It somehow feels wrong to promote Microsoft in general, but lately I’ve been wowed by some of their innovative products and software. I expect this out of Apple or Google, but when I saw previews online of Microsoft Surface from CES 2008 earlier in the year, I was wowed.  It also got me wondering if this might ever become commonplace in our lives.

If you’ve never seen Microsoft Surface check out the video below.

AT&T has already started to roll these units out at some of their wireless stores, so it’s well worth a visit to check it out; and while you’re there, give yourself another reason to play with the iPhone.

When I began writing this post, my intent was to just share a cool new toy with everyone, but what really dawned on me was how fast things were changing, and how as an agency we’d be at the forefront designing these new types of experiences for consumers.

Ten years ago as a start-up agency, my universe was fairly limited to websites, emails, and the very sexy work of corporate extranets. Now we are diving into Second life, Facebook apps, mobile apps, and hopefully (with the blessing of a nice client) Microsoft Surface experiences. Digital experiences are becoming increasingly important. As an agency, the way we create strategies and design and develop them to their full potential needs to change and adapt all the time.

It’s fair to say that agencies sometimes dive into unknown territories - were no case studies exist, no proven numbers. It’s always a risk for both the client and the agency to dive into uncharted waters, but rewards are high when you nail it. The point I’m trying to make is that we, with our smart people and unbelievable clients, could in the near future have an opportunity to work on a project the involves Microsoft Surface or any other progressive digital experience. I guess this is why we all love working for an agency like Engauge, it’s the chance to work on something others might only read about.

If you want to get wowed by another Microsoft product check out Photosynth, it will blow you away.

I don’t often watch South Park, but when a friend sent me this clip I had to share it with everyone. As I watched, it dawned on me how much we rely on the internet these days, and nothing can illustrate it better than this clip.

Click on the picture above, or visit this link to view the clip.

Would you be able to function on a day-to-day basis with no internet?

About a year and a half+ ago I read a fascinating article in Business 2.0 magazine called “The Disruptors”. The article was published in September 2006, and to date is one of the most eye opening articles I’ve read. The article talks about 11 companies with 11 big ideas that would change everything, or more accurately change industries, destroy established companies, and even change how we do things day to day. So today I started reading another article in Information Week called “5 Disruptive Technologies To Watch In 2008” that talks about virtualization, and that I’ve always been a big believer in both on the server and web application/services side. The more recent article in InformationWeek was definitely more geared towards technology disruptors, and to be frank wasn’t such a surprise to me. Anyway it got me thinking about the old Business 2.0 article, and how eye opening the “big ideas” were, so I decided to re-look at the ideas and determine if there were still strong disruptor candidates.

Netvibes.com
First off this article first introduced me to Netvibes.com, and ever since then I’ve been using it. The idea was that a highly personalized start page with no major advertising would knock Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Google off the portal “my homepage” leader board. Although Netvibes.com has grown tremendously, the other major portals are still around, and in-fact iGoogle and Yahoo’s relatively new portal homepage have matched some of the unique personalization features Netvibes.com originally dominated with. For now it doesn’t look like Netvibes.com will disrupt the major portal, and what it really shows is how fast these portals can react and adapt to new challenges.

BlueLithium
Everyone heard the buzz about BlueLithium and there highly targeted ad serving based on the whole networks click streams. The disruption was targeted against Google and traditional CPM ad networks back in the day. Well in this case I think BlueLithium rocked the online ad industry and certainly pushed companies like Google and ValueClick to react with similar behavioral targeted products. In September 2007 Yahoo made a big move and bought BlueLithium for $300M. In the short term I’d say BlueLithium had a major impact, however the competition was quick to react again and new competitors have risen as a result.

Salesforce.com’s AppExchange
The disruptor in this case was not salesforce.com as a CRM solution but the underlying database and so called “Web Operating System” salesforce.com exposed when they launched AppExchange. The big idea was to allow developers to build on-top of the AppExchange infrastructure and ultimately compete with the traditional enterprise big boys such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc. The problem salesforce.com has is that clients want to see lots of strong partners (developers) building products on-top of AppExchange, and developers want to see lots of customers before investing in AppExchange. This is an unfortunate catch-22, which hopefully will dissipate over time. Around May 2007 AppExchange was uncoupled from the main salesforce.com CRM system and prices were reduced in order to attract both customers and developers to the on-demand platform. Although I believe it’s too early to determine if AppExchange is a destructor, I believe it certainly has all the potential attributes and characteristics to disrupt the big boys.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks for part two and three that look at Coghead, Clearwire, Jajah, EEStor, Zopa, NanoLife Sciences, Applied Location, and NextMedium.

One of my roles at Spunlogic (and a personal passion) is to review emerging technologies and new innovative concepts. Over the last several months I’ve been on various Beta teams, reviewing what I think are very exciting concepts to our industry that I’d like to share with the masses.

Coghead (http://www.coghead.com/)
Coghead is probably one of the most exciting concepts that is actually becoming a reality. I joined the Beta team about 9 months ago, and am excited to say the product just got released a few weeks ago. Coghead, in essence, is a do-it-yourself web application platform. It allows business users to build complex applications using logic and business components through a user interface “wizard”. No coding language or database knowledge is needed. You can search for applications other users have shared (free or buy), copy them and modify the logic/data structure as needed. It can create multiple access rights for various users and essentially replace enterprise level software if done right. I like Coghead for many reasons, but most of all it allows me to play with concept applications very easily to determine the logic I’ll need, the data structure and the interface screens that make sense without having to involve development in any way. For example, I’ve been playing around to create an asset management system, as well as a robust employee records system. The future is end-less for this on-demand service, and large software companies need to take a serious look at how this type of product could impact them.

Joost (http://www.joost.com/)
What can I say? I LOVE Joost. It’s my new way of watching TV and sharing what I like in a community. I finally got into the Beta team about 7 months ago. To be honest, the performance of the product/service wasn’t great;  but, as they improved the software I started to experience what they were talking about. Live High Definition TV on my laptop, with great controls and features. I was recently allowed to share Joost with a limited number of friends, and I’m curious to see their feedback. Prior to Joost I’d been using BitTorrent (http://www.bittorrent.com/). And, in my opinion, Joost kicks the Torrent concept and is going to be the new wave of how we watch TV, at least on our Laptops, etc.

Fotowoosh (http://www.fotowoosh.com/)
I recently came across fotowoosh and thought the concept and practical reality was amazing. Having just joined the Beta team I don’t have a great deal to report. The product has a long way to go before it’s ready for commercial use, but essentially fotowoosh uses complex mathematical algorithms to construct a 3D rendering from a digital photo (2D). What!!!??? How!!!??? In very basic terms, the software determines the ground, sky, vertical and horizontal surfaces, and building structure, etc. and applies learned knowledge from training images in order to construct the 3D model. So, basically, some really complex geometry and logic! The possibilities are endless, as you can imagine; historical reconstruction, real-estate, architecture firms, mapping, etc. Think about it, even virtual worlds like Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) would one day use this rendering technology to have a real-life experience. As I mentioned this software is really at its infancy, and has a long way to go. But I’ll keep you posted during the beta phase.

I’d love to know your thoughts, and even other tools/software your all keeping an eye out for.

I just attended CRMA’s first National Conference in Atlanta, GA and was honored and fortunate enough to be invited to talk on a panel called “Embracing Web 2.0 – The new way to interact with your Customers”. The panel was moderated by Paul Greenberg who was the day one keynote speaker and the author of “CRM at the Speed of Light”. I was joined on the panel with Brent Leary (CRM Essentials), Sherry Heyl (What A Concept!), and Terry Bruehl (Macquarium).

In preparing for the panel discussion I found myself torn between talking about Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 and what it means to CRM professionals in terms of technology, or relationship management tactics and the available methods of communicating and engaging with customers. As I looked over my notes it was obvious why CRM professionals should ALREADY have embraced Web 2.0 and I wondered if I’d provide information to the audience that they already knew. As with panel discussions, the title of the session may sway based on the questions and interests from the audience. Paul our moderator fielded some great questions and the panel responded with extremely valuable insight, however the discussion from the audience evolved into justification of using specific tools available in the Web 2.0 arena such as Blogs, RSS, del.icio.us, etc. I realized my earlier conflict in my preparation of technology vs. relationship tactics/strategy using Web 2.0 was abundantly the same conflict or confusion the audience had. I also realized that perhaps the terminology of Web 2.0 (blogs, RSS, Wiki, AJAX, etc.) is so fragmented in definition that a lot of the CRM professionals have already embraced/used some of Web 2.0 approaches both technically and strategically without even realizing it, and that the tools and terminology used is what they thought “embracing web 2.0” needs to be.

Web 2.0 in my humble opinion can be described very easily and does not have to involve any of the buzz words. Simply – Web 2.0 enables online users (regardless of environment or device) to communicate in two-way and even three-way conversations, discussions, opinions, reviews, etc. In other words a company or individual can communicate with other individuals/employees/customers/partners, etc., and in turn they can consume the information and even communicate back to the company or individual (two-way communications). But more importantly the whole group can communicate with each other providing a three-way conversation. That’s it, that’s all web 2.0 really is in its basic form or approach. So what’s the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, again, simple! Web 1.0 allowed a one-way conversation. A company or individual pushed out content, users had to find the content to consume, but did not have an easy way to start a two-way or three-way conversation.

Two things have brought us into the Web 2.0 arena.
1. Technology – Advances in technology have provided us tools like blogs (WordPress), RSS readers/aggregators (News Gator or Netvibes), AJAX, Flex, etc. i.e. the technology has enabled the Web 2.0 approach, and more importantly it’s affordable for companies and individuals.

2. Adoption rate – Social networking/review sites like MySpace.com, Flickr, blogger.com, YouTube.com, epinions.com; these early adaptors of the approach and technology have enabled the online user base to accept and demand this approach.

So going back to the CRMA panel discussion – wouldn’t any effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy involve Web 2.0 principles as its fundamental approach? I couldn’t imagine a CRM strategy to only have a one-way conversation. In which case I go back to my earlier two statements –

1. Am I telling the audience something they have already embraced?

2. Is the audience already engaging in Web 2.0 without knowing it, but are caught-up in the terminology?

I’d love to hear your opinions, comments, thoughts regarding the two questions/statements above. So in the spirit of Web 2.0 let’s have a two-way and even three-way conversation!

I realize I explained Web 2.0 in very simplistic terms and haven’t really touched on the emerging evolution to Web 3.0 and the convergence of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), however I feel we’ll miss the point of future evolutions if we don’t understand the basic approach we already live and breathe.

I also have to take my hat off to Art Hall and his team for putting on such a great conference.

I came across a site that I thought was really interesting called Jumpcut, which is a site that allows you to upload your own movie clips much like YouTube. In addition the site allows you to upload sound tracks and images in order to edit/cut a movie. It’s essentially an online video editing suite. The really cool thing is that you can grab other movie clips that have been shared by users, allowing you to combine them or remix them to make your own version. And just like YouTube, you can share your newly created video content with friends, the rest of the community, etc.

Jumpcut is owned by Yahoo and I’d imagine it’s their competition to Google-owned YouTube. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use the site, edit content, and my favorite feature: using other peoples’ video content to create my own versions. A client of mine actually steered me to the site after mentioning a Doritos Super Bowl contest he saw on the site. The contest asks people to create their own video using Jumpcut to edit the movie, grab shared clips and upload original content. The movies submitted by the community were actually really cool and more importantly novice users with little knowledge of video editing could participate. Although YouTube is the clear leader in user-generated video content, I thought Jumpcut had a really cool collaborative spin to it, and more importantly allowed anyone to participate regardless of their skill set or knowledge and you don’t need to have any original content to use the site.

Man I love how Ajax, video, and Flash based Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are getting incorporated into the next generation of websites. I could talk for hours about the greatest and latest buzz around cool flash/Ajax websites, online games, rich modular experiences, integrated video, etc.; but instead I’m going to talk about web analytics programs we have in our tool box today and how you can use them to analyze all those cool technologies like you would any regular HTML site.

I recently heard someone complain about a Flash based tool they had that looked and worked great (well at least they thought so); however they couldn’t measure the effectiveness of the tool without investing in building custom analytics and reports. They’d invested most of their budget to ensure the tool had all the bells and whistles; however they couldn’t effectively realize the ROI on their investment.

I asked them why they didn’t use their web analytics program to analyze the effectiveness of the tool and generate reports much like any other website. They said the only stats they got were basic page view data like how many times the page that contained the Flash tool was accessed, how long people spent on the page, where they came from, etc. All the regular stats you’d expect from a page view analysis, however that didn’t tell them how users were interacting with the tool, which part of the tool they were using, if they were converted in the tool, the path/flow the user took, which section of the tool they were abandoning, etc. They thought they had to build a custom application that could provide the data their web analytics product couldn’t. They were surprised when I told them this wasn’t the case. A good web analytics product can provide all the data needed and more, you just need to know how to configure it correctly.

First let me explain why most people don’t think a web analytics product can track within a Flash tool. Most analytics products are initially configured to only report when a page is loaded. They show the Flash file only being loaded once each time the page is loaded and have no way to measure what the user did when using the tool. This is true for most embedded media (Flash video, Flash applications, applets) or pages that only load once that contain Ajax, show/hide DIV CSS Layers, etc.

Normally this is fine for HTML sites, however you can configure web analytics products that rely on JavaScript calls (like WebSideStory’s HBX) to track any element on a page even after the page has been loaded because you can call the JavaScript again using Flash ActionScript, Server Side Scripts (using AJax), or other event based JavaScript functions.

Most popular ASP based analytics products like WebSideStory HBX, Coremetrics, Omniture, etc., rely on JavaScript to provide the actual data rather than analyzing log files. Typically you place a piece of code on every page. When the page loads the code triggers some JavaScript that provides the page name, category/section, funnel/path, conversion data, etc., to the web analytics product.

Well what if you could trigger the JavaScript call from within a Flash tool, and provide whatever data you wanted to the web analytics product stating a different page name, category/section, path, etc. An actual page view is only recorded as such because the JavaScript passes the data to the web analytics product saying it’s a page view. In theory I can browse the homepage of a site, and a Flash movie on the page might call the JavaScript 50 times telling the web analytics product I’m on 50 different pages, however the reality is that I only loaded the homepage once. Once you think of a page view as any call to the JavaScript you can start wrapping your head around how you’d configure the Flash tool to provide all the data needed through the web analytics product without having to build a custom application.

I just unsubscribed from the Buy.com emails (finally). Those guys really bludgeon you with emails and probably for the better part of six months I just deleted them without even looking at them, like it was part of my daily chores for the day. So I finally decided to unsubscribe. I was surprised that they actually had a preference page to allow me to select one of the following:

- Basic Emails

- 2 Emails per week

- 1 Email per week

- 1 Email per 2 weeks

- 1 Email per month

- Deal Alerts Emails only

- Entertainment

- Technology

- Unsubscribe

A decent choice list by them but the options were radio buttons and not check boxes (meaning I could not choose multiple items)! So I could choose to only receive technology emails but I’d still get them daily. Or I could select to get emails from them once a week but they’d still send me entertainment content which I don’t want. They were so close!

I can’t stress the importance of properly created preference centers for email marketing. And in today’s world if you don’t give your customers as much flexibility and control over how you communicate with them you’re missing the boat. Silverpop, one of our partners and truly one of the best Email Service Providers on the planet, has a great white paper section on their site and in particular they have one entitled, “Give Customers What They Want with Preferences.” It’s a great read. Maybe they should send a copy of it over to Buy.com

As a full service interactive agency, we work with many companies to help them understand the best way to run their email marketing campaigns. One of the mysteries of email marketing is when and how often email campaigns are sent. Over the last several years I’ve read countless analyst reports that attempt to pinpoint the right time, day and frequency an email campaign should be sent depending on the industry (i.e. retail, travel, b2b, etc.). When asked by clients and colleagues when and how often a campaign needs to run, I’m often reluctant to quote these statistics as they try to replicate them for their own campaigns. The fact of the matter is that frequency and timing of an email campaign should really depend on when you have content that is most relevant to the recipient. Now I’ll admit that’s easier said than done, but it is possible for any organization that’s willing to take this approach.

The simplest approach is to tell a client their industry typically sends an offer campaign 4 times a month, and that reports/statistics show that recipients have a high open and click-through rate on Thursday between 10am and 11am. I would have certainly provided sound strategy to my client and we’d end up sending an email once a week on Thursday between 10am and 11am. Granted we’d probably get average and perhaps above average results but so would everyone else.

I’d argue that we all know relevant content sent to a recipient when they want it will achieve the best possible results. For example, getting a lunch coupon for Chick-fil-A at 11am because I clicked or hovered over a banner ad in yahoo mail or hotmail will result in a higher conversion rate of that coupon than sending a blast campaign to everyone in my mailing list once every month. Yet the vast majority of campaigns are sent on a pre-defined frequency and time, typically to an un-segmented list (i.e. the message isn’t relevant to every recipient), and the content/offer is normally pretty generic. These campaigns still achieve good results but the approach can trap organizations into a routine as you scramble to get content based on a fixed schedule and start comprising on creative, content versions, segmenting, and testing in order to keep costs down mostly due to low ROI (cost of production and broadcast fees vs. revenue generated).

We should expect more from the web! So I’d rather tell a client they should send a campaign only when they have unique and valuable content that is relevant to a unique recipient. Stop sending “blast” campaigns to the whole mailing list and don’t create filler content because of a set frequency that recipients find generic. Introducing the concept of life cycle campaigns, trigger-based campaigns, personalized and dynamic segmented content campaigns regardless if the client is ready technically or logically can be a tough sell to any marketing department. Those who understand it embrace it, and those who don’t typically get caught up in the cost of running these types of campaigns, the sophistication in the logic and technology needed, and the change/risk of doing something so different. What we all need to realize is that the power of the tools we have, real-time data, and analytics that are at our fingertips has made this level of campaign available to any organization and can achieve far higher ROI than the typical blast frequency strategy.