The original model looks like any 2gb SD card but has an integrated WiFi chip that lets just about any camera that uses SD cards to automatically upload pictures to your PC over WiFi, upload to online photo sites (or both). There's an even an option to allow content to flow directly into iTunes on a Mac.

It's a neat tool that works well, especially for the online connection (a USB cable is going to work much faster to just transfer photos to a PC). Two issues are the fact that WiFi sucks a lot of battery life from your camera and it's an all or nothing proposition. You can't select which files to send over.

Eye is capturing on several important trends. Today’s mobile consumer expects to be connected to the Web seamlessly and ubiquitously. As a result, there's an explosion of non-PC devices that allow people to connect to the Web in unique ways (Kindle is a good example.) The disconnected digital camera has prevented that seamless connection and Eye-Fi is ahead of the curve, allowing better ways for consumers to connect their cameras to the rest of the their online personas.

What's missing? I'd like to see upload to several PCs at the same time and 2GB is a fairly small storage capacity these days (the reason I was told was to keep maximum compatibility, not to mention 16gb of images would take quite a while to upload). Despite that, I like the concept and execution here and I'd expect smart camera vendors to spend more time trying to get their cameras working closer with Eye-Fi.

Tempting as it is to join the chorus of disapproval as details of UK broadcaster ITV’s latest PR disasters around voting irregularities emerge - and boy, do they make themselves an easy target - what are the wider lessons for broadcasters adjusting to a world of declining revenues and fragmenting audiences?

Yes, broadcasters need to create new revenue streams as audiences and ad revenues migrate online. Getting revenue from premium phone lines was never the long-term answer, not least because audiences are increasingly interacting via their laptops and mobile internet (ie voting for free) rather than via SMS and Premium calls. The latest publicity has now accelerated the decline of those revenues.

What’s needed is a fundamental shift in the way broadcasters perceive their relationship with their viewers, in response to the shift that viewers are already making. As their viewers increasingly time-shift, place-shift, and multi-task across different platforms, broadcasters like ITV need to demonstrate quickly that ‘interactivity’ means more than simply fleecing their viewers via dodgy phone lines. Contrition is fine, but can ITV actually change what seems to be hard-wired behaviour among some of its execs?

As revenues decline, broadcasters should also radically look at the value of their content. As new business models for content creation emerge – the likes of Kate Modern and Quarterlife are produced for a fraction of traditional TV budgets – broadcasters should not take the primacy of professionally created content for granted. Their viewers don’t.

The growth of online video consumption creates new challenges for companies seeking to engage audiences. For more on this check out our recent report Online Video in Europe: Managing TV Audience Fragmentation.

It’s About Relationships and Experiences
Event organizer Jim Sterne added an Industry Insights day to this year’s event and invited a small group to bring their biggest and most forward thinking ideas to the table for discussion. I shared my thoughts on the fact that the traditional customer lifecycle: Acquire, Convert and Retain is defunct. I supported this with Jupiter research demonstrating that customers no longer traverse the Web in linear fashion (if they ever did), from consideration to purchase. They’re bombarded by choice, assaulted by advertising and rarely pay attention. Consumers are visiting multiple sites, multiple times prior to purchase and are twice as likely to value the advice and opinions of “friends” over brand driven content. All of these factors contribute to a fragmented online experience, where content is consumed in snack-size pieces and picked up from convenient locations across the web. To quantify this behavior and glean some semblance of understanding from erratic consumers, I proposed a new method for measurement based on Relationships and Experiences. Simply put, by quantifying these two aspects of customer interaction, you can enhance, improve and optimize the digital channel. I’ve built out a framework for quantifying these characteristics, so stay tuned for more on this topic in upcoming research.

All Business is Becoming eBusiness
One topic that surfaced on several occasions was that eBusiness and Web metrics are finally taking a seat at the boardroom table. Organizations are dissolving the silos that sequestered the online channel from the rest of the business and allowing these metrics to permeate throughout the enterprise. This is due largely to the accountability that Web analytics delivers to business metrics. The Web is infinitely measurable and now more than ever we have data to support our marketing assumptions. Although this data represents only 5% of all spending, it’s a start. Although the truly data driven organization is still a distant hope for many, we have reached the point where Web analytics has entered the lexicon of even the largest HiPPOs. At the Insights day, we discussed analytics moving from tactics to strategies and that the importance of metrics is growing throughout most organizations. The conversations about Web analytics are also moving through a maturity cycle. Originally only the CIO was interested, then CMO’s took notice and most recently the CFO is asking the questions. The value of analytics is working its way upstream.

Old Concept, New Yardstick: Attribution
Creating the perfect marketing mix is nothing new, but attribution has emerged as a method for quantifying customer touch points throughout a given campaign to allocate credit across initiatives. Historically, the last click gets all the credit for an online conversion, which is often the branded keyword or direct navigation resulting after much research and previous impressions. Web analytics tools are well suited to quantify the multiple marketing endeavors leading to conversion and use a weighted methodology to give credit where it’s due. Stay tuned for more on this as well since Jupiter will publish on this topic in coming months.

Mindreading Technology?
One of the most remarkable presentations delivered at the summit was an addendum added for Joseph Carrabis, who never got a chance to deliver his slides on Sunday because we assaulted him with questions. Joseph’s recently patented technology can really read your mind. He is a behavioral anthropologist that applied the insights of psychology and sociology to a technology solution. It works by embedding a standard javascript tag onto a page that tracks all mouse movements and clickstream activity throughout a session. The tool can determine gender in a matter of seconds and knows when you’re happy or sad. As unbelievable as this may sound, the accuracy has been proven out at 87% and although appealed originally by the US Patent office, it won their approval last month. The creator is brilliant, but you may need an interpreter to know what he’s talking about. Not because he’s speaking Gaelic (which he’s apt to do), but because his concepts are mind boggling. Although when pressed to explain his technology, he asks simple questions that shed light: Do men and women think the same? No, well he can discern that by the way the mouse moves on the page. Are you excited? Your mouse will react differently than when sad. The technology takes all this in and is able to produce actionable recommendations to enhance the way that visitors experience your web site. By using this technology and its neurological insight, the tool does know what you’re thinking. It’s a bit Orwellian, but likely to pervade Web site technologies everywhere. This topic and the NextStage Evolution technology deserve a full write-up on their own, so stay tuned on this one as well.

In all the event lived up to its reputation as the must attend show for Web analytics. I’ll close with a few notable quotes that I jotted down throughout the four days of the conference. These are snippets and paraphrases that capture great Web analytics insight:

~ If you’re explaining, you’re losing. Bob Page, Yahoo!
~ New roles are emerging: Brand Behavioralists and Dialogue Designers. Ryan Warren, Exact Target
~ The executive is the new customer, so don’t show up with a bus full of ideas; deliver a solution. Anonymous
~ The planets are aligned for Web analytics. Tom Davenport, Competing on Analytics
~ Ever see what happens when you try to push on a rope? Bryan Eisenberg, Future Now
~ Join PALM: People Against Lowly Metrics. Avinash Kaushik, ZQ Insights
~ We’re moving from Web metrics to business metrics. Embrace the “marchitecture” (marketing and architecture). Tim Goudie, Coca-Cola
~ Asking users to predict future behavior just doesn’t work. Jacob Nielson, Nielson Norman Group
Finally the most heard question: See you in the Lobby Bar?

This program gives access to 24/7 customer service to rebook on the first available flight and arrange complimentary hotel, car rental, ground transport or meals in the event of a flight delay.

As an added bonus, Air Canada offers “automatic flight information updates sent to you by SMS and email.”

The price of this “New Era” is not mentioned in the email, nor is it mentioned in first page of the website promotion. So three clicks in, I learn the “New Era” costs $25 for short haul (under 1000 miles) and $35 for long haul (over 1000 miles).

Air Canada, of course, understands travelers are frustrated by “unpredictable weather conditions, airport and air traffic delays”, a legitimate list for which they are blameless (though I find it somewhat incomplete since I’ve had flights delayed on the airline for reasons including needing to siphon off fuel when too much was mistakenly loaded, and waiting for a new flight crew due to union regulations)

I’ve been a big fan of Air Canada’s marketing, their well-branded flight classes and website features. I’ve defended their a’la carte pricing as one of the earlier carriers to introduce fees for second bags.

Entrepreneurial, perhaps. But this fee for service offends me on principle.

Flight delays top the list of travelers concerns, as is addressed in our recent report called “Airlines and Leisure Travelers: Understanding Issues and Opportunities”. Some airlines are trying strategies based on the premise that their customers deserve a level of customer service. According to the Boston Globe, American Airlines Inc. is testing out a gate-side customer service center and a phone bank at Logan intended to help passengers get rebooked on alternate flights faster while US Airways plans to have several agents dedicated to tracking flights that will arrive late and rebooking passengers who will miss their connections.

Regrettably, Air Canada now considers customer service to be an opt-in a’la carte revenue generator.

Yet I fear they are correct: this, sadly, could be a new era in travel.

The question asked respondents to pick their top two favorites. Clients can check out the data on Quantify, and compare it with the results last June.

For those who don’t, here’s a quick synopsis:

While credit cards remain the number-one online consumer payment option for purchasing goods and services, this is not necessarily a function of having been designed for web usage.

Put simply, credit cards weren’t designed for the web. But their ubiquity in the U.S marketplace….and the leading role the U.S. played in the early days of e-commerce…has made cards (debit as well as credit) the natural way to facilitate online transactions. JupiterResearch survey data reflect this.

Since then, of course, a variety of other payment options designed for Internet usage have emerged. Some, like PayPal, BillMeLater, Google Checkout and eBillMe, have been relatively successful. Others, like Beenz and Flooz, have come and gone. The difficulty of balancing development of a multi-sided market—in which success is predicated on overcoming the “chicken and egg” nature of generating enough consumer demand, while ensuring adequate merchant acceptance—can be significant, and requires resources adequate to sustaining visibility, and generating demand. Not a path for the faint of heart, or weak-of-capitalization.

A new JupiterResearch report indicates that consumers who are turning to alternative online payments are doing so for two primary reasons. The first is security -- in the form of not having to enter card information online. The second, convenience, is related—as anyone who has ever wanted to make a purchase on a PC upstairs, using a credit card located in a wallet or purse a floor or two away has found. In a time-challenged society, speed of throughput takes on many forms. True, consumers report wanting the ability to still use cards, when they want to, reflecting the value of consumer payment choice. But while it takes time to expand new market offerings, JupiterResearch believes that the significant expansion in merchant acceptance over the last 18 months … and the consumer factors outlined above … bode well for the continued off-eBay expansion of PayPal, and the continued consumer adoption of BillMeLater and other services which can deliver on consumers’ needs by tapping into the speed, convenience and security aspects associated therewith.

link

Beyond online, another area in which managing the development of a multi-sided payments market will present challenges is in mobile payments. An interesting deal to note out of the U.K. this week on the subject. Monitise plc and Metavante, with whom Monitise plc is co-backer on their U.S. JV, Monitise Americas, announced the introduction of a mobile payments service tied to a prepaid payments card tied to, and distributed via, Carphone Warehouse.

Despite the name…a relic of the days when mobile phones weighed ten pounds and sat in the “boots” of vehicles…Carphone Warehouse is one of the U.K.’s largest mobile phone and phone accessory chains, making the inclusion of a Carphone Warehouse an interesting synergy in a prepaid-centric nation. In the U.K., Monitise plc operates the Monilink mobile banking and payments network, which is available to customers of HSBC, first direct, Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, Alliance & Leicester and Ulster Bank, plus the major UK network operators.

A handful of companies are getting creative to maintain multi-language support. In a conversation with eGain’s CEO Ashu Roy earlier this week, for example, he indicated that some multi-channel merchants in international markets have turned to their local employees to assist with customer service requests. These employees are obviously well versed in the local language, as well as aware of local customer preferences and resources. As companies expand into markets where there may be multiple languages or dialects spoken, not all of which are supported through traditional customer care channels, such a strategy can help fill in the gaps.

Indeed, while there are certainly areas where companies can contain costs in international markets (and the report will help identify these areas), companies must ensure they don’t miss out on an opportunity to differentiate based on customer care. US-based companies are often taken to task for their missteps in global markets; by contrast, there is often a perception that these companies provide superior customer care. In our report, we outline how US companies can take advantage of their expertise in customer service, and identify which tools and options can help them build a leadership position in customer care outside of the US.

Over 4 times as many employees
Over 5 times as many employees in R&D
Over 3 times as much R&D spending
Nearly $12 billion in cash on hand as of March 31 (a hair less than Google’s cash on hand).

All of this is surely enough to neutralize scale economies as barrier to entry, as I wrote about yesterday.

But those vast resources are spread across multiple Microsoft businesses. And Microsoft’s Online Services Business is losing a billion dollars a year. Meanwhile, the company cannot afford to neglect its cash cow and other emerging businesses either. So focus is one advantage that Google has. Another would have to be incumbency, Porter’s #5 mentioned in yesterday's post. No matter how many resources you throw at competing with Google, you can hope--for but not count on--matching or exceeding the technological breakthroughs that have given them this lead.

Acquiring to Change the Playing Field

Microsoft seems to have reached this conclusion, leading them to make an aggressive acquisition bid that they hoped would allow them to reap further scale benefits and enhance their competitive position not so much in search but in the portal and display advertising business. That logic still applies. The question is whether Microsoft will turn its attention to acquiring some other online player with a similar rationale.

Hence today's reports that Microsoft has been in talks with Facebook.

Just go to NBC.com on your iPhone and click on the video tab. Bottom line, no matter what differences there me be between Apple and NBC, the iPod/iPhone eco-system is just too important to ignore.