
Brightpearl Delivers in a Multi Channel World
Nearly three years ago in a fit of frustration I wrote a post detailing what I considered to be a relatively obvious set of requirements for a small manufacturing business I am a shareholder in. To recap – we currently use a bunch of disconnected systems because there is no

REVEALED: eBay’s Playbook for Social Business Adoption
eBay’s going social. Its protagonists are building the next generation social platform called the HUB, to increase employee engagement, collaboration and effectiveness. It is instructive to follow the evolution of their strategy in response to the growing chorus of eBay employees who were demanding social tools, or had already snuck them in. On first impression, […]

Law Firm going after individual sellers on Amazon for Patent Violation
I don’t know enough about this right now to go and make the statement of if this is a valid legal issue, or if this is simply “patent trolling”, but apparently a law firm representing Kelora Systems is now going … Continue reading →

A Tale of two customer bases: Amazon and Ebay
My company is four years old this week, and while we do have our own web site where we sell from, we need to be on Amazon and Ebay as well to make sure we get the largest audience possible for our products. Going through the data over the last year, and over the last […]

Skype – the mysterious money bubble
This morning I wrote this post already in one tweet: 2003: Skype founded. 2005: bought by eBay $2.5B (60m users). 2009: sold by eBay $2.8B (450m users). 2011: bought by MSFT $8B (700m users) That was after a very quick 5 minute analysis of a few tweets, posts and web sites. Now I’ve finally found […]

Want to Know How First Round Capital was Started?
If you read this blog often you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of First Round Capital. They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. One example is that they introduced a […]

Blue Murder ?
I guess it used to be called “Stormchasing” – where groups of seemingly heroic, but clearly just plain stupid, raincoat-clad student types armed with an entry-level standard def video camera caught clips of each other laughing and shouting such ludicrous lines as “oh crap, Bob, it’s coming straight at us” as a 125mph wind got […]

Sell Used Music on Redigi: A Threat to Apple’s iTunes?
I remember a time when the only way to buy music was to drive down to the local music store and purchase a cassette tape. You had to buy the whole album then. Yes, I’m serious. When the tape got old or the music fell out of favor I threw it away, listed in the […]

Crowdsourcing Our New Logo Design. Time to Vote.
We’re putting our money where our (digital) mouth is: having talked so much about crowdsourcing, we took 99designs for a test drive, hoping to see a new CloudAve logo emerge. I was not too impressed with the initial submissions, but just as I sus…

Crowsdourcing Our New Logo Design. Will it Work?
We’ve written so much about crowdsourcing, I figured it was time to put our money where our mouth pen keyboard-tapping fingers are. CloudAve will soon get a new layout, and we thought we should refresh the logo, too. Next step: LazyTweet – and within minutes a trusted friend recommended 99designs. I read a few positive […]

Welcome to the Facebook Market Place
If you have not checked out the Facebook Market Place lately – now is probably a good time to do it. Originally opened in 2007, with a few odds and sods like the acquisition of Ooodle– the Facebook Market Place of today is a cross between Craig’s List, Amazon, and Career Builder. You can literally […]
I totally love Phishing when they are obviously juvenile
Well Ok I love it when Phishers are really being idiots, and yet another phising attempt fails to snare its intended victim, namely me, and namely because the phisher is being very stupid. I do a lot of shopping online so I am fairly sensitive to the loss of an account or someone trying to […]

Google Wave Invites Show up on eBay
In case you are wondering why hundreds of thousands of Google geeks and regular geeks are on edge today, it is because today is the day that Google sends out its “Google Wave” invites. While no one knows how many people have signed up to get one, the popular belief is that they are rarer […]

Ready for a Private Label Amazon
The New York Times and Techflash are leading news this morning about Amazon and how it looks like it will become the Wal-Mart of the internet. The question is, is anyone ready to follow or take on Amazon on its own turf. All ecommerce companies should be looking at what Amazon is doing right now […]

Using eBay as SaaS Marketing Tool?
This listing on eBay is hilarious, almost makes me wonder if it’s a true listing or carefully planted advertising for Google Apps (and SaaS in general). But the seller appears to be real, has been on eBay for ten years… Here we go, get Microsoft Office w. Outlook for $75, because: It’s brand new and […]