IBM Happenings: March 2009

The month of March was a busy one at IBM with a flurry of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The complete index of IBM Happenings (by year and month) is here. One of the major focus areas for IBM in 2009 will continue to be related to a “smarter planet“. See […]

Credit Cards

There are approximately 1,500,000,000 credit cards in the United States — an average of five cards for every man, woman, and child. I have always thought it would be great to have just one. If I could have just one it would be the American Express platinum card. The fee is quite high but my […]

Amazon Does It Right

Amazon is one of the few web sites that really has their act together. In the Fall of 1995, I made a presentation to a group of CEOs about the Internet. I showed them various web sites that I was fascinated with at the time, mostly related to engineering, scientific, government and academic projects. The […]

Open, Please – Epilogue

This epilogue to the “Open, Please!” blog posting is based on feedback from a Canadian reader who agrees that overly aggressive marketers intrude on our private lives, but feels there is a “rub”. He says that if you “filter” your email or snail mail without actually opening it, you will occasionally miss something very important. […]

Open, Please!

As more and more things move to email and the web, financial services companies are showing signs of advertising frustration. Since their email gets blocked by our spam filters or we just hit the delete key, they continue to rely on paper mailings. Solicitations to take out a loan, get an investment advisor, set up […]