25. May 2008 by admin.

This may not come as a shock to you: Best Buy reduces its customer base to 4 target customer profiles. Rather than regurgitate them for you, I’ll let Best Buy’s own slide deck speak for the company:

I don’t know how much Best Buy spent to arrive at this result, but it’s interesting that they were able to narrow it down to these 4. Further, ask yourself: does MY company have its markets embodied into profiles like Best Buy does, and, If not, shouldn’t it? I don’t know how Best Buy measures its success WITH these profiles vs. WITHOUT (how does it know that its increased sales are the result of having these profiles vs. one or many other factors?), but it certainly can’t hurt.

So…Are you a Ray, Barry, Maria or Helen type?

The rest of this very interesting profiling deck can be found at http://consumerist.com/photogallery/bestbuylifestyles/

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25. May 2008 by admin.

When I published the previous entry, somehow one of the 4 target profiles got left out. So, here it is.

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24. May 2008 by admin.

If you’re thinking about buying a personal navigation device with GPS, like the one I recommended–

the TomTom Go 920, which I bought before my trip to France–you might also want to check

out the Uniden Maptrax RD 438.  This one comes with an integrated radar detector, so you

not only get told where to go, but also how likely it is you’ll get nailed for speeding if  you’re

getting there too fast.  I have friends (you know who you are) who always drive 75MPH,

so this would be a godsend for them.

Amazon.com Widgets

Tags: Uniden, Maptrax, TomTom  GPS, PND

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21. May 2008 by admin.

Bacteria can be turned into living computers

This article appeared in the Telegraph Newspaper at Telegraph.co.uk
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/05/20/scibacteria120.xml

Last Updated: 1:01am BST 20/05/2008

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21. May 2008 by admin.

Welcome to the world of Robocup NanoSoccer. Nanotechnology will change the world, but
first it will result in nano-scopic soccer games…perhaps, eventually, nano-sports leagues?

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21. May 2008 by admin.

I just returned from 2 weeks in France–1 week in Paris and 1 week in Provence. I decided prior to the trip to buy a portable navigation device (commonly known in the biz as a “PND”), a TomTom Go 920 GPS device.

When I had read about these in the past, I thought ‘here’s another device I will have to carry around and worry about–I’ll just get a phone that has assisted-GPS instead’. However, after talking to someone who had bought one for a trip to Europe, and finding out that this particular TomTom has both North American and European maps pre-loaded, I decided to get one.

Let me tell you, it was worth it. Here’s what makes this device worthwhile: 1) voice recognition that really works pretty well–you can tell it the address you want directions to and it will tell you how to get there; 2) bluetooth–if you have a bluetooth-capable phone, you can make calls through it by synching it with your phone’s address book; 3) it always can tell you the nearest hospital/doctor/gas station/auto repair shop to where you are or at least one of them (if not every one); 4) it has a more accurate speedometer than your car does, since it relies upon actual distance/rate calculations based on the satellite fix it has; 5) you can download map modifications that other customers have input to the maps, so you get updates not only from TomTom but also from other people.

In France, the TomTom made our lives much easier. We never had to worry about getting lost and it knew exactly how to get us where we wanted to go.

The device cost me $368, but you can get it even cheaper now, since it’s being replaced by a newer model. I’m not sure that the newer model is worth the extra money, but the model replacing mine is the TomTom Go 930.

If your car already has navigation built-in, then you probably don’t need this. If you don’t have it built in, skip getting one in your next car (probably at least a $1000 option) and get this instead.

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