Erik Gibb
2007 May

Snippets from the article:

• U.S. men are doing more and more grocery shopping but retailers are still not doing much to make the trip any more enticing
• Men do represent a large part of grocery shopping dollars and they aren’t being very well accommodated … sales are being lost
• Men have difficulty finding items, forego buying rather than risk purchasing a substitute for an item on the grocery list and hesitate to ask for help if they can’t find an item
• Unlike women, male shoppers typically focus more on convenience than price, and retailers will need to cater to that
• The Shopping Buddy, a wireless computer on shopping carts alerts shoppers to certain items they might want using information from shopper loyalty cards
• Unlike women, men tend to hone in on the specific thing they want to buy instead of surveying the entire aisle… can be a problem for manufacturers and retailers trying to promote new products
• Great at picking out the stuff that they bought before. It’s the new stuff, or something new and different that a manufacturer is trying to promote, that they have trouble with
• Men also tend to bristle at the overwhelming number of choices in grocery aisles, with the cereal aisle being one prime example
• “One guy I thought was going to have a nervous breakdown in the cereal aisle,” Putnam said, adding that this man, in his early 30s, worked the night shift as a police officer in a dicey part of town and was otherwise used to stressful situations.
• Retailers still refer to their main customer as “she,” with women still doing the majority of the family shopping, so a major overhaul of stores to make them more attractive to men is not likely.
• But food retailers in general are focusing more and more on segmentation — tailoring store offerings to shoppers most likely to shop there or that they want to attract. This strategy could attract more male shoppers.

(Read More)

Continue reading “Grocery stores are overwhelming for men, retailers piloting in-cart recommendations based on loyalty card history” »

CBS Corp. said Wednesday it is buying Last.fm, a music-focused online social network, for $280 million in cash in a bid to attract younger viewers and listeners across its businesses.

Last.fm management, including founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones, will continue to run the company independently, CBS said in a statement.

The acquisition follows CBS Interactive’s recent purchase of Wallstrip.com, an online financial news site, and investments in the online video site Joost and other online companies.

Founded in 2002, Last.fm now has more than 15 million active users. The site builds a profile of users’ musical tastes to make personalized recommendations and connect users who share similar tastes.

It also provides custom online radio streams and other music-related community features. (Read More)

Continue reading “CBS Buys Last.fm for $280 Million Cash” »

ABC is hoping to reinvent the newsmagazine for the YouTube generation with a show produced by ABC News but based on user-generated video.

Hourlong skein “i-Caught” will get a six-week run on the network starting Aug. 6 and then return midseason to replace “The Bachelor” on Monday nights.

Amateur video will form the basis of the show’s segments, but ABC News correspondents will build news stories and features around video captured on cell phones or digicams and uploaded to a companion Web site.

Exec producer David Sloan said the show will take on a wide breadth of potential stories, including breaking news; celebrity journalism; investigations; and stories of politics, crime, Internet hoaxes or just the moments of everyday life. (Read More)

Continue reading “ABC’s Newest News Correspondents: You” »

WiFind from Tasty Apps is a neat little replacement for Airport menubar item that adds some cool features. Specifically it shows right in the drop-down menu both whether or not networks are locked and also each WAP’s signal strength. This is surely a much handier way to check all those networks at your local coffee shop, rather than just trying to connect to each one. It is worth pointing out, however, that WiFind does its magic via a SIMBL plugin. (Read More)

Great opportunity to surface exactly the right information in a dashboard format. Both the signal strength and the password protection status are crucial when deciding what network to choose. I have 6 different wireless boxes in my house i can connect to, but I’m never sure which one is the right signal strength based on my current location. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will, and hope it lives up to it’s promise.

Continue reading “WiFind: Show the right information at the right time” »

Glowcap is an ordinary pillcap with built-in connectivity & computation that encourages behavioral feedback loops with family, remote loved ones, & care-givers.

an orange glow encourages users to take their medicine, up to 4 times per day. a glowcap can also send an email or call a mobile phone as an urgent reminder to take the medicine, & can generate an automatic progress report for the patient & her doctor each month.

via engadget and infosthetics

Continue reading “Ambient pill cap sends cues to take your meds” »

Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk

It is used by more than 100,000 commuters a day, visited by as many as a million tourists a month, and crossed by 40 million drivers a year. Its bold beauty is staggering, its mystique legendary. (Read more)

Continue reading “Golden Gate Bridge: Happy 70th Birthday” »

YouTube Tests New User Interface with Thumbnail Previews, “Time Stamps” and More……

YouTube has just begun to test a user interface with new with thumbnail previews of related clips.

It also creates a destinct url for spot in a video. So, you don’t need to watch a whole video to see the clip of dog singing to get the good part, you can just create a location within the video. This functionality was part of Google Video, which is shifting considerable resources to YouTube. More enhancements to come.

via BeetTV and Google

Continue reading “YouTube Tests New User Interface with Thumbnail Previews, “Time Stamps” and More……” »

During the PlanetOut/Gay.com redesign I proposed adding different layout options to search results pages, in addition to surfacing the refine function in a handy minimizable tray.

Continue reading “PlanetOut: Search and Refine” »

Netscape was the original dotcom darling, and the losing faction in the browser wars. I worked for and with some extremely cool people building and maintaining the corporate intranet. Like my role at Netscape, my portfolio examples aren’t divided sharply by discipline. I moved fluidly between team lead, information architecture, design lead, and web development as required by the project and our team’s workload.

Continue reading “Netscape: An Introduction” »

InterMap Systems’ goal was to make health care accessible to the end user. A carefully curated taxonomy merged internal and third-party content together for the end user, mapped to more natural language queries (Eg., a search for “Zit” would return information relating to “overactive sebaceous glands”). They also provided visual navigation tools that mapped health care information across condition lifecycle (symptoms->diagnosis->treatment, etc…)

Continue reading “InterMap Systems: An Introduction” »