Independent Analysis: AI, SaaS, and Revenue Growth Strategy

This article was first published in my Examiner column : Google announced their  Winter Cleaning   on their blog. This is part of their periodic announcements where they shut down products or features that are not popular. In this announcement. Google Calendar will lose some features like Appointment slots and Google recommends " Find a time  view or  Suggested times  as alternatives." Google Sync will not be open to new devices starting January 30th 2013. Google recommends  using CardDAV  specially for syncing Google contacts on your iOS device. I had not used the app Punchd and that is going away. Here is what Google says :  Punchd is an app that keeps loyalty punch cards on your smartphone. On June 7, 2013, we will discontinue the Punchd Android and iOS apps, and merchants will no longer honor Punchd loyalty cards. This was a small winter cleaning and maybe Google has completed their product housekeeping. Have you heard anyt...

I wrote a trends post on Coupon Marketing for 2013 for SmallBizTrends. I talk about how companies like Groupon are evolving their business model with resources to help merchants like GrouponWorks and what I think the evolution of coupon marketing will look like in 2013. Take a look and comment there on the article at SmallBizTrends. On another note hope you saw my post on SheerID talking about Couponless Marketing published by Techcocktail. Of course if you want another way to send a treat read my post on Treater .

I was part of the book Technology and Critical Literacy in Early Childhood  by Vivian Maria Vasquez and   Carol Branigan Felderman From the book description on Amazon : What do new technologies and new forms of communication mean for young children growing up in the 21st century? How are they shaping the mindsets, identities and practices which impact their lives at home and at school? This book explores the intersection of technology and critical literacy, specifically addressing what ICTs afford critical literacy work with young children between ages three to eight. Here is a embed from Google Book Search on the page that includes my relationship to this book: I hope this has tempted you to buy this book specially if you are in education or have kids. Vivian Vasquez is Professor at the American University. I met her at one of the first ever Social event I attended PodCamp DC EDU. I am glad a chance sharing of my experience on Facebook was instrumental in gettin...

At a high level Treater solves several problems, specially with the holidays coming and a lot of us scrambling to make sure we thank all those who helped us be successful this year. I was on the phone with my friend Duncan Alney of Firebelly Marketing and challenged him to send a gift using Treater. Within minutes he was able to send a gift of a coffee to his friend and says it is really easy to use. Admittedly he was hesitant at first wondering if there were merchant partners that Treater had in all parts of the country. After receiving the treat of course his friend was wowed by this and said she was not surprised that Duncan had chosen a treat from Dunkin (get it ;) ) Following treater on Twitter or Facebook is also a treat with all kinds of fun stuff and contests. "Our first contest winner, Julie, had such an amazing Treater story to share," says Kim Bryden . "To enter, you had to say why you deserved free coffee for a week. Julie won with an amazing resp...

15 Marketing Trends In 2013 And How Your Business Can Use Them from Rohit Bhargava Speaking at the Potomac Tech Wire 's "Social Outlook 2013", Rohit Bhargava had given us a preview of his trends for 2013. This is the full version and I am happy to see Infusd included as well under the 'Social Visualization Trend". Rohit's Blog is interesting and you should subscribe to his RSS feed.

The first inklink I got about this deal between Delta and Virgin Atlantic is from an article by Carla Caldwell in the Atlanta Business Chronicle of course In his inimitable style Richard Branson announced Exciting day for @ virginatlantic & @ delta - signals a new era of expansion & effective competition virg.in/dl — richardbranson (@richardbranson) December 11, 2012 I love following International travel and this is exciting to me. I have flown on Virgin Atlantic to London Heathrow and decided never to use a flight through Heathrow to Asia again. It was not Virgin's fault but more of the airport itself. It may have improved a lot since then with the opening of the new terminal. The world of travel gives you more choice now. You can get to Asia faster through the Middle Esst with direct flights from DC to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Bahrain on United, Etihad, Qatar or Emirates. It is usually a 14 hoir flight to the Middle East and then a 3 to 4 hour hop to most places...

This week had it's share of interesting news and here is what got my attention : Google Plus introduced Communities and Geoff Livingston promptly starts Billy Bob Thornton's Marketing Chutzpah . This is another feature that is bringing Google Plus to parity with Facebook, I compare this with Facebook Groups. The blog post announcing the communities also said, " Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network thingy ever. More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google (+1'ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search...), and 135 million are active in just the stream. " This was confusing to me and they could have just said 135 active users. Of course Vic Gundotra , Google's SVP, Engineering is supposed to have said in an interview with Danny Sullivan that his boss asked him to stop tweeting . If you see the tweet in question you can see why. #feb11 "Two turkeys do not make an ...