Amazon’s new PriceCheck app has retailers in a lather. Mind you, local retailers already hate Amazon, and for good reason. In a scenario you’ve likely heard, a customer walks in to a bookstore, enjoys excellent customer service, is guided to just the right book by the trained sales associate, and … well, you know the rest. (customer looks it up on Amazon, orders it on the spot. Or, even worse, orders the Kindle version over the free wi-fi). Meanwhile, the merchant is stuck holding Santa’s bag (pays rent, heat, light, payroll, local taxes, can’t scale long tail items due to local customer base …).

You can already scan items using Amazon’s excellent iOS app, but the PriceCheck app does one better. After you do your scan, you can act as part of Amazon’s drone army and send them the local price. Crowdsourced intel! To roll out the new app, on Dec. 10 Amazon offered consumers up to 5 percent back on purchases made through PriceCheck, igniting a firestorm of protest from local merchants.

So, is it inevitable that Amazon and other large online-only businesses take over the plurality of retail sales?  The trend is here and will get stronger as we buy more with our mobile handsets. You can’t unring that bell.

But merchants can offer superior customer service or offer amenities that are unavailable online. In short, local retailers need to create and communicate value, not price, as their chief competitive advantage.

My local bookstore, Watermark Books, gets this message. There’s a nice cafe that draws people in. You can buy the New York Times. There are frequent events featuring popular authors. Every time I walk in, I find something new that I want to read. And they greet me by name. You may pay more (they do have sales), but they’ll gift wrap your purchase while you wait. The store brings value to my book shopping experience.

There is a something that government can do, however. Amazon has affiliates from every state, has a physical presence in 17 states, but only pays state sales tax in a handful of states. Retailers that sell nationally should pay sales tax. The current solution is a self-reported (and unenforceable) “use” tax. That’s right: you’re supposed to keep all your online receipts, add them up and tax yourself when you pay your income tax. Amazon and other online retailers have fought state efforts to collect state taxes and have mostly prevailed. Currently, the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would level the sales tax playing field, is working its way through the U.S. Senate. Sensing the inevitability of a uniform online tax, Amazon has offered to collect tax for affiliate merchants, beginning in 2012, for 2.9 percent of the value of the tax collected, in essence going from tax avoider to tax collector in one fell swoop.

Our government is broke, and avoiding paying tax seems to be the national sport. But in this case, we should all pay. Because it’s fair. And because not paying is killing our local merchants.

I like Amazon and am a customer. But I also support local merchants. Because I want to live in a town where there’s a local bookstore.

Read more about the Amazon PriceCheck app:

• Bloomberg Business Week: Amazon price check app is an attack on small business
• TechCrunch: Today Amazon will give you $15 to use PriceCheck and screw local retailers
• LA Times: Furor surrounds Amazon’s price comparison app

We’re hiring a new colleague to work in advertising (digital emphasis) at Loyola. Ping me if you’re interested, and please check out this position description:

Loyola University Chicago invites qualified applications for an Instructor or Assistant Professor position (starting August, 2012) in Advertising and Digital/New Media in the School of Communication at the Water Tower campus in downtown Chicago.

The candidate should have a focus in advertising, digital/new media and branding.  The applicant should be experienced in the conception, design, delivery and measurement of advertising through traditional as well as new media tactics including promotion, web authoring, social media, mobile technology, rich media, screencasting, virtual worlds or search marketing. Experience in working with diverse markets is preferred.

REQUIREMENTS: The appointment may be at an instructor or assistant professor level, depending on the qualifications of the successful applicant. Candidates with a record of teaching and working with students are preferred.

For the assistant professor (tenure track) appointment, the candidate should have earned the PhD in a related field, have significant professional experience in advertising and digital media and have the potential to be an outstanding teacher and productive scholar.

For the instructor appointment (renewable multi-year contract), the candidate should have earned a Master’s degree in a related field, have significant professional experience in advertising and digital media and the potential to be an outstanding teacher and a leader in service to the profession.

DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES include teaching undergraduate courses in advertising, communication and technology, campaigns, and integrated marketing communication, as well as developing specialized courses in applications of new media.  The position includes department and university service as well as ongoing research and/or professional activities.

Initial review of applications will begin Dec. 1, and continue until the position is filled. Candidates must apply online at www.careers.luc.edu with a letter of application describing their experience and interests and a current curriculum vitae.

Applicants should send materials related to teaching experience, a portfolio with samples of research or professional work, and a personal statement on teaching and research. Three letters of recommendation are also required.  Application materials and letters of recommendation should be sent to Dr. Kay Felkins, Search Committee Chair, School of Communication, Loyola University Chicago, 820 N. Michigan, Chicago, IL 60611.

Loyola University Chicago School of Communication enjoys a new facility, including a state-of-the-art convergence studio; a collegial faculty distinguished by a mix of professional and academic achievement; and location just steps away from the nation’s leading ad agencies and media outlets. A graduate program in Digital Media and Storytelling will be launched in Fall 2012.

For further information about Loyola University Chicago and the School of Communication, consult the University Web site: www.luc.edu. Loyola University Chicago is a Jesuit Catholic university, an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action employer, with a strong commitment to diversifying its faculty. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

Loyola advertising faculty position description (download .pdf)

Loyola University Chicago School of Communication website

Here are some files I’m sharing at the PRSA International Conference:

Analytics and campaign development - Analytics and campaign development

Research summary – PDF; PR at the micro level summary

Teaching poster - PDF; media relations for the digital age

Detailed notes - PDF; creating the digital press release

I think RSS is a great way for a high-volume information user to stay on top of things without too much time or work. But RSS is in decline, slowly being replaced by social sharing and proprietary feeds. To me, social sharing is like browsing, while RSS lets you look at every book on the shelf. Each has a valid use, each is unique.

If you would like to continue to use RSS with Twitter, here’s some information on how to create an RSS Feed for a Twitter user:

This article from TheNextWeb shows how to create an RSS feed for a single Twitter user or account. If you want to create a feed for my Twitter account (@davidkamerer) then the syntax for the feed would look like this:

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=davidkamerer

Many Twitter searches are likely to be keyword-driven rather than account-driven, however. Twitter’s advanced search has a lovely interface to help you pull a specific, tailored search. Now we really miss that RSS feed! However, TheInfoBabe has created a “cheat sheet” that you can modify to obtain the RSS you need. Here’s a sample feed that includes location and keywords:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?geocode=40.744544%2C-74.027593%2C5.0mi&q=+research+paper+near%3A%22hoboken%2C+nj%22+within%3A5mi

But bad news – while the resulting feed will load into my RSS reader, it returns a 403 error. I will continue to work on this and post an update when I figure it out. Other sample feeds from TheInfoBabe do work, so be sure to check them out.

You can also pull RSS from Twitter searches from some third-party sites. I have had success with Topsy and IceRocket.

If you have additional resources to share, please comment below. Thanks!

This post appeared in The Wichita Eagle business section on July 21, 2011.

When you’re shopping for TVs at Best Buy, the number of choices can be overwhelming. And it doesn’t help that every TV looks pretty much the same. So it’s really helpful that the store places a QR code on every set. You can scan the handful that really interests you. Later, when you’re home, you can peruse the details.

QR (quick response) codes seem to be popping up everywhere these days, from subway ads to billboards. One study, from JumpScan, found that QR scans increased 1,200 percent from July to December 2010.

With a QR code, you can add video information to a print ad. You can help a customer find the nearest store. If you’re running a convention, you can create a database of contacts for vendors by putting a QR code on each ID badge, scannable when each person visits your booth.

Actually scanning a code, however, takes some work. You have to get out your smartphone (if you have one), launch appropriate software (have you downloaded it?), take a picture of the code (hold it steady, please) and then view the resulting web page (you have online access, don’t you?)

At the end of this tortuous path lies the custom, targeted information that you’re seeking. So please – make it worthwhile for your customer. Here are some general principles for using QR codes for your business:

Does it make sense?

If you’re just sending people to your home page, it’s probably easier to type the URL than to scan a code. And if your website isn’t mobile friendly, don’t even think about QR codes. You’re setting your customers up for failure. They don’t want to look at your website on that tiny screen.

Choose a platform

While there are many places online that will generate QR codes for you, you should choose an end-to-end platform, which can provide rich analytics to measure the success of your campaign. Some platforms also let you reassign codes, which can be useful if you’re printing codes onto expensive signs. If you’re a Realtor, for example, when you sell a house you can reassign the code and move the sign to another house.

Test your codes

Make sure they still scan when printed. How about in low light? If you’re putting QR codes on a house for sale, will they scan from the street? In a study that I conducted, more than 15 percent of the codes wouldn’t scan. And make sure the code goes to the correct web page.

Tell people what to do

Most people have never scanned a code. For them, you need to provide instructions, such as “Scan this code with your mobile phone to receive enhanced content  …” You might also provide an URL where the consumer can download the appropriate software. And, by all means, please include an actual URL (if it’s long, please shorten it with a tool like bit.ly or tinyurl.com). A QR code should never stand alone.

Measure your success

Your analytics should be able to tell you how many people scanned your code. More importantly, what did they do? Focus on conversions more than impressions. Do prospects call? Do they click through and buy something? See which codes perform the best and try to understand why they were successful.

Keep it simple

There are many ways to direct customers to your website. Instead of QR codes, you may be better off creating short URLs for key pages, or even a special address on a different domain for a specific product or campaign. If you’re worried about your customers not all having smartphones and software, build your campaign on SMS text. Virtually every cell phone can send a text, and texting is practically the native language of teenagers and millennials. When people text you, return a targeted message than includes a URL.

The Internet has become the de facto place where information is exchanged. QR codes and other mobile technologies can help link offline assets to the connected web, bringing new customers to your digital front door.

Read more:

A selection of articles on QR codes

Edelman Digital: Emerging trends in mobile tagging (includes detailed slide deck)

Case study article from Search Engine Watch (includes list of QR platforms)

Oh, how the “splinternet” is growing! Each day a new device with its own unique requirements wants to visit your web site. How do you deliver your content to each visitor?

Onswipe Demo Video from Onswipe on Vimeo.

In the WordPress ecosystem, you can manage this with plug-ins, bundles of code that give your site special superpowers. For example, this site uses the Carrington Mobile theme for mobile devices. When an iPhone visits the site, WP does a browser detect and serves the Carrington version of the site. Easy.

While Carrington does have a pro version that supports the iPad, a new plug-in called OnSwipe raises the ante. Using HTML5, Onswipe delivers a true App-like experience to visitors who use the iPad. It performs much like FlipBoard, but the experience is delivered through the Safari browser.

OnSwipe reformats your site for landscape or portrait orientations, and pulls a graphic from your most recent post as a splash screen. You can also control type and colors from the Appearance menu inside your WordPress install. You can also install a “favorites” icon on your iPad screen to call the site directly (here’s how to do it).

While the overall effect isn’t quite as slick as a dedicated app, you can effectively crash the app store with OnSwipe, publishing what you want, when you want. It’s a big plus to not have to wonder when you’ll be approved by Apple.

If you’re not a WordPress user, OnSwipe has created other options for publishers that is available by invitation. If you would like to see a well-implemented version of OnSwipe technology for a magazine, grab your iPad and head on over to Marie Claire.

Develop content once and share it in multiple formats, effortlessly. We’re getting there.

Read more:

Onswipe home page

Technology Review: Forget Custom iPad Magazines: Onswipe Turns Any Site Into One

ZDNet: Onswipe plugin creates iPad-friendly WordPress sites

Thanks to Robert Tolley at Greteman Group and Amy DeVault at Wichita State for the heads up.

This post appeared in The Wichita Eagle business section on June 2, 2011.

Today it’s not enough for your business to have a website. You must also have a mobile-friendly option. Mobile traffic continues to explode, and if your site is difficult to use, your customers will go elsewhere.

Apple alone has sold more than 187 million iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). And Apple isn’t even the market leader. Today, Google’s Android is the fastest-growing mobile platform, activating 400,000 new devices every day.

You can check your website analytics to see how much mobile traffic you’re currently receiving, what devices are visiting and how long people are sticking around.

It doesn’t have to be a big job to make your site perform better for mobile traffic. While the specific steps you should take may vary, there are some things you can do that will make your site more useful to mobile visitors.

1. Choose text over visuals

Mobile visitors are more tactical than desktop visitors. They’re not just web surfing; they’re looking for something. They may even be nearby. So make sure you’ve provided the essential information they’re seeking: location, map, hours, email and phone number. Provide a clear description of who you are and what you do. For example, if you’re a restaurant, include a menu. Make sure your customer doesn’t have to wade through a bunch of screens to find it.

2. Presentation matters

Most of your content should be presented as text. Text is an under-rated element: it’s easy to create and edit, downloads quickly, and is easily indexed by search engines. For a mobile site, it also reformats for presentation to multiple devices.

Check your website navigation and make sure it works on mobile devices. If you have Flash-based elements on your site, get rid of them. Apple devices, more than 25 percent of the smartphone market, can’t view Flash. And, for the most part, neither can Google.

3. Get a mobile theme

The next step is to make sure your site is formatted for mobile delivery. If you use a content management system such as WordPress, this is easy. Just install a mobile theme like WPTouch or Carrington Mobile. Most popular content management systems like Joomla or Drupal also support mobile themes.

Don’t despair if your site isn’t easily themed for mobile. You may be able to make your site mobile-friendly through a service that reformats your navigation, images and text for mobile delivery. WireNode, MoFuse and Zinadoo offer three alternatives.

For the ultimate mobile experience, you may want to create a dedicated app. Note, though, that only three platforms – iPhone, Android and BlackBerry – have enough critical mass to support app development. If you’re considering this route, check your analytics to see which devices are visiting your site. You will likely have to develop for at least two platforms to accommodate most mobile visitors. And for the visitors who come from other devices – you’ll still need a mobile site for them.

4. Think like your customer

Always have a link to your home page on every page of your site. Provide a way to toggle in and out of the mobile site – some people will prefer the other version. And don’t feel like you have to “mobilize” every page of your site. Think about your customers’ needs and start with the most important pages.

Today there are more than 5,000 different mobile devices. Futurists call this the “splinternet” – a web in which seemingly everyone uses a different device and a different browser. Your online success begins and ends with delivering a meaningful experience to each visitor. No matter what device they’re using.

OK, I admit it. I was anxious beforehand.

I had signed up to share a meal at The Girl and the Goat, a hot restaurant in Chicago’s west loop. The meal was coordinated by GrubWith.Us, a “social dining” site whose motto is “never eat alone.”

I was there in part for the food (it’s hard to get a reservation at the Goat) and in part for the experience. Last semester, my digital marketing students took on GrubWith.Us as a client, and I wanted to see things firsthand, as a customer would.

Social media can seem anything but social. Walk into any coffee shop, and you’ll find people clacking away on their laptops. Most are on Facebook or other social networking sites, yet no one talks to their neighbors. The “social” opportunity is there, but the action is not.

There’s a lot of speculation going on about the future of social media (the current darling is “gamification”) but one hunch is that social can lead us back to “IRL social.” (IRL is an acronym for “in real life.”) So far there’s but one breakout IRL social leader, meetup.com. Through Meetup, people register and coordinate to meet in real life around a common interest, such as kayak fishing, scrapbooking or vegan cuisine. According to Alexa.com, Meetup is the 127^th most popular website in the U.S.

So that brings us to GrubWith.Us, which is currently active in seven U.S. cities. Browse for active meals at specific restaurants on specified dates, and sign up for the one that interests you. The price for the meal slowly rises as more people sign up. Your social graph is pulled through Facebook, so you can see whom you’ll be dining with. You pay in advance for a prix fixe meal, tip included. At the meal, all you pay for is any additional drinks.

At my grub, the table seated 10 people and was full. Because the restaurant was bustling, I could really only talk with about half of the grubbers. They were friendly, interesting, and conversation flowed easily. Most of the grubbers were in their late 20s or early 30s.

For us, chef Stephanie Izard (winner of Top Chef season four) prepared eight dishes as part of a chef’s tasting. There were three servings of each dish for the table, so by the end of the evening servers brought us 24 dishes. It was a generous amount of food, and really showed off the range of the restaurant. I particularly liked the ham frites, the chickpea fritters, and the sugo (braised pork, goat and lamb, served in pappardelle with rosemary and ground cherries).

After the meal, diners can reconnect on the GrubWith.Us website to talk about the meal or exchange contacts. As you Grub your way through your city, you add badges and friends to your profile. Many of my dining companions had participated in several meals, even though the site has only been up for about five months.

The possibilities of this concept are great: think of GrubWith.Us as a connector for the convention-goer in a strange city, who wants to have dinner with like-minded souls. Or a grub before a concert, attended by fans of the artist. Ultimately, the number of organizing ideas behind potential grubs is limitless.

Unlike Groupon, GrubWith.Us is not a deal site. People attend the Grubs for social reasons rather than to get a discount. So restaurant owners are likely to prefer this service to daily deal sites, which commonly take 50 percent or more of the revenue from the deal.

GrubWith.Us just received a $1.6 million round of funding, with digital rock stars participating (Google’s Matt Cutts, Ashton Kutcher and Andreessen Horowitz, among others). They are currently expanding into new cities.

A barcode for the CueCat, circa 2000

Technologists have long talked about the “singularity,” the day when the machines can outthink us and surpass human intelligence. That day is a long way off. But we have reached another kind of singularity. In this event, our expectation is that the information we seek will be digital and easily available on demand. In the first Internet, our digital presence was a supplement to the dominant analog model. In the second iteration, a social layer moved many of our conversations online, alongside increasingly social content from mainstream publishers (think: Amazon book reviews, blog comments and “social” stores like eBay).

In the digital singularity (I dare not call it Internet 3.0) old-fashioned, grubby, in-real-life – ANALOG – assets are clamoring to join the fracas. And so far, it’s been a bumpy ride. Leading the way are web-friendly bar codes that push us to web sites when we take a picture of them with a mobile application. These have been deployed well (such as on product displays at stores like Best Buy; seriously, who can keep track of 40 different TV models without some help?) and poorly (almost every newspaper or magazine has an ad with a bar code, pushing you to some crummy commerical on a web page).

These bar codes are easy to create, print and share, but chances are they haven’t yet materially affected your daily life. If you don’t use a smart phone, they are out of your grasp. If you do, you must load the app before you point your device at the code. Sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s a reasonable technological approach, but still too tweako to become useful to the masses. We have yet to see the killer app that will make these codes part of our daily lives.

But if you would like to learn more about moving the analog world online, I highly recommend this post by Joshua Holland at Edelman Digital, which includes this slide deck (95 slides) from PSFK:

Further down the line, augmented reality holds more promise, though the technological base is pretty complicated for widespread adoption today. Layar, an augmented reality app for the iPhone and Android platforms, uses several layers of technology to deliver a locatin-based experience with a web overlay. It begins with the camera in your mobile device, which “looks” at the landscape in front of you. Next, the GPS in your device kicks in, associating the visual with coordinates in a Google map. Next, a “screen” of software is loaded, indicating points of interest on the map, floating on top of the image. Then some content flows onto your screen when you touch the points of interest. You might be led to a phone number, which you can dial with one touch, or some information about store hours, or the location of  the nearest accessible entrance.

While it’s easy to use Layar, the different “layers” aren’t easy to find or load onto your mobile device, and there’s no critical mass of applications that will drive use of the software. Still, for niche use, this is promising – and powerful.

Today, the crush demand for digital content must be measured against the many hurdles that these new technologies face. We mustn’t become technological determinists. If we build it, there’s actually little chance that people will come. Failure is the norm. After all, we’ve done this before. During the first Internet boom, one hot technology was the CueCat: yes, a bar code reader to guide you to a web page. Of course, it was a colossal failure; Gizmodo voted it one of the worst inventions of the decade (2000s).

Wrote Brian Barrett:

“If you subscribed to a magazine in 2000, there was a decent chance you were sent a CueCat, and an even better chance you never used it. The CueCat was a barcode scanner that you plugged into your computer. The idea was that users would scan ads in magazines and thus be shepherded magically to the advertiser’s website. If it sounds like a needlessly cumbersome way to use the Internet, that’s because it is! Fortunately, the CueCat was put down for good in 2001.”

As you go through your day, watch for evidence of the “analog bridge”: technology that brings the analog world online in a meaningful way. The CueCat was ridiculously ahead of its time. After all, back then, going online meant booting a computer, firing up a modem and logging on to AOL. Today the barriers are much lower. And, with the digital singularity, there’s a pull – an expectation – that the conversation will be online.

What will be the killer app? Who is effectively using bar codes or augmented reality today?