Loss For Words

Trends in mCommerce

2010-07-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

It seems like mobile commerce is finally becoming mainstream. This should not come as a big surprise with the sharp increase in sales of smartphones over the past few years. This article from Mashable sees mobile banking and bargain hunting among the top trends right now.

Online marketing making parents cool (sort of)

2010-07-18T22:38:00.005-04:00

Maybe it is me but it seems viral online marketing is getting better and better. Just take the recent Twitter campaign from Old Spice which has generated plenty of free buzz for the once stodgy brand.

Maybe not as big as the Old Spice campaign but just as funny is Toyota's Sienna minivan campaign. Their ability to speak to every parent's fear that their cooler years are behind them is genius. What is cooler than the family in this video???

Digg is getting personal

2010-05-29T23:22:00.002-04:00

Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com, just posted a new video that walks fans through the newest round of features the site will be providing. In short, Digg is following the trend of leveraging a user's extended network on other sites like Facebook in order to personalize the experience. I am glad to see they are willing to move when the current and I hope this creates renewed interest in the service.

Opting out of email takes more clicks

2010-03-29T08:25:00.003-04:00

If it feels like it is tougher and tougher to opt out of annoying marketing emails you are probably right. An article in Sunday's NY Times reports that more online business are trying their best to keep people on those distribution lists no matter what. Many are requiring several clicks (3 or more) for the user to be removed from the email list. Others are trying to offer a low frequency option (how about every week instead of every day?) without completely losing them.

Urban parking made easier

2010-03-23T10:17:00.000-04:00

As a former resident of Manhattan who refused to give up his car (and even drove to my west side office) I can attest that finding parking in a big city sucks. Primo Spot is a great tool for navigating the mean streets and reducing your road rage.

Find me the perfect URL

2010-03-22T21:45:00.000-04:00

Check out http://instantdomainsearch.com for quick searches on domain names.

1986 was an awesome year!

2010-03-22T09:44:00.010-04:00

Of course it's not the real Gary Carter writing this Twitter account but I sure wish it was.

Humor Twitter accounts are becoming a whole new platform for funny folks to gain attention. And if you think this type of thing goes no where your wrong. Take @shitmydadsays, for instance, which has spun off into an upcoming CBS sitcom. Not too bad

Every stat you could want in less than 4 minutes

2010-03-04T13:01:00.001-05:00

Learning to love Twitter

2010-03-03T17:49:00.006-05:00

Still not convinced Twitter is useful? Feel like it is something strictly for the tech savy only? Check out this great article in today's New York Times which gives some very practical applications for the micro-blog service. Asking questions, getting real time news for a particular area and leveraging hashtags to see what is happening at specific events are just some of the ideas.

The 800 pound search engine

2010-02-27T21:57:00.001-05:00

After my last post about how Google has totally screwed up their recent attempts at taking over social media it was nice to read Steven Levy's article "How Google's Algorithm Rules the Web" in this month's Wired. With all the attempts Google makes to branch out in different directions it is important to remember that their value proposition is still their ability to return relevant search results. The article is well worth reading as it gives both an interesting history as well as some "under the hood" insights of the ever changing logic that drives the worlds most successful search engine.

Google's anti-social network behavior

2010-02-14T23:11:00.003-05:00

Google is sure having a tough time lately with it's recent product releases.

First they had to deal with the backlash against the Wave product as the overwhelming consensus from the public was confusion. Wave was supposed to be the new generation of online communication taking aspects from email, instant messaging and social media but in the end it seems Google missed the mark from a usability perspective.

Now the company is dealing with the public's privacy concerns over Google Buzz. The new social networking product which is competing with FaceBook was released as a component of Gmail without any "opt in" options and automatically considers anyone in the users address book as a "friend". Of course, the advantage of this approach to Google is the tool was automatically linking folks together and not requiring them to seek each other out over time (think FaceBook). But just because someone is in my address book does not mean I want them in my social network.

It looks like Google is at least smart enough to recognize their mistake and is already taking steps to correct the mistakes made with Buzz. They announced they will stop automatically linking you to the folks in your address book. Also, they will stop forcing Buzz in the Gmail menu but rather it will be an option users can turn on and off.

Back and busy as ever!

2010-02-13T20:12:00.001-05:00

It has been a while since I last posted on LFW but I am committed to making a habit of it once again. The last two months have been spent surviving the holidays, working hard as usual and spending some well deserved time with the family.

One of the things I have been working on recently is the launch of my companies new brand, Reed Krakoff. The brand's website is a big part of the launch and will continue to evolve this year. The new luxury line which gets it's name from Coach's head of design will be making it's grand entrance this coming week during Fashion Week in New York. Check out the new site and be sure to check out video from the fashion show which will be posted Wednesday evening.

Good Sites for Holiday Deals

2009-12-01T20:45:00.004-05:00

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are out of the way the holiday shopping season is now in full swing. Here are some sites that can save you money:

Bing.com - Microsoft's new search engine is not only a formidable competitor to Google but it is also a great way to save some money when online shopping. Simply search Bing for the item your interested in and the results will show you what they found. As a part of those results any merchant who has partnered with Microsoft in the "Bing Cashback" program will display the gold coin icon under their listing. By clicking through this link, providing your email and making a purchase the Bing system will keep track of your running total and provide you with a rebate.
Twitter.com - Twitter can be a great way to get real time updates from your favorite retailers. This year more than ever brands like Toys R Us and Coach are leveraging social media to communicate with their customers.
Amazon.com - The largest online retailer is constantly updating it's deals. You can check out their deals page to see the latest.
CyberMonday.com - The Monday after Thanksgiving used to be the biggest online shopping day of the year. While that may no longer be the case any longer it is the unofficial start of the online deals. This site is a good resource because it aggregates all the deals happening for easy search by category, merchant. etc.
Sample Sale Sites - A new trend in ecommerce has been the online sample sale (check out TechCrunch's article in October about the trend) in which retailers offer their excess inventory at deep discounts. Sites like Gilt.com and Hautelook.com require users to register and once they do they have access to fashion and lifestyle brand sales.

Morgan Stanley's look at the current and future of the web

2009-11-24T02:35:00.002-05:00

Morgan Stanley recently presented their report on "Economy and Internet Trends" at the Web 2.0 conference. Lots of data included here with much of it financial in nature but starting with slide 29 the presentation gives an interesting outlook that is worth browsing.

Much of the content focuses on the mobile market with some truly amazing growth expected over the next five years. For instance, according to Cisco global mobile IP traffic is likely to grow by 66x in the next four years. Two other topics that gets plenty of focus are the effects of social media on behavior and the growth happening in Japan.

Protect your site at all costs

2009-11-20T22:00:00.001-05:00

As the holiday season is upon us with less than a week to Thanksgiving it is smart to remember the value of ecommerce infrastructure redundancy. While many companies do a good job of avoiding a single device at the web/app/database server layers there are plenty out there that don't protect some other from other pitfalls. Here are some important things to think about:

Third party API's - Most sites do not handle all functions that a site needs to perform themselves. For instance, it is both expensive and impractical to host tax calculations internally. If your site is using third parties it makes sense to follow some best practices including

Make sure your front end has a graceful experience if the API is unavailable.
For sensitive and critical API's like credit card processing consider routing traffic over a private line.
Review and know your API service level agreements. If there are issues at midnight you want to know who to call.

Network Devices - Devices like routers, firewalls, switches, etc. are the hops between your customers and your web site. If it is important enough to have redudancy at the server levels isn't it just as important to do the same thing here?
N+1 - One mistake some folks fall into is building out an environment that has redundancy but is venerable to device failure. For instance, if your site has 4 web servers and at full volume all machines are fully utilized you are at risk. Losing a single machine could potentially cripple your site. Get to know the concept of N+1 and you will sleep better.

I think back to the outage earlier this year of credit card processor Authorize.net that got me thinking about how important it is to have all your bases covered in the critical portions of your site. Just ask the owners of all those ecommerce sites that were unable to take orders during the downtime due to their dependency on the service.

Time launches technology blog Techland

2009-11-16T15:40:00.000-05:00

Time Inc just launched their new mainstream technology blog at Techland.com. The site covers gaming, gadgets, tech news and a few other general geek categories.

iPhone requires .NET? Really?

2009-11-02T05:35:00.000-05:00

I am in the middle of developing an iPhone app and in order to get the app onto my phone before it is in the Apple store I need to work through the iPhone Configuration Utility process. Barely got through step 1 in the process when i got this notice. Sort of odd that a Microsoft framework is required when installing a Apple utility.

EverNote: Forget Me Not

2009-09-05T16:08:00.001-04:00

One of my biggest problems in a typical day is keeping track of the seemingly endless list of things I need to remember. The truth is we live in a fast paced, adrenaline fueled society that demands we juggle 50 things at once. I will also admit to be less than perfect in the self organization department. Despite my endless attempts at writing notes on the nearest piece of paper, leaving myself voice mail reminders and emailing thoughts out as soon as they pop into my head I still manage to loss some piece of information from time to time. Until now......

A few months ago I read an article about a service called EverNote describing it as a ubiquitous note capture tool. The description and review seemed to place it in the category of just another attempt at retaining bits of information much like most email clients offer as a peripheral function. But over the next few weeks I continued to hear good things about the app and so last week I decided to give it a spin. It wasn't long after signing up that I found myself using the free service for pretty much everything I need to capture during my day. And I mean I use it everywhere for pretty much anything I can think of needing to hold on to. Here are some examples:

With the desktop app on my laptop I can drag and drop emails from Outlook into Evernote.
The mobile web interface allows me to jot down notes on my BlackBerry.
I started using the Web Clipper Bookmarklet which is smart enough to save only the content you have highlighted on a web page into your new note.
The service gives you a custom email address you can send notes to.

Needless to say I am impressed by the flexibility of the service. It is simple enough to use but there is quite a bit of "smart" underneath the hood of Evernote to make the app a powerhouse as a productivity tool. For example, yesterday I discovered that the service actually indexes content in images and therefore makes them searchable. How cool is that? Just snap a picture of a whiteboard with notes on it, upload it to EverNote and the content is now searchable as if you typed it into a document. The screenshot on the right is my simple example of what I am talking about. I took a picture of my Blockbuster card, uploaded it to Evernote, logged in and searched "membership". It pulled up my image and highlighted the search content! Pretty amazing stuff.

So, if your like me and find it tough to keep track of everything that comes your way in the course of a day this service may be just what you need. Hey, what do you have to lose? The basic service is free.

It will be getting cold out soon.....

2009-08-27T05:25:00.000-04:00

Every year about this time I start thinking video games. Probably because like most people (and bears) I tend to hibernate in the colder months. Nothing better than finding your game for the winter months and spending the next few months of downtime getting better and better. Sure it is still August but before you know it I will be shoveling snow off my driveway and wearing wool hats to keep my head from freezing. Hell, regular season football is two weeks away!

So it was pretty nice when I read this morning that their seems to be a console gaming price war going on. Looks like Microsoft is dropping it's price on the XBOX 360. Now I understand that I am late to the game (no pun intended) when it comes to upgrading to the current console platform. In my defense the past 4 years I have been a little occupied with the birth of my two kids and therefore my gaming skills have suffered. On the rare moment when I did have a half hour to sit down and play I was more than happy to fire up the old PS2 and get 9 innings of baseball in. But with the recent drop in price on the XBox and PS3 I may need to step up and start gaming again. Need to practice quick since my son will probably be ready to compete in the next few years.

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The value of online social relationships

2009-06-03T09:38:00.000-04:00

If you missed it Business Week had a great article on the gold rush that is going on around online social networks. Everyone agrees that being able to tap into the power of common interests is huge. As the article points out our friends are "our trusted sources".

What is easy to forget is the business model around harnessing this power is still undefined. Even the largest online communities like FaceBook and Twitter have yet to define how they will turn social connections into advertising dollars. That being said there certainly have been some promising studies correlating our social circles with behavior. This article has no great theories on the right answer but does give a good sense of the different efforts that are happening.

Personally I find the current "wild west" of social media fasinating. Sure I enjoy getting updates on what my family, friends, coworkers, etc. are up to but that is not what keeps me engaged. The potential of mining our personal choices and being able to customize how we live, work, shop, etc. is vast. Imagine knowing that the next book you buy or DVD you rent is the result of carefully calculations which consider multiple factors about you. Chances are the quality of that experience will be higher than the "hunt and peck" methods we use today.

SuperBowl Tweet Tracking

2009-02-04T04:51:00.001-05:00

Got a very cool link (thanks to my coworker for this) to a NY Times time line of the Twitter messages during the Super Bowl. This is a great example of how aggregating social content can have a useful application. Of course, you can apply something similar to track activity on a number of things (products, movies, music, etc.).

Site of the week - Blip.fm

2009-01-07T07:51:00.001-05:00

Maybe it is because I am a former party/club DJ. Perhaps it is my frustration with the suggested songs that Last.fm and Pandora give me. Plus, I haven't updated the playlists on my iPod for so long that I hardly use the damn thing anymore.

Whatever the reason, my newest addiction is Blip.fm.

So what is so great about this site? Well, here goes.....

Of course, there is the access to any song under the sun.
The "Twitter like" interface (which includes mirco-blogging) is minimalistic and easy to use.
Speaking of Twitter, you can link your Blip account to your Twitter account so that every time you add a song a "Twit" is posted.
The social aspect of the site is fairly intuitive which opens up the door to discovering new tracks.

It might take you some time to really "get" the benefits of Blip since on day one you won't have a network of friends to share music with. But trust me, a week later you will wonder how you lived without it.

10 Best Intranets

2009-01-05T11:40:00.001-05:00

Jakob Nielsen has created his "10 Best Intranets of 2009" list along with a good analysis of the trends he is seeing in the space. This extract of a much larger 473 page report gives some interesting highlights that anyone looking to roll out an enterprise intranet solution should read.

According to the article, empowering collaboration and providing social networking tools for the corporate user base seem to be gaining momentum. While there are many in the industry who feel that enabling a workforce with FaceBook-like functionality is counter productive I would argue the opposite. If used properly, social tools can provide the foundation for knowledge share and become a tremendous asset for productivity. Also, by looking the other way when it comes to this trend companies are ignoring that fact that if they don't provide a secure, managed platform the user community will eventually create their own.

Another interesting call out from Mr. Nielsen's report is the apperant consolidation of technology being used with SharePoint becoming more and more dominant in the space. In fact, the article points out "fully half the winning intranets used SharePoint".

Apple CEO calms health speculation

2009-01-05T06:08:00.001-05:00

As you may know, there has been a lot of speculation recently around Steve Jobs' health. In fact, Mr. Jobs condition has has been an ongoing discussion point in the media and online ever since his 2004 surgery for pancreatic cancer. Over the past year the obvious weight loss has brought the topic to a boil and a few weeks ago it was announced that the co-founder would not deliver the keynote address at this weeks MacWorld conference. Mr. Jobs has presented at the conference since returning to the company in 1997.

During this same period of time the chatter regarding the potential life threatening condition of the Apple CEO has had some very real effects on the company including a suffering stock price. Many attribute the visionary successes that Apple has experienced with products like the iPod and iPhone to Mr. Jobs himself.

Well, today Steve Jobs posted an open letter to ease peoples concerns which cites a "hormone imbalance" as the root cause for the weight loss. He goes on to say that he has mapped a road to recovery with his doctors.

Good to hear that things are looking up for the charismatic Jobs. We need his genius around to continue to develop and inspire.

FireFox sustains 20% worldwide

2009-01-02T08:24:00.001-05:00

Just read an interesting article from NetApplications that puts FireFox at above 20% and Internet Explorer slightly below 70%. Not a surprise with FireFox 3 being lightning fast and all the great plug-ins the browser offers. For the details click here.