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Internet Retailer magazine, online and conference: launch

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in Publishing, T'interwebs.

I’m pleased to be able to announce my small involvement in an interesting new venture to support the development of eCommerce and ‘internet retailing’.

eCommerce is so interesting because it’s the point where marketing and engineering collide – with some vigour –  and the challenge to businesses old and new is to align the many traditional skills (marketing, commercial, IT, logistics, buying, contact centres, fulfilment, outsourcing, procurement…) and capabilities in a way that’s relevant to the new, demanding internet customer. While there are many resources for the eCommerce professional they tend to fall into two camps: the online marketing folk (with great resources at e-consultancy, for example, NMA, Revolution, etc) or IT (where software capabilities and services still drive much of the eCommerce agenda). 

Mark Pigou, founder of RetailEvents (a trade, conference/exhibition company, specialising in retail, but also branching into other areas – eg Blogging4business) has recognised the opportunity to bring the many professionals together and has created a conference called Internet Retailer. Building from this Mark is also planning to launch a tightly-integrated print magazine and an online service.

Having met Mark and talked through the ideas, I’ve agreed that I’ll be the ‘launch editor’ of the online service, writing a combination of news, analysis, interviews and features at www.internetretailer.info. I’ll be working on this until the conference in September and subject to growth we’ll probably bring on dedicated editorial resource from there. We’ll see, but for the meantime I’m really excited to get “IR” up and running and to tap into the interest and enthusiasm we’ve already received in the pre-launch discussions.

If you have any information you wish to give us  please feel free to  email editor a-t internetretailer.info with general comments, questions or story ideas (or ‘scoops’ of course!). Please use press@ for announcements and other release information. Embargoes respected, Chatham House rules understood, confidentiality is my middle name so I’m looking forward to hearing from people – the inboxes are up and running!

 

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Moleskine: CityGuide is Web2.0 for paper?

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in Publishing, T'interwebs.

I want one NOW! I’ve tried to create this sort of thing many times, using either Moleskins, pocket-sized filofaxes… This looks like a neat implementation: part journal of record, part updateable working book. Either way these will become prized travelogues and journals in the hands of commited, capable writers. I’ll just buy them because I love the idea of being such a writer 😉

Interesting though how this is a DIY guidebook. To fully make this ‘web2.0 on paper’ you should be able to upload your tips/experiences, tag them and of course ‘subscribe’ to a feed from other travellers. It’d be neat if Moleskin offered a printer ‘plug in’ or a print on demand ability so that you could obtain and carry with you the condensed experience of rated contributors… Oops – I just realised that I’ve described “BookTailor”, a neat Bertellsman-funded POD travel book company that sadly folded in 2001. Surely the time is right for that idea to be re-appraised?

Stunning ‘online’ customer service: SerenataFlowers.com

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

Two things came together: hearing Peter Ahl (MD and founder of SerenataFlowers.com) speak at ‘What’s New in Online Marketing‘ and really enjoying hearing about their pragmatic ajaxing (as well as their having grown to 5% market share of the floral business in the UK) and my mum staying with us for a week as we got to grips with our newborn.

The time was ripe to ‘say it with flowers’, as the phrase goes, so I gave SerenataFlowers  a quick whirl. Sadly, I was a little too quich and while wibbling between a white thingy and a pink thingy I accidentally added both, then checked out with rapidity not noticing I’d bought both. Doh. While I was a bit miffed at the checkout not having really, really checked that I didn’t want both (!) I wrote this off to experience and consoled myself with the thought of a happy mum.

I was surprised therefore to get a call from the delightfully-helpful “Jeff” in their call centre today, ringing to check that I’d really meant to order two. I admitted that I’d made a mistake, but also that I was happy to live with it. He said it was no problem, that these things happen, that it was their practice to ring and check in cases of double quantities and as I spoke he refunded my card and cancelled the extra plant.

Now, I just don’t see how things get better than this. Slick web interface; good service; good standard operating procedures; humanoids who call you and can make decisions; and a focus on treating the customer well. While I hadn’t held my mistake against Serenata you can be sure that I’ll remember this customer service and will use the service again. Bravo.

“Tertius” Jindal – arrives at last!

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

So, here we have the result of Project Tertius, or “Tershey” as he’s been known for months in utero…

Quick facts (more later for doting family etc):

Born: 3 June 2006, 10.30pm by caesarean after 18 hours of labour.

He was a doughty 10lbs 11oz and he and Vicky are both doing well – back from hospital late on Tuesday.

We’ve called him Aneirin Michael Alexander.

Aneirin‘s work is the oldest poetry in the British Isles – a Welshman before there was a Wales; Michael was Vicky’s father and Alexander my grandfather.

Aneirin (pronounced “an-AY-rin”, not “an-EYE-rin”) seems very good natured but that’s based upon a short acquaintance, during which time he (or I) have been sleeping or eating. Sometimes both.

Manon and Alice have been in turns very sweet and then bored with him: he doesn’t have a very high ‘play factor’ for them at present! 

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in Publishing, T'interwebs, Webshite.

Egad, do I love the internet! Or, rather, I love that people with time, creativity, energy and humour put in the effort to create such wonders… The Blog of Geoffrey Chaucer!

GC’s ‘about me’ saith:

I here neyther that ne this, for when my labor doon al ys and have made al my rekenynges I goon hom to my hous anoon and, also domb as any stoon, I sitte at another book tyl fully daswed ys myn look. Certes, I oghte to get outte more. Thou kanst fynde myn feede for liveiournale at the username ‘chaucerhathblog,’ sum swete soule hath sette yt vp for me.

Sum swete soule indeed!

This reminds me of my anglo saxon teacher, Nick Jacobs, who would read Chaucer with fluency and enthusiasm that brought it to life. This is certainly one to watch for a while on ye rss-reader.

It wouldn’t be right to leave the topic of historic blogs by famous dead people (!) without a tip of the hat to the excellent Pepys’ Diary. Bravo.

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

Very enjoyable and thought-provoking book. Step by step examination of the emergent network theory behind the popular “six degrees of separation” that we now take as a truism – by the person who seems to have made many of the major advances. The first 50 pages are a quick read, and I nodded along thinking “yeah, I get this”, only to have the next 200 pages show how this was an overly simple view and take us through to a more current, complex understanding. Well-written if very dense. There are dozens of pages of detailed notes at the end – showing the academic foundations – but it also meant that the end came rather quicker than I’d expected! Worth a read if you’ve got beyond the pop-science re-treads of network theory, but you’re not actually enough of a mathematician to be hanging with the researchers 🙂

The Bus Uncle – Wikipedia

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs, Webshite.


Thanks to Antony, our ‘man on the ground’ in HK, I’ve just caught up with the global phenomenon that is “Bus Uncle”. This wikipedia article shows WP at its best: rapid, considered, analytical and giving an excellent cultural view – I can but point you at it and step back. The wonderful aspects of this are the way the “meme” (pur-lease) has spread so quickly and the immense enthusiasm of the parodists and spoofers: there are fake movie posters, spin-offs, catch-phrases… You know we’re in a digital world and that Steve Job’s cry that we’re all now media producers is true when you check out the footnotes to the story: here is one of the spin-offs:

Music: Eagles’ ‘Hotel California‘ in ”’Uncle Bus”’ and Crazy Frog Remix (Featuring William Hung)

Thanks Antony!

SixApart’s “Comet”: MySpace meets blogging and Flickr

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

No sooner have I queried just how quickly the buzz will die away from MySpace than Sixapart announce “Comet” (no, not the UK electricals retailer! Note though that the logo is white reversed out of red – similar to the old Comet logo before the brown/gold one).

With MySpace users so young (aka fickle) – more than half are under 18 – the battle is more for the maturing, late, loyal adopters, rather that the teen-locusts who’ll just move on to the next crop field and devour that as soon as the wind changes.

Comet offers a combo of blogging, personal site (structured around interests, books etc) and photos (Flickr-like). This seems to offer a step about the fast-moving, transient MySpace pages while not requiring the commitment to running your own blog. Good middle ground, and possibly a more sustainable business model.

The “long tail” economics challenge comprehension

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

Publishing 2.0 � The Long Tail of Revenue 2.0

Much is made of the ability of ‘Web 2.0’ companies to monetise (ugh) the ‘long tail’ of the web. It’s such an old saw now that it’s becoming axiomatic, but every now and then it pays to question how this can work in practice. Publishing 2.0 has a nice article, based on his breaking the ‘magic 500 inward links’ (I didn’t even know that was a metric. oops).

If you base the math on 41.4 million blogs, Publishing 2.0 is in the top 0.006% of all blogs based on being linked to by only 0.001% of all blogs! That’s some wacky math.

Worth a read and a ponder.