced a major overhaul of the Android Market, which has been rolling out over the course of the month. The update, said Google's Android Developer Ecosystem chief Eric Chu, includes a revamped user interface, new categories, improved navigation, app content ratings, a change to the refund window and additional device targeting capabilities.
Although nothing about video previews was mentioned in the blog post, Chu did tease "we're not done yet...stayed tuned."
Perhaps this was one of the things he was hinting about?
Example Videos in Action
In any event, the feature, apparently soft-launched with little fanfare on Google's part, has already been adopted by a number of developers, including Dropbox, Twidroyd and Skyfire. AppsFire was able to pull the videos from the API for use in its app discovery site here, here and here.
Developers were aware of the feature, says�?AppsFire's Ouriel Ohayon, because it was already available in the developer interface and the API.
Interest in video demos is quickly picking up as the news spreads today. Earlier this morning, AppsFire's Ouriel Ohayon noted that around 500 apps were using this feature - as of now, that number is closer to 2,000, he says.
For end users, this is a welcome addition - now you can not only see a photo of an Android application, you can actually see it in use. Users often turn to YouTube, another Google property, to watch application demonstrations, and now that functionality will be integrated into the Market experience.
UPDATE: Ohayon found the original email from Google sent out on November 19th to developers where the feature was mentioned. In it, Google detailed the coming changes to the Android market.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/q2qCGCMFdmY/android-market-gets-video-previews.php
Class Action Lawsuit Accuses Apple and App Makers of Sharing User Data With Advertisers
The suit was filed on Dec. 23 in federal court in San Jose, California and centers on the use of the Unique Device Identifier (UDID). According to the lawsuit, this unique identifying number "transmits that information along with the device's location data to third-party advertisers."
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The suit also contends that some apps share users' location, age and gender with advertisers; Pandora, Dictionary.com, the Weather Channel, TextPlus and others are named, along with Apple, as defendants in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit follows a Wall Street Journal story earlier this month that found that over half of the 100 popular apps it examined transmitted the UDID, along with other information, to other companies - all without users' awareness or consent.
For its part, Apple says that apps "cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used." But according to the WSJ investigation, many apps seem to violate this rule, and Apple spokespeople have been mum on how the company interprets or enforces this policy.
The lawsuit claims that the transmission of personal data is a violation of federal computer fraud and privacy laws. It seeks class-action status for all Apple customers who downloaded an application between Dec. 1, 2008 and last week.
But as Bloomberg notes, it may be hard to prove that Apple has violated any laws given the terms of service we all agree to (but never read.) "Still," writes Bloomberg, "it's another sign that concerns about monitoring consumers' behavior via their electronic devices is not about to go away anytime soon, as regulators and Congress prepare to take an even closer look at the issue in the new year."
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Lessons from the Second Successful Humble Bundle
The Humble Bundle lets customers choose the price they wanted to pay - anything from a penny up - to download a package of 5 indie video games. And even though they could have paid just a cent, the average customer spent $7.83 to download the bundle. Some companies, in order to have their names listed as top contributors on the Humble Bundle site, paid several thousand dollars for the bundle. (And for those keeping score at home, Linux users again paid twice as much as Windows users - $13.76 to $6.67.)
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Making the Pay-What-You-Want Business Model Work
Pay-what-you-want has become an interesting alternative business model online, with bands like Radiohead demonstrating that it can be an even more successful than traditional pricing. The key to success, however, may be the amount of attention you can generate for your campaign. Pay-what-you-want is often a trade-off between a making small number of full-price sales and a large number of sales at what's likely a far lower price. One of the games in the bundle Machinarium, for example, normally sells for $20. But by being part of the Humble Bundle, certainly it sold many times more copies than normal.
Of course, not everyone can generate quite the buzz of Radiohead or Humble Bundle for that matter, and a recent study pointed to another option for helping make pay-what-you-want endeavors successful: combine it with a voluntary payment to charity, and people then tend to give more. Indeed, Humble Bundle customers can flag some of the money to go towards charity - either Child's Play or the EFF - and some of it towards a tip for the Humble Bundle itself. Venture Beat estimates that tip might've brought in around $90,000 for the startup's tip jar.
Adding a BitTorrent Option
One of the interesting decisions that the Humble Bundle made this year was to make the games available for download via BitTorrent. Bundle co-founder Jeffrey Rosen asked people why they pirated the Bundle, rather than purchasing it for a penny. Many responded that they simply wanted to be able to access the games via BitTorrent as, for example, they had a poor Internet connection and couldn't sustain the download.
So Rosen added BitTorrent to the download options. He notes, "The most common search term for the Humble Indie Bundle is 'Humble Indie Bundle torrent', so we hope that by supporting BitTorrent we can help convert at least some of the pirates into legitimate users, or at least give one less reason to pirate it."
With the pay-what-you-want pricing, the DRM-free content, and the embracing of BitTorrent, the Humble Bundle seem to be trailblazing a very different model for selling and distributing online content. What are your thoughts on their ability to make this work so well?
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/IlQokXjn4yE/lessons-from-the-second-succes.php
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This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ducttapemarketing/nRUD/~3/usufzJvfVB4/
The Smartphone Explosion
I've been dipping around the edges of this story with recent blog posts, but Seth Weintraub takes it a step further in this post in Fortune. Next year is likely to be the year that smartphones emerge as the default...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/rVx-wtc7nHs/the-smartphone-explosion.html
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Monday, December 27, 2010
Don?t Underestimate the Cash-to-Cash Cycle
I don?t recall the first time I was asked about the ?cash-to-cash cycle? for a business, but I do remember my surprise when I realized how long it was.�The term ?cash-to-cash cycle? refers to the time from when the cash outlays start for a new product, until the time that the cash revenues are fully realized (deposited in the bank).
When a new product development starts, it can be as a result of an idea, a competitive product, or theRead More
From Small Business Trends
Don?t Underestimate the Cash-to-Cash Cycle
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Investors Use Twitter to Follow Stock Market?s Mood
A hedge fund has created a trading model that lets investors gauge the stock market's mode via Twitter. Bloomberg has the story: The Derwent Absolute Return Fund Ltd., set to start trading in February with an initial 25 million pounds ($39... Read more
Source: http://www.businesspundit.com/investors-use-twitter-to-follow-stock-markets-mood/
Zumbox raises $9.7M to kill the post office with a digital mailbox
Zumbox, which provides its users with digital copies of their mail based on their home address, has raised an additional $9.7 million, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Zumbox lets users send or receive scanned, physical versions of letters, bills or other things they might normally send and receive via paper mail. Each user has a personal mailbox at the Zumbox site to view mail.
The company has created a digital mailbox for every street address in the U.S. So companies can send bills via Zumbox, and they look like scanned versions of the real paper bills. The Zumbox site lets users look at a variety of media in the form of HTML, Flash, audio and video.
The company uses a closed system with security measures that meet pretty tough regulations, such as the medical-record HIPAA law. Users get a secure PIN number, which they receive from Zumbox via paper mail to make sure that scammers don?t get into their mail. So the system is supposed to be secure and have no junk mail.
But it does sort of beg the question as to who would use a service like this. Most companies already offer e-mail billing and have an option for their customers that want to pay bills online. It is another way to kill off the ruthlessly inefficient system that is paper mail, but it seems sort of redundant in an era that is already dominated by email and electronic messaging.
The Westlake Village, Calif.-based company was founded in 2007. It has raised $12 million across a seed funding round and its first round of fundraising. It has some high-power investors like Rick Braddock, former CEO of Priceline.com, and Michael Eisner, former CEO of The Walt Disney Company. This round brings its total funding up to $21.7 million.
Companies: Zumbox
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/XU-Kz1k4AO8/
Deals & More: Novariant grabs $4.5M for hands-free farm equipment
Today’s funding announcements include technology to run farms efficiently, monetize videos and monitor theft in stores:
Novariant gets $4.5M for GPS technology: The Fremont, Calif.-based company has raised funding as part of its fifth round, according to a filing with the SEC. The firm, a spinout from Stanford University in 1994, creates products for the agriculture, mining and aerospace industries that perform functions like automatically steering farm equipment and landing aircraft.
Auditude brings in $4M to bring ads to online videos: The Palo Alto-based company raised a third round of funding, according to a filing with the SEC. Big name clients including Comcast, Sony Music and Universal Music Group use Auditude’s ad platform to monetize online video content.
3VR gets $17M to watch over businesses with video surveillance: The company has raised a new round of funding led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures and Focus Ventures. The San Francisco-based company develops video search technology that helps retailers, banks and hotels fight theft and fraud.
Revolution Foods gets $20M to bring healthy lunches to schools: The Oakland-based company has raised a new round of equity funding to provide high-quality lunches to students in more than 100 schools, according to a filing with the SEC. The business, started by graduate students at the UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business, works with partners like Whole Foods Market and Berkeley Farms to serve schools in California, Colorado and Washington, D.C.
Companies: 3VR, Auditude, Dag Ventures, Focus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Menlo Ventures, Novariant, Revolution Foods
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/Jfa-weFgFRY/
Rewind: Editing the Playlist of My Life
We all have content we collect as we go about our lives, whether it's music or movies or books -- so much that it becomes hard to filter or make sense of it all. Can we edit our lives the way we do a playlist?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/BeKF3mxEct0/
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Sunday, December 26, 2010
The Smartphone Explosion
I've been dipping around the edges of this story with recent blog posts, but Seth Weintraub takes it a step further in this post in Fortune. Next year is likely to be the year that smartphones emerge as the default...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/rVx-wtc7nHs/the-smartphone-explosion.html
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Swimming In The Cross Currents Of Religion
It's Christmas Eve, Friday Prayers, and Shabbat all on a single day today in Jerusalem. And I'm here with our family to soak it all in. We spent the day in and around the Old City and it was a...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/tkiRGdTbYEE/swimming-in-the-cross-currents-of-religion.html
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NYC Big Apps Version 2.0
Last year NYC ran a mobile and web app developer contest called NYC Big Apps. I posted about it and was one of a number of judges. The city and the participating developers thought it was a successful effort and...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/Ek-WAPUk7-s/nyc-big-apps-version-20.html
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Saturday, December 25, 2010
iNdians: Cherokees First to Use iPhones for Native Language
Cherokee, the only southern Iroquoian language to survive into the present, does not use the standard Latin alphabet (the one you're reading) but instead uses a syllabary developed by a polymath tribal Chief named Sequoyah, two centuries ago. The tribe worked with Apple to allow Cherokee users to utilize that unique representation while using their products.
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According to the official release by the Cherokee Nation:
"The new access to the language will allow Cherokee speakers to communicate via e-mail, text messages and across all platforms of the iPhone and iPod Touch. It allows developers to easily create new Cherokee applications as the language is now part of the operating system, opening a new market for application developers."
The syllabary requires iOS 4.1. The software can be downloaded from iTunes and the instructions from the Cherokee Nation website.
In 2003, Apple added the Plantagenet Cherokee font to MacOS operating system. The tribe and the company are currently working on extending Cherokee to the popular iPad tablet in the near future.
The idea for the mobile app came, in part, as an outgrowth of experience at the Tsalagi Tsunadeloquasdi Cherokee language immersion school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, which uses computers equipped with the Cherokee syllabary to teach first through fifth graders (and win language fairs).
Joseph Erb, of the Cherokee Nation's language technology division, told the Associated Press:
"(T)he cool technology is in English. So we had to figure out a way to make the cool technology in Cherokee."
The only problem, of course, is the primary motivation for using the language, keeping teachers out of your business, is moot at a school devoted to teaching in Cherokee. But then, I guess there's always sixth grade, isn't there?
Illustrations from the Cherokee Nation Office of Communication | other sources: Los Angeles Times
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