Innovation, US

Bank of America is saying goodbye to "Higher Standards" and hello to "Bank of Opportunity," its new marketing theme

Colin Henderson

 Bank of America has successfully become national, and is now changing its marketing tag line.  This is in keeping with their controversial recent new offerring targeted at new immigrants in the US.  I expect this will drive some more innovation from BofA. Having established itself as the only truly nationwide bank through a string of acquisitions in recent years, Bank of America is now taking steps to become more of a national advertiser. It plans a sharp increase in ad spending this year, with its first new ad campaign since 2003. Source: WSJ.com – Login   Technorati tags: bank+of+america, US Continue reading Bank of America is saying goodbye to "Higher Standards" and hello to "Bank of Opportunity," its new marketing theme

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QR codes – we have lots to learn

Colin Henderson

QR codes are the hottest thing since sliced bread in Japan.  Ignore the kanji here, and follow the pictures.  Scan the QR code from a poster, or web site (2), and that loads the web page in your phone browser (3).  From there you can navigate within the site (4). This solves one of the chronic problems for phones … typing in the http address.  The marketing opportunities are huge.  There is room for 7000+ data elements in the QR code, and phone numbers, websites, and contact information are easy. The phone reads QR through the infra red port built … Continue reading QR codes – we have lots to learn

Web/Tech

Congrats to Jungle Disk on their upgrade in conjunction with Amazon S3

Colin Henderson

Totally off topic, but I have to congratulate Jungledisk on this upgrade.  I have been using their web service for a while now, and it performs impeccably.  Result – I have a complete nightly back up of ‘my documents’ for about $15 per annum (6 gig’s including My Music 4 gigs, and files 2 gigs).  It works as an incremental back up so only takes a few minutes, scheduled at 4am. This upgrade is amazing … the first sentence is mind blowing. To enable fast file renaming and copying, we’ve placed servers in Amazon.com datacenters using their EC2 service. When you need to … Continue reading Congrats to Jungle Disk on their upgrade in conjunction with Amazon S3

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Google goes after Small Business with Office Application

Colin Henderson

 We’ve talked about web based applications here before.  Well its now an official reality. Its free until April.  It appears to be based on the familiar docs and spreadsheets link from your Gmail page. Google Apps Premier Edition, to be unveiled Thursday, features online e-mail, calendaring, messaging and talk applications as well as a word processor and a spreadsheet. The launch follows Google’s introduction of a similar suite aimed at consumers last August. The new Premier Edition, however, offers enhancements aimed squarely at corporate environments. Source: Google Targets Microsoft With Launch Of Business Applications – News by InformationWeek   Technorati … Continue reading Google goes after Small Business with Office Application

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ING introduces OurVirtualHolland within Second Life

Colin Henderson

 ING have just introduced a plan to build out a significant presence within Second Life.  They have a regular site and a blog to support it.  (update:  their blog has no feed – I presume that’s an oversight that will be addressed). I especially like their approach.  Its a simple fact that virtual reality has different levels of accomplishment so far by different participants as Second Life evolves, so the grass roots approach should work well. Hat tip to Marcel for this announcement yesterday.  Read his blog post for detailed background, from someone involved.  He notes ING want to learn and … Continue reading ING introduces OurVirtualHolland within Second Life

Payments6 Comments

Will paper check usage ultimately be replaced by debit cards (US)

Colin Henderson

eCom Gal over at “Where are V“, asks a fair question because the US is lagging the rest of the world in debit card adoption/ elimination of cheques.  Great question, and the answer isn’t simple. but seriously, will paper check usage ultimately be replaced by debit cards and online bill pay? Source: who are “V”?: Who gets to say when paper checks go away?We Are V- Verity Credit Union’s Blog The short answer is, no…  although debit card will grow rapidly, as retail consumers shift quickly to debit.  Why – business cheque use persists. These are old stats from Canada, … Continue reading Will paper check usage ultimately be replaced by debit cards (US)

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links for 2007-02-21

Colin Henderson

Emily Chang – My Data StreamMy Data Stream “I wanted to have the data from my selection of RSS feeds parsed and actually imported into my own MySQL database so it was archived and referenced in my own system. “ (tags: SocialNetworks data+stream) Loan Calculator – Prosper (tags: interest rates) Accueil Credit Mutuel – portal site (tags: bank credit+mutuel portal) Eric’s Credit Community – Prosper.com Data & Statistics Prosper analysis (tags: prosper finance statistics) Greater Toronto Area Directory & Guide for Condominium, condo with location, features, & price chart Condo prices historical (tags: condo toronto) Continue reading links for 2007-02-21

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Canadian Banks – not much to differentiate

Colin Henderson

 Nice succinct review of Dundee’s targets and expectations for Canada’s Banks.  BMO – market neutral, 12-month price target is C$75.00 CIBC – market outperform, 12-month price target is C$115.00 National Bank, market neutral, 12-month price target is C$68.00 RBC – market neutral, 12-month price target is C$59.00 Scotiabank – market outperform, 12-month price target is C$57.00 TD Bank – market neutral, 12-month price target is C$76.00 Source: Canadian Banks & Insurance What really is striking from comparing the Canadian Banks over a 5 year view is that there is little to differentiate.  As an investor just buy one, and they all … Continue reading Canadian Banks – not much to differentiate

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Short Downtime « WordPress.com – and customers are happy!

Colin Henderson

 Wordpress is where this blog is hosted.  They had a 20 minute outage last night, and the owner, Matt, posted an apology, and explanation.  The entire post is self effacing, and practical.  The 90 comments are universally supportive.  How many Banks would get that response to an outage? These guys try, they are open about it, and they continually improve, bit by bit.  No home runs … just quiet improvement.  I trust Matt and WordPress.  Even though its a free service, I happily pay for storage, and site editing capability. In particular I liked this last comment … they are building … Continue reading Short Downtime « WordPress.com – and customers are happy!

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Customer Experience Management – Ron worries for its future

Colin Henderson

 We could debate the verb, talk about how customers will tell us how their experience was, etc, but I buy Ron’s assertion that firms need to take this seriously.  Its not just a question of measuring the outcomes.  It requires pro-active activities, cultural shifts, and I would suggest openness to achieve positive results. When CEM first started appearing as a term a few years ago, I thought it was the perfect antidote to reengineering. Whereas reengineering was about process redesign from the firm’s POV (reduce cost and cycle time), I thought CEM would evolve to be about process redesign from the … Continue reading Customer Experience Management – Ron worries for its future