What do Starbucks and movies have in common? No, its not that a coffee will cost you four bucks in either place… Starbucks, who currently sells CDs in its stores, is now promoting movies. In A Starbucks Jolt to the Big Screen, Newsweek reports that the ubiquitous coffee vendor has launched its first movie promotion by advertising the soon-to-be released spelling bee movie Akeelah in its stores. Continue reading »
Apr 252006
Apr 242006
Friday, Microsoft announced that Steven Berkowitz, formerly CEO of Ask.com, would head up its MSN and Windows Live operations. Berkowitz was previously CEO of IDG Books, which publishes the “Dummies” series. More recently, in an odd twist to the old “the butler did it” theme, Berkowitz was a chief suspect in the demise of Ask’s helpful butler Jeeves. At Microsoft, he’ll head up the software firm’s Internet effort. And when we last reported on search engine market shares, Ask.com While perhaps not in complete chaos, Microsoft’s online efforts haven’t been able to gain appreciable share against rivals Google or Yahoo.
Apr 212006
At the recent WebmasterWorld Conference (Pubcon), I talked to lots of site owners who derive at least some of their income from contextual ads, typically Google’s Adsense product or the Yahoo Publisher Network. I asked quite a few for their opinions on the two networks. Surprisingly, there was quite a bit of agreement on a few key points:
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, says that social power often trumps political power and economic power. Speaking at the Webmasterworld Conference (aka Pubcon) in Boston, Gladwell focused on anecdotes from this bestselling Tipping Point to illustrate how well networked individuals have been able to disseminate new ideas more effectively than costly advertising. Individiduals identified as “connectors” tend to have far larger circles of friends, often from disparate geography and fields of endeavor. “Mavens” are a different category, comprising individuals who are respected for their knowledge of a particular topic. (For example, if you were about to invest in a new home theater, there is probably someone among your friends and acquaintances that you would call to get advice.)
Apr 132006
InternetWeek reports in Apple Discussion Board Users List Boot Camp Woes that Apple’s new Boot Camp software destroys the OS X partition on some Macs. In essence, users with this problem find that their Macs can run PC applications perfectly, but can no longer function as Macs.
Apr 112006
Search engine users are increasingly clicking on listings in the first page of search results, according to new data from Jupiter Media and iProspect. The new study shows that 62% of users click on a result on the first page of search results, compared to 48% in 2002. 90% of users click on a result in the first three pages, vs. 82% in the earlier study. I suppose that an optimist could interpret this data as meaning that the major search engines are producing better results, allowing their users to find what they are looking for with less scrolling and paging. While that is probably the case, a more pessimistic viewer would note that a third of all searchers – fully 38% – don’t find anything worth clicking in the first page of results. Is the state of search technology that bad in 2006? Are the combined geniuses of Google, Yahoo, and MSN unable to satisfy almost 40% of their users with their first page of results?
We like Netflix, and have been bullish on their approach to movie rental. In our opinion, their collaborative filtering and community approach to DVD rental will serve them well in an eventual switch to downloads. But we really wonder about their claim that a list of movies that a customer wants to rent is a patentable idea. Accoring to a Reuters article, Continue reading »