I’m happy to note that Blogs@Baruch received a mention in the annual Horizon Report, a document produced by Educause, an international non-profit organization “whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.”  Every year the report is read by IT and instructional technology professionals at universities and colleges across the world to get a sense of the current state of technology in higher education, and future directions.  It identifies key trends and critical challenges facing higher education as we attempt to keep pace with the technological needs of modern life, and to continually look for innovative ways to integrate technology into our  functioning and curricula.

The bulk of the study is focused on describing, analyzing, and sharing prime examples of six “technologies to watch,” which are organized by their “time-to-adoption.” Click the image above to download a copy of the report; it’s interesting reading for techies and non-techies alike.  Here’s a summary of the “technologies to watch”:

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less

• Mobiles: making services and information readily available to students and staff on portable devices such as iPhones and Blackberrys.  For an example of what this looks like, see Stanford’s iApps Homepage. 
  
• Cloud Computing: a new way to think about computers, software, and files, which takes advantage of “data farms,” or collections of computers that distribute processing and storage.  You no longer need to run productivity software on your hard drive; Google Apps, for instance, supports word processing, presentations, spreadsheet design, presentations, and calendars that are accessible, shareable, and functional through a web browser, wherever you are.   The vanguard in this development is data intensive cloud computing used by the hard sciences, but this also has implications for students and staff, who, perhaps, need not rely so heavily on Microsoft Office in coming years.  (Though not mentioned in the Horizon Report, last September, CUNY’s Online Baccalaureate began a “Virtual Application Streaming Pilot Project,” a local cloud computing experiment).       
  

Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

• Geo-Everything: mobile phones, cameras, and other handheld devices can now automatically attach “geolocative” information to data they produce, such as photographs and videos.  Researchers and teachers are exploring ways to integrate this functionality into their work via annotated maps, visual narratives, and game-based learning.  See Community Walk and Paint Map for examples.
• The Personal Web: individuals and groups are exploring the “creation of customized, personal web-based environments to support their social, professional, and learning activities using whatever tools they prefer.”  At the Institute, we call this “personal publishing,” and it is the core idea behind Blogs@Baruch, which was mentioned as one of five exemplary “Scholarly Community Blogs” cited in this section.  Other examples of “The Personal Web” include Omeka, an open source software developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, which allows anyone with access to a server and a MYSQL installation to build and share online collections of artifacts; and SMARTHistory, an “edited online art history resource to augment or replace traditional art history texts.”

Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

• Semantic-Aware Applications: the “semantic web,” according to Wikipedia, “is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.” Some refer to this as Web 3.0, or “using the web as what to write with.”  Educause sees the development of “tools that can simply gather the context in which information is couched, and that use that context to extract imbedded meaning.”  Woah.  Few examples of the semantic web in higher education exist.  Patrick Murray-John, an instructional technologist at the University of Mary Washington, is exploring what opportunities new tools that look treat online materials as data may have for the studying of teaching, learning, and thinking.
• Smart Objects: “a smart object is simply any physical object that includes a unique identifier that can track information about the object.”  Think about a package that’s tagged with a bar code that is scanned and allows you to track it; or the library book you have that’s way overdue.  Products based on this idea are entering the consumer market, and could be used in archaeology, medicine, and in combination with Geo-Everything approaches.  An example being developed by researchers at the University of Florida would continuously monitor patients for a variety of conditions as they went about their normal lives.

We’re pleased to be included in a report of this magnitude, and to see such a wide variety of innovative deployments of technology.  These are interesting times!

Although wireless technology seems great, do people really want their information to be fully vulnerable by having it in one chip? read this article for more, and what people are attempting to do with these chips that are hidden in credit cards,

Click here to learn how to dissable the chips!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cufZ9l7ci…

lie detector, does it work? is it safe in the workplace? can we trust it?

RFID chips in plastic cans can tell you about how much you have recycled by logging online!

 http://earth2tech.com/2008/03/17/recycle…

Server logs is created by the owner of the site and it records each files requests from websites. Code page is a new way to collect data. This located on the user’s side of  the transaction. The data collected by tags have several advantages over server log data (which is data that can be a bit more accurate). The data collected by web bugs has smaller storage requirements due to the fact that it stores only relevant data, and when data are collected in this manner, it permits real-time processing and viewing of site metrics. Panel data is the process of using panel data to generate site effectiveness data. which is the same as using panels in the general marketing research process. Specialized software is downloaded onto a participant’s computer to record their click stream data. The main similarity between them is that they all are use for recording peoples activities on website. The differences are that server logs record information on the server side while Coded Data collects information from the browser side. Meanwhile coded pages are more useful than server logs because the user’s IP address may change during the session. In effect it causes the server log to record different visitors. Coded pages have real time viewing and server logs does not because it has to be transferred.

• What are some of the specific metrics that measure Internet traffic, audiences, and campaigns. Which ones do you think are the most important?

Hits- numbers of files requested.

sessions -amount of activity on a site during a specified period.

Page views- times a web page is requested.

Click-through- numbers of times visitors come to the site by clicking on an ad.

Impressions- number of times and ad banner is requested by a browser.

Measuring metrics for Audiences: Unduplicated audience: the visitors that are not “regulars” to the website. Visitors- number of people who visit the site.

Behavior on the site -how many pages were viewed, time on the pages.

Measuring metrics for Campaigns: Offer – promotion (testing shipping cost from free to discount offer). The communication channels can be use as will (mail/email, online banners)

• What kinds of variables are needed to measure the effectiveness of branding efforts on the Internet? Where are these measures obtained?

Sales can be measure of effectiveness if it is a transactional site. Three ways of collecting it: hit counters, server log files, and coded web pages. The audience measures the provided date about the people who visit the site. (by time, members, non members, etc) The traffic can see the document site activity. You can see what things were most requested, the total activity of the site (”click throughs”, time spent on it).

• Think about your own Internet experience, can you think of a specific encounter in which information or knowledge clearly improved your interaction with a human agent? Can you think of an encounter in which the human agent lacked the information or knowledge to make your experience satisfactory? Be prepared to discuss both positive and negative experiences and what could have transformed a negative encounter into a positive one.
  …to be determined…I’m not a fan of human interaction over the internet…its cold and complicated

Build customer scenarios, using data including call center reports, e-mail logs, chat transcripts, and Web site software that can report unusual volumes of activity and uncover patterns in day-to-day service queries. Use the scenarios to determine where intervention can prevent problems, such as common customer mistakes in placing orders.

Make customer service pervasive by fulfilling common requests before the customer even asks and ensuring that service is readily available throughout the value chain.

Design the service process for “seamless escalation.” Translated, this means firms must guide customers to the service they need without having to move through frustrating layers of information that does not fit the needs of the customer

The company should be able to anticipate problems in the customer service process and have these issues solves or ready to be solved before the consumer finds this problem and is ready to address it. If they anticipate a problem, the consumer will have less of a problem trying to solve that problem.To do this, companies must anticipate potential problem areas before they become troublesome, develop solutions, and provide service that exceeds customer expectations.
1. Can you identify any ethical issues that are inherent in sophisticated customer service programs?

Anticipatory customer service builds customer scenarios by using data including call center reports, e-mai logs, chat transcripts, and Website software.  This means that there will be alot of access to the consumers information that the client might want deleted or kept secret. You are using their logging information to help others in a similiar situation which may be unethical.

A server log is where group files created by the server are stored. Every time a browser requests a file, an entry is generated on the server log. A problem with it that each individual graphic on a page gets stored separately,  which would cause a page that has 5 graphics to receive 6 hits on the log, since there is a log for the 5 graphics and then 1 for the page itself.

A coded page involves placing a 1 by 1 pixel image on a web page, and with the cookies on a browser’s computer, it will return data about the users web activities.

Panel data generates site effectiveness by polling willing users who install software on their computers which record their click-stream data. The software is then polled regularly and uploaded.

The coded page would seem to be most useful in this scenario. A server log is rather inaccurate in terms of the data it reports while panel data would be the hardest of the three to acquire, since it depends on cooperation of users who are more likely than not uninterested in lengthening their time on any one website. Because of the ease of its data recording process and the fact that it operates without needing interaction from users, coded pages look to be the best method of data collecting.

What are some of the specific metrics that measure Internet traffic, audiences and campaigns. Which ones do you think are most important?
Some of the metrics that measure internet traffic are report dashboard, marketing campaign reports, browser based reports, path analysis, and segmentation by behavior and channel. The dashboard seems most likely to be the more important of these options. Dashboard is customizable in terms of the summary data it displays. Summary data can always be used to consolidate the amount of browsing a user actually needs to do while giving the most useful data, which has been customized to the users preferences. In lowering navigation between programs and windows, they create a more user-friendly experience.

]]> http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/wymbs/2008/12/22/chapter-11-6/feed/ 0 http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/wymbs/2008/12/22/internet-marketing/ http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/wymbs/2008/12/22/internet-marketing/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:19:03 +0000 maciu20e http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/cwemaciukiewicz/?p=43

• Explain the nature of the consumer adoption process. How is it different from the concept of difussion of innovations?

The consumer adoption process is when a customer comes in contact with a new product and gets some interest after awareness. The customer can sometimes contrast the product with another product. As the customer begins to buy their product, they will begin to purchase other products from the same firm; thus making them(company) a part of the customers life.  The consumer adoption process will explain the customer’s behavior. THis will show us how a consumer adapts to the product and using the product in which it will explain the life of a product over a period of time. The diffusion of innovations is the communication models that consists of four parts: the time, communication channels, innovation, and social system in which the innovation is spreading.

• Define “pervasive computing” in your own words. What changes is it likely to bring about in the way marketers approach the internet?

Pervasive computing - is the concept that explains how a single person has access to multiple computing devices that can be both online and offline. (ex. Blackberry, laptops, cellphone) Marketers will have to keep up with  the changes. New services and products will be a consequence of this evolving access to technology. (ex. RFID)

• Strategic drivers of wireless adoption and explanation for each.