I work in e-commerce, and recently I’ve been fascinated to watch the industry scramble to react to a new phenomenon: the collision of social networks and online shopping, which has opened up a new frontier of social shopping. This post explores the past, present, and future of social shopping.

The Past: Online Shopping Develops Independently of Social Networks

In the last few years, companies have pioneered new ways of selling products that their physical counterparts haven’t done: they allowed customers to contribute to the dialog. They started by allowing customers to rate products (like 3 our of 5 stars), but then they opened it up even more by allowing customers to individually voice what they think about a particular product by writing personal review–both good and bad. Still, customers had to seek out the e-commerce store, navigate to a particular product page, and scroll down to discover what others thought.

Continue Reading “Social Networks and Online Shopping Collide to Create “Social Shopping””

Almost all PC laptops that you will buy today are packaged with Windows Vista. Vista has received mixed reviews from the public and I have been avoiding to upgrade until a lot of the performance issues with Vista are worked out. However, if you are in the market of buying a new laptop, you may not have an option to “wait it out”…chances are your system will come pre-packaged with Vista.

But did you know that you can get better performance with Vista by running it on a MacBook Pro? In fact, according to PC world, the fastest Windows Vista notebook they’ve tested this year is a Mac.

Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year–or for that matter, ever–is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro’s PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway’s E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook’s score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn’t care less whether you run Windows

Although a Mac is a little pricey, if your laptop performance is number one on your list, consider buying a MacBook Pro. Read PC World’s full test report.

Vandelay Design blog posted some really cool  Tools to Monitor, Measure, and Track You Website.  Check them out.

As more and more businesses are supporting their own online needs, it has become imperative for businesses to own Creative Suite applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Dreamweaver. While all of these softwares are great and have very powerful features they can also break a small business owner’s budget. Seth Rosenblatt of CNET suggests some great alternatives:

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Entrepreneurs and career professionals often find themselves stuck in a business situation and can’t seem to identify a clear path around, over, or through the barrier that is keeping them from reaching the next level. Perhaps they are too close to the issue or too connected to it. Perhaps they have a mental block and just can’t come up with the ideas, or, in some cases, maybe, they are the problem.

Finding an advisory group, whether it is formal or informal, is very important. They can be your friends, colleagues, or associates. Some of them should come from different industries and bring with them different ideas and perspectives. We need people…success is very rarely created in a vacuum.

We saw the importance and the immediate benefit of leveraging the collective knowledge of the New York City Webgrrls last week. I facilitated the Webgrrls HotSeat, a workshop designed to help the participants clearly identify an immediate issue that is holding them back and then collectively offer ideas to help that person address the issue and at least start the process of getting past it. It was a great session and it was amazing to see the depth of knowledge and the willingness of all of the participants to share their information and their insights.

Below are some examples of the issues that the participants were facing at the Webgrrls HotSeat last week.

Continue Reading “Teams and Advisors are Important – Business in a Vacuum Very Rarely Creates Success”