- Building Tomorrow’s Organization – without today’s IT?September 2, 2010A few weeks ago I wrote about The diminishing role of IT and the CIO. That post struck a nerve with quite a few readers so I wanted to expand on the topic. I thought about a case study of some fo...
- Marketing and IT share a common fearSeptember 4, 2010Change is scary. Big, organization-altering, career-shifting change is downright terrifying. While it can be fun to blog about disruptive innovation and creative destruction — commenting as an obs...
- Google Experimenting With 20 Search Results Per Page?September 4, 2010You have always (well for as long as I can remember) been able to select the number of search results shown by Google. The default is 10 Then they add in various other things like news, video, images,...
- Technology’s Unintended Consequence: The Elusive WorkerSeptember 4, 2010Marketers often struggle with the “elusive consumer” — a term used to describe the increasing difficulty of targeting potential customers and capturing their diffusing attention. Now it’s time...
- VMware vCloud Director: Networking Overview with ExampleSeptember 2, 2010Click image for larger version. There are many concepts in VMware vCloud Director that will be new to even some of the most seasoned VMware administrators. As time permits over the coming weeks, I...
- IBM Takes the Cloud to the US Open - eWeekSeptember 3, 2010News 8 AustinIBM Takes the Cloud to the US OpeneWeekTo help drive home its point that IBM is serious about cloud computing, Big Blue hosted an event at the US Open to show its cloud prowess in action....
- Google Improves Control of PPC Exposure With Modified Broad MatchSeptember 3, 2010by Mike Fleming If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad. You also know what they mean and how your keyword...
- iTunes Ping’s Latest Problem: SpamSeptember 3, 2010iTunes Ping is apparently full of spam, yet another hiccup in Apple’s road to establishing a legitimate social network.As Sophos notes on its blog, a barrage of spam links are hitting the music-them...
- More Thoughts On Demand: A Referendum of Sorts on Google and SocialSeptember 3, 2010It's been nearly a month since Demand filed its S1, and I promised you all a longer look after my initial posting. Here are some thoughts now that I've had a chance to digest the document. A caveat: I...
- Quick Takes: Readings on The New Intelligent EnterpriseJuly 20, 2010Quick Takes is our summary of news and readings in management, sustainability and intelligent enterprise. New Brynjolfsson piece: “Cloud computing and electricity: beyond the utility model” In the...
- Content is driving cloud computing's real expansionSeptember 3, 2010This week, we tuned in to learn about Apple's newest releases, including an upgrade to Apple TV. It joins the ranks of Google TV, as well as Web content clients from Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube inclu...
- what's with the ugly carpet in vegas?September 3, 2010One thing is consistent throughout each and every casino in Las Vegas: over the top ridiculously ugly carpet. Chris Maluszynski has managed to put together an entire photo gallery devoted to this carp...
- The Truth About E-mail: We Check It All the Time [STATS]September 2, 2010E-mail has invaded every aspect of our lives. We don’t need a survey to tell us as much, but new research from Xobni and Harris Interactive confirms that we’re not alone in dealing with e-mail ove...
- Facebook Testing Subscriptions to Other People; This Will Change How We Use FacebookSeptember 2, 2010Facebook has confirmed that it is testing a new feature that will allow any user to subscribe to notifications of another user's activities through the same interface that new comments and accepted fr...
- B2B Search and Content Marketing: Getting Found by ProspectsSeptember 2, 2010If weve said it once, weve said it tons of times here on the Savvy B2B Marketing blog – to connect with today's B2B buyers, you need to produce and make easily accessible a range of content that gui...
- Map Your Customer's ExperienceSeptember 2, 2010Have you ever taken a close look at the experience your customers have with you? The big concept of Two Hat Marketing is for all of us responsible for marketing our businesses (and that would be every...
- The Complete List Of “Categories Of Buyer Resistance?”September 2, 2010This is a follow up to my recent post: “The Real Reasons Why Buyers Resist Object”
- How to Ensure Your Website Gets Some ActionSeptember 1, 2010When it comes to getting your visitors to take action, whether that be a sale, download, request, or call, it’s your content that is going to either make it happen or leave people blowing in the win...
- How to Grow Traffic to Your BlogSeptember 2, 2010Of all topics, this is one of the perennials. People want more traffic, more attention, more awareness to their blog. It’s fair. We work hard on our blogs. We want more attention and traffic. If y...
- Twitter: iPad app reviewSeptember 2, 2010Twitter has just released a new official version of its app for the iPad (iTunes link), and it looks like a strong competitor for Tweetdeck. I've been trying out the new app which, according to the...
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William Toll’s Recent Readings
William Toll’s Recent Reading
- End of life ESXAugust 31, 2010ESX 4.1 is the latest update, there will be no more updates than that. A strong message is being pushed to the customers about the End of the life the ESX 4.X classic. The full blown...
- 3Par Acquisition: The Future For The Storage IndustryAugust 31, 2010The ongoing battle for 3Par by HP Dell tells us much more about the state of the IT Industry than just the desires of two companies to acquire some interesting storage tech. It sig...
- A way out of the private cloud dead endAugust 31, 2010A trend circulating among both the cloud computing upstarts and their corporate equivalents is the ability to offer a private cloud infrastructure with a clear and easy glide path to public clouds. We...
- Mobile SERPS & UsabilityAugust 30, 2010Posted by SuzzicksSo here is the deal: Traditional websites frequently rank in mobile search results – especially if you are searching from a SmartPhone. What you may not realize is that the convers...
- Gmail Priority InboxAugust 31, 2010Last year, I posted about a new Gmail feature that will prioritize important messages. This feature will be available soon and it's called Priority Inbox."Priority Inbox is a new view of your inbox th...
- What’s the Difference Between CRM and Marketing Automation in B2B Demand Generation? (DG)August 31, 2010I tackled this important topic last Wednesday in a new post on the Silverpop Demand Generation (DG) blog – a post that also was highlighted on the Savvy B2B Marketing blog in their weekly roundup. S...
- Gmail Priority Inbox: The Un-Spam FilterAugust 31, 2010Google this evening has launched what it calls “priority inbox” for Gmail. It uses a variety of algorithmic and machine learning techniques to automatically capture and organize “important” em...
- RSA Kicks Off Cloud Strategy With Product LaunchAugust 30, 2010RSA launched a Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance, a security and compliance solution for cloud environments, which partners say could be one more arrow in their quiver but won't radically cha...
- How Facebook Scales with Open SourceAugust 31, 2010When it comes to having to scale your service to handle ever-increasing data demands, there may be no better example to look at than Facebook. The social networking giant has grown from a service for...
- VMworld - Future of NetworkingAugust 30, 2010First session this morning at VMworld was by Howie Xu, RD Director, Virtualisation and Cloud Platform at VMware. Howie is the networking futures guys. There was much expectation for this session with...
- Thought Leadership Interview: Jep Castelein Provides Tips on Improving Lead Nurturing ProgramsAugust 24, 2010The 6 Steps Jep Castelein shared in his section of The Quintessential Marketing Automation Guidebook discussed how to find untapped revenue in your lead database. Building higher eng...
- Online Marketing Anti-Pattern #2: Tis just another PR outletAugust 30, 2010Last week, I started this series of marketing topics to highlight practices that are not in keeping with the times or were at best misdirected efforts. I call them Anti-Patterns. For each of those I p...
- Infographic Case Study: Links from CNN, HuffPost, Wikipedia, etcAugust 30, 2010I love this infographics case study from Wordstream about how they just got into using infographics as an internet marketing tool. I’ve been recommending friends of mine to small...
- 4 Social Media Lessons From Cisco Systems and #TechChatAugust 30, 2010Marketing at the enterprise level has a unique set of challenges—lack of agility, decentralized teams, and long approval processes—to name a few. Lucky for us, we had the opportunity to chat wit...
- On Retargeting: Fix The ConversationAugust 30, 2010The New York Times published a story on the practice of retargeting today, entitled "Retargeting Ads Follow Surfers to Other Sites." While not nearly as presumptively negative as the WSJ series on mar...
- Cloud is not Rocket Science but it is Computer ScienceAugust 30, 2010That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard - it means it’s a different kind of hard. For many folks in IT it is likely you might find in their home a wall on which you can find hanging a dip...
- Intel Pays $1.4 Billion for Infineon Wireless SolutionsAugust 30, 2010Intel has acquired Infineon's Wirless Solutions (WLS) business for $1.4 billion. WLS, which provides cellular platforms to global phone makers, will operate as a standalone business, and will continue...
- Managing Service Levels in the CloudAugust 30, 2010Listen to my conversation with Dan Foody, vice president of product management at application infrastructure software vendor Progress Software. In this podcast, learn about the role of service level...
- Craftsmanship in Designing WebsitesAugust 30, 2010With high pressure from clients and crazy development schedules for web designers, it is easy to forget to spend the proper amount of time crafting a design. In the interest of speeding things up, it...
- Content Marketing and the Junta 42August 29, 2010Back in 2008, Joe Pulizzi started looking in-depth at blogs that focused on content marketing. He found 81 blogs - and the Junta 42 were the viewed as the leaders in what was then an emerging field. ...
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William Toll’s Recent Reading
- Disaster Recovery: How to Satisfy Requirements and Meet Changing NeedsAugust 26, 2010- Greg Ewald, vice president of marketing, SteelEye Technology (www.steeleye.com), says:How do you know if your disaster recovery plan is up to date?Businesses should determine if the data protection...
- Weekly Poll: What Are The Top 5 Worst Terms in the World of the Cloud?August 26, 2010Terms that come to describe any new technology can be vague and annoying, especially when marketers start adding a bit of spin. So we decided to ask for your feedback to see what you think are the wo...
- Total Coverage Analytics for Social Media ROI – are you capturing all the data you need?August 26, 2010I’m thinking about the webinar I’ll be giving with Compete.com on September 28th (formal announcement will be forthcoming soon) and “ultralight” data not normally collected in...
- Walmarting the CategoryAugust 25, 2010PG is slashing prices and attacking new markets worldwide in a dash for improved sales and increased share. I don’t quite understand how this is a business strategy for any business other than Wal...
- Is Digg digging itself into a hole with its new design?August 26, 2010Digg may have been a Web 2.0 pioneer, but out of all the mature startups loosely grouped into the 'social media' category, it's one of the companies some might argue is well past its prime. While othe...
- Gartner: Virtualization, U.S. Recovery Drive Strong 2Q Server SalesAugust 25, 2010Instead of virtualization technology cutting the number of servers required, indications now are that customers may actually be buying more servers to meet new needs for virtualized environments.
- Gmail Voice and Video Chat - make calls from GmailAugust 25, 2010I live in Gmail. I travel a lot and need to communicate with people all over the world. Regular email and Instant Messaging is great, but sometimes a phone call or video conference is necessary. Now G...
- Geeky Startup OpenDNS Gets More Than 50,000 New Users After David Pogue WriteupAugust 25, 2010Here's the power of David Pogue- and Walt Mossberg-types: In the last week or so after getting a wet kiss from the NYT's Pogue, geeky tech startup OpenDNS has signed up more than 50,000 new accounts,...
- Why Google Has No GameAugust 25, 2010A few weeks ago, I wrote Pandas and Lobsters: Why Google Cannot Build Social Applications, a post that dissected why Google doesn’t get social. Since then, Google appears to have stepped up its effo...
- Case Study: Zecco's 300% lift from Promoted TweetsAugust 25, 2010Twitter's new Promoted Tweets ad platform may be new, but it's already gotten top ratings from advertisers. Online investment brokerage Zecco announced Promoted Tweets has increased the company's enga...
- the peaks and valleys of media consumptionAugust 25, 2010A nice visual from the recent Ofcom UK report on the media industry and consumption of media. This visual looks at the typical daily consumption of media and shows it as a series of peaks and valleys...
- Lead Generation Metrics: Ramp, Quota & ProductivityAugust 25, 2010I'm very excited to announce the release of the 2010 Lead Generation Metrics Compensation Report focusing on the “pipeline development" Inside Sales function. Let me share three data points...
- How Many Companies Has Google Bought?August 25, 2010One of the best ways to track Googles strategies is through visualizing analyzing their acquisitions. Which is what the following image helps you do. Click on it for the full enlarged version :) vi...
- Study: META Descriptions Very Important Search Results Click Through RatesAugust 25, 2010Dynamical.biz translated a new eye tracking study done Spanish (PDF here) of how searchers look at the search results on a search results page. Here is the break down of the study, but before you loo...
- SES San Francisco 2010 Wrap-UpAugust 25, 2010QR code on the side of a building? Geek cool. Last week the West Coast SES Conference and Expo moved from San Jose back to its roots in San Francisco. It was a well attended show (5,000+ in 2009 vs....
- spoilers all over nycAugust 25, 2010The MTA in NYC has installed new signage across many of the subway stations that alerts riders to the arrival time of the next train. Some people would consider this a spoiler alert...and have taken...
- Security? what security?August 25, 2010By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management RFID, Bloor ResearchPosted: 25th August 2010Copyright Bloor Research © 2010 Advertisement: We live in a world now that whatever you read yo...
- A Look At Hidden Costs In Cloud SolutionsAugust 25, 2010In a recent post David Pallman takes a look at the hidden costs of cloud based solutions. He examines and identifies these commonly overlooked costs involved in cloud based solutions specifically in t...
- Server sales surge in second quarter; HP, Dell gain, says IDCAugust 25, 2010The server upgrade cycle continues to chug along with global sales rising 11 percent in the second quarter to $10.9 billion, according to International Data Corp. (IDC) data. Hewlett-Packard retained...
- 5 Actionable Takeaways from SES San Francisco 2010August 24, 2010Posted by jennitaLast week I covered SES San Francisco for SEOmoz. Every time I attend a conference, I try to go to sessions that will have information I can bring back to the community. Sometimes I l...
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William Toll’s Recent Readings
- The Web is Dead: Long Live the Cloud - ReutersAugust 20, 2010RediffThe Web is Dead: Long Live the CloudReutersBernard Golden is CEO of consulting firm HyperStratus, which specializes in virtualization, cloud computing and related issues. ...Dead-tree magazine c...
- Software Is The New HardwareAugust 20, 2010Today Intel announced that it is buying McAfee for $7.7 billion. This acquisition made people scratch their heads. Why McAfee?The obvious arguments are that Intel has hit the growth wall and organic g...
- 10 Common Mistakes Made by API ProvidersAugust 20, 2010Twitter was one of the first to see what happened when traffic to the site came more from the API than the Web. It now has more than 65 million tweets per day, most coming from services that use the...
- Foursquare Experiences Record Signups After Launch of Facebook PlacesAugust 20, 2010Foursquare is experiencing record interest in the wake of the launch of Facebook Places; on Thursday, the location service broke its record for new user signups.Facebook Places brings checkins and loc...
- customers don’t go to your site for the features, they go for the contentAugust 19, 2010I really enjoyed Karen McGrane’s talk (embedded below). Some of my favorites: “People don’t go to your site to look at your templates. They go for the content.” “Emphasize the real goal: no...
- Intel's doomed McAfee forayAugust 20, 2010CEOs, like the rest of us, have their pursuits. Mark Hurd’s was Jodie Fisher. Paul Otellini’s is McAfee. Let’s hope the breakup doesn’t cost Paul his job.
- 10 Common Mistakes Made by API ProvidersAugust 20, 2010Twitter was one of the first to see what happened when traffic to the site came more from the API than the Web. It now has more than 65 million tweets per day, most coming from services that use the...
- Cleaner, Easier, I Dig the New DiggAugust 20, 2010There was a time when a story on the front page of Digg was the holy grail for any web publisher. But in more recent months, the average Joe has moved on from the once and powerful...
- Internet Marketing Research: A behind-the scenes look at MarketingExperiments Web clinicsAugust 20, 2010“Our job is to help you do your job better.” That’s how I sign every MarketingExperiments Journal email, and it’s a mission all of us at MarketingExperiments take very seriously. One of the ma...
- Viridity Chats with IDC About the Future of the Data CenterAugust 19, 2010Today, Michael Rowan, CTO and Co-founder, Viridity and Michelle Bailey, Research VP, Data Center Trends and Strategies, IDC spoke about The Future of Energy Efficiency in the Data Center. According to...
- Viridity Software Raises $8M for Server EfficiencyAugust 19, 2010Viridity Software says it can take the sensors out of data center energy management. On Thursday, the Burlington, Mass.-based startup announced it has raised an $8 million second round of funding from...
- StumbleUpon Comes to the iPhone and AndroidAugust 19, 2010Content discovery and recommendation engine StumbleUpon is bringing its “best of the web” finds to mobile devices with new iPhone and Android applications.The web version, which enables its userba...
- Virtualizing the University Computer LabAugust 20, 2010We are beginning to hear announcements fairly frequently about the states, school districts, and universities that are moving to the cloud for their email and productivity tools. As schools and univer...
- Groupon Smashes Sales Records with Nationwide Gap DealAugust 20, 2010Groupon launched its first national deal today, partnering with Gap to offer $50 worth of apparel and accessories at the low price of $25.The site is known for its local daily deals, often offered by...
- SaaS and the changing face of software salesAugust 19, 2010Will the future leave any room for traditional enterprise software sales engagements, or will everything end up as SaaS? Visit website for full story...
- Business Blogging Set To Grow By 25% In Two YearsAugust 19, 2010A new study from eMarketer estimates that 43% of US companies will be blogging by 2012. And that one third of US companies are currently blogging. No word on their level of engagement or activity, bu...
- What the New Digg Means For Your BusinessAugust 19, 2010Digg has been notorious for driving a server-crashing influx of traffic to web properties worldwide. The social news site has been able to drive anywhere from 1,000 to over 1.3 millio...
- Orleans: Microsoft's next-generation programming model for the cloudAugust 19, 2010One of Microsoft’s biggest selling points for its cloud platform is that developers can use .Net, Visual Studio and other programming tools they already know to write Azure applications. But that’...
- The necessity of PaaS: Will Microsoft be the Singapore of Cloud Computing?August 19, 2010From ancient Mesopotamia to, more recently, Holland, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore and Korea, the success of many societies has been in part credited to their lack of natural resources. The theory bei...
- CloudAudit Effort Gaining MomentumAugust 19, 2010A month ago we wrote about the OpenStack announcement as a potential game changer for cloud security. This week the CloudAudit effort released their first set of deliverables, which did not generate...
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William Toll’s Recent Readings
- Off in the Clouds – SecurelyAugust 16, 2010I’m taking a few weeks of vacation and have spent most of the past few weeks using the time between calls with Gartner clients to move along our upcoming “Securing and Managing the Cloud Spotlight...
- Bowing to IT demands, cloud providers move to reserved instancesAugust 18, 2010With the rising interest in private cloud computing, many public cloud providers are moving to service offerings that promise reserved portions of clouds they are calling reserved instances or sometim...
- Content Marketing Optimization — SES San FranciscoAugust 17, 2010Awesome – got my first article off to Virginia and Susan 30 seconds after that session ended. Probably means there are sixty issues they have to fix. But that’s life because I had...
- Top 10 tips & things you need to know about AdWords RemarketingAugust 17, 2010This is a guest post from Rob Hillyard at Return on Digital. Create a brand new campaign for Remarketing. This will enable you to monitor how everything is doing much easier than running it within a...
- Phones, TVs, Cars Leading the Way to 22 Billion Internet-Connected ThingsAugust 18, 2010The number of devices connected to the Internet is expected to hit five billion this month, says IMS Research, and will reach 22 billion by 2020. About one billion computers, laptops and modems were...
- Is Silicon Valley Focusing Too Much On Consumer Tech?August 17, 2010Steve Jobs said that to Time magazine soon after launching the iPod in 2001. We didn’t pay much attention back then; after all, Apple was considered a dying vendor. But a decade later, the state...
- Search: Where to Next — SES San FranciscoAugust 18, 2010Moderator: Graham Mudd, Vice President, Search Media, comScore, Inc. Speakers: Brian Kaminski, Chief Operating Officer, iProspect Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and CMO, Acquisio Shashi S...
- Developing Great ContentAugust 18, 2010This is a live blog post by guest blogger, Imelda Khoo. Imelda is the E-Marketing Manager at Tektronix, responsible for global SEO, PPC and social media. Imelda blogs at SEM Booty and is also on Twitt...
- Evernote Surpasses 4 Million UsersAugust 18, 2010Evernote’s growth isn’t showing signs of slowing down; the popular note-taking software now has 4 million users.It was just three and a half months ago when Evernote surpassed 3 million users and...
- Educating your salespeople about the new B2B sales cycleAugust 17, 2010I spent most of my career in B2B marketing, although for four years I was in B2B sales. So Ive seen both sides. Back in the mid 1990s it was hard to find evidence of love between marketing and sales...
- Apple Snags 48% of Mobile Profit PieAugust 17, 2010Apple raked in 48 percent of the worldwide mobile market’s earnings before interest and taxes in the second quarter of 2010, mocking the relevance of market share figures, where it’s still a rel...
- Getting to know you at AdSense In Your City: BostonAugust 16, 2010Last week I was given the opportunity to attend the Boston AdSense In Your City event. Though Boston technically isn’t my city (I’m a New Yorker by birth) I can see why so many of our fabulous pub...
- How Cloud Computing Impacts the Cash Needs of StartupsAugust 17, 2010Cloud computing has been a key enabling factor in the latest generation of web startups, letting them start with small amounts of capital and scale quickly in response to demand. Startups don’t care...
- Techonomy: a new philosophy of progressAugust 8, 2010Last week, I had the privilege to attend the first edition of Techonomy, a fantastic new conference blurring technology and economy with an optimistic balance that technology in its broadest sense (n...
- Google Launches Enhanced CPCAugust 17, 2010Google released their latest addition to the bidding features family - Enhanced CPC. It's been in beta since March, but Enhanced CPC officially launched yesterday, August 16th. The premise of the t...
- Customer Loyalty in the Age of FoursquareAugust 16, 2010
- White Paper: Using Social Media in Product ManagementAugust 17, 2010brainmates has published a white paper entitled “Collaborative Conversations: Using social media in product management” Click the link at the bottom of this page to download your...
- Slideshare Announces Freemium Business Model – Follows Hootsuite and RedditAugust 17, 2010“Freemium will be the new Premium” – These were the words by Mr. Vishal Gondal, Founder CEO, UTV Indiagames during the Conference on Digital Media By CII. This was a very interesting and true s...
- Can you use it? Find out with the Digital Copyright SliderAugust 17, 2010If you've come across something you'd like to to use in another work; for example, a book published in the early 1920's, and you're not sure if it's under some kind of prohibitive copyright, you can u...
- How To Minimize Errors And Create More Usable Websites: Part IAugust 16, 2010Errors happen. It’s inevitable that any system will fail at times. Often failures are attributed to human error. Most, though are really due to design errors. As designers what can we do to minimize...
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William Toll’s Recent Readings
- Market Research for Link Building - Who You Can Get Links FromAugust 15, 2010Posted by Paddy_MooganFollowing on from my debut SEOmoz blog post on How to Get Links in Tough Industries, I wanted to go into a bit more detail about the processes you can use to find people who are...
- Inside Look at PostRank AnalyticsAugust 16, 2010PostRank is a leading provider of content engagement and real-time data analysis solutions. I was able to catch up PostRank's Community Manager, Melanie Baker, who gave me a great walk through of Post...
- Optimization Testing: Should You Avoid Testing During a Traffic Spike?August 16, 2010In our most recent webinar Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing, an audience member asked a great question about site testing near a product launch. A perfect indus...
- Good Post - Overcoming Fear Of The CloudAugust 15, 2010In my perusing of various blogs and articles this morning I ran across this one, "Overcoming Fear Of The Cloud" A paragraphs in the article says: "The fears range from the personal (Will I lose my jo...
- How To Find a Customer in a Divided IT UniverseAugust 16, 2010The last few years have seen a significant shift in the locus of innovation, which is having a meaningful impact on emerging vendors and startups. It used to be, if we wanted to talk to cutting edge u...
- Facebook to Remove Boxes This WeekAugust 15, 2010In a blog post over the weekend, Facebook announced that it will remove application boxes from its service on August 23. As we explained recently, boxes enable Facebook users to display third party co...
- Brunch n Brains: John Cleese on CreativityAugust 15, 2010Thanks to Idea Champions' Heart of Innovation for sharing this video of John Cleese on creating conditions of creativity: Are you providing your creative muse boundaries of time and space?
- Hidden Costs in the Cloud, Part 1: Driving the Gremlins Out of Your Windows Azure BillingAugust 15, 2010grem•lin (?gr?m l?n) –noun 1. a mischievous invisible being, said by airplane pilots in World War II to cause engine trouble and mechanical difficulties. 2. any cause of trouble, difficulties,...
- Beware! The Social Media Dog Strategy MentalityAugust 15, 2010With over 13,500 views on YouTube, my dog Max thinks hes a social media rock star pup. Shh.. dont tell him there are videos with millions of views and he is at most a blip on the celebrity circuit. It...
- The internet marketing guide to infographics.August 15, 2010It’s well recognised in the marketing community that beautiful infographics are to backlinks, what diamonds are to Naomi Campbell.Information graphics or infographics for short are hot to trot onl...
- Who Do You Trust?August 15, 2010It's been well documented that people don't trust corporations as much as they used to. But who do they trust? It's largely people from two categories: third party experts (academics, some media sourc...
- Google Analytics Intelligence Gets New Alerts FeaturesAugust 14, 2010Google has announced the launch of new AdWords Alerts and more options in Custom Alerts in Google Analytics Intelligence. If a user has their Analytics and AdWords accounts linked, Intelligence will...
- 4 Tools for Assessing Cloud PerformanceAugust 15, 2010As more and more companies begin offering cloud-based services and, in turn, as more and more companies begin to migrate to the cloud, there's an increasing demand for tools to monitor and assess clou...
- What's Next For Oracle?August 14, 2010Watching Larry Ellison and Oracle over the years as it has morphed itself is a real study in market dynamics. Its transformation from database company through middleware provider to now being a clou...
- The Value Of BurstingAugust 13, 2010Having things burst in the data center does not seem like a very good idea but the term really applies to allowing components of the data center to expand on the fly when there is a peak load and then...
- Oracle v Google: Why?August 14, 2010When Android debuted in 2007, I couldn’t figure out how Google had managed to apply an Apache license to the project. Java, like Linux, was governed by the GPL and thus incompatible...
- Leading in Listening: Complimentary Report on Listening PlatformsAugust 4, 2010For those of you who follow our @converseon tweets and/or keep track of the Social Media Listening space, there was some important news recently. In an industry where it is becoming increasingly di...
- How I Understand Customer Relationship Management (CRM)August 14, 2010Keep in mind when reading this that my background IS NOT in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), however as someone who is very involved with Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) it’s...
- AT&T: Yep, Wireless is DifferentAugust 14, 2010The net neutrality debate sparked (most recently) by Google and Verizon earlier this week continues. Now ATT has weighed in, and unsurprisingly it appears to agree with the companies. One of the big...
- Twitter Goes Mobile on the WeekendAugust 13, 2010SocialFlow, a New York-based social media marketing startup backed by Betaworks recently studied one of its clients with more than 500,000 Twitter followers and came up with some unique lessons. The c...
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William Toll’s Recent Readings
- Despite the promise of cloud, are we treating virtual servers like physical ones?August 11, 2010RightScale had some great data about usage of Amazon EC2 recently that described how cloud computing is evolving, or at least how their portion of that business is progressing. At first glance, it cer...
- Survey Finds Enterprise Is Overwhelmingly Open Source [Infographic]August 11, 2010Zenoss, the corporate sponsor of the cloud-based networking and management project Zenoss Core, has released the results of its 2010 Open Source Systems Management Survey. The survey was based on a...
- The Cloud's Legal Lining - CFO.com MagazineAugust 11, 2010The Clouds Legal LiningCFO.com MagazineAs cloud computing grows ever more pervasive, pricing will moderate and legal and regulatory challenges will emerge, a top technology attorney says. ...and more?...
- About Radical Approaches to Cost Reduction in GovernmentAugust 11, 2010Today Gartner published a press release about a research note I wrote a few weeks ago: “From Modernization to Survival: Radical Cost Reduction in Government“(full note available here for Gartner c...
- You Aren’t Using a Cloud PlatformAugust 11, 2010I’m pretty sure that in larger companies, aside from the internal use of virtual machines that are mis-labeled as cloud computing, the cloud wave is a wave of talk. Instead of telling us how they...
- Top 5 Corporate Blogs’ Front Page StructureAugust 10, 2010Just today Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox published the findings of a recent eye tracking study on the reading habits around corporate blogs. Of course, I find this of immense interest both as the blog ed...
- This Just Tested: An aesthetic design that produced 189% more leadsAugust 11, 2010So often, beautiful design gets trumped by marketing objectives – and rightly so from a marketing perspective. The graphical elegance of a Web page might be worthy of an art exhibit, but if it doesn...
- The 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization (SMO)August 11, 2010About a week ago I started seeing a curious number of tweets, links and Google Alerts to a popular blog post I wrote 4 years ago. The reason was that today happens to be the four year anniversary of t...
- We’re all social, but social isn’t always simpleAugust 10, 2010It’s been a tough week dealing with client questions about collaboration, social software and social media. I’ve covered some topics during my Gartner career that were a little more cut and dried....
- Facebook Places Will Be About More Than Just a Check-InAugust 10, 2010Facebook’s long-awaited entry in the location-based sweepstakes is coming soon, a spokesman for the giant social-networking company tells CNET’s Caroline McCarthy. But while CNET says the new fe...
- Hot or Not: E-mail Marketing vs. Social-Media MarketingAugust 10, 2010Image credit: Rapportive at The Next Web Conference The following is also my column this week in Advertising Age.Contrary to popular belief, video didn't kill the radio star, YouTube didn't knoc...
- Google & Facebook: A Tale of Two Data CentersAugust 10, 2010Facebook welcomed local officials to a public ceremony last year when it broke ground for its new data center in Prineville, Oregon. Many companies continue to follow what we call the “Fight Club Ru...
- A Confidential Report Outlines Google’s Plans for Your DataAugust 10, 2010How far should Google go when it comes to profiting from the massive amounts of personal data they posses? That’s the question that is discussed in a confidential (not anymore) ??...
- Product-Market Fit or Market-Product Fit?August 10, 2010When starting out a project we know how important it is to get out of the building, talk to prospects and figure out whether our idea holds any merit. That’s the basis of Customer Development. An...
- 5 Tips For Writing Bullet Points That SellAugust 10, 2010As I’m looking over Marie Forleo and Laura Roeder’s final launch video for Rich, Happy and Hot B-School, I’m pretty impressed with how they stacked benefit upon benefit via effective bullet poin...
- Using your social network to search with your Bing for Mobile iPhone appAugust 10, 2010Do you ever find yourself standing in front of the movie theater trying to figure out what movie to go to? Or how about you are in the car with friends looking for a place to eat. Wouldn’t it be h...
- 4 Keys to Proactive Sales ManagementAugust 10, 2010I see this far too often. Sales managers and sales leaders reactively manage their people. They reactively manage because they to manage to results. Results are a trailing in...
- Second (Day) Thoughts on Google-Verizon Framework - Isn't This All About Android?August 10, 2010Today's Washington Post has a second day editorial from the CEOs of Verizon and Google on their proposed legislative framework first announced Monday. Here it is: Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg - Fr...
- Service Provider of Tomorrow, Part 8: MSSP will fade as IaaS and PaaS flourishesAugust 10, 2010As IaaS and PaaS providers continue to grow at rates significantly faster than the overall IT industry – proof that a rapidly increasing percentage of total IT infrastruture resides in and is moving...
- SaaS Product Marketing – Upgrade and Upsell StrategyAugust 10, 2010I think it would be hard to overemphasize the importance of upgrades and upsells in SaaS product marketing. In an industry where free trials, freemium versions, bargain basement subs...
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William Toll’s Recent Readings
- Is Your Site Prepared for an Onslaught?August 8, 2010On Tuesday, AdGrok co-founder Antonio Garcia-Martinez penned a masterfully incendiary blog post in which he blasted the "backwater" tech scene in New York. It was only the company's third post on its...
- CRM Magazine’s 2010 CRM Market AwardsAugust 8, 2010There’s a saying that good things happen when you least expect it. Such is the case this past week. As part of its CRM Evolution ’10 conference, CRM Magazine announced the winners of its 2010 CRM...
- Kundra to be Questioned on Cloud StrategyAugust 8, 2010I read that Congress will soon grill federal cloud-computing enthusiast and champion, Vivek Kundra. Kundra, the nation’s first CIO of the U.S., appointed by Obama last year, will face the House Ove...
- Whatever the Numbers, Cloud Growth is SkyrocketingAugust 8, 2010A UBS research report sparked a lot of discussion this week with its estimate that Amazon Web Services’ total revenue will top $500 million this year and $1.1 billion by 2014. Analyzing the numbers...
- Once Again, Social Media/ Business/ CRM is Not About What Brands Say, But About What Brands DoAugust 8, 2010In my recent rant on why Social CRM is a non-starter in India, I said that even the most progressive Indian brands are using the social web to say the right things with the right ton...
- Applying Risk Communication Principles to Social Media CrisisAugust 8, 2010It may start with a tweet, or with a blog post somewhere and a few irate comments. You're monitoring the conversation that remains low key, until a pundit grabs hold of the information, sees i...
- Optimizing the Enterprise Website for Demand Generation – Turning Traffic into RevenueAugust 7, 2010I wanted to share a technique my firm has used for the past decade to drive substantial improvement in converting website traffic into revenue. We have been able to prove this prospect engagement proc...
- Finding the RIGHT IT Channel PartnerAugust 5, 2010In the IT industry, “Channel Partner,” provide a range of services – from product and service resale and packaging, to delivering related value-added services and support to end customers. Alt...
- What Matters is the Trend, not the Moment - (by @baekdal)August 7, 2010You probably remember the chock wave that rippled trough the social media community after Forrester found that the location based market is insanely small (1% of users), and Foursquare is dominated by...
- End of iPhone Exclusivity Won’t Have Negative Impact on AT&T? Yeah, Right.August 7, 2010ATT’s profits rose by 26% in the last quarter to $4.01 billion. Driving that growth was 1.6 million new wireless subscribers. Guess which phone the majority of those new customers got?If you guess...
- The Big Data Era: How Data Strategy Will ChangeAugust 7, 2010From Barnes Noble to Cabelas to Catalina Marketing, big companies are shifting their approaches.
- Privacy mattersAugust 7, 2010The Wall Street Journal has been running an important series about the collection and exploitation of personal information on the Net. As part of that series, it is featuring a debate today between me...
- Day 14: Four Foursquare Trends to WatchAugust 6, 2010Image via Wikipedia Today is the last day of the Fourteen Days of Foursquare series. I’m relieved it’s over in a way – fourteen days was long! However, focusing on Foursq...
- Will Amazon Become The King of Web Hosting Too? - GigaOm (blog)August 7, 2010Will Amazon Become The King of Web Hosting Too?GigaOm (blog)... should worry current players such as RackSpace and The Planet (which is said to be in the process of merging with SoftLayer, another ho...
- Will Amazon Become The King of Web Hosting Too? - GigaOm (blog)August 6, 2010Will Amazon Become The King of Web Hosting Too?GigaOm (blog)... should worry current players such as RackSpace and The Planet (which is said to be in the process of merging with SoftLayer, another hos...
- The Big Data Era: How Data Strategy Will ChangeAugust 7, 2010From Barnes Noble to Cabelas to Catalina Marketing, big companies are shifting their approaches.
- 10 Entertaining eBay Facts You Might Not KnowAugust 7, 2010As the world’s largest marketplace, eBay has hundreds of millions of listings live at any given moment. Since its founding in 1995, the company has grown from just one curious computer programmer to...
- Is Tumblr the New Twitter?August 7, 2010An article from earlier this week on NYTimes.com talked about the growth of Tumblr — 25,000 new accounts daily and 1.5 billion page views each month — and how it may be adding a new must-do activi...
- Shadow IT vs. Shadow MarketingAugust 7, 2010I believe marketing must lead its own technology. As detailed in my presentation Rise of the Marketing Technologist, I think marketing departments need marketing technologists on staff, led by a ma...
- Inside the Numbers: How Demand Media Will Pitch a Billion Dollar IPOAugust 7, 2010Demand Media is a money-losing company. How will it convince Wall Street to value it at a billion dollars or more? By directing investors’ attention to a set of numbers which say it’s a very profi...
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William Toll’s Recent Readings
- Overcoming SaaS security and other barriersAugust 4, 2010Having moaned about the poor job vendors are doing in helping customers explain how they manage the potential pitfalls and barriers associated with SaaS it was refreshing to see spons...
- UBS Analysts Try To Unravel Amazon MysteryAugust 4, 2010Even though cloud computing is few years old now and Amazon Web Services is considered as the poster child of public clouds, pundits and others were deeply mystified about the size of Amazon's cloud c...
- 30 Content SEO, Marketing, Creation, Strategy & Promotion Insights + ResourcesAugust 4, 2010Chess by Alejandro Fernandez Everybody seems to agree with the “content is king” mantra. At the same time most articles, blog posts in and outside the SEO industry seemed to i...
- A Day With the Bloggers at IBM: Notes - Part 2August 4, 2010IBM invited a group of bloggers for a day to talk with executives and a visit to the labs. This morning the discussion centered on analytics. This afternoon the conversation still focused on analytics...
- Flickr Rolls Out Photo Overhaul to All UsersAugust 4, 2010After three weeks of testing, Flickr is rolling out its massively redesigned photo pages to all of its users.The redesign overhaul focuses three key aspects of the photo page: the navigation, the cont...
- What Every CMO Needs to Know about Content StrategyAugust 3, 2010I recently concluded a very detailed study of the most influential technical documentation sites of 2010 to determine what made them influential. What I discovered transcended documentation to incl...
- Cloud Computing Is Here to Stay! ForbesAugust 3, 2010Cloud Computing Is Here to Stay! For some, this summer is shaping up to be the “Summer of Cloud Computing,” with every major technology vendor announcing products, or at least...
- Facebook Doubles Size Of Planned Data CenterAugust 3, 2010When Facebook started work on its first wholly owned data center almost eight months ago, it was heading towards 400 million users worldwide and plans were set for a 147,000 square foot facility. But...
- iPhone App for Domain SearchAugust 3, 2010Network Solutions has released a unique iPhone application that enables the search and purchase of domain names. Named DomainStorm, the application is Network Solutions first. The applications BrainS...
- The History of Web Search Engines (INFOGRAPHIC)August 3, 2010We put together a new infographic about The History of Search Engines. You can take a sneak peek below, or head on over to the full-sized infographic: This post originated on the WordStream Blog. Wor...
- Is Confusion Blocking Sales Progression For Cloud Computing?August 3, 2010By Scott Gillum, SVP GyroHSR The Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines a cloud as a “visible mass of particles of condensed vapor.” According to CIOs interviewed for an article in the...
- A Day With the Bloggers at IBM: Notes - Part 1August 3, 2010I am at IBM's blogger day at the corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York. Officially it's called the "Smarter Planet Blogger Day." I'm hoping to get some insight into a company with more software t...
- R.I.P. 3 Ways Facebook is Killing Your WebsiteAugust 3, 2010The game used to be relatively simple. Build a website. Make it useful and at least moderately pleasing to the eye. Keep it updated. Make your content at least semi-friendly for search engines. Bingo!...
- Debunking Some HCM SaaS MythsAugust 2, 2010One of the things about being an analyst is that clients rely on you to cut through the hype and claims to find out about reality (or as close as they can get). I have had some interactions with som...
- Rapportive - GMail plug-in raises $1 millionAugust 3, 2010Rapportive - is a plug-in for GMail (or more exactly - for browser) which in the GMail's right pane instead of ads shows the social profile of the person who sent you the email. The information for th...
- Windows 7 Surpasses Vista, XP Still DominatesAugust 2, 2010Despite being the fastest selling OS in history, Windows 7 has yet to eclipse XP, which holds greater marketshare than Vista and 7 combined, according to NetApplications.
- Enterprises' love/hate cloud relationship foretells unhappy resultsAugust 3, 2010According to the recent Yankee Group survey, "more enterprises consider cloud computing a viable technology, with nearly 60 percent saying they view it as a business enabler versus less than 40 percen...
- How Big is Amazon’s Cloud Computing Business? Find OutAugust 3, 2010Source GigaOM It goes without saying that with its array of web services, Amazon has transformed the computing landscape and nurtured what is generically known as the cloud comput...
- How 12 CEOs & Founders are Leveraging Web VideoAugust 3, 2010This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.The debate continues on w...
- 5 lessons from the Cloud about Efficient EnvironmentsAugust 3, 2010The week before last our team decided to divide and conquer to cover two simultaneous events. Half of us headed to Portland, Oregon for OSCON and the other half stayed here in Austin to participat...
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William Toll
William Toll's Twitter Stream- Speaking on #Cloud & #SaaS @utollwi @cloudbzz @thinkstrategies & Replify at @UKTIBoston #Boston #BMM RSVP http://bit.ly/afml7I
- @MichaelGrover Ok I am signed up for www.factopio.us .. As a fact geek I can't wait to use it! #BMM
- RT @stevegarfield: @lenedgerly paid his nephew $50 to read Enders Game. He liked it. #bmm <<Paying kids to read a Full book..our future?
- Great to meet @Michellemmm @thisissolar #bmm
- Here for #BMM some great conversations already! (@ Doyle's Cafe w/ @bobbiec) http://4sq.com/8Gxsdr
- Marketing and IT share a common fear http://ow.ly/18RR7D
- Marketing and IT share a common fear: Change is scary. Big, organization-altering, career-shifting change is dow... http://bit.ly/cexz7C
- Technology’s Unintended Consequence: The Elusive Worker http://ow.ly/18REby
- Technology’s Unintended Consequence: The Elusive Worker: Marketers often struggle with the “elusive consumer” — a ... http://bit.ly/cfFWgQ
- Apple's Ping is an example of arrogant company developing a secret Social product that is trapped on local disk. V.1 #Fail
- Google Improves Control of PPC Exposure With Modified Broad Match http://ow.ly/18R7EQ
