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With the recent release of the Mojo software development kit, Palm is hoping to open the floodgates of application for its Palm Pre smartphone. But early impressions suggest webOS SDK won’t be as strong as Apple’s iPhone platform for high-end mobile gaming.
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It might seem an odd move for a company that relies on money from advertising. Yet AOL is reducing the number of ads it shows on its home page and some other Web sites it runs.
The maneuver is one of the changes new CEO Tim Armstrong, 38, has brought to the long-struggling Internet company since he took over AOL in April. The former Google Inc. executive was hired to recharge AOL and lead its spinoff from Time Warner Inc., undoing a legendarily disastrous deal.
To prepare for AOL’s rebirth as an independent company later in the year, Armstrong and other executives say they are trying to recapture elements of the culture AOL had when it was a startup — back when it was America Online and on its way to becoming the dominant provider of dial-up Internet access.
Month: July 2009 Page 1 of 2
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After nearly eight months without a leader, the Tech Council of Maryland plans to announce Monday that it has tapped Renée M. Winsky, a current board member, as its new executive director.
Winsky, 46, spent the past nine years at the Maryland Technology Development Corp. — she has been president and executive director since 2007 — and has long been involved in the state's technology community. She previously worked at the Information Technology Association of America and the National League of Cities.
"I'm looking forward to getting back to my true association roots," she said last week. Winsky will start her new gig in September.
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It might seem an odd move for a company that relies on money from advertising. Yet AOL is reducing the number of ads it shows on its home page and some other Web sites it runs.
The maneuver is one of the changes new CEO Tim Armstrong, 38, has brought to the long-struggling Internet company since he took over AOL in April. The former Google Inc. executive was hired to recharge AOL and lead its spinoff from Time Warner Inc., undoing a legendarily disastrous deal.
It is hard for me to believe, but today is the nine year anniversary of buySAFE’s birthdate. Time sure does fly by when you are having a good time.
When I left buySAFE a few months ago, I promised to keep you up to date on my next entrepreneurial adventure. In the spirit of start-up birthdays, I thought I would share with you a few interesting details about my next venture.
Obviously, buySAFE was founded to make the Internet safer for online shoppers, and we did that for tens of millions of consumers. This time around, we want to make technology safer for our kids (Fatherhood has a way of inspiring you to do such things). Our new start-up is tackling two serious, prevalent and complex problems: Sexting and Predators. The market simply hasn’t provided any effective solutions for parents yet, and we intend to fill that gap.
The business was inspired by my brother, Tim Woda, who as the parent of older children, has had to confront these difficult issues directly. It seems like every time I speak with a parent of tweens or teens, they express the same frustrations and fear about allowing their kids to use digital technologies. Since there are more than 37 million kids in the U.S. and more than 1.2 billion kids globally between the ages of 9 and 17, I believe there is an interesting business opportunity here.
The following is a short video overview of the Sexting and Predator problems that parents face today. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment. I welcome your assistance. Also, please share this video with your friends and family. I believe it is important that we educate parents to make sure they are fully aware of the digital dangers they must manage on behalf of their kids.
I recognize that I haven’t told you how we are going to attack these scary problems, but I will over the coming months. I wanted to tease you first! 🙂 Before telling you everything, we have to finish building out our product and raise a bit of capital to finance our public launch. Both of these activities are ongoing (and going well), and I will share more as we make additional progress.
I will continue to provide you with regular updates here on this blog, but if you want to get more frequent updates, feel free to become a fan on my Facebook Fan Page. I am using it to share my daily thoughts on this start-up adventure. Thanks, and stay tuned!
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Nokia (NYSE: NOK) sold its Symbian Professional Services unit to Accenture for an undisclosed amount, the companies said Friday.
The unit handles product development and engineering consulting services for the Symbian operating system and its clients include cellular carriers, chip manufacturers, and handset makers. The 165 employees of the division will transfer to Accenture, and the deal is expected to close in September. -
On the Official Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Docs blog, Google posted an entry with the headline “Pardon our Dust.” This is Google’s way of saying that change is on the way, with a brand new interface due to appear on Google Docs in short order. Anything interesting? You betcha.
According to Google, the changes will take place over time, and not all at once. Google says that the small changes will be implemented over the coming weeks, with the final result being “a brand new shiny interface.” Oh, the rapture.
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A company that’s redesigning its Web site recently called me to discuss the possibility of my firm assisting them with their SEO efforts. First, I congratulated them on being one of the few companies to consider SEO prior to re-launching their site (that’s the way it’s done, people!). Then we talked about their domain name.
This company was planning to move their site to a new domain because the old domain (and by “old,” I mean 10 years old) no longer represented the company. As many of us do, they typed in about 100 different domain names into GoDaddy’s search and eventually found an available domain name that was more in line with their core business.
One problem: their domain name choice was absolutely horrible. It had five keywords crammed together. It was confusing, hard to recall, and terrible for branding, SEO purposes, and any other measurement that you wanted to put to it.
But, the domain name only cost $9.99 per year. What a deal, right? -
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Monday outlined a host of new features that will be included in its forthcoming Office 2010 home and business productivity suite. Not surprisingly, many are geared toward users steeped in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other popular Web 2.0 tools.
For starters, Microsoft revealed that the Office 2010 release, slated for the first half of next year, will include free Web versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Office, and Notepad. The move is in keeping with the “Work anywhere” theme the company has attached to its new offering.
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As the recent financial crisis has showed so dramatically, networks exist everywhere. Global inter-linkage of loans and mortgages — which were intended to distribute risk — actually ended up spreading it far and wide. Similar network-based impacts are at work in fields as diverse as information security and supply chain management. But while networks create new risks, they also generate new opportunities, write Paul R. Kleindorfer, Yoram (Jerry) Wind and Robert E. Gunther in their new book, The Network Challenge: Strategy, Profit and Risk in an Interlinked World (Wharton School Publishing). In an interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Kleindorfer and Wind discuss the themes of many of the 28 essays in their book.
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In What You Don’t Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen (Wharton School Publishing), author Michael A. Roberto aims to help leaders identify problems before they become major disasters. He discusses why problems go undetected for so long, how to spot patterns across an organization and how to avoid the “isolation trap” that prevents senior executives from seeing problems that are festering beyond their control, among other topics. Roberto, a management professor at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., wrote an earlier book entitled, Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer. Below is an excerpt from a chapter in his current book.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
— Shunryu Suzuki, Japanese Zen priest
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UnitedHealth Group and Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) Wednesday announced they're launching a multi-million dollar initiative to build a national telehealth network. Although the initial focus is on patients in rural and inner city communities, the companies envision providing a platform for delivering health services wherever distance or shortages of clinicians present obstacles to affordable care.
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While Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch is drawing a lot of attention in the application space, GetJar said Wednesday its mobile store has surpassed over a half billion downloads.
The company offers an independent over-the-air app store that enables users to browse, buy, download, and install programs onto a variety of handsets including smartphones and feature phones. The company offers more than 50,000 apps in over 200 countries, and GetJar has been chosen to handle the backend for Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson's upcoming app store.
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Google just announced that Tasks will be the first feature to graduate from Gmail Labs to become a default feature for all Gmail users.
Gmail Labs, which launched about a year ago, holds a collection of experimental additions to Gmail that users can try out by enabling them within their Gmail’s settings. It also provides an interesting window into Google’s application development philosophy.
Tasks provides a to-do list within Gmail optimized for mobile access and integration with Google Calendar. Senior product manager Keith Coleman says the decision to add it to the main product was partly based on how many users had signed up to try it, and how many have continued to use it. Coleman adds that a handful of other Labs experiments will likely graduate in the near future. -
Gmail has had Gmail Labs for a while now. Gmail Labs are a great place to try out experimental Gmail features if you are so inclined. The mad scientists who are Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s engineers have cooked up an entirely new set of Labs, this time for the Google Calendar.
Google says it has been pleased with the response its Labs has seen in Gmail. There are tons of features in Gmail Labs for users to test out. I have quite a handful activated that have become essential to my Gmail experience.
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A few tips for employees regarding Internet and cell phone use:
— Remember that anything you do on a company-issued computer or cell phone — in or out of the office — could be tracked by a boss, the courts or a regulator. Many employers monitor Web site use, keystrokes, instant messages and e-mail. Some even archive text messages on work cell phones. -
Even in this dismal job market, opportunities do exist for talented individuals, as companies look to upgrade their human capital and benefit from the fluctuating talent pool. Part of my job involves regularly talking to business leaders about their hiring needs. And in recent conversations with executives in the technology and marketing spheres, I’ve found that most everyone agrees on certain key points that help resumes stand out.
Whether you’re unemployed, underemployed, or simply looking for an opportunity to grow and prove your professional worth, this is a climate you can and should take advantage of.
It should be obvious in a day and age with the Internet, YouTube, HD and video cameras, that poor customer service can be very costly to a company. However, some of the old dinosaurs are a bit slow on the take. This entertaining music video, “United Breaks Guitars”, was produced by a country singer who had a terrible experience on United Airlines.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&w=560&h=340]
As I watched the video, I couldn’t help but do a bit of math on the implications of such a viral production. At the time of this blog post, more than 2.5 million people had viewed this music video on YouTube, and the bottom-line is that these 2.5 million people invested more than 11 million total minutes watching a negative message about United Airlines. That is the same as 22 million 30 second commercials. That is some serious negative PR!
I enjoyed the song and the video, and I can honestly say I will have a hard time getting the tune (and the message) out of my mind next time I have to consider United Airlines for a flight. I am sure that at least half of the people that watched the viral video will have the same image stuck in their heads when they have to make a choice between United and other airlines.
Companies clearly have to get serious about treating their customers like gold, and this needs to start at the top of the organization and filter down to each and every employee. In the video, Ms. Irlweg, a normal United employee, is singled out as the person that made the final decision on whether to solve this customer’s problem. Today, she is infamous because of this video, and her decision turns out to have been pretty costly for United Airlines.
I recently purchased an Apple computer, and after a month or two, I had a tech problem. I brought it into the Apple Store, and within 10 minutes, I walked out with a brand new laptop (with my old hard drive swapped into it). The problem Apple fixed, for free and in minutes with a brand new laptop, was the type of problem that would have taken me a week to get fixed with Dell. I was floored! I could not believe the awesome customer experience from Apple, and at that moment, I officially converted to an Apple fan. I have literally told everyone about the experience since that amazing customer service experience.
Although it was initially expensive for Apple to solve my customer service problem, I am 100% sure that their investment in me will pay off many times over in the coming months and years because of the positive word of mouth it created.
I am betting that this singer’s negative video on United Airlines will ultimately cost the company hundreds of times what it would have cost to simply solve this customer’s problem. Can you imagine if United had solved this singer’s problem quickly,
without hassle, and with a smile? What if they had surprised or
shocked him with their amazing customer service? Perhaps he would have written a different song. “United Loves Guitars” has a much better ring to it.