Ad wars: AT&T forced to fight Verizon on its own
When Verizon went after wireless competitor AT&T with a "There's a Map for That" commercial showing AT&T's inferior nationwide 3G coverage in the United States, AT&T was caught off guard.
Its response: file a lawsuit. The justification: AT&T believed that the map was deceptive and that consumers would not understand that its map excluded areas where 2G coverage is available.
Google fights scammers with one strike and you're out policy
Malicious ads are on the rise and just as AdWords is an appealing platform for legitimate advertisers looking for a massive audience, Google's self-serve ad service is a juicy target for scammers looking for the same.
From ads that hawk scammy get-rich-quick products to ads that lead users to web pages infested with malware, malicious ads pose a significant threat to Google. After all, if users come to fear where Google's results (paid or unpaid) might lead them, Google risks losing one of its most valuable assets: the trust and confidence of its users.
FDA Social Media Hearings #FDASM
The pharmaceutical industry is glued on the FDA hearings on social media happening in the US. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a government agency of the US Department of Health & Human Sciences and acts as the main regulator of US market for drugs, worth $275 billion-a-year.
Are middlemen a luxury, or necessity?
Joe Hewitt is the Facebook employee responsible for the super-popular Facebook iPhone app. But thanks to Apple, he's decided to move on.
On Twitter, he announced that he "handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer". Soon after, he revealed the reason why: the tyranny of Apple.
EU: no cookies without consent. Will EU affiliate programs be killed?
Earlier this year, I wrote about an EU plan to require that internet users consent to cookies before they're placed on their computers. At the time, I called the plan "absurd".
Which must be precisely why the Council of the EU has approved a directive amending legislation to do just that. The announcement of this potentially horrendous action? Well-hidden in an 18 page Council press release.
Will Netflix throw its customers under the bus for higher profits?
Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of Netflix. The movie studios don't really like you. They think low-cost rental services like Netflix are cutting into DVD sales, which have declined. So they come up with a plan to block rentals of new releases for a short time, perhaps a month.
The question: do you oppose this plan or do you look to negotiate with the studios for some sort of benefit?
Is this Listia ad on TechCrunch a 'scam' offer?
The other day, I was checking the latest posts on TechCrunch and came across a promotion promising a free pack of MySpace branded playing cards. I love free things and I clicked, hoping that my next game of poker would have a MySpace theme.
Instead I was greeted by a charity auction on a service called Listia. To bid, I needed 'credits'. The parallels to the scam offers controversy I wrote about on Monday started to became apparent.
Google Go: was the name already taken?
Yesterday Google announced that it was releasing Go, a new open source programming language that's designed to aid in rapid development while at the same time supporting the latest technologies, like multi-processor CPUs.
There's only one problem: there's apparently already a programming language named 'Go'.
American Airlines fires an employee for...customer engagement
Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of American Airlines (AA). A customer named
Dustin Curtis comes to the conclusion that your website sucks after
booking a flight on it and finding the process to be a "horrific
displeasure".
A UX designer by trade, Curtis takes it upon himself to redesign your website's homepage and provide some suggestions. All at no cost, of course. He publishes this as a blog post that begins, "Dear AmericanAirlines". Shortly thereafter, the UX designer receives an email from an AA employee who does UX design for your company.
Is NDA culture hurting developers?
Ars Technica has an interesting post revealing some sordid tales from the world of iPhone development. The tales center on iPhone app developers who claim to have developed apps that they really didn't develop. And they're getting away with it because of an NDA culture that permeates much of the development world.
NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, of course, are those pesky little agreements that you've probably asked been asked to sign a million times if you work in the world of technology. In some markets, just about everyone asks that an NDA be signed for the smallest of things. Sometimes I half expect to be asked to sign an NDA if I ask where the bathroom is when working on-site with a client.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
