Why not Using Online Payments to Checkout? I'm really surprised, Americans still pay their bills by check, they love the good old US mail! A recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive and featured by the NYTimes indicates:

'More than 37 percent of bills are paid by check; 35 percent are paid online. The remaining 28 percent are paid with cash, debit cards or other payment methods'.

I'm pretty convinced that there is a huge consumer demand for new payment technologies, including cash, checks, credit cards, debit cards, stored value cards and Internet banking. Conception for such a payment technology should address a fair pricing, safety and convenience of payment to get onto a path the Web can really improve one's life.

Well, payments is one of the most regulated businesses online, but as recent facts and rumors show: PayPal, Amazon, Google and Yahoo! like to differentiate their business by new payments models. Consumers like to buy what they want wherever they are and it's just a question of time when Google will enter the payments market.

Handling your every online transaction, the potential revenue from Google's payments of each purchase would make AdSense look like penuts and PayPal's market value wuld drop by several billion $'s. For now it's just speculation, but I'm expecting more services like this in the future, there is too much inefficiencies in the market.

Labels: checkout, google

  ¶ 'Why not Using Online Payments to Checkout?' posted by eA : 10:45 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Can't Overtake at Famous Monaco Grand Prix? Due to his superior skills and an excellent one stop strategy, Michael Schumacher, Ferrari, ended on place five, Fernando Alonso, Renault, won and his brother Ralf Schumacher, Toyota, became 8th and got the final point.

As a five times winner in Monaco and as the most successful driver in the history of Formula One he had the best timing in qualifying to lead from pole position, but because of a very controverse decision he was relegated and had to start from the last position.

He set the fastest lap of the race and said:

"It's like anything else in life. You can't only have friends. You've got those who envy you and are foes. You've got to come to terms with that. Why should it be any different than in real life?"

Well done!  ¶ 'Can't Overtake at Famous Monaco Grand Prix?' posted by eA : 10:06 PM  1 comments links to this post

  Notification: Site Feed Consolidation I'm going to add the one or the other service to my blog in future. To benefit and to know what's going on on my blog it's recommended to subscribe to just a single feed:

• http://feeds.feedburner.com/andreasengelcom

  ¶ 'Notification: Site Feed Consolidation' posted by eA : 6:10 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Attracting and Retaining a Coveted Audience Participating in a social network centered on user-generated content has become one of the most exiting trends today. Free and easy interaction, staying in touch with friends, finding long lost friends, and meeting new people encourages users as well as visitors to share comments, photos and videos, read and write blogs or just hang out.

Funded through ad-revenue, intensified competition to attract and retain this highly coveted audience is the natural evolution to sustain brand loyality in one of the fastest moving markets in the world today.

Experience showed, that simplicity is a highly competitive advantage today and adding different business models associated with leads to a natural segmentation of the marketplace.

• More Info

  ¶ 'Attracting and Retaining a Coveted Audience' posted by eA : 3:56 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Social Connection Trumps All Social networking in a very competitive (US-) marketplace, unique visitors over the last year:

Site	Apr-05 UA (000)	Apr-06 UA (000)	YOY Growth
MySpace	8,210	38,359	367%
Blogger	10,301	18,508	80%
Classmates Online	11,672	12,865	10%
YouTube	N/A	12,505	N/A
MSN Groups	12,352	10,570	-14%
AOL Hometown	11,236	9,590	-15%
Yahoo! Groups	8,262	9,165	11%
MSN Spaces	1,857	7,165	286%
Six Apart TypePad	5,065	6,711	32%
Xanga.com	5,202	6,631	27%

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, May 2006

Traffic rank over the last year:

  ¶ 'Social Connection Trumps All' posted by eA : 5:18 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Enertegic Ideas for a New Way of Participation Second Life and There make interaction commercially successful establishing a well functioning economy without crashing and burning involving users to create wonderful things. Spending time and energy creating compelling content is an exiting user-trend today and becomes even more popular participating in online multi-player games and communities like mentioned below.

A logic consequence would be that online communities continue to increase in popularity and become more and more technically advanced through easy to use tools and applications meeting the different levels of user-expectations and activities.

I'm exited how a new concept code-named 'Spore' will perform customizing a user's experience in a new participation era. It's a question of balancing communications, content, commerce and search to create a customer-centric product or service for digital markets.

Labels: 3D

  ¶ 'Enertegic Ideas for a New Way of Participation' posted by eA : 5:48 PM  1 comments links to this post

  Web Vision of a World in 3D With more than 6 million paying subscribers 'World of Warcraft' has proven to be the most played 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) worldwide and it still continues to grow rapidly with players participating in the virtual community in creative ways producing international appeal and publicity.

With Google Earth and SketchUp, a 3D modeling software, Second Life, a commercial virtual 3D community and maybe Croquet, a platform to create multiple-user online applications (just to name a few) the next era of online collaboration and participation has started now.

I think that over the next 10 years many people will spend a lot more time in 3D virtual worlds using them as a platform to meet, communicate and shop, to participate in virtual 3D events and to conduct buisiness on a level of interaction we have never experienced before. Blurring the virtual and physical worlds just makes me think of how many business opportunities and of course challenges will occur...

Labels: 3D

  ¶ 'Web Vision of a World in 3D' posted by eA : 8:57 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Charge for your Time via JyvePro, a Recent US-Project Is your time and expertise in demand, are you an expert in translating, touting, consulting? Well, then you can charge for your time. JyvePro is currently taking Beta Testers who want to make money with their expertise.

I think there is a huge potential for that kind of business model (otherwise I would not have projected it), it is still in an early stage, but more and more professional health care providers, tech savvy educators, lawyers, artists, etc. want to use the Web as a commercial platform. It is a quick, convenient and easy way to connect with clients.  ¶ 'Charge for your Time via JyvePro, a Recent US-Project' posted by eA : 11:45 AM  0 comments links to this post