Blog

{3:17 minutes to read} My last blog post focused on the content producer’s side of affiliate marketing—those who generate income from their online content by redirecting readers to e-commerce sites where a purchase results in an affiliate fee for the publisher. This post explores affiliate marketing from the side of the marketer who pays those affiliate […]

{2:43 minutes to read} Affiliate marketing is a lot like selling bonds on Wall Street and almost as difficult to explain. In Tom Wolfe’s classic novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, about the unfulfilling life of bond trader Sherman McCoy, the protagonist’s wife conjures up this unforgettable analogy to explain daddy’s job to their daughter: “Just imagine […]

{3:02 minutes to read} Helpful Techniques to Giving Structure to Your Software App Ideas Designing software is a lot like writing a novel or painting a masterpiece. They all start with a blank page and an idea. For me, sitting down to write a blog post is almost as daunting a task. Fortunately, over the years, […]

{4:25 minutes to read} It Will Save Time and Money for Everyone Involved  Imagine that you run a successful luxury home design and construction business. You meet a prospective client who just sold her high-tech company and wants to use the proceeds to build a new home for her growing family.  “We are expecting our […]

{4:05 minutes to read} Like most of us, I’m a creature of habit. Although I no longer get the New York Times delivered to my doorstep, I still read it every morning over breakfast on my iPad. I start with the Most Emailed section and then jump to Top News and Opinion. If your email […]

{3:28 minutes to read} As a student, math and science always came easily to me. It was the liberal arts subjects—you know, the ones that required lots of reading and writing—that I had the most difficulty with. Writing, in particular, was always a struggle. Even today, as I painstakingly select just the right words for […]

{3:28 minutes to read} In 1981, a small team of IBM engineers broke from the company’s longstanding tradition by launching the IBM 5150 computer, using industry standard parts and an open architecture instead of their own proprietary designs. The result, dubbed “The IBM PC” by the press, was the inspiration for a generation of explosive […]

{3:30 minutes to read} With my first full-time job fresh out of college, the first thing I wanted to buy for myself was a personal computer. I had my eye on one of the earliest “portable” IBM compatible PCs from a fast-growing upstart called Compaq Computer. It was at the Comp-USA/uPro/Shop chain store where I bought […]

{3:25 minutes to read} According to the late artificial intelligence pioneer Alan Turing, a computer is “intelligent” if the program can convince a user that he/she is chatting with another real person. Eugene, a computer program designed to impersonate a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, was the first to pass this Turing Test in 2014 — fooling […]

{3:30 minutes to read} Is this blog and corresponding newsletter of high quality, or not worth the space in your inbox? The question of content quality came up at recent marketing discussion group. The writers in the room tended toward defining quality in terms of writing style while the marketers had a broader perspective suggesting that […]

{2:50 minutes to read} Since this is my third post on the subject, I’ll admit to having an obsession with testing. I took my last final exam nearly 25 years ago as a Master of Business Administration (MBA) student. Now I wonder if test automation would have made my life as a student less stressful, or […]

{3:00 minutes to read} Let’s be honest: Software testing is really boring! At the risk of falling asleep, you might wonder why you should even read this blog post. And while the very thought of testing might make you drowsy, failure to test before launching your new website or mobile application could result in real […]

{3:00 minutes to read} Tests get a bad rap. As a diligent student and consummate worrier, the very mention of the word “test” has always brought a cold sweat to my brow. Ironically, I did consulting work for The College Board (also known as the company behind the SAT) later on in my adult life, […]

{3:10 minutes to read} My girlfriend is half Jewish, half Protestant and raised her kids Catholic. I told her that she should be getting double the number of gifts every holiday season. In other words, she should practice “conversion optimization.” Digital Conversion Optimization is a gift we can give ourselves, without suffering through a religious […]

{2:10 minutes to read} Remember the buzz about “high frequency” trading that was blamed for the sudden stock market plunge known as the 2010 Flash Crash? Fortunately, the Flash Crash was short-lived, but similar technologies called, “programmatic advertising” are now widely used for maximizing the efficiency of buying and selling digital ad space. If you […]

  {2:50 minutes to read} What caused the 2012 sales explosion at Target? An angry father storms into his neighborhood Target store outside of Minneapolis brandishing a handful of store advertisements for maternity clothing and baby furniture. He demands to speak to the manager. “Why is Target sending ads for baby furniture and maternity clothes […]

{3:10 minutes to read} When I was living in Japan in my mid-twenties, I had an Australian friend who supplemented his income with frequent trips smuggling photography equipment to and from Hong Kong. He said it was a great side business, but not for people like me whose visible discomfort with duplicity would reveal all at […]

{3:10 minutes to read} Fear is in the air: Halloween is rapidly approaching. Although ghoulish rubber masks of Frankenstein or Freddie Krueger are frightening to children, most adults remain unfazed. Yet, something as mundane as the cost of a software development project can strike terror in the eyes of a buyer, particularly a small business or […]

{3:00 minutes to read} In the 1958 movie, The Blob, an old man wandering through the woods stumbles across an otherworldly, glowing liquid and starts poking at it with a stick. Defying gravity, the blob quickly travels up the stick to the old man’s arm, then completely engulfs and consumes him. The blob continues to grow, and soon begins gobbling up entire towns, ultimately threatening all of humanity.

Is Digital, “The Blob” of marketing, consuming everything in its wake?

{3:30 minutes to read} Even if the calendar says otherwise, I have always considered September the start of a new year. Maybe it seems like a new year because it is the beginning of the academic year, or maybe because it’s the season of the Jewish New Year. Whatever the reason, September seems like a great month to make commitments and start new projects.

And so, with the writing of this article —

I am pleased to announce the launch of our new website and regular newsletter/blog.

I first heard the term WebGL a few months ago when a new and important network connection asked me if any of my teams were using it for displaying 3D animation.  I run into new technologies all the time, but fortunately, as a sales person it’s perfectly OK for me to plead partial ignorance, with a response, like “sure, but I don’t know too much about the technical details”.

Who needs another pair of three letter acronyms to make marketing technology even more opaque? By now even the most technophobic marketers have heard these two – SEO and SEM, but may not really know the difference or why they should care. The “SE” part is actually the same for both and stands for “Search Engine”.

Growing up in the 60s and 70s I was fascinated by what futurists had in store for us on the next millennium. The Jetsons promised personal space ships that would enable us to commute to school or work in minutes. Star Trek envisioned a device that would deconstruct us into our essential elements and transport us seamlessly through space to then reconstruct us aboard the Starship Enterprise.

The first time I heard the term “stack” in the context of software, I immediately pictured my regular Sunday morning breakfast which I learned to make from scratch (recipe below).

How can anyone spend $392M for a website that doesn’t work?   That is the question many Americans including congressmen, senators and the president are asking about the botched launch of the new national health insurance exchange website.  There are really two parts to this question – 1) why doesn’t it work? And 2) why has it cost so much?

Re: Seeking mobile app developer.   As someone who sells custom software solutions for a living, a subject line like this always catches my attention.  Skipping all the other unopened emails, I double click on this inquiry first to see if it’s a real, live lead.  As I read through the body of the email, I look for some indication as to whether the prospect knows what he/she is getting into with a mobile application and whether a mobile website might be a better option.

Are you often baffled by the techno-jargon used by software programmers?  Do you sometimes wonder what all those acronyms mean – CMS, PPC, PHP, CSS, C++, .NET…?  Rest assured that you are not alone.  Just like lawyers and doctors, programmers have their own technical jargon.   If you are not a lawyer, doctor or programmer, you can’t be expected to be fluent in their language.  However, that doesn’t mean you can’t be informed, particularly when you are in need of their services.