bizologie Favorite Apps: Broadway Edition

Tony-Award.jpg

The Tony Awards are coming up on Sunday and we've got our tap shoes shined and our jazz hands ready. Let's take a look at a few apps that will help us navigate The Great White Way the next time we're in The Big Apple. iBroadway offers show information including venues, scheduling and ticket information. On the opening page, their search feature allows you to narrow by genre so that you can search by musicals, plays, dance, comedy or drama. Once you've chosen a show, you can buy tickets, get a map to the theater, watch videos and find information about the cast. You'll also see details such as runtime and audience. You can also connect direct from here to iTunes if you'd like to purchase music from the show. iBroadway is free for iPhone.

ILoveNYTheater from The Broadway League offers similar features and also includes a guide to restaurants and hotels in the Theater District. One cool feature of this app is that you can purchase tickets "direct from the theatres' official ticketing offices in real time without broker markups." ILoveNYTheater is also free for iPhone.

"At The Booth" was called "The best thing to happen to New York theater since the introduction of the TKTS booth!" by Entertainment Weekly. If you've never been to the TKTS booth in NYC, it's a big ticket center in Times Square where you can buy same-day, discounted tickets to Broadway Shows. "At The Booth" will not only tell you which shows are on sale and at what discount, but also how long the line is! Trust us, if you've never been to TKTS, knowing all of this information ahead of time is really handy. "At The Booth" is 99¢ for iPhone and Android.

Not jetting off to NYC any time soon? No worries. TheaterMania will tell you which Broadway shows are heading to your city. Cities include Boston, Chicago, DC, Las Vegas, London, LA, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle. TheaterMania is free on iTunes.

IDC Tech Talk: IT Productivity

IDC.jpg

In this IDC Tech Talk Bob Parker, Group Vice President, Manufacturing & Retail Insights, discusses IT Productivity in the Manufacturing and Retail Industry. Reviews of IT spending data collected over the last 10 years make it look like IT spending has been taking cuts, but as Bob points out it's really only that IT spending has not been growing as fast as revenue because IT departments can now do more with less.  What investments in IT allowed  for that increase in productivity?  The big three are, virtualization, business intelligence, and longer refresh rates on hardware. What does the future look like? Bob thinks more IT productivity is yet to be gained with cloud computing, integrated decision environments, and smart devices (mobility). For a look at all 6 factors that drove IT productivity over the last 10 years, and the 6 factors could drive more IT productivity over the next years, check out the IT Cost Challenge for the Coming Decade.

Casual Friday: Cell Phone Cases We Think Are Fun (And One That Might Be Healthy)

Kate-Spade-Giraffe-Phone.png

The only thing more fun than finding new apps for your smartphone is buying clothes for it. Here are some cases we think are stylish, functional and one that might even be good for you. Like Kate Spade's cute handbags and dresses, her phone cases are cute and come in all sorts of fun colors that we think are great for summer. We really like the retro phone and the movie-themed ones:

If you're looking for durability and protection, you might want to check out Otterbox's Defender Series:

If you're planning to spend some time by the pool this summer, you might want to check out DryCASE for your phone or tablet. They keep your electronic devices waterproof up to 100 ft. We actually tested this one this past weekend by throwing our Nook into the pool in the DryCASE. Worked like a charm--thank goodness!

The Bounce Case from Case Mate & Pong, "reduces normal cellphone radiation measured in SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) by at least 60% by redirecting your cell phone’s electromagnetic energy away from your head. Once redirected, the radiation quickly dissipates and poses no threat to you or those around you.":

Happy Birthday Wolfram Alpha!

wolfram_alpha_birthday1.jpg

We at bizologie are big fans of Wolfram Alpa, as you can see here, here, here, and here.  We heard through the grapevine known as the Wired Epicenter Blog that this new engine just turned two, so we decided to give it some attention in honor of its birthday, and discuss it in greater detail.  For the uninitiated, what exactly is Wolfram Alpha? The FAQ page says, “It's a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”  In Wired's entry, author Ryan Singel goes on to say, that the man behind the engine, Stephen Wolfram is encouraged by the fact that “…people are trying to use Wolfram Alpha for complicated things like comparing the economies of two countries.”

Type in a topic on which you want to know more, and Wolfram Alpha returns to you a shiny and concise report on said topic with key facts, statistics, charts, illustrations, annotations for how it derived the data, etc.  Even better, you can save each segment of the report as its own image, or you can download the entire thing as a PDF file.  (Oh, and the Random button on the homepage is both fascinating and addictive).

For business researchers wanting to learn what features it offers and how to learn the ropes of entering queries, visit the Examples by Topic page, wherein the Money & Finance, and  Socioeconomic Data categories will make one hot and bothered.

To give a balanced perspective though, Wolfram Alpha does have its limitations.  The takeaway for business researchers:  don’t expect it to generate the several hundred/thousand dollar reports sold by the friendly neighborhood analyst company.  For example, if you search: Smartphone Market, your current results page will have the utterance:  “Commercial Products- Development of this topic is under investigation...”.  It then comes as little surprise too that, while the engine touts itself as being great at comparisons, it has a hard time comparing public and private companies.  Search: Hilton, Marriott, and you receive only the financial facts of Marriott (which is public).  Search: Hilton vs Marriott, and you will get in return the digital equivalent of a blank stare.

Overall though, Wolfram Alpha is an ambitious entity that delivers very well on topics within its current scope of expertise, and bizologie will be eagerly enjoying its evolution. We wish Wolfram Alpha, "...and many more"!



Missing Drop.io? Try Ge.tt

Gett.png

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

AAA_Avg_Gas_prices.jpg

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

mappos.jpg

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-Think-Mobile.png

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

ELaCarte.jpg

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.

Beach.jpg

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

Netflix_Streaming.jpg

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.

Netflix Device Usage

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

Shoe-Mile.jpg

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

Smartphone-Things-to-Give-Up.jpg

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

PrintCentral.jpg

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

Crunchbase.png

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

BrandZ.jpg

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:

Top Brands 2011

Casual Friday: We Wish We Could Go Back To College

graduation-cap.jpg

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

Prom1988.jpg

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:

Prom Spending 2011

*featured photo - prom circa 1988

What's in a Name?

Brand-Names.png

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

filetype.jpg

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:

US Biodiesel Market