Friday, August 13, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
How Starbucks Plans to Capitalize on Free Wi-Fi
Starbucks stores nationwide now have free Wi-Fi, but details around the second piece to the coffee retailer’s digital strategy — the Starbucks Digital Network — have been slim. Here’s how Starbucks plans to cater to digital consumers and premium content providers through its Digital Network.
The Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) will be available to customers at company-operated stores beginning this fall. With SDN, Starbucks hopes to engineer an in-store, third-place experience like no other by offering exclusive and premium content from hand-picked content providers, including Apple, The New York Times and leading health publisher Rodale.
In an interview with Mashable
, Starbucks’s Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman revealed intimate details around the vision behind SDN and the various entities participating in the network.
The Bigger Picture
For Starbucks, the in-store experience is paramount.
The company already knows that computer users spend about one hour per visit on Wi-Fi while mobile users stick around for 15 minutes per web session. Plus, Starbucks has a history of curating music and pop culture content with in-store selections. SDN is the realization that nationwide free Wi-Fi offers Starbucks more access to its customers; it is a marriage of digital convenience and curatorial prowess.
“We know that people would pay us for this opportunity. But instead of asking them to pay us, we thought, ‘Let’s aggregate and compile the best content that [Starbucks customers] can’t get any where else,’” Brotman says.
In fact, when it comes to SDN, there’s no money changing hands between Starbucks and the content providers. Content providers are giving away restricted access in the hopes of attracting new business, and Starbucks wins by having something completely unique and customers benefit from by getting something of value at no cost. Brotman says, “It’s a win-win for everyone.”
Starbucks does plan to upsell SDN users, and there will be a revenue share between the coffee retailer and its content providers should customers go on to purchase while browsing.
The Network
Brotman describes SDN as a localized five channel network with curated content from the best sources in the following categories: News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business & Careers and My Neighborhood.
In the News channel, customers will have unfettered access to the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times. Brotman explained that access to the latter of the two will be the paid versions not available for free to readers anywhere else.
When it comes to entertainment, Starbucks will offer free Apple iTunes downloads. Brotman promises even “more exciting Apple stuff” in the future, noting that the two brands have a strong relationship. Nickelodeon is offering free access to Nick Jr. Boost via SDN. The offering should appeal to parents trying to entertain their kids by giving unrestricted access to educational games that aren’t usually free.
Starbucks has selected Rodale — publisher of health and wellness magazines such as Runner’s World and Women’s Health — for its Wellness channel. The premium content offered will be tailored to Starbucks customers and will include recipes, videos and articles, all of which will be updated regularly. Rodale will also let users create their own maps, running routes and biking routes with Starbucks stores identified as pit stops.
The Business & Career channel will feature content from Yahoo, a network-wide partner, as well other to-be-announced partners.
Just as it sounds, My Neighborhood will be populated with local information and will even include access to compete Zagat ratings for local eateries. This section will allow users to locate and learn more about the nearest schools using DonorsChoose.org for classroom funding.
“This is just the beginning of how we plan to leverage this channel,” says Brotman. He imagines a future filled with more Apple goodies, exclusive e-book downloads and eventually the opportunity to digitally connect patrons to other patrons through games or other social activities.
by Jennifer Van Grove Mashable Business August 11, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
9 ways agents should be using Google | Inman News
Recently, I Googled "Google for real estate professionals" and came across this page for real estate agents! Google truly has some fantastic (and free) applications that can enhance any agent or broker's business.
Here are my top nine favorite Google products for real estate agents:
1. Google Maps
Google offers a free service that lets you make your listings easier for homebuyers and real estate agents to find when they look for properties on Google.com.
2. Submit listings to Google Base.
By providing your real estate listings to Google, you will broaden your distribution and receive free traffic and leads through natural search results on Google properties. Real estate search results will be displayed on Google Maps, allowing users to immediately zero in on the neighborhoods most attractive to them.
3. Google Maps API
You can also place interactive maps on your own website using the Google Maps API (application programming interface). Display your listings on detailed maps and satellite imagery and give your users a visual, intuitive way to find the property that is right for them. Also, use the Google Maps API to show the location of your office and provide directions to your door.
4. Google Earth
Give your agents and clients the power of three-dimensional satellite imagery with Google Earth Pro. Exceeding 200 million downloads, Google Earth has redefined the way people interact with real estate and property information. Publish your listings in Google Earth's KML data format to expose them to Google Earth's audience.
Also, give your company the ability to research and present property information overlaid with school districts, parks, roads and business listings.
5. List your business on Google Places
Over one-third of people looking for real estate information on Google are searching for agents or brokers. You want your name and address to be displayed when they search. Google Places gives real estate professionals an easy way to submit business listings. Submit multiple locations with a data file and conveniently manage and control listings.
6. Market homes in 3-D with Google SketchUp
Google SketchUp Pro is a deceptively simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, presenting, and modifying 3D models. Model your properties in Google SketchUp and give your clients a 3D view. Enhance your website listing by using the animation capability of Google SketchUp Pro.
Allow customers to freely explore the home, community and its surroundings in 3D. You can also use Google SketchUp Pro to print to high-resolution devices, place your models in Google Earth, and post them to the 3D Warehouse.
7. Gmail and Google Apps
Communicating with colleagues, clients and other agents is essential to every real estate professional. Google offers a package of simple and powerful tools that you can use to communicate and collaborate more effectively, for less.
Google Apps includes fully customized e-mail addresses with plenty of storage, instant messaging, sharable calendars, tools for sharing and collaborating on documents and spreadsheets, and even collaborative wikis.
What's more, you can access these services and all of your information wherever you are -- at your own desk, on other Internet-connected computers, and even while you're on the road with your mobile device. Best of all, there's no special hardware or software required, so you can be up and running with Google Apps with minimal hassles.
8. Create a Google profile
When you've created a business based on your name, you want to be easily discoverable. Creating a Google profile makes it easier for prospects and partners to find you because Google profile results appear at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages.
Your profile can include photos, information about your real estate business, and ways for people to contact you. Turn on the "Send a message" feature, and anyone with a Google account can send you a message through your profile, without having your e-mail address revealed to them.
9. Create a YouTube channel to showcase your listings
Allow your listings to sell themselves and give homebuyers the ability to prescreen potential homes before they contact you by creating a YouTube channel. YouTube actually reaches the specific audiences you are looking to reach: real estate buyers and sellers.
Did you know that YouTube viewers are 90 percent more likely to obtain information about real estate online than the average American?
Google sure has come a long way!
This is a great video I found a few days ago -- a two-minute look back over the last 11 years of Google: "The Google Story." (Can't view the video? Click here.) I wonder what is next for this super-search giant!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Skype Files For IPO, Only 6 Percent Of Users Pay
Preparing for an eventual public offering, Skype has now filed an IPO registration statement
with the SEC. The maximum proposed offering amount is listed as $100 million, but that is just a placeholder amount.
According to the filing, Skype’s revenues for the first six months of 2010 were $406 million, with a net income of only $13 million. But a big portion of that was from interest income. That is only a 3 percent net margin, and this isn’t exactly a new business. Its income from operations was only $1.4 million for the six months. However, its gross margins are 51 percent, and have been expanding steadily as the company benefits from the scale of is operations and is able to negotiate lower telephone termination fees around the world.
On the IPO road show, Skype will no doubt point to its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before income taxes and depreciation) numbers, which conveniently strip out things like goodwill, stock-based compensation and litigation expenses. Adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2010 was $115.7 million, up 54 percent from a year ago. The company currently has $85 million in cash. These numbers reflect pro forma adjustments to Skype’s historical financial statements. (Click on the financial results table below to enlarge):
One interesting tidbit from the filing is that Skype had to pay $344 million to settle with the Skype founders for the Joltid peer-to-peer technology that at one point threatened to hold up the spin-off of Skype from eBay.
The filing also reveals that Skype “users made 95 billion minutes of voice and video calls” during the first half of 2010, with a full 40 percent of those minutes being video. Skype users also sent 84 million SMS text messages through Skype during the period.
As of June 30, Skype was averaging 124 million users a month, with only 8.1 million of those paying users (out of a total of 560 million registered users). Those users, however, pay an average of $96 a year. Skype’s strategy is to keep growing its overall number of users and convert more of them to paying customers.
Getting more people to buy Skype-Out minutes will obviously not be sufficient. Skype also plans on adding advertising revenues and enterprise products (37 percent of users surveyed say they use Skype for business purposes). According to the filing, part of Skype’s strategy will be to:
Develop new monetization models, including advertising. Our users made over 152 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls in the twelve months ended June 30, 2010. We believe this represents a meaningful opportunity to increase our revenue from alternative monetization models, including advertising, gaming and virtual gifts.
The company is based in Luxemborg and is offering American depository shares. A new holding company will be created following the offering which will combine the ownership from public investors, private investors such as Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and employees. The convoluted chart below shows what the new ownership structure will look like:
Monday, August 9, 2010
Lithium batteries under scrutiny
It also has a controversial safety record peppered with fires and recalls. Now the Department of Transportation wants to toughen rules for how the batteries - and devices containing them - are shipped on cargo airplanes. If finalized, the proposed changes would require shippers to treat iPhones as hazardous materials on par with flammable paint or dry ice with the full weight of regulation - and added costs - that comes with that classification.
Companies such as Apple, UPS and Best Buy say they support stricter safety standards but are worried the rules go too far and could wreak havoc on supply chains. They warn the changes could raise prices for consumers. And it's a testament to the ubiquity of the lithium-ion battery that the dispute over the transportation proposal has now embroiled everyone from trade partners such as Israel and South Korea to airline pilots, medical-device makers and the National Funeral Directors Association.
Lithium-ion batteries have skyrocketed in popularity because they're lighter and smaller than other batteries. More than 3.3 billion lithium-ion cells were shipped in 2008, according to industry estimates, up from 1.5 billion in 2005.
They have also been known to ignite because they contain a small amount of flammable solvent. If the batteries overheat or short-circuit, in rare cases the solvent can react and catch fire.
Tech companies such as Dell and Lenovo have issued recalls in recent years for laptop batteries at risk of overheating.
Policymakers have since turned their attention to shipments of these batteries, especially after a 2006 incident at Philadelphia International Airport when a cargo plane containing lithium batteries caught fire. The National Transportation Safety Board could not determine the exact cause of the fire.
Such incidents have been enough to alarm airline pilots, who have taken up the cause of tightening rules with the support of Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House transportation committee.
"Under existing regulations, a flight crew may not be made aware of a pallet containing thousands of lithium batteries on board the aircraft, yet a 5-pound package of flammable paint or dry ice would be subject to the full scope of the regulations," said Oberstar in a statement when the Department of Transportation first introduced its proposal in January. "That makes little sense."
Regulators consider any package containing a lithium-ion battery to be hazardous but exempt small batteries, such as those in cellphones. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, has proposed removing that exemption. Anything containing the batteries would have to be specially packaged, and anyone shipping it would have to receive hazardous-materials training.
PHMSA said it's in the middle of rulemaking and would not specify when a final decision is expected.
Companies say that regulators should focus on better enforcement of existing rules, rather than adding new ones. Industry groups say that in every battery case that has been cited as suspicious, the problem was that people were not following the rules.
The new regulations could affect a massive web of companies, including manufacturers, shippers and retailers. They say costs would be staggering. UPS told PHMSA that complying with the rules would cost the company at minimum $264 million in the first year. And the company said each subsequent year would cost an additional $185 million.
The National Funeral Directors Association says the proposed regulations would affect them, as well, because many deceased who are flown to funerals have pacemakers and defibrillators, which contain the batteries.
Because many of the affected devices are flown around the world, the proposed rules also have raised the alarm of U.S. trade partners, worried the rules could act as an unfair trade barrier since products would be harder to ship to the U.S.
by Jia Lynn Yang Washington Post Aug. 1, 2010 12:00 AM
Lithium batteries under scrutiny
Arizona drivers warned about gas-pump credit-card scam
Police departments around the state have reported at least 30 cases related to "skimmers" - illegal reading devices attached to legitimate credit-card readers - found at gas stations in the past six months, said Shawn Marquez, director of compliance programs for the state agency.
Skimmers have been reported in Maricopa, La Paz and Mohave counties, and in the cities of Phoenix, Lake Havasu City, Bullhead City, Kingman, Glendale and Surprise, the agency said.
According to police departments in the counties that reported skimmer activity, cases have cropped up sporadically over the past year, but not in a concentrated area. It appears the scammers moved in and out of each area quickly.
The tiny devices are surreptitiously installed into or onto gas pumps, copying the electronic data in the magnetic strip of credit or debit cards as people swipe them at the pump. The information can then be used to counterfeit credit or debit cards. Skimmers also are commonly planted in ATMs, authorities said.
The devices are not planted by the business owners, but by scammers adept at placing them at key locations.
Last month, Gov. Jan Brewer directed the Department of Weights and Measures to increase training and inspection efforts to search for skimmers.
Over the next few weeks, state inspectors will increase the number of inspections on gas pumps, hold training seminars for its officers on technology used to detect skimmers and work with professionals in the petroleum industry to collaborate on detection and protective measures, Marquez said.
Because skimmers often are placed inside the pumps, it is difficult for consumers to detect them, Marquez said. But he urged people to report any suspicious devices on or around any gas pump.
Skimmers are about 2 inches long, with electrical wires attached.
The problem is not restricted to gas pumps. Jeno Erdelyi, 46, a Californian working in the restaurant business, said skimmers are common enough that even waiters sometimes hide the devices in their wallets or belts to secretly swipe cards.
Erdelyi, who was recently visiting Phoenix, said he withdraws cash to buy gas. He uses oil-company credit cards only when he travels for work.
Gouinda Das, 36, a Phoenix Shell gas-station attendant, said most patrons use cards to purchase their gas. Only about 30 to 40 customers a day pay with cash, usually when they buy other items at the convenience store, he said.
Miljan Rakic, 21, who was gassing up recently at a Phoenix station, said he routinely checks his online statements and uses credit cards with fraud-protection guarantees to avoid identity theft.
Rakic, a former credit-company employee, said he has encountered customers whose identities were stolen after running their cards through skimmers attached to gas-pump card readers. The devices resembled small lock boxes, he said, so patrons assumed the skimmers were a part of the card reader.
Like Rakic, consumers should regularly monitor their credit- and debit-card statements and check their credit scores, said Steven Katz, senior director of corporate communications at TransUnion, a national credit company.
Before draining an account, identity thieves may charge a few small transactions to see if card owners are monitoring their accounts, said Jennifer Leuer, general manager of ProtectMyID, an identity-protection service with Experian.
Any discrepancies in bank statements should be reported immediately to the bank, police and credit bureaus, because the amount card owners are liable for may increase the longer they wait to report fraud, Leuer said.
Consumer liability is limited to $50 for credit cards once the card is reported lost or stolen. But for debit cards, the liability fee is dependent on the number of days consumers wait to report it. According to the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, consumers could be responsible for all the money lost in their accounts if they wait longer than 60 days from the date the bank statement is mailed.
by Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Arizona Republic Aug. 1, 2010 08:10 PM
Arizona drivers warned about gas-pump credit-card scam
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
The $100 BankNote
U.S. Government Prepares Global Public for New $100 Note
A new $100 note will begin circulating on February 10, 2011. To ensure that the people who rely on the $100 note know how to use the security features in the new design, the U.S. government has launched a global public education program.
The $100 BankNote