Today’s a fun one for retail research.

First, I received an update from Compete’s blog deconstructing the myth of Cyber Monday:

 It was like pulling the plug while the stereo was still going – that droopy drop-off of sound and fury – two years ago when the first so-called "Cyber Monday" was conveniently labeled, leaked, and then debunked as hooey on Tuesday. And again this year, it just ain’t so.

The FCC isn’t standing in the way of the local utility company rolling out broadband service over powerlines; state governments and the lobbying by competitors have obstructed this.

With all of the attention on global warming and what each of us could do, there is an interesting paradox that you may not realize which is happening right under your nose at work.  I was reminded of it again as I came across a Dilbert comic that sums up the issue in three short panels as only Scott Adams can do:

Usually Gphone rumors come out of some publication you’ve never heard of in India or Taiwan and are told with questionable, if not outright broken English.

Consumer Engagement is not a metric that can be measured in the same manner by all businesses and therefore there is no such thing as an optimum engagement score.

Consumer Engagement is also not simply captured on your website, it’s calculated using all touch points in a consumer’s (website, search engine, blog, banner ad, offline media, etc…). Consumer engagement has to be defined by marketing teams and appropriate stake holders so that it can be correlated to repetitive interactions by the consumer.

So, you have heard that blogging is the way to go’. Do you want to blog? Are you going to? Then this list of common blogging misconceptions may be helpful for you.

It’s true! Apple’s application to obtain a patent, to protect a new device which they described as a combination of a mobile phone and an iPod, was made public yesterday.

Marketing requires much more than just wishful thinking. While that statement might sound like the obvious, upon reflection, it’s a more ubiquitous concept than we might think.

In a nutshell: Economics, economies and economic theory have all been based on economics of scarcity.

One of the nicest developers I ever met at Microsoft, Steve Lacey, surprised me recently when he said he was working at Google. Great to see him today. He, like almost everyone at Google, refuses to tell me what he’s working on.

Aaron wall opened today with a great post, “The Myth of a Perfectly Optimized Page” where he talks about temporary nature of most optimization and that long term, it is the creation of useful content that matters most.

In this article I’m going to explain the top 10 software development fallacies my company avoids.

Have you been approached by website companies stating your web site design does not comply with the UK Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)? Worried?

Sometimes it’s fun to post a little Q and A to help folks better understand different aspects for search engine optimization.

Marketing your own professional services is simply not the same as marketing a retail product or an anonymous business service. You can’t sell corporate consulting like you do web hosting……..

The new buzz on the internet is all about getting one-way links by distributing content to other sites in exchange for backlinks. As with every other SEO or website promotion technique ever devised, there are plenty of newbie myths about it that can ruin your chance for success before you even start.

Did you hear the one about great salespeople being great talkers? They have the gift of gab and they dazzle their customers into buying anything. Some salespeople even believe it. It’s the biggest myth in sales. Here’s how it got started and why it is a myth.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the web is its dynamism. We all know that it develops at an astonishing speed – yesterday’s craze is today’s old news, and bigger and better things seem to be springing up every few days. Some of them crumble quickly into dust, while others seem destined to tower above the rest.

You can hold effective meetings and become a more successful leader if you avoid these seven monsters. Here’s how.

What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that happens all too frequently when I am approached by a prospect interested in search engine optimization (SEO):