WebProNews

Starbucks-iTunes Offering "Pick Of The Week"

 Expanding their ongoing marketing partnership, Starbucks and iTunes yesterday announced Pick of the Week, offering coffeehouse customers free downloads and videos. Upcoming Pick of the Week artists include Carly Simon, Duffy, Counting Crows, Adele, Sia, and Hilary McRae.

Starbucks And McDonald's Traffic Trends

Odds are decent that you see at least one of these establishments every time you leave the house.  So Hitwise has pulled up some data and examined whether Starbucks or McDonald's will win the high-priced coffee war.

Apple To Patent Line-Cutting Technology

Devices like the iPhone could be virtual baristas and sandwich makers, if an Apple patent application for placing orders at places like Starbucks and Panera receives approval.

How To Look Your Best In Search Results

Mom always said, "Put your best foot forward." It's valuable advice, because often how you appear on a first meeting sends subtle signals about you and can influence what happens next. We should also be concerned the same way with how we appear, what information is presented about us, in the search results. 

Starbucks Gives Away Tracks For iTunes WiFi Launch

Starbucks is going to give away 50 million tracks as it helps launch the new iTunes wireless service with Apple. From Oct. 2 to Nov. 7 customers in all 10,000 U.S.

Apple And Starbucks Partner On Music

Apple and Starbucks have entered into an exclusive partnership that allows customers to wirelessly browse, search, preview, buy and download music from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks.

SEM Includes Giving The People What They Want

My friends at digital-telepathy passed something along to me for a look and a laugh. Turns out, it’s an interesting illustration of search engine optimization and a web design shooting blanks. The site is optimized but someone forgot to consider how to target it for customers, not just search engines. In addition, the design isn’t responding to one of the most popular reasons someone would go to the site. In the writeup, called Search+ :: It’s All In The Grinds, the story goes that, upon hearing the office call for a Starbucks run, an office employee decided to order something different from Starbucks. He went to search for the Starbucks website to see what he could order differently. He writes,

Uncommon Uses - SMS Based Interfaces

Beyond voice, probably the simplest and most ubiquitous technology on the mobile phone is text (SMS), North America has been a bit of a laggard adopting this technology but in the last year or so has really started to use text. I think the voting on American Idol might have been one part of the tipping point for texting in the US. I’ve certainly seen a rise in the amount of people using text, but being in San Francisco my experience may not be mainstream. Here’s some interesting text interfaces:

Simple Question: Who Else Can Win?

I've been writing about companies who are committed to making a difference. I think the issue boils down to a very simple question: "Who else can win?"

Microsofties Hit By Horrible Weather

Seattle was hit bad by violent winds and power outages over the weekend, and Microsoft's employees blogged their experiences (in many cases only after days of waiting for the power to return). Todd Bishop has a rundown.