Archive

It makes sense to watch the calendar when putting together a marketing plan. Holidays, seasons and events, after all, drive sales. "There's good reason to ride the coattails of seasonal events and holidays," said Shannon Byrne, marketing coordinator at BlueGlass Interactive. "When done right, it pro...

Google is adding its voice to a chorus of opposition to a proposal to update the International Telecommunication Union treaty in a way that could give governments more power to restrict the flow of information online. Next week, members of the ITU -- the UN organization that oversees international c...

Samsung Electronics will implement new measures to keep its Chinese suppliers compliant with labor laws after it completed a round of audits that found notable problems relating to labor policies, the company announced Monday. These included problems with overtime, but Samsung is also looking to ens...

Shopping and sales activity on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday rocked this year, with online purchases on Black Friday topping $1 billion for the first time. More than 35 million Americans visited retailers' stores or websites on Thanksgiving Day, up from 29 million last year, the National Retail ...

I have been taking a closer look at two of the brand-new technologies that are really shaking up the computer world. One is Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system with all those funky tiles. The other is the Lenovo Yoga 13 laptop. The changes are many. Some will think all this change is good, others...

The Internet has become the world's largest shopping mall, and the market is continuing to grow. Q4 2011 U.S. retail ecommerce sales were up 14 percent compared with 2010, reaching nearly $50 billion for the quarter, ComScore recently reported. Total U.S. e-commerce sales are projected to reach $2...

OK, it's time to officially close the book on the 2011 holiday retail season and to shift our attention forward to 2012. For me personally, what makes it difficult to stop looking back are the new trends that emerged that will forever change holiday shopping: Mobile made its mark, with 11 percent of...

Stick a fork in the sacrosanctity of Thanksgiving -- it is done. A number of retailers, most famously Walmart, will be opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day, on the premise that they will be scooping up sales from consumers too eager to wait for Black Friday. Whether that is true or whether so-cal...

Adoption of cloud technology at the federal level is still far from routine -- but cloud transactions continue to emerge on a regular basis. The deals range in value, demonstrating that cloud migration can be applied for relatively small deployments or for huge networks. In the latest major deal, HP...

HP released its fourth quarter earnings report, bearing out CEO Meg Whitman's warning last month. It is not pretty. For the full year fiscal 2012, net revenue was $120.4 billion, down 5 percent from the prior-year period. For the fourth quarter, HP posted net revenue of $30 billion, down 7 percent y...

Intel CEO Paul Otellini will retire in May, ending an eight-year reign as the semiconductor industry undergoes a major market transition. Intel did not announce his successor, but said Otellini will oversee the upcoming six-month leadership transition. The company highlighted the bright spots in Ote...

How can classic retail, the brick-and-mortar physical stores dotting our neighborhoods, compete with the likes of Amazon and Zappos? Can real-world retail survive e-commerce? And if it can, what's the trick? How do retailers intend to meet this growing threat? We're now seeing something insidious t...

Some of Walmart's employees are taking aim at a major soft spot for any retailer: Black Friday, the most important shopping day of the year. A union-backed coalition called "Making Change at Wal-Mart" is organizing strikes this week, culminating on Friday, to protest the company's working conditions...

Facebook reoprtedly is finalizing a new tool for marketers that can help them determine how effective their promotions are and ultimately give them an incentive to stick around as advertisers. The tool lets online retailers follow purchases made by Facebook users who have viewed their ads, although ...

United Airlines experienced a major computer problem this week, and the news no doubt sent shudders down the spines of would-be Thanksgiving holiday travelers everywhere. The glitch -- reportedly in its dispatch system -- led to the delay of a number of flights. United found and corrected the error,...