-->

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

2005 Top Ten Global Issues And Challenges In The Hospitality Industry

Hospitality Net - Industry News | By The International Society Of Hospitality Consultants (ISHC)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Global Uncertainty

2. Human Resources Issues

3. Branding Issues

> A proliferation of brands and branded hotels worldwide that is leading to the commoditization of the hotel product.
> Increased competition between the brands is leading to amenity creep, and diverging interests between owners and brands.
> Instilling authenticity of local culture into brand standards remains a challenge.

4. Financial Viability

5. Technology

The hospitality industry must do a better job of managing technology and addressing the challenges posed by new and changing technology. Specifically, the industry must align technology investment with business objectives, address aging and inadequate infrastructure (at both the corporate and the property levels); and learn to better utilize technology in marketing to guests, training employees, yield management, and meeting customer requirements.

6. Customer Issues

Customer issues present a challenge to the industry in several ways:


Increasing loss of control over the customer - The use of the Internet, homogenization of the hotel product and increased corporate oversight has reduced the amount of control that operators have over the customer.
Changes in the customer - Hotel customers are changing due to demographics (the aging of the baby boomer generation) and due to lower transportation costs that promote travel.
Changes in customer expectations - Customer expectations are changing as consumers become more sophisticated and better educated.

7. Operating Cost Creep

8. Supply Issues

9. Safety and Security

10. (Tie) Distribution Channel Management

In 2005 it is expected that price sensitivity will continue to drive consumer buying behavior in virtually every segment. Pricing structures will need to demonstrate price integrity across all distribution channels—not just electronic ones. The potential challenges are formidable: lead times to booking continue to shrink; the move toward real time inventory becomes paramount, impacting technology, product categories, segments and channels; and the desire to track and manage every revenue stream in every channel means that distribution channel management transitions to a focus on the most profitable customer.

10. (Tie) Airlines in the 21st Century

It is important to closely monitor the fundamental changes occurring in the airline industry and their potential impact on the hotel industry for the viability of the hotel industry depends greatly on airline lift capacity, service and convenience in travel as well as the cost of airline travel.

Google

SiliconBeat: Snap: the future of transparency?

SiliconBeat
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alerted to this article by SEM 2.0. Bill Gross, the founder of a new search property, Snap, publishes daily stats and financial details on the home page. Silicon Beat highlights the following:

- They've served 2.6 million searches since they first launched.
- They made $55.88 yesterday.
- They have 1,235 advertisers.
- And they had 624 clicks on ads yesterday that generated revenue."

Despite the figures like $55.88 Bill Gross is quoted as saying "It's kind of scary to put that data out there,' he added. "But it's liberating at the same time. I think it's good in the long-term. I think it will be a trend. In every aspect, it's better to be open.''

Would this kind of transparency prevent another "Enron"?

More charts and stats like the home page referrals charts would make comparisons for PPC etc a doddle....

Example:
Referrer google.com Visitors 47,041 Cost $5,738
Referrer top20.com Visitors 41,670 Cost $0

Click through from the bottom of the referrers list for full Snap BETA traffic figures

Snap Stats a few of the details available are:

Executive Summary
Traffic
Keyword
Snap Financials
Advertisers

Way to go?


Google

EasyMobile to push prices down?

T-Mobile backs EasyMobile venture: No-frills service could see prices drop T-Mobile is to act as carrier for a web-based U.K. mobile phone service set up by Denmark's TDC and the EasyGroup that is to launch in March.

CBS Marketwatch "TDC said its agreement with the Easy Group would allow it to launch the same service in up to 12 countries in Europe under the EasyMobile brand."

Google

Monday, November 29, 2004

On blogs, open source journalism, MSN gaffes and online marketing

micropersuasion.com

Steve Rubel blogs about blogging and marketing. His forthcoming phone seminar will cover the main topics of his blog:

How blogs are changing the media and journalism.
The ways that blogs change traditional PR.
What is the opportunity for marketers?

Google

Saturday, November 27, 2004

John Battelle's Searchblog: : Blogging has legs

Blogs, Yahoo Are Winners

To end his post John Battelle quotes from Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meekers report on trends in search and blogs:

Pdf Mary "outlines trends in this space well, her report is a must read for all of you interested in the business implications of blogging. Her conclusion: This blogging thing, it got legs. And that's a fine way to end my 1,000th post here on Searchblog. "

Google

Enjoy England Excellence Awards 2005

travmedia.com

The "winners of the Enjoy England Excellence Awards 2005 will be announced at the national Awards ceremony at the British Museum in London on 19 April next year...

All finalists must demonstrate a commitment to excellent service and customer care, strong environmental policies, provisions for disabled guests and investment in staff training and development."

The Awards categories include "Tourism Website of the Year" ....finalists include:
· English Lakes Hotels, Low Wood, Windermere, Cumbria www.elh.co.uk·
· Mid Bedfordshire District Council, www.midbeds.gov.uk/tourism
· Peak District Farm Holidays, www.peakdistrictfarmhols.co.uk
· Lyth Hill House, www.lythhillhouse.com· The London Pass
· Discover Teesdale, TIC, www.teesdalediscovery.com
· World of Glass, St Helens, Merseyside www.worldofglass.com
· Brook House, Brook Horrabridge, Yelverton, Devon www.brook-house.com
· Marston Hotels, Princes Parade, Hythe Kent www.marstonhotels.com
· The Ripley Castle Estate, Ripley Castle, Ripley,N Yorks www.ripleycastle.co.uk
· www.londonpass.com

Google

Friday, November 26, 2004

FT.com Fantasy article - How to be a Billionaire

FT.com

Google

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Reuters | Hearing Set After Microsoft Rivals Quit

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage "By David Lawsky BRUSSELS (Reuters)

The judge considering Microsoft Corp.'s appeal against European Union sanctions has called a closed meeting for Thursday to decide what action to take after two more major opponents of the U.S. software giant withdrew from the case.

Novell Inc. and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) removed themselves from the lawsuit after Microsoft, maker of the dominant Windows operating system, agreed to pay each of them substantial sums in settlements

The sole remaining company opposing Microsoft before the EU is RealNetworks, maker of rival audiovisual software Real Player"

Google

Xmas Holiday shoppers already clicking online -

CBS Marketwatch Christmas online retail analysed: The figures relate to FMCG with no mention of travel related purchases

At least two out of every five holiday purchases will be researched online and completed in person. That's what Gartner Group analyst Adam Sarner predicts based on current shopping behavior.

"Most commerce happens offline -- only 1.7 percent of it is online," said Sarner. "But at least 40 percent of shoppers do their prepurchase research online -- for some product groups more than others."

Consumer electronic products lend themselves more naturally to online research than clothing and perishables, noted Sarner.

Both online and offline, holiday shopping will reach $219.9 billion this year, showing a 4.5 percent rise over last year, according to The National Retail Federation.

Google

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

IPO Report: Cendant eyes $1 billion via IPO of Wright Express unit -

By Steve Gelsi, CBS.MarketWatch.com

"Cendant Corp. set plans Tuesday to dip into the recovering IPO market for a second time this year, filing to take its wholly owned Wright Express Corp. unit public for a hefty $1 billion...
Wright Express captures transaction data at more than 180,000 fuel and vehicle maintenance locations, including more than 90 percent of the nation's retail fuel locations and 40,000 vehicle maintenance locations"

Google

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

AOL portal idea targets Yahoo and MSN

Internet Daily: AOL expands free content

Frank Barnako, CBS.MarketWatch.com reports that: "Time Warner Inc.'s America Online is reported hard at work deciding to move content outside the walls of its subscription service..."The portal idea makes sense, but it's not easy," Jordan Rohan, an Internet analyst, told The Times. "It's not clear the brand has what it takes to give Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) or MSN (MSFT: news, chart, profile) a run for its money." "

Google

VisitScotland’s pre-Christmas campaign travmedia.com

travmedia.com main details and offers..


Cross marketed with snowboard campaign: travmedia.com "Snowboarding Superstar Encourages UK Holidaymakers To Take To The Slopes In Scotland"

"Scots snowboarder Lesley McKenna, Britain’s most successful Snowboard World Cup competitor ever, is encouraging UK visitors to head to the Scottish Highlands in search of snow this winter. From her base in her home-town of Aviemore, Lesley spoke about her passion for snowboarding in Scotland, coinciding with the launch of VisitScotland’s new 2004/2005 Ski-Scotland & Winter Activities brochure."

Google

Fast Company | Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos

Fast Company | Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos: "Fast Take: The Book of Bezos...Amazon.com's founder is a study in contradictions -- analytical and intuitive, careful and audacious, playful and determined. What really makes this remarkable entrepreneur tick?"

Last paragraph reads: "Add up lots of little advantages.
Bezos realizes that Amazon doesn't have any single big advantage over potential competitors, so he's constantly introducing small but innovative features that add up to a superlative experience for customers."

Google

Friday, November 19, 2004

Travel Daily News - Details of managment of .travel domain

Travel Daily News - CrossSphere participates in .travel domain initiative Those who wish to purchase a .travel domain name will be asked to complete the authentication forms and submit them to CrossSphere. CrossSphere will then authenticate the registrant as a member and submit the authentication to Tralliance, who will assign each registrant a unique identifying number and reserve their name selection.

Tralliance will manage the registry by providing infrastructure, technology and administrative support for .travel. A .travel directory will be created to help Internet users locate travel and tourism information on the Internet, aiding buyers and sellers of travel.

Google

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Yahoo work in progress | Using Domain Keys To Fight Spam

Slashdot report on the CNET News story Yahoo takes on spam, boosts e-mail storage | CNET News.com: "Yahoo on Monday said it has begun attaching antispam technology to all of its outgoing e-mails, hoping that other providers will follow suit" also points to Yahoo's: "Internet-Drafts / 'work in progress.'" Domain-based Email Authentication Using Public-Keys Advertised in the DNS (DomainKeys).

For the system to work, both outgoing and incoming e-mail services must use the keys: EarthLink and Google endorse the Yahoo product but AOL and "MSN are pushing their own antispam and e-mail authentication technologies. AOL's SPF and Microsoft's Sender ID check an e-mail's identity through its Internet Protocol address, and can be used alongside DomainKeys.

Yahoo and Microsoft have filed with the Internet Engineering Task Force for their technologies to become standards."

Google

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Cendant Does Franchise

Cendant Hotel Group Goes to the Web to Disseminate Franchise Information / November 2004

The site explains how Cendant’s size, resources and strategic industry relationships offer compelling reasons for hotel owners to affiliate with one of its eight brands, he said. “As the world’s largest lodging franchisor, Cendant can provide franchisees with tremendous marketing and purchasing muscle.”

Google

Webby Awards

Criteria Webby Awards'05 maybe

Google

iMediaConnection: Basic Training for Affiliate Managers

iMediaConnection: Basic Training for Affiliate Managers: "Basic Training for Affiliate Managers"

Google

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Seth's Blog: on the the 'Is Branding Dead?' debate:"

Seth's Blog: A Little Like Francisco Franco: "Chris Busch wants me to wade into the 'Is Branding Dead?' debate:"

Godin adds three short points to the debate:

Summary:

1) The number of massive mega brands and their value is shrinking
2)The number of new micro-brands is exploding
3)There's a difference between brands and branding: Brands exist whether you want them to or not...Branding is ill-defined, usually vacuous, often expensive and totally unpredictable.

The original article By James Surowiecki:
Wired 12.11: The Decline of Brands: "The Decline of Brands : Sure, there are more brands than ever. But they're taking a beating - or, even worse, being ignored. Who's to blame? A new breed of hyperinformed superconsumers. (That's right - you!) "

Other articles & comments:
PSFK: Long Live Branding
gapingvoid: why branding is dead

Google

Travel Writing Awards - Winners and Categories

Another award for Totaltravel.co.uk to aim at....

travmedia.com: "British Guild of Travel Writers(BGTW) "

Google

Monday, November 15, 2004

Meet Millionaire Spammer Jeremy Jaynes

iWon News: "Trial Shows How Spammers Operate" details of his operation.

Slashdot | Meet Millionaire Spammer Jeremy Jaynes Discussed

Google

Forbes.com: Adobe Beefs Up Flagship Product Acrobat adds Yahoo toolbar

Forbes.com: Adobe: "Those downloading the updated version of the free Adobe Reader could choose to install a cobranded Yahoo Inc. browser toolbar on their computers. The toolbar - an increasingly popular method of online search engines that remain visible on a user's Internet browser - will feature links to the Yahoo search engine and other products. "

Google

Forbes.com: Dow Jones & Co. to Buy MarketWatch Inc.

Forbes.com: Dow Jones & Co. to Buy MarketWatch Inc.: "Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, will buy MarketWatch Inc. for about $519 million in a deal that would end a monthlong bidding war for the online financial news and information provider"

Google

Saturday, November 13, 2004

dabs.com - email signup data collection

dabs.com - subscribe

Google

Friday, November 12, 2004

Total - Travel

www. total-travel.com/farebuster/ remove space..

Google

SiteProNews: Part One : Blogs, RSS feeds 101

What are Blogs, and Why Your Business Should Use One

"Whether blogging turns out to be a passing fad, or if it proves itself to be a whole new way to communicate with existing and potential customers, you owe it to yourself, and your company to examine what the potential is for you."

Google

Internet Daily: EBay buys classified site in Netherlands for $290 mln

Internet Daily:

"EBay is tapping the classifieds business in the Netherlands."

Moving in on trad medias worst fear....

Google

Thursday, November 11, 2004

The death of Usability - long live design and branding

Digital Web Magazine - The End of Usability Culture: By Dirk Knemeyer. The author stirs up the long standing debate about the division between usability and creativity...the comments discuss this opposition as perhaps being too harsh. Read on and please comment...

Dirk Knemeyer is a Founding Principal of Involution Studios LLC, a digital innovation firm located in Silicon Valley and Boston. Dirk is responsible for managing the business and for providing design strategy, brand innovation, and training services to organizations around the world.

Dirk is on the Board of Directors for the International Institute for Information Design (IIID) headquartered in Vienna, Austria, as well as the Board of Directors for the AIGA Center for Brand Experience, based in New York City. He is also a member of the Executive Council of the User Experience Network (UXnet). He has published more than 100 articles—many on the topic of design strategy—and regularly gives presentations all around the world.


In the article Knemeyer defines the overemphasis on usability as being the reason for "the largely stale and uninteresting visual and experiential nature of what is on the Web represents the power that usability culture is exerting over the design process"...

Design needs to be brought back in because in his view "Traditional design flies in the face of usability culture."

He considers design to be "largely based on:

Individual intuition and creativity
The designer’s natural ability to synthesize data and information
The designer’s natural ability to produce compelling experiential interfaces and products that provide emotional or informational impact"

To back up his call for "soul" to be allowed to influence web sites design he quotes the following example:

"Anticipating the central importance of design as the lever for competitive advantage, Stanford University is investing in the creation of a pioneering design school. A new trend is beginning, away from the analytical bent of the researcher and toward the creative nature of the designer.

Note the "designer" one page site the d.school / extraordinary / sustainable

Dirk Knemeyer's call to action in "Keep the baby, toss the bathwater" merit careful reading and consideration, he concludes that:

"We need to.. find new heroes. Who are the great digital designers practicing today? There are some, but they remain relatively unknown. They need to step forward, take the initiative, assert their skills and abilities, and take center stage from the researchers, analysts, and academics. And the design community needs to support these people, extolling their virtues with the same vigor we show buying the books and pushing content from our current sacred cows.

Think bigger. With very little innovative work out there, we must push the boundaries of our own minds. Sure, we only have so much screen real estate and resolution to work with. Yes, we are limited by programming and hardware boundaries. We will be awkwardly zagging while most of our peers happily zig in lockstep. That’s how many of the great movements in history got started.

Be courageous. The easiest thing in the world is to line up statistics and best practices and use those “objective” guides as a war hammer to bludgeon away any attempts of creativity, innovation and experiential design. These are the tools of a usability culture and, while they still have a role in the process, they cannot overshadow that vital spark of originality. Flying in the face of these “proofs” is not easy. But, at certain times and in certain ways, we absolutely must.

Learn from the past. Not allowing a usability culture to rule does not mean abandoning it altogether. Good architecture is vital. Having usable pages is critical. Adhering to standards and following conventions is important to a degree. We need to pull, push, stretch and sometimes tear those boundaries, balancing the best of where we are now with the inevitability of the change we will lead next.

The future brand, Totaltravel, can only benefit from balancing usability and standards with a strong dose of soul to create the spirit of travel which will be called.....

Google

Yahoo! beefs up its entertainment with new head of media - Nov. 2, 2004

Yahoo! hires former ABC executive Braun - Nov. 2, 2004: "Internet portal Yahoo! named Lloyd Braun the head of its media and entertainment division Tuesday, giving the former ABC executive control over the company's movies, TV, music, games and business content"

Google

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Forbes.com: Getting The Price Right

Forbes.com: Getting The Price Right: "Baye teamed up with John Morgan, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley to track the prices of 36 electronics products over a 19-month period using Shopper.com, an online price-comparison service. They found that the seller with the lowest price changed frequently and that the difference between the lowest and highest price could be as much as 60% at any given point in time...

Another force in play, Baye says, is consumer loyalty. Once a consumer has had a successful transaction with one vendor, they tend to stick with that vendor, and that creates an incentive on the part of vendors to win them back for repeat business... Baye and Morgan found that firms with a higher reputation than all the other competitors can charge a premium that tops out at 18%. When two firms in a large field of competitors have an equal reputation, the premium that both can charge relative to others falls to about 5% he says. Once there's a third firm in the game with an equal reputation, the premium they can collectively charge begins to evaporate.. Those who win that loyalty, and who get a good reputation as a result, Baye says, tend to get better traffic from consumers and move more goods. And if a firm gets a better reputation relative to competitors selling equal goods, they can charge more, he says...If the cost of information goes to zero, will all firms charge the same low price?" Baye asks. "I think that's true without loyalty, and to that end vendors have invested a lot in building loyalty."


Google

"links page" @ Economist.com - Cities Guide

Economist.com - Cities Guide: "Suggested reading & surfing"

Google

Economist has partnered with Expedia

Economist: "Economist.com has partnered with Expedia to provide our web users with airline, hotel, car rental and hotel reservations - all of which can be booked online."

Google

Netcraft: Domain Transfers (and Hijackings) to Become Easier

Netcraft: Domain Transfers (and Hijackings) to Become Easier Domain names could become easier to hijack as a change in domain transfer rules takes effect Friday. Under new rules set by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), domain transfer requests will be automatically approved in five days unless they are explicitly denied by the account owner. This is a change from current procedure, in which a domain's ownership and nameservers remain unchanged if there is no response to a transfer request.

This could mean trouble for domain owners who don't closely manage their records. Domains with incorrect e-mail addresses and outdated administrative contact information are at particular risk, as the domain's WHOIS database information will be used to inform domain owners of transfer requests. A non-response becomes the equivalent of answering "yes" to a transfer request, according to the ICANN policy change.

Google

E-Business 101, Part 5: Intellectual Property made simple....

E-Business 101, Part 5: Intellectual Property: "E-Business 101, Part 5: Intellectual Property "

Google

Who's been reading your blog? Blogger Gets Night Visit from US Secret Service -

Blogger Gets Night Visit from US Secret Service - Web Hosting Help, Web Hosting FAQs, Find Web Hosting Now: "'A writer on popular blog-site LiveJournal has posted of her nightmare ordeal with the US Secret Service, an event spurred by a posting she made to her blog criticising George Bush prior to the Presidential Election earlier this week. "

Google

Firefox, Google and Web Search

Firefox, Google and Web Search: "Mozilla Firefox has Google, Yahoo and other search tools baked in, but they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to search capabilities available with this innovative new web browser that launched its first official version today."

Hugely popular - netcraft reports "Netcraft: Firefox Launch Slows Mozilla Site: "The large volume of users seeking to download version 1.0 of the Firefox web browser has caused intermittent performance problems today for the Mozilla Foundation. "

Google

BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | UK firms 'embracing e-commerce'

BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | UK firms 'embracing e-commerce': "UK firms are embracing internet trading opportunities as never before, e-commerce minister Mike O'Brien says...

The report suggests 69% of UK firms are now using broadband and that 30% of micro businesses are trading online. "

Google

AOL reorganization MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory

MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory:
"Just An Online Minute... AOL Reorg by Tobi Elkin.

The AOL reorganization establishes four divisions: the content and advertising group led by Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of AOL; a unit for selling premium services led by John McKinley; an Internet access group which includes AOL's broadband business, run by Neil Smit; and a European business unit."

Google

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

easyjet 10th birthday campaign: travmedia.com

travmedia.com: "TV advertising campaign and new strap line"

Google

Best Call Centre 2004 : RCI, timeshare Co: Cendant Corporation travmedia.com

travmedia.com RCI, the world’s leading timeshare exchange company and part of Cendant Corporation, was last night crowned Best Call Centre 2004 at the TTG British Travel Awards.

Keen to develop servicing third party businesses in addition to its 450,000 European membership base...

Google

Internet Daily: Forrester researcher sees major opportunity in blogging - Internet Services -

Internet Daily: Forrester researcher sees major opportunity in blogging : "Charlotte Li is a market researcher who practices what she preaches. The principal analyst at Forrester issued a report Monday recommending businesses publish Weblogs, as she does.

Describes the main features of bloging as:

1) It's a give-and-take conversation, much more so than e-mail marketing. You're saying something relevant to the audience and asking for feedback.
2) It is a real commitment. You have to maintain it. It can become very ravenous.
3)...hope that it would help our clients, attract new clients, and exert a greater influence in the marketplace.
4) Blogs are the exhaust stream of somebody's attention. If you can tap into what people are paying attention to, you should have a pretty good idea where you as a company or organization should be going.

There are two kinds of investment opportunities in blogging : One is selling the service and the software -- for example, what Six Apart Inc. is doing with Typepad and Movable Type. The other model is advertising.

She concludes that: " I think that blogging is going to take off, partly because more and more people are interested. But more than anything else, it is going to get a lot easier to read blogs thru RSS technology. These are feeds put together to push a blog's content to a person's desktop"

Google

Monday, November 08, 2004

iMediaConnection: Betting on Buzz - tool to measure and track "conversations£

iMediaConnection: Betting on Buzz: "BuzzMetrics' Discussion Minor technology, which identifies the most influential consumers in an industry, tracks their unaided conversations over time and across numerous public discussion channels, such as blogs, list-serves, chat rooms and product feedback sites, then analyzes their conversations"

Google

Branding: iMediaConnection: Discussing Online's Impact on Sales 2

iMediaConnection: Discussing Online's Impact on Sales 2
iMedia Brand Summit panelists discussed a "study, conducted by MSN in conjunction with Rex Briggs of Marketing Evolution, [which] analyzed the online component of ad campaigns conducted by Nestlé's Coffee-Mate and Kraft's Jell-O brands and found that the Web can provide media impact equal to or better than other media effective at branding....

for Ford "both online and magazine were particularly cost-efficient. But online got top-of-level awareness all the way down to individual beliefs about what the product delivered in terms of brand industry, like quieter interior or better payload capacity, all the way to people actually buying a truck."

Google

Branding online...iMediaConnection: Evolution of the Soft Sell

iMediaConnection: Evolution of the Soft Sell: "Brands are spending big broadcast dollars driving traffic to sites that aren't even designed to close the deal."

Google

Friday, November 05, 2004

Markenbusiness: the magazine for brandname owners, with daily news about names, trademarks, brands and legal issues

Markenbusiness: the magazine for brandname owners, with daily news about names, trademarks, brands and legal issues: "Free Trademark Search of 18 international registers:"
The check searches USA, Canada, Mexico, the database of WIPO International Trademarks, European Community Trademarks, and more. It's
available at http://www.markenbusiness.com (look for the light blue box on the right.)

Google

Intellectual property laws and related issues Internetnews

Data Dumps Recommended for ISPs: "Intellectual property laws and related issues" By Michael Singer : SANTA CLARA, Calif.-- Service providers faced with a growing amount of subpoenas and DMCA (define) "take-down" requests should consider cleaning their network logs, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Google

first felony prosecution of Internet spam distributors: Tech Briefs

Tech Briefs: "A brother and sister who sent junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted in Virginia Wednesday in the nation's first felony prosecution of Internet spam distributors"

Google

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Xmas online sales up 19%

Onsite Search Drives Sales, Cart Abandonment Unabated: "According to a new projection from Jupiter Research (which shares a parent company with ClickZ), 2004 holiday online sales will be robust. The firm is projects a 19 percent increase in sales over last year, for a total of $21.6 billion. Growth is driven by more U.S. online users (up 18 percent over 2003) as well as a projected 2 percent increase in the amount each buyer will spend."

Google

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Sabre using open systems technology:: Travel Weekly -

:: Travel Weekly - The National Newspaper of the Travel Industry ::: "Sabre is becoming more amenable to open systems technology, a factor that now has it displaying hotel amenity information in the GDS primary search screen...
Sabre’s new hotel shopping platform, which uses Oracle software and Hewlett Packard hardware. Its foundation is a relational database that runs Unix, which is portable across disparate hardware platforms."

Google

America Online poised to cut 700 jobs - Internet Services - Media - Internet - Stock Reports - Market News

America Online poised to cut 700 jobs - Internet Services - Media - Internet - Stock Reports - Market News: "Time Warner's America Online division is preparing to fire more than 700 workers next month as a part of a cost-cutting drive to fight a falloff in subscribers, according a published report Tuesday."

Google

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Internet Explorer Takes Another Market-Share Hit

Internet Explorer Takes Another Market-Share Hit: "Challenges to Microsoft's Web browser dominance are mounting as Internet Explorer loses more market share to open-source rival Mozilla.
Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer lost nearly a percentage point in market share in the past seven weeks "

Google

brandchannel.com | Nothing Says Brand Like the Package | Ted Mininni

brandchannel.com | Nothing Says Brand Like the Package | Ted Mininni: Papers and other content available to voew inc branding glossary....

Google

HBS Working Knowledge: Organizations: Defensive versus productive mindset: Surfacing Your Underground Organization

HBS Working Knowledge: Organizations: Surfacing Your Underground Organization: "Talk a little bit about productive and defensive routines.
Chris Argyris: There are two dominant mindsets in the world of business or any kind of organization.
One is a productive mindset, and it says it's a good idea to seek valid knowledge, it's a good idea to craft your conversations so you make explicit what you are thinking and trying to examine. You craft them in such a way that you can test, as clearly as you can, the validity of your claims. Truth is a good idea. All the managerial functions�accounting, all of them�have a fundamental notion that the productive mindset is what ought to be used to manage human beings.

Chris Argyris

Then there's another mindset I call the defensive mindset. The idea is that even if you are seeking valid knowledge, you are seeking only that kind of valid knowledge that protects yourself or your organization or your department�it is defensive. From a defensive mindset point of view, truth is a good idea when it isn't threatening or upsetting. If it is, massage it, spin it. But if you massage it and spin it, you're violating the espoused theory of good management. When you spin, you have to cover up the fact that you're spinning. And in order for a cover up to work, it too has to be covered up.
This leads to an organization that has an above-ground management world, and a below-ground management world."

Google

VOIP cutomer service :: Travel Weekly - The National Newspaper of the Travel Industry ::

:: Travel Weekly - The National Newspaper of the Travel Industry ::: "Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to connect clients with travel agents.

For example, clients click a button in an e-ticket receipt from their agent, select whether they want to talk by PC or phone and then are connected with their travel agent. The call is free and merely requires access to the Atlas Travel Web site and a telephone.

For a demo, visit http://webtest.atlastravel.com/einvoice/einvoice_exchange.htm"

Google

Wired News: Smart Web Changes World: Future dreams

Wired News: Smart Web Changes World: " smarter internet and a host of cheap, web-enabled mobile devices will allow access to a whole range of services on the move, research group Gartner Dataquest said ...

...Navigation systems that now offer only a rudimentary selection of road services such as fuel stations and tourist sites are just a beginning...

Some websites already offer a glimpse of the future by having customers describe and rate restaurants they visit, in a real life version of what Google and Amazon do by tracking clicks and customer purchases. Consumers and businesses should expect this kind of internet intelligence to come to the real world...

The building blocks for a more intelligent internet are standardized data from a wide range of sources that can be recognized and connected. For now, we are in a technology cycle in which all kinds of information network are built and tied together for ubiquitous access to the internet, Gartner says. It expects the distinction between fixed and mobile Internet to slowly disappear.

The first signs of this can be seen in some websites that recognize how a consumer comes to a site, either from PC or cell phone. They adjust the size and content of the page accordingly and automatically.

The next cycle of connectivity, where all systems understand each other, has barely started, while the following cycle -- in which this intelligence is embedded in every device -- is still a dream.

The building blocks for a more intelligent internet are standardized data from a wide range of sources that can be recognized and connected. For now, we are in a technology cycle in which all kinds of information network are built and tied together for ubiquitous access to the internet, Gartner says. It expects the distinction between fixed and mobile Internet to slowly disappear.

The first signs of this can be seen in some websites that recognize how a consumer comes to a site, either from PC or cell phone. They adjust the size and content of the page accordingly and automatically.

The next cycle of connectivity, where all systems understand each other, has barely started, while the following cycle -- in which this intelligence is embedded in every device -- is still a dream... "

Google

WebProWorld :: Blogs: Influencers First, Businesses Next

WebProWorld :: Blogs: Influencers First, Businesses Next: "Blogs: The News Influencers. posted by rich_ord

The potential power of blogs to further reduce big media influence cannot be understated. Blogs are much more distributed than any other media and this gives them a depth no other media can match. Blogs are literally the equivalent of thousands of reporters able to kill a false story with facts within minutes of its publication or broadcast... Industry Blogs Become Real Businesses.

Over the next few years, targeted blogs delivering coveted niche audiences of decision makers will thrive financially. Advertisers will pay a premium to connect with these hard to reach individuals. These niche blogs will evolve to become sucessful independent businesses as they reach traffic levels that interest corporate marketers and ad agencies."

Google

Top 10 SEO Commandments: Traffic Building Mistakes To Avoid

Top 10 Traffic Building Mistakes To Avoid: "Top 10 Traffic Building Mistakes To Avoid"

Google

Forbes.com: Venture Capitalists Increase Fund-Raising

Forbes.com: Venture Capitalists Increase Fund-Raising: Associated Press
"Venture capitalists raised $5.5 billion for future investments during the third quarter, continuing a recent upturn that reflects renewed optimism about the financial future for fledgling companies...

Investment levels, though, aren't rising as rapidly as the fund-raising activity - a situation that threatens to create an unhealthy market imbalance. Theoretically, the amount of venture capital sitting on the sidelines could outstrip the supply of viable business plans, resulting in imprudent investments that culminate in a round of devastating losses that recall the dot-com debacle. ..

The amount of venture capital raised from investors during the three months ended in September more than doubled the $2 billion collected during the same time last year...
Most venture capitalists say their investment strategies haven't been influenced by Google's huge success, although most of the financiers acknowledge they dream of someday producing similar returns."

Google

How Optimizing Your Press Release Improves Your Market Exposure and Increases Traffic

How Optimizing Your Press Release Improves Your Market Exposure and Increases Traffic: "Optimizing Your Press Release Improves Your Market Exposure and Increases Traffic" by Laura Cunningham

Follow the normal process for writing a release with the following additions:

1. Research keywords for your target audience/subject matter

2. Add keywords to the press release to create keyword-rich content
a. Add keywords to your H1, header tag
b. Add keywords strategically within your press release copy
c. Add keywords in links back to your site

3. Make sure density levels are appropriate (recommend 8-15% overall density)

4. Make sure you optimize the first 250 words of your content

Google

Monday, November 01, 2004

Blogging resources Easy Bake Weblogs Archives

Easy Bake Weblogs Archives

Google
Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.