howard | 
03 30th, 2007| 
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registration required but worth it.
Mar
27
Mar
23
SRI
is Celebrating 60 Years of Innovation
SRI’s name for a value proposition’s four
essential, defining ingredients is "NABC", for Need - Approach - Benefits per costs - Competition:
- A statement of an important customer and market problem (Need)
- that proposes a way to use resources (Approach)
- to deliver superior customer features (Benefits per costs)
- when compared to others in the market (Competition or alternatives)
"To make a business case
at SRI, the project champion has to argue convincingly that the
opportunity is worth at least $1 billion".
So I was wondering how this fits with the Long Tail. In the Long Tail
we’re told that the real opportunity is in niche products and brands.
So does it still make sense to aim for the biggest market opportunity,
or should we instead focus on the most profitable market opportunity?
"Forget
squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The
future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the
shallow end of the bitstream."
Jon
Mar
23
One smart way to harness community online is to make it easy for fans to show off your/other content on their personal pages. Video is perceived as high value, and putting branded Web widgets on personal pages is a great way to deepen the connection between brand and consumer.
These widgets could include popular promotional video content or more useful content . This is an extension of uploading ads to
YouTube, blogs, or MySpace pages.
From Forrester: Why You Should Care About Web Widgets
Blinkx (www.blinkx.com) lets users post videos relevant to their pages.
Blinkx is a leader in the video search space.
The "blinx it" widget, posted on a page, links browsers to a video
collection that matches the text on that page by using contextual
technology similar to Google’s AdSense.
EyeJot (www.eyejot.com) makes recording and emailing video a snap.
EyeJot
is designed for users with webcams. They record a video in one step and
then send a link in an email or post it on a Web page.
Magnify (www.magnify.net) assembles subject-specific video collections from across the Net. Consumers
and companies, whether they’re interested in surfing or woodworking,
can now add video collections to their sites. Magnify automatically
snarfles up relevant videos from YouTube and other online video
collections and aggregates them into a dynamically changing display.
Users can also paste Magnify.net collections into sites as widgets.
PANJÉA TV (www.panjea.com) lets users create their own video mashup.
PANJÉA
is basically an authoring tool that lets users easily combine graphics,
sounds, and videos – from their own collections or from the Net – into
a video widget. Then they just paste the video widget into any Web page
to show off their personality. The PANJÉA TV widget will be available
in a few months.
SplashCast (www.splashcastmedia.com) creates a dynamically updating video widget.
Like PANJÉA.TV, SplashCasts’ are video widgets. But when the author of
a SplashCast updates it with new content, that new content
automatically appears on embedded SplashCast players all across the Web.
VUVOX (www.vuvox.com) creates content displays that resemble works of art.
VUVOX goes PANJÉA TV and SplashCast one better with a collection of
authoring tools that build up spectacular visual effects. For example,
users can make videos play in the background of an interface that
features photos shifting in kaleidoscopic patterns. Web authors hoping
to show off their visual creativity will find the VUVOX tools
addictive. The Vuvox authoring tool should be available later in
February.
Yodio (www.yodio.com) focuses on voice and audio.
Yodio
targets creators more interested in shouting than showing off. If you
want to tell the world something, you record a short Yodio soundtrack
on the phone or on your computer, match it up with a photo or two, and
paste it into a Web page to tell the world.
Jon
Mar
23
Interesting piece of research that predicts the future of mass
marketing and mass brands in the age of the long tail and successful
niche brands.
From Forrester "THE TAIL WILL NOT WAG THE DOG
The End Of Mass Marketing"
by
Jaap Favier
…niche brands will grab a growing part of
the consumer goods, media, retail, finance, and telecom markets. What
will incumbents do for damage control?
Focus on communities, not brands.
Mass brands like Kellogg’s are a mile wide in targeting and an inch
deep in relationship, evidenced by the fact that they attract as many
clients as nonclients to their site. Such brands are particularly vulnerable to niche brands that market,
for example, an organic cereal via interest Web site
organic consumers.org. Kellogg’s can only defend itself by establishing
many deep relationships with specific cohorts, for instance by
developing community sites around personal and social values jointly
with other shallow brands like McDonald’s or Disney.
Change their brand portfolio, geographic footprint, and media mix.
As firms focus on communities, they will realize that some of their
mass-market brands have no link with any specific group. They’ll have
four choices for such brands:
1) reposition them with strong, explicit
values;
2) turn them into price fighters, and abandon all brand
advertising;
3) move to developing markets like China where Social
Computing is less prominent; or
4) bury them .
Each of these brand strategies will lead to a new media strategy, away from mass media.
Jon
Mar
22
I’ve been using PDAs for some time now, ever since I was given a PalmV back in 1998 by a colleague at work. I loved it - finally I was able to keep my stuff on me in a geeky and attractive tool. It was perfect.
Over time i have, like many many others, longed for PDA and phone to merge so I could get internet on the move and so forth.
Well, we’re obviously at that point, with pretty much all phones, let alone PDAs/SmartPhones being web enabled in one way or another.
Brilliant right?
Well, no.
Here’s what I think - all PDAs/SmartPhones suck in one way or another. None of them are perfect.
Currently I am using a Blackberry 7130v on vodafone in the UK. I have to admit it’s the one of the best i’ve used, and over my last machine, an Orange SPV M2000 running Windows Mobile, it’s a million times better.
But it’s the small things that annoy rather than anything else. The email, web, all of that are excellent and I really can’ find fault, but why oh why can’t I send files to the thing over bluetooth? You have to use a cable, which is crazy, and it only works on a PC, which isn’t much use to me on my macbook.
I’m dying to get my hands on a new Treo running the latest version of windows mobile, the one which doesn’t lose all the data when the power runs down as the SPV did (the end reason why I gave up using it and switched)- but I can’t see IT giving me a new phone after 3 months 
Perhaps the Apple iPhone will be the perfect mix? We shall see, but if it only bolts in to Yahoo! web mail, it’s not going to make much ground in a business environment.
For the record, these are the PDAs I have used over the years…
- Palm V (PalmOS)
- handSpring Visor (PalmOS)
- HP iPaq (Windows CE)
- Sony Clie (PalmOS)
- Motorola mPX (Windows SMartPhone)
- Orange SPV M2000 (Windows Mobile)
- Blackberry 7130v (RIM OS)
Howard
–
Mar
22
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moving your music from one machine to another with iTunes? Apple tell you how.