Top 10 Things that Caught My Eye — Week of 3/29/10
Back from a quick trip to Miami for a sales call (I know, it sounds terrible). But here’s what I found interesting and hope you do too. In a tip-of-the-cap to Spinal Tap, I’ve taken the list up to 11 for this week:
- Excellent article by Timothy O’Neill-Dunne on how technology is transforming the travel industry
- PhoCusWright Connect take on Hotel Prices on Google Maps. The entry of Google into meta-search (even if they don’t want to overtly call it that just yet) is an interesting development.
- RedMonk’s James Governor drinks Microsoft Kook-Aid at MIX?
- TechCrunch reports that Google is going to incorporate Adobe Flash in Chrome OS. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if I think what the new friend is doing is stupid. The headline says it all. I’m not sure what sane reason Google has for changing its stance as the leading advocate for HTML5 to embracing Flash. To say it’s about choice would be a trite answer.
- Marc Benioff is becoming something of a guest-poster-in-residence on TechCrunch. His latest post is about how he feels the iPad is going to lead a revolution in how people interact with technology.
- Great article by Enterprise Irregular Paul Greenberg on the state of Social CRM
- Interesting study on the performance of the Top 45 UK travel sites. Not terribly surprising that customer service is weakest link, but also telling that the steps after search…that is the part when people actually look to book…otherwise known as the part where travel companies make money…perform weakest.
- European LCC EasyJet wants to add booking options over Facebook. Would you book an airline over Facebook? Or maybe the right question is: “Are there any reasons that you wouldn’t book a flight on Facebook?”
- Lawson to offer ERP on AWS instances. A big step from a company whose CEO Harry Debes predicted SaaS was a fad just 2-3 years ago. Still this is not SaaS, and only Cloud-ish (it’s single-instances on the Amazon Cloud; doesn’t significantly change the game on pricing or upgrades), but a baby-step in the right direction. Basically it seems that Lawson wants to provide hosted solutions, but doesn’t want to invest in its own datacenters. Much better analysis from industry pundits Vinnie Mirchinani and Frank Scavo.
- What brand of Freedom Would you Like? Apple’s or Google’s? Seems to me that at least Apple’s pretty straightforward with their approach. Google? It’s a little more murky.
- Bonus Round: Forrester analyst John Rymer’s take on the future of app servers.
No comments yet.