Powered by one of the strongest brands of these days, Google Keep is ready to take over the note taking segment. However, if you take a closer look at what is really behind Google Keep, it is no comparison to the top dog Evernote. Evernote clearly has more features such as the ability to tag notes, collaboration, or the ability to work offline and synch. Critics thus compare Google Keep with a plain sticky note.
Here is a nice video that was shown during a recent internal academy session at MRM Worldwide. It offers a pretty good summary of the most basic SEO principles.
BMW teamed up with Local Motors, an online community dedicated to mobility solutions, to crowdsource the search for new mobility trends and solutions that could be integrated in BMW and Mini vehicles in 2025.
Here is the intro trailer emphasizing BMW’s leadership role when it comes to automotive innovations:
Here the design brief video from BMW:
Learn more about the competition here:
https://forge.localmotors.com/pages/competition.php?co=77&tab=design-brief
The submission phase has just ended, now it is the crowd’s turn to vote for the most innovative and promising submissions until 23 October 2012. The winner will be announced 31 October 2012.
Sounds like an interesting competition and from a first glance at the submissions more than 400 ideas and concepts have been entered. Quite a good result in my eyes. I do not know how and where this competition was advertised (I only read abot it in an automotive blog) but looking at 400 submissions the right audience was reached via adequate channels and platforms.
Take a look at the submissions now and register to vote.
Do you know Etsy?
Well, if you are into handcrafted items that reflect your personal style and can barely be found among the mainstream retailers, this is your place – as a seller and as a consumer. Or simply to get inspiration.
Etsy was launched in 2005 as an e-commerce website that focused on handcrafted items. A clear opponent to the shiny, fast-paced online fashion shops, etsy focused on the products with a more personal note, handcrafted by people like me and you. Etsy quickly became the place for all those undiscovered artisans who so far only had three possibilities to merchandise their goods:
1) open up a local shop – which often times was too big a step in terms of the fix costs or
2) sell their stuff on ebay. Well yes, you surely reach a big audience on ebay, but only if they find you. And often times ebay was not the appropriate platform for such goods since these were not yet brands that gave you a certain reference of quality but instead you simply had to hope the product is as good as it looked on the photos. However, the advantage of ebay is that it offers a gigantic marketplace and you are only charged if you sell anything.
3) open up your own online shop. This may make a lot of sense and costs should today be quite easy to control. However, here again, you may also have to invest into ad spending in order to assure people will find you. The web is huge and confusing.
I remember speaking to friends about the problems young German designers have when they try to sell their dresses, costumes, etc they had to design and create as part of their fashion design university curriculum. It takes a lot of effort and then in the end they ended up without an adequate marketplace to sell it. After some research, I found dawanda which does exactly this: sell unique products from small-scale producers, very often handcrafted. So there was no need to come up with such a marketplace since it already existed. And since Etsy was founded in 2005 it soon also entered the German market of course supported by what had by then already become a strong brand and the synonym of a marketplace for handcrafted uniques.
Today, 7 years since its foundation, Etsy has more than 15 million registered members and more than 875,000 registered sellers who have found on Etsy their personal storefront to sell their goods. And customers found an online marketplace where they can spend hours browsing through unexpected products from all over the world and also sharing them with their friends via facebook, twitter or pinterest. Since e-commerce projects can easily (well compared to traditional business models, I do know what an online rollout means!) be rolled out in numerous markets, Etsy is today present in more than 150 countries. That’s what you call a head start.
One thing I’d like to add: Since Etsy not only sells handcrafted items but also antiques or vintage products, this marketplace also profits from the current trend to invest in such goods. In a different product category such as cars we do see a very strong trend towards youngtimers and oldtimers which is clearly reflected in price increases of up to 10% per year.
Here is some insight into the technical side of Etsy and how it harnesses SlideShare (a little bit promotional though):
Beim sonntäglichen Kaffee habe ich heute morgen in der aktuellen Wirtschaftswoche einen sehr interessanten Artikel über Quadrocopter/Drohnen gelesen. Darin wurden insbesondere die Quadrocopter der ETH Zürich erwähnt. Um einen Eindruck zu bekommen, habe ich via Smartphone auf dem TV YouTube Videos der ETH aufgerufen und konnte mir dort einen guten Eindruck davon verschaffen, was aktuell schon möglich ist. Da diese fleissigen Helfer so programmiert werden können, dass sie sich selbst nicht in die Quere kommen können, lassen sich die Einsatzmöglichkeiten beliebig nach oben skalieren. Statt 3 Quadrocoptern die nach exakter Vorgabe Bausteine stapeln ist dies rein rechnerisch auch mit 30 möglich.
Aktuell liefern sich die ETH und die UPenn einen harten Wettkampf um die Vormachtstellung in diesem Bereich. Gleichzeitig sind erste Geräte auch schon serienreif oder gar bereits im Dienste von Armeen. Es ist faszinierend zu sehen, wie exakt diese Fluggeräte reagieren und auch im Team arbeiten können. So schnell und exakt aufeinander abgestimmt, wie sonst eigentlich nur Ameisen, Bienen oder Vogelschwärme agieren, könnten diese Fluggeräte, Krisengebiete überwachen, die Ausbreitung von Waldbränden kontrollieren, Staudämme bauen oder Mauern hochziehen. Vordenker sehen hierin gar die Zukunft der menschlichen Fortbewegung.
Facebook User die trotz Bedenken bereits auf Timeline umgestellt haben, können mit etwas Glück noch 50 kostenlose Visitenkarten von moo.com abgreifen. Der international agierende Anbieter von Printmaterialien bietet aktuell kostenlose Visitenkarten an, die ihren Inhalt aus der Facebook Timeline beziehen.
Folgender Film zeigt wie das relativ einfach geht:
Also einfach unter Info auf das kleine Icon clicken und man wird automatisch zur Seite von moo.com weitergeleitet, die dank sehr schöner und übersichtlicher Nutzerführung spielend leicht die Erstellung von verschiedenen Visitenkarten ermöglicht. Wer zu den Glücklichen der aktuellen Promoaktion (10x 5000 pro Tag) gehört, erhält diese Visitenkarten völlig umsonst, auch Versandkosten nach Deutschland fallen nicht an. Für weitere 150.000 fallen nur Versandkosten an.
Ich bin gespannt auf die Qualität!
Interessant wäre es natürlich zu erfahren, wie moo.com zu dieser offensichtlich weltweiten Kooperation mit Facebook kam und für wie lange diese laufen wird. Sicher ist, das Feature selbst und obendrein die kostenlose Aktion dürfte den Kundenstamm enorm vergrößern.
Viel Spass damit!
