If you're like us, you've been mourning the loss of Drop.io. We loved the simplicity of not having to create an account to quickly upload a few files and share the link easily. Luckily today we discovered Ge.tt. Ge.tt is really simple to use and you don't have to create an account, though you can if you want to keep your uploaded files for more than 30 days. It's got instant sharing so you don't have to wait for files to upload before you share via Facebook, Twitter, URL or email. Each file has a "view" option so users can access the information via their browser or download it if they like. If you've created an account, you can also see how many users have accessed files you've uploaded. We've created a Ge.tt page on "Big Data" that you can check out here. And you can check out Ge.tt in action in the video below.
High Gas Prices for Memorial Day
bizologie took a road trip to the beach for the holiday weekend. With gas prices averaging around $3.80 that took a bite out of the vacation budget. We weren't the only ones feeling the pinch of course, according to the Associated Press households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. Compare that to spring 2009 when they spent just $201. Right now every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar goes toward gas, that is a 40% bigger bite than normal. And, unfortunately these prices won't just be effecting this trip, analysts expect average prices for 2011 to come in higher than the previous record of $4.11 in 2008. What is hard to believe is that just one year ago the average cost of gas was only $2.74. Oh, the good old days.
Hopefully the high gas prices won't keep you from enjoying the road this summer. Check the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report, where you can get current costs for a trip and even map your trip and get prices at stations along your route.
Casual Friday: Live Purchasing
In case you needed another way to spend your free time, here’s one interesting way: live purchasing. The Zappos.com website has a Real-Time Order Map that it dubbed Mappos, which allows you to see what individuals (kept anonymous of course) are ordering in real time all over the country. You gaze at a map of the U.S. as images of merchandise, pointing to an originating city, pop up on the screen for several seconds before winking out. If you feel so inclined, you can even vote thumbs up/down on the merchandise that was purchased, though Zappos doesn’t detail how that feedback is used. Not only is Mappos addictive to watch, but it arguably exemplifies the oldest selling ploy in the book, aka, “Everyone’s doing it.” They are not the only company to have employed technology to track live purchasing. In an excellent Vogue article from the June 2010 issue called “High Clicks,” Sarah Mower interviewed Natalie Massenet, the founder of swanky luxury clothing etailer Net-a-Porter, a company which also tracked live purchasing behind the scenes, and presumably still does today. Mower had the following to say about Net-a-Porter's live purchasing system:
“…The whole office is wired for sound and video. Everyone in the company here, in New York, and the distribution centers can see what's selling, when, where, what the turnover is. Go look at the screens. They're mesmerizing.
Positioned in the sight lines of every desk, they display a visual of Google Earth, and every time someone makes a purchase, a Net-a-Porter bag pops up on the location. On the screen above, the shopper's order is pictured, along with how much she spent, where she lives, and a running tally of the day's takings. It's 11:00 A.M. London time now, and someone in Yekaterinburg, Russia, is buying towering $1,200 Fendi shoes. In NYC where it's 6:00 A.M. a woman drops $3,600 on Isabel Marant. A pair of $1,290 Bottega Veneta sandals is being ordered up in Athens (though the country's nearly bankrupt); a plunging, multicolored $600 Melissa Odabash swimsuit is going to soccer-wife country in Altrincham, Manchester.”
Needless to say, it seems that live purchasing could serve multiple functions, acting also as an ongoing morale-booster for employees who sell and process merchandise. It will be interesting to see the extent to which this trend catches on and evolves in the future.
Google's Think Insights on Tablet Users
Google's Think Insights recently published their study "Understanding Tablet Device Users". Some of the stats presented are exactly what you'd think like tablet users report decreased time spent on their laptop/desktop. But there are a few interesting stats:
- The most popular activities are gaming, searching for info and emailing
- The least popular activities include shopping, reading e-books and consuming entertainment
- 1 in 3 respondents spends more time with their tablet than watching TV
You can see the full report here. Are you using your tablet for anything interesting or have any favorite apps? Tell us about it in the comments.
Make Splitting the Check Fun
Don't feel bad if you and your friends are having problems with the bistro math at dinner. The MIT guys can't do it either. They can develop special tablet to do it for you though. Yes, I know you already have an app for that, but E La Carte is banking on their tablet wooing restaurants by doing much more and raising revenue. The E la Carte tablet allows customers to order, play games, get wine suggestions, split the check, figure the tip, and even pay the bill at that table. LotsOLoot.com reported that in a pilot program in six restaurants, customers at E la Carte tables spent 10% to 12% more than those diners at other tables and tips went up too. The company has raised over $1 million in funding from investors, and will be launching tablets in 20 restaurants on the West coast. The big news is that the company has a partnership with a large restaurant chain that hasn’t yet been announced, but apparently some Applebee’s execs participated in the first funding round, so that might give us a pretty good hint.
Short on Vacation Days? Maybe it's time to relocate.
According to No-Vacation Nation, a report from the Center for Economic & Policy Research, America "is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation." Turns out, if you like taking extended summer vacations, Europe is the place to be. By law, most European countries guarantee workers 20 paid vacation days per year, with some offering up to 30 days. And this doesn't include paid holidays which range from 5 to 13 days per year. The U.S. government doesn't require companies to offer paid vacations or holidays, leaving 1 in 4 Americans with no paid vacation or holidays. The average American worker receives about 9 paid vacation days and 6 paid holidays. Here's how a few of our OECD counterparts stack up:
Netflix Beats BitTorrent’s Bandwidth
Wired reported that for the first time in internet history, the largest percentage of the net’s traffic is content that is paid for. Sandvine's Global Internet Phenomena Report, Spring 2011, which measures total traffic and averages it over 24 hours, shows Netflix, with 22.2% of traffic, overtook BitTorrent, with 21.6%, as the largest component of Internet traffic on North America’s fixed access networks. At peak times, Netflix hits 30% of all traffic. Sandvine's spotlight report Netflix Rising boldly proclaims "Netflix is now the undisputed bandwidth king of the Internet in North America." Netflix has 23.6 million subscribers, up 6.7 million subscribers in just the last half year. A few factors leading to that growth; Streaming is now available on Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation without a physical disc, and Apple began shipping a version of the AppleTV with integrated Netflix streaming.
The top 4 devices driving the most Netflix usage are all game consoles: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC and Wii. They account for more than 85% of the total Netflix traffic. Those same Netflix game console users also exhibit the largest daily data consumption of around 2.5 GB per day.
It doesn't look like Netflix will be giving up their bandwidth crown any time soon. They are rumored to be expanding outside the US and Canada into Europe, Latin America, and Asia. And, they just announced a deal to air exclusive content, the television series “House of Cards”, reportedly outbidding major networks including HBO and AMC.
Casual Friday: Career Voyeurism
How about a field trip of sorts? We have all wondered what it would be like to have a career different from our own, so what follows is a list of confessions, that is, a list of book titles all starting with Confessions of. They give us insider perspectives into professions that may be very different from our own, and at the sake of sounding like a salesperson, it’s fascinating to read the life lessons that others have derived from their own unique first-hand experiences. This compilation represents an interesting slice of real no-fiction-here lives, though it is by no means 100% complete. ISBNs are included should you want to locate a title for yourself. And now, in no particular order:
• …A Street Addict- 9780743224888 ("Street" in this case refers to Wall Street.) • …A Serial Entrepreneur- 9780787987329 • …A Public Speaker- 9780596801991 • …A Municipal Bond Salesman- 0471771740 • …A Radical Industrialist- 9780312543495 • …An Event Planner- 0470160187 • …A Record Producer- 0879308745 • …A Master Jewel Thief- 0375508392 • …A Video Vixen- 9780060892487 • …An Economic Hitman- 9780452287082 • …A Prairie Bitch- 9780061962141 • …A Subprime Lender- 9780470402191 • …An Advertising Man- 1904915019
P.S. I can vouch that the Master Jewel Thief and Event Planner titles are fun reads.
The Mobile Movement from Google Think Insights
Google's Think Insights has a great video out about understanding smartphone user behavior. Did you know that 39% of us use our smartphone while in the bathroom? Does this mean smartphones are the new magazines? Also, about 1 out of 3 smartphone users say they'd give up chocolate before giving up their phone. Other things we'd give up before our phones include beer, high heels (that's an easy one!), Super Bowl tickets and Cable TV. You can see the complete report here and check out the video below for the highlights.
bizologie Favorite Apps: PrintCentral
So the iPad is growing up. It's not just your toddler's favorite toy or just your movie theater on the plane. The iPad has graduated to a full-fledged business necessity. One of the business apps getting rave reviews is PrintCentral. MacWorld gave it 4 out of 5 mice and it's been named the World's #1 printing app. With PrintCentral from Eurosmartz you can print direct to most wireless printers, or print to all printers (Bluetooth, USB, WiFI, Network) by installing the free WePrint software on your Mac or PC. Cost: $8.99
Crunchbase for Private Company Research
Researching private companies can be difficult especially if you can't afford expensive databases. Crunchbase is a "free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit." Crunchbase covers both public and private companies but since public company information is usually easily accessible from a number of sources, Crunchbase is my go-to place for private, tech companies. Their company profiles include things like company descriptions, screenshots, company milestones, executive names and titles, recent news and funding information. Information will vary. Sometimes you'll find extra videos, names of competitors and website traffic and other times you'll only see a company description. You can simply plug in the name of a company you'd like to research or you can search their database by geography, category, funding or status. If you've found a company profile that you'd like to share with others, you can share it via Facebook or Twitter but you can also use their embedded widget code to share it on your website. Then as the Crunchbase database gets updated, so will your company widget. We introduced you to Hipmunk a couple of months ago and below you'll see their Crunchbase widget.
Got a source you like to use for private company information? Tell us about it in the comments.
Top 100 Brands for 2011
bizologie has covered the top social media brands, but which brands have the most value overall? Millward Brown Optimor, with The Financial Times, Bloomberg and Datamonitor, developed the BrandZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands. The BrandZ Top 100 fuses consumer measures of brand equity with financial measures to give each brand a dollar value, so the brands with more loyal customers have higher values. As Advertising Age reported, for the first time in 4 years the Google brand has been knocked from the top. Can you guess who finally toppled the king of brands? Yep, Apple. With their sales of ipads they moved to the top spot. This year Amazon just beat Walmart as the most-valuable retail brand with its brand rising to $37.6 billion as Wal-Mart's fell to $37.3 billion. Wal-Mart still has more than 10 times the sales and more than five times the market capitalization of Amazon, but BrandZ's calculation subtracts tangible assets from market value, so Amazon benefits because they have no physical stores. The largest increase in growth was Facebook up 246% (now worth $19.1 billion). The Chinese search engine Baidu saw the second largest growth with a jump of 141%. Even with their tough year, Toyota's brand still rose 11%.
You can get a full copy of the 2010 report for free from BrandZ. Here's a look at the top 10 for 2011:
Casual Friday: We Wish We Could Go Back To College
Graduation season is upon us and we wish all of our bizologie readers who are graduating good luck! We remember what it feels like to finish up that last paper and breathe a sigh of relief that you've taken your final test. But if it's been a while since you've graduated, you might be reminiscing about meals plans, walks through the quad and dorm room life. Let's let the cast of Avenue Q remind us what college is all about. Happy Friday, y'all!
Prom Spending
Visa did a phone survey of 1,000 families to see what they are spending on prom this year. Parents who make less than $50,000 will spend on average $778 and parents who make more than $50,000 will spend an average of $916. Not all families buy into the hype of prom though, 22% of families who have teenagers will not spend any money on the prom, probably indicating their kids aren't going. This Good Morning America video features a mom and daughter who spent way over the average. This 15 year old girl spent $3000 on her outfit - that included tanning, hair extensions, teeth whitening, designer shoes and bag, and to top it off a $1700 dress. I'm pretty sure I didn't spend that much on my wedding ensemble. But as Quinn Fabray pointed out on Glee - "you can get married as many times as you want, but there is only one Junior prom." Here's a breakdown of prom spending by region:
*featured photo - prom circa 1988
What's in a Name?
Ever wonder how some of your favorite companies and brands get their names? Strategic Name Development, a brand naming company, does just that. They employ a team of linguists from all over the world to assist companies with naming products or even changing the name of their company. According to the SND web page, about 1900 companies change their name every year. So what makes a good product/company name? Strategic Name Development says good names should roll off the tongue. They should be short, pronounceable and "harmoniously balanced with vowels and consonants alternating evenly throughout." Some examples they give for harmonious, balanced brand names include Amazon, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Lexus and Panera.
Strategic Name Development also has a great monthly publication called "This Month in Branding". Here are just a few of the interesting facts I found:
- The Today Show debuted in 1952. Its proposed name was "The Rise and Shine Revue."
- Monopoly was invented in 1935 after a redesign of a game called "The Landlord's Game."
- The application for the trademark for Milk Duds was filed in 1983. Its name is derived from the large amount of milk in the product and the failure to produce a perfectly round shape.
- Yahoo! was incorporated in 1995. Yahoo was first used in the book Gulliver's Travels for a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. The founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, jokingly considered themselves yahoos.
- People magazine's first issue debuted in 1974. Its name was borrowed from the popular People page in Time magazine.
- The Hershey's Take5 candy bar brand name was first used in 1966. Named for its five ingredients: milk chocolate, peanuts, caramel, peanut butter and pretzels, it also capitalizes on the colloquial expression "Take 5" for a 5 minute break.
- On April 1st in 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne formed Apple. The name was inspired from Steve Jobs' former job at an apple orchard.
- Eggo was first used as a brand name for frozen waffles in 1935 on April 27th. It was originally named Froffles, a portmanteau of frozen waffles, however, people started referring to them as Eggos for their eggy taste. In 1955, the company officially adopted their nickname.
Catchword Branding is another product/company naming firm. They give some helpful naming tips in the video below:
More Ways to Google for Market Research
Last week in the Tracking Down Free Market Research post, Laura revealed one of our secrets to finding expensive market research reports using Google. Here's another trick to use when you aren't lucky enough to find the entire research report. Look for excerpts of that report, especially charts and graphs, highlighted in PowerPoint presentations. You can look in SlideShare, where you will find lots of presentations posted, but don't limit yourself just to that site. Do an advanced Google search and limit to the specific presentation file types or just add the shortcut filetype:PPT or filetype:PPTX to your keywords. Here's an example of a slide about the US Biodiesel Market that features a graph from Euromonitor International:
Itty Bitty Bit of Branding
For my first contribution to this blog, I figured it would be fitting to start small. Really small. 16x16 pixels to be precise. The favicon, or bookmark icon has become a somewhat ubiquitous visual moniker for that we rely on and appreciate when browsing through multiple open webpage tabs or a long bookmark lists. A few examples are the favicons for Wired Magazine website, the Amazon website, this bizologie blog, and Google Calendars (which features the date). I say somewhat ubiquitous though because while many established institutions, especially those with popular recognizable brands have been using favicons for some time, small businesses sometimes overlook this opportunity to display their brand image. In a deeply sweeping and precise scientific survey, I did a Google search for the words: Austin coffee, and opened 10 pages from the first Google results page. Four of the cafes had a favicon and six of the cafes did not. In a second search for the words: San Diego pet boarding, only two of the 10 boarding centers from the first results page sported favicons.
How does a small business go about remedying this? Visit an icon generator page like this one from Project Fondue. Upload an image or logo, or use their editor to create one from scratch, download the finished product, and use a website editor to embed the code.
As Harvey S. Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, said: “Success is the sum of details."
Casual Friday: Google Chrome Ads
Everyone get your Kleenex ready, Google just launched it's Chrome TV ad campaign - their biggest offline campaign ever - and the first two ads are real tearjerkers. There is a tactical reason for all that emotion. As explained in the New York Times article, Google wants to appeal to users who are not interested in the technical benefits, but just want to see see what they can do with Chrome. The Dear Sophie ad shows a father creating an online scrapbook for his daughter in Gmail by sending her notes, photos from Picasa, Google mapping their first house, and videos of dance classes and birthday parties. The It Gets Better ad , first aired this week during Glee, shows people using Chrome’s toolbar to record videos for the Dan Savage project of the same name to encourage gay teenagers that they can make it through the tough times. How can you not tear up during these ads? Makes me want to switch to Chrome right now, so I guess it's working!
Tracking Down Free Market Research Reports
Update: Check our Free Research Reports page for a list of current free reports available. One of our missions here at bizologie is to help our readers find business information for free whenever possible. But what can you do when that great market research report you need costs anywhere from $500 to $5000? Well, that's when you put your mad library skills to good use and start doing some creative Googling. For example, we know that Gartner, Inc and Forrester Research offer all kinds of market research reports in the information technology space. I also know that Gartner calls their reports "Magic Quadrants" while Forrester uses the title "Forrester Wave". These reports are very expensive to purchase but sometimes other companies will post them freely on their websites. As an example search, we'll use a Gartner report. I've chosen "mobile enterprise applications" as a subject I'd like a market research report on. Using Google as my search engine of choice, I type in "gartner magic quadrant mobile enterprise" and then choose "advanced search". Under "file type" I use the drop down menu to choose PDF. Then I click the "Advanced Search" button and...bam! First hit: Gartner's "Magic Quadrant for Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms". And I've just saved $1995.00.
Now sometimes you won't know that Gartner has this report available. I can still type in "mobile enterprise application" and limit my search to PDFs. As a shortcut, you can just add "filetype:PDF" to your search string rather than using the advanced search feature. That particular Gartner report is still the fourth item down in my search. And now I'm not limited to only Gartner reports but reports from other firms, as well. Some other research firms you might look for include IDC, Frost & Sullivan, Jupiter and Aberdeen.
We'll be honest and say it doesn't work every time, but I'd say I have good luck finding reports about 70% of the time. Obviously, the newest reports present the biggest challenge, but even if you can find one that's a year or two old, it can still be very valuable information. Some research firms also offer the option of buying just a section of a report for a discounted price. For example, let's say you find a report that is $5000. You might see that the information you need is in chapter 7 of a report and they may be willing to sell you just that section for say $700.
If you've never seen one of these reports, they're usually maybe 20-30 pages long and include things like a graph of players in the space, an overview of the industry, strengths and weakness of players in the space and maybe a forecast of future expectations for the industry. Below you'll find examples of Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves. Happy Searching!
Private Cloud
Gartner knows that most large enterprises see private clouds in their future. They see companies trying to determine whether to invest in building a cloud service or buying from cloud service providers. To make the best decision, companies need to be able to evaluate the private cloud computing trend, vendors and road maps. For more information on private cloud, create a free account with Gartner and then watch this webinar to learn:
- What private cloud computing is and how will it evolve?
- How to choose between public and private cloud computing?
- Who are the vendors?
- How should a private cloud computing strategy be developed?
This short video from David Mitchell Smith, Gartner VP provides a short intro to Private Cloud: