Devastating. There are no words to effectively convey the human catastrophe suffered in Japan. Engadget would like to express our sincere condolences to those readers personally affected by recent events.
As a tech publication, we're obviously focused on the impact recent events will have on Japan's vast consumer electronics industry — an industry that has responded with millions of dollars in cash, equipment and services to help with the relief effort. Thus far, Canon, Panasonic, and Sony have each pledged ¥300 million ($3.67 million) in donations. Sony is also matching employee contributions as will Mitsubishi who's donating a whopping ¥500 million ($6.1 million) in aid. On the equipment side, Sony is donating some 30,000 radios to relief efforts while Panasonic is providing 10,000 radios, 10,000 flashlights, and 500,000 batteries. NEC, Kyocera, and Epson are each donating ¥100 million in funds, computers, and telecoms and IT equipment.
While it’s still too early to quantify the exact impact the earthquake, tsunami, and ongoing nuclear troubles will have on the global tech industry, the scope of the issues is becoming clearer now that the initial chaos has passed. Click through to see how everything from laptop batteries to iPads are at risk.
Gabriel Dishaw, an artist, sculpted a pair of nikes from old computer parts. We’re talking motherboards, chipsets, power connectors, USB ports, and even an old typewriter case coming together to re-create the Air Max+ 2011. It’s an absolutely stunning piece of art that took 90 hours to complete. [Freshness Mag via Hypebeast]More »
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Marketers plan to increase spending on e-mail and social media marketing more than any other tactics in 2011, according to a recent survey.
As marketers find opportunities to build audiences, conversation and conversions with clever cross-promotion between the two mediums, e-mail and social media tactics are becoming increasingly popular and intertwined.
Incentives Drive Clicks and Conversions
Dingo, a pet food company in Ohio, used Constant Contact to create a promotion that rewarded customers with a $20 coupon if they signed up for the company’s newsletter and “Liked” its Facebook Page, with the catch being that the page needed to get to 5,000 fans (from a base of around 300) for the promotion to kick in. Mike Halloran, the owner of Dingo, says it reached its goal within three days, as pet owners found out about in the Dingo newsletter and forwarded it to their friends and “liked” Dingo on Facebook.
Mark Schmulen, general manager for social media at Constant Contact, says that Dingo’s campaign illustrates a growing trend among customers. “Of all channels, e-mail marketing and social media go hand in hand better than any other,” he said. “Getting your customers to share your message with friends is the most effective way to grow your business.”
Gary Levitt of upstart e-mail marketing provider Mad Mimi sees a similar trend. He cites one of his customers, bag and accessory retailer Timbuk2, as a great example of how to integrate e-mail and social. The company’s strategy is “to use a Facebook application to handle [contests] rather than setting up and optimizing a landing page of its own.”
The company’s e-mail newsletter — which has more than 100,000 subscribers – recently featured a promotion to win a free bike, helmet and messenger bag to fans of the company’s Facebook Page. So far, the opportunity has driven more than 6,500 clickthroughs to the giveaway, versus just nine clicks (yes, nine) to the company’s prompt that encourages e-mail subscribers to become Facebook fans.
Promotion Works Both Ways
These promotions can also work the other way, however. Shoe retailer Crocs not only promotes social media through its e-mail newsletter, but also promotes its e-mail newsletter through social media. For example, the company will inform its Twitter followers or Facebook fans about a special offer that’s only available to newsletter subscribers. The company also lets Facebook fans sign up for its e-mail newsletter from an app that’s built into its page, something that Andrea Stow, senior global eMarketing manager for Crocs, says has resulted in a “gigantic leap in our e-mail subscribers.”
Stow continues, “Our strategy is understanding and knowing that there might be duplicates [subscribers to multiple mediums] — but the more customer touch points, the better conversion we’ll have.” Jeff Rohrs, vice president of marketing at ExactTarget, the company that powers Crocs’ e-mail marketing, adds, “What I really like that Crocs is doing is they realize they don’t have to abandon the channel — it’s not an either/or scenario. You work them all together and you end up with more subscribers, fans and followers overall.”
That reach, says Stow, gives Crocs the ability to stay in touch with customers year round — important for a company that only expects its average customer to buy new shoes two or three times per year at most.
E-mail Will Only Get More Social
Although companies like Crocs, Timbuk2 and Dingo are still relatively early movers in the integration of e-mail and social media — Schmulen believes only 10% of Constant Contact customers are using social media to its full potential — the pace of evolution in the space is only going to accelerate.
Both Constant Contact and ExactTarget made big bets on social last year with their acquisitions of NutshellMail and CoTweet, respectively, and both now speak of a next wave of innovation built on more precise targeting based on social data. To that end, Constant Contact acquired BantamLive in February, a deal that Schmulen says will let his customers “see who’s talking about [them] and who the actual influencers are.” Similarly, Plaskoff of ExactTarget says his company is working on tools that leverage user profile data through Facebook’s open graph API.
Concludes Schmulen, who was also a co-founder of NushellMail, “What we’re seeing today [is the] social call to action [becoming] the primary call to action inside of newsletters.” Expect that trend to continue as marketers start to realize the benefits of doing so and technology providers continue to integrate e-mail and social tools into one package.
It’s here. Two years after IE8 was revealed, Microsoft will release the final version of Internet Explorer 9.0 during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival at 9PM PDT. For most of the world, that means it won’t be available until Tuesday, March 15:
US PDT
March 14, 21:00
US MDT
March 14, 22:00
US CDT
March 14, 23:00
US EDT
March 15, 00:00
UTC/GMT
March 15, 04:00
UK / Ireland
March 15, 04:00
Europe
March 15, 05:00
Eastern Europe
March 15, 6:00
Moscow
March 15, 7:00
India
March 15, 09:30
China
March 15, 12:00
Japan
March 15, 13:00
Australia AWST
March 15, 12:00
Australia ACST
March 15, 13:30
Australia AEST
March 15, 14:00
New Zealand
March 15, 17:00
(If you’re excited, it’s worth checking an hour or two before those times.)
Most of us have experienced the beta or release candidate versions of IE9 so there are unlikely to be any major surprises. However, this is the first version which most home and business users will install. Whatever your opinion of Internet Explorer, it remains the world’s most-used browser and IE9 will become an important part of your development life.
There are several important questions to ask yourself:
Should you install IE9 now or wait until a significant proportion of clients have migrated?
If you’ve been holding off using HTML5 and CSS3, is it now time to start investigating those technologies?
Which modern technologies can be used in IE9 and — more importantly — what’s missing?
Will you install IE9 today? Keep an eye on SitePoint for IE9 reviews, tips and tutorials coming soon…
One of the things I find myself thinking about a lot lately is how people start their mornings. My last few mornings have been filled with upheaval: packing, cleaning embarrassing piles of (previously) hidden dust and dismantling everything I worked so hard to hang on our apartment walls (Maybe a little too hard. Most of these screws are unwilling to dislodge themselves). The one thing I can cling to when my life feels a little upside down is music. Food used to fill that “I need comforting” spot, but I’m trying to be a bit healthier so I’ve gone back to my college DJ roots and have been crafting carefully curated playlists to ease myself into the next few days that will involve packing and unpacking my entire life. I thought I’d start off today but sharing the music that’s been echoing through my living room lately, but I’d really love to know what music gets you up and going every morning. Whether you listen in your car on the way to work, pump something through your headphones in the subway or just migrate to the home office and turn on the speakers- what songs help you tackle a new day? I think music is one of the (often overlooked) key elements in how we make ourselves feel at home, so I’d love to hear what some of you are listening to*.
Feel free to leave Youtube or iTunes links below– I’d love everyone to be able to click through and have a reader-generated playlist of great morning songs. [Image above from the Makelike wallpaper collection] xo, grace
*AC is sharing his morning mix after the jump, too! It seems like our house is on the rockin’ side this morning…*
Grace’s Morning Mix (Mood: Get up! Start Packing!)
Wild Flag- I think this is “Endless Talk”. They don’t have an album yet and this is the only song I couldn’t ID from the show and other live videos. I was about two feet from Carrie during this performance- it was amazing. Everything about this band and their live shows makes me want to not only start the day but tackle it full force. It also makes me want to start a band. If anyone in Greenpoint plays drums…
Superchunk- “My Gap Feels Weird”. Click here to read Superchunk’s “Sights & Sounds” column on D*S. That post won me (Ok, maybe just Rachael) major cool points with AC, who is a massive Superchunk fan. I have a hard time listening to this song and sitting still. It typically leads to me putting down my laptop (always a good thing) and jumping around the room like an idiot.
CLICK HERE for the rest of my morning playlist (along with AC’s playlist) after the jump!
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