09 January 09
Palm showed off the new Palm Pre today at CES - complete with their new platform webOS. The folks at CrunchGear caught a demo on video.
The Synergy feature looks very promising. It integrates calendar and contact info from your various email accounts and social networks into a single source.
You can certainly see the iPhone and the HTC TouchFlo influence on aspects of the UI, but Palm has definitely brought some fresh ideas to the table.
Sources are reporting that the Pre’s interface is faster and more responsive than the iPhone, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the above video.
With the Blackberry and iPhone capturing so much market share in recent years, many believe that this is Palm’s last stand. While not revolutionary, with the early reviews pouring in, the Pre looks like it just might keep them in the game.
17 December 08
In a move to position themselves as a critical strategic partner in these tough times, Ogilvy has launched a SEO-challenged Flash website with PDF’s as the primary content.
No, you are not reading The Onion.
20 October 08
A blog I frequent published an article that, with a simple quiz, brought into high relief the lack of brand differentiation in online retailers. The author removed the logos of a dozen or so e-commerce websites from brick and mortar retailers such as Sears, Macy’s, and Kmart and challenged you to identify who’s site was who’s. I got most of them wrong.
While this exercise is quite powerful, there is a critical piece of the equation that the author left out. Many of the retailers that she cited don’t have distinctive customer experiences in the the real world. Yes, I could tell the difference between whether I’m in a Kmart, Macy’s or Sears, but how memorable and engaging are these customer experiences? What does the JC Penny brand really have to leverage in-store that they can extend online? The fact that Penny’s has consistently scored high on Forrester’s Customer Experience Index isn’t enough to truly set them apart online — especially when competing against companies like Zappos.
So who does do a good job extending their brand and differentiating itself online? Let’s take a look at a few examples…