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  • Archive for March, 2008

    Apple’s Anti-Catalyst Strategy

    By: David Evans on March 31st, 2008

    The lastest issue of Wired Magazine has an interesting article on. How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong. It provides some useful insights into why companies can sometimes do better by keeping tight control over their product rather than operating as a catalyst that encourages other businesses to join the ecosystem. Any […]

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    Amex Loses the Fob

    By: David Evans on March 31st, 2008

    American Express is ditching the fob–the contactless slugs with a contactless chip that people could hang off their key chains to pay with. The company line is that people prefer mag stripe cards and Amex is pushing those with a chip. But the reason why people don’t like fobs–MPD found hardly anyone did in […]

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    What’s Down with Google?

    By: David Evans on March 31st, 2008

    With Google’s stock down 40 percent since the beginning of the year you have to wonder whether some investors have misunderstood how Google makes money all along. Google’s stock too a big whack a few weeks ago when ComScore released stats showing that number of clicks the search-ad giant was getting were down. What the […]

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    Piggly Wiggly Gives Pay By Touch the Finger

    By: Karen Webster on March 29th, 2008

    With its ejection from Piggly Wiggly (not to mention its bankruptcy), Pay By Touch is pretty much dead as a new payment system.
    It all sounded so clever. People registered their finger and associated it with a method of payment. Then they could pay at participating merchants like Piggly by pressing their finger on a […]

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    Media Companies Should Stick to Their Knitting

    By: David Evans on March 24th, 2008

    Media companies are engaging in a bit of co-opetition as they form ad networks for selling advertising across member properties. (See the recent AP article Media Groups Share Content in Ad Deals.)
    Sometimes competitors are getting in bed together because they figure, I guess, that they don’t want to lose the money for selling […]

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    Visa, Famous Bank Card Association, Dead at 37

    By: David Evans on March 24th, 2008

    Visa, a bank card association that was formed in 1970, and which endured numerous attacks from class action lawyers, rivals, and government prosecutors, passed away on Wednesday, March 19, 2008, after a long illness. Her death was announced by her investment banker, Goldman Sachs. Survivors include its thousands of issuers, and millions of cardholders. […]

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    BEBOAOL–Brilliant Stroke or Going for Broke

    By: David Evans on March 24th, 2008

    Troubled online giant AOL just swallowed also-ran social networking site Bebo for close to $900 million. Given the volatility of the online ecosystem these days you have to give AOL credit for placing such as huge bet on a social networking site that mainly the Brits seem to love, and to Bebo for taking […]

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    Consumers and Product Choices: Less Can Equal More

    By: Karen Webster on March 18th, 2008

    eMarketer recently reported the results of a University of Iowa study that suggests that consumers who have only a little information about a product are much happier with that product than people who have more information. It’s kind of an interesting commentary in a world increasingly dominated by information from a variety of sources […]

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    Carnival of Mobilists 115

    By: Catalyst Code on March 17th, 2008

    Our iPhone SDK post is included in this week’s Carnival of Mobilists, a round-up of some of the best entries on the mobile industry, hosted by Andrew Grill’s blog.

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    Regulating Payment Card Interchange Fees - The Case of Australia

    By: David Evans on March 10th, 2008

    A few readers responded to my post on the European Commission’s efforts to regulate interchange fees in Europe. One commentator pointed out the lack of evidence in Australia that merchants passed on lower interchange fees to consumers in the form of lower prices. Another one responded that the amount of money was so small that […]

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