1.    Make ‘Em Laugh

“Most marketing campaigns fall down because they’re specifically designed to sell products and generate leads,” says David Meerman Scott, viral-marketing strategist and author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. A better plan, he says, is to back off the sell and amp up the entertainment.

How: MicroBilt, in Cherry Hill, N.J., helps companies gauge the creditworthiness of their clients. (Yawn.) To spice up its message, it marketed itself by marketing its clients–specifically by creating edgy videos for them. For Red House, a furniture retailer in High Point, N.C., that offers financing to customers with shaky credit, MicroBilt created a video with a jauntily irreverent song about how Red House sells to “black and white people.” CNN ran a light-hearted news segment about it. For MicroBilt, it’s a subtle sell: The company name doesn’t appear in the commercials, but in theory the more furniture Red House sells, the more demand it will have for MicroBilt’s services.

Cost: Production could run to several thousand dollars, but sticking the video on YouTube is free.

2.    Be a Guru: Part I

Whether you sell real estate or fix teeth, you know a whole lot more about your business than your customers do. Attract attention by sharing that expertise.

How: The world loves an expert. Two decades ago, Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group, a New York real estate firm, created The Corcoran Report–a timely, statistical snapshot of local real estate prices–and sent the data to the local newspapers, which then printed the statistics. Another example: Every quarter, MicroBilt publishes a digital magazine, SEE, discussing regulatory changes and general tips on running small businesses.

Cost: Publishing a newsletter or a comprehensive white paper requires time and research, though you may find willing, able and cash-strapped business or journalism students to share the load.

3.    Stick to a Shtick

Some brands are so dialed in to a customer base–its history, interests and aspirations–that the marketing effort smacks more of a celebration.

How: Jeremy Cowan, founder of Shmaltz Brewing Co., maker of He’Brew beer, builds all his events around Jewish themes. Each year, he hosts an anniversary party where he gives out yarmulkes and Hanukkah Gelt (kosher chocolate coins) with his brand on it. (Jewish DJs often work their magic for free beer.) Cowan also ran a contest asking for bat mitzvah photos to create a collage now used on his label and invites. “It’s not just weird,” he says. “It reinforces our message and our vision.”

Cost: A few thousand bucks, depending on the extravagance of the events.

4.    Connect With Customers by Making Them Stars

This is a less costly twist on MicroBilt’s make-a-video strategy, with a dash of social-networking spice thrown in. Talented or not, people want to share their art, stories, even their hopes and dreams. Give them an outlet in exchange for sampling your product or service.

How: When skin care company Philosophy launched a new fragrance, “Unconditional Love”, just before Valentine’s Day this year, it put out a call for love stories to be posted on its Web site. It received 2,000 submissions. Each writer received samples of the perfume–and the company got their contact information.

Cost: Beyond the free products, minimal.

5. Tweet (No, really, we mean it.)

By now you’ve heard about Twitter–that curious, strangely addictive social-networking technology that facilitates the exchange of torrents of severely truncated messages (140 characters max) among millions of users. You may have read that it’s a waste of time–and in many respects, that’s true. What’s also true is that Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool.

How: Congratulations for getting to the end of this sentence. “As an online culture, people are not reading; they’re scanning,” says Dell Computer’s Stefanie Nelson, voice of @DellOutlet. “The shorter and more direct your message is, the more successful you’re going to be.” Dell tweets links to coupons at Dell Outlet’s Facebook page, which shoppers use during checkout at Dell.com. This strategy works for small companies, too: The abbreviated offers are easy to produce–you don’t need an ad agency to write 140 characters. Viral Marketing: In July, in honor of its 10th birthday, London-based do-it-yourself Web site builder Moonfruit gave away 11 Macbook Pro computers and 10 iPod Touches. Contestants had to tweet using the hashtag #moonfruit. (Hashtags collate Twitter responses.) Nearly a month after the contest ended, traffic to Moonfruit’s Web site is up 300%. Sales are up 20% this month, more than paying off the $15,000. investment. And the Moonfruit Web site has climbed onto the first Google page for “free website builder” (it used to be on the fourth). Word to the wise, says Moonfruit founder Wendy White: Such campaigns must be courteous and fit with a company’s brand, lest you draw the ire of the Twitter-sphere: “There’s a fine line between annoying people and getting the thumbs up.” Conversational Marketing: Online shoe-retailer Zappos doesn’t market on Twitter–it talks. A small army of 436 Zappos employees use Twitter (Chief Exeuctive Tony Hsieh leads the way with a shade over 1 million followers). “You get to see Zappos people and culture before you decide to buy anything from them,” says Shel Israel, author of Twitterville. Focus Groups: “There is a major element of Twitter that’s about listening and learning,” says Brad Nelson, the man behind @Starbucks. “Twitter is a leading indicator.” Collecting the information is as simple as searching for references to your company. There are many other ways Twitter can be an effective marketing tool from customer service to vendor selection.

6. Work the Press

Mentions in the news media offer what traditional marketing and advertising can’t: exposure with implied credibility. While PR is nothing new, plenty of companies (and PR agencies) still don’t get it.

How: To get your foot in the door with journalists, first build trust and rapport by offering information on your industry without angling for a profile, or even a quote. Second, offer constructive feedback on important stories; most journalists’ e-mail addresses are online, so you can write to them directly. Third, remember that pain sells–in any economic environment. Cautionary tales that readers can learn from are inherently intriguing, so don’t be afraid to share.

Cost: PR firms charge by the project or by monthly retainer (up to $15,000 a month). Tight on cash? Negotiate a pay-for-performance contract–based on press citations or other measurable metrics.

7.    Be a Guru: Part II

Disseminating data and white papers is nice, but ultimately connecting with customers is what counts.

How: Add your own personal touch by speaking at local organizations and penning articles for publications. “Don’t dare try to sell anything,” says guerrilla-marketing expert Jay Conrad Levinson. Your price: a brief biography and a link back to your Web site.

Cost: At the margin, nothing. You would have spent those hours networking some other way, right?

8.    Get on the Menu

If you can, let others do your marketing for you.

How: Four years ago, Chris Lindland, founder of Cordarounds, online peddler of pants with horizontal whales (that go “around” the leg), had a clever viral-marketing idea. He convinced the proprietors of the Black Horse pub, his favorite watering hole in San Francisco, to add Cordarounds as an item to its drink menu. The trade: Lindland promised (by way of a biweekly e-mail to customers) a free beer for all who dropped by the Black Horse wearing his Cordarounds. He only had to make good on that promise about once a month; meanwhile, hundreds of Black Horse customers ended up asking what the heck Cordarounds were.

Cost: Minimal.

9. Host a Virtual Trade Show

Traditional trade shows are a convention-center-sized hassle–and they cost a lot to boot. Add up booth rental and presentation time-slot fees, advertising, promotional doodads and travel expenses (never mind the lost time away from the office), and a company’s tab can rocket up to $100,000 per show. Hence the rise of virtual trade shows, designed to look and function like the real thing but that play out in real time in cyberspace. Entry fee: just $3,000 to $8,000. Better yet, you don’t need to be a computer wizard to participate.

10.    Meet the Neighbors

The rise of online networks plugged into specific local communities is a huge marketing opportunity for small businesses.

How: LifeAt.com, for example, allows users to post news, classified ads and restaurant reviews. The site keeps tabs on hundreds of “communities”–including specific apartment buildings and neighborhoods. Other sites that can help boost local visibility are Yelp.com, Insiderpages.com and Best of the Web.

Cost: Minimal, and varies by site and service provider.

11. Build a Board to Buff Your Rep

Small businesses are short on a lot of things, credibility included. The higher your profile, the more clout you’ll have with suppliers, partners and customers. A board of advisers can help.

How: Trustworthy lawyers and bankers are solid additions to any board. Whatever the mix, collect a spread of perspectives and complementary skills; also, assemble an odd number (three is good for a small business) in case you’re looking for a swing vote on a key decision. Finally, recruit advisers on a short-term basis: The advice your business needs at $500,000 in sales is different from what it needs at $5 million. (Note: Don’t confuse a board of advisers with a board of directors.)

Cost: Perhaps $5,000 in stipends annually

12.    Light up Their Inboxes

E-mail marketing has been around for years, but the tricky part remains getting people to open the messages in the first place.

How: Here are three handy tips, courtesy of Gene Marks, owner of the Marks Group, a technology consultancy to small businesses. First, avoid using generic addresses like sales@ or info@ in the “from” line; second, keep the “from” name consistent and recognizable in all e-mails; third, be clear and specific as to what’s being offered in the subject line (”Acme’s Weekly Newsletter” won’t cut it).

Cost: Easy-to-use, database-driven tools–many customizable, down to the logos and graphics–cost around $100 per month to blast thousands of e-mails.

13.    Bake It in

Marketing shouldn’t be an afterthought–it should be an integral part of the business concept and execution strategy.

How: KidZaam, in Prescott, Ariz., aims to make going to the dentist fun for kids. KidZaam’s office–in all of its red, blue and yellow glory–looks like something out of either a Bugs Bunny cartoon or a bad acid trip. While they wait for their appointment, kids can watch movies or play their favorite videogames. Parents have been known to drive two hours to ease the pain.

Cost: Depends on the concept.

14.    Barter for Exposure

By now, everyone knows that the more people who link to a Web site, the higher it appears in Google’s search results. That’s where all those trigger-happy bloggers come in.

How: ScanMyPhotos International, a Los Angeles-based shop that turns print photos into digital files, offered bloggers 1,000 free photo scans if they agreed to place a link to Scan’s site on their blogs. Result: Within two months, Scan’s site leaped to the first search page when Google users entered the phrase “photo scanning.” (Note: Be sure to specify the text that bloggers use when linking to your site–choosing the right keywords is critical to getting the most out of the search engines.)

Cost: Time and service–a potentially small investment for scalable, online businesses.

15.    Cozy up to Celebrities

Think celebrity sponsorship is the solely province of companies with huge marketing budgets? Think again.

How: When he wasn’t waiting tables at Red Lobster in Queens, N.Y., Daymond John dreamed of launching a designer T-shirt company. To get started, back in 1993, he leaned on friends in the music industry to finagle his way onto music-video sets, where he mingled with the performers and even begged their stylists and crew members to don one of his 10 early designs. “I think I got 200 ‘nos,’ ” John recalls. He eventually convinced hip hop group Brand Nubian to wear his shirts in their video “Word is Bond.” Soon, the press caught wind of FUBU, and now the full fledged “streetwear” company generates a whopping $370 million in annual revenue.

Cost: A lot of networking and phone calls.

16.    Wipe Off the Lens

If all else fails, take another hard look at the market and its willingness to pay for your product or service.

How: Four years ago, Sarah Endline, a former Yahoo! product designer, hosted small focus groups to hit upon a new candy idea: pebble-sized cacao beans smothered in premium chocolate. In one effort, Endline invited 12 people to munch on everything from Gummi bears to organic chocolate bars; later she enlisted Harvard B-school students to host focus groups on campus. Result: a rocking little candy maker called Sweetriot in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo district.

Cost: Market surveys can cost up to $10,000, but there are some cheaper online options. Zoomerang charges $600 for a year subscription to its surveys service; Survey Monkey offers subscriptions starting at around $20 per month or $200 a year. Focus groups? Perhaps $100 for food and drinks.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook Inc. earlier this month. What follows is Mr. Zuckerberg’s point of view on the matter. After that follow tips and advice as to how to do as Greta Garbo might do to protect her privacy online. If she would have even harbored the thought.

Walt Mossberg: Obviously, people wouldn’t go on Facebook unless they wanted to share with groups of people. But there is this perception that you have been on a course to push people’s information where it’s visible across the Internet unless they do a bunch of stuff.

Mark Zuckerberg: Privacy is a really important issue for us. In terms of the settings that we have, I think that there are some misperceptions. The primary things that people do on the service is they use it to share with their friends and the people around them and their community, and they use it to keep in touch with people. That’s the sharing side. Then there’s the side around staying connected with people. So people need to be able to search for you, figure out which person you are. Having some information be visible more broadly is very valuable for that.

There have been misperceptions that we’re trying to make all the information open, and that’s completely false. There are big buckets of information that we recommend that you share with only your friends privately. Then some of the more basic information, we recommend that that’s visible to everyone. We didn’t change any settings or anything like that. The big feedback we got was that the privacy settings had just become too complex. We’ve built privacy into every single product we’ve ever launched. People were saying we want to make sure that we have control over how we’re sharing information, but with all these settings, we’re not sure how to use them. So, we built one main setting that controls all of the information that they’re sharing on a day-to-day basis.

On June 16, 2010 EPIC, (Electronic Privacy Information Center), Privacy Groups Recommended Further Changes for Facebook: EPIC has joined a letter, organized by the ACLU of Northern California, calling for Facebook to fix ongoing privacy problems with the social network service. The letter, signed by several privacy organizations, recommends that Facebook make “Instant Personalization” opt-in, limit data retention, give users greater control over their information, and allow users to export their content from Facebook. EPIC has a complaint currently pending at the Federal Trade Commission, charging that Facebook has engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices. For more information, see EPIC Facebook Privacy.

I foresee more privacy changes in Facebook’s future but until then….

Below are eight things you shouldn’t give to a social network – when signing up for an account, posting content or interacting with your contacts through the network.

1. Access to your email account. During the registration process, social networks often solicit a new user to provide an email address and account password so they can access the user’s email address book.  To be safe, don’t provide this information at all.  There are some social networks that capture a user’s email contacts and then solicit them – often repeatedly – to join.  If you consider providing an email address and account password to a social network, read all agreements (including the privacy policy) very carefully before clicking on them.

2. An email address associated with your professional life. Never provide a work-associated email to a social network, especially when signing up.  Consider creating a new email address strictly to connect with your social networking profile(s). Jobseekers should take special care to keep professional and personal lives separate.

3. Your exact date of birth, especially in combination with your place of birth. Your exact date of birth may be useful to an identity thief.  A 2009 study published by researchers at Carnegie Mellon showed that a date and place of birth could be used to predict most, and sometimes all, of the nine digits of one’s Social Security number.  If you do decide to post your birthday, use privacy settings to restrict the visibility of this information and don’t provide the year.

4. Your browsing history. Delete cookies, including flash cookies, every time you leave a social networking site. Also consider using a proxy server to mask your IP address, such as Tor.

5. Vacation Plans. Don’t publicize vacation plans, especially the dates you’ll be traveling.  Remember, no matter how carefully you construct your privacy settings, there’s no guarantee that what you post won’t become known to unauthorized viewers.

6. Public posts with your address, phone number or email address. Don’t post your address, phone number or email address on a social network profile or status update.  Scam artists as well as marketing companies may be looking for this kind of information. If you do choose to post any portion of this, use privacy settings to restrict it to approved contacts. Be especially wary of providing a GPS location of your home.  If you use a location-aware social network, use extra caution! Don’t publicize the location of your home because people will know when you are not there. (See Please Rob Me – Raising Awareness about Oversharing)

7. Compromising, sensitive, embarrassing or inflammatory pictures or posts. Remember that whatever goes on a network might eventually be seen by people not in the intended audience. Think about whether you would want a stranger, an insurance agent, the government, your mother or a potential boss to see certain information or pictures.  Don’t be afraid to ask to have content removed.

8. Money. Be wary of requests for money, even if they are from contacts you know and trust. If a contact’s account is compromised, a scam artist may use his or her name and account to attempt to defraud others through bogus money requests.

Additional General Tips for Using Social Networks

1. Become familiar with the privacy settings available on any social network you use.

2. Stay aware of changes to a social network’s terms of service and privacy policy. You may be able to keep track of this by connecting to an official site profile, for example Facebook’s Site Governance.  Consider subscribing to an RSS feed for Tosback, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to track changes in website policies (covers some but not all social networks).

3. Be careful when you click on shortened links. Consider using a URL expander (as an application added to your browser or a website you visit) to examine short URLs before clicking on them.   Example of URL expanders include LongURL, Clybs URL Expander and Long URL Please  (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse does not endorse one URL expander over another.)

4. Be very cautious of pop-up windows, especially any that state your security software is out of date or that security threats and/or viruses have been detected on your computer.  Use your task manager to navigate away from these without clicking on them, then run your spyware and virus protection software.

5. Be aware that your full birth date, especially the year, may be useful to identity thieves. Don’t post it, or at a minimum restrict who has access to it. (Yeah I know I said this before, but it merits repeating.)

6. Use caution when using third-party applications. For the highest level of safety and privacy, avoid them completely.  If you consider using one, review the privacy policy and terms of service for the application. WhatApp? rates applications, browsers, platforms and social networks on privacy, security and openness. While this rating system is still under development and is not a guarantee that an application is safe, it may provide users with additional information when making a decision about whether to use an application.

7. If you receive a request to connect with someone and recognize the name, verify the account holder’s identity before accepting the request. Consider calling the individual, sending an email to his or her personal account or even asking a question only your contact would be able to answer.

8. If you receive a connection request from a stranger, the safest thing to do is to reject the request. If you decide to accept the request, use privacy settings to limit what information is viewable to the stranger and be cautious of posting personal information to your account, such as your current location as well as personally identifiable information.

9. Take additional precautions if you are the victim of stalking, harassment or domestic violence.

10. Take additional precautions if you are a job seeker.

11. In the event that your social networking account is compromised, report it to the site immediately and alert your contacts.  You will need to change passwords, but proceed with caution because your computer security may have been compromised.  Malware, including key-logging software, may have been installed on your computer.  If you use online banking, do not log on from the computer that may have been compromised until you have ensured your computer security is intact.

The following is a story that appeared in The Economist on April 8, 2010:

Larry Nathanson, head of emergency-medicine “informatics” at one of Harvard Medical School’s hospitals, has experimented with using Apple’s  iPad in the casualty ward. He writes that “initial tests with our clinical applications went amazingly well…the EKGs look better onscreen than on paper. It was great having all of the clinical information right at the bedside to discuss with the patient.”

Dr Nathanson’s enthusiasm hints at the potential of wireless gadgets to improve health care, and to ensure more personalized treatment in particular. Pundits have long predicted that advances in genetics will usher in a golden age of individually tailored therapies. But in fact it is much lower-tech wireless devices and internet-based health software that are precipitating the mass customization of health care, and creating entirely new business models in the process.

Wireless health is “becoming omnipresent” in hospitals, according to Kalorama Information, a market-research firm; it estimates that the market for such devices and services in America alone will grow from $2.7 billion in 2007 to $9.6 billion in 2012. Don Jones of Qualcomm, a maker of networking technology, argues that the trend speeds diagnosis and treatment, and saves doctors’ and nurses’ time. GE, an industrial giant, and Sprint, an American mobile operator, have joined forces to offer hospitals such services. GE’s Carescape software allows the secure monitoring of patients’ health via mobile phones, as does rival software from Airstrip.

Doctors are an obvious early target for wireless health. A forthcoming report by the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), a think tank, estimates that two-thirds of American physicians already have smart-phones. Over one-third of American doctors use Epocrates, a program for mobiles and laptops which offers instant information on drug-to-drug interactions, treatment recommendations and so on. The software will soon be able to access electronic health records (EHRs) via mobiles—which the author of the CHCF’s report thinks could be “the killer application” of wireless health.

The hope is that nimble new technologies, from smart-phones to EHRs to health-monitoring devices, will empower patients and doctors, and thus improve outcomes while cutting costs. The near ubiquity of mobile phones is the chief reason to think this optimistic scenario may come true. Patients with fancy smart-phones can certainly benefit from interactive “wellness” applications that track diet, exercise and vital signs. Apple’s App Store, for example, offers thousands of health-related applications. Jitterbug, an American mobile operator that offers easy-to-use phones for the elderly, recently added more health services; rival mobile carriers are doing much the same.

But Carolyn Buck-Luce of Ernst & Young, a consultancy, points out that “mHealth” is transforming health care in poor countries as well as rich ones. Medicall Home, a Mexican outfit that provides medical consultations by mobile, already has millions of customers. Paul Meyer of Voxiva, an American technology firm that has set up mHealth systems in Rwanda and Peru, among other places, says that such schemes have been so successful in the developing world that they are now being adopted in the rich world too. His firm has helped the American government with its recent launch of Text4Baby, a public-health campaign to educate pregnant mothers (they receive free text messages with medical advice) that will soon become the biggest such effort in the world.

What is more, mobile phones are but one part of a broader wireless trend in health care that McKinsey, a consultancy, estimates may soon be worth up to $60 billion globally. Many companies are coming up with “home health” devices embedded with wireless technology. Some are overtly clinical in nature: Medtronic, a devices giant, is developing a bedside monitor that wirelessly tracks the blood sugar levels in diabetic children sleeping nearby. GE has come up with “body sensor networks”, tiny wireless devices that track the vital signs of those who wear them.

The most successful gadgets may be, as Eric Dishman of Intel puts it, “surreptitious”. His firm, a big chipmaker, is investing in devices to track the health of the elderly, such as “magic carpets” that sense erratic movements and thus can predict a fall. Continua, an industry coalition, is developing shared standards so that blood-pressure monitors and scales can wirelessly transfer readings to doctors’ offices or personal EHR services like Google Health.

All these devices and services do not just allow doctors to make more accurate diagnoses, prescribe more effective treatments and keep better track of patients’ conditions. They also allow health services to tailor treatments depending on patients’ personal preferences and behavioral foibles. Studies show, for example, that although some patients with chronic conditions are fastidious about taking pills or insulin properly, others are careless or forgetful. Some prefer efficient electronic reminders, whereas others respond best when a nurse calls home. A global consumer survey released on April 6th by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), a consultancy, finds that the elderly prefer high-quality care with lots of personal attention, whereas younger types prefer low-cost care and wellness schemes.

Many health systems, PWC’s accompanying report finds, are beginning to divide customers into different categories and customize treatments accordingly. For example, Discovery Health, a South African insurer, uses a variety of different methods to get patients with chronic diseases to follow through on their treatments, from text messages reminding them to take their pills to rewards for good behavior.

A similar scheme run by HealthMedia, a wellness firm owned by Johnson & Johnson, a big drugs firm, uses online tools (it calls them “digital health coaches”) to help patients manage diabetes and lose weight. Its studies suggest that half of the digitally coached do lose weight, and the improved health of those with chronic conditions is worth $1,000 a year to their employers.

Virgin “HealthMiles”, an American rival, has taken the same idea a step further, using online social networks, through which co-workers or family members can cheer on or nag patients electronically, in order to encourage exercise or weight loss. Patients seem to like this kind of thing: one patient who suffers from ulcerative colitis, for example, has created a forum for fellow sufferers that can be accessed through an iPhone application.

All these initiatives are particularly promising because they help bring about behavioral change, normally the hardest element of any treatment. Patients often ignore doctors’ lectures, but are more inclined to listen to supportive friends and family. By the same token, doctors and nurses are not always on hand to encourage healthy behavior, but mobile phones and other wireless gadgets can be. That is something that even personalized genetic therapies could not offer.

The following article is by Andrew Martin for The New York Times which appeared on April 8, 2010:

Through a new partnership with an Internet company that specializes in personalized shopping, MasterCard is set to introduce a Web shopping mall on Monday that it says can pinpoint with considerable accuracy what its cardholders are likely to purchase. The site, called MasterCard Marketplace, relies on technology developed by Next Jump, a New York company that monitors customer behavior from thousands of retailers and uses the data it gathers to help merchants tailor their product offerings.

MasterCard describes its approach as a potential game changer, luring consumers to a shopping site run by a payment network rather than a retailer is an uncertain proposition. Some privacy advocates, meanwhile, say the technology makes them uncomfortable. Anita L. Allen, a law professor who studies privacy issues at the University of Pennsylvania, said that as consumers gave up more private information for short-term gains, “In the end, we turn into citizens who live in a world where we have no control over our own data.”

Of course, companies of all kinds try to anticipate what consumers will buy and tailor their marketing programs accordingly, including MasterCard’s rivals, Visa and American Express. But the success of personalized online shopping has been mixed. MasterCard’s competitors are also trying to expand their presence in online commerce. For instance, American Express has a site called “Daily Wish” that offers discounts, and Visa is in the process of introducing RightCliq, intended to help consumers comparison-shop online.

Next Jump’s selling point is that it draws on buying patterns across thousands of retailers, giving it a huge sample size of consumers to analyze. Charlie Kim, the company’s founder, says Next Jump converts one in every 11 browsers into buyers, a rate that far exceeds the industry norm. The company runs employee discount and reward programs for many big companies. For more than a decade, it has gathered mountains of data to help refine its algorithms for predicting what people are likely to buy.

On the new MasterCard site, shoppers will be asked to select a handful of merchants they favor. From there, Next Jump will monitor how they use the site and adjust offers accordingly, said Joshua Peirez, MasterCard’s head of innovation platforms. “Next Jump measures everything you do on the site,” Mr. Peirez said.

Next Jump’s technology is already available on Yahoo’s shopping site, as well as on the sites of many corporate perk programs that offer merchandise discounts to employees. In 2008, MasterCard began offering discounts to debit card holders on a Web site called MasterCard Savings that employed Next Jump’s algorithms; officials described it as a pilot project.

MasterCard said it was working to assure customers’ privacy. For one thing, customers are not automatically enrolled in the marketplace site but must sign up on their own. Retailers will not be provided names of specific customers but rather a batch of customers who share certain characteristics, like income level or having young children. But some privacy experts question the growing use of customer data on sites like MasterCard Marketplace, even if people divulge it willingly.

Joseph Turow, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that hiding the identity of customers from merchants was not enough. The type of profiling done by sites like MasterCard Marketplace, he said, often leads to “social discrimination,” in which people are lumped into categories they may find objectionable. He said companies rarely explained to people how they were categorized. “People might be happy with a Dell 30 percent off, but why did my neighbor get one deal and me another?” he said. “We are accepting this notion that companies have a right to do this.”

From its start 24 years ago SXSW® (otherwise known as  South by Southwest®), all those that want to know all about innovation and creativity in music, independent film, and emerging technologies have followed the siren call and converged on Austin, Texas.  This happens just before Spring springs.  SXSW® offers a week and a half of conferences and festivals. An article in Time, by Dan Fletcher, focuses on this year’s tech smash: The South By Southwest Interactive and delivers the top 10 Tech Trends for 2010.

1. Location, Location, Location: The biggest rumble down south was between a pair of location-based gaming services: Austin-based Gowalla and New York-based Foursquare. Both services are similar — users “check in” to real-world locations through their smartphones and are rewarded with badges and discounts for frequenting hotspots. Foursquare is the established favorite and has a larger user base, but Gowalla led a strong insurgency, with a slickly designed iPhone application and a heavy presence at the festival. Who won? We’ll call this one a draw, as many festival-goers used both services simultaneously to locate their friends and track down parties.

Gowalla and Foursquare both face the same challenge ahead — breaking outside of the tech-heavy communities on the coasts to become a tool in everyday life. It’s not an easy road. The two services must deal with privacy concerns (although they track your location only when you give them permission) while fighting to build partnerships with merchants and brands to help encourage skeptical users to give them a try. But even if these services remain niche distractions, location isn’t going away anytime soon. The Web’s social giants also want you to start sharing your whereabouts: Twitter has already added the ability to add location to tweets, and Facebook reportedly plans to roll out a similar feature in their status updates before the summer

2. Building Platforms, Not Websites: Twitter has never been about going to Twitter.com — the website itself is pretty barebones, a fact founder Evan Williams freely admitted in his March 14 SXSW keynote. The microblogging service has gone one step further with their announcement of @Anywhere, a platform to help publishers and web designers build Twitter features into their own websites. The service, which will launch with 13 beta partners including the New York Times and YouTube, lets Twitter users post messages and find new people to follow without ever needing to leave a partner’s website.

While details were scant, it is Twitter’s first stab at matching the success of Facebook’s Connect platform, which lets users sign in and interact with websites using their Facebook profile and data. But Mark Zuckerberg’s social giant isn’t resting on its laurels either — at an event for Facebook Developers, Facebook platform manager Gareth Davis characterized the company as a “service” rather than a Web destination. If you read between the lines, that means that Facebook is likely going to further de-emphasize the importance of going to Facebook.com and focus on making your Facebook profile a crucial part of everything you do on the Web.

3. Social Gaming: One new area where you’ll see Facebook’s new platform is in console video games. Developers showed off demos of games that had Facebook Connect built in, allowing you to share scores, statistics and even a personalized gaming highlight reel to your Facebook profile, direct from your Xbox 360 or Playstation. The latest generation of games on Apple’s iPhone include the same sort of features, designed to let you share your achievements with friends.

But beyond that, the games themselves will become more social. In 2009, the success of games like Zynga’s Farmville (estimated, by some counts, to have more players than Twitter has users) proved to developers that there’s a winning strategy in targeting games less to gamers and more to users looking for fun ways to interact with their friends. And Farmville is really only ostensibly social — you can visit your friend’s farm and offer rudimentary help, but that’s about it. The next generation of online games — like the popular Bejeweled Blitz — will offer richer, more direct competition and game play between users.

4. Augmented Reality: Conceptually, augmented reality isn’t anything new — if you’ve watched the Olympics or seen a first-down marker during a televised football game, you’re familiar with digital overlays enhancing real-life events. But one challenge for 2010 will be harnessing the growing ubiquity of webcams and smartphones to make augmented reality useful as a tool in day-to-day life. One of the best examples yet is the virtual box simulator from the U.S. Postal Service, which taps into your webcam to let you figure out what size box is needed to ship an item through overlaying a semi-transparent 3D model of the box. Other examples for 2010 range from a John Mayer music video to Xbox’s upcoming Project Natal.

Augmented reality is a hot trend in iPhone apps as well. They include offerings that let shoot you friends with virtual lasers in the iPew application or tracking down your parked car with Car Finder. Gimmicky? A bit. But developers are only just beginning to get a handle on the types of implementations that are possible.

5. Living in the Cloud: Get ready for your files to start living online, rather than on your computer. One of the most highly anticipated speakers at SXSWi was Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, a popular European music service that offers millions of songs streaming on-demand. Launching the service in the U.S. has been complicated by licensing issues with record companies, and there was hope Ek would announce a U.S. launch date at the festival. (He didn’t.) Still, the service — and competing U.S. friendly offerings like Mog — manage to make the iTunes model of having a library of downloaded music look downright anachronistic. Who needs to rip CDs or buy songs when nearly any song imaginable is available, providing you have an active Internet connection? The argument becomes even more compelling when mobile applications are taken into account — Mog announced that its app will roll out in spring, with a subscription fee of $10/month.

Expect similar revolutions to take shape in video. Netflix already offers a library of thousands of streaming videos, and Major League Baseball lets subscribers watch any game on-demand. Rumors that cable networks such as ESPN are considering offering themselves through platforms like the Xbox are keeping the idea of taking TV into the cloud on the front burner.

6. Birth of the Backchannel: The growth of sites like Twitter and Facebook has given rise to the idea that events have both a frontchannel (the Super Bowl, for example) and a backchannel (the live, online discussion from fans watching the game.) The next generation of Web-connected TVs and software will include ways for people to monitor and interact with the conversation happening around an event, filtering live streams in real-time to display the most relevant discussions.

It works on a smaller scale. The best example of the power of the backchannel at SXSW was an inadvertent one. An interview with Twitter founder Evan Williams was wrecked by criticism on Twitter. Festival goers were unimpressed with the questions posed to Williams by moderator Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review and tweeted their displeasure before leaving the interview en masse. In a blog post later, Haque said he wished he had been monitoring the Twitter conversation from on stage

7. Frictionless Payments: Micropayments were a $1 billion industry in 2009. If they hope to grow in 2010, these types of transactions need to be made easier. One of the slickest implementations was a application from Paypal, which lets users “bump” their iPhones or iPods to authorize a transaction between accounts. Owe a friend for pizza? Click your phones together and the debt’s resolved. A startup called Venmo (now in private beta) goes even one step further. Friends can issue payments with text messages or create a special list of people who they trust, who are then allowed to pull money from their account at will.

8. Social Objects: The Web has made people more social. But what about objects? That’s the thinking behind Stickybits, a startup launched at SXSW that adds a social layer to barcodes. Using the company’s Android or iPhone application, users can scan barcodes, attach a piece of information — either a video, note or audio recording — and receive a notification whenever someone else scans the same object. Stickybits also produces unique, one-off barcodes of its own that, when attached to a postcard, for example, add digital memory to static objects. The company sees the codes being used in everything from product reviews to including a digital copy of your resume on your business card.

9. iPad: The buzz about Apple’s upcoming tablet computing device continued at SXSWi. Even though very few in attendance had even held an iPad (the first models will ship in April), there was still a great deal of discussion on how the device would impact gaming, web browsing and print media. With developers still racing to put the first generation of applications together at launch, there were very few concrete examples on hand. One exception? Wired gave a full video demo of how they plan to port their magazine to the iPad, which received an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd on hand.

10. A Richer Web: The most controversial aspect of the iPad is its lack of support for the Flash plugin, a ubiquitous part of the Internet that powers everything from online games to sites like Hulu. Part of the reason Apple thinks it can leave out Flash is that the next generation of web coding, HTML 5, is already in use on the Web. HTML is the language most websites are created in, and this latest generation of standards includes tools for developers to include video on their site and build rich, full-featured online applications without requiring users to download and install a plugin like Flash.

One obstacle to implementation?  People who won’t upgrade their browsers. Older versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox are still the most popular browsers in use on the web and aren’t capable of displaying HTML 5 content. Developers won’t be able to include many HTML 5 features in their websites until the vast majority of users upgrade to one of the latest generation of browsers, like Google Chrome or the upcoming Internet Explorer 9.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1973759_1973760,00.html

…it creates a thorny puzzle for businesses striving to build online audiences.

A recent article in The Atlantic written by Derek Martin gives an informative introduction as to how the internet is changing.

“The golden age of the Web is coming to an end. Prepare for the Splinternet.”

Thus announces Josh Bernoff in an interesting post about how new gadgets designed for surfing the Web — our smartphones, e-readers, tablets and even TVs — are fighting with each other to redefine how we access information online. But what is the “Splinternet” and why should the answer even matter to you?*

Let’s take a step back and think about some of the new gadgets on the market. Smartphones and e-readers are not like laptops, where each computer lets you interact the same Web. For example, Apple iPad won’t support Flash software, which supports most online videos. Ben Kunz of BusinessWeek suggests this is a blatant move to force iPad users to satisfy all their video cravings through Apple stores. Similarly, in the e-reader arms race, Apple, Sony and Amazon are competing with different libraries of books and products.

If the last 10 years were a heyday for open content on the Web, the next ten years could be the age of platforms. Today to reach the universe of new mobile browsers, you can’t assume that your audience is using only a laptop to access the same version of your content. So it won’t be enough to have just a magazine website. Instead you’ll need a website and a Kindle App and an iPhone/iPad app and another app for another device that has a distinct audience and requires a specific template. Kunz sums up the problem for content providers like this:

The device-portal tie-up isn’t necessarily bad for consumers, who have plenty of choices for media consumption. But it creates a thorny puzzle for businesses striving to build audiences. How do you compete when your potential customers are using devices and content systems that lock one another out?

Let’s bring this back to advertising, because money is at the heart of this platform battle. The first wave of the ad war was fought on a couple fronts, dominated by display ads on content pages and search ads on search pages. Google’s great revenue revelation was that you could make a bazillion dollars selling online ads next to search results, because you’re putting ads through an obvious filter: what the user wants to find. Google has parlayed that discovery into $23 billion business. It is the success story in advertising in the last five years.

But in the Splinternet age, ads are more tightly controlled by platform. My old Blackberry defaulted to Bing search because Verizon has a deal with Mircosoft. But my new phone that runs Google Android software serves Google ads under apps for programs like Pandora. Meanwhile Apple has banned any apps that use location-based software to serve up targeted ads, presumably because it wants to corner that market on its own device. This is a new age, where gadgets have a “hidden agenda” to hold you in their ecosystem of content display and advertising. There are walls are going up just as the walls to mobile Internet access are falling down.

“We’re going to open up the floodgates for the rest of the publishing world starting this afternoon,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said on-stage. Prices shown in the demo appear comparable to Amazon’s Kindle store. Amazon already has an app for its bookstore made for the iPhone, so the company can’t be happy that Apple is stepping into its home court. Yet the Kindle is considered easier on the eyes than the Ipad. For Print Media fans and producers it’s all good.

But the iPad is not just about digitizing the paper. Electronic Arts showed off Need for Speed: Shift, a racing game built for the device. Brushes, a canvas for drawing art (finger-painting?), was also demoed. And the MLB, which has been quick to jump on new application platforms, showed off its live video app.

Compiled from two articles written by Mark Milian for the L.A. Times.

1. Donating Money:
Money is the most efficient way of giving right now since at the moment there at the moment there are no commercial flights into Haiti.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has urged Internet users to be cautious and do their research before giving money to help the relief effort in Haiti.

“Past tragedies and natural disasters have prompted individuals with criminal intent to solicit contributions purportedly for a charitable organization,” the agency said in a statement.

TEXT Giving: many Americans are making donations via text message to help Haiti. The American Red Cross, is taking donations at 90999 (text the word “HAITI” and an automatic $10 donation is made), and you can support the foundation of musician Wyclef Jean by texting the word “Yele” to the number 501501.

Although the above two text methods are above board, the Better Business Bureau notes that this emerging method for donating “is ripe for exploitation by scammers.” It has not heard of any text message scams yet, but they’re probably inevitable. As a result, consumers need to keep a number of things in mind when considering giving by text message as well as by more traditional methods. When giving by text message, the money might not get to where it needs to go for weeks or more, though carriers said they were working to try to speed up the process. “What people may not realize is that it could take up to 90 days before the money actually reaches the charity,” said Art Taylor, president of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance. His giving advice: “Follow up that $10 donation by going to the Web sites and donating directly.” Or give to the charity Web site’s directly in the first place, call the charity or send a check directly to the charity in the mail.

Here are some more tips from the Better Business Bureau and the F.B.I.:

• Don’t automatically trust the numbers your friends and networks pass along. Instead, confirm the text message number directly with the charity by checking the charity’s Web site. The American Red Cross, for instance, mentions the 90999 number on its site.

• Do not respond to any unsolicited e-mail messages about giving to Haiti, and be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims or officials asking for donations via e-mail or social networking sites.

• Be cautious of e-mail messages that claim to show pictures of the disaster areas in attached files, because the files may contain viruses.

• Don’t assume the links your well-meaning friends are sending you are legitimate or represent the best organizations. Before giving, vet the charity you’re giving to to make sure it’s not fraudulent and is best equipped to actually help and use the money responsibly.

2. Food and Clothing Drives:

Drives for food and clothing—while well intentioned— may not necessarily be the quickest way to help those in need – unless the organization has the staff and infrastructure to be able to properly distribute such aid. Ask the charity about their transportation and distribution plans. Be wary of those who are not experienced in disaster relief assistance. A trusted organization of this sort is The Salvation Army in your community. You can visit them or the website, for information about this sort of donation, for over time, all of those things will be needed.

Tips on Vetting a Charity:

* Find out if the charity has an on-the-ground presence in the impacted areas.

Unless the charity already has staff in the effected areas, it may be difficult to get new aid workers to quickly provide assistance.  See if the charity’s website clearly describes what they can do to address immediate needs.

* Find out if the charity is providing direct aid or raising money for other groups.

Some charities may be raising money to pass along to relief organizations.  If so, you may want to consider “avoiding the middleman” and giving directly to charities that have a presence in the region. Or, at a minimum, check out the ultimate recipients of these donations to ensure the organizations are equipped to effectively provide aid.

(If you’re looking for organizations to give to, check out BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s list of charities providing assistance in response to the earthquake.)

In a recent article authored by Rachel King for Business Week you’ll get a peek at the beginnings of what may be on your desk in the future.

Tech executive Parikshit Arora had an unconventional response the morning he discovered that his office computer was no longer working. Rather than fixing it himself or calling in help from the information technology department, he discarded the device. “It wasn’t booting up,” says Arora, vice-president for technology at iQor, a company that handles call-center work for clients. “I didn’t even care to find out why. I threw it away and got another one.”

The same goes for most of iQor’s 11,000 employees. Why the seemingly cavalier take on computers? Two years ago, New York-based iQor ditched most of its Dell and Hewlett-Packard desktop computers and installed a fleet of cheaper, stripped-down machines that lacked hard drives. Also made by HP and known as thin clients, these smaller, virtually disposable devices leave most processing and storage tasks to a centrally located server. “We refer to thin clients as lollipops,” says iQor Chief Executive Vikas Kapoor. “If yours isn’t working, just get another one.” Now, about 75% of iQor’s employees use thin clients with files and software stored elsewhere. When a machine dies, staffers get a new one and resume work in minutes.

iQor may be a harbinger of things to come in corporate computing. While traditional laptops and desktops reign supreme in the workplace, accounting for the vast majority of employee computers, companies are increasingly willing to consider alternatives. Some are experimenting with thin clients in a bid to cut costs while many others are betting on netbooks. Employees are spending more work time on smartphones, while Apple’s Mac—once viewed as a machine for artists and educators—is wending its way into corporations. “We’ve got the most diverse offerings of PCs that we’ve ever had,” says Richard Shim, research manager for IDC’s personal computing program, which is now tracking some 20 different kinds of personal computers, up from 16 in 2008.

No single kind of machine has gained wide workplace acceptance. Yet in aggregate, the alternatives reflect a shift in the way corporations think about computing. For instance, the Mac operating system was installed in about 2.7% of corporate computers in July 2008 but the figure had increased to 3.6% by March 2009, according to Forrester Research.

The worldwide thin client market may grow to 7 million units in 2012, from 2.9 million in 2007, according to IDC. Gartner (IT) expects that by 2014, 15% of traditional professional desktop PCs will be replaced by so-called virtual desktops, which also leave most computing and storage tasks to a centrally located computer, rather than maintain them at the employee’s workstation.

Executives at iQor opted for a nontraditional computing environment in large part to save money. “For every dollar I spent buying a PC, I spent 50¢ to the dollar every year maintaining it,” Kapoor says. “There’s a lot of technical expertise that’s required to do that maintenance.” iQor has eliminated its help desk and, before long, expects to cut its IT staff to about a quarter its previous size.

Decisions about what kind of computer to buy will come to a head in 2010 for the multitudes of companies expected to step up hardware purchases as the recession ends. In a November survey of 1,752 IT employees by ChangeWave Research, about 22% of respondents said they plan to increase IT spending in the first quarter of 2010, up from about 10% a year earlier. No longer can chief information officers make a straightforward choice between a desktop or a laptop. Now companies need to assess rising demand for portable computers, smartphones, virtual desktops, and so-called cloud computing, where processing, storage, and other tasks are handled off-site, often by a third-party provider.

Weaning employees off customary equipment isn’t always easy. “Initially [the thin client] wasn’t as fast as our PCs,” says iQor’s Arora. “It was quite frustrating at the beginning,” he says, adding that since the kinks were worked out, everything has functioned as it should. “I feel I have the lashes on my back to show the pain,” CEO Kapoor says.

While growing numbers of companies are toying with alternative computing modes such as thin clients, few have committed to putting thousands of users through the transition, says Annette Jump, research director at Gartner. “In times like this, CIOs are going to experiment with a lot of different technology,” says Ric Echevarria, a vice-president at chipmaker Intel. He says many CIOs conclude that business PCs provide better performance and security and that they’re easier to manage.

No one expects PCs to go away altogether. “Up until now, the center of a corporate user’s universe was their PC, but as we go forward the PC is going to be just one of the key tools that workers use,” says Al Gillen, an analyst at IDC. “The net result is that we’re talking about a PC market that will still grow in size in the future but it won’t be the fastest-growing market anymore—there will be many more options.”

As C.E.O of Quantum Genomics Corporation, Mr. Segard oversees the company’s strategies and financial planning. He has been QGC’s leader since June of 2006. Lionel Segard is a proficient biochemist and is a leading expert in sourcing, developing, and financing innovative biotechnology projects. He has extensive experience in building teams of experts from a variety of backgrounds. Before heading QGC he was C.E.O. of the French National Institute of Health (INSERM). He is a founding member of France’s Strategic Council for Innovation, where he was secretary general from 2003-2005. He began his career as a scientist at IBM. From 1999-2002 he served as C.E.O. of 24/7 Media’s French subsidiary. Around this time he was co-founder of Eurobiobiz, a company that worked with the E.U. to create and develop European Biotechnology companies and advise investment funds.

Lionel Segard graduated in Biochemistry from Université Paris-Sud 11. He prefers physical forms of recreation. He finds skiing exhilarating. Mr. Segard is a practitioner of Aikido, which melds together his inner and corporeal strengths.

Mr. Lionel P. Segard can be found in the Madison Who’s Who Directory and he is looking forward to networking with you.

www.quantum-genomics.com