market

Notebooks continue to drive growth in worldwide PC market

Shipments of PCs to the saturated U.S. market may be declining somewhat, but the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) gave the worldwide PC market a big boost in the third quarter, according to figures released Wednesday by IDC.

PC shipments grew 15.5 percent worldwide in the past quarter. Growth in the EMEA regions, led by Hewlett-Packard and Acer, was paced by a strong demand for notebooks and back-to-school promotions, leading to the best growth rates in the region in the past two years.

"The issue is that it continues to be notebooks that are driving strong … Read more

Sober thoughts on dealcoholized wine

A few years back I wrote a monthly letter on marketing and business strategy, but there was a section at the end called Tobak's Great Wine for Techies. I think that was the only part anyone read. It had tutorials on wine varietals, regions, aging and storage, plus monthly wine pics, on-line resources, all kinds of stuff to help folks enjoy great wine without breaking the bank or taking a class.

You can check out the archives here.

I'm only bringing this up because 26 days ago I decided to go sober for a month. I've gone a week or two before but never a month. I don't know what I was thinking, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

About two week in I recalled reading about dealcoholized wine. I got on-line and found a handful of wineries in the business of making wine without the buzz.

They all use roughly the same process. They make the wine using typical fermentation techniques, then employ a filtering process to remove virtually all the liquid, including the alcohol. This produces a kind of dealcoholized wine syrup. Then they add water back in and bottle it.

Ariel Vineyards, owned by J. Lohr, claims to have won a gold medal in a blind tasting against wines with alcohol. The website also listed about 20 awards. This got my attention.… Read more

Open source + marketing: A match made in heaven

CIO.com profiles the rise of Alfresco to prove its point that open source married to marketing is a very good match, but the same is true of an increasing number of open-source projects. They're no longer about random itches and corresponding scratches.

Open source is big business, and becomes bigger every day. Bigger, in part, because of the marketing dollars that increasingly feed it:

Instead of a project that began with the attitude of "My Dad has a barn; let's put on a play!" the Alfresco team started with a core competency in content management and looked for new market opportunities.… Read more

Predictify pays you to change the future

Predictify is a survey engine cleverly masquerading as a prediction market. On the site, users can answer questions that test their predictive abilities in various fields. If they prove to be right, they can win actual real money. Users even get a small payout for answering a question if they end up being wrong.

People and companies wanting to do market research can submit questions to the Predictify audience--for a fee--and the answers that prove to be most accurate split the bulk of "pot" that is attached to the question.

The money is ingenious misdirection. The point of rewarding accuracy is not to actually pay people for being right. The money is there, rather, to ensure that people who answer questions try to be right. Data from a Predictify survey is broken down in many ways for its users who pay for results, and it's that demographic breakdown that Predictify is really selling, not absolute predictions.

For example, suppose a company wants to know how to price a product. It can ask a question, "What do you think the price of this product will be when it hits the market?" The answers will be correlated with demographics, revealing what different groups (gender, age, ZIP code, etc.) think the item is worth. The "winners" who select the right price aren't predicting the price so much as determining it, and the people who select the price point are basing it not on the aggregate wisdom of the crowd but on the pricing level their target demographic has zeroed in on.

It's one of the cleverest Web 2.0 mind games I've seen in a while, and it just might work. Like many prediction markets, though, the community will run out of gas unless there's a strong incentive to keep people engaged. Money is just part of it on this system. Predictify also ranks users, and pays out more to the more accurate ones.

… Read more

Who will be the 800-pound gorilla of digital convergence?

Way back in the dark ages--before cell phones, reality TV, or social networks--there was big iron. In those archaic times, computers were actually used for computing, as opposed to watching porn or idiotic video clips. The computing giants of the day included IBM, Digital Equipment, Unisys (the marriage of Sperry and Burroughs), Data General, and Wang Laboratories.

The transition to personal computing and networking changed all that. IBM and Unisys survived by refocusing on services. The others didn't fair so well. Markets change. Companies that change with them survive. Those that anticipate change do better still. Those that resist … Read more

Camera sums up your life for marketers

Here's something for you privacy advocates: a security camera that determines your age, gender and, possibly one day, your social class.

It's called FieldAnalyst and it's from NEC. The system homes in on faces of people who pass by the video camera. It then rapidly compares the image against samples in a database. It then spits out what it believes is your approximate age is and your gender.

NEC scientists may next try to add clothing as a characteristic and classify people by whether they wear a suit or a T-shirt.

FieldAnalyst isn't looking for criminals … Read more

Financial sites MarketWatch, Cake get in on social networking

Financial advice takes a turn with the introduction of social networking features to Dow Jones' MarketWatch.com and Cake Financial, a new, entirely user-based investing community.

Just this week MarketWatch added MarketWatch Community, a Beta offshoot where users can post comments, rate articles, and try their hand at market forecasting.

Cake Financial, currently in Alpha, passes over an authoritative analyst voice in favor of a "Social Investing Revolution" allowing users to view the real-time performance of community members with similar profiles. During sign-up, users fill in their investment style, growth goals, history, and education level among other questions. They still build their own networks by adding family and friends, and can create account preferences like an automated stock watchlist.… Read more

Last minute tips for retailers for the holiday shopping season

As the tail end of the year comes around, many Internet retailers gear up for what will hopefully be the busiest part of their year. Of course, this is also one of the most nerve-racking times of the year as well, especially for those who have a disproportionate amount of their business relying on the success of only a few months of the year.

As you gear up for the holiday season, SEO blends more than ever into all of your other marketing efforts. Here are a few tips to help you on your merry way.

Audit Time

If you … Read more

Another Sony mystery product

Of all the companies that have caught the mystery marketing bug, Sony is quickly becoming the most prolific perpetrator. In fact, the campaign tactics may be too secretive for their own good. The Sony "Rolly," for example, still has people guessing what it's all about even after the product was officially unveiled.

Its latest entry is equally baffling. A teaser page on Sony's Japanese Web site offers virtually nothing other than an obscured photo and the obligatory "Coming soon" tag line. (We're thankful that they at least spared us the cliched countdown clock.) … Read more