Spotlight Features

Marshall McLuhan's old adage, "the medium is the message," has never been more true than it is today. Companies wanting to showcase their cutting-edge products and services are increasingly turning to new and innovative marketing techniques that express the spirit of what they're selling. Video pres...

Somewhere in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I just know the owner of a certain day spa is rubbing her hands with glee. You see, on New Year's Day morning, as I was blearily checking my emails, I clicked on one of the many group buying sites to which I subscribe and saw an offer I simply couldn't p...

Many firms are not properly prepared for the response to a daily deal offering. "These offers can be wonderful if they are analyzed correctly by the company," said Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. "If they are not, then it can easily be a disaster." The daily deal sites are ...

On a single day in March earlier this year, The Orange County Register's website generated $188,000, mainly by selling nearly 5,457 customers on its daily deal: a Catalina Flyer catamaran round-trip ticket for $34. A portion of the revenue was generated by a side deal. For an industry poised to reac...

Since few people bother to read Privacy Policies, Terms of Service or Click Wrap Agreements, is it any wonder that social media sites, search engines, and providers of cell services ask for and receive carte blanche rights to our whereabouts, along with other personal information? We all know that i...

Once upon a time there was an online group called "The Point." It was a nebulous organization with the vague goal of using the power of social media to to do such things as crowdsource a design for the Chicago Stadium or launch a petition. One day, one of its members got the bright idea to use its n...

Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level almost from the start of the Obama presidency. The administration issued its strongest backing yet for cloud technology with last month's release of the "Federal Cloud Computing Strategy." Offici...

The allure of utilizing the latest advance in information technology -- cloud computing -- is that cloud applications will greatly increase efficiency and reduce IT costs. The U.S. government, which spends upwards of $80 billion per year on information technology, clearly presents a big opportunity...

The U.S. government is searching for ways to reduce the fog of bureaucracy to improve communication with citizens, and has turned to the cloud as a key strategy to achieve that goal. In addition to improving services to taxpayers, use of the cloud could save cash-strapped federal agencies millions o...

Government information technology procurement has been largely conducted on an independent basis, with each federal agency determining its own needs and acquiring the infrastructure -- both hardware and software -- to meet those needs. However, the procurement landscape may change significantly with...

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- enacted in the waning days of the 20th century -- contains provisions designed to make it evolve over time. The idea was that as technology fostered new ways of creating and distributing copyrighted material such as music, movies and software programs, the law...

A $30 billion information technology market is hard to pass up. That's why the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' program to invest that huge amount of money in health records technology has received a lot of attention in the IT vendor community. That's normal. It is decidedly unusual, ho...

Many businesses have begun to use some form of user-generated content on their sites, and while this content can help to build a brand and develop a community, there is some risk involved. Some of the issues requiring management and moderation include abusive language, spam attacks, dilution of keyw...

Until recently, a phone was just a phone. Sure, it got cooler when it lost the rotary dial, the cord, the wire and its voice-only restrictions. Still, it was just a phone. Businesses knew that the sound of its ring usually meant money (for what company with silent phones is profitable?) -- but few w...

Every year since 2001 has been hailed as the year of mobile. But after years of hype and over-revved anticipation, the year of mobile may never come to be. Instead, it looks as though this is the year mobile will morph into something else entirely. In the years after the mobile generation, content w...