hbjzrc.com

And maybe that’s where its online division, with much lower overhead, can play an important role in the company’s future. Along with the ability to offer lower prices, BestBuy.com also offers a significant advantage over online competitors: you can have many of the products Best Buy offers online immediately, thanks to in-store pickup. If Best Buy can make those prices competitive and offer in-store pickup where possible, my desire to use Amazon would diminish, since I could have a product from Best Buy in twenty minutes, compared to five days from Amazon.

Maybe Best Buy won’t need to worry about
the Web because it is the last big box retailer standing, and there will
always be people who don’t like to buy online or would rather have a
product as soon as possible.

In order to do that, Best Buy needs to capitalize on what it does best: customer service. It can’t compete on price all the time, but it can inform the public and provide each customer with the single retail element Amazon can’t: guidance. After all, you can’t ask Amazon which digital SLR would be best for you, right?

Best Buy also needs to realize that pricing is still a major concern and it must match every other retailer in the area, like Walmart and Target, and make every effort to get as close to online pricing as possible.

Realizing Best Buy probably can’t afford to match Web pricing
indefinitely, how does the company respond? Will my local store decide
that it will no longer match Web pricing? If so, what would stop me
from buying everything I see at Best Buy online? It makes little sense
for me to waste my money because I don’t have any patience.

Before Circuit City died, Best Buy did everything it could to ensure it didn’t lose my business to the big box store across the street. Now that Circuit City is gone, it must do everything it can to ensure it doesn’t lose my business to the price leader online.

But now, that competition is gone. I’m starting to worry that Best
Buy may not be as willing to match pricing any longer. I’m starting to
worry that Best Buy will get complacent and stop doing everything it can
to earn my business. Most importantly, I’m starting to worry that Best
Buy won’t be able to compete on any level with the Web.

Although Best Buy is now alone in its fight with the Web and I’m concerned that it may become yet another victim of the Internet, the company has some advantages that it can exploit: Its people are an asset that can provide guidance, its willingness to match pricing is a plus, and its online division can offer cheaper prices and in-store pickup.

Right across the street from that Circuit City is a Best Buy. For years, I have gone back
and forth to get the best price out of both stores. More often than not,
it was Best Buy that would earn my business, thanks to its salespeoples’
greater willingness to match the best prices of any competitor in the
area.

The future might not be clear for Best Buy at this point, but one thing is certain: it has a chance to be the first major electronics retailer to do what Circuit City and CompUSA couldn’t: compete with the Web.

Now that Best Buy is practically alone as the last major big box
electronics retailer, it has a new enemy that it probably can’t beat all
that often: the Web. Let’s face it: sites like Amazon.com and
Newegg.com don’t have the overhead Best Buy does. They don’t need to
worry about renting space for stores, paying salespeople, and paying
sales tax to every state. Online retailers have s a significant
advantage.

Earlier this week, I discussed
how utterly appalled I was at the (lack of) value a local Circuit City store
offered me in my area during its “liquidation” sale. But that’s not the
whole story.

For people, like me, getting more comfortable with online purchasing,
I simply don’t know what would stop me from using Best Buy as a research
center. I can go to the store, check out a new camcorder or surround
sound system and then decide if it’s something I want. If it is, I’ll
ask the manager if they can match Amazon’s deeply discounted price. If
he can, I’ll buy it at Best Buy. If not, I’ll go home and order it
online.

Competition breeds results. I liked that CIrcuit City was across the
street from Best Buy because it kept both stores’ managers on their toes
and more willing to do whatever they could to keep me in the store and
ensure that they earned my business.

See also: SearchMe. And the cool search experiments at Viewzi.

Search results populate the page as you type.

I’m not sure if this technology could scale to support a mass of users (or even if using Google this way is legal). Certainly, a typical Google search is more compute-efficient than searching on every letter typed. But the Keyboardr method is more efficient for users, since it lets you watch and refine your search as you go.

A small team in Germany has written a cool front-end to the search engines on Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Keyboardr executes and displays searches as you type. It’s a better interface than the type-wait-retype cycle of most search engines.

Worth a look.

Keyboardr also lets you navigate your results with the keyboard, which adds to its speed for users.

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Some suggest that Google will struggle to make it in the enterprise due to security concerns with Google Apps. Cisco doesn’t have that problem. Its brand oozes “enterprise.” As such, it may well be Cisco that changes the face of enterprise computing…by initially changing the way we communicate and collaborate within the enterprise.

Zoho, anyone?

Zoho is a leading competitor to Google Apps and, in many areas, actually surpasses Google Apps. While some of Zoho’s applications directly overlap with Cisco’s current products, the sheer breadth (and, in some cases, depth) of its office productivity and collaboration story must be intriguing to acquisition-hungry Cisco.

Perhaps even more critically, as Hampus Jakobsson pointed out to me (over Twitter, no less), video “requires full attention–the scarcest of all resources.”

Just don’t hold your breath for video to part the waters. Video has its place, but it’s a highly verbose form of communication, and the Web’s most popular technologies increasingly teach us to speak sparingly.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Video, while great, takes too long. We e-mail, instant-message, and tweet for a reason: it’s short and to the point. Who has time to watch a video each them they want to communicate?

Indeed, I think that we’ll see Cisco acquire Control Yourself, the company behind open-source Twitter lookalike Identi.ca, before it changes the world through video.

Cisco gets this. At least, groups within Cisco get this. That’s why Cisco Senior Vice President Doug Dennerline’s WebEx team has been adding presence and instant messaging through Jabber, e-mail through PostPath, and more to its Web-conferencing suite.

It’s also why Cisco will almost certainly add some form of office productivity suite to WebEx, despite protestations to the contrary from Alex Hadden-Boyd, director of marketing for the collaboration software group at Cisco. (Apparently, Hadden-Boyd didn’t see the memo from his boss, Dennerline.)

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers calls video “the killer app,” but apparently, he hasn’t been paying attention to trends on the Web, or even to his company’s own emerging-collaboration story.

Laptop magazine’s Tech Support Showdown 2009 rates 10 computer companies’ tech support, with Apple coming out the overall winner. Apple’s overall grade for 2009 was an “A,” scoring an “A” for both phone and Web support.

Apple’s support performance over the last few years, coupled with the popularity of the
iPhone and
iPod, have propelled Apple’s Mac sales. In its 2009 fiscal third quarter, Apple reported selling 2.6 million Macs, up 4 percent from the year ago quarter.

“Apple has consistently offered some of the best Web and phone support of any computer vendor, and this year was no different,” the magazine said in evaluating Apple. “Its Web site is brimming with well-ordered FAQs, query-based search, and PDF manuals, the latter of which quickly answered our external monitor question.”

If a top-notch customer support program is high on your list of features when buying a new computer, you should be looking at a
Mac, according to a new ranking.

Comparing it to the other companies involved in the showdown, Acer received a C-; ASUS (B-); Dell (C-); Fujitsu (B-); Gateway (B-); HP (C-); Lenovo (B+); Sony (B+); and Toshiba got a “B.”

“Virtually no computer vendor–or retailer, for that matter–is immune from the wrath of users who have become intimately familiar with the ‘Blue Screen of Death,’ and other PC foibles,” the magazine said in its introduction to the tests. “But, it’s how manufacturers handle their customers’ hardware and software problems that ultimately determine their true reliability, and, you would think, future sales.”

Apple also received “A” ratings in 2007 and 2008 from the magazine for its tech support.

Competitor Scribd launched a similar offering back in May with a guaranteed 80 percent revenue share to publishers and pricing limits up to $5,000 per title. Docstoc is launching with its aforementioned sliding scale of revenue sharing, which I’m told has no limit on maximum pricing. It will also continue to offer its advertising service, which places Google Adsense ads next to documents that are offered for free.

Documents purchased through Docstoc can be viewed on the Web or on portable devices like the Kindle and the
iPhone. Rather than selling books, Docstoc is specializing in ready-made forms, presentations, and technical documents–what the company is calling “professional utility documents.” However, there are some publishers in Docstoc’s store, like WriteMyEssay.com, that cover topics outside of business. Nazar says that the store may continue to expand into other areas, but that it will keep “selectively picking the best, high-quality partners” from those that apply to be included in the store.

As part of the deal, publishers get “a majority” of the revenue, although actual figures are based on a sliding scale and depend on who they are and how Docstoc is promoting them.

Browsing documents for sale is just like browsing Docstoc's free, hosted documents, except that you can only view a preview until you pay for a content license.

In order to avoid serving up two versions of a paid document, such as a preview and full version, Docstoc has updated its Adobe Flash-based viewer to limit viewing to several pages of a document. This lets potential buyers take a look before they buy, just as Amazon and competitor Scribd do.

As for payments, Docstoc is letting users pay via PayPal, Google Checkout, or with a credit card. There’s also a money-back guarantee policy that lets users get a refund if they’re dissatisfied. The policy gives users a week to make a return, with up to five returns a year. To keep any abuse from happening, the company is also tracking users’ IP addresses, to make sure they’re not just opening up new accounts and making returns beyond the five-time limit, although Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar told me he doesn’t anticipate too heavy a return rate, since the new viewer shows a multipage preview.

Online document host Docstoc on Wednesday is opening up an online store for publishers to sell their wares. The company is acting both as the host and the payment platform, as well as providing the viewing technology for the documents.

(Credit:
Docstoc)

Verizon will become the third U.S. carrier to support Android, with the notable exception of iPhone carrier AT&T. T-Mobile has been perhaps the most vocal Android backer in the U.S. to date, although Sprint has also pledged its support for Android.

McAdam and Stratton deflected several questions about what this partnership would mean for Verizon’s existing partners, of whom Research in Motion and Microsoft are perhaps most prominent. Verizon chose to make this announcement on the eve of the
CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference in San Diego, overshadowing the debut of Windows Mobile 6.5.

The Android devices that emerge from this partnership will have Google’s Android Market preinstalled on the phones, said John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless parent company Verizon Communications. Verizon also pledged to support applications such as Google Voice, currently at the center of a controversy among Google, Apple, AT&T, and the Federal Communications Commission over Apple’s decision to prevent Google Voice from reaching the iPhone.

A few years ago, smartphones made up around 10 percent of Verizon’s devices, he said. Now, it’s more like 40 percent and the growth has not stopped amid a global recession that has hurt demand for many consumer electronics products.

Schmidt spoke several times during the call about Google’s eagerness to team up with a network of that scale and implied that developers should like that combination as well. “Developers need the kind of data network that is the base of what Verizon offers,” he said.

Google and Verizon Wireless on Tuesday announced what would have once seemed a very unlikely partnership, pledging to “advance the discussion” in the mobile computing market with a family of jointly designed devices to appear over the next few years.

Verizon is known for the strong performance of its data network, but has not historically been known for its mobile software, at least not in a good way. The carrier was perhaps most emblematic of the wireless industry’s desire to control the software that ran on its devices, and that left Verizon customers with a stable network but relatively unpopular applications.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

The companies declined to name hardware partners for the initial devices, but Motorola and HTC have been rumored for months as the initial phone makers expected to work with Verizon. Beyond that, it sounds like Verizon and Google expect to release other devices, such as Netbooks or perhaps an ebook reader that will run on Verizon’s network.

Verizon, however, is playing in a different league than T-Mobile or Sprint. With 87 million customers, Verizon has more subscribers than Sprint and T-Mobile combined.

Stratton did say that Verizon sees room for multiple partners on its network. The carrier is still expected to bring the Palm Pre to its network next year, according to analysts.

Still, Google and Verizon have pledged to create services and applications that may or may not be exclusive to Verizon Android handsets. Partnerships are a dime a dozen in the tech industry, but the combination of two giants of Verizon and Google’s size has to be taken seriously by the rest of the mobile industry.

Verizon has joined T-Mobile and Sprint in support of Google's Android software, with plans to release two new Android phones this year.

However, ever since Apple’s
iPhone shook up the mobile industry in 2007, Verizon has pledged to improve the quality of the software that runs on its phones by scaling back its control over that software to allow outside developers a greater say over what software is available on Verizon phones.

Eric Schmidt and Lowell McAdam, CEOs of Google and Verizon Wireless respectively, worked on this partnership for 18 months before they were ready to officially bring it to light, they said Tuesday morning in a Webcast press conference. Two mobile phones running Google’s Android mobile operating system will launch on Verizon’s network by the end of the year, and that’s just the start of a joint road map that will include other Android-based devices beyond phones, the companies said.

Exploding iPhones are so earlier this week, people. The new scary consumer electronics product that might explode and kill you and your family is the cheap Durabrand DVD player exclusive to Wal-Mart. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a recall of the device, saying the players can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers.

So far 12 out of approximately 1.5 million units have flamed up, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which adds that the fires have caused property damage but no injuries. While 12 problematic devices don’t really add up to epidemic-like numbers, it’s still troubling knowing yours could be the 13th. Not that I’m fearmongering or anything.

I should have bought the $31 DVD player.

The players retail for less than $30, are made in China, and are full of shrapnel to flay flesh from bone. OK, that last bit was hyperbolic, but still, any Durabrand DVD player bought from Wal-Mart after 2006 can be returned to the nearest store for a full refund.

(Credit:
Matt Hickey)

OK, so the software maker still spends lots of days in court, even if it has settled many of the antitrust cases that once filled its Outlook calendar. Wednesday, though, it will make its case to an appeals court for why it shouldn’t face an injunction banning sales of Word that contain a custom XML feature.

Microsoft will have its day in court on Wednesday.

For its part, I4i has said it isn’t seeking to have Word pushed off the shelves entirely. It just wants the offending code removed.

Both sides have made their arguments (and counter arguments, and counter-counter arguments abundantly clear), so now it will be up to the federal appeals court to weigh those positions. The hearing is set for 10 a.m. EDT/7 a.m. PDT, and we’ll try to post an update after the hearing is done.

Earlier this year, a federal jury found that recent versions of Word infringe on a patent held by I4i and ordered Microsoft to pay the Canadian company $200 million. Last month, a federal judge hiked the damage award and also ordered the injunction.

If it loses its appeal, Microsoft could try to offer an XML feature that behaves differently, pull the custom XML feature from Word, or pursue some sort of settlement.

Time will tell. But the market is about to get very interesting again. To achieve its goals, Red Hat must increase its investment in JBoss to make it an even better application platform that can effectively compete with Microsoft and its comprehensive infrastructure/middleware/tools suite.

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As for Microsoft, I can’t see how it can hope to compete with Red Hat’s open-source strategy without including a healthy dose of open source, itself. Figuring out how to maintain its profit margins and sales potential, while simultaneously encouraging the growth of its developer ecosystem, is going to be difficult without open source.

Red Hat wants to own the infrastructure market. The company is nearing its initial $1 billion goal, but has a far more audacious ambition: own half the associated middleware market.

Red Hat, meet Redmond.

As it does so, it’s going to bump into Microsoft SharePoint, which is increasingly used as a platform for building applications, much like Red Hat’s JBoss application server. SharePoint has come under threat from Google recently, but this is a battle Red Hat will have to fight, too.

For years, Red Hat has happily sold Linux to Unix shops anxious to save money at equivalent or better performance. During this time, the company largely avoided Microsoft, which has tended to compete much higher up the stack. No longer. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer argues that one of Microsoft’s biggest opportunities lies in enterprise infrastructure and associated application development.

It’s a battle for the heart and soul of the enterprise, and it’s going to get a little messy. It’s about time.

Biggest opportunity that we never talked about is enterprise infrastructure. Most of that goes to the database and mainframe vendors today who are in the business. We’ve got four billion in revenue and yet we’re a small market share player.

The two companies can’t help but run into each other. Will they also be able to collaborate? They must. No customer is going to exclusively run either Microsoft or Red Hat technologies. The two have showed an ability to get along, if only a little bit. Can the two come together even as they seek to beat each other to bloody pulps?

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Servers, there are going to be more new applications written in the next five years than any five-year period of time.

After all, Microsoft is also focused on these opportunities, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told TechCrunch:

This is a direct challenge to Microsoft, especially the manner in which Red Hat aims to go about it. As Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst noted in the company’s earnings call earlier this year, Red Hat is “laser-like focused on that mission of commoditizing these key (infrastructure) layers” through open source.

It’s not a strategy that will endear the open-source agitator to Microsoft.

Sony’s console is no longer the most expensive console on the market; Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Elite now holds that crown, with a $400 price tag, though even that could be slipping, with very nearly confirmed price cuts coming next week that could drop the price of the Elite to $299 and the Pro to $249.

With Sony’s
PlayStation 3 trailing so far behind Microsoft’s
Xbox 360 and
Nintendo Wii, it was only a matter of time before the company that had offered the most expensive console on the market would reduce the price of its hardware.

(Credit:
Sony)

But by doing so, Sony has ensured that going forward, it will take a loss on every console it sells. That was confirmed by Sony Computer Entertainment chief Kaz Hirai in a recent interview with the Times Online.

As bad as the losses may be, capturing more market share is Sony’s goal for the foreseeable future. That wouldn’t have been possible if the PS3 wasn’t so affordable.

The PS3 Slim is part of the right strategy.

There’s little debate that Sony’s decision to cut the price of the PlayStation 3 to $299 and offer the PS3 Slim at the same price is surprising. The price cut will undoubtedly hurt profit margins. But it was a smart move.

And yet the PlayStation 3 is a victim of its feature set. All those extras add to the cost of its console. It’s why at $400, the company couldn’t profit off a single console. It’s also why it’s still facing losses with each sale of its cheaper hardware.

Microsoft and Nintendo force gamers to invest in accessories to achieve the same level of usability. Xbox 360 owners need to buy a $50-per-year subscription to Xbox Live just to play games online. Wii owners might be able to play online for free, but thanks to the uniqueness of its games, Nintendo has been able to sell a slew of add-ons, including a steering wheel for Mario Kart Wii, gun attachments for first-person shooters, and more. Neither console boasts a Blu-ray player.

Regardless, Sony should enjoy better sales, now that it’s in that same pricing sweet spot. That will be especially true when consumers consider features the Xbox 360 doesn’t have, like a Blu-ray player, free online multiplayer gaming, and built-in Wi-Fi.

The store shelf battle
Having a higher console price than the competition hurt Sony at retail. When consumers went to the store with enough cash to buy just one console, they needed to choose among the $250 Wii, the $300 Xbox 360 Pro, or the $400 PlayStation 3. They chose the cheaper alternatives.

“If you’re just talking about the hardware alone, the quick answer is yes,” Hirai said in response to a question asking if Sony is losing money on each console sold. “That makes good headlines, but I don’t actually know that that’s the true nature of the business that we’re all in, whether it’s PlayStation, Xbox, or the Wii.”

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As ideal as it might have been to turn a profit on every sold console, Sony’s decision to reduce the price of the PlayStation 3 and offer a new console version was smart. It makes the company’s consoles more affordable. It ensures that it provides the best value proposition in the space. And as more consumers opt for the PlayStation 3 over its competitors, it could put Sony in a position to capture a larger share of the market, considering what it makes on royalties and licensing fees from third-party developers and hardware makers.

The consumer wins, when we consider the PlayStation 3’s value proposition. Sony loses, from a per-unit profit perspective. But in the long run, the price reduction might help Sony.