Blog

The majority (80%) of emails sent with coupons received higher open rates and transaction rates than non-coupon campaigns, according to a new report from Experian Marketing Services.

Seventy percent of coupons-using households get their coupons from newspapers. However, the Internet is a growing coupon resource. Over the last three years, the number of households that get their coupons online has increased by 46 percent.

Click rates trended higher for coupon emails, with an average of 17 percent for coupons redeemable online and 24 percent for coupons redeemable in-store.

"For marketers, the data behind our coupon study further validates how email coupons can and should be used to engage customers and drive traffic and sales to other channels," said Matt Seeley, president of Experian Marketing Services‘ .

 "Understanding the purchase drivers and triggers along with the channel preferences of unique customers is an essential element in building loyalty and engagement. Today’s consumers are multi-channel and marketers that acknowledge this will see greater return on their marketing spend."

Other highlights from the study include:

Two-thirds of American households use coupons, with the vast majority of them (87 percent) used to save money and 30 percent used to try a new product or service.

Eighty percent of online coupon mailings garnered higher transaction-to-click rates and transaction rates than the non-coupon campaigns. Of this group, 78 percent also had higher revenue per email.

More households are now using coupons at restaurants/fast food chains. Compared to 2006, there are now 9 percent more households redeeming coupons at restaurants.

Related Articles:

>10 Reasons Social Media Isn’t Replacing Email

>Holiday Shoppers Want Deals Even More Than They Did Last Year

>Majority Of Consumers Want To Interact With Brands Online

Nintendo currently has the motion-controlled console market in a chokehold, but Sony and Microsoft are planning to cut into Nintendo’s slice of the ma…

Boxee, everyone’s favorite HTPC software, just announced that the company just partnered with its first CE company. But that’s all the company is saying. We don’t know anything else. However, there is an event coming up on December 7th right around the corner from John’s house where we should learn more. I’m already excited though. Just think what this means.

Boxee is amazing program and many people geeks are already using it on their Apple TVs, HTPCs, and other devices. But it deserves so much more. The irony here is that the people with the necessary skills to get Boxee on their HDTVs currently probably don’t really need the super-user friendly interface found on Boxee. It’s the people that don’t have any idea what the hell Boxee is that really could benefit from the program.

Boxee is by far the easiest HTPC software to use. But not only that, the system is about as robust as you can ask for with the ability to stream media from countless online video sites and share viewing data with friends. It’s really HTPC software 2.0.

Hopefully the upcoming box will bring all the goods at a fair price. Considering just about any system that can output HD can run Boxee, I wouldn’t expect the box to cost all that much.

Click here to see the video.

As the President was preparing to leave for his trip to Asia this morning, he took a moment to discuss the economy, which will of course have a central role in his discussions with leaders throughout the trip. He made clear that while we have come back from the brink of what many predicted would be a depression, he will not be satisfied until robust job growth returns. Towards that end, he announced that in December he will bring minds and stakeholders together for an intensive jobs forum:

As I’ve said from the start of this crisis, hiring often takes time to catch up to economic growth.  And given the magnitude of the economic turmoil that we’ve experienced, employers are reluctant to hire.

Small businesses and large firms are demanding more of their employees, their increasing their hours, and adding temporary workers — but these companies have not yet been willing to take the steps necessary to hire again.  Meanwhile, millions of Americans — our friends, our neighbors, our family members — are desperately searching for jobs.  This is one of the great challenges that remains in our economy — a challenge that my administration is absolutely determined to meet.

We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times.  But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can [take] to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country.  And that’s why, in December, we’ll be holding a forum at the White House on jobs and economic growth.  We’ll gather CEOs and small business owners, economists and financial experts, as well as representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups, to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again.

It’s important that we don’t make any ill-considered decisions — even with the best intentions — particularly at a time when our resources are so limited.  But it’s just as important that we are open to any demonstrably good idea to supplement the steps we’ve already taken to put America back to work.  That’s what this forum is about.

President Barack Obama makes a statement on the economy in the Diplomatic Room, announcing that a jobs forum will be held at the White House in December, November 12, 2009. (Official White House Photograph by Chuck Kennedy)

The Prime Minister has welcomed leading architects, key members of the construction industry and other figures involved in creating Britain’s public spaces to Downing Street.

Gordon Brown told guests, who included the winners of this year’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) Public Building Award, that British design and architecture are “second to none”.

Speaking at the reception, the Prime Minister said:

“Everywhere I go round the world I see British architecture and I see the fruits of the great talent and ability we have in Britain, and everywhere I go round Britain these days I see the tremendous creativity of British architects and what you’re achieving in new schools, new hospitals, but also in new public as well as private buildings.”

He also met student from Eastbourne College, who won the Royal Institute for British Architect’s (RIBA) 175th Anniversary competition to design a Parliament building of the future.

The PM said:

“It is a really exciting design and it shows huge creativity amongst young people.”

Visit RIBA and CABE’s websites

Via Shocklee comes this story of a company that claims to have created software that can recreate live performances by famous musicians (even dead ones). Basically, the software learns (or so its creators claim) exactly how certain musicians played, and then can mimic that style exactly. Here’s how Pocket Lint describes it:

Zenph Studio’s approach is to work out how the musician and the instrument acts and responds, then get a computer to play that track again as a real-time, real-life performance, which in turn can be recorded using modern techniques. The new track isn’t a re-mastering, but a re-performance, as if the musician was actually playing it even though the artist may or may not be dead.

The technology works by ascertaining how an artist strikes a note and then recreating that note again. For the piano, the company takes into account everything from how an artist strikes a note to their hand movement, how they play when tired (yes, it can recreate fatigue) and even, as for the case of Jerry Lee Lewis, how they play with their feet. For the guitar there is even more to take into account, like pad placement, fingernails, and bending of the strings, the list goes on.

The result is that songs recorded 100 years ago can and will be able to be re-recorded with modern recording equipment, allowing old songs to be revitalised and enjoyed once more “in surround sound or headphone listening”.

And, of course, the technology goes well beyond just remastering. In theory, you could create entirely new recordings by long-dead artists, matching their exact styles. As the article suggests, you could toss John Lennon into a Rolling Stones song.

Of course, if this sounds sorta familiar, that’s because we were just talking about the legal mess associated with Bluebeat.com’s claims that the music it offers from its site for sale are not the original works by bands like the Beatles, but an entirely new recording through a “psycho-acoustic simulation.”

So, now, take this software that supposedly can perfectly mimic a certain musician’s playing, and have it record a song. Say it’s a new song. Who owns the copyright? What if it’s adding John Lennon to a Rolling Stone’s song? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s an old song, updated in some slight way? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s just the same song but “remastered”? Who owns the copyright? The legal questions raised by this kind of software are going to keep copyright lawyers busy for a long, long time.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

NEC subsidiary NEC System Technologies has developed a power strip [JP] with a built-in processor, sensor (the device pictured on the right) and remote control that can cut power consumption by as much as 15% and more. The company says the so-called Green Tap, which sports four outlets, can be used by both offices and private homes.

The device can be used for all kinds of electric appliances. The sensor monitors various data such as the luminosity, temperature, humidity or human heat around it. If you’re out of the room in which you placed your TV, for example, the sensor makes the power strip send an infrared signal to the remote control, which then makes the TV go into standby mode or turn it off completely. If you return, the TV will be turned on again.

The Green Tap works similarly for air conditioners or heaters, automatically setting the temperature in a room, for example. It will even cut off power supply in case of an earthquake (the sensor has a built-in accelerometer).

NEC System Technologies plans to start commercializing its technology in 2011 but hasn’t decided about pricing and other details yet.

According to the latest stats from Compete, Twitter didn’t fare too well in October.  In fact, rather than pull in more unique visitors compared to the previous month, Twitter may have lost some and turned a one-time anomaly into a two-time streak.

As the below graph shows, Twitter’s growth rate slowed quite a bit starting in June.  Compete then recorded that its unique visitor count peaked in August.  September didn’t play out at all in the site’s favor, and in October, both visits and unique visitors dropped by about 2.1 percent.

This left Twitter only slight ahead of where it stood in June.

Meanwhile, Compete stats show that Facebook saw a month-to-month surge of 3.50 percent in terms of unique visitors.  LinkedIn saw a bump of 3.29 percent, too.  Even MySpace, which suffered a hit, only experienced a small drop of 0.65 percent.  So Twitter seems to be on its own here.

Nonetheless, after writing up a similar report from Hitwise late last month, a quote from Evan Williams seemed appropriate, and it may fit here, too.  Williams told Adam Lashinsky, "It’s grown a little bit slower lately, but we have some things in the works that we think will change that."

Related Articles:

> Twitter Continues Retweet Roll-Out

> Twitter Analytics Service Gets Off To Great Start

> New Hitwise Report Exposes Twitter Trouble

Almost buried in a deluge of shovelware and games with “Imagine” in the title, Cing’s Hotel Dusk: Room 215 was a surprisingly well-written and well-ex…

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Boxee, the freeware multimedia management software based on the XBMC framework will soon be getting its own set top box.

Boxee’s Avner Ronen today announced that the startup has signed its first partnership with a consumer electronics hardware company, and that the mockups of the upcoming set-top box will be shown off on December 7.

“This will be the first connected device running Boxee, but the idea is to provide consumers with a way to get Boxee in their living rooms, no matter whether it’s on a Connected TV, game console, set-top box, BluRay player, computer, etc,” Ronen said today. “Our goal is to be on every Connected device in the living room.”

Last week, we saw the first shots of the upcoming Myka ION “nettop box,” which is already running both Boxee and XBMC. We’ve sent out inquiries to find out if the two products are related in any way.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

California Air National Guardsmen based here successfully demonstrated coalition
personnel recovery operations using net enabled data link capabilities for the
first time ever during the U.S. Joint Forces Command exercise, Bold Quest 2009,
held Oct. 27 to Nov. 5…

As the nation honors its past and present servicemembers on this Veterans Day,
many who have worn the uniform of their country will reflect on their service’s
creed and what it means to them…

In 1848, the Oregon Militia launched a campaign against the Cayuse
Indians…

In February 2009, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley said, ‘I am proud to
report that the total force team of regular, Reserve, Guard and civilians, along
with our joint partners, continues to provide world-class air, space and cyber
capabilities for our combatant commanders.’…

Conflict might have been the 20th century norm, but collaboration is the nature of
21st century relationships between the National Guard and other components of the
armed forces, the chief of the National Guard Bureau said here
Monday…

Fox News held a fair and balanced debate over Modern Warfare 2, the popular new FPS that lets you play a CIA operative tasked with helping Russian agents clear terrorists out of an airport. In the game, it turns out that the Russian had turned on you and forced you to kill innocents in the airport. It’s a depiction of USA-funded terrorism. It is not a murder simulator.

The debate here, if it can be called that, seems to rotate around the correlation between video game violence and real violence. The old man in this debate mentioned an American Association of Pediatrics statement. Here it is:

VIOLENT VIDEO GAME CONTENT MORE ATTRACTIVE TO YOUTH

Restrictive age and violent-content labels increased the attractiveness of video games for boys and girls of all age groups, according to a new study. In “Age and Violent-Content Labels Make Video Games Forbidden Fruits for Youth,” researchers tested 310 Dutch children in three groups: 7 to 8, 12 to 13 and 16 to 17 years of age. Participants read fictitious video game descriptions and rated how much or how little they wanted to play each game. An important finding for parents, pediatricians and policy-makers is that age and violent-content labels do not prevent young children from playing games with objectionable content. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Study authors suggest that video games should not be forbidden in Europe or the United States because that will only make the games more attractive, and parents should help in selecting appropriate games for their children to play.

This amazing bit of news – kids like stuff they can’t have – is an obvious by-product of our neophilic instincts and does very little to correlate events like the shooting at Fort Hood and 9/11 to violent video games.

Violence stems from a lack of human interaction in a nurturing and mental health context. To ascribe any sort of behavior to media is a cop out for the pundits and for the aggressor. That said, I would recommend children not watch Fox News because it encourages damn fools to come to presidential speeches wearing guns, but that’s neither here nor there.

Sadly, Jon Cristensen at SlashGamer was too tongue-tied to respond to this criticism and it’s rarely the gamer that comes out ahead in these sorts of ambushes. The bottom line: violent games are not for young kids just as pornography, beer, cigarettes, handguns, lighters, spray paint, and knives are not for kids. There is a time and a context for each of those things and to rail against them shows a lack of judgment and clarity.

UPDATE – A cool response: