Stories on the tech industry, content marketing and online sales enablement
A new survey came out during a Broadband Policy conference here in DC. It was put on by Pike and Fischer, a subsidiary of BNA (http://www.bna.com/about/companies.htm) that looks at broadband from a policy perspective: http://www.broadbandpolicysummit.com/ The survey found that 40% of attendees ranked high speed as the most appealing advanced service, substantially more than services […]
I was interested to read a few days ago that Verizon plans to discontinue its branded social community and move it over to Facebook. Their Facebook page has over 18,000 “fans”: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/06/04/verizon-moving-its-branded-social-network-to-a-facebook-page/ Of course it’s very smart of Verizon to particpate in social networks — Strategic Communications Group has its own page, and we regularly […]
Fierce competition is back on the web browser front. After Microsoft crushed the Netscape challenge in the mid to late 90’s, Microsoft Explorer cruised for years as the overwhelming leader in the web browser market. It still is, with approximately 75% market share. But out of the Netscape defeat rose the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit […]
The WSJ reported today that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods is back online with a vengeance. He was cleared by the SEC of any wrongdoing relating to anonymous postings on Yahoo Finance message boards. Mackey had attracted media attention by posting critical comments about the rival food chain Wild Oats under the screen name […]
Excellent MediaPost article today by Steve Smith, longtime reporter for Media Industry Newsletter, an Access Intelligence property. Steve writes about a new way NearbyNow, the company that adds new media channels to mall shopping, is using mobile to spur retail sales. The company offered SMS sale information for some time. (Unfortunately at no malls near […]
Lots of good reporting lately on the $13.9B purchase of EDS by HP. Many are saying its the clearest sign yet that cloud computing has fully arrived. Others say the purchase is more about buying market share and becoming the world’s #2 IT outsourcing company, behind IBM. Rob Hof of BusinessWeek has a really good […]
Saw an interesting news item that broke Monday courtesy of DomainNameNews and SlashDot that hasn’t been broadly covered yet. Apparently VeriSign has been awarded a patent for the resolution of mis-typed domain names. This was at the heart of the controversy back in 2003 around their SiteFinder Service. Amidst a storm of criticism ICANN insisted […]
RCR Wireless broke a story last week about AT&T buying millions of femtocells from British company ip.access LTD. According to research and banking firm ThinkPanmure, AT&T plans to offer the devices for as little as $100. http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080424/FREE/895619934/1014/rss01 Why is this important? Because femtocells can solve two critical wireless problems — poor indoor cell coverage for […]
(graphic credit New York Times) Interesting article in the Times today about the battle between Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple for dominance of the smartphone market. Smartphones are becoming so capable these days I call them $79 personal computers. As the article notes, until the introduction of the iPhone the market was focused on […]
Friday morning I attended an interesting event put on by the Association for Corporate Growth, National Chapter. ACG National is a who’s who of the DC business community and puts on quality events. I’ve been a member for two years and volunteer on their marketing committee: http://www.acgcapital.org/ On Friday Stan Soloway was addressing trends in […]
European researchers this week issued a report that portrayed the U.S. Internet infrastructure in a positive light. The study was commissioned by the World Economic Forum, and conducted by Insead, a business school near Paris. It ranked the United States fourth, behind just Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. This struck me as strange. Turns out the […]
How consumers are tracked online has been an issue for years. Until recently the main vehicle for this tracking has been the cookie, a small file placed on a visitor’s browser that identifies repeat visits and online activity. The latest chapter of this debate to reach critical media mass concerns Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contracting […]