But “unpaid/earned/proprietary” media spending has seen the sharpest rise, with nearly one-fifth of respondents reporting increases of more than 30%. Climbing unpaid-media spending is likely an effect of the increased emphasis on social networks, where the most effective efforts are earned, not bought.

via Engagement on Social Networks Top Priority for Marketers – eMarketer.

The model is only viable as long as companies feel that the discounts aren’t harming the brand.

“At first we weren’t into being a part of this and marketing our brand on anybody’s Web site,” said Joseph Cabasso, vice president of Mario Badescu, which has been a partner with HauteLook and the Gilt Groupe. “Our first sale on Gilt was last July and we did phenomenally,” he said. “Since we never discount, I knew that offering our customers 20 percent off would make them happy. So, I thought we’d try it once.”

via Skin Deep – Prospect of Deals Is the Attraction for Members-Only Sites – NYTimes.com.

Whatever benefit in the market Apple hopes to achieve by this suit to me seems likely to be worth far less than the loss of good will and prestige Apple will suffer if they vigorously pursue this case (let alone if they initiate more such suits).

via Daring Fireball: This Apple-HTC Patent Thing.

I can’t help but connect this idea:

Copying ideas is how progress is made. It’s copying implementations that is wrong (and illegal). Admittedly there are gray areas, and reasonable people can disagree about whether some specific instances cross that line.

With this quote dug up by Engadget:

“Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal”

Testing this out now

I’m convinced that the Apple fan base is an installed base for all future Apple products.

Mac OS X North American installed base almost 11%.

With regards to algorithmically driven news, the big knock against it is that it will narrow the field of interest.  This interesting link suggests an alternative system that makes more tangential recommendations:

“In a paper that will be released by PNAS, a group of scientists are pushing the limits of recommendation systems, creating new algorithms that will make more tangential recommendations to users, which can help expand their interests, which will increase the longevity and utility of the recommendation system itself. Accuracy has long been the most prized measurement in recommending content, like movies, links, or music. However, computer scientists note that this type of system can narrow the field of interest for each user the more it is used. Improved accuracy can result in a strong filtering based on a user's interests, until the system can only recommend a small subset of all the content it has to offer.”

via Slashdot Science Story | Recommendation Algorithm Wants To Show You Something New.