 WebProWorld eCommerce Forum |
A R Hosting
Does anyone know if they are any good? Also would 5gb per month bandwith be adequate for most small chat forums with a few pictures on the first few pages.
cost effective international shipping
I've recently launched my website, selling a how-to-record-music DVD. The product itself will be less than 1 LB. Any tips for international shipments? Fed Ex? DHL? How do I calculate tarrifs/customs fees?
Should I switch to an ecommerce solution?
I've been running a small beaded jewelry website for the past 6 months and am thinking about switching to an ecommerce platform such as oscommerce or zen cart or cube cart
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| Recent Articles |
The VC No and the Entrepreneur Yes
Bill Burnham has a great series (1, 2 & 3) on the Art of the VC No. Saying No is their business (from thousands of business plans to a handful of investments)
The Rise of the Empowered Consumer
The Economist has a fascinating story about the increasing power consumers have in today's marketplace. Snippets. With consumers becoming increasingly empowered...
Podcasting Picks up Speed
Last year, as the word podcast began to spread like wildfire, we took a look at it in several posts here at Threadwatch and despite still thinking that the majority of amateur radio like podcasts suck, i have to confess to being a fan of the medium in many ways.
The Future of WordPress and MovableType
There more I look at the blogging "market" these days, I see things falling into fairly well defined places--at least in my head. There is a already a well defined split between the hosted services that offer blogging capabilities (Blogger, TypePad, Y! 360, LiveJournal, etc) and the "host it yourself" model.
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| 04.04.05
The Long Tail Will Rise If The Media Charge For Online Content
 By Steve Rubel
According to Reuters, a Dow Jones & Co. Inc. executive predicted that more U.S. publishers likely will try to wean readers off free Internet versions of their newspapers by starting to charge online subscription fees.
If this happens, then you can be sure that more consumers will gravitate down the Long Tail of Content to blogs for free, unfiltered content. Newspapers who go down this arrogant path may not be able to return to prominence online ever again. New media brands will emerge in their wake as leaders.
Just look at how MarketingVOX and AdRants are already eroding the walled gardens of AdAge.com and AdWeek.com
Reference: Dow Jones Executive Foresees More Paid Web Sites
About the Author:
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 15 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as Vice President, Client Services at CooperKatz & Company, a mid-size PR firm in midtown New York City. Rubel evangelizes the application of Weblogs and RSS in traditional public relations campaigns.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice. |
Silicon Valley Will Never Be Detroit
 By Ross Mayfield
Steve Lohr's article in the NY Times begs the question is Silicon Valley turning into Detroit? Especially when Goldman Sachs calls 2005's IT growth at 4% and remarks ...
... that "technology looks to be firmly in the cyclical category for now."
This against the backdrop of PC Forum's desert climes. The theme reached out to support new industries such as health care, education. Even so far as outer space. But that's a good thing. When IT is only selling to IT, we know where that leads.
I read Steve's article as the discovery of new markets fulfilled by bottom-up phenomena.
Another path for technology can be seen in the proliferation of new services and networks on the Web that are being built, largely from the ground up, by ordinary people. The information and images - the content, in media industry jargon - is supplied not by company-paid professionals but by communities of people who find the data useful. Those seeking a business in the phenomenon call this information user-generated content. Photos, event listings, blogs and wikis - Web sites that allow users to make their own entries - on every imaginable subject are all part of the trend.
There is mounting evidence that this grass-roots media hybrid is moving into the mainstream. Ross Mayfield, chief executive of Socialtext, reports rising demand for his start-up's expertise in using wikis among large corporations like Nokia and Kodak. Last week, Yahoo announced that it had bought Flickr.com, a Web site where people store and share photos. Jerry Yang, a Yahoo founder, said candidly, "We are venturing boldly, and somewhat blindly, into this world of user-generated content."
I'm not sure there is any other way. Outer space is a big place, and colonizing the martians is futile. But back to Detroit, not that there is anything wrong with the city.
Here is a way of thinking about economic geography. Other regions may have been positioned for trade, produced efficiently, financed trade or produced means for transport. But have other regions provided this plus produced goods that enabled others to produce with such economies?
In other words, past revolutions produced for others to consume, but net net, we produce so others can produce. Naturally technologies diffuse until they become infrastructure, but are social infrastructure a fundamentally different economic input?
Source: Is Silicon Valley Similar to Detroit?
About the Author:
Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.
He also writes Ross Mayfield's Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings. |
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