Video Post: Closing the Book on Borders

Reactions to the announcement of Borders declaring bankruptcy last week ranged from a yawn to panic about the entire bookstore retailing industry. Many are wondering what possible effect this could have on Barnes & Noble, Border's biggest competitor. Given Barnes & Noble's shaky financial situation, there's no guaranteeing what will happen, but I look into that and more in this week's Daily Axioms Video Blog.

The Ghosts of Vistas Past

We are unlucky enough to have an HP computer in our office that still uses the now obsolete Microsoft Vista operating system. This is a product that proved to be fatally flawed and is now replaced by the much improved Windows 7. Why does anyone care? Because these poor computers originally equipped with Vista are still around and people actually try to use them! Ha!

We had a out-of-town visitor to Axiom today with a relatively new Dell laptop with....you guessed it, Vista. I spent the better part of a morning trying to dig down into the internet settings to get the thing to connect to our network. A procedure that takes about two minutes on our Macs. And don't even think about trying to set up a printer...you will regret you even tried. And of course whatever you try to do, you get about a dozen warnings that all life as we know it will end if you allow a perfectly safe application to download.

If anyone out there is still using one of these computers, please, please do yourself a favor and upgrade to Windows 7, or better yet, buy a Mac.

Archos Climbing Its Way Out Of Tech Obscurity

Archos has been around a long time, but unfortunately was cast into the shadows of the technology world from line after line of disappointing products hitting the market.

But over the last year, things have started to turn around for the once-struggling tech company. There was an article today about Archos' financial growth in both the U.S. and Europe. And we're not talking small, steady climbs, because the revenue increases are over 200% here in America and over 110% overseas.

The Archos turnaround boils down to two things:

1. Archos bet early and bet big on tablets. Before all of the talk right now about Honeycomb, Samsung's Galaxy Tab garnered all of the press. But even before that, Archos was trying to make waves in the budding tablet market with several budget models.
2. Archos tried to carve out their own niche in the tablet market by offering a lower price point without sacrificing too much quality. While obviously not the best, Archos tablets are a fairly solid budget option.

Taking that Wal-Mart style approach paid off for Archos, because despite being the butt of many jokes (like Wal-Mart) they successfully sold many lower-end products (like Wal-Mart) for a substantial profit margin (like Wal-Mart).

Amazon Launches Video Streaming Service

In January I wrote about Amazon buying a popular European movie streaming service, and how many of us were assuming this meant Amazon would soon be entering into the video streaming business.

Apparently "soon" meant about a month, because Amazon has officially released a video streaming service for their prime members. Although a prime membership on Amazon costs $79 per year, the video streaming service is free, which is a great additional feature.

For those debating whether to go with Netflix, Hulu or Amazon for their streaming needs, that $79 per year makes Amazon the cheapest of the three, at about $6.60 per month.

The downside of Amazon's service right now boils down to two things: clunky navigation and less titles than their established streaming counterparts.

However, I expect Amazon to tweak their system a little bit over the next couple of months, and this is a big first step for the online retailing giant in gaining a solid foothold in the Netflix/Hulu video streaming conglomerate.

32% of Local Businesses Use Facebook Places

Due to its low price point (free), Facebook is obviously a route that many small, local businesses have wanted to pursue in a still-recovering economy.

But Facebook-adoption rates among those local businesses is actually much higher than I would've guessed, with a recent MerchantCircle report showing that 70% of local businesses are using the world's largest social network.

While 70% may not seem like a completely overwhelming number given how prevalent Facebook is nowadays, it's still a 20% increase from last year. That's a significant jump, and a sign of where small business marketing priorities are.

Another interesting stat from the report is that 32% of local businesses are utilizing the Facebook Places check-in feature, while 9% use Foursquare. At first glance, this appears to be simply Facebook Places outpacing Foursquare. However, I see two takeaways here:

1. Facebook's stature and popularity are paving the way for new users to enter the location-based arena, making Facebook Places a desirable option for location-based marketing.
2. Marketing and business interest in location-based marketing is much larger than general consumer interest. All of the statistics I've seen on location-based networking point to an adoption rate right around 5-8%, which is less than the usage rate by local businesses and much less than their use of Facebook Places.

All in all, this is great news for location-based networking as a whole. If the numbers in this report are correct, about 40% of local businesses are utilized location-based services. So although the general population isn't using it as much, that number could grow.