« Posts under Business

TARGET!!! MAKE A DEAL!!!

May 3, 2012 / posted in Business, Technology / Comments Off

Target and other stores have a problem with a simple solution. They can not compete with Amazon on price. They simple don’t have the over head of running thousands of stores all over the country. They have an advantage that. Amazon simple doesn’t have. The shopper is sitting in the sore with his hands on the product. MAKE A DEAL!. I bet in most cases they wouldn’t even have to meet Amazon’s price. If they can get a little off and have it RIGHT NOW is HUGE!

Even better keep selling the Kindle, but every time someone seems interested, in one, offer and on the spot unadvertised discount for  a competitor’s product. Use Kindles to sell IPads. Home sellers have been doing this for EVER. You notice an open house one week end and that is exactly when your yard sign goes up.

Basically it comes down to Target forgetting how to sell. If you have an interested buy IN YOUR STORE, with the product IN HIS HAND, and you can’t figure out a away for him to leave with it, then YOU ARE THE WORST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD.

 

Target, signaling its growing irritation with its rival Amazon, announced on Wednesday that it would stop selling the online retailer’s Kindle e-readers.Enlarge This Image Matthew Staver/Bloomberg NewsUnpacking Kindle Fires at a Target in Denver in November. Target has sold Kindles since 2010.Add to PortfolioAmazon.com IncTarget CorporationGo to your Portfolio »Target, with almost 1,800 stores, is one of the bigger carriers of Kindles in the offline world, though most of the devices are sold at Amazon’s Web site.Like other big retailers, Target has been trying to figure out how to stop Amazon shoppers from visiting Target stores to check out products, and then buy them online from Amazon. It is a practice encouraged by Amazon; over the Christmas holiday, for example, the company offered a promotion on its Price Check app that gave shoppers 5 percent off any item scanned at a store.

via Target, Upset With Amazon, Will Stop Selling Kindles – NYTimes.com.

Dap: NY Times

< , , >

Google Drive for Linux Is on the Way | PCWorld Business Center

April 27, 2012 / posted in Business, Internet, Software, Technology / Comments Off

Someday Linux will no longer be an afterthought. Even to companies that rely so heavily on Linux for their products and internal processes.

The Google Drive launch has been one of the big announcements of the week, but it was a fairly unequivocal disappointment for one vocal category of users: Linux users are justifiably miffed that the new cloud storage service doesnt support the free and open source operating system.

via Google Drive for Linux Is on the Way | PCWorld Business Center.

Dap : pcwolrd

< , , >

What Steve Jobs means to me – part I

October 16, 2011 / posted in Business, Technology / Comments Off

One of the most important technology story of the last couple of  weeks was the passing of Steve Jobs. Over that time media has been commenting on how this one man’s vision changed how  our relationship with computers. Even if you never owned an Apple product you have benefited from his vision because Apple has been setting the standard for design since the second generation of iMacs came out about 10 or so years ago. Design is the legacy of Steve Jobs (though several news outlets make a point to say that this man invented stuff), moving it from an after thought to a core function of the product. He understood that useful, desired even needed  technology was not being adopted because it was hard to use, and there was not a common vocabulary for interacting with it. Before Apple, technology had to come with HUGE manuals that had to be studied to learn and understand the features. Key strokes had to be memorized. Navigation was not obvious. Remember the keyboard template that came with Word Perfect software? Now a days most tech come with relatively thin manuals if any. Any marginally computer literate person can open most software packages, even ones he isn’t familiar with and “figure out” how to use the major features. Apple did that with its “user-friendly” interface. Microsoft’s ubiquity only aided in this effect  when it copied this as part of Windows 3.1 and even more so as part of Windows95.

This is all to say, that if you LOVE your computer, you have this man to thank. As leader of Apple he made decisions that ONLY a man who dropped out of an Ivy League University so he could take calligraphy would make. On the face of it that seems insane but that is how the Universe works sometime. Serendipitous connections are made to produce wildly beautiful results.

Thanks Steve

< , >

Great interview of Entrepreneur Curtis Pope, CEO of AisleFinder.com

March 25, 2011 / posted in Business, Internet, Technology / 1 Comment

Black Web 2.0 posts a Robert Scoble interview of Curtis Pope, a young entrepreneur who founded AisleFinder.com, an online shopping site that helps you find items in the grocery store. This is really a great idea. Every time I go shopping, invariably two things happen:

  1. I grumble about how my wife can’t group things together on the grocery list that would be near each other in the store so I wouldn’t have to do a “full table scan” every time enter a new isle to see if there is something in this isle I need.
  2. I have to make a second pass through the store picking up the things that where in isle 3 but at the bottom of the list.

 

I have thought about about this problem several time but concluded that collecting the data would be too labor intensive, to make it worth while. I’m glad somebody else has tacked the problem and I wish you guys had data on the store that I use.

Dap:Black Web 2.0

< , >

I’m definitely not sticking with AT&T after the merger

March 24, 2011 / posted in Business, Technology / Comments Off

I just caught this from Everything Android:

Let’s get this straight people. If I by a a piece of hardware. It’s MY piece of hardware. And it is correct for my to run ANY piece of software that I legally obtain for it. I am not going to ask service providers about stuff that has nothing to do with them.

Pwn your own phones people.

< , , , >

I’m going to miss T-Mobile when it’s gone

March 23, 2011 / posted in Business, Technology / Comments Off

AT&T has begun cracking down on those subscribers who are tethering their laptops or other Wi-Fi enabled devices to their smart phones for Internet access. The company began sending texts and e-mails to those it suspects are doing so without subscribing to the carrier’s $45 per month DataPro plan.

via Unauthorized tetherers on AT&T being told to pay up | Wireless News – Betanews.

Let’s get this straight. I have a data plan that I pay for. It is not an unlimited data plan in the truest sense of the word. There is a limit to how much data I can consume in a given month. If i exceed that limit I must pay a overage charges. I have agreed to this. We are in business. Why would AT&T, or anyone for that matter, care if I share that bandwidth my laptop or my four friend’s laptops? I think I have decided that I will NOT be with AT&T after the merger.

< , >

Amazon AppStore is open for business

March 22, 2011 / posted in Business, Software, Technology / Comments Off

The anticipated Amazon AppStore went live to day. And today only AngryBirds Rio is free. (I’m totally addicted to Angry birds)

Apple filed it’s response with the US District Court of Northern California.

< , >

T-Mobile 3G days are numbered

March 21, 2011 / posted in Business, Technology / Comments Off

The big story in mobile today is about the AT&T T-Mobile merger. One thing this means for T-Mobile 3G customers is the loss of there 3G service. After the merger At&T plans to repurpose all of T-Mobile 3G spectrum for LTE 4G. At the very least T-Mobile 3G users will be stuck with 2G speed, if any access to data at all. I believe that is the case with the Nexus One, the phone that I have. Those of us who already have 3G phones, I think we have time to get decent use out of them before having to switch. It will take at least a year for the merger to be complete and the 3G to 4G conversion will take several years after that. So I wouldn’t panic. The merger in and of Itself is not a reason at this point to upgrade phone you phone or switch carriers. I don’t think I would at this point buy a NEW 3G phone from T-Mobile.

Dap: Everything Android

< , , , >

RIM and Mobile Carriers fight to hold our leashes

March 18, 2011 / posted in Business, Hardware, Technology / Comments Off

Near Field communication will soon come to mobile phones later this year. This technology can be used to enslave us. How this tech is implemented will decide who our master will be.

Enslave is a strong word. But let me tell you what I mean. The next big thing you will be able to do with your phone is pay for stuff. You wave your phone over a little pad and TADOW, you just paid for stuff. The argument is over where the credentials will be stored. Here is and article from WSJ that explains:

The carriers say they want to encrypt and store the credentials in the phones SIM card, the small chips placed in the back of phones to activate access to mobile networks. SIM cards can be easily swapped from phone to phone. Such a system provides a single payment hub that doesnt depend on what kind of phone you have, the carriers argue.RIM wants the credentials built into a secure area of the BlackBerry itself, which would bind users to its devices and potentially cut carriers out of the loop, according to officials representing some of the carriers. RIM is already reaching out to banks on its own, these people say.

via RIM, Carriers Fight Over Digital Wallet – WSJ.com.

RIM, who makes the highly successful, but quickly becoming irrelevant, Blackberry wants it stored on the phone. Why? Because if your payment credentials are on your phone, you are less likely to get another phone. <sarcasm> And I’m sure RIM will make is SUPER EASY to transfer those credentials to your Nexus S.</sarcasm> And Blackberries stay relevant for another 18 months. The mobile Carriers, on the other hand, want it stored on the your SIM. So when you upgrade your phone it is as easy as swapping SIM. Still making it hard to switch carriers because phone companies will have the same attitude about transferring credentials as RIM probably will.

I say (and I’m sure people will listen to me) neither. Put it on the flash memory.  RIM if you want to stay relevant than do relevant things. You are still the man in the enterprise market but total slept on the consumer market. Until it was too late and Apple came and took the hole thing.

What can I say about mobile companies, I hate you all. Your business model is not one of providing the BEST service, and BEST experience for customers.  You use phones as a the bait for your trap which are the contracts we must agree to in order for afford the handsets. I for one don’t want another way for a company to trap me.

So, I want control of the credentials myself. I want to be able to see the file, copy it, back it up, and move it to any device I want. And when my phone has lost its luster, and they all do, and my carrier disappoints, and they all do, I can take that data and move where I wish. Freedom at it’s most basic level is the ability to leave. The way the mobile industry is structected right now there is no freddom for the consumer. Maybe I was wrong earlier. Maybe ‘enslave’ isn’t too strong of a word.

< , >

No Net Neutrality provisions in the Comcast NBC deal?

January 19, 2011 / posted in Business, Internet, Technology / Comments Off

Comcast will retain NBC’s stake in Hulu, but is stripped of control

January 18, 2011 |  1:49 pm

Call it the Hulu Handcuff.

The federal government is making sure that Comcast Corp. won’t be able to use its newfound clout when it takes control of NBC Universal to sabotage the online video website Hulu.

via Comcast will retain NBC’s stake in Hulu, but is stripped of control | Company Town | Los Angeles Times.

Yes, but what provisions are in place to keep Comcast, one of the largest ISPs, from favoring Hulu over its competitors, like Netflix, being now that it has a 30% stake in Hulu?

< , , >
« Older Posts