Shoppers are increasingly turning to e-tailers for their product needs and wants instead of wandering through the mall, hoping that they find the right product, and that it's the right size, color, price, etc. If you have been reading this blog, then surely you realize this. Recent figures from the Department of
Commerce show that online stores' sales were up 12.4% in January – and that is since last year.

Making sure that your e-store always has a good range of products in stock, and marketing your store to the right target audience can make all the difference when launching an e-store in this volatile economy. Here are some important factors to keep in mind when starting an e-commerce store in these tough economic times.

Strong Web Content and Design:

Keep it looking new and fresh, it represents the quality of your business and products.

Very Detailed Product Information and Quality Images:

Customers won't buy anything if they don't know what it is that they're buying.

Allow Room for Customer Feedback and Reviews:

This is the best way to build customer loyalty and establish a regular clientele.

Search Engine Optimization:

Creatie keyword-rich content on your site which matches what prospective customers are looking for on search engines like Bing and Google.

Email Marketing Spurs Repeat Business:
Set up e-mail lists to keep your customers in the loop and keep them coming back.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for regulation of the Internet on Saturday, and demanded that authorities crack down on a critical news Web site which he accused of spreading false information.

In a televised speech, Chavez said:

"The Internet can't be something free where anything can be done and said. No, every country has to impose its rules and regulations."

He singled out the Venezuelan news site Noticiero Digital, claiming that it had posted false information that some of his close allies had been killed.
Chavez called for Venezuela's attorney general to take action immediately against the Web site. "This is a crime," he said of the reports.

There was no immediate response from the Web site, which is a popular outlet for critical news and commentary in Venezuela.

Chavez has regularly clashed with broadcasters and newspapers. One anti-Chavez channel, Radio Caracas Television, was forced to move to cable in 2007 after the president refused to renew its license. In January, cable and satellite TV providers also stopped transmitting that channel under government orders, when it defied regulations requiring it to televise some of Chavez's speeches.

Referencing satellite TV channels, Chavez said:

"It can't be that they transmit whatever they want poisoning the minds of many people — regulation, regulation, the laws!"

The last anti-Chavez channel on the open airwaves, Globovision, currently faces multiple investigations by government regulators for alleged violations of broadcast regulations.

Chavez called for authorities to take action against Globovision, saying one recent panelist on the channel "has the nerve to say that Chavez, the president of this country, supports drug trafficking and also has the nerve to say there is evidence that here in Venezuela … a bunch of courses have been given to terrorists from ETA and the FARC…That's very serious. That can't be permitted…I can't put anyone in jail. There are the branches of government that should act, and the people themselves have to act."

The interview that Chavez mentioned came during tensions between Spain and Venezuela after a Spanish judge said he has evidence of Venezuelan government links to the Basque separatist faction, the ETA and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, both of which are classified as terrorist organizations by the European Union and the United States.

Chavez's government denied having links to the two groups, and the two countries have since tried to ease tensions with a joint statement pledging to work together against the ETA.

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing a 10-year plan which will reinvent America's media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the nation’s dominant communication network. The plan will be submitted to Congress this week.

The blueprint underscores the government’s view that broadband Internet is becoming the common medium of the United States, gradually displacing the telephone and broadcast television industries. It also signals a shift at the F.C.C., which under the George W. Bush administration, gained more attention for policing indecency on the television airwaves than for promoting Internet access.

According to F.C.C. officials briefed on the plan, the commission’s recommendations include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country, currently without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices, and also the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service. The effort will influence billions of dollars in federal spending.

About a third of Americans have no access to high-speed Internet service; either they cannot afford it or choose not to have it. The plan should enlighten and plug-in all citizens, envisioning a fully Web-connected world with split-second access to health care information and online classrooms, delivered through wireless devices.

The F.C.C. plan includes reforms to the Universal Service Fund, which spends $8 billion a year from telephone surcharges to ensure that rural and poor people have phone lines at home. It also supplies Internet access to schools, libraries and rural clinics.

In recent weeks, a much-talked-about idea in the television industry has been a voluntary auction of over-the-air spectrum for future mobile broadband uses. The F.C.C. is trying to free up roughly 500 megahertz of spectrum, much of which would come from television broadcasters, which would be compensated if Congress acts.

Of course the proposal already faces resistance from the TV industry. Stations say they still serve a valuable public service, especially during emergencies, and say the F.C.C. proposal could cause gaps in signal coverage.

In its first earnings report as an independent company, AOL posted a small profit for the fourth quarter. It recorded a net income of US$1.4 million, or 1 cent per share, for the quarter. In the same period a year ago, it lost $1.93 billion, because of a $2.2 billion noncash impairment charge.

Their revenue declined 17% to $809.7 million, down from $974.2 million from the same quarter a year ago — due to a drop-off in both subscription and advertising levels. Their subscription revenue dropped 28% to $307.4 million; advertising revenue dropped 8% to $471.6 million.

Display advertising in the U.S. rose 1% to $151.7 million, while outside the U.S. it fell to 22%. Search and contextual advertising fell 19% compared to the fourth quarter in 2008. AOL attributed this to a 27% drop in Internet subscribers who tend to use its search function more frequently.

Even though revenue fell year over year to $809.7 million, the number was actually better than what analysts had expected. Display advertising may have registered just a 1% increase, but it was the first time domestic display showed year-over-year revenue growth in eight quarters.

As a standalone company, AOL has laid out a number of goals for 2010, which include increasing its user base, launching a paid service platform, and completing a new search deal. Certainly, executives at the company are looking at the long term — and urging investors and advertisers to do so as well.

For IT, cloud computing is as significant a development as the invention of the PC!

Apple made the iPod a success by changing people's perception of music from a product to a service, a single song to download as needed, as opposed to a physical CD to buy in a store — and the cloud will have the same impact on information technology. While end users may never even know that the application which they happen to be using is coming from the cloud, IT will be totally transformed, and the business as a whole will have an entirely new way of viewing, using and paying for technology.

"Companies that are smart are taking a look at the varied aspects of cloud and pushing certain applications up (into the cloud) and those that need unique distinguishing characteristics they push down (into the traditional data center environment)," said Doug Neal, co-author of the report Doing Business in the Cloud – Implications for Cost, Agility and Information, and research fellow with CSC's Leading Edge Forum Executive Programme:

"IT has to realize that it's in kind of a precarious position. It can either accelerate this change and gain great glory or they can sit back in denial and just atrophy…the most important value the cloud brings is not lower costs…it is improved agility, not just for IT, but for the business as a whole."

The agility comes from the option to offload any aspect of a company's IT infrastructure to an outside provider, paying only for the services you need, as you need them.

And therein is the mystique of the cloud: no provisioning, no waiting, just click, pay, and you're all done.

"What the promise of the cloud is, in part, to begin to segment apps so that… for those few times a year I need extra capacity, I reach out to the cloud…So I pay with occasional opex for what [I] used to pay for with capex and, in the process, I could probably double, triple, quadruple the bang I get out of my data center."

“Blogs are the most important thing to online marketing since sliced bread.”

“Blogs may have their place… but it’s not in direct marketing.”

Such disparate views leave us asking who to believe!

The blog consultants?

Or the “old school” marketing mavens?

Bombarded and barraged with hype, marketers can have a tough time deciding whether blogs should be part of their arsenal.

Listen to the blog consultants?

Who profits from the blog phenomenon anyway?

And are we talking “opportunistic agenda” or “objective perspective”?

How about marketing experts?

Is it fair to say that blogging does not belong in a direct or business-to-business marketing program?

Why do so many old-hatters bristle at the idea of blogs?

Is it simply because of imagined shortcomings?

Or do blogs actually stump an “old school” sensibility that seeks a precedent for comparison?

A decade ago, at the dawning of the commercial Web, marketers were caught in a similar pickle. One faction wrote the Web off as negligible, while another took to the barricades, waving the Web flag and proclaiming the demise of other channels. It's clearly seen who was right!

“Okay,” you say, “history is well and good. But what happens in the next senior-management meeting when the CEO asks, ‘Does blogging belong in our marketing communications program?’ What to tell him?”

Well, you can tell him blogs are not an effective direct marketing tool. I doubt they ever will be. Blogging does not allow you to precisely target audiences or permit any discernable control over who sees your message. However…there's a but…

Blogs have already proven useful in publicity campaigns, generating word-of-mouth and, in some cases, media attention. CPG marketers have made the most effectual use of commercial blogs, with highly imaginative efforts attracting throngs of consumers. There is no question that these blogs have affected consumer bonding with brands.

Blogs can also play an important role in business-to-business marketing. Management gurus, public speakers and prominent business leaders can wield some mean business-to-business blogs. Tom Peters, for one, has a very successful blog. For Peters’ fans, this is a really heaven sent: access to Peter’s daily thought process. What's more, the more people who clamor to glean Peters’ next idea, the higher the likelihood that his next seminar will sell out and his next tome will fly off the bookshelves.

Are blogs right for every company or brand?

Definitely not.

Are bloggers, and especially blog consultants, over-hyping blogs?

Yup.

The former group is merely excited about technology. The latter benefits from getting business people to turn off their logic and open up their wallets. The unfortunate backlash: wholesale discrediting of blogs by critics who have either never used them effectually or have never used them altogether.

A brave new world, or just a passing fad? The importance of blogging should not be overstated or ignored. Blogs are unique. They are not direct mail, telemarketing, direct response TV, e-commerce or e-mail marketing … and that’s just fine. Defining what they are not does not diminish what they are and what their potential in the hands of a smart marketer is.

Viral marketing campaigns are internet word-of-mouth initiatives which use social networks to increase lead generation and brand engagement. They work across any online platform and easily scale from large to small, exponentially increasing their reach with minimal effort on the part of the marketer. All too often smaller organizations shy away from viral campaigns, assuming that they are time-intensive and require big budgets. This is simply not true. In fact, once you have made the initial investment your fans do much of the work for you.

Your viral campaigns will be the most effective when you have a clear goal in mind. The three most common are increasing customer acquisition, brand awareness, or customer loyalty. No matter your goal, it is important that you clarify it from the beginning because you will use different tactics depending on your desired outcomes.

There are many types of campaigns, but what they all have in common is their tendency to evoke a reaction: laughter, shock, surprise, or what you will – that triggers people to take action and share the content. The most common viral campaign tools are video, interactive flash games and images. And among the plethora of distribution channels, you'll find something for every budget.

When you are creating your campaign you will definitely want it to be easy and actionable; remember: the simpler, the better. It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes for someone to digest and react to your offer. To support that quick and instant reaction, you'll want to build your campaign on established platforms. Video, images, e-mail, Twitter, and so on and so forth, are readily accessible and understood.

For customer acquisition campaigns, consider methods to introduce yourself and attract prospective clients who would otherwise not consider your brand. Twitter and Facebook are great viral tools for sharing content, video, images and more. Contests and giveaways are classic popular viral strategies.

Brand engagement, on the other hand, is all about increasing the power of your current client relationships. This strategy is permission-based, as these individuals have given you permission to reach out to them through various channels. They have already seen value in what you provide and are interested in engaging with you further. Twitter, Facebook, e-mail marketing, and promotions are all ways to enhance engagement with your current customer base. Hey, you can even use text messages!

You've all heard the cliche that more eyes lead to more secure code when it comes to open source. But the question is: is it true?

The latest attempt to answer this query comes from the code scanning vendor Veracode.

The Veracode study found that in aggregate 58% of all applications which they scanned did not have an acceptable security score – that means there was some risk.

39% of Open Source applications and 38% of commercial applications did have an acceptable score according to Veracode when mapped against the CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors.

That's not so impressive to me…

…What was impressive however, from my perspective, was the remediation time:

"Open Source project teams remediated security vulnerabilities faster than all other users of Veracode's application risk management services platform…Open Source applications took only 36 days from first submission to reach an acceptable security score, compared to 48 days for Internally Developed applications and 82 days for Commercial applications."

Veracode also noted that open source software had fewer backdoors with less than 1% across scanned applications in the study. The 'many eyes' of open source transparency is most likely the number one reason why there are not more backdoors in open source code.

I have seen and reported on other studies over the years showing differing levels of open source code quality but the time to remediation is often a statistic, where open source really stands alone. The fact of the matter is that all software has bugs, with many eyes or not. It is what developers do once something is found and how fast those issues are fixed, which, in my estimation is the truest test of software code resilience and quality.

The European Union reported on Tuesday that some 100 million Europeans using Microsoft Corp. software will be asked to choose among rival Web browsers by mid-May. This comes under a deal which the EU struck with the firm in order to settle the latest antitrust action.

Microsoft, this month, is starting to send updates to Windows computers in Europe so that when computer users log on, they will see a pop-up screen asking them to pick one or more of 12 free Web browsers to download and install, including of course, Microsoft.

The European Union's executive commission said that giving consumers the chance to try an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which comes with the widely used Windows operating system would

"bring more competition and innovation in this important area."

EU antitrust regulators in December dropped their last pending antitrust case against the software giant, after the company offered to let users choose between its browser and others. This ended more than a decade of legal trouble which cost Microsoft, euro1.7 billion in fines.

Rivals had complained that attaching Internet Explorer to Windows was an excessive way for Microsoft to put its Web software on most of the world's computers.

The top five browsers: Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Google Inc.'s Chrome, Apple Inc.'s Safari and Opera, will be given prominent placement on the pop-up choice screen.

The selections will rotate from computer to computer, so none of these five browsers will always be first.

Smaller competitors such as Avant Browser, Flock, Green Browser, K-Meleon, Maxthon, Sleipnir and Slim Browser will also be displayed when the user scrolls sideways.

The EU said greater browser choice also would boost the use of open Web standards: a set of guidelines on how Web sites are designed.
Rivals claim that Microsoft has not always followed these standards closely, thereby forcing Web designers to make sites compatible with Internet Explorer — the leading browser — instead of working smoothly with other Web software.

Microsoft's browser choice screen will be used for five years in the 27-nation European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Microsoft could be fined 10% of its annual revenue if it does not stick to its commitment to distribute the browser screen and avoid any retaliation against computer manufacturers who install other browsers as a default on the computers they sell.

Users in the U.S. and elsewhere will not see any change.