Marketspace Advisor

Travelocity Survey Results: Tech-Heads on Vacation

Interesting statistics from the Call Center CRM News Blog on usage of different devices by different demographic groups...

Vacation is intended to be a break from work...isn’t it? For getting away from the office and office-related responsibilities, right? To reconnect with friends or family or yourself, yeah?  Well, in time for summer vacations, travel Web site Travelocity today released results of...

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[Call Center CRM News Blog]

Cookies and Privacy: Where to From Here?

The Wall Street Journal  ran an article (password-protected, alas) on June 16 titled "Marketers Promote Good Cookies", in which they discussed some of the challenges posed by these now-staples of Web-based software  , as well as some associated solutions being considered.

If you are interested in how cookies work, to better appreciate this article and what it might mean for you, this book chapter on user tracking by my friend Philip Greenspun might be useful. 

Beyond Neopets: The SitePal Shopping Assistant

I was helping my son put together a web site this evening, and while browsing through some Javascript libraries we came across SitePal.  Interesting claims about the effect of this avatar aid on conversion, but at $10-50/month, worth the experiment!  Anyone have experiences with this technology they'd like to share?

The Cyber Lions winners

My favorite: "Run"

The full list of Cyber Lions winners is now available (download .pdf), let's have a look at the entries that received the Gold.

Sony's Chief Pledges to Halt Company Slide

Of interest, about the company that brought us the Walkman and the Betamax but missed the iPod and the Tivo:

The head of Sony, Sir Howard Stringer, on Wednesday promised shareholders a fresh plan to revamp the company and halt the long slide in its stock price.

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[NYT > Business]

OPA Breakfast Meeting: User Experience and Engagement

 

On Wednesday, Jeffrey Rayport and I attended an Online Publisher's Association breakfast in Boston.  On the agenda:  presentation and panel discussion of really interesting new research from the Northwestern University Media Management Center on the links between user experience and consequent engagement with web sites.

Looking into the Messages within Blogs – iQuest

From my friend Bill Ives, link to his blog below:

"Blogs contain a lot of content to shift through for a variety of reasons (trends, major issues, etc.) My friend Josh Rosenthal and his colleagues at iQuest Analytics have developed a tool to help with this task. As their site says:

“iQuest can rapidly analyze anything with words in any language — emails, call center transcripts, message boards and blogs, text responses to survey questions, media coverage, documents of any kind — and surface patterns and associations without being prompted where to look or what to look for. Used as a stand-alone application or deployed in concert with iQuest Analytics' battery of survey and assessment vehicles, iQuest produces an in-depth data map of what your important constituencies feel, think and believe.”

At Microsoft, a Smart Guy Has His Hands Full With the Smart Phone Business

 

With Windows-powered mobile devices lagging behind the Palms and BlackBerrys, Microsoft has enlisted an electrical engineer from China.

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[NYT > Technology]

As TV Moves to the Web, Marketers Follow

 

Television programmers are looking to make the Web a lot more like TV, and advertisers are showing a growing interest in the approach.

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[NYT > Technology]

At This Restaurant, the Video Games Come With the Meal

 

A new restaurant will not have human waiters but powerful central computers that will record food orders and display video games that customers can play while they eat.

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[NYT > Technology]