market

Is this what panic looks like? Eloqua's fixation with Loopfuse

I'm biased on this one, but I had to laugh when I read the Loopfuse blog today. It turns out that Eloqua, Loopfuse's most direct, proprietary competition, is totally unconcerned by Loopfuse as a competitor.

The problem, unfortunately, is that the data says otherwise:… Read more

Special relationships with the search engines

Are you looking for that edge online? Something that your competitors don't have? Forget wasting all your energy on a great design and developing superior content--it's not what you know, but who you work with.

Sooner or later, most of us in the industry get an e-mail, either passed on by someone we know, through our own e-mail, or possibly through one of our own sites that offers to help us achieve success online. Most of these are fairly nondescript and rather generic.

Then the other day, I had one passed on to me that was more than … Read more

Intel increasingly letting customers lead the way

When you're the world's largest chipmaker, it's hard to turn on a dime. It can be even harder to admit when you've overreached.

A shift has taken place at Intel over the last year or so. Once known for dictating the direction of the PC market, Intel is increasingly letting its customers carve their own path. With that subtle yet important change, the PC industry is moving past its Model T era and entering a new world of style and design, where a simple black or gray box won't do.

The most recent and telling … Read more

Debunking The Tipping Point

A fascinating article in the February issue of Fast Company about Duncan Watts, a researcher at Yahoo, who questions some of the core concepts of Malcom Gladwell's book The Tipping Point [T]astemakers, Gladwell concluded, are the spark behind any successful trend. "What we are really saying," he writes, "is that in a given process or system, some people matter more than others." In modern marketing, this idea--that a tiny cadre of connected people triggers trends--is enormously seductive. It is the very premise of viral and word-of-mouth campaigns: Reach those rare, all-powerful folks, and you'… Read more

Guy in a mouse suit wins Super Bowl (ad, that is)

Doritos parent company Frito-Lay has been a proponent of the user-generated TV ad for some time now. Last year, it kicked off its "Crash the Super Bowl" advertising campaign, in which ordinary people (OK, ordinary people with nice cameras and video-editing skills) created ads for the cheesy chips and submitted them to the company, where they were promptly posted on YouTube.

For Super Bowl XLII, in which many of the game's high-profile ads turned out to be disappointing or downright stupid (at least in my opinion--but the Budweiser ads were pretty good this year), the second annual &… Read more

A design week in NYC: friendlier cabs, greener gadgets, thick crusts, and disco balls

Having just returned from New York City, I wonder whether I find it so intense because that's just how it is or because I tend to overbook my schedule, trying to squeeze in an ambitious number of meetings, rushing back and forth between midtown and downtown. In almost every cab ride I took on this trip, I noticed that many cabs now have a touch screen infotainment system that lets you pay with a credit card, watch TV, or access local city info (including a GPS tracker). I like the credit card option and the GPS but had mixed … Read more

Proxy marketing: It's the (other) product!

In this new age of " radical transparency," British firm Garlik has unveiled a new way to gauge popularity on the internet. The "QDOS" digital status rating system factors in how many times a person's name appears in a search, as well as a person's popularity, impact, and activity, among other criteria. Garlik's system plays on the phenomenon of "vanity searches:" googling" and comparing oneself to others. I couldn't resist the temptation: My QDOS score is Q3176 -- that's less than Nelson Mandela (Q6624) and Woody Allen (Q7764) but … Read more

Forecast: SLR growth rate to taper off

LAS VEGAS--Digital SLRs showed strong growth last year, but the sales surge will begin to moderate, according to a new report by the Camera and Imaging Products Association.

SLR cameras are bulky and expensive, yet they're also responsive, work better in dim conditions, and are flexible because photographers can change lenses. Year-over-year sales of digital SLRs grew 42 percent to 7.5 million units worldwide in 2007, CIPA said this week.

By contrast, the SLR growth rate will dip to 22 percent in 2008, 13 percent in 2009, and 9 percent in 2010, the CIPA predicted. That corresponds to … Read more

Panasonic aims for top-tier camera status

LAS VEGAS--Panasonic is a relative newcomer to the camera business, but the electronics giant outlined strong ambitions for the business Monday.

"We will try our best to achieve 15 percent market share by 2009," Tokihazu Matsumoto, director of the company's digital still camera business unit, said at a news conference at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here. "We aim to become one of the top camera brands in the industry."

The company also is hoping to reach 15 million units globally during the fiscal year, which for Panasonic runs through March 2010.

That's … Read more

Spinmeisters everywhere, but not a drop of think?

Sam Varghese writes a provocative slam on the open-source spinmeister over on ITWire. His basic premise is that open-source spinmeisters like Blake Stowell (of SCO infamy) are on the rise. They are, apparently, everywhere.

The problem with this view is that he doesn't substantiate it at all. He may be right, but when I started to survey the projects and companies I know I kept drawing a blank on the mysterious yet apparently omnipresent spinmeisters.

Who are these people that attach themselves to open-source projects, do nothing, and yet become the public face of open-source projects? I guess they've failed because I can't think of any. He suggests that these people get by through deception:… Read more