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Procter & Gamble Seeks E-Commerce Innovation (Internet Retailer)
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Posted: 07/08/2010
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Consumer favorites manufactured by Procter & Gamble are now even more available. P&G’s new retail web site offers 52 products (with more coming) for consumer purchase, including Tide detergent, Oral-B toothbrushes, and Gillette razors. Though P&G made $76.7 billion in sales in 2009, increasing those sales is not the Web site’s main goal. According to the manufacturer, the site will provide a “living learning lab for developing e-commerce innovation.” Data gathered about P&G’s online consumers will provide a better understanding of various shopping behaviors and preferences. “As big and influential as Procter & Gamble is, there is no doubt this is a sign of a broad trend with consumer goods manufacturers,” says Jim Okamura, senior partner with consulting firm J.C. Williams Group.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Content Strategy,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
North America
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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Programming With Screen Shots, Not Just Code (Dr. Dobbs)
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Posted: 03/04/2010
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new system that allows one to program with screenshots. For more than three decades, the graphical user interface (GUI) has dominated computer programing, but its underlying reliance on code manipulation means it’s still relatively labor intensive for computer programmers to customize or build programs. The new system, Sikuli, enables programmers to develop programs using GUI screen shots. While it requires some knowledge of Python, the system enables even casual users to create new programs without mastering complex programming language. The user simply draws a box around the desired content, captures the screen shot and then places it appropriately into the Python code. The research team plans to present a paper entitled GUI Testing Using Computer Vision at CHI, the premier conference on human-computer interactions, where they will describe new applications of Sikuli aimed at large software development projects, both for programmers and non-programmers.
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Industry:
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer
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Pulling Klout: Website Helps Users Measure Their Social Influence (CNN Money)
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Posted: 08/19/2010
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Users can now discover their social “Klout” by numerical rank by inputting their Twitter name into Klout.com. The San Francisco-based social media start-up is shoring up its position to become the online standard for measuring social impact by partnering with Virgin America to offer a hand-picked group of “influencers” a free flight from San Francisco or Los Angeles to Virgin America's newest destination, Toronto. Here’s how the new type of marketing campaigns (implemented by brands like Starbucks and Cover Girl) work: (1) Users accept product offers; (2) In return, Klout requests for disclosure of the freebie; (3) Klout measures some two dozen variables, including the number of times their comments are retweeted, the size of their Twitter audience, and the influence of those followers, to come up with a numerical value and ranking on a 0-to-100 scale.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Puzzling Together Business Data: Salesforce.com Buys Jigsaw (CRM Daily)
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Posted: 06/17/2010
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Salesforce.com’s purchase of contact provider Jigsaw makes it even easier to access, create, and even clean up contact information for businesses all over the globe. Salesforce.com chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff, said it will be “as easy as Wikipedia to source data, as easy as iTunes to buy data, and as easy as Facebook to stay updated as the data changes.” Boasting a 1.2 million member count and a database with 21 million professionals working at 4 million companies, Jigsaw describes its role as “collecting, refining, managing, protecting, and organizing the global list of people in business – so you don’t have to.” Through the use of Jigsaw’s cloud platform, new applications can also be created by software vendors to better use business contact information.
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Industry:
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Experience & Interaction
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business
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Retailers Dial-In To Smart Phone Shopping Trend (CRM Daily)
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Posted: 01/04/2011
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With one-third of mobile phone usage to be “smart” this holiday season (Nielsen), retailers are getting dialed-in to e-commerce. The 21 percent increase over last year indicates that retailers can no longer rely on independent strategy for their retail outfits, whether they are bricks-and-mortar stores, Web sites or mobile shopping channels. Heather J. Brunner, chief operating officer of Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice, said a phone is "just a mini-computer, and our challenge now is to transfer the Internet experience to a much smaller screen." For instance, outdoor brand Patagonia recently launched a new application that suggests similar items and price ranges while customers browse. In-store, the app will recommend complementary items based on the tag’s bar code. Companies like Neustar are working on types of “second-generation” bar codes for smart phones that are square rather than rectangular while Pronto, a company owned by New York-based IAC, plans to launch a mobile app for product price alerts.
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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 Business,
Business to Consumer
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