Valtech Blog

A rundown of the biggest digital stories, new trends, mobile technologies, cool websites, and social networks.

GM pulls paid ads from Facebook: Facebook pulled the plug on a $10 million a year Facebook advertising account, citing poor ROI. GM spends about $40 million a year on Facebook marketing, so will continue to post content about its brand on Facebook, however.

Social media and in-game advertising is going to grow over the next few years: This being an election year, expect political campaigns to contribute significantly to that growth, giving it a boost in 2012 alone with the millions already being poured into digital ads by presidential campaigns this year.

ClickZ reports that President Obama’s campaign is on track to spend $35 million on online advertising this year. That’s up from about $16 million the campaign spent in 2008, a record for that year. Obama’s competitor in that race, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), spent around $3.6 million on online advertising.

‘Holy Grail’?: Campaign like it’s 2012? You betcha. The Obama team is using a new tool that gives the campaign a real-time “master view” of the re-election efforts throughout the country. Details are, understandably, under wraps, but the team behind the idea has around a hundred statisticians, predictive modelers, data miners, mathematicians, software engineers, and bloggers chugging away at the Obama For America headquarters in downtown Chicago.

When you hear “home improvement,” do you think Walmart? That might change. The world’s largest retailer is showcasing its home-improvement prowess through a digital campaign that helps consumers tackle projects such as replacing an outlet or switch and staining a deck. The site lets you download a project sheet with tips and instructions, while videos guide you through the task at hand. As the narrator in the videos notes,  “All the tools are available at Walmart to get you going.”

Website traffic from tablets has grown 10 times faster that than of smartphones: And will represent 10 percent of all Website traffic by 2014, according to a report released by Adobe at its Adobe Digital Marketing Summit EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), which is taking place in London May 15 and 16.

According to the report, the share of Website visits from tablets grew approximately 10 times faster than the rate for smartphones in the first two years after market introduction and grew more than 300 percent in the last year.

Today’s poll:

 Loading ...

Read all posts by Adam Khan

A rundown of the biggest digital stories, new trends, mobile technologies, cool websites, and social networks.

Mo’ mobile mo’ problems for Facebook: Usage of Facebook mobile site and apps (441 minutes) has surpassed time spent on its desktop website (391 minutes) — for those who use both Facebook interfaces, according to a report by Comscore.  That’s a bit of a problem for the social networking giant, which had to file a sixth amendment to its IPO, noting that monetization from the mobile channel could be tricky: ”We may not be successful in our efforts to grow and further monetize the Facebook Platform,” Facebook notes in the amendment.

Baidu, China’s largest Internet search provider (yes, bigger than Google, with 78% Chinese search market share by revenue), launches a low-cost smartphone:  Priced at around $160, it will run on the company’s Baidu Cloud software, which gives users access to 100 gigabytes of storage. Baidu has nearly 35% of mobile search share in China, and it is rumored that Apple may be adding Baidu as the default search engine for all Apple iOS-based devices in China.

Amazon enhancing Cloudfront Content Delivery Network (CDN) for dynamic content: At present, Amazon relies on partners like Akamai for dynamic content delivery. However, according to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog post, Amazon is planning to bolster its own CDN to support delivery of dynamic, interactive content. Cloudfront will now let customers serve content from multiple sources–including Amazon’s own S3 storage service, dynamic content from Amazon EC2, as well as from third-party sites — from a single domain name.

Majority (58%) of Americans remain uninterested in mobile wallets: According to a March 2012 research by marketing solutions outfit Catapult, only 10% of US consumers were at least somewhat interested in using mobile wallets for in-store purchases. But the lack of consumer interest and confidence in digital wallets isn’t deterring traditional payment companies from pushing the envelope. MasterCard has entered the battle with PayPass, a new “contactless” payment platform, and Visa has just completed an employee test of its V.me service, which is said to be compatible with smartphones equipped with “near field communication,” or NFC, which transforms a mobile device into a “tap-and-go” payment system.

Ever made a poor late night food decision? It’s a universal human trait, as this very cool interactive infographic by Massive Health reveals. An aggregation of 7.68 million self-reported food ratings conducted over a five-month period, it’s a revealing heat map that proves cultures across the world are susceptible to post-sundown diet meltdown.

Junk Food Science

And after you take today’s poll, remember to send us (blog@valtech.us) a good scoop, tip or suggestions for stories you’d like us to cover.

 Loading ...

Read all posts by Adam Khan

That’s up from 55% same time last year, according to a Pew report.

[Location-based information is described as directions, recommendations, and information related to the location].

“This increase coincides with a rise in smartphone ownership overall (from 35% of adults in 2011 to 46% in 2012), which means that the overall proportion of U.S. adults who get location-based information has almost doubled over that time period—from 23% in May 2011 to 41% in February 2012.”

Other nuggets from the report:

As smartphone usage has risen, so too has the use of a geosocial service like Foursquare or Gowallah to “check in” to certain locations and share their location with friends. Nearly 18% of smartphone owners use geosocial services on their phones, up from 12% in 2011. This translates to 10% of all adults as of February 2012, up from 4% in May 2011.

Within my own circle of friends on Facebook, for example, I am seeing an increasing number of photos tagged with location, a sign that there is a growing level of comfort with indirect “check-ins”.

Personally, I use the Yelp iPhone app on a daily basis, and the app’s ability to deliver reviews, special offers, and directions has been incredibly useful.

So do you seek out and act on location-based information? Do you tag photos with location or share a “check-in” with friends?

Read all posts by Adam Khan

I’m a consumer and an IT professional–but first, a consumer.

As such, I see brands–not “multi” or “omni” channels, brick-n-mortar, online, mobile, cross-marketing, blah, blah, blah…..

The interaction I have are with the brands I love and it’s changing. As a consumer I look to the brands I know and respect–and the new ones that catch my eye!  No matter what/where/how I want to shop, I expect my brands to be there–or I will be disappointed. The customer experience must enable a seamless, transparent, effortless and always intelligent method for interacting & purchasing from my favorite brands.  I want the right offers presented at the right time to provide me an experience that makes a great story–either way I will share my stories on my social networks–good or bad.  Sure I want my favorite brands to increase their profitability too.  Why not? I need them to be successful so they can keep giving me a great experience.

Now, as an IT professional, I see trends.  One of them is a Smarter Planet (borrowed phrase from IBM).   Yes, you have to work hard to make a complex set of technology commerce channels work seamlessly for the consumer.  IBM powers over $30 Billion (USD) of the world’s internet retailer sales.  Their new Smarter Commerce leadership does seem to be helping consumers achieve their goals in more and more world markets.

Read all posts by scottfrost-Global Retail Practice Director

Working IT executives in the community use networking to help themselves
manage successfully.  Information Technology is moving from a supporting role to a star player as IT
increasingly becomes the core of business operations. CIO’s and Senior IT executives should plan to attend SIMposium 2012, CIO Means Business, to develop the necessary leadership and strategic skills necessary to keep your
company on the cutting edge. SIMposium, the largest gathering of CIOs in North America, is held annually to
bring IT professionals together to discuss, learn and engage on their current business issues, identify industry best practices and lay the foundation for developing business alliances.

SIMposium speakers represent a who’s who of the IT industry, with guest from Fortune 100 companies to the
smallest organization.

http://www.simposium2012.org

The Society for Information Management (SIM) is over 40 years old, and it’s the
premier chapter-based CIO and IT executive group in the country. SIM is not a
vendor group – it’s an exclusive club, led by CIO’s, for CIO’s and their direct
reports. By design, a majority of the members are CIO’s, CISO’s and CTO’s.

Read all posts by scottfrost-Global Retail Practice Director

by Scott Frost, Valtech Global Retail Practice Director

Collaboration. Now, more than ever. While the CIO is driven by enterprise projects, Brand management and Brand reputation drives the CMO. The CMO will be more focused on social media and “e-Reputation” and the fluidity the customer brand perception & customer experience influence on cross-channel commerce results.
If 80% of a brand’s ‘conversation’ comes from customers via social media & online communities, the CMO is all about trying to capture that voice by moving beyond campaign management and measurement. Also, as the CMO realizes it’s impossible to control the message or the digital assets, the CIO needs to help the CMO create a platform that consumers can interact with and reward consumers for sharing positive stories; and provides ROI for the organization.
For this reason, ecommerce is increasingly falling under the purview of CMO’s over the CIO’s traditional IT channel point- of-sale systems management. In this collaboration, the CIO will focus on multi-channel data and information security, analytics aggregation tools, technology choices and enterprise integration. The CMO listens and responds to the voice of the consumer to measure that voice, drive revenue, and to find new customers.
The partnership of the CIO and CMO can make or break, drive or stagnate, x or x, a companies competitive advantage. If the conversation is not already taking place, today’s retail CIOs and CMOs need to talk to each other, listen, adapt, and act as one.

Read all posts by scottfrost-Global Retail Practice Director

If you missed the Internet Retailer Conference last week in San Diego, the sessions provided lots of tips, dos and don’ts, and also trumpeted all the latest trends in the online marketing world and the new world order in social and mobile commerce. Most are things we already understand but still need the experts to confirm for us (and make us feel better too!):
• 96% of top 500 Fortune companies are doing social media and social commerce
• 50% of the top Fortune 500 are doing mobile apps and commerce
• Trend now is to year-round free shipping by online retailers including LL Bean, Newegg and EBay
• 37 Million people now have five or more connected devices (how many is too much?)
• By 2020, there will be over 50 billion connect devices
• People research online and via mobile, while more still buy online, mobile offline is growing fast (now above current $100 billion per year)
• For eCommerce buyers today, there is no significant distinction in expectations between buying online or mobile
• With 123 Million connected TVs by 2014, TCommerce promises to do the same (from our couch)

All these IRCE numbers and the experts at the show tell us that the new world is here…and prove to us that if we’re not selling online, mobile and social…we’re losing market share…
I think all of us know the trajectory of this story line and we are all doing some type of evangelizing in our companies and to our clients to make the new order for our digital life. However, as I talked to more and more of the IRCE exhibit floor warriors last week, I am began to think that the marching orders are being lost along the road to the digital nirvana. Many are still stuck in their silos, with stale and hard to fix websites, with disconnected ecommerce, social and content platforms…and worse, there is still a disconnect between IT and Marketing, and the ability to understand and link sales made with those lost in the Cloud.

Hold on now as things are just about to get more complicated with Commerce 3.0!

I know everyone is on top of their game at the new intersection of all of today’s new technologies. Please raise your digital hands if you have all of these technologies covered for your customers (stuck in the middle) in the new digital world…

Figure 1 Commerce 3.0 Technologies

OK, so there aren’t too many hands out there right now…yes this all takes time to work this to connect all these dots. Besides we don’t all have the resources of Google, Apple and EBay.

So how are the big boys connecting the dots with their bigger pockets and ideas?

For EBay, the answer is X.COMMERCE. Let’s take a closer look to see if this is just another name for Commerce 3.0 or if it is something new that we can all learn from.
The first thing to know is that EBay continues to develop its mCommerce solutions and enabling technologies as they look to focus on smaller local markets. EBay is developing internal and external capabilities to bring local offline retail inventories online. This effort is very broad in scope as EBay wants to connect buyers with ALL local inventories to enable local sellers looking for global buyers.

To do this EBay is investing over $1 billion in technology investments that will leverage the 100 million EBay users, as well as PayPal transaction and inventory core skills. X.COMMERCE will be a Cloud –based open eCommerce platform and is the result combination of core EBay assets with the addition of its recent acquisitions of GSI Commerce (eCommerce Services Provider) and Magento (medium and small business eCommerce platform).

That’s quite a lot to follow…so let’s take a breath here and break it down into something manageable…

With the quick comparison map above, it looks like X.COMMERCE maps well to an integrated Commerce 3.0 platform that delivers commerce online, mobile, and social commerce, digital intelligence, open capabilities and developer networks along with lots more content (including local).

X.COMMERCE lets EBay realize a more complete selling solution and a further transformation of EBay beyond the online store focus to a new customer centered anywhere commerce focus. With X.COMMERCE, EBay looks to:
• Connect transactions of buyers and sellers closer to customer where they both are (local + global)
• Engage buyers with on the fly digital marketing across both broad and niche communities
• Drive technology for seamless online and mobile self-service & selling anytime, anywhere, any store to any device.

In part two of our IRCE blog we’ll talk more about Commerce 3.0 and how all businesses can move beyond disconnected silos to do exactly what EBay is doing with X.COMMERCE (and what others are doing including Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast, Verizon etc…). Thanks so much for reading Valtech’s blog and please let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Jordan Scott, Valtech New York, June 22, 2011.
Business Development Manager, Digital Consultancy
245 Park Avenue, 39th Floor
New York, NY 10167
Jordan.Scott@valtech.com
http://www.valtech.us/us/index/ebusiness.html

www.valtech.us

Read all posts by JordanScott

One of my favorite interview questions for agile Scrum practitioners is: When moving organizations to a Scrum methodology, what aspects of Scrum should be practiced by the team and governed from more of a purist approach than a open / pragmatic approach? For anyone promoting Scrum, this is an important question to ask oneself as well. This can be a challenging question for many and you can usually tell from the answers, those that really understand how Scrum is supposed to be followed by teams in most organizations. Let’s say my methodology called Scrum was really about how my family takes photos and the process we follow. If we were to take photos that we wanted to keep around, we would all want to agree upon standards of why, when, and how we should work the process, to obtain quality looking photos. I certainly wouldn’t want to see my head cropped off from a family group photo, or have my kids in a photo that was so dark, I couldn’t even recognize them. So the question remains what are the common practices in Scrum, which should be followed in the strictest sense, that are a must for success? During this series, I will elaborate on my thoughts answering this question.

The first practice is to have a Product Owner (PO) who knows and understands the needs of the customer, and will share with the team descriptions of features, which is known as the ‘Product Backlog’. The PO’s responsibility is to shed light on these features, so the team understands what to create. Without the PO providing this information, it’s like me taking a picture in the dark without my flash. The better the light, the better the photo can be seen and understood, once taken. The PO also needs to have a clear focus, just as we do when taking pictures. This comes when the PO has a clear vision from the customer, and can share this with the team. When the PO has decided upon the appropriate grouping of features, we can start to see the themes within the vision. This constitutes our ‘Product Backlog’ with meaning and clarity. The goal for the team at this point is to actually break epics / features into smaller workable stories and rank their respective value to the customer. ‘Stories’ are the placeholders for having a conversation, so collaboration is also a must between team members if they are to be successful.

Planning in Scrum is an area, where teams like to skimp. A ‘Sprint’ is typically a two-week interval at which a team has to get work completed and accepted. An experienced agile team will hold some sort of pre-planning meeting before a Sprint starts, and try and figure out what the team should focus on within the Sprint. Again, for my family, if we were taking pictures, we wouldn’t just randomly start taking them; we would normally have some planned event, which makes it worthwhile to take the pictures. By the first day of the Sprint, the teams planning meeting results in stories and tasks that can be delivered and completed by the team within the two weeks. Inexperienced teams forgo pre-planning, and so there is missing acceptance criteria, which in Scrum is the equivalent of requirements for software development. There are missing or no test cases to support the needed functionality, or there is no awareness of what needs to get done, since no one took time as a team to determine where the immediate value to the customer would be, and what stories should be worked. My families’ Scrum practices without the planning would be like us taking pictures of each other in the dark at the same time with each flash going; probably not the best outcome. Also, Stick to a regular schedule each and every Sprint, and ensure the team pre-plans.

Nice; my kid just took my picture with the flash and I’m seeing dancing lights. I’ll be back with more…

Read all posts by nathan.slippen

Our team was hit with an interesting issue this iteration when trying to maintain session information through multiple dao calls when invoking multiple threads.

Our Problem:

Our project has an immense need for reporting and as such our team must maintain logs for each layer of our code base. We use the call sessionId or contextMap.cookieId to track the call flow from our WebService layer all the way through our data access layer. Recently we discovered that in some cases the sessionId’s in our service logs were not present in our DAO logs. After much research we eventually were able to determine that the calls did in fact make it to our DAO layer, but mysteriously had a different sessionId. After careful diagnosis it seemed to us that this issue was present only when a method in our business layer spun off multiple threads to our dao layer. Spinning multiple threads is a necessity for us as we hit multiple backend systems, via our data access layer, and these external systems can have high response times. For obvious reasons we cannot afford to wait for a backend response before making a call to another backend.

For multithreading we created callable classes for each backend call we need to make.

Example.
public class CallableQueryFoo extends XXXCallable implements Callable<Foo> {
private FooDAO fooDAO;
public CallableQueryFoo(Map sl4jContextMap, fooDAO fooDAO) {
super(sl4jContextMap);
this.fooDAO = fooDAO;
}
public FooResponse call() throwsException {
FooResponse fooResponse = fooDAO.getFoo();
return fooResponse;
}
}

public abstract class XXXCallable {
protected Map sl4jContextMap;
public xxxCallable(sl4jContextMap) {
if(sl4jContextMap != null && !sl4jContextMap.isEmpty()) {
MDC.setContextMap(sl4jContextMap);
}
}
}

As you can see from the above example the constructor for CallableQueryFoo accepts a Map as a parameter. The Map is actually a contextMap. The contextMap contains a cookieId/sessionId. So when an instance of CallableQueryFoo is created, a call to the super class is made and the contextMap that is passed is then copied so that it will be a applied to the new thread. At least this was our understanding, but as it turns out the new thread is actually created when the call() method is invoked. This still should not have been a problem as MDC (Mapped Diagnostic Context) should be using the parent thread cookieId for the child thread, but for a currently unknown reason MDC gets confused and does not apply the cookieId correctly. In fact for our case, it seems to randomly use cookieId’s from previous call flows.

Fix
public class CallableQueryFoo extends XXXCallable implements Callable<Foo> {
private FooDAO fooDAO;
public CallableQueryFoo(sl4jContextMap, fooDAO fooDAO) {
super(sl4jContextMap);
this.fooDAO = fooDAO;
}
public FooResponse call() throws Exception {
super(setMDCContextMap)
FooResponse fooResponse = fooDAO.getFoo();
return fooResponse;
}
}

public abstract class XXXCallable {
protected Map sl4jContextMap;
public xxxCallable(Map sl4jContextMap) {
this.sl4jContextMap = sl4jContextMap;
setMDCContextMap();
}
protected void setMDCContextMap() {
if (sl4jContextMap != null && !sl4jContextMap.isEmpty())
MDC.setContextMap(sl4jContextMap);
}
}
}

In order to correct our issue, we determined that we would need to copy the context map when we invoked the call() method. To do this we created a Map in our super class and set it when the constructor is called. We then have and are able to copy the original contextMap to the new thread when we invoke call(). Worked like a champ.

Read all posts by kyle.knapp

A colleague of mine asked me the other day, “what is it about Agile training or coaching that you are passionate about?” Good question, one that I’ve been pondering for awhile now. Thinking about it led me to consider the situations and challenges faced by Agile trainers and coaches if one does it long enough.

 Generally speaking, we trainers/coaches are asked to help teams that are doing Agile already or to help a new team get started. In the first case, the reasons for needing coaching assistance can be many: 

• the team has not been given sufficient initial training
• the training was good, but the team is undisciplined in their process
• the process is OK, but the team members are working as individuals and not changing their mindsets to put the team first
• etc.

Certainly, helping a team in these circumstances to improve can be challenging and rewarding.

 But for me, the allure of getting a new team off and running is compelling. My ideal scenario is to have the opportunity to train a whole team in the basics of Agile/Scrum and then immediately help them get started by coaching them through a project backlog workshop where we apply the theory we learned in the training session and get the team ready to start planning their first sprint. 

 At the end of the training session, we have lots of folks starting to see the possibilities and some who are still skeptical. As we progress to the backlog workshop and start to create user stories, I enjoy watching the sense of team start to emerge as everyone contributes.  I also am a big proponent of using the note card approach on a whiteboard.  The visual stimulation for the group is palpable; everyone is engaged, not heads down in a laptop.  As more and more stories are discussed by the whole team, business and technical sides, and put on the board, the energy level really rises.  Then when we have the stories, we prioritize, estimate and release plan. 

 Invariably, when we finish the backlog workshop and the team looks around the room at a board full of stories, estimated, prioritized and release planned, there is a feeling almost of exhilaration, a sense that we really have a project that we can understand and do. 

 So, in a very short time, usually 3 days or so, I see a group of individuals go from knowing not much at all about Agile and Scrum to having a project with stories, estimates and overall plan and ready to get started with planning the first sprint.

 I like it – a lot.

Read all posts by doug.batchelor