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Filtering The Noise: Discovery Personalizes The Online Experience (Tech News World)
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Posted: 11/11/2010
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The internet abounds with buzzwords. Now, there’s new buzz about “discovery,” the real-time aggregation and personalization of content as it is applied to an online experience. Take Amazon for example, an online retailer that makes purchasing recommendations based on your past buying behavior and others that match your browsing and purchasing habits. True discovery, however, elevates this concept to the next level: It will tie together what you have liked, purchased, viewed, discussed, and browsed, into a real-time aggregator that provides recommendations on any category of your choosing. For discovery to be completely revolutionary, it must have both an online and mobile interface. From websites like Yelp to smartphone applications like mobile GPS, several discovery platforms are in the works, including Ping, a music discovery engine launched by Steve Jobs in September.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Content Strategy,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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The Virtual Dressing Room (CNET News)
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Posted: 10/27/2010
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Finding the right fit is often one of the most frustrating elements of shopping online. Now, with the help of a new, headless “shape-shifting robot mannequin,” shoppers don’t have to simply leave their purchases to chance. Created by Estonian start-up Fits.me, the virtual fitting room service allows customers to enter their measurements and presto! The “me”-shaped mannequin previews the coveted item in whichever styles and sizes the customer specifies. The service is being tested by retailers across Europe, including Germany's Quelle and U.K.-based Hawes & Curtis. Apparel has potential for huge e-commerce gains. "Only 8 percent of clothing is currently sold online, and Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room is the disruptive technology that will enable online apparel retailers to successfully compete with traditional brick-and-mortar clothing shops," Heikki Haldre, CEO and co-founder of Fits.me said. Initial findings are very positive with a 28 percent reduction in online apparel returns, while sales increased threefold, said Haldre.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global,
Europe
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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Motricity Delivers User-Preferred Content On-the-Go (CIO Magazine)
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Posted: 10/27/2010
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Motricity recently launched mCore MobileCast, a service that allows wireless carriers and large companies to define content based on their smartphone users’ preferences. Requiring "zero touch" by the users, the cloud-based service takes a user’s location and prior usage into account before delivering audio, video, text and HTML5 content streamlined to the user’s preferences. For instance, a mobile user purchases tickets to a rock concert via a mobile device. Enter mCore MobileCast: The service ingests the concert data in combination with GPS data to disseminate auxillary information to the user, such as the concert's opening act, parking locations and even places to eat nearby. "All that information is in separate places today, but we aggregate it all up," said Jim Ryan, Motricity’s chief strategy and marketing officer. The company provides mobile infrastructure services to "hundreds of enterprises" and 10 major wireless carries, including the top four in the U.S., Ryan said.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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Diaspora Code Released Publicly; May Improve Framework For Businesses (CIO Magazine)
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Posted: 10/27/2010
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A new project, called Diaspora, was recently released to public developers in hopes of bringing the project to fruition as a new social network – defined by community – that promises “the benefits of Facebook without the privacy concerns.” The project’s creators are at a standstill, stating, "We began the summer a list of technologies, and a few bold claims and the goal to make an intrinsically more private social network. The overwhelming response that we elicited made us realize that technology wouldn't be enough." The Diaspora project could prove useful in providing businesses with a framework for implementing proprietary, internal social networks without running the risk of divulging trade secrets or sensitive materials. With the goal to integrate Diaspora into Facebook, businesses also won’t have to sacrifice giving up the social network’s huge audience.
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Industry:
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Creative & Design,
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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InterContinental Hotels Group Offers Hospitality With A Technical Twist (InformationWeek)
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Posted: 10/14/2010
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It’s easy to chalk IHG's, InterContinental Hotels Group, ubiquitous success up to one thing: customer loyalty. Tom Conophy, IHG's CIO, said the company’s core focus is on making customers "the center of our universe," and customer loyalty is vital to growth in the hospitality industry. The ever-growing hotel group, which owns seven hotel chains, including Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and InterContinental Hotels, keeps its guest doors swinging by making business intelligence one of their core competencies. 200 million guest profiles currently occupy the company’s 25 TB database, with detailed information on 43 million loyalty plan members. The company currently receives 30 million availability requests per day, supported by its own proprietary search technology, the Bottom-Up Optimum Search Strategy(BOSS). "Search is the killer app for us," Conophy says, and with IHG’s iPhone app as the industry’s most downloaded, adding mobility is another success factor with a concept the group has named “Virtually Me.”
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Creative & Design,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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