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The Neuroscience of Retailing: Shopping is about Emotions

Why do people shop?
It’s not just to acquire things they want or need. People shop because it makes them feel good.
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan has an intriguing article in the Wall Street Journal called The Neuroscience of Retailing: Research Shows Shopping Can Make People Euphoric:
Research shows that people often do get a high from shopping [...]

US Internet speeds still lagging

The resurgence of Internet innovation since 2004 (”web 2.0″) has been driven by user-generated content and UI innovations. The secret ingredient for both is widespread broadband Internet access.
Unfortunately America still lags in penetration of fast, broadband Internet. Christopher Rhoads reports in today’s Wall Street Journal that local governments around America are racing to [...]

Proclivity CEO Sheldon Gilbert featured in the New York Times

The good people at Proclivity have gotten a nice bit of PR in the NYT tomorrow: Guessing the Online Customer’s Next Want, interviewing Proclivity’s CEO Sheldon Gilbert. Congratulations to Sheldon and the team!
SilverDock interviewed Sheldon Gilbert about Proclivity at last year’s Shop.org Annual Summit. Sheldon shared his thoughts on Proclivity’s behavioral targeting technology. [...]

The YouTube Top 10 Brands

Social Media Influence has compiled an entertaining summary of the Top 10 corporate brands on YouTube. If you don’t want to read/watch the whole thing, InternetRetailing.net has a helpful summary of the Top 10 Brands on YouTube.
Note that only 5 of the top 10 brand videos were actually produced by the brand (and one [...]

NYTimes: To Raise Shopper Satisfaction, Web Merchants Turn to Videos

Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times reports on how e-commerce retailers are using video to increase customer satisfaction. Some highlights:
Gordon Magee, head of Internet marketing for Drs. Foster & Smith, based in a Rhinelander, Wis., said a transition to video “will be seamless for us.” The company, Mr. Magee said, has in recent [...]

Cringely’s wild speculation: will Apple buy Adobe?

Bob Cringely, everyone’s favorite gossip-columnist-cum-technology-strategist, is back with more juicy gossip about Apple and Adobe. Cringely asserts that Apple is quietly advertising its professional applications business for sale — in order to clear the way for an acquisition of Adobe.
Cringely’s job is to entertain and incite his readers and he’s certainly doing a great [...]

American Eagle bets on Video Shopping for Martin+Osa

There’s a ton of innovation happening in online video for retail these days. In the latest example, Martin + Osa (a new brand from American Eagle) has launched a new website with a really cool video shopping tool called “Shop by Outfit”:

M+O’s Shop by Outfit is a great window into the future of [...]

Flash vs. iPhone — VHS vs. Beta — HD-DVD vs. BluRay

There’s a bunch of excellent commentary and backstory around the web about Adobe’s push for mobile dominance (relevance?) with today’s Open Screen Project announcement.
Ed Burnette at ZDNet points out that pretty much every mobile handset player (Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Samsung, Intel, ARM) has lined up behind Adobe. Who’s left out? Apple and Google. [...]

Adobe opens up Flash — the Flash vs. iPhone battle heats up — where the heck is SilverLight?

Big news today: Adobe is opening up the Flash platform for their new “Open Screen Project“. You know they’re serious because they’re giving up $50 million of annual revenue (see item #4 below).
In geek-speak summary, here’s what Adobe’s doing:

Allowing outside developers to access the guts of the SWF and FLV/F4V viedo specs. This [...]