Groupon Now – an interesting evolution of social purchasing

Over the last couple of years I have been following the “social purchasing” space and have written a number of posts on this topic. Most of them have been about Groupon and have been pessimistic about their long-term leadership position. While Groupon has grown tremendously fast and have gotten astronomical valuations, they were the innovator that defined the space. Today they officially launched a...

The digital marketing awards are really nice…..though it’s the results that drive business!

Over the last year the (add)ventures Interactive / Technology team has won a variety interactive web awards. Most recently, we won two different Interactive Media Awards (IMA), one for an eCommerce site and the other for a sports event site.  While winning these awards is incredibly rewarding for the information architects, project managers, designers, copywriters and engineers that contributed to these projects,...

The answer to Twitter overload: Paper.li

I came across the term “Twitter overload” the other day and immediately understood the reference. Twitter is a great channel for following thought leaders and culling insights from social media leaders. Unfortunately, with a very busy schedule, it is difficult to catch the nuggets of information within the stream of info flowing through Twitter. The answer is Paper.li a fantastic aggregator of your...

RIP Flash – Killed by Apple

Adobe Flash has had a good run but it’s time to say goodbye. Over the last six months, our engineering team has made a conscious decision to avoid using Flash wherever possible. Why? There are a few reasons, but mostly because Flash is costly to develop and maintain, not supported by Apple mobile browsers and it is a closed system unlike HTML5. Sure there are certain interactions that you cannot accomplish in...

Web Services & SaaS…..truly ubiquitous technologies

While driving between meetings today, it struck me how ubiquitous Software Services and SaaS “apps” have become. It is pretty astounding. When HP first started discussing “Web Services” around 1999, I was interested in the concept, but didn’t fully grasp the implications and power back then. So, it is amazing to see how quickly web services and web apps have the norm rather than the...