Google recently launched Google Scholar, a search engine for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. By special arrangement, Google’s spiders index content from open and password-protected sites. However, unless users have a subscription to protected sites, they can’t read those articles. When I need to analyze consumer trends, predict […]
CIBC customers got a big surprise when a bank machine in New Brunswick spat out Canadian Tire money this week. The bank, already under fire for faxing private documents to a West Virginia junkyard, suspects a business customer put the money into a cash drop. No word on the suspects, who must “Spend like Santa; […]
Merriam Webster has named “blog” the word of the year, based on requests for definitions at its online dictionary. Other words in the top 10 reflect top news stories, such as the US election, Florida hurricanes, and Iraq War. The bizarre entry, “defenestration”, seemingly stems from political hara kiri or Unix manuals. (c) 2004 by […]
The NHL hockey drought has advertisers scrambling, says the New York Times. Advertisters are at a loss when it comes to finding ways to connect with men, who tend not to tune to other shows in big numbers. They may want to take a hint from advertisers of products for teens and twentysomethings, who’ve learned […]
Marketers have lost credibility in recent years, says a story in The London Telegraph. And that’s because most marketers lack commercial skills, such as “tough-minded numeracy”, profit responsibility, financial analysis, and international business. But how many marketers have those skills? As an open career field, marketing has multiple entry points. Marketers do not complete a […]
A Canadian gaming company handed over $28,000 today for a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich purported to bear the Virgin Mary’s image. The company purchased the sandwich through an eBay auction that made headlines around the world. And it’s those headlines that likely prompted the company (which I’ll avoid naming) to make the bid. Google News […]
Ars Technica claims Best Buy — which owns Future Shop — wants to fire 20 percent of its customers. Some of those customers buy products, cash in on rebates, return the products for refund, then buy them later, at discounted prices. Still others buy discounted loss leaders to resell on eBay. I’m surprised this hasn’t […]
Wondering about your return on investment for marketing? Check out this Business Week article on marketing metrics. The article notes that many marketers casually toss around terms like lifetime value and ROI without any real understanding of their meaning or application. Often touted as creative types, many marketers resist using metrics for their marketing programs […]
