Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - E-Commerce Archives

Kickstarter, A Solution for the Patient

2012-05-23T19:43:09Z

If you want to be involved - intimately involved with the manufacturing process behind a product you purchase then I suggest you immediately jump onto Kickstarter and start backing projects. The high-flying site has made lots of news in a short amount of time. In March of last year they received $10 million in funding. In its third year the site raised almost $120 million in funding - almost three times as much as total revenue from the prior years combined.

Perhaps the company's highest-profile project was Arianna Huffington looking to use the site to raise $1 billion to buy back the Huffington Post from AOL.

In December of last year I came to the conclusion that the TouchFire Keyboard - a silicone keyboard project on the site may be the perfect companion for those of us using the iPad 2 as a data entry device.

So with my readers in mind I ordered it and waited. And waited. And waited. There have been updates but the detailed emails seemed more like excuses than actual information I could use to determine when this thing was going to ship. And then finally today I received an email from "Steve & Brad" telling me - you know what - let me share how they gave me the news:

The Good News: We signed off on Touchfire going into volume production; hooray! Our factory will start making Touchfires next week.

The Bad News: We had to order 80,000 new magnets, and it will be about 4 weeks before they get here.

More Good News: By the time the magnets arrive, the factory will have made a lot of Touchfires!

Even More Good News: We were able to come up with a single version of Touchfire that works for all generations of iPads. In fact, we were forced to….

So the keyboard should now ship by the end of June - about a six month process or so from the time of ordering.

There are a few things I really like about these emails however. They are enthusiastic. You feel like it is your own in-house R&D team communicating with you - you can sense their excitement which naturally makes you excited as well. And these guys, Steve & Brad (pictured) are really likeable based on their emails - you just get the feeling you could spend hours with them discussing the relative merits of Picard Vs. Kirk.

But getting back to the story at hand - it appears the seemingly random magnet polarization of the "iPad 3" speaker which caused some iPad 2 cases not to work with the New iPad has also presented a challenge for this group. Their solution was to change the size and polarity of the magnets - 80,000 have been ordered and will be delivered in four weeks.

So in short, my first Kickstarter experience has been smooth but slow - very slow. If you are patient and interested in learning how products are made and want to learn about real-world manufacturing challenges, you likely want to order something from them soon.

Gadgets to Have Integrated Welcome Ads Soon?

2012-05-18T13:50:24Z

If ads on the Kindle Fire Welcome Screen are successful, others will follow

There are a few things which are well known about Amazon’s Kindle Fire. First of all at $199 the company either loses money or at best breaks even depending on which analyst you speak with. We also know the version of Android the device runs is unusual as Amazon has its own proprietary shell around it.

And just like a company can pay to have a promotion on the Amazon PC home page it is being reported that Amazon is considering charging between $600,000 to $1 million for the rights to have ads displayed on the welcome screen.

Will this ad be shown on current Kindle Fires or perhaps a new ad supported model? Well the answer is not known at this point.

This approach is far different than that of Apple who has implemented ground breaking minimalist designs not only on its devices’ home pages but in its retail stores.

But consumers have shown a willingness to be flexible when it comes to saving money. Witness the success of the Kindle Fire as an example.

If Amazon is very successful selling home page advertising and such ads become popular and the consumer likes the model, there is a natural industry progression we can expect.

First off, a question… What company comes to mind when I say Internet ads. OK, I get it – today the answer is Facebook but in general, Google – right? And what company has the market-leading smartphone OS? You guessed it – at least till Facebook develops one, its Google again.

So doesn’t it make sense that Google will want in on the action and will start to integrate ads into the home pages of Android phones allowing consumers, carriers and equipment makers to subsidize the price of the phone with honest to goodness product pitches?

This potential trend is a real possibility and consumers have shown themselves to be very willing to take subsidized devices in exchange for long-term contracts. They also tolerate ads on TV, radio and even their streaming radio courtesy of services like Pandora. Ad supported gadgets may be the next frontier and if Amazon is successful, we may see the market scramble to emulate and/or improve upon its model.

Pinterest Now Worth $1.5B

2012-05-17T10:48:37Z

Now that was fast – Pinterest just raised $100M at a valuation of $1.5B in a round of funding led by Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten Inc. Pinterest's existing venture-capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners also participated according to a press release.

Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten said: "While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining. We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest's vision and Rakuten's model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world."

And the Japan connection makes sense as I have recently detected a dearth of Hello Kitty pins.

Seriously though, this is a staggering valuation growth rate as the company was just valued at over $200M late last year.

The timing for this transaction couldn’t be better as Facebook is still in the hype phase – investors are scrambling to be part of it and the demand for new social offerings seems to be at an all-time high. Moreover the potential large-scale defection of Facebook advertisers that some are predicting as a result of the public news of GM getting poor ad results hasn’t happened – at least yet.

Of course the pin-board based social network is new, growing quickly at over 20M users and is looking for a business model. The good news is a number of companies have said the visual social network drives more traffic to their sites than even mighty Facebook.

The challenge of course is how to turn those eyeballs into cash.

That will be the challenge – but if the site is already connecting buyers and sellers, there should be a way to take a piece of the transactions being generated.

At least that is what the investors paying the ever-escalating price the company’s shares are going for are hoping.

More: Softpedia, Reuters

Justifying Amazon's 16x Greater than Apple P/E Ratio

2012-05-16T16:13:03Z

One of the biggest surprises to me is comparing P/E ratios of tech companies against Amazon. Actually to be more specific, I marvel at Amazon’s P/E against pretty much any company I have seen lately. Now I don’t go around memorizing the price to earnings ratios of companies but yesterday I happened to be talking to TMC webmaster Robert Hashemian who is also an accomplished financial author having written Financial Markets for the Rest of Us. Together we compared the trailing P/E of Amazon against virtually any company we could think of like Adobe, Apple and Microsoft which were far lower.

Interestingly today I came across an article from Paul Santos who delves into a similar issue except he focuses just on Amazon and Apple. You see Amazon trades at a forward P/E of a whopping 193 while Apple trades at a forward P/E of 12. Here however are the important points:

Apple [is] growing revenues faster than Amazon, growing earnings, and growing estimates. Amazon not only has revenues that grow slower, but its earnings have been falling for two years straight. Amazon's earnings are also predicted to fall in 2012 vs. 2011, and its next-quarter earnings are predicted to fall 95% from the year before. Finally, Amazon's EPS estimates for the next quarter were slashed 90% just days ago.

Santos surmises part of the reason for this discrepancy has to do with the fact that more managed mutual funds own shares in Amazon as a percentage compared to Apple. In fact the ratio is about 19.4% to 10.7% for Apple or about double.

In addition he believes investors are concerned about putting too much money in a single stock – specifically Apple.

Moreover he points out there is a lack of large-cap growth alternatives and companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Amgen and Dell are no longer in this category.

He believes that the advent of a Facebook IPO may change things – he also mentions a Zynga or LinkedIn growth spurt could result in money moving out of Amazon and into one of these other players.

I have to say I am torn on the issue because I see cloud computing as such a massively growing business and at the recent Interop 2012 show it seemed myriad cloud infrastructure and software companies were targeting the 800 pound cloud gorilla Amazon. Of course competition can reduce margins and even marketshare but Amazon is in such a position of strength it is tough to see them being significantly damaged in either area in the next few years. Moreover as a defacto ecommerce leader, the company seems so well positioned to clean up as brick and mortar retailers continue to go belly up.

But to have a P/E 16 times greater than Apple when Apple has shown itself virtually immune to pricing pressure is shocking. Moreover, it seems Cupertino can perform regardless of the macro-economy.

Having said all this – I am now wondering if Amazon – a company I wish I owned isn’t a better short in conjunction with a paired long-position in Apple.

Santos disclosed he was short Amazon as well and it does seem like this sky-high valuation will have to come back to reality at some point. Then again, people have lost fortunes betting against Bezos. I consider him to be a genius and perhaps one of the smartest businesspeople out there. But then again, no one is infallible and a person’s intelligence doesn’t make the market rational.

Update: TheStreet has an article which says you should sell Apple and buy Amazon because P/Es no longer matter - confidence in management is more important. Sounds awful dotcomish to me.

Disclosure: I do currently own Apple shares and haven’t decided if I will put on the pair trade discussed above.

GM to Facebook: Your ads Don't Work

2012-05-16T09:46:37Z

When you are about to have one of the largest public offerings in the world - north of $100 billion and much of the reason for the size of your IPO has to do with advertising revenue, there is nothing worse than having one of the world's largest and most sophisticated advertisers telling you your ads don't work. And that is exactly what just happened to Facebook when GM pulled the plug on a $10 million dollar ad deal.
To put this in perspective, GM is the third largest advertiser in the US and its budget is absolutely huge. Last year in fact it was $1.8B. The interesting part of the situation is that even though GM won't be continuing its ad spend this year it plans on continuing to spend $30M or so for Facebook content.
What this tells us is Facebook is just becoming a driver of the Splinternet or another Internet which advertisers and developers need to take into account. While having free content is great for Facebook and moreover GM will no doubt continue to drive massive web traffic Zuckerberg's way, the challenge becomes how to monetize it all.
Now one could argue that Facebook can just show ads from other companies on all the content GM creates and they currently do this. The issue worth wondering about is what if other advertisers come to the same conclusion and there are no ads from major companies like Ford or Toyota to show on all the GM content.
Let's further consider GM wastes massive amounts of its ad budget on TV. By waste I mean branding is a very tough business in that it is tough to target branding ads directly to your audience. In other words when you see an ad on TV for a Chevy truck - a category which only a percentage of the population would buy, the rest of the ad spend could be considered wasted.
So GM is comfortable with wasted ad spend - most companies realize this is just the way branding works.
But on the web there is more measurability meaning that GM likely compared its click through rates on Facebook with other sites like Google, etc and decided there weren't enough people clicking to keep the ad campaign running. Typically the online advertising division of companies is more results oriented than those in the TV or radio areas.
Let's remember people have likened advertising on social networks to an interuption of a conversation between friends and this GM news seems to echo the sentiment.
And perhaps most importantly if you had to surmise what sort of ad would be most successful on Facebook you would no doubt say those targeting consumers - and automobiles would likely be at the top of the list. And here we have this massive consumer automobile advertising company complaining about advertising effectiveness.
Now it is worth pointing out that advertisers use different metrics to measure ad effectiveness. In my career I have seen one company decide an advertising product isn't for them and their direct competitor loves the exact same product. This happens at trade shows as well where the booth of company A does poorly but company B competes directly with company A and has a full booth of people and signs up for a larger booth at the next event.
So this could be an issue of a single company using measurement tools which put a poor spotlight on Facebook's results.
But it could also be the equivalent of IBM pulling out of COMDEX and subsequently sinking the largest trade show in the US virtually overnight.
Now I am not trying to be over-dramatic here - Facebook isn't going to go away any time soon but if this example becomes a trend it may have to refocus its ad push on advertising outside its network using the rich targeting data it continues to amass.
And while the Facebook IPO seems to be the hottest thing since the launch of the iPhone it remains to be seen if in one year the stock becomes more like high flyer Google or sinking ship Vonage.
See Henry Blodget's take and the original article in the Wall Street Journal.

Kickstarter: Sometimes the Cloud Can't Keep a Secret

2012-05-15T14:30:10Z

Data breaches happen - a while back Moveable Type upgraded its blogging software and posts scheduled to be seen at a later date were given away by tag pages which posted immediately. In other words if a blogger wrote about a new Version of Microsoft Word and scheduled the post for later in the week,the tag pages - for things like "word processor," "microsoft," "pc" and any others would be immediately visible to readers and search engines.

Yours Truly was hit by this bug a few times and was even accused of not honoring an embargo as a result.

Point being - data breaches are real and they happen in the cloud as well as in-house systems.

Kickstarter recently had a breach as well where 77,000 projects became accessible via an API which the Wall Street Journal was able to access until around 1:40pm EST this past Friday, May 11th.

If there is good news it is that Kickstarter has 77,000 projects and financial data wasn't disclosed - as a refresher, the company helps get new products off the ground by crowdfunding and taking a 5% cut. The highest profile project may be from Arianna Huffington who is trying to use the platform to buy back the company she founded The Huffington Post from AOL for $1B.

Will this breach result in a major problem for Kickstarter? Probably not - unless it happens repeatedly. At this point I think we all expect breaches to happen and although the cloud can't always keep a secret, you could argue in-house systems are sometimes bad at keeping things confidential as well.

Are You Ready for the Identity Economy?

2012-04-28T23:14:20Z

With Facebook’s value being pegged around 100 billion dollars; it is easy to see why many are calling identity the new oil of the internet. And one company, UnboundID is looking to become the leader in this bold new frontier which they call the identity economy. By allowing companies to buy, sell, trade and leverage customer information the company allows their customers to combine this information with others in order to add value to themselves as well as end users.

An example of this concept in action is logging into a site using Twitter or Facebook – end-users hate to answer questions online and indeed many will abandon a site which makes queries which take their time. That’s why a site like Pinterest relies on Facebook to be an identity provider. Of course there are applications where Facebook’s login may not be secure enough such as let’s say banking. But still, a bank could let users check their balances via Facebook or even a Facebook login but require more rigorous authentication in order to make a transfer.

Telecom carriers are logical providers of identity and in fact BT has rolled out authentication as a service. The concept here is that a carrier knows who you are and also has your credit card on file or at least a billing arrangement. Moreover, consumers trust their carriers to be middlemen in transactions such as purchases (think ring tones, etc.) – so it makes sense to piggyback on such an ecosystem like app developers leverage their app store of choice.

And there could be even greater incentives for consumers to share their identity information beyond simplifying logins. For example, credit card fraud is a huge problem – ranging between $37B-$70B per year in the US alone. What if credit card companies gave consumers a better interest rate or other incentives to share their information and as a result were able to work with your telephone operator to ensure your cell phone was near your credit card when you were making a transaction? The savings would be massive and when you realize what a big deal this would be you understand that whole “new oil” reference above.

In a recent conversation with Steve Shoaff, CEO and Andy Land VP of Marketing of UnboundID I was told the company helps its customers acquire new users while also helping the users turn into dollars via monetization directly or through targeted ads and intelligence. Finally they help with customer retention and satisfaction.
Andy Land speaks with me at Cloud Expo 2011 New York – as you can see the business has evolved a great deal from last year

They advise a user-centric approach to managing your business. In other words whereas many companies have product silos of customers where information is isolated, you need to align your data and organization around the customer. I like to think of it as a normalized database where information is not duplicated – a customer number is constant and is used across your company’s various products and services.

The obvious question to me has to do with security – how do you ensure this information which is pay dirt for hackers around the world is guarded as well as the secret service guards the president – well at least in the US. I got the answer I was expecting - UnboundID data is encrypted end-to-end and unless a foreign government gets into it and can apply a supercomputer to break the encryption, the information is of little value if intercepted.

Moreover, the company says – and I agree, it is better to have identity information in the hands of a few highly secure companies than spreading it around to numerous vendors you do business with. Of course no system is infallible but many of us would feel safer buying from an established e-commerce vendor with a reputation to protect than a smaller company which may not have the resources to fend off attacks.

The company also restricts the rights of users – making sure the admins aren’t too powerful, allowing them to easily tap into the data themselves. Moreover, UnboundID helps its customers with the ever-changing patchwork of global privacy regulations.

They are looking to become the center of this identity brokering space and have been growing by leaps and bounds while also receiving recent funding. They have established a foothold in the carrier space and are evolving their product to serve the needs of tech and financial companies as well.

Neustar Aims to Make Mobile App Development Easier

2012-03-20T15:26:39Z

With over half a million apps in the Apple App Store alone one might argue that developers have all the tools they have to develop compelling applications but what if there was a way to take traditional apps and integrate them more closely with carrier networks and big data analytics allowing them to be more powerful, spur increased consumer spending while greasing the wheels of mobile commerce and more?

Recently Jean Foster and Steve Edwards at Neustar showed me their Intelligent Cloud service which integrates rich anonymized databases from TARGUSInfo with access to carrier networks and other information to accelerate developer productivity and to frankly enable applications to become better drivers of value for consumers and revenue for advertisers and merchants.

One demo they showed me involved a gift card where a user scans the bar code associated with it. At this point a unique URL is passed to a browser and opened on the mobile device allowing a consumer to check balance information, make a payment and connect their cell phone to the card. Then a consumer can opt in for marketing information and can further text message to get a response with balance information on the card. Then they can scan a code on a product to have the amount debited from the card. In this manner the cell phone becomes the card meaning the card doesn’t need to be used again.

It is worth mentioning that Neustar handles the messaging and communications in the above demo.

The company has covered North America with carrier partnerships and recently Telus has signed up to the platform enabling developers to integrate the best of Neustar APIs with those from Telus allowing such things as mobile payments and messaging.

Neustar also provides communications for enterprises – for example their Mobile Enterprise Services solution allows an HR department to communicate rapidly with workers not only via SMS but via email and desktop solutions. This solution is powered by the company’s Text Everywhere service.

They also have a Geofence solution enabling marketing based upon location. Partner ZOS enables the company to provide its customers the ability to provide messages and offers when users are near specific locations.

Neustar has a storied history as a trusted third party providing SMS short codes, DNS look ups LNP information and more. They believe this position in the market allows them to be the optimal partner at a time when privacy and consent are becoming so important.

Last year the company purchased TARGUSInfo and is now able to correlate anonymized data from 200 independent databases allowing an app developer for example to see if a cell phone user is likely to be able to purchase a luxury car, etc.

Neustar is a fascinating organization as it has its hands in myriad areas of technology and communications – this move into big data, analytics and mobile enablement for developers seems like a smart diversification move as many of its legacy markets begin to slow.

And certainly with all the recent security challenges facing mobile app developers, it is possible the company really is at the right place at the right time to ensure increased user, carrier and ecosystem trust.

Amazon Gives Away Money to Promote Local

2012-03-20T11:30:56Z

For the next 19 and a half hours or so you may have a chance to get a $10 gift certificate for $5 and you can use it on Amazon's site not just its local area. To get a piece of the action you need to visit the local site and be aware that the offer is limited to today only and based on my informal research the company is selling about 1,000 of them an hour. 73,547 have been sold so far.

7 Wireless Data Cap Winners

2012-03-07T14:06:58Z

Yesterday I outlined 7 Wireless Data Cap Losers and today I thought I would explore the flipside – in other words, who might win as a result of carriers becoming far stingier with their bandwidth allotments. After all, devices are becoming far more powerful and quad-core tablets and smartphones could become the norm by the middle of next year if not sooner. So with all this power and limited supply of bandwidth, how might user behavior change?

Here is my list of the 7 wireless data cap winners.

Cable companies have deployed WiFi throughout the US thanks to technology from companies like BelAir Networks – now part of Ericsson. And in order to use these networks, cable companies simply ask that you continue to use their services – at least for now. So the move made by AT&T and soon others to reduce available wireless bandwidth will no doubt have consumers thinking twice before cutting their cable cords and potentially switching to FiOS or U-verse.
Hotel WiFi networks generally aren’t that great and quite often are eclipsed by the speed of 4G and even 3G and potentially 2G networks. The worst part of it all is you can’t tell just how bad a hotel WiFi network is until you pay for it – a frustrating situation for business travelers to deal with. But still, hotels will likely see increases in WiFi usage which one hopes will lead them to spend more money on their bandwidth.
Boingo/iPass should be beneficiaries of wireless bandwidth caps as both services allow users to quickly access a number of global WiFi networks available in many airports and other areas of high foot traffic. Many companies will likely see subscriptions to these services as a great alternative to relying fully on Verizon, AT&T and others. I have used both services and they are both quite useful.
Starbucks will become that much more desirable to users looking to escape bandwidth caps from carriers and we can expect users to wait till they are near the ubiquitous coffee shop before downloading large attachments, photos, etc. Ditto for McDonalds and other establishments offering free wireless bandwidth.
Slacker Radio has the ability to download hours of music on numerous stations allowing a customer to suck up content over WiFi, listen and then sync favorites and disliked content when on a WiFi network. For $9.95/month Slacker Premium Radio lets you download 25 stations worth of content and fill your favorite device with music which you can enjoy offline.
Sirius XM Radio saw a huge threat from Pandora and other streaming radio stations but in a world where listening to excess music could actually slow everything else you do down, we can expect users to explore options. And one of these is satellite radio which uses no bandwidth at all – just a satellite antenna.
Apple iTunes loses revenue to streaming radio apps like Spotify and Slacker because both services allow users to play specific music on demand meaning they don’t need to purchase individual songs. But when the bandwidth is no longer all you can eat, it becomes cheaper to buy than to rent from the cloud. Advantage Apple iTunes and Amazon MP3 downloads.

http://blog.tmcnet.com/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=13

Off to MWC 2012 Next Week

2012-02-23T19:34:46Z

I've got lots on my plate this week before I take off to Barcelona to attend Mobile World Congress (MWC) - which was once called 3GSM. I've got great meetings lined up and I am very interested in seeing what is happening in the world of 4G, white spaces, M2M, tablets and smartphones. Apple won't be there - formerly anyway so I consider this event to be kind of like the anti-Apple confab. Interestingly, all the major events I attend these days are devoid of the iconic Cupertino brand as well. It doesn't seem to be hurting them does it?

Yet face-to-face events like this one are crucial to get the word out and generate buzz around brands which don't have the Apple halo. Companies that will really need to shine this week include Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Google and HTC.

I will be sure to keep you posted as I travel to the show (www.tehrani.com)- you can also follow me on Twitter at @rtehrani. In addition the TMCnet Mobile World Congress news page will give you access to articles written by 100+ TMCnet contributors.

These are some of the MWC stories produced so far today:

Logitech Zagg iPad 2 Keyboard: Do You Need a Laptop?

2012-02-14T17:00:11Z

A few months back I was in Boston interviewing a number of companies in the tech space and just before one of my interviews I was reading about the Logitech Keyboard Case by ZAGG for iPad 2 and I was intrigued. I thought having a real keyboard connected to the iPad 2 was a great pain reliever for my fingers which ache when hitting glass repeatedly but I worried the addition would limit my ability to use the tablet while standing. Quite often in my office I find myself using the iPad and I figured a fixed aluminum keyboard would make this practice cease.

Owen DeLong of Hurricane Electric is an iPv6 evangelist but I found him equally good at evangelizing why I needed a bluetooth keyboard from Zagg for my iPad 2. At first I wasn’t convinced and instead thought the new TouchFire silicon keyboard would be the best choice for my aching fingers. I even wrote about my decision to buy this keyboard and Owen commented that the beauty of the bluetooth Logitech option was you could view the entire screen while typing.

My interview with Owen Delong

He is correct and at that point I decided to purchase the Logitech as well. After charging the device via Micro-USB for over an hour you get a few weeks’ worth of battery life with light to moderate use. The case is great because it uses the magnets of the iPad and turns the tablet off when the case is used and wakes up when the tablet is lifted out of its aluminum semi-cocoon.

I feel comfortable enough with the case that I feel somewhat OK leaving the iPad in the trunk – something I would never do with the standard Apple case attached.

If there is a downside to the keyboard it is battery status information. It would be great to know when the battery was at 20% for example. There is a status light which blinks when power is low but with 2-weeks of use on a single-charge, most users will see no need to turn the keyboard off – except when they charge it. Moreover, the status light is hidden from view when the iPad 2 rests in the case.

One final challenge is if you put the iPad 2 in the case with the wrong orientation, the screen does not turn off. You have to remember to line up the hole in the case with the hole on the iPad where the 30-pin dock connector is.

Last week at ITEXPO my primary laptop died leaving me with just the iPad and Zagg combo. I certainly wasn’t as efficient as I would be with a laptop – in-part because it is easier to delete large amounts of email on the PC using Remote Desktop connected to an office machine. Moreover, finding old email on an iPad is a slow process for someone who has a very large mailbox. But the iPad was an acceptable replacement for my regular machine – which is pretty scary actually.

I say scary because many people may not see the iPad as a proper alternative to a laptop but I have found it to be a worthy replacement for much of what I do. Obviously the ability to run Flash is still an issue but the flipside is not having to worry about battery life throughout a typical day. Moreover, the iPad seems more socially acceptable on the table at lunch, in meetings and other places where a laptop may get you dirty looks.

As you can imagine, in exchange for the ability to have a more pleasant typing experience and producing content more quickly, I am no longer able to easily use the iPad while standing and/or walking. It is not impossible - just a bit awkward.

The keyboard/case combo will set you back $100 on the Zagg site, about $80 including shipping on Amazon and a refurbished unit will cost you $50 including shipping on Meritline. I have used Meritline quite often in the past and never had a problem but never bought a refurb from them. Quantities are limited according to the company so you may want to act fast.

Google+ Growth, Dropbox Killer: Google IS the Tech News

2012-02-09T16:04:09Z

Google has entrenched itself is so many areas of tech they have become the technology news of the day. First off, Google+ growth has been nothing short of fantastic, in part because the company has altered search results to put more emphasis on this social network. Every SEO/SEM professional has had no choice in the past few months to get up to speed on the latest social network from the search giant. And this in part is the reason why it has half the unique visitors of Twitter according to web traffic tracking site Compete.

In other unrelated news in the mobile market – hey wait, it isn’t unrelated at all – once again it features Google whose Motorola Mobility acquisition is about to get OKed – perhaps as early as next week.

The bad news now for those companies selling products with technology covered by Motorola/Google patents – you’re on the hook for 2.25% of every sale. This includes iPhones and even cars which utilize H.264 or UMTS. Think that one through – that is $2,250 for a $100,000 BMW or Mercedes. Of course if you don’t agree to these terms, you get thrown off Google’s search home page – just kidding – you actually just get sued by Google’s ever-expanding army of lawyers. It may be preferable to just get booted from the first SERP.

It is worth mentioning this is the same standard set by Motorola – many in the industry hoped Google would ease up on these requirements.

By now you have followed the trend – we will move on to yet another unrelated space – cloud storage where Google is set to release a Dropbox killer – its new Drive service. Really though this move was necessary as Google has to have an iCloud competitor as well if it plans of allowing Android to copy all the cool functions and features of iOS.

Google is into so many things and as a result you have two groups of people. First are the users who are happy to see the company expand because they rely on Google’s free services for everything from email to RSS reading. And then there is the second group – competitors and investors who worry Google is suffocating the rest of the tech space with its ever-expanding growth into new and perhaps unrelated spaces. This latter group includes privacy advocates who worry that these moves coupled with Google’s new “shared data” privacy policy allows Google unprecedented access to personal information.

But whatever your feelings, you’ll be happy to know that Google has even more news which will allow you to voice your thoughts in person to a Google employee. You see, the search leader is said to be opening a new retail store in Dublin. And I am sure your Android device will have no problems giving you step-by-step directions on how to get there once it’s built.

Rewards Network, the Social Restaurant Hub

2012-02-07T21:52:28Z

In the last few decades it has become apparent that all companies are for the most part limited by their imaginations. Apple was thought to be a computer company but is now a leader in music, movies and phones. Amazon went from selling books to everything – even its servers are for rent via its cloud-computing solutions. Google went from search to purchasing Motorola Mobility and is well known for being involved in many projects from solar to self-driving cars and the television space.

But an airline? Certainly they aren’t adapting to the new competitive landscape – after all, many of the airplanes we fly on in the US were built in the 1960s when the cloud was defined as an IBM System/360 mainframe.

American Airlines has been a pioneer in loyalty marketing since the AAdvantage frequent flyer program was launched in 1981 and as a result their successful marketing concept spread to many other industries from toys to greeting cards.

The airline took a page from its own book and runs an AAdvantage Dining program which allows members to earn points good for travel and other services. This isn’t unlike agreements AA and other airlines have with credit card companies where a percentage of the money spent is converted to airline points or miles.

The company just announced a new program called the Get Ahead Bonus promotion where participants are eligible to earn 2 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles on every dollar spent after $75. The offer is good until April 30, 2012 and typically participants would get only one mile per dollar spent. The promotion is actually a bit ambiguous as it also says you can get up to 7 miles per dollar between now and

31^st but let’s stipulate you will get more miles than usual to get us back to more interesting topics.

And the fine print does get interesting as the company encourages you to be social – you are to submit dining reviews between now and March 31st, 2012 to get your extra points.

So here we have an airline who has obviously embraced restaurant rewards and now has found a way to incentivize users to be more social by providing reviews.

The company behind this dining program from American Airlines is Chicago based Rewards Network an organization with over 3.4 million frequent diners according to their website. It was founded in 1984 as Transmedia Network by Mel Chasen and at that time had only 225 members. It has become a major force in Airline loyalty card/ restaurant programs and partners similar initiatives at America West, Continental, Delta, US Airways among others.

I spoke with Megan Flynn, the Senior VP of Marketing at Rewards Network and she told me the company has an open network philosophy – sharing data and reviews with not only their partners but with social networks. She says there will be some announcements soon regarding new content sharing partners.

She likens her company’s service to a “secret shopper” experience where you know the review is from a person who actually ate at the restaurant. You see, the way the program works is it matches credit card numbers to ensure customers get credit for eating at a particular establishment. So the company has not only credit card information but email addresses.

She contrasted this to other sites where reviews can be posted by anyone – there is really no quality control. And the review numbers are staggering – over 50,000 restaurant surveys are completed each week according to Flynn.

To me some natural partners are Google, Facebook and Microsoft/Bing – Yahoo would make sense as well. Google might be a likely acquirer– remember they have Zagat and they also launched Nosh which isn’t that far from the Rewards Network concept.

It’s interesting, Facebook quotes 483 million “active” users – but we know the numbers are fudged (or at least exaggerated). And even if the real number is so big, how do we know if any of them have spending power? I’ve said repeatedly that having a US real unemployment rate somewhere between 18-30M is part of the reason for Facebook’s success. Are these the buyers a restaurant wants or needs?

Then we have the Groupon business model – daily deals emailed to members and as a result the company has a valuation of about $15.5B!

What is the value of millions of members of a restaurant program who actually spend money? In 2010 the members spent almost $700M in fact. We aren’t talking chump change here. Imagine the potential to grow this business as an even more social company where it starts to get the buzz of a Yelp or LinkedIn.

Seems to me Rewards Network is really one of the most underreported stories out there and as long as it can continue to take an industry as stodgy as the airline space and make it social and interactive, imagine the potential it has to transform other markets and industries.

Need a New Car? Win a Mustang at ITEXPO in Miami Next Week

2012-01-27T15:48:11Z

I think I may have one of the best jobs in the world. I admit it is a bit ADHD-inducing as I get involved in lots of areas from new media to the latest technologies in the market as I run this major media company which is TMC. Not only do I get help influence tens of millions of people online I also get to host live events where I meet many of the readers who frequent my blog and TMCnet - the main web portal of TMC where I am CEO.

But the most exciting part of my job comes twice a year when I give away a car to an unsuspecting attendee at ITEXPO. Next week - Friday Feb 3rd at 1:45 pm at the Miami Beach Convention Center, I get to give the next car away and it will be a Ford Mustang. In order to be eligible to win you need to pick up a card at registration and get it stamped by all the sponsors of the car giveaway.

Thank you sponsors for making these giveaways possible. If I were an attendee at a show I would want a mix of solid education, a chance to network with peers, see the leading exhibitors in the space but also to have some fun and that is what events like our various receptions and giveaways are supposed to provide.

The TMC team and I look forward to hosting you next week. Thank you all in advance for coming to our event and hats off to the TMC team who is managing not only ITEXPO but a host of collocated and unparallelled events such as Super WiFi Summit, MSP World, our SUITS technology patents event, M2M Evolution, Mobile LATAM, HTML5 Summit, Cloud Communications Expo, The Channel Vision Expo (CVx), Business Video, Asterisk 123, 4GWE, StartupCamp5, Avaya Tech on Tap, the Blackberry Hackathon, SIP trunking workshop, business development workshop, telecom reseller week, to name a few.

http://itexpo.tmcnet.com/sip-trunking-workshop/miami/