Stouffer's Blog

Let your engines do the shopping

2006-05-04T21:50:00.000-04:00

This article talks about how the latest internet comparison pricing websites work. The two sites mentioned are SmartShopper and Shopwiki.
SmartShopper is what is known as a register based price comparison search engine and the author seemed to like it quite a bit. You download it to your PC then search for a product. SmartShopper will see vendors who have the product you want and give you back a list of vendors and their associated prices. The problem with any register based site is that they rely on the merchant to submit product information, meaning that if the merchant you wish to buy from gives SmartShopper incomplete of out-of-date information then you could be out of luck.
Shopwiki is what’s called a crawler based website and it works a little bit differently. Here’s what the author had to say about Shopwiki and other “crawlers” since they are relatively new compared to registrers. “With crawlers, the search engine goes each month to as many Web sites as it can find and retrieves info on prices, stock and other data. Although crawlers are superior to registers, no one has figured out how to make crawlers more precise, so sometimes they produce results that have nothing to do with your search inquiry” Another difference is that registers charge fees for a company to be a part of their total possible inventory of products whereas crawlers just search all over the whole internet.
Registrars, crawlers, whatever, these sites will blow up the internet shopping market in the next few years. Americans shopped for $286 Billion dollars on the internet last year and according to this guys survey we think that internet shopping has improved out overall shopping experience by 32%. The search engines are a great way to save money on the internet and will be used a lot in the future. The search engines charge fees for advertising on their websites and for each product the company sells through its website. These kind of search engines definitely benefit everybody and I’m down with them.

Surfers Buy Waves Online

2006-04-27T22:38:00.000-04:00

Surfers Buy Waves Online

A dude out in California named Lance Lurie started an online business in which he sells sells a service to anybody who wants to guarantee themselves a nice wave. His company called BuyAWave.com has developed the satellite technology that can track “fledgling” waves as far out to sea as 300 miles. Programmers at the company have developed software that “tags” the waves, giving each a specific identification number. Wave are determined to be small, medium or “monsters” and are priced from $1.89 all the way up to $9.99 for those one of a kind monsters.

Surfer’s can go to the website and choose a wave that will be rolling into shore at whatever time they want. A “wave controller” straddles a surfboard out past the break and by consulting with a handheld waterproof device, tells the surfer exactly when their wave is approaching. Sven Legstrom an avid Malibu surfer and client of BuyAWave says ”At my desk job during the day, I can log on and buy a few gnarly ones that'll be incoming after I get off work. fantasize about them. Well, you know what I mean... catching the break just right, getting in the curl and riding it all the way. I get off work, grab my board and head over to the beach. I can catch the 5:36, the 5:44, the 5:50, the 5:57, the 6:02 and the 6:08. After that, I'm pretty spent”. Many avid surfers like Sven are doing the same. BuyAWave generated $18 million in revenues in 2004, with 39% of their sales coming directly from Malibu.

Of course some people are hating on Lance’s idea. I don’t disagree when people say “you can’t buy nature”, but it’s not just the wave that people are buying it is a convenience factor that they are buying. Compare it a to ski resort; people there pay for the lift service, use of the lodges, and parking services not only to ski down a mountain a.k.a “nature”. Although in the case of the ski resort the company does actually own the land I think Lance’s idea was pretty cool and I would definitely be willing to spend 20 bucks for a good hour surfing. That is of course if I lived in Cali and knew how to surf. Lance’s company is pretty sick right? Tell me what you think.
Check these pics of Malibu's Surfing

EXTRA CREDIT- GOOGLE TALK

2006-04-24T20:19:00.000-04:00

Google Talk

The guy Nicoli basically spoke about Google's core competencies. They have the most data available because they are the largest search engine on the internet. They use this data to make their search engine even better. Over the past decade or so groups of 3 to 5 engineers work on configuring data in new ways that make search engines easier to use. For example, the search Britney Spears can be mistakenly typed into a search queries in many differents forms. Google data miners basically find out the different ways and spellings of queires that people enter incorrectly. Once they find this information they will make that particular misspelling of the search go to the correct search for Britney Spears. (enter Brittney Speers and u still get what you are looking for).
Google boasts that they have more than three times the websites of their largest competitor. Google engineers have also been working on the long time problem of language translation. They are using webpage documentation to find ways that will make the translation easier in the future. Since Google has the most data they will be the best translator in coming years.
One thing that Nicoli said that made me realize how modern of a company is is that they allow 20% of their time for whatever they feel is necessary. This is a great way to get more out of your workers. They can devote a small yet significant portion of their time into developing new ways to do things and these new ideas can get more engineers assigned to them and could eventually make Google more profitable. It also seemed like it was a laid back place to work. Have a pool table and video games to play with could be a great way to interact with your co-workers and to clear your mind from work related stuff for a little bit.
So basically employees of google are paid to find and develope trends from databases in a laid back enviornment. This has to be part of the reason for Google's booming success over the past decade.

Digital Books Start A New Chapter

2006-04-20T23:46:00.000-04:00

Digital Books Start A New Chapter

Morning commuters often read the newspaper, a magazine, or a book while riding the train to work in the morning. A recent technological advance that allows the batteries of palm pilots to run for a much longer time period will soon change this common early morning scene.

The new technology works likes this: “A small company called E Ink has created a method for arranging tiny black and white capsules into words and images with an electronic charge. Because no power is used unless the reader changes the page, devices with the technology could go as long as 20 books between battery charges. The text also looks just as sharp as ink on a printed page, since each capsule is the size and pigment of a grain of laser-jet toner. This is changing the way people read books and the online book selling industry is starting to catch on.

Mirroring Apple’s website for selling itunes, Sony now offers over 10,000 book titles on its website. Sony is also selling a product called “The Reader” for about $400 dollars which is approxiamately the size and weight of a regular sized novel which buyers can download books to and read in the same fashion. The publisher random house has followed suit offereing 25,000 books for sale online. They, as will Sony, charge a price per page downloading fee for all categories of books.

What has happened to personal libraries? These new ways for reading for entertainment seems kind of odd to me, but I guess it’s the convenience of buying online that has changed the book industry forever. Recently, a professor of my said that she had bought and ipod for the sole purpose of listening to books on it. What is this world coming to?.....As you can see; I am having trouble finding articles to write about, leave some awsome feedback.

Internet users fume at fee idea

2006-04-13T23:42:00.000-04:00

Internet users fume at fee idea

BY JAMES S. GRANELLI
Los Angeles Times
Don’t you get annoyed when that little downloading thingy on the bottom of your computer takes forever to finish? This is the issue at stake in this article. Some broadband providers such as Vonage and Roadrunner – High Speed Online as well as others have recently proposed that heavy data application downloader’s using their services should have to pay extra for this streamlined service.
Phone and cable companies such as these claim that these heavy users congest the internet slowing it down for everyone else. The article puts it simply “For instance, online film sites such as CinemaNow Inc. might have to pay a premium to send movies uninterrupted, or Apple Computer Inc.' s iTunes Music Store might tack an extra fee on a song download to guarantee instant delivery”. This will in most cases make the internet run smoother.
The problem with this that is affects the neutrality of the internet as a whole. It is, of course, the information highway and many are arm up in arms about this proposition. “On Friday, Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., issued a draft bill that contained strong language protecting network neutrality. It would bar broadband providers from charging content providers for priority lanes.” I feel this is the right move until the problem worsens. As broadband services continues to grow so will the demand for heavy application downloader’s but, if we can all just wait a few every seconds nobody will have to pay for this specialty service. The focus of many internet service providers is exactly that- to build up their copper infrastructure in order to keep their internet running faster than their competition.
Adding premium charges to internet service will only hurt the masses in my opinion. This kind of technology must be prohibited so that we can do things like download pictures for our blogs without it costing extra money. Please, voice your opinion about this terrible new proposal.

The Problem with Internet-Based Movie Downloads

2006-04-06T23:03:00.000-04:00

The Problem with Internet-Based Movie Downloads -
The Internet Isn't Connected to the TV, Stupid!

As of April 3rd, six major Hollywood studios announced plans to sell movies over the Internet. These are not rentals but actual movies that can be viewed on your PC. The author of this article goes into quite some detail about why he believes they will not work.

This guy seems kind of pissed off about the $20 to $30 dollars websites like movielink.com and cinemanow.com will be charging for each movie download. His reasons are pretty simple. Why pay 30 bucks for a movie on the internet when you can find it for target for half the price? He seems to believe that is the opposite of what internet buyers want. Internet buyers are there for the simple fact that online downloads are cheaper than store prices, but i feel there is more to internet buying than just price. People including myself are lazy and I use the internet so I don't have to take a ride down to Best Buy or Target. Convience is another factor to internet buying that the author seems to have forgotten about.
His other grudge with these new downloads, which I agree with is that any movie downloaded can only be watched on a computer monitor. Who wants to watch a movie on a small computer screen when they could be watching in in front of their big screen tv? Nobody, exect, a very small percentage that already use these and other websites for music and video downloading will want to get a download...convert it to a dvd... and then only be able to use this dvd in their PC. These websites are going to have to find a way to either make the movies cheaper so consumers will buy them based on cost or add other featurs to the downloads making them enticing to the avid movie watcher.
I think that the author is a little pessimistic about the success of these movie downloads but he does have a point about watching movies on your PC. I don't really like the idea of doing this myself but I'll be the first one to jump on the bandwagon as soon as the price of an online movie download drops to $15 bucks or less.

Ringtones USA Introduces Fair Pricing for Ringtones, Mobile Games

2006-03-23T14:32:00.000-05:00

ARTICLE

New Mobile Content Warehouse Gives Consumers Purchasing Flexibility

Downloading music over the internet is not the only thing you can do nowadays. Cell phone companies such as Verizon Wireless have developed their websites recently to contain ringtone downloading capabilities. Most of the people I know have been using websites such as http://www.ringophone.com/, http://www.besttones.com/, and http://www.ringtonesusa.com/ for years now.

The website ringtonesusa has started charging their customers for each individual download rather than a set monthly rate. Ringtone websites have had trouble in the past getting people to subscribe to their monthly membership. Although memberships can be as cheap as $2.50 a month these clubs often limit the amount or number of downloads per month. At ringtonesusa you can download videos, animations, realtones, games and more along with just downloading ringtones to your cellphone. Each item costs between 99 cents and 8 bucks (for games), and any ringtone you want will run you $1.99. This is a better way of selling their product because you are not obligated to use your set amount of downloads per month, rather you can download a bunch in one week then not revisit the site for another year. The website is easy to use with features like “What model phone do you have” questions which direct you to the ringtones which you are able to download.
I like this new way of pricing downloadable ringtones because I can get as many or few as I want while at the same time knowing exactly how much I am spending. DO YOU LIKE THIS METHOD OF PRICING?...... comments are cool……

Clearer pricing information for online supermarket shoppers

2006-03-17T17:09:00.000-05:00

Clearer pricing information for online supermarket shoppers

Recently in the United Kingdom, five major online grocery stores have been accused of mispricing their products. Customers have found that the price they are being charged at delivery are slightly higher than the price that showed up on the online shopping website.

The five companies in question (Asda, Sainsbury, Tesco,Waitrose and Ocado) said they will comply with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in order to help sustain the prices of their products online. The price discrepancy that customers face is that the price they obtain on the day they place their order is different than the price they pay a couple days later when their purchases are delivered to their residences. The OFT has made three provisions for online grocers to comply with. They are; 1. upfront information about their guide price policies and how the online shopping process works, 2. ensuring special offer prices quoted on-line are treated as firm prices for orders that are to be delivered in the offer period, the duration of offers will be made clear, 3. easy access to the terms and conditions.
I believe that this type of price discrepancy is all over the internet. The most common way for online sites to fool you into paying a higher price is to not include their shipping and handling fees until after you have made the purchase. Almost everything you buy online has this type of fee and it really adds to the cost of the products. These U.K. grocers have been overcharging their customers and now realize what they have been doing wrong. This type of price difference must be regulated somehow in the United States because as the internet become faster and more widely used for making every day purchases the ability of the online websites to overcharge its customers could become enormous. Some kind of regulation like the OFT’s in the U.K. should be watching over our transactional websites here in the U.S.

Class Action Giant Sues Labels

2006-03-10T15:59:00.000-05:00

Class Action Giant Sues Labels

One of the most popular online sales industries that has grown exponentially over the past few years is that of digital music sales. With the increasing demand for online music, major music labels began offering online music downloads and CDs to compete with such Internet music pioneers as Napster. However, as of March 9, a class action lawsuit has been filed accusing major music labels, such as Sony BMG, Universal Music and Time Warner, of fixing prices for Internet music downloads. William Lerach, San Diego attorney who filed the suit, claimed at least five major music labels “fought together to keep the online music market from emerging, and then ‘conspired to fix and maintain’ music prices”, once online services like Apple’s iTunes (www.apple.com) became increasingly successful.
The lawsuit stemmed from the U.S. Department of Justice investigation into pricing of online music and the collusion between the labels on how music is sold over the Internet. While it seemed until recently the only problem with online music sales was alleged “illegal downloads” where programs allowed downloaders to obtain music files without paying any fee at all, there is now a much more serious problem on the horizon. The suit filed by Lerach was on behalf of eleven plaintiffs who purchased music online, and for “anyone who has paid inflated prices for music”. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer launched a similar investigation into online music pricing and more can be read about Spitzer and the Department of Justices explorations in DOJ Probes Music Pricing.

Internet companies have tough time with high search ad prices

2006-03-02T17:09:00.000-05:00

High internet search ad prices

The price of advertising via the internet has gone up significantly in the past several years, especially during the holiday seasons. Because the internet has gained so much popularity the demand for controlling “keywords” in the more widely used categories has skyrocketed.
Chief Executive Mark Vadon of Blue Nile Inc. recently stated that the company’s top five keywords rose more than 80% in the fourth quarter alone last year. Blue Nile Inc. (www.bluenile.com) is an online jewelry store which includes services like interactive tools that let you build your own diamond engagement ring and boasts having over 60,000 diamonds in its inventory. Obviously this website does a lot of online advertising.
Ben Perry a director from www.iprospect.com (a firm devoted to researching and selling online search marketing) says that spikes like these price increases have been happening for the last few years. His company shows result like a 2.5% price increase for a keyword in the retail category in 2005 but a larger 7.3% increase in the year before. This shows that there has been an upward trend over the past few years. According to Perry, the most modest price jumps for 2005 we in the travel and entertainment keywords, while automotive keywords showed no rise and financial keywords actually fell last year.
The point of the article was to show that overall internet keywording costs have been increasing for a long time now. The problem that I see is that due to the increasing number of internet users the cost of adverting will continue to rise. This will be a problem for smaller companies that don’t have the resources to pay for expensive keywords on websites. Isn’t it the goal of the internet for everyone to be on the same playing field? Pretty soon small companies will have to avoid using the internet for advertising simply because they don’t have the capital. How will they compete when a few large firms buy up all the popular keywords?

AOL Hopes To Ring Up Upgrades

2006-02-23T23:26:00.000-05:00

AOL Hopes to Ring Up Upgrades

Although this article doesn’t talk about pricing on the internet, it does talk about prices for internet service. How much does a normal dial-up connection cost per year?

AOL has recently raised its rate by 9% to $25.90 a month. (see aol.com for more details). The reason for AOL in doing this is to get more people to switch from dial-up to their broadband service. I think this is a good move for AOL because their number of subscribers has dropped from 26.7 million in 2002 all the way down to 19.5 million in 2005. The reason why I think this is smart is because only 6 million of these AOL users are paying for their high speed services. This leaves about 13 million subscribers left for AOL to target.
They really need to capitalize on their current customers in order to deal with their price conscious competitors like , Netzero and Earthlink. Both of these providers offer discounted starting rates which would offset the hassle of a customer changing email addresses and the rest of the service. If cost is the only issue you can get high speed internet from Netzero for only $9.95 a month when you sign up for a year. AOL has combated this by offering their service to people who already have broadband connection through their cable provider for only $14.95 a month.
AOL does hope that their image and superior software will help it keep its current customers but I don’t know if people really care about all that if they can find service for ½ the price elsewhere. So, you can get either a dial-up or broadband connection from AOL for $25.90 a month or for $14.95 a month you get the broadband AOL (which also includes 10hrs of dial up service a month- good for business travelers), but Netzero is offering a high speed broadband connection for only 10 bucks a month. Which one would you use? I think that AOL is doing the right thing by increasing dial up pricing but I think they should be more competitive in pricing their high speed internet services.

Shopping For a House via the Internet

2006-02-16T19:21:00.000-05:00

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/19/real_estate/blogging_for_real_estate/index.htm

Blog if you love real estate
Bloggers are changing the equation when it comes to buying a house or condo.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Hello all, my name is Matthew Stoeber and I am a Senior double major in Finance and Marketing. With all due respect blogging about internet marketing is at best boring as #(*^$. Hopefully as the semester continues I can unveil a few articles that tickle your feather. In this day in age the internet provides us with a wide variety of information. If all goes well I will keep you updated about some of the information which is available to you when concerned with the price you pay for different products.
I’d like to begin by taking a look at the most advanced way to shop for a new home. Recently blogs have been started in order to inform homebuyers about some of the nitty gritty parts of real estate that you can’t find out just by going to an open house or from your agent. Things such as seasonal flooding, neighborhood restaurants, noise at night and other things along those lines are now recorded for many residential housing areas.
At websites like realtor.com and the now commonly used ebay this information is simply not provided. There is a picture of the property, some basic details and a bidding price. Now, on websites such as Curbed.com, and Gothamist.com as well as thousands of blogs, potential buyers can discover anything that current residents or recent buyers wish to post about the area/property conditions. I feel that these websites will offer enormous influence in the future of the real estate market. Since all of us are going to be in the market for housing over the next couple of years I feel that this type of new information will help us decide which area/property/type of residence is right for us. Finding a good price in such a competitive housing environment such as Long Island will be a challenge that I will be facing in the near future, and this type of information can definitely improve my chances of satisfying my housing needs. Post a comment if your little heart desires!!!

2006-02-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

For all your sports news and scores use go to foxsports

2006-02-09T11:30:00.000-05:00

Brett Farve will retire before the end of this semester