Curb on charges + other news

3 minutes estimated reading time

Vodafone

FT.com – Vodafone slams curb on rates – The curb on rates is complex. I agree with Vodafone that consumers would not like to pay to receive calls as well as paying to make them – this would bring the UK more in line with the US experience. However, I can understand why a curb on charges is proposed. The curb in charges is inspired by roaming charges that are expensive and the stuff of modern-day horror stories. The curb on charges will be implemented More related content here.

Finance

Slate Magazine – The Death of the Credit Card Economy

FMCG

Unilever Foodsolutions Ireland: Recipes – I like what Unilever has done here, in what I suspect is a low traffic part of their site

Gadgets

Waiting for the Zune Generation – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

Cool consumer products from DEMOfall – SiliconValley.com

Marketing

FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Five ways social media will help brands face the credit crunch – crap opportunistic title but decent primer in social media

Yahoo Bleeds Purple. And You Thought Microsoft’s Marketing Campaign Was Weird – not sure that as a consumer I would be clear about what the call to action is, but some of the elements in this are quite nice. For sneaker freaker completists; you may want to catch on to a set of limited edition Yahoo! vs Pony in a purple and white colorway. Without giving too much away I have spoken to people in the know and it will all make sense over the next couple of months. Keep an eye on Yahoo! UK for some changes sooner, rather than later

Product Development IS Marketing, And Vice Versa | American Express OPEN Blog

Media

The Explosive Growth of Mobile Music Downloads

Google’s Strategy In Japan: Avoid Yahoo And Take Over The Mobile Web First – Google desperately tries to avoid Yahoo! Japan laying a can of whoopass on them

Ad Spending by Medium – May, 2008 – Seeking Alpha

China’s Internet Offers A Plethora Of Marketing Opportunities

Online

Top Mobile Trends: Multimedia Microblogging – its a bit weird thinking that something I do as part of my normal day is ‘TOP MOBILE TREND’. Living in the future eh.

QuarkBase : Everything about a Website Does what it says on the tin, got this from Jonathan Hopkins’ Twitter feed

Retailing

Coca-Cola to Fill Your Big Gulp with 100 Flavors | PSFK – Trends, Ideas & Inspiration – it will be interesting if Coca-Cola record formulation popularity and how that feeds back into their product development process

Why your airfare is different from your neighbours – interesting profile of SABRE: the airline booking and technology software company

Software

Mac Mojo: Solve for Excel now available :)

Antares Audio Technologies – audio processing software

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Used for Fraudulent Activities – ReadWriteWeb

Technology

Official Google Mac Blog: Gears for Safari

GigaOM Interview: Bill Hambrecht, Legendary Silicon Valley Banker – GigaOM – key takeout: Lehman’s will have little effect on funding for the technology sector and there will be an opportunity for banks to take tech firms to IPO as there will be fewer underwriters overall at the end of this

Austin game event: Sun Microsystems tailors its services for online games » VentureBeat

Web of no web

Urban Tours – interesting way for Blackberry to try and differentiate itself from the ubiquitous mapping applications now on smartphones. It also breaks out of the Brooks Brothers-clad Crackberry image

Wireless

Apple’s Latest iPhone Sees Slow Japan Sales – WSJ.com