Amazon is out of kindle after cutting its price to USD 189.

This is not the first time this happens to Amazon with the same product. Oprah Winfrey advertised in October 2008 that the Kindle is her favourite gadget. As a result, all Kindles were sold out. That was the second time preceded by another incident back in 2007.

Ok, maybe forecasting Oprah’s move is out of Amazon scope, but this is the third time and the influence of 25% discount should have been taken into calculations. Naturally, there could always be another reasoned that is not revelled to us, as many firms are adopting the frustrating top-secret approach in order to create an artificial buzz.

It will take few more days or weeks to restore it I believe, anyway, the good news are that the new Kindle DX is a much better version of the original Kindle. This Kindle has better performances, is bigger and cost USD 379.

I do not know about you, but I am waiting for the next generation where colour will be incorporated, and while they are at it, maybe they can add some apps.

 Amazon new Kindle:

Just as if Amazon was guessing I was writing about them, they just released , during last night, a new kindle version that is 21% smaller in size, with same size screen and costs $189 USD or $139 without the 3G technology having WiFi only.

These are the issues / improvements associated with the new kindle according to Amazon: 

All-New, High-Contrast E-Ink Screen – 50% better contrast than any other e-reader

Read in Bright Sunlight – No glare

New and Improved Fonts – New crisper, darker fonts

New Sleek Design – 21% smaller body while keeping the same 6″ size reading area

15% Lighter – Only 8.7 ounces, weighs less than a paperback

Battery Life of One Month – A single charge lasts up to one month with wireless off

Double the Storage – Up to 3,500 Books

Books in 60 Seconds – Download books anytime, anywhere

Free 3G Wireless – No monthly payments, no annual contracts

Built-In Wi-Fi – In addition to the 3G wireless, you can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots

20% Faster Page Turns – Seamless reading

Enhanced PDF Reader – With dictionary lookup, notes, and highlights

New WebKit-Based Browser – Free 3G web browsing (experimental)

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Founder & CEO said that for the $139 price, they expect people to buy multiple Kindles for their home and family.

A continental airspace closure took precedent in September 11, 2001 when the US had to close its airspace in order to neutralize potential further attacks.

The eruption of Icelandic Mount Eyjafjallajokull and the resulting volcanic ash cloud over Europe have caused severe flight disruptions since last week, grounded millions of people, tones of cargo and disrupted international air traffic over Europe and the Atlantic.

The above had enormous affect on trade, business and insurance. Not to mention convenience. The ecological effect is too soon to evaluate, however has a destructive potential on climate in case of severe eruption.

Europe is operating several airports and KLM has started today a gradual procedure in order to restore its flight schedule.

The continental boycotting due to the volcanic ash over Europe is gradually removed today in order to allow the millions of passengers and tones of cargo to start flying again.

It is amazing how such a simple incident could have grounded Europe traffic for few days and cause such damage.

KLM has announced today that:

Flights to and from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

We have resumed operations in a phased manner. 

This means that we have started to operate European flights into and out of Amsterdam. In the coming days we expect to gradually go back to our normal schedules.

European flights

On Wednesday 21 April, as of 14.00 hours ( Amsterdam time), we will start to operate some flights to the United Kingdom. As of 22 April, we will try to get back to our normal schedules to and from the UK.

We also expect that later today, 21 April, we will be able to resume some flights to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany.

Intercontinental flights

All intercontinental flights to Amsterdam are expected to arrive on Wednesday 21 April.

All intercontinental flights from Amsterdam are expected to depart on Wednesday 21 April.

KLM together with Schiphol airport urging passengers not go to the airport if their flight is cancelled. It will take some time before all flights will be back on schedule.

It might be the right place to acknowledge the dedication of some European airports that made many efforts to assist passengers in providing them place to sleep, water and food. This was an extraordinary action on behalf of airports.

Speaker Profile

Speakers:
Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
Alan Perkins, Head of Search Marketing, SilverDisc Limited

Description:

This is a very concise description of the session:

This session is about how successfully architecting sites for search engines and how specific page elements and design technologies may impact your ability to gain good organic listings.

Subjects: Directory and file structure, server-side includes (SSIs), 404 error trapping, JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, and secure area usage

Insights:

• User expectance is different from IT view and SEO has to match user expectations, not IT.
• Recommended book: Information architect for the world wide web by Louise Rosenfeld , http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/

Shari Thurow:

• Knowing keywords tools still does not make you a copywriter. 
• Consistency in Information Architecture, site navigation and urls.
• Do not assume: test, test and test your architecture.

Alan Perkins

• SEO is all about the content on your site and links into it.
• IBM defined pages in the core of the web. A core page needs to link to our site.
• Best IA skeleton: hierarchical
• Tim Berners Lee: Don’t change URLs, change content within them, but not them.
• URLs ending with / are the best
• Don’t use urls with .html end since tech might change and you will be forced to change URLs
• Ensure IA allows deep linking into your site.

Renowned SEM professionals are gathering in London this week for this conference.

SES London 2010

Where search engines issue is a key success factor in today’s any marketing plan the expectations that its importance is growing.

With that in mind and with the experience Endeavour gained in the area of search engines (SE) I headed to London to participate, this is my second year I am following SES.

Topics such as: online marketing, search engines optimisation, search words and phrases, conversion, links directories and crawlers are all to be discussed here.

I am blogging on the latest in the search engines field from the conference as it happens and hope to bring you in real time the latest on SEO.

More about SES London site and conference can be viewed at: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/

Enjoy,

David Dekel

Final frontier, as James T. Kirk used to call it.

Today, Endeavour space scuttle took off again in one of its last missions as the whole shuttles project will be terminated by the end of this year. The space shuttle Endeavour has set off for the International Space Station (ISS) on a repair mission and the video can be seen below.

The story of the NASA project is both unique and tragic. It has began some 40 years ago based on even earlier concepts of reusable space shuttles. Six Space Shuttle orbiters were built; the first, Enterprise, was used only for testing purposes. Five space-worthy orbiters were:

 Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

• On January 28, 1986, orbiter Challenger (OV-099) disintegrated 73 seconds after launch in a dreadful explosion well remembered by anyone who have ever seen it.
• On February 1st, 2003 Columbia was lost during reentry.

In both cases, NASA lost all astronauts and mission specialists onboard and went through a process that risked the entire project.

Endeavour was built as a replacement to Challenger. Columbia was never replaced.

Believe it or not but we are witnessing history in the making as the Shuttles project will be terminated by the end of the year. Further NASA projects will imitate the old way of taking off on a top of a missile and landing with parachutes into the sea, just like in the old Apollo program.

So space shuttles as we used to see them are terminating an era in space exploration and will not be replaced by reusable shuttles. It is impossible to evaluate how many people worldwide were touched by the ambitious NASA shuttles project. It started by a mass correspondence to the white house, by Star Trek series fans to change the first shuttle’s name from Constitution to Enterprise and became part of all of us with its victories and failures. The tragedies affected our life.

I clearly remember myself as 18 years old teenager watching the documentary movie Hail Columbia at the Air & Space museum in Washington on a giant screen. It was an amazing movie and one of the only few I witnessed people cheering to a movie at the end of it.

 Therefore, every time they take off, we hold our breath, together with all NASA employees and pray to see it landing safely.

This post is dedicated to the brave men and women who lost their life in this project and to their families. They made us so proud.

President Reagan said in the memorial service of Challenger:

” Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain”.

Challenger: STS-51-L crew: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ron McNair. Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, and Judy Resnik.

Columbia STS-107 crew:  Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel B. Clark and Ilan Ramon (Col. IAF) . (Pic by NASA).

However, as from last night, there is an unusual additive to the building: the Dutch brewery started brewing browsers… Google Chrome to be exact. Slides of the browsers logo are projected on the outside wall of the Heineken building to be seen by nearly frozen by passers.

We are witnessing Google efforts to promote their almost two years old browser. One can see Chrome advertisements everywhere on newspapers, magazines and of course online.

In terms of popularity and according to Net Applications, Google Chrome web browser has just passed Apple’s safari and is occupying the third place in popularity after Internet Explorer various versions and Firefox. This popularity is expected to grow once Google will release it Chrome OS.

In case you are wondering which browser will be the most popular in two three years from now, the answer is somewhat surprising: whatever they will be named, they will be installed on mobile devices, namely, mobile phones.

According to Gartner, somewhere at 2013 browser-equipped phones will exceed 1.83 billion, compared with 1.78 billion PCs worldwide.

Get ready.

The new phone, categorized as a Super phone, is produced by HTC and runs on the Android 2.1 mobile operating system.

 As it seems right after the Google announcement, most speculations as for the technical specifications of e the new phone were accurate.

Nexus One Google new SuperPhone. Screenshot

Nexus One technical specifications:

• operating system: Android 2.1
• 3.7-inch display, 480 x 800 OLED display
• Processor: 1GHz Snapdragon from Qualcomm
• 5-megapixel camera with LED flash (guys from iphone, pay attention here: flash, you didn’t see it coming, did you?)
• Audio stereo Bluetooth
• Active noise cancellation using two microphones
• Live-action wallpaper that responds to your touch
• Google Maps navigation
• Improved Facebook integration

So, after all the hype created, the mother of all questions? Are we witnessing a revolution in either concept, design, technology or performance? More importantly: is this an iphone killer?

The answer is no to both parts unfortunately. Improved? Yes, but no revolution this time.

Nexus One demonstrate one interesting feature  is the voice to text capability. In terms of cool, this is a major one. It is so much easier to talk to a gadget rather than typing it on small keys or touch. These things are usually coming with a short period of training the algorithm and are not 100% accurate, but this is very interesting feature. It is more interesting by the fact that the voice recognition is being processed by Google servers, not the phone itself.

As expected the Nexus One demonstrated a friendly high resolution Google Earth feature. The application did respond to voice orders.

Other new software applications are: live background, new weather and news applications.

Nexus One Price:

The expected prices are: 529$ for unlocked Nexus One phone without service plan and 179$ for a phone with a T-Mobile plan.

The Nexus One will be launched today in the US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong.

 New Google market

Google that started as a search provider, evolved to other fields such as browsers and ended up as the world’s largest advertiser has entered today to the field of retailing of phones and service plans.

 So far, Google sells only one phone, the Nexus One and one service plan on its Google phone marketplace, but that would change soon.

The concept here is worth mentioning: Google aims to provide and sell phones with simple service attached in a simple online way. The concept makes sense, however, we remember clearly many cases in which general retail shops failed selling mobile phone due to the high involvement customer required in purchasing mobile phones. Let’s see how Google addresses this problem with its new Nexus One phone and the online Marketplace.

It depicts the growing power social media gained in public opinion, access and usage. Just as much as it can contribute to a firm or individual PR, it can make a nightmare as well.

The story is a simple customer care issue that evolved via social media into an overnight nightmare, goes as follows:

An American guy named Dave Carroll flays United Airlines and in the process his guitar gets damaged in the cargo process. Carroll applies to UA, asks for covering his damage and the company takes few months to reply with a decision. Once they do take the decision it is not other than sorry, but no compensation, in so many words.  

So far, an everyday story. However, Carroll opts for the ultimate revenge and does what he does best: compose couple of funny songs named United Breaks Guitars and releases it on youtube.

The next thing happening is amazing: more than five million people viewed the clip! Some experts suggested the clip influenced negatively UA stock price and even caused long run damage to UA brand name. And if you believe this was the worst implication, now the story ended up on Endeavour’s blog…

The story ended by UA finally offering compensation to Carroll but he nobly rejected the payment asking them to give it to someone really needing it.

I myself refuse to join the party around this case, I believe it went out of proportion and that we can all learn a thing or two concerning customer relations and its consequences. I also refuse to add to the flames by naming this post United Breaks Guitars as the subject requests, due to the same reasons.  

Let’s pull this discussion upwards to its principal level rather than dealing with the single case at hand here.

As most of us are aware of, most airlines are responsible for any damage to people or luggage even though in many cases the airlines are victims to ground workers as well. Most airlines will offer compensation to proven damage and damage to luggage is an everyday issue for airlines.

From the company’s perspective, I can see two issues that needed to be solved: the length of time in making the decision and obviously the negative nature of the decision. The first issue should never happen of course and the second is questionable and got worse when the company finally offered compensation, probably after realizing the snowball.

Many firms need to communicate negative or unsatisfactory decision to customers’ demands, however, delaying and prolonging the process is not advised and unless the firm waits for the customer to give up on his/ her case, it is always advised to update the customer as for how long the decision process might take, the information needed, the actions to be taken and the commitment of the company and the person dealing with it for concluding it.

In addition, since there is always more than one way to communicate disappointing messages to customer, the worst thing to do is also making the customer angrier by the tone or manner in which the message was delivered. A customer might be willing to accept a negative answer to his demand but will not accept humiliation, patronizing or any none sincere reply with some empathy.

If a CRM professional makes the mistake and actually manages to add pain on sorrow, he can expect the customer to develop revengeful ideas and even carry them out.

We are all aware of the customers that can never be satisfied and will actually go the extra step just to have few Dollars refund. Some customers are very good at that and spoiling it for everyone else being firms and other customers. If you ever worked more than a day for any airline on this planet you must have heard the following sentence: I’ll never fly with you again…

I remember myself feeling so much better when finding out passengers are actually use that phrase against all airlines evenly. In addition, mostly the passenger is not aware of the carrier identity in the booking process and most flights are being selected for price and timing, not carrier.

The social issue media is actually changing the roles of the game for PR professionals and firms. In today’s reality individuals can get a massive public attention to their message for or against a firm and the days firms had absolute PR power over the individual customer, are over. CRM and PR professionals should take that in calculations when dealing with customers. As they say in relation to traffic but applicable here as well: sometimes it is better being smart than right.

David Dekel, CEO

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

EU banking basic fees were reported to fluctuate from 27 Euros annual fees in Bulgaria, via 46 Euros in the Netherlands and up to 154 in France and 253 in Italy.

The EU report covers prices of various banking fees of 224 banks, accounting for 81% of the EU market.

 Another exposed issue was the clarity of services, terms, conditions and engagement rules with the bank. Many customers reported the level of clarity in given services was

very low, misleading and insufficient.

The above findings are just the tip of the iceberg as the report itself suggest. The report suggested that some of the misleading is intentional and revealed banking hidden fees and failing customers as a trend.

OK, what did I miss?

High street Banks are acting like some dodgy money exchange shops? What is going on here?

A little economic crisis and the banks are losing it? Just when we thought general trust in the financial system could not be worse…

Well, here is the main problem here: banks are essential part of our economy and finance foundations. If we have problem in this level, the whole system built on it will not function well.

Unfortunately, EU officials have only exposed the problem and are leaving each country and law enforcement agencies to take care of the rest.

The EU officials exposing the problem and publishing it deserve recognition for what they did, however, there is a lot to do in order to set a clear EU message to all EU financial institutes:

Zero tolerance towards dishonest banks and financial services!

EU commission and each EU country should impose strict regulations concerning banking fees and services. It is not possible that the whole world will try to recover from one of its deepest slow downs while banks will row the opposite direction.  This really has to finish.

IBC Amsterdam, is traditionally scheduled for mid September every year. It is the leading international IT forum for the electronic media industry. It is practically one of the largest IT conferences in Europe, attracting roughly 49,000 visitors and 1,300 exhibitors from more than 130 countries. IBC combines a highly respected and peer reviewed conference, an exhibition that demonstrates media innovative technology and networking opportunities.

IBC period is a paradise on earth for local Amsterdam hotels, restaurants, bars and taxi drivers as much as it is hell if you are a tourist or a businessman seeking a room in the city.

If you are reading this post from a distance, it might be useful to know IBC 2010 dates: 9 to 14 September 2010, at the Amsterdam RAI. You can visit the website at: www.ibc.org

This evening, the IBC organization acknowledged the pioneers in media creation, management, delivery and innovation as it does every year. One special award was given to Amber alert that I would like to share with you.

Amber Alert Netherlands

 The Amber Alert Netherlands, an innovative cross-platform system designed to spread information about a missing child as quickly as possible.

If a child becomes missing the system, developed by Netpresenter, gives the Dutch police one single point of access to push out alerts simultaneously to radio, television and the press. AMBER also delivers online messages to individuals and businesses who have registered for the service to computers, as SMS and instant messages, website alerts and RSS news feeds.

 “Amber Alert” was named after Amber Hagerman, the 9-year-old who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas in 1996, and then murdered.

The first time the system was used in the Netherlands, the child was found within 45 minutes of the alert being issued by the police. Restaurant employees recognised the child from the alert message on the store’s digital signage screens.

“Mercifully, the abduction of a child is still a rare occurrence, but when it happens everyone is focussed on finding the child as quickly as possible,” said Michael Lumley, chair of the IBC Innovation Awards judging panel which is making this special award. “Amber Alert is a great use of technology in our industry which provides a real social service and we are delighted to make this award.”

Avatar: reality just gained another dimension

The award ceremony was ended with presentations of few actual scenes from James Cameroon’s new movie Avatar. From what we have seen, I have to admit this is an amazing experience. Not only the 3D issue was impressive, but the whole concept and story. It looks like reality just gained another dimension. I am looking forward to see the whole movie when it is published in December.

The IBC being a media oriented organization by its nature was aware of the copy & “sharing” capabilities of the participants and specifically requested not to copy any of the scenes in any way. So, if you want to take a look at what to expect, you can use the following trailer download link: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/hd/ 

This is a two dimensions version only, however, impressive by itself. 

David Dekel

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.