There’s no denying that the state of the economy is not good.  You know that. I know that. And even if somehow we didn’t know that, the media would make sure the fact that the economic sky is falling wouldn’t slip from our attention for long.  The media is having a field day with the current financial state of affairs, so much so that they’ve actually started to become part of the problem.

How can consumers ever feel confident enough to go out and actually consume if every five minutes another media update of how really, really, really bad things are is hammered into our heads?  Frightened consumers don’t spend or invest and contribute to the economy.  They take their money and go home.  And given the fear frenzy the media is stirring up, once these consumers get home, they probably take their money and themselves and hide under their beds in the fetal position.

Our economy depends on consumer spending.  If even those of us who can still afford to spend are too frightened to do so, the economy will only continue to sink deeper and deeper into the mud.  Manufacturers can’t recover unless someone is buying what they are selling.  Consumers need to be aware of how the economy is doing but they don’t need to be so acutely aware that they can’t function.

I’m getting tired of the constant doom and gloom that the media is forcing down all of our throats.  Reporting the news is one thing; contributing to the problem is another.  No one, no matter how financially secure they actually are, will ever start to feel economically confident again if the only news they ever hear is bad news.  There needs to be balance in the media if the economy is ever going to be balanced again.

OK, I feel better now and have officially stepped off of my soapbox.

As a senior account manager, I work with a large brand that relies on a wide range of brand management reports that help it monitor both the performance of its own interactive marketing programs as well as the interactive efforts of its competitors. We provide them with reports that track every one of their brand marketing campaigns, from e-mail to PPC to SEO. We also track the brand’s social activity, how many blogs we post on, the number of hits to its podcasts and vodcasts, and even how many fans have signed up on its Facebook page. We also monitor user sentiment toward the brand and its competitors using BuzzMetrics.

To keep its competition’s online activities in focus, (more…)

Join Michael Wunsch and Scott Million as they discuss ways to combine and use data from benchmarking and analytics.

 

 LeapCast 02172009 [8:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this final segment of their discussion about designing and programming for mobile phones, Christopher Ehren, LeapFrog’s Creative Director, and Jeremy Kolonay, LeapFrog’s Director of Web Software Services, share their thoughts about what they think will be in store for mobile sites in the future.

For the first two parts of their discussion, Part One is linked here and Part Two is linked here.

Where do you envision mobile applications and sites going in the next few years in terms of design and functionality?

Christopher Ehren: I wouldn’t generalize mobile applications and sites even at this point because of segmentation—is it a data driven site like movie times or weather or is it an entertainment media site because a lot of media driven sites are having mobile redirects? YouTube is a perfect example. They’re using Google’s detection to determine where somebody is coming from so they serve them the proper frame size for their video serving. So I really don’t think the applications on the web are going to change. I think we’ll see more like the iPhone and BlackBerry—more dedicated apps that do the job of serving information that normally would be served through a website like movie times, sports scores, and weather. So I think we’re going to see more specific applications for serving the type of data or presenting the type of media or entertainment. I don’t think the site design will change that much. If anything, there will be fewer mobile websites and more mobile applications.

Jeremy Kolonay: Another thing I’ll add to that is from a consumer’s perspective. For the generation of mobile devices coming out now like the iPhone and the G1, we find that they are in a place where the battery life and CPU performance allows us to offer a full featured Safari ready device. My iPhone is as powerful as my PC was 7 years ago. Maybe not with the same 3-D capabilities but as far as the actual CPU in it, that’s a 400 megahertz CPU.
(more…)

In this second part of their discussion about designing and programming for mobile phones (Here’s part one, in case you missed it), Christopher Ehren, LeapFrog’s Creative Director, and Jeremy Kolonay, LeapFrog’s Director of Web Software Services, discuss the best ways to performing QA testing and also the steps needed to make sure a mobile site appears on a consumer’s mobile phone the way it was intended.

How do you approach QA testing? Do you use emulators, rent time, buy phones, or utilize some other resource (friends or even staff)?

Christopher Ehren: Yes to all of those really. Emulators are fine as long as they’re not written by a third party. The emulators should come from the operating system provider or developer because then it’s the real thing. I’ve seen a lot of emulators that really only emulated the size of the screen. They were little more than an HTML frame that forced the content into a certain frame. It was just size restrictions. Not really the way to emulate a browser of any type. The size restriction may help the initial design of a site but it doesn’t help with the operation of the site.
(more…)