Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Play Risk Via Google Maps

Since it’s introduction, people have done some very cool stuff with Google Maps via the use of the available API. We’ve seen Chicago crime stats, cheap gas prices, Washington DC Metro finder and just about anything else you could imagine using Google Maps. This is a great example of how opening your data and giving developers access with a well-written API can expand the reach of your original application. It also shows the creativity of developers when they’re given something good to work with. In the end, everybody wins

Speaking of winning, somebody finally built what the world has been waiting for, GMRisk, (the game of Risk via Google Maps.) Isn’t technology amazing? Who’s up for a game?

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Monday, November 07, 2005

Jeff Croft vs Jakob Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen recently released his 2005 List Of Web Design Mistakes, and in true Jakobian fashion, he manages to point out some good mistakes and then offers a couple different solutions. Mostly though, he likes to offer just one solution. I’d say he’s a one-solution-fits-all type of guy, (after he’s thrown out two or three sensational solutions in order to get his list some attention, and his site, a good deal of traffic.)

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Sunday, October 30, 2005

It Takes More Than Great Tools To Build Something

Although the Internet and other new technological tools provide access to opportunities for a growing share of the world’s population, tools alone will not make it happen. As Godin puts it, the tools are available, but there will always be a crying need for craftsmen who can do great things with these tools. I can go to Sears and buy a pickup truck full of tools, but it won’t make me a carpenter. I will not be a “craftsman” even though the folks at Sears are branding their tools as CRAFTSMAN®. By the way, their slogan is “Makes Anything Possible.” Well maybe for some, but that doesn’t include a large portion of public that has a significant problem mastering the “tools of the trade” (author included).

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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

More e-Commerce Growth

If anyone is looking for confirmation of the tremendous growth in e-commerce, it is certainly evidenced in the latest Google earnings report.

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Friday, October 21, 2005

DM Internet Sales Projected to Rise to 43 Percent

Eric Dukart, who directs Sundog’s Customer Insight Group, just returned from DMA 05, the Direct Marketing Association’s national convention in Atlanta. In an article dated yesterday, DM News, the mouthpiece of that organization, reported that a Multichannel Marketing 2005 survey of direct marketers projects Internet sales will leap to 43 percent by 2007. Keep in mind these figures are specifically for companies that are considered direct marketers. One of the interesting findings of the survey was that 33 percent of Web sales were incremental...sales that wouldn’t have occurred if people would have had to order via phone or the mail.

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