Shop.org Blog

Quick links for the first day back at work post-Memorial Day:

What was SES China like?
Gartner discusses a new breed of online shopper — the “social gatherer”.

Got 100 dollars? 7 Experts share budget website marketing tips. Good tips even if your budget is substantially more than $100.

Cottonelle has a branded campaign featuring a very cute puppy running around your desktop. I clicked on this first because I had a friend who used to work at OTO Labs, the agency that created it, but it’s a nice application, and a good way to build a community around toilet paper, something that’s on the challenging side of the spectrum.
LinkedIn now has a feature called “Who viewed my profile?”… It shows titles or companies of people who have viewed your profile. This seems to be part of a trend towards “overt surfing”, where the tracks of where you go online are revealed for all to see. With a bit of work, I can identify about 30% of the people who’ve visited my profile, which then leads to interesting speculation.

- Josh 

Here’s an unusual customer service experience. A colleague of mine had ordered a pair of childrens water shoes for $10 from a well known online retailer. They were a size large, and she called to make arrangements to return them. They told her they’d send out the new pair, and not to bother sending back the first pair, just to donate them to charity. Econmically it makes sense; their margain was probably only $5, and between shipping costs and restocking, they’d lose money. I wondered if they saw on her customer record that she was a fairly regular customer, and this wasn’t something that had the potential for abuse. I’m wondering, have others heard/seen of a practice like this, as it was new to me?
Welcome Ethan. Some good links in your post. I look forward to reading future posts, and would love to see an intro section with a bit of bio info on the different posters. It also seems that there’s a comment queue somewhere, as it doesn’t look like there have been new comments on the blog in quite a while. [this appears to be fixed , as comments have posted]

-Josh 

Video

1) The Break-Up
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zv6w_the-break-up

For more info, see http://bringtheloveback.com/

2) Kodak’s Winds of Change (where’s JC Penney’s fantastic video from First Look?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz6XjXu-oT8

3) Hammer and Coop (Mini cooper)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78QVkmjZrVw

For more info, see http://www.hammerandcoop.com/

Breaking vid:
VW’s night drive (reminds me of William Carlos Williams’ Danse Russe)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHzhptiDxtE

Extra credit from the archive:
Jeep’s dot matrix waterfall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2LUz2WVcek

Presentations

Shift Happens (Slideshare itself is a neat tool)
http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/shift-happens-33834

From the archive:

Identity 2.0
http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

Hans Rosling at TED
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2670820702819322251

Mashups

TwitterFeed (RSS into Twitter)
http://twitterfeed.com/

BaseEstate (Google Base real estate maps)
http://www.baseestate.com/

The “Shave Everywhere Effect” (?)

Kohler’s Jo’s Plumbing
http://www.josplumbing.com/

Affiliates

Zafu (Vertical search engine for jeans)
http://www.zafu.com/

Open Policy

eBay To Go (listing widgets)
http://togo.ebay.com

Book

Lovemarks
http://www.lovemarks.com/

Interfaces

Now:
Endless.com’s left nav
http://www.endless.com

Future:
1) Jeff Han multi-touch
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ftJhDBZqss

2) MIT Sketching (the applied Line Rider)
-http://youtube.com/watch?v=NZNTgglPbUA

3) Google Earth fighter jet tour of the Alps (play both embedded vids at the same time)
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/03/swiss_alps_jet_fight.html

Games
1) Desktop Tower Defense (warning: addictive)
http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/Default.asp?cc=1

2) Onslaught
http://ec2-1.playr.co.uk/onslaught/

And finally… actual memes (to make us feel square)

1) Cat graphics and doods (explaination and see Twitter’s maintenence page)
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/11/i_am_in_thy_library_.html

From the archive:

Leeroy Jenkins (already a Jeopardy answer)
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Leeroy_Jenkins

All your base
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

From LoveYourFeed.com: Is Amazon a comparison shopping engine?

What color is my hat? Party games with deeper meaning.

Not the pull quote he was looking for: Good article on BizChair.com and the 20 year old founder. I do wonder if he actually said the following, and if he wishes he left out the “other”. Belnick notes he has signed exclusive agreements with several suppliers in China. “That way some other fly-by-night web site can’t just come along and undercut our price by $10.”

Freakonomics Blog on Zappos.com and the NY Times article on buying clothes online.

WebProNews: Google to shutdown Made for Adsense sites. This should eliminate some of the search spam that’s out there.

Always nice to see people make it to the top of the world. Of course, I work at Discovery, but you’ll keep coming back to the blog.

–Josh

As I promised almost one month ago, I am posting my next Word-of-Mouth Wisdom interview with Kelly Mooney, President of Resource Interactive. Kelly gave a groundbreaking presentation on the Millennials in her Shop.org Annual Summit keynote last year. I decided to revisit this topic, as well as her upcoming book, which I was interviewed for (and I posted that interview in April).

1. Please define “Millennials” and provide our readers with links to your research on them.

I’d refer your truly curious readers to Litmus, Resource Interactive’s white paper on this economically influential but somewhat mystifying generation of consumers. You can also see a slide summary of the presentation and hear the millennials in their own words at our MySpace page.

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