LetsBuyIt Blog

Enterprise 2.0 is Web 2.0 technology taken to the corporate world. Just as in the consumer Web, the goals of Enterprise 2.0 technologies are better collaboration, easier information management, and more personalized productivity.

And just as in the consumer Web, from mashups to wikis, startups abound. To differentiate from big companies, they’ll have to do things differently.

Let’s start by discovering iotum

iotum is a company which empowers conversations by connecting people where, when and how they choose. iotum’s software platform immediately makes people more productive, accessible and in control of their communications.

It delivers benefits to

• consumers
• mobile professionals
• enterprises

Presence technology aims to make communication smarter by letting people know if someone is available to take a call. The reality is that presence is typically a pain to constantly update and stumbles at organizational boundaries. Startup iotum’s “relevance engine” automates the process, and its hosted services get rid of those boundaries.

The relevance engine pings a user’s instant messaging client, calendar, recent call history, and list of important contacts to automatically determine how calls should be handled or what presence information should be displayed to a potential caller. For example, if it sees a salesperson’s been calling a customer a lot recently, iotum’s Talk-Now app for BlackBerrys might escalate that customer’s importance so the customer could see the salesperson’s presence information or have his calls patched through more often.

Microsoft is currently working on a brand new tool, PopFly, which will provide you with the ability to easily build a mashup in a few clicks:

PopFly relies on new SilverLight technology and will much certainly enhance usability on the web.

Chacha.com is the ultimate fusion of computer technology & human intelligence. Live human guides are available to provide additional assistance. - The human brain.

ChaCha’s goal is to provide a better search experience by combining results that are hand-picked by our knowledgeable human guides with the best computer-generated search results. In those cases where you can’t find what you need with our instant results, ChaCha will connect you with a live human guide who will find the information for you through an instant messaging-style search session.

ChaCha aims to create:

• A smart search engine that “learns” by tapping into human intelligence so its results are always improving
• A place to find exactly what you’re looking for instantly
• Help from people who are knowledgeable about the very thing you are looking for when instant results don’t have the answer

We went to a meeting this morning on the growing opportunity of marketing on mobile phones. The interest of all techniques and methods - SMS, MMS, Bluetooth points or QR code - has been proved regarding to different marketing goals and objectives of the advertisers.
Effectiveness of these mobile campaigns was one of the most significant points of the demonstration: opening rates up to 98% for SMS campaigns, return rate of 25% in average for communication campaigns, in addition to a penetration rate of the mobile phone use in Europe that doesn’t stop increasing.

I must confess that I still have some remaining questions about mobile marketing:
- Return rates are still very high today because commercial mobile messages are not very spread, and spam does not exist on this terminal. But what will happen when spam will appear among sms and mms as they are today by emails? Will we all have to get a anti-spam solution on our mobile phones?
- What about answer and/or website connection fees included on these messages? Will they be carried by the advertisers or is it gonna stay the way it is today: surprises?
- As for QR codes (or 2D codes), I must confess I’ve always been puzzled about them, but never really saw them since they appeared.. I barely believe that just by tacking a picture from any angle of a small code, it will really redirect you with no mistake to the good website!

I recently wrote an article about RueDuCommerce.com repositionning itself as a global shopping portal.

Here is the podcast from RadioBFM.com.

Gauthier Picquart, founder and president of RueDuCommerce.com, a major French shopping website specialized on electronic products, was interviewed today in “Good Morning Business” show, on BFM Radio.

While RueDuCommerce.com historically won a great share of the French e-commerce market, thanks to its aggressive price strategy with very low margins, Gauthier Picquart explained he recently had to change its strategy due to financial difficulties. Indeed, RueDuCommerce.com is kind of repositionning itself as a global shopping Portal and is willing to widen their product offer by letting other online shops use and integrate their e-commerce platform.

Exposure on such a great shopping website, with stable large audience volumes, will surely attract thousands of shopping websites, willing to reach more people and winning more customers. In exchange to this exposure, affiliated partners will have to yield a commission on the sales carried out.

Another interesting thing is that they want to provide users with a unique shopping cart, shared with all partner shops. It is a key point, which will probably increase the average basket amount value and also simplify the user experience of online shopping. Thumbs up if they really do it.

This article, which was published in ‘Die Zeit’ (Nr.24, 6.06.07) last week, is an interesting reflection of the problem of the European obsession of inter-governmental symposiums to make economically agile decisions. Where Europe discusses eagerly and does not decide anything, Google just does ‘it’. By now Europa ‘capitulates’ in front of Google.

Europe desperately tries to protect its ancient stand of guarding the sciences, while Google unstoppably floods the internet with information. What is it that makes Google that untouchable in comparison to its competitors? Google doesn’t have a product but capitalises on its popularity!

Click here for the full article

One of the last cons of using web-based applications instead of classic desktop applications (such as Gmail/Yahoo Mail/Hotmail instead of Outlook, etc.), is the unability to use them offline.

Well Google just released Google Gears, a small browser addon that enables web applications offline. Indeed, Google Gears is able to locally store your online data onto your computer so that you can use them anywhere. Once reconnected, Google Gears synchronizes your local date with the online application.

The first Google application leveraging this great new feature is Google Reader. You now can read your favorite news feeds in the plane or anywhere else.

Hopefully, they’ll very certainly soon release an upgrade of Gmail and other Google Applications (Docs, Spreadsheets, etc.).

Discover Google Street View to explore neighborhoods at street level–virtually!

Use Street View to:

• View street level photographs (select cities)
• Take virtual walks; pan, rotate and zoom
• Explore cityscapes, landmarks, points of interest
• Find shops, restaurants, parks, hotels and more

Microsoft Surface, the first commercially available surface computer, turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. It provides interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more.

Availability: winter 2007
Price: around US $ 10,000