Friday, February 07, 2003

College Students Riding the "Connected" Wave How College Students Shop and What They Buy "According to a survey of college students in the US, conducted by Harris Interactive for Alloy 360 Youth, 93% of college students go online in a given month. Harris surveyed over 2,000 college students between the ages of 18 and 30 and reported that college students were responsible for $210 billion in sales in 2002. As for their shopping behavior, Harris finds that 94% think that a good selection is important when shopping whereas just 27% are looking for specific brands.... College students are also highly likely to own a number of consumer electronic products. Harris determined that 88% have a personal computer (PC), 67% have a cellphone ad 85% own a television." [eMarketer Daily] Even though this report was done for marketers and I never fully trust numbers that come from such studies, I'm fascinated by the statistic that more college students own a personal computer than own a television. And 67% of them have cell phones. In fact, if you visit the Harris Interactive summary of the survey, it elaborates on that last point to note that 67% of them have cell phones and 36% use them to access the internet. Do you know anyone that uses their cell phone to access the internet? I don't, and that includes me (yet). Today at lunch, Diane, Kate, and I had an interesting conversation about when "instant gratification" became such a cornerstone of our society. Kate says it was the remote control, while Diane thinks it was computers. I brought up James Gleick's book Faster (which I highly recommend) and decided on the telephone. But imagine the changes we're going to witness when the current 67% of college students with cell phones enters the work force. As Carrie Fisher noted in Postcards from the Edge, "instant gratification takes too long." These days, when I walk around the building at work or help staff members with computer problems, I see a lot more chat programs on their desktops. Chat programs that they've installed themselves in order to stay in touch with friends and family. Cross Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and NetGens with chat and cell phones and you'd better fasten your seat belt over the next couple of years. [The Shifted Librarian] 7:27:42 AM

	Thursday, January 16, 2003

Joel On Software: Mouth Wide Shut When Apple releases a new product, they tend to surprise the heck out of people, even the devoted Apple-watchers who have spent the last few months riffling through garbage dumpsteron the other hand, can't stop talking about products that are mere glimmers in someone's eye. Testers outside the company were using .NET for years before it finally shipped. So, which is right? Should you talk endlessly about your products under development, in hopes of building buzz, or should you hold off until you've got something ready to go? Mouth Wide Shut [Joel on Software] 11:40:57 PM

	Wednesday, August 21, 2002

blogs amplify The great thing about a topical community of webloggers is not that it doesn't just filter, it selectively amplifies.    First order, it will pick up and repeat interesting news and ideas -- if you are subscribed to a handful of the blogs in the community, even it's a small subset, you'll likely see everything interesting, and the really interesting things you'll see several times -- because interesting ideas at the shared "frequency" of the community make the network resonate.   Second order, not only do the interesting bits get widely broadcast, they also get refined as they travel -- as add comments or criticism or just add their own riff to the item.    This is not just collaborative filtering.  I think Dave Winer calls this "triangulation".   That didn't really make the idea register for me. 8:46:47 AM

	Monday, August 19, 2002

New company aims for simpler PGP. PGP Corp. sets out to do what Network Associates couldn't--entice enterprise customers to buy encryption products based on the PGP algorithm by making them easier to use. [CNET News.com] Wow, PGP makes a come back, but without PRZ. Their "new" hook: ease of use. Good luck to them -- they'll need it. 10:17:30 AM

	Sunday, August 18, 2002

Malcolm Gladwell: The Naked Face From the August 5, 2002 issue of The New Yorker, this article by Malcolm Gladwell asks whether you can read people's thoughts just by looking at them. Ekman recalls the first time he saw Bill Clinton, during the 1992 Democratic primaries. "I was watching his facial expressions, and I said to my wife, 'This is Peck's Bad Boy,' " Ekman says. "This is a guy who wants to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and have us love him for it anyway. There was this expression that's one of his favorites. It's that hand-in-the-cookie-jar, love-me-Mommy-because-I'm-a-rascal look. It's A.U. twelve, fifteen, seventeen, and twenty-four, with an eye roll." [Scott Loftesness] 12:49:29 PM

	Thursday, August 15, 2002

doom and gloom from the sage in omaha Berkshire Hathaway. "Let's be clear here, this disaster that will someday arrive was caused by Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan." [The Motley Fool] 11:38:20 AM

	Thursday, August 08, 2002

Making Money Warren's Way  [Business Week: Daily Briefing] 11:14:18 PM

Intel Chairman Andrew Grove said the company won't expense stock options, but will provide a new level of detail about its options program in its f... [Wall Street Journal] 6:13:28 AM

early indications the double dip has begun Best Buy: Lowers outlook. Consumer spending has widely been credited with keeping the depth of the current recession relatively mild. This morning Best Buy, a major retailer of consumer electronics, announced that it is not going to meet Wall St. expectations for the current quarter -- attributing the miss to new weakness in consumer spending. In revising its outlook, the Company cited declines in consumer confidence resulting in flat comparable store sales in the past four weeks, which reflected general softening across most product categories. "Our June results were in line with our expectations, but comparable store sales softened significantly in July, finishing the month essentially flat," said Brad Anderson, vice chairman and CEO of Best Buy Co., Inc. "In light of the environment, we are closely monitoring sales and inventories, and identifying ways to pare expenses in the second half." Unfortunately, Best Buy isn't alone. Other retailers reporting this morning include Neiman-Marcus (July same store sales down 2.7%), JC Penney (down 2.2%), and Talbots (down 19%). [Scott Loftesness] 6:07:22 AM