Entrepreneur India » Technology

Iconic?

Team Entrepreneur — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:15:01 +0000

For most part of this year, the only Android tablet you might have heard of by a long shot was the Samsung Tab. But over the last three months, it seems anyone with half a tech division is launching one. Everyone from iBall to Motorola to companies you never heard of before. You remember the gold rush for the netbooks market? This is the 2011 edition.
One of the companies that led the surge in the netbooks market was Acer, who along with Asus made portable computing available under 20k for the first time in the country. No such luck with the pricing, but Acer has now also joined the tablet wagon with some of its own.
We got our hands on the Acer Iconia A501 last month. What we felt eventually could be best described as mixed. Allow us to elaborate.
First off, the A501 does look very spiffy, with its shiny body that borders on Macbook body material, with a capacitive LCD touch screen that is bordered by a black material. The 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 screen is ultra glossy, which means its collects fingerprints and will make you blind in lit up conditions. But get the viewing angles right, and you have a superb screen that is good enough to watch a HD flick on. Just don’t use it in the sunlight.
The rest of the body is all aluminum and ensconces a front facing camera for those video calls, a back facing 5 megapixel camera (that is just about okay), and twin speakers at lower end on the back. On the sides, the A501 has the 3.5mm headphone jack, the power button, a volume rocker, card slots for the SIM and micro SD card, USB and micro-USB slots, a reset button, a docking connector, and a mini HDMI port. Yes, you heard the last one right. Mini and not a full size one. Plus, you got to get your own cable it seems. That’s a bummer.
Overall, the 10.1-inch tablet looks good. Our only downer with the look and feel is that it does feel a lot heavier than the iPad2. You could say it crams in a lot more too, and that is still only a relative argument. A better one could be that maybe 10-inch tablets are just impossible to make light and able enough for single-handed use. Maybe the whole seven inch rush led by Kindle makes sense.
One the insides and in operation, the A501 performs fairly well. One of the drawbacks of this review is that we do not have another Android tablet to benchmark it against. And we do think the iPad2 is far superior for any Android tablet in the market to lay claim on its space. Nevertheless, the show must go on.
Lets tackle the innards first. The specs that matter are a 1GHz Tegra 2 processor with 1GB of DDR2 RAM, which are very typically Acer-solid. These are very handy specs and it showed in pure review period. The tablet hardly ever crashed out on us. In operation with heavier stuff like games and video, there was no apparent lag or pixel corruption that we could find.
A lot of the smoothness on the A501 must also go to Android 3.0, which is more popularly known as Honeycomb. Again, we do have not reviewed any other version for tablets, so we are unsure how to provide a relative view on this.
As is with most Android devices, it does look like Acer has done some over-the-top customization of its own. Starting off, the homepage on the A501 is not what you would expect on an Android mobile device i.e. it’s just not a tray of apps. Instead, we have small corners or hubs with a couple of things packed in.
For example, the top right-hand corner is where you would find the tap to the full apps menu as well as a plus sign that lets you customize the page. On the left hand side up top, we have a Google search corner with both text and voice search. We must recommend the later by the way as it was pretty (70 percent) accurate for the reviewer’s Delhi-meet-Bandra-meet bad throat accent. The bottom part of the screen also houses some more navigational tools. On the left corner, you have the back, home and recent icons, which change orientation as you navigate on. For example, when you tap recent, the back icon turns to a down icon to close that apps tray for you. The other corner is much simpler with just informational stuff like battery life and notifications.
So what we like from the interface is actually the notifications bit, which we do miss on the iPad. We are told that iOS 5 fixes this bit but we are yet to review that. What we do not like with the interface is the slightly convoluted way around menus. We would like apps to be the centerpiece of our tablet, and as such need one tap or max two taps to reach the app we want. Here, it is easy to lose your self in the question of which way to go.
Native apps on the A501 play nice with you, and it helps that we are all on Google for most of our day-to-day stuff. Browser is strictly okay for us. Social integration does seem to be lagging behind on this and somehow it does not feel as polished as the iPad. But this seems like a product still feeling its way around the interface. Expect more tweaks as we go on. For heavy users of e-mail and document processing software, we would say the A501 is pretty good with its large 10-inch screen. Any less, and the professionals and entrepreneurs out there would simply not use it for work. Thankfully, the onboard keyboard on the A501 is well spaced out and the icons are pretty large to type. We are okay with not downloading any other keyboard.
The thing that irritated us most about the A501 is the battery life. We are decent media consumers on our tablets, heavy on games and apps. And we were unable to get more than six hours at a time from this tablet when on Wi-Fi. On 3G, we could do a little better, but then we all know about how good 3G is in India.

Hit or miss?
The A501 has many things we like, the first that it is 3G enabled. We certainly think that no matter the data networks, going Wi-Fi only with tablets is just daft. Good on Acer coming out with this version along with the Wi-Fi only model. We also like the interface, though we do have some navigational issues. We like the look, the specs, and we think it is enterprise worthy to an extent even as apps for business and productivity are limited compared to an iPad.
Things we don’t like include the battery life, the weight, and also the somewhat unpolished finish to Honeycomb. But what we do not like most is the high price point that it is being retailed at. By hook or more hooks, Acer must find a way to price it lower. Else it has no chance against an iPad, which in any case outslugs Android tablets on content for consumption. Why, given the cheap Chinese imports, you could probably find similar tablets under 20k soon i.e. they will do to Acer what it did to others during the netbook rush.

Textbook Landing

Team Entrepreneur — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:24:51 +0000

One rainy afternoon when my son was three or four years old, I took him to one of those cavernous beachside arcades. I thought the flashing lights, buzzing action and acres upon acres of Frogger, Galaxian, Donkey Kong and the like would thrill him, and we’d pass a happy few hours there.
But instead he stood tentatively in the middle of the arcade, bewildered and overwhelmed. After halfheartedly tossing a few Skee-Balls up a ramp, he turned toward me and asked, “Is that enough, Mom? Can we go?”
Website landing pages often look and feel like an arcade floor. Rather than enticing and directing someone who comes to your site, they confound them—meaning, of course, that visitors act like my son did, bolting for the exit by way of the back button.
A landing page is a place where visitors end up after being enticed there by a specific, targeted campaign—an offer for something desirable delivered via e-mail, social media or an ad. Often, the page plants that compelling offer behind a lead capture form, with the idea of converting visitors into leads that can be followed up on. A landing page offers visitors a hyper-focused experience: delivering them to a specific page, and giving them a clear path to follow.
There is an art (and science) to creating a targeted landing page. A highly effective one contains just enough information to inform visitors without making them feel like fireworks are going off in their face. Ideally, your landing page should convey three simple things: where your visitors are, what you’re making available to them (and how awesome it is) and what the next step is to procure (or find out more about) that incredibly awesome thing.
It’s tempting to go overboard—to arcade-ify your landing page by adding all manner of bells and whistles. Instead, go for simple and clean with stupid-obvious navigation. Less is so often more.
Here are the bones for an effective landing page—one that will convert your browsers into buyers, or at least further your relationship with them.

Match the message to the promise. If your pitch promises something your prospect or customer wants (a buyer’s guide to your product, a free e-book) make dead sure that the visitor receives precisely that—immediately.
“Message mismatch” is an all-too-common occurrence: In its study of 150 individual landing pages, Silverpop found that the most successful landing pages match the promotional copy in an e-mail’s call to action—what yielded the click in the first place. Yet 45 percent of the landing pages evaluated failed to repeat the e-mail’s promotional copy in the headline. If you sell someone on a promise, make sure that the first thing they experience doesn’t tell a whole other story.

Deliver awesome. The other day I clicked on a link that offered a guide to family-friendly Caribbean resorts, only to realize after I downloaded it that it was a sales brochure for one specific resort. I felt gamed, which is a terrible taste to leave in a prospect’s mouth. Be sure that the content you produce as a landing-page download is valuable: Will your prospects love it? Or is it lame?

Avoid TMI. My boy in the arcade is the poster child for this one. Don’t cram too much stuff onto the page.
Doing so can invoke hyperlink distraction and result in your prospect wandering down a different path entirely. Scott Brinker, president and co-founder of marketing agency ion interactive, calls the tendency to weigh down a page with lengthy text and explanations “sagging page syndrome.”
“Trying to cram as much as possible onto one page puts the burden on the respondent to sift through it,” Brinker says. “Unfortunately, most of the time they’re just not that into you yet.”

Keep your headline benefit-driven. Reiterate what’s awesome about your offer by telling customers what’s in it for them. A product-driven headline highlights what your product or service will do. A benefit-driven headline tells customers what your product or service will do for them.
In a test we did at MarketingProfs for two different landing pages, both offering access to one of our planning tools, the first read, “Join today and get access to SmartTools: Social Media Marketing.” The second read, “Create Successful Social Media Campaigns Fast with SmartTools.”
The first is product-driven, but the second imparts what a subscriber will get out of it. Not surprisingly, the second, benefit-focused landing page converted 26.06 percent better than the product-focused page.

A word about subheads and copy. A subhead beneath the headline is a good place to explain the key benefits of your offering. Lots of words versus very few words is a richly debated issue in marketing circles. I’m a fan of fewer words, preferably in easily scannable bullet form, with perhaps a video or supporting graphics. One word of caution: Don’t set video or audio to play automatically as soon as the page loads. Not only is that gratingly annoying, but the sudden volume can also scare those of us who tend to work in silence.

Use a strong call to action. Once a visitor lands on the page and opts into your offer, make sure they know what to do next. Put a call to action in an obvious place, and play around with what language works best for you. Some research suggests that landing pages with submit buttons labeled simply “submit” tend to perform worse than those that invoke more actionable wording, such as “download now” or “register.” Be sure the button stands out by adhering to the four Bs: big, bright, bold and blindingly obvious.

Keep things simple. When it comes to lead generation, solicit only the most relevant information. The idea is to eliminate friction between the visitor and the desired action—to entice, not irritate. Simple also means pruning the words and images on the page down to the essentials. The less content you have on the page, the more you’ll be able to feature “above the fold,” or in the important space that page visitors see without having to scroll down.

Use trust indicators and social proof. Establish credibility by including signals to your trustworthiness: Testimonials, press mentions, third-party trust and security verification (like TRUSTe or the Better Business Bureau), satisfaction guarantees and so on.
You might also include “social proof,” like blog comments or the number of followers you have on Facebook or Twitter. Social proof enhances your credibility by signaling that others are similarly connected to your company.

Testing, testing. Your product and services are unique, and so is your audience. When it comes to landing pages, test what works best for you—with your audience. The most straightforward way to do this is through a simple A/B test, in which you try different versions of an offer to see which performs better. Start by testing apples vs. oranges, then refine your approach. Once you determine whether an apple converts better than an orange, determine whether a Macintosh, say, converts better than a Fuji.
©Entrepreneur November 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of Marketingprofs (Marketingprofs.com) and the co-author of Content Rules.

Your Digital Waiter

Team Entrepreneur — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:30:22 +0000

If you are a world traveler of sorts, and also a foodie, we guess you would have noticed the stark difference in service levels between restaurants in India and abroad; and that it does not really hold our hospitality in shining light. Outside of the five star hotels in India, service levels at restaurants are woeful. This is not to say that Indians as hosts are bad, in fact otherwise, but it can be agreed upon that not enough attention is paid to how important it is to serve the customer right.
The reasons for this are many. For one, the restaurant industry suffers from a crippling shortage of talent. The best people are trained and absorbed by the hotel industry, and restaurants are left with slim pickings. You can then argue that restaurants can focus on training their own staff, but there are a couple of major roadblocks to that. Firstly, the restaurant business is easily one of the most cutthroat ones in urban India, with low margins, high input costs, and not to mention, debilitating real estate rental rates. After all that, there is hardly anything left for training the staff in an organized manner. The second problem is the sector’s high attrition rate. What is the point of spending on training when the staff is not likely to stick around for more than a year at best?
Here’s a thought. Why not transfer some of the onus of how good or bad the service could be on to the customer? And why not use technology to do so? This is the basic concept behind Titbit, an iPad app that has been developed and commercialized in India by Titbit Inc, a division of the Valuable Group.
Valuable Group has been operating in India for a while, and this is not the first time that the company has been leveraging technology to disrupt an existing sector. Its most widely known, executive director Ameya Hate tells us, for UFO Movies – a nation-wide digital cinema network that has upended the old way of distributing films.
People familiar with the cinema sector would tell you how UFO helps distributors expand into smaller centers on time, and with scale, with its digital delivery model as against the old and prohibitive way of sending prints across India. Hate is hoping for a similar sort of intervention with Titbit in the restaurants business, which has been traditionally rigid with
service processes.

Titbit is an app that solves the problems of the waiting process and does it with style that the iPad tends to bring with all its uses. A B2B offering, the Titbit app is preloaded on to iPads that are offered as digital menus to diners at the company’s client restaurants. Diners are then able to scope through the digital menu, choose their dishes and drinks, and place their order.
This sounds very simple and ordinary in text, but in operation (refer to pictures) it is beautiful-easy and superbly tailored to how the process of ordering, waiting tables, and cooking processes in kitchens work in tandem at a restaurant.

Dine easy
For the diner, Titbit helps overcome the problem of menus not saying much about the dish. Food has a lot to do with sight. If a dish looks good, you are
that much eager to order it, right? Titbit lets the diner see actual pictures of all dishes on the menu, something not possible with regular paper menus. In addition, Titbit also lets the diner to read a wider description of what the dish will have in terms of ingredients and make a better decision. This is something that a regular menu can’t and also, most waiters would not be helping you out with. An Indian waiter with complete knowledge of what a dish contains, and then being able to communicate it right, is a rare commodity.
One of the most common complaints diners have all over India is that the waiter is unable to remember and ensure that their special requests–less salt, more chili, no sugar etc.–are met with. With Titbit, the diner is in complete charge of these requests as he is able place these at the time of selecting a dish.
Moreover, dishes in a Titbit menu would have the most common requests attached to them. For example, if you are ordering a beef steak, the app would automatically ask you if want the steak rare, well done, or medium. As such, it takes the possibly busy or forgetful waiter out of the equation.

Tailor Made
The ordering process comes to a close when the diner chooses his beverages, and then checks his order out. At this time, Hate tells us, there comes a chink that cannot be overcome with technology, but can be smoothened over. He says that the logical way of developing Titbit would have been to send the order directly to the kitchen to make it a faster process. Or so it would seem.
“Working with the restaurants, we realized that waiters play one crucial role in the whole ordering process besides interfacing with the diner. He also queues up the food as best suited for both the diner and the kitchen,” says Hate.
For example, a diner may order a soup, a salad, a bottle of wine, and a plate of lamb chops. However, he is not asking for them all together, and the kitchen too can’t rustle them up altogether. Only the waiter is able to best handle in what order the food will be served in.
To get around this, Hate says, Titbit also puts an iPod Touch in the hands of the waiter. After the diner checks out his order, the order is sent to the waiter’s iPod Touch from where he is able to queue up, with timings, in what order the food would be needed.
The final step of the Titbit process is the billing process, where the restaurant can go two ways. The first is to have the billing done separately by the waiter and using the Titbit only as the ordering
tool. The second and more preferred option is to integrate with the restaurant’s POS process, where the billing is automated.

And then the Tidbits
Having seen Titbit in action, we can safely say that it does completely change the way one will order food at a restaurant. It makes the whole eating out process simpler and definitely easier. By automating how the diner looks at, researches, and orders food in a restaurant, Titbit is able to fix the huge service quality problem prevalent in Indian restaurants.
Hate tells us that restaurants also benefit from social integration into the menu, by the way of Facebook. By logging into Facebook on the Titbit app, a diner is able to share the dish he or she is having at a certain restaurant and rate it as well. That’s word-of-mouth marketing driven straight from the tables.
Of course, Titbit is a business and so there are costs for the restaurant. Hate says, however, that these costs are minimal in the long run. For one, Hate adds that his company has taken away the cost of buying iPads away from the restaurant by deploying iPads it has bought on its own costs. So the initial capital investment headache is no more there.
The restaurant pays Titbit on per billing transaction, approximately Rs.40 to Rs.45, which would be a flat charge. This cost though is easily recoverable by the restaurant, says Hate, which would benefit from a rise in the number of walk-ins, savings made on better table management, and a rise in the number of orders as it would save on ordering time.
Titbit already has about three restaurants as its clients, including one abroad. Hate says the intention is to spread to 60-odd restaurants in India by the end of the year. Once he has enough clients, he has revenue plans for brand placements e.g. placing Sula’s wines first in the wines menu. Also on the cards is a consumer-centric mobile and online food ordering app by the end of the year, where Hate hopes he will finally be able to intervene again in the painful process of ordering food online. Office folk rejoice!

A New Mobile Generation?

Team Entrepreneur — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:56:05 +0000

With technology, the trick is to buy in at the right time and at the right price. So with the next generation of mobile—dubbed 4G, or fourth generation—rolling out now, should you take the plunge? The short answer is yes. In most cases you’ll get faster connections and the most cutting-edge phones, at a price that isn’t too much higher than what you’re paying for 3G (this generation) service today. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some decisions to make, made more difficult by a lot of jargon. Here’s a rapid-fire 4G primer to equip you for some next-generation wireless shopping.

What is 4G, exactly?
Faster mobile internet service. How much faster? It depends. And you probably won’t get a straight answer from your service provider. One problem is that the term 4G has morphed from something with a strict industry definition (100 Mbps-plus mobile service, or networks about 10 to 20 times faster than current ones, according to the International Telecommunication Union), to a marketing phrase mobile providers use to describe their upgraded networks.

What are LTE, HSPA+ and WiMax?
These are the names of the technologies used to deliver 4G service. Why should you care? It’s smart to have some sense of what the providers are betting on, as it will impact the speeds you get and the phones you have access to.

Here’s enough info to make you dangerous: WiMax data networks were the first, with Clear and Sprint offering WiMax mobile data services last year. But WiMax hasn’t taken off as expected, and those providers are considering other technologies. HSPA+ underlies networks from T-Mobile and AT&T and can reach theoretical speeds of about 21 Mbps (but more likely around 5 Mbps). The gold standard is LTE (Long Term Evolution), which Verizon launched recently. Sprint has talked about using LTE, and AT&T is rolling out its combined HSPA+ LTE network. It’s the technology most likely to deliver 1 Gbps of bandwidth.

Why does any of this matter?
Right out of the gate, it may not. You can go to almost any provider and order up 4G service and get something faster than you had last year. Most providers can deliver service roughly in the 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps range in the real world. Place your bets on LTE-based operators. Faster downloads and the most cutting-edge mobile devices? Sounds like a winning formula.

Promotion in motion

Team Entrepreneur — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:53:11 +0000

Gino Orfitelli has the cure for whatever’s ailing your PC, and he makes house calls. The owner and self-appointed “chief geek” of Southington, Conn.-based ePRO Computer Repair offers clients everything from setup to software installation to virus and spyware removal, specializing in home and office visits. That means Orfitelli is constantly on the go, so mobile technologies play an increasingly critical role in his day-to-day business.

“I run ePRO almost solely out of my iPhone,” Orfitelli says. He relies on small-business-centric mobile applications to quote customers, track inventory and invoice jobs.

Orfitelli’s iPhone includes MerchantCircle’s new Merchant Mobile App, which lets users create and publish daily deals, photos and status updates, as well as respond to customer inquiries and monitor reviews. Orfitelli—a longtime MerchantCircle user who credits the site’s marketing tools for boosting ePRO’s digital visibility—encouraged the company to extend its solution to the iPhone and signed up to test the free Merchant Mobile App as soon as the beta was released.

“Given the nature of my business, it really helps me to have access to [MerchantCircle’s] different features when I’m not in front of the computer,” Orfitelli says.

His business is one of more than 1.6 million companies that have turned to Mountain View, Calif.-based MerchantCircle to attract new customers and connect with other firms in their community or vertical. In addition to its free marketing and networking services, the MerchantCircle platform features a portfolio of premium solutions, including search-engine marketing and instant website development, to help users further build and enhance their web presence.

“MerchantCircle gets merchants online, connects them with other merchants and provides them with simple, powerful tools to reach customers,” says VP of marketing and product management Darren Waddell.

MerchantCircle profiles can be created in a matter of minutes. The site directory includes about 20 million pre-built listings in all. New users type in their phone number to find their page, customizing and fleshing out the existing information as they see fit. From there, they can manage and track customer reviews and search engine visibility, publish ads across the MerchantCircle network, on Google and Yahoo, and interact with peers to talk shop, ask and answer questions. According to Waddell, 25,000 to 30,000 merchants join the site every month.
The Merchant Mobile App simplifies and streamlines the MerchantCircle user interface for smartphones, giving users like Orfitelli the flexibility to manage their digital profile. “We want to drive down the barriers blocking merchants from exploring online marketing,” Waddell says. “There are so many guys out there in trucks, living their life out and about. We want to make it simple for them to respond to online activity.”

Chicago-based writer Jason Ankeny is the executive editor of Fiercemobile content, a daily electronic newsletter dedicated to mobile media, applications and marketing.

Books Smart

Team Entrepreneur — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:46:04 +0000

Online accounting packages sure make things seem easy. Linking directly to business accounts, doing sophisticated invoicing, even getting an insight into your taxes—a snap, right? But figuring out which tool works best for your business isn’t quite so simple. To keep you on the right side of the IRS, here are our picks for online accounting tools for companies of all sizes.

Best for accounting-savvy small-business owners
QuickBooks Online Simple Start
(Rs.588 per month)
Considering Intuit pretty much invented small-business accounting tools and has 90 percent of the market, it’s no shocker the company offers a genuinely effective online product. Aimed at the single-user market—though your accountant can peek at what you’re doing—Simple Start lays out company information in relatively easy-to-use, tab-based web pages. Most business functions, such as managing invoices and printing checks, run smoothly. And we’re impressed with sophisticated options like customized charts of accounts and complex tax tracking. But making all this capability work takes a surprising amount of accounting knowledge. Be sure to sit down with your bean counter and set up QuickBooks properly so you don’t make a royal fiscal mess.

Best for web-savvy, growing companies
FreshBooks (Rs.905 and up per month)
FreshBooks attempts to be just that: a fresh way to keep your books. Where other programs are more interested in the minutiae of accounting, FreshBooks offers a simpler layout, more web-based collaboration features such as team management and a lower level of accounting speak. By and large, it succeeds. The system presents a relatively legible account dashboard and understandable screens. Based on our tests, customer support is good. Plus, there’s direct integration with online work tools such as Basecamp. But FreshBooks is still accounting software, which means screwing up is oh so easy. The program can convert contractor invoices into expenses that make no accounting sense, expense categories are prone to errors and audit trails are flimsy.

Best for accounting-phobes
Outright (Rs.452 per month)
Outright is not for large or growing firms, or for anyone with sophisticated accounting needs. However, for very basic accounting for, say, sole proprietors, it’s hard to beat. Everything—and we mean absolutely everything—in your ledgers is boiled down to four simple web pages: Money In, Money Out, Reports and Taxes. Apart from a basic Overview page, that’s all there is. And that’s the beauty of it. Just start entering what you’re getting paid and what you’re spending, plug in your bank and credit card info, and with a bit of diligence, a surprisingly accurate picture of your business finances emerges. You’ll also be able to determine what you owe the feds in taxes, which will save you from a world of hurt come tax season. With tools like Outright around, there’s no excuse for not having bombproof business ledgers.

Jonathan Blum is a freelance writer and the principal of Blumsday LLC, a web-based content company specializing in technology news.

On Familiar Ground

Team Entrepreneur — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:39:50 +0000

Two years into his tenure at New York-based digital agency Squeaky Wheel Media, Scott Wells and his co-worker, Robert Boyle, had a thought: Rather than just helping clients push their products, why not create one of their own? Other hybrid agencies had tested the waters—some with screaming success, like Invoke Media, which developed the popular social media dashboard HootSuite.

After a client shot down their pitch for a custom mobile app, Wells and Boyle approached Squeaky Wheel Media founder and president Anthony Del Monte about developing the product in-house. After the trio spent two months hashing out the details, Del Monte agreed to finance the effort—named Crowdbeacon—as an internal project, with Wells and Boyle at the helm. We talked to Wells about the service, agency collaboration and what’s next.

How does Crowdbeacon work?
It’s a free, location-based mobile app. People ask a question based on their needs and location and get direct answers from other Crowdbeacon users and local businesses. If you ask, “Where can I get a blouse right now?” other users in the area who are following “shopping” as an interest get that question and can respond.

How did you come up with the idea?
Early in 2010, we had a promotional idea for Squeaky itself, called #NYCHelps. For two weeks, we basically searched Twitter for anyone who needed help in New York—looking for a lunch spot, delivering a last-minute package—and we’d give them suggestions. Then we had an opportunity to pitch a similar concept to one of the agency’s clients in the real estate business. The idea was to connect home buyers with local information, such as what the schools are like and where the good restaurants are. The client decided it wasn’t for them. But we were still really interested.

What was the agency’s M.O. in greenlighting the project?
There’s a lot of opportunity in mobile. [Del Monte] knew that this could potentially be a separate business for us and bring some good attention to the agency.

What resources did the agency provide?
Squeaky invested Rs.1.12 crore-Rs.1.35 crore of internal manpower and out-of-pocket costs. We dedicated two full-time developers to it, and myself and Robert, who were marketing and communications focused, as well as five contract people. [Del Monte] gave us the go-ahead in May 2010. After almost nine months of development, design and strategy, we launched Crowdbeacon in February 2011.

What’s happening with Crowdbeacon?
We’re at over 50,000 downloads. But we realized that unless we had the outside funding to really market and distribute Crowdbeacon, we wouldn’t be able to succeed. Squeaky had some reservations about outside investors coming in. So in April, we began offering Crowdbeacon as a white label solution that other businesses can use to connect with their own audiences. We’ve already gotten a couple clients out of this.

The Digital Underground

Team Entrepreneur — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:50:55 +0000

The face of today’s cybercriminal looks surprisingly familiar. He has an expansive network of partners and technology geeks. He’s contracted out research and development to write his software and middle managers to make sure everyone in his organization is doing their part to rake in the dough. He’s a smart businessman who is able to leverage others’ skill sets to turn a profit.

Sounds like someone you can relate to, right—someone embracing the entrepreneurial spirit? That’s precisely the problem. That character is emblematic of the new wave of cybercriminals who are taking over the internet, making millions off the backs of honest business owners and consumers around the world.

“Over the past year, cybercriminals have been more financially motivated than ever,” says Neil Daswani, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of security firm Dasient. “Cybercriminals are very entrepreneurial indeed, although they are surely not moral.”
And the way things have transpired, these shadowy cybercriminals don’t even need to be tech whizzes to steal from you. “The underground economy has evolved with specific roles that are sought after and paid for,” says Michael Sutton, vice president of security research for cloud security provider Zscaler. “This has allowed criminals without a technical background to benefit from web- and e-mail-based attacks. They don’t need to create the attacks themselves—they simply purchase an exploit kit in the underground and it handles the heavy lifting for them.”

Today’s cybercrime economy is made up of a complicated mix of specialists, each of whom makes money doing one thing really well. It’s classic capitalism at play. There are people who write malware kits to scan the internet and infect computers automatically. There are those who use that malware to gather infected machines and control them in a collective computing pool called a botnet. There are others who rent out botnets to run larger attacks against banks, or to steal big pools of identities. There are still more criminals who use stolen identities to actually go to ATM machines and steal the money.

And then there are the kingpins. Typically operating in Eastern Europe or China, beyond the law enforcement reach of Western countries, they take all the different resources available and come up with the business plans to put fraudulent schemes into action. They either put the specialists on their payroll or hire them as contractors to do their individual parts.

“They piece it all together,” says David Koretz, CEO and president of security firm Mykonos Software. “They go to one group to write the virus, a second group to take the virus and use it to build a big network, a third group to find a vulnerability in an e-commerce site and a fourth group to attack that site and do tens of thousands of transactions in a few minutes by using a wide range of bots. Now all of a sudden they’ve done a million dollars of theft in a few minutes.”

As a case study in the organic development of a free-market economy, the evolution of the modern hacking ecosystem is fascinating. It’s also horrifying, because it comes at the expense of small businesses. According to security experts, small businesses are ideal targets for the cybercrime syndicate because they tend to have more computers, stored data and money to steal from than the average consumer, and much fewer security protections in place than larger enterprises.
“The sweet spot really is the small business,” says Kevin Haley, Director of Symantec Security Technology and Response.

One of the big misconceptions that small-business owners and sole proprietors tend to have is that they can’t possibly be targeted by the bad guys. It’s hard enough to get customers to find your website, so how’s a crook from Estonia going to find you? The thing to remember is that these criminal entrepreneurs have completely automated their hacking schemes, says Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at security firm Sophos.

“We need to understand that Bob’s lawn mower business isn’t being targeted by criminals—they’re just looking for every single instance of a vulnerable website on the internet, and if they can find one, they infect it,” Wisniewski says. “So the thought that ‘I’m too small, they’re not going to hit me’ isn’t really a valid defense. Certainly you aren’t going to be targeted the same way that Sony was targeted. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be targeted—you’re just going to be targeted by an automated bot.”

Clearly, you’re the hunted in all of this. And just as animals evolve to develop camouflage and protections from predators, you need to adjust your business to avoid becoming lunchmeat.

The End of Free

Team Entrepreneur — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:09:07 +0000

All-you-can-eat never lasts forever. That’s the story in mobile these days, as mobile data plans—the kinds that let you surf the web and download apps on your smartphones and tablets—move to a pay-per-use model. Businesses, consider yourselves warned: Going over the limit can result in hundreds of dollars in overage fees. When the mobile internet was slow and ugly, unlimited data plans made sense. But as mobile apps and streaming video came into vogue, suddenly those mobile data networks started getting bogged down. So out came the tiers and the caps and the throttling. Here’s what it all means.

Reality
Almost no mobile operator offers truly unlimited data plans these days. AT&T famously moved its iPhone data plans to tiers first: 200 MB of data (enough for light surfing and e-mail) for Rs.675 per month; 2 GB of data (fit for streaming music and video) for Rs.1,125 per month. Verizon is planning data caps soon, while T-Mobile continues to offer unlimited data—unless you use too much, in which case they’ll throttle back your speeds for the rest of the month. And no, most carriers won’t let users share pools of megabytes of data as they do voice minutes.

Watch your 3G/4G bandwidth consumption closely
Most mobile operators offer some form of mobile app or website to help you monitor your usage. If your carrier lets you sign up for alerts when you approach your data limits, do so. But note: Soon many operators will use this heads-up as a chance to sell you more data to meet your one-time overage. You’ll probably get a decent deal on the fly, but also use it to reevaluate your base package and upgrade as necessary.

Be aggressive using Wi-Fi versus 3G/4G
Too many people use carrier mobile networks when they’ve got their own (free-to-use) Wi-Fi network in their office or home. For some users, managing Wi-Fi settings may be too complex, or leaving Wi-Fi on drains their batteries. IPhone battery life and built-in Wi-Fi management is pretty decent; on Android, turn to an app like Locale or JuiceDefender that will automatically turn your Wi-Fi radio on and off depending on your location or other settings, saving battery life and megabytes of data usage.

Reevaluate your business model
As much as data caps impact how individuals, small businesses and startups consume mobile content, they’re also going to have an effect on mobile businesses that rely on video or other high-bandwidth content. There can only be a few businesses like Netflix in the world, but if you’re counting on using a flashy video or high-bandwidth mobile app as your calling card to attract new mobile users, you may need to think again—for your would-be customers’ sake.

Responsibility: It’s What’s for Breakfast

Team Entrepreneur — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:31:47 +0000

In a culture where many households own at least one computer, digital responsibility is key. As someone who runs her business primarily through a MacBook and an internet connection, I’m going to drop some knowledge.

Computers and online access have leveled the playing field, giving the general public a voice whose strength is unprecedented. But just because so many of us are expressing ourselves online doesn’t mean we’re automatically granted a cloak of invisibility and immunity from being accountable for the things that spew from our fingers. I believe we have an even greater responsibility, given the access we enjoy.

Responsible blogging
I’ve learned some hard lessons about blogging. The most important one? My audience is the reason I get to keep doing what I love to do: write and tell stories. I have a weighty obligation to them and they’re at the forefront of my mind. This is why I think it’s complete crap when a blogger chooses to turn off his/her blog comments. If you’re too popular to communicate directly with your audience, maybe you need to rethink why you got to where you are. My audience keeps me in check. My readers call BS on me (and know they have the power to do so). I hope they’ll let me know when I’m not holding up my end of the bargain.

And anonymous commenters? Not welcome in my ‘hood, and here’s why: You don’t get to walk into a dinner party, punch the host and then disappear into the night without someone knowing your identity. A blog or online forum is no different. Be accountable for your words by ponying up an identity to go with them.

Responsible attribution

People have no idea how many copyright laws they’re violating every day. All it takes to get past this hurdle is a simple strategy: Offer credit. If you’re going to quote another blogger or news article, make sure your readers know it’s a quote and give credit along with a link back to the original source online.

Same goes for photos. If you’re using a photo in your article or post, just because you can find it in Google’s image search doesn’t mean it’s fair game. If you can’t pay, use Creative Commons (creativecommons.org) to search for those that are available free. You have to link to the original source and provide a photo credit. Inexpensive stock imagery can be purchased from sites like iStockphoto.com and BigStockPhoto.com.

Ultimately, when we stop looking for shortcuts and think before we act, we give ourselves the opportunity to do better business.

Erika Napoletano is Head Redhead at Redhead Writing, a Denver-based online strategies consultancy dedicated to keeping companies from looking like idiots online. Visit her (if you dare) at redheadwriting.com.