Websight
Senior editor Brian Quinton joined DIRECT’s editorial staff in September 2004 and now covers all aspects of e-commerce and online marketing, including e-mail campaigns, search engine marketing, Internet retailing and interactive advertising.
Websight
Getting In
If you have any doubts about how thoroughly geeky I can be and believe me, I can provide testimonials from family and friends please consider the nerd...
Too Much Togetherness?
If you lived through the dot-com bubble, you could be excused for thinking you'd slipped through a wormhole in time and landed back in 1999. In rapid-fire succession, a slew of the biggest online ad players announced plans to get a lot bigger by acquiring platforms, technologies or expertise they hadn't had before....
Of Monkeys and Men
In early May, researchers from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center found a possible correlation between human speech and the gestures of chimpanzees....
Dead Letters
There are lots of ways for communications to go astray. On the digital side these often involve drop-offs and gopher holes in the network supporting the...
Buried Mobile and the Double Dip
A few weeks ago, embarrassed by my 98-pound weakling of a mobile phone, I gave in to techno-lust and stopped by my wireless carrier's local outlet to...
Google's Parking Problems
My list of the ways Google is like my hometown of Chicago comes down to one item: They both have parking problems that are rooted in history and long overdue for a solution. And in both cases, conspiracy-minded observers see a plot to keep the revenue stream open....
Marketing Mercenaries
One of my all-time movie faves is Last of the Mohicans, because it's a classic film about pre-Revolutionary America, because it's beautifully photographed,...
Poisoning the Well
IT'S BECOME A CLICH TO SAY that the Web has changed all the rules about how merchants and companies deal with the public. The many ways consumers can...
What's Your Click-Fraud Color?
HERE'S A PERSONALITY TEST for search engine marketers: When it comes to fraud in pay-per-click advertising, which of the following statements do you most...
Pay Up or Shut Up
IT WAS THE END OF A TYPICAL airport-to-airport marathon. They were tearing up the remote lots at O'Hare, so it began with a Darwinian struggle for a parking...
The Sweet, Sticky Smell of Success
Do you know about Diet Coke and Mentos? It's not the latest weight-loss craze. It's a Mr. Wizard science experiment gone berserk, and it's currently storming...
Caught Up, or Just Caught?
ANYBODY ELSE AROUND HERE miss Walter Cronkite? How about Huntley and Brinkley, or Harry Reasoner? Or, for that matter, who misses the 7 o'clock network...
Golden Age of the Geo-Geek
SCIENCE SAYS THE ABILITY TO navigate was developed to enable early humans who stumbled on a bountiful berry bush or well-stocked watering hole to find...
A Freedom of Search Issue
LET ME SAY THIS RIGHT AWAY: I don't want kids to see Internet porn. To that extent, I'm in line with the U.S. Department of Justice, which wants to revive...
I'll Be Watching
WHY SHOULD YOU, AN ONLINE marketer, care about companies like Google and Apple selling video downloads over the Internet? Because I do. I'm speaking of...
Googzilla vs. Mothrasoft?
At press time, Microsoft and Google are still going at it hot and heavy to win an important search advertising partnership with AOL. Once upon a time,...
Shirts, Panini and Desire
Because I stayed at a Las Vegas resort hotel seven years ago, I now get its brochure every 90 days, even though my plans are to return right after I get...
Up to Scratch
FOR ME, IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST sight. I'd never seen anything so slim, so responsive, so good-looking. And with those kind of smarts wrapped in that beautiful...
Like It's 1999
PARDON ME FOR GLANCING at the calendar so often. But you see, I just can't shake this sneaking suspicion that it's 1999 all over again. See, I spend my...
