Douglas Karr's Articles on Martech Zone
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RIP: All Your Databases Are Belong to Matt
The technology world lost a special person yesterday, friend Matthew S. Theobald. Matt was an amazing and brilliant person, developing and designing a means to index the data of the world through the Internet. I wrote about Internous after meeting Matt after a local Smaller Indiana event last year. Matt had a vision and tirelessly pursued it. The last time…
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Email Marketing or Facebook Marketing?
1.webp” class=”s3-img alignright” height=”75″ width=”75″ border=”0″ alt=”derek-mcclain.png” align=”right” />Derek McClain asked on Facebook: If you are a business that does online marketing, would you rather have someone’s email address or have that same person as a Facebook Fan aka Person that “Likes” your page? Think about this one before you answer. It’s a great question. I’m not a fan of…
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The Internet Runs Better without Flash
1.webp” alt=”Flash Block” align=”right” border=”0″ />Steve Jobs was right. The first person who advised me to get a Flash blocker was Blake Matheny. Blake is one of the best engineers I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with – and I’ve worked with him both at Compendium and at ChaCha. You’d think that I would have listened to a guy…
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A Video on Design versus Usability
Jon Arnold does an amazing job explaining what his firm does, Tuitive = Usability. There are some incredible applications out there that never see the light of day. The application may solve some very difficult issues, but if no one can actually figure out how to use it, abandonment will be high and sales will be difficult. Branding managers, product…
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For Traditional Businesses, New Media Is NOT Easy
Social media is easy. SEO is easy. Blogging is easy. Stop saying it. It’s not true. Technology is daunting. Conventional companies struggle with leveraging technology and newer channels to get positive results. Many abandon or avoid it altogether. Online search and social media are no less daunting. Twitter is simple. Right? How hard is it to type 140 characters? It’s…
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Engage! Business Rules and Social Media
1.webp” class=”s3-img alignright” border=”1″ alt=”engage.png” />For the past month, I’ve been reading Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. This is not a light read – a complete guide may be an understatement! It’s a book you really need to sit down, concentrate on and digest one page at…
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WordPress: Publish Future Posts as Upcoming Events
We built a WordPress micro-site for Corporate Blogging for Dummies and wanted to have a section where we displayed upcoming events in the lower sidebar. The solution to do this is actually quite simple and built directly into WordPress. Within your theme, you can add a loop that only queries and displays future posts for a specific category that is…
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SaaS Shifts to Offer Database as a Service
A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of listening to ExactTarget Chief of Operations, Scott McCorkle, speak to the evolution of their platform. I’ve written in the past that I believe Email Service Providers have jumped the shark – and it appears the forward-thinking ESPs have already taken note. Scott spoke to ExactTarget’s goal of being the Marketing Hub…
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Haptic Feedback: The Evolution of Touchscreens
If you’ve not heard of Haptic technologies, you will. Over a decade ago, researchers at MIT started developing devices that provide direct stimulation for people to feel virtual objects. In the last decade, the technology has begun to make it’s way onto touchscreens. Last year, Immersion demo’d a touchscreen at CES that provided haptic feedback. By adjusting the frequency and…
