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Jruby is a Gem for Gilt.com (CNET News)
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Posted: 12/03/2009
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In a conversation with the Gilt Groupe’s CTO and co-founder Michael Bryzek, Software, Interrupted’s Dave Rosenberg unearths how Jruby powers the luxury shopping site. JRuby’s ability to seamlessly integrate and leverage mature libraries entices Java developers seeking additional productive frameworks to turn to the high-performance platform. Because Gilt.com deals with spikes in traffic when new items are released and items surge in popularity, the IT infrastructure must have the capability to scale and burst in order to meet customer demands. The company is gearing up to deploy Ruby on Rails 3.0, which offers great performance, scalability and the ability to write and expose elegant APIs written in the Ruby language.
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Industry:
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
E-Commerce,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer
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Karmaloop’s Online Roots Run Deeper Than Facebook And Twitter (DIRECT Marketing Online)
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Posted: 03/17/2011
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Long before Facebook became synonymous with social marketing, Karmaloop’s rep program was successfully hawking its line of streetwear to its audience of teens and young adults. Nearly a quarter of its $100 million in annual sales is generated by 6,500 reps across the globe. Assigned a customized code to track sales and earn points, reps essentially build their own customer base by promoting the brand via personal blogs, Websites, Facebook pages, and other social networks. “We have our built-in audience and the trust and loyalty of millions of 18- to 24-year-old kids, and they’re going to follow us, because peer-to-peer is how we do that,” director of lifestyle marketing Giovannah Chiu said. The same philosophy led to the creation of KarmaloopTV.com in 2008, which has since expanded to include channels devoted to specific brands and regularly scheduled programs.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products
Topic:
Content Strategy,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Kitty Crowdsourcing? New Service Helps Businesses Collect And Rank Innovative Ideas (Fast Company)
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Posted: 09/02/2010
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When Princeton sociology professor Matthew Salganik came across KittenWars.com, he knew he found a valuable model for his own crowdsourcing website, All Our Ideas, which merges sociology and computer science techniques to enable organizations to collect ideas and rank them more effectively. A virtual idea factory, the service allows users to launch their own question and answer websites. If neither answer presented is acceptable to visitors, they can simply add their new ideas to the mix. Those new ideas then get filtered into the voting pool. Salganik explains, “If you ask for suggestions, especially online, you may get thousands of ideas that can take weeks to sort through. On the other hand, if you use a survey with preset questions and answers, you can get lots of data but few new ideas." The service is already gaining traction with organizations like Princeton’s class of 2008 student government, which used the tool to pinpoint the most pressing issues on undergrads minds.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Latinos Make Up Huge Piece Of Mobile Marketing Pie (ClickZ)
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Posted: 03/31/2011
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Mobile phone use is on the upswing among the Latino population, rising 26 percent from 2006 to 2010 compared to 18 percent of the general population. Three key markers indicate that the Hispanic population will continue to drive mobile marketing: they care about social connectivity, they are actively seeking fun experiences and they are open to innovation. The proof is in the pudding: 82 percent of the market has been penetrated; mobile phones are outpacing landlines among this demographic as the primary source of communication; this group is more interested in mobile web browsing than the average population; 24 percent of mobile users have downloaded at least one app; and the group has demonstrated that enhancing their lives through social connectivity is a priority.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Content Strategy,
Creative & Design,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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Legally Broadband: Finland Declares High-Speed Internet Access a Legal Right (CNN)
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Posted: 11/19/2009
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Finland recently declared broadband Internet access a legal right. While it is a view shared by the United Nations, Finland is the first country to actually make it legally required for telecommunication providers to supply connection speeds of at least 1 megabit per second for all 5.2 million Finnish citizens by July 2010. The mandate is an intermediary step to reach Finland’s real goal of reaching speeds 100 times faster–100mbps–by 2015. "We think it's something you cannot live without in modern society,” said Laura Vilkkonen, the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications. While the majority of the Finnish population (95%) is currently wired, the new law aims to stretch the Web to internet deprived rural areas.
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Industry:
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Technology Implementation
Region:
Europe
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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Like This: Google Acquires Like.com (InformationWeek)
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Posted: 09/30/2010
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In an effort to fortify Google’s search and e-commerce capabilities, the mega-search company recently purchased visual search company Like.com. Like.com’s computer vision and machine learning technology allows users to search and conduct visual comparisons for goods as they shop, making it particularly user friendly for mobile devices. Like.com CEO Munjal Shah confirmed the deal, stating, "We were the first to bring visual search to shopping, the first to build an automated cross-matching system for clothing, and more. We see joining Google as a way to supersize our vision and supercharge our passion." Google’s likely goal in the purchase is to beef up it core search products and image recognition services (Google Goggles), as well as intensify its social capabilities (Jambool and Slide.com) to make search more “social and more deeply integrated with e-commerce.”
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Industry:
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer
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Market Intelligence the Smartphone Way (CRM Daily)
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Posted: 02/04/2010
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Context-aware software tries to connect the real world with the vast stores of information about places in a virtual world: the Internet. The technology channels the knowledge amassed to provide useful tools to the smartphone user. Consumers gain more control over their buying experiences and save time when they purchase from vendors who have critical insight into their shopping habits. The software’s diverse industry applications include retail, business management, hospitality, and food and beverage. Research firm Gartner projects the market for this technology will grow to $12 billion by 2012, with Google standing in prime position to address and profit from the new wave of demand. Other companies that stand to benefit are Nokia, Cisco Systems, Avaya, large telcos like China Telecom or potentially even social networks such as Facebook, Gartner says.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Mastercard Campaign Praises Hockey’s “Unsung Heroes” (Strategy Magazine)
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Posted: 06/09/2010
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“Unsung heroes” are typically the faces behind the scenes, eschewing the limelight to help launch others to the top spot. In an unexpected turn, Mastercard’s new campaign casts new light on the "unsung heroes" of the hockey world. In support of its title sponsorship of the 2010 MasterCard Memorial World Cup, MasterCard’s saucy, mockumentary-style campaign features live-action vignettes that pit inanimate objects against each other to battle it out alongside real athletes. The digital campaign celebrates mundane objects like alarm clocks, cups of coffee, garage doors, dumbbells, slush and shock absorbers, whose efforts are often overlooked in the hockey player’s quest to meet challenges. Designed to be dynamic, memorable and cost-effective, the campaign extends the creative theme with trading cards featuring each item and rich media ads on TSN.ca, Sportsnet.ca, CHL.ca and NHL.com, as well as the major Canadian portals that drive visitors to the Mastercard.ca site to vote on their favorite videos. Mastercard will run the "Unsung Heroes" campaign until the end of the Memorial Cup on May 23.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic:
Content Strategy,
Creative & Design,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
North America
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer
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Mastering The Whole Customer Experience (.net)
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Posted: 04/15/2010
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In a recent interview, Oliver Lindberg caught up with Paul Dawson, EMC Conchango’s experience director, to discuss the company’s methodology. EMC Conchango concentrates on what it calls “total experience design,” taking a comprehensive look at the customer journey from beginning to end, and all the points in between. EMC Conchango operates as the European arm of EMC Consulting, allowing it to leverage its global reach and cast a wider net to capture more global business. Based on fact, the experience planning process incorporates Agile methodology, regularly released software and eye tracking to analyze how people interact with the content of a page. The agency is also experimenting with electroencephalograms that are literally wired to reveal what consumer’s brains are thinking and feeling. The agency also partners with Microsoft to adopt new user-facing technology to better understand customer behavior and devise ways to prolong consumer interactions with brands and products.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Content Strategy,
Creative & Design,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global,
Europe
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer
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Maximize your Web Site’s Mobilization with CSS (Practical eCommerce)
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Posted: 09/11/2009
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With mobile internet use and mobile-friendly browsing on the rise, expert Armando Roggio is
encouraging businesses to consider his “Web Design Tips” before redesigning their e-commerce sites to address their mobilization. Simple techniques such as adding a second style sheet or slightly revising a page’s HTML can enhance mobile shopping experiences
without wasting time to register new mobile domains or create mobile-specific styles. The best
solution? According to Roggio, it’s more efficient to redesign your current site to render well
across multiple platforms including mobile, desktop, RSS, and more, using CSS. To illustrate his advice, Roggio creates a home page for an e-commerce comic book store with an instructional video demonstrating how to create mobile-friendly background images.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Creative & Design,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer
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