Insights

I admit that I go to different stores for ideas. Sometimes I think I could spruce up my living room with new pillows. Other times, I want to see if there is anything new in the kitchen section that could make my amateur adventures easier. I image I am not the only one. And, I [...]

A week ago, the bills seemed certain to pass. But in one week, the tides turned. SOPA is now dead. The PIPA vote is cancelled. Mashable did a nice timeline: The Week That Killed SOPA: A Timeline This battle is over, for now. But more bills will come. Because the piracy problem is far from [...]

Prior to Wednesday, awareness and familiarity with the acronyms SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) or PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) was pretty low. Although there was chatter at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, until yesterday, the issues surrounding SOPA/PIPA were fairly unknown to the general public. Media coverage had been pretty limited. What a difference [...]

On Wednesday January 18, 2012, hundreds of sites around the country will go dark in support of the Stop SOPA movement. We’ll be one of them. The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP [...]

As each year draws to a close there are certain traditions that are observed. We enter the holiday season with an eye toward sharing, festivities, thankfulness – and another eye toward moving “out with the old and in with the new.”

First of all, what the heck is a QR code? According to comScore, only about 6% of people have used a QR code. A QR code is also known as a quick reference code. It’s an image (special matrix bar code) that, with the right application, smart phones can direct users to special digital content. [...]

Many originally predicted retail holiday 2011 shopping to be modest at best. Not necessarily a bad thing, and though many wished for higher sales, being prepared for a slim season is easier than recovering from poor sales. But what really happened? How can the season help us with 2012? Just ten days before Christmas the [...]

Aisles dedicated to male shoppers are coming to stores near you. Recent research has revealed that men shop too <gasp>. Actually, there is a trend that men are doing more of the household shopping. Despite the fact that bachelors have been shopping for themselves for years, it is family level shopping changes that are causing [...]

This season has brought with it an avalanche of holiday cheer and good wishes. Many of these festive greetings have reached me through my e-mail. On a given day I can receive up to twenty colorful and creative communiques. Unfortunately, only about a third of them are from people I know.

Baby boomers have consistently, and happily, been labeled as rule changers (Rybarski, 2004). It should be no surprise that as the cohort enters retirement age, their concerns and fears are different from other generations. In particular, the end of life conversation is taking a very different path that ranges from innovation in funeral expectations to [...]