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HP Photosmart D110a ePrint printer earns 5-star reviews despite lacking ePrint… what?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/05/hp-photosmart-d110a-eprint-printer-earns-5-star-reviews-despite/

hp photosmart d110a 5 stars eprint HP Photosmart D110a ePrint printer earns 5 star reviews despite lacking ePrint... what?

See the bullet for HP’s new D110a Photosmart e-All-in-One that says, “HP ePrint for printing anywhere.” Well, you can ignore that for now. While HP proudly lists ePrint — the ability to print PDF, JPEG, and MS Office documents received as attachments from any email-capable device — as a flagship feature on its newest line of web-connected printers, it’s not a working feature and it won’t be until a software update is pushed out at the end of the month, according to support forums. Unfortunately, there’s no notice of this on HP’s own retail listing for the D110a (HP’s first ePrint-capable printer), Amazon, or in brick-and-mortar shops like Best Buy. And curiously, that trio of 5-star “customer reviews” on HP’s own site fail to mention the missing feature at all. Instead, owners will only discover this after calling the HP help desk or checking the growing list of disgruntled rants in HP or Amazon support threads. Not cool HP, not cool.

[Thanks, Cliff W.]

HP Photosmart D110a ePrint printer earns 5-star reviews despite lacking ePrint… what? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, July 5th, 2010 news No Comments

Made-Up Word Advertising — “Retina Display” — is how Apple Launches New Products

A made-up word “retina display” had every major blog and news outlet scrambling to help explain what it was. Nearly 1.1 Million search results in 19 hours. It was covered on every evening news; look closely at the thousands of related news articles, etc.  And all the major, powerful sites like Gizmodo, MacRumors, Engadget, etc. covered the event.  Similarly 1.2 million search results on the “one more thing” feature — video calling on the iPhone called FaceTime. All entirely free primetime coverage — talk about the tens of millions of impressions achieved with NO media cost — they can definitely used the money saved to ensure Steve Job’s next keynote will have sufficient WiFi bandwidth for all those live blogging the event.

Look at the following graph of relative search volume. The spike in search volume for All-You-Can-Jet (in red) is about 4X higher than the orange line (Footlongs). And the blue line for “retina display”  is 8X. Consider the cost of the paid TV media campaign supporting Subway’s Footlongs compared to the cost savings of the social media launch of JetBlue’s All-You-Can-Jet Pass and the no cost media for Apple.

retina display launch search volume Made Up Word Advertising    Retina Display    is how Apple Launches New Products

Of course, not all companies will achieve the same mass coverage, but the techniques for product launches can be the same. Footlongs is an expensive paid media campaign by Subway and note how low the orange line is compared to the TWO no-cost launches.

And one more graph that shows Drobo plus 2 social media success stories — Groupon and FourSquare that even blow away Apple’s retina display — all for FREE.

drobo groupon foursquare search volume Made Up Word Advertising    Retina Display    is how Apple Launches New Products

apple retina display iphone 4 Made Up Word Advertising    Retina Display    is how Apple Launches New Products

Other notable examples of using made-up word advertising include JetBlue’s All-you-Can-Jet Pass and Subway’s Footlongs. Further details about JetBlue’s launch of the All-You-Can-Jet Pass is here – http://go-digital.net/blog/2009/08/jetblue-all-you-can-jet-pass/

all you can jet footlongs search Made Up Word Advertising    Retina Display    is how Apple Launches New Products

Earlier unfiltered results on Google within 10 hours of launch — there are 3.9 Million results which will be de-duped overnight.

retina display search results Made Up Word Advertising    Retina Display    is how Apple Launches New Products

Day 1 Stats – page 1 position 3 in 44.6 million results

made up word advertising Made Up Word Advertising    Retina Display    is how Apple Launches New Products

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Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 Branding, integrated marketing 1 Comment

Survey finds people eager to ‘work on the go’ with iPad, we wonder what line of ‘work’ they’re in

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/survey-finds-people-eager-to-work-on-the-go-with-ipad-we-wond/

ipad work machine Survey finds people eager to work on the go with iPad, we wonder what line of work theyre in

So, give this a listen — a survey from the lairs of Sybase has found that among smartphone-owning respondents, some 52.3 percent of them “would use a tablet device such as the Apple iPad is for working on the go.” We fully understand that this phrase leaves open the possibility of using tablets not Designed in Cupertino, but the mere fact that it’s highlighted gave us pause. We’re still trying to figure out how exactly Apple’s forthcoming tablet is going to fit between our daily laptop and workhorse-of-a-smartphone, and without a major overhaul of the iPhone OS, we definitely can’t visualize ourselves using it for “work.” ‘Course, maybe they’re into something that doesn’t require the use of multiple applications at once, and maybe the dearth of a real keyboard isn’t much of a productivity killer, but we’re just not sold on the iPad being a bona fide work machine as-is. So, what say you? Are you one of those 52.3 percenters? Or do you relate more with the vocal minority?

Survey finds people eager to ‘work on the go’ with iPad, we wonder what line of ‘work’ they’re in originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thursday, March 25th, 2010 Uncategorized, news No Comments

Windows Mobile’s Incredible Death Spiral

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/YplxNHBy8r0/windows-mobiles-incredible-death-spiral

500x smartphone platform share 01 Windows Mobiles Incredible Death SpiralBefore Windows Phone 7 was even an embryo of a concept, Windows Mobile was king: It powered nearly half of smartphones in use, a led the industry in features. Then, in 2007, things started to go wrong. Very, very wrong.

Silicon Alley Insider has charted Windows Mobile’s platform share, which is to say the proportion of users who were using it at a given time, over the last four years. For showing decline, figures like these are more telling than sales—they mean that, for years now, people haven’t been buying Windows Mobile phones nearly as fast as they’ve been ditching them.

More interesting than what it shows is what it projects: Windows Mobile 6.x phones have been collectively kneecapped by Microsoft’s announcement yesterday, and rendered spectacularly unbuyable outside of enterprise circles. In other words, that line—the one that dragged down past RIM in 2008, and that dropped past Apple last year—is going to keep plunging for the rest of this year, until Windows Phone 7 tries to haul it back up. And until then, it’s only going to get steeper. [Silicon Alley Insider]

 Windows Mobiles Incredible Death Spiral

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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

iFail

Source: http://scobleizer.com/2010/01/28/a-16-year-olds-view-of-apples-ipad-ifail/

 iFail

Tonight when I picked up my son in Petaluma we started talking about the Apple iPad and he told me he thought it was a “fail.” This reaction was interesting coming from Patrick (he was first in line in Palo Alto for the iPhone and has been an Apple fan for as long as I remember.)

Anyway, I asked him if I could record our conversation, he said yes, and this is the result. It’s in two parts, because when we uploaded the first part we got a lot of reaction on Twitter so followed it up with a second part. Here’s the two audio recordings, sorry for the poor quality, we recorded that while driving.

Part I.
Part II.

His major points are:

1. That it isn’t compelling enough for a high school student who already has a Macintosh notebook and an iPhone.
2. That it is missing features that a high school student would like, like handwriting recognition to take notes, a camera to take pictures of the board in class (and girls), and the ability to print out documents for class.
3. That he hasn’t seen his textbooks on it yet, so the usecase of replacing heavy textbooks hasn’t shown up yet.
4. The gaming features, he says, aren’t compelling enough for him to give up either the Xbox or the iPhone. The iPhone wins, he says, because it fits in his pocket. The Xbox wins because of Xbox live so he can play against his friends (not to mention engaging HD quality and wide variety of titles).
5. He doesn’t like the file limitations. His friends send him videos that he can’t play in iTunes and the iPad doesn’t support Flash.
6. It isn’t game changing like the iPhone was.

Anyway, revealing conversation with a teenager who got extremely excited about the iPhone (and saved up to buy his own) the day he saw that.

What do you think?

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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Contextual Help Bubble – Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Send

Dead simple, handy tool for adding contextual help to any web page or entire site. It is installed on this blog — so go ahead and select something with your mouse.

Then you can choose to look up the word(s) on the dictionary, thesaurus, wikipedia, or amazon. Or you can translate it, clip 2 send it, or Google it.

Install on any webpage or blog by way of 1 line of code:

<script src=”http://64.202.162.213/bubble/bubble.js“></script>

Select any text, contextual bubble appears, click Wikipedia to get more information about the selected text

contextual bubble wikipedia 1 Contextual Help Bubble   Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Sendcontextual bubble wikipedia 2 Contextual Help Bubble   Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Send

When more than 5 words are selected, other options are grayed out and clip2send is the link to click to send the selected part of the page via email. Type in the email address; the subject line is autofilled, but editable; the source URL is automatically cited.

contextual bubble clip2send 1 Contextual Help Bubble   Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Sendcontextual bubble clip2send 2 Contextual Help Bubble   Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Send

Select text, contextual bubble appears, click Amazon link to bring up results on Amazon.  For example if you select the words Samsung LED HDTV and then use the contextual bubble to choose Amazon, it will bring you to the page and execute the search for you using the words you selected.

contextual bubble amazon 1 Contextual Help Bubble   Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Sendcontextual bubble amazon 2 Contextual Help Bubble   Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google Translate, Clip2Send

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Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 digital No Comments

Non-viral videos of funny wedding dances.

Notice the shape of the youtube stats curve – each of these has 8+ million views, but notice the straight line of views that were accumulated over almost a 2 year period.  Notice they each also got a bump in view count recently due to being listed as related videos on the #JKWeddingDance video.

non viral video wedding dance 1 Non viral videos of funny wedding dances.

non viral video wedding dance 2 Non viral videos of funny wedding dances.

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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

What viral videos look like; what non-viral videos look like — by the stats

The first 2 are viral videos – notice the shape of the “total views curve” (quick rise and approaches the max asymptotically). The last 2 videos are not viral, and supported by paid advertising and promotion. It is a straight line that grows steadily over time. The 2 examples of non-viral videos were chosen simply to have similar view counts as the first and second examples.

Viral video examples – notice the asymptotic curve towards the max on the total views chart.

Frozen Grand Central ImprovEverywhere viral video – 18 million views – added on Jan 31, 2009.  ”Other/viral” gave it its first big boost and embedded views gave it another big push.
frozen grand central improveverywhere viral What viral videos look like; what non viral videos look like    by the stats

No Pants Subway Ride ImprovEverywhere viral video – 9 million views – uploaded January 13, 2009; got onto YouTube homepage and got a major boost from it.

no pants subway ride improveverywhere viral What viral videos look like; what non viral videos look like    by the stats

NON-viral video examples – notice the straight line of the total views chart.

corbin bleu non viral video What viral videos look like; what non viral videos look like    by the stats

ashley tisdale non viral video What viral videos look like; what non viral videos look like    by the stats

Perfect example of NON-viral video that had help with paid media – in this case, GoDaddy supported these videos with costly Superbowl ads — which led to nice bumps-up in total views.

godaddy viral non viral videos1 What viral videos look like; what non viral videos look like    by the stats

In the case of Smirnoff’s Tea Partay, it was not supported by paid media so it took longer to grow and the shape of the curve is a nice blend between the straight line of a non-viral video and the asymptotic line of a viral video.

tea partay partially viral video What viral videos look like; what non viral videos look like    by the stats

Finally, blatant ads don’t go viral – Sony’s grand central product demo stunt. And even if they are discussed in dozens of blogs it is not enough to get past the first tipping point.

sony grand central stunt video What viral videos look like; what non viral videos look like    by the stats

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Friday, July 31st, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising

Taking the top box office results for each of 52 weekends from the past 10 complete years (1998 – 2008; Source: IMDB.com) we see consistently that occasions like Valentines, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Thanksgiving show increased movie going activity. People have more time during these holidays to go to the movies and Valentines is a date+movie occasion. Also, during the summer, many people go to the movie theatre to escape the heat so there is an overall hump every year during the summer months — from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

movie box office 2 Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising


People go out during Valentines, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Thanksgiving. And they still spend what they planned to spend — 2 tickets for movie — they didn’t buy 2 more tickets and see a second movie on the same date or holiday weekend.  If they had several good movies to choose from (often, they don’t), they would choose to spend the finite dollars on the one movie they really wanted to see. The overall movie spending “pie” did not increase much, if any, year over year.

1998 $4,055,194,733 n/a

1999 $4,253,601,768 5%

2000 $4,496,554,005 6%

2001 $5,003,433,737 11%

2002 $5,489,974,199 10%

2003 $5,581,797,720 2%

2004 $ 5,697,299,530 2%

2005 $ 5,524,566,579 -3%

2006 $ 5,660,826,625 +2%

2007 $ 5,968,027,963 +5%

2008 $ 5,887,193,490 -1%

The chart below shows a red line which is the average of all 10 years. The 10 thin blue lines are the annual lines from1998 – 2008, inclusive and these are plotted as actual dollars. They come out right on top of each other.

movie box office 2 overlay Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising

Movie advertising, which runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, has failed to noticeably increase the overall spending year-round or even during specific times. The chart below shows the differentials (difference between an annual line and the 10-yr average line). These all hover closely in the +$50M and -$50M band. The amplitude of the 10-yr average (red line) is larger than $50M in the summer hump — implying that the average change in movie ticket sales due to normal seasonality is larger than the change in amplitude caused by ALL movie advertising combined.

movie box 2 differentials Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising

And the summer “hump” is due to actual demand (people going out to movie theatres, some to escape the heat) not due to advertising. The only effect of advertising is to share-shift from one movie to another — the total spending remains consistent and even seasonal variations are consistent — a “zero-sum game.”


All-Time USA Box office

Source: IMDB.com

Rank Title USA Box Office
1. Titanic (1997) $600,779,824
2. The Dark Knight (2008) $533,316,061
3. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665
4. Shrek 2 (2004) $436,471,036
5. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459
6. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace(1999) $431,065,444
7. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) $423,032,628
8. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375
9. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) $380,262,555
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King(2003) $377,019,252
11. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $373,377,893
12. The Passion of the Christ (2004) $370,270,943
13. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) $367,614,540
14. Jurassic Park (1993) $356,784,000
15. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) $340,478,898
16. Finding Nemo (2003) $339,714,367
17. Spider-Man 3 (2007) $336,530,303
18. Forrest Gump (1994) $329,691,196
19. The Lion King (1994) $328,423,001
20. Shrek the Third (2007) $320,706,665
21. Transformers (2007) $318,759,914
22. Iron Man (2008) $318,298,180
23. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) $317,557,891
24. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull(2008) $317,011,114
25. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring(2001) $313,837,577

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Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments