Facebook: Countdown to IPO
It has been rumored for quite a long time, yesterday it was finally announced that Facebook will go public. Exactly eight years after Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook on Wednesday, February 1, 2004, the social network submitted its IPO application to the US SEC. Not only traders are excited about the most spectacular IPO of all [...]
> Continue reading
University of the future: Free-of-charge online lectures by elite universities
Sebastian Thrun, Stanford professor emeritus, presented nothing less than his vision of a ‘democratized higher education’ at the recent 2012 Digital Life Design (DLD) Conference in Munich. It all started with an experiment: Thrun, an expert for artificial intelligence and researcher at Google, offered his Stanford standard curriculum seminar on the ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence’ [...]
> Continue reading
Case Study: Four Seasons’ Digital Media Strategy
In a study recently published by world-renowned hotel chain Four Seasons, digital media were hailed as an absolute ‘must-have’ for marketing and branding activities in luxury travels. For a relaunch of the hotel chain’s website, the company had surveyed their target groups world-wide asking for the expectations and needs of travellers. The results were not [...]
> Continue reading
Social Search and Social SEO: Google personalizes web search
When Google+ was launched, Google was not getting tired to underscore that Google+ will not simply be another social network. This week, the company announced that Google+ information will be part of its English web search. Posts, interests and reviews from friends will thus be more valuable, making the single user more important than ever [...]
> Continue reading
2012: Year of the Smartphone
Exactly five years ago, on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs presented the world’s first iPhone marking a milestone in the development of smartphones. Even though there were some road bumps in the beginning, Jobs succeeded in the following years to create a whole new market which will be a decisive factor for growth in 2012 [...]
> Continue reading
Resolutions for the New Year: Getting it done with digital support?
Losing weight, do more sports, finally make some time to archive all digital photos, alas it all sounds so easy to make up these resolutions for the new year, but we all know what will be the final outcome most of the time. Maybe digital fitness gadgets like Garmin Connect, Nike+ or Dailymile help to [...]
> Continue reading
Corner shop of the future in Japan: AR vending machine with face recognition
In Japan you can find vending machines at almost every corner, even in the most remote places. Japan is truly a vending machine paradise. Some of those machines sell even the most bizarre things. They have already become an integral part of Japan’s service culture. Vending machine technology becomes increasingly complex and sophisticated: Different machines [...]
> Continue reading
Tablets for the masses
Tablets have been on the market since two years now, but they have become one of the hottest items sought after during Christmas sales. According to a survey conducted by Germany’s Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), 13% of all Germans wanted to either gift or purchase a tablet during this [...]
> Continue reading
Case Study: Beer brands go for digital campaigns on Christmas
‘In 1874 a green beer bottle was a great invention, just like Augmented Reality is today’, says Oliver Bartelt, Manager of Communications at beer brand Beck’s in a press release to underscore the brand’s innovative thinking. Over a century in the past the brewery was among the first to offer their beer in green instead [...]
> Continue reading
A booming market: Earning real cash with virtual goods
The business with virtual goods has become increasingly attractive and has already managed to influence the entire media landscape: the IPO of online game agency Zynga in the US and Nexon in Japan this December, the launch of Facebook Credits and Google+, the continued rapid growth of in-app purchases for the mobile platforms iOS or [...]
> Continue reading
