美國調查顯示消費者認為網路購物比較環保。

Shoppin’ Where the Trees Ain’t Droppin’

JUNE 16, 2009

Green sites are sprouting up everywhere.

Consumers primarily shop online for convenience, product selection and price. But now another reason can be added to the list: environmental responsibility.

Fully 35% of respondents to a Shop.org survey believed that online shopping is better for the environment than store shopping.

Even better for online retailers, 60% of those who believed in the environmental merits of online shopping said they would shop online more as part of a greener lifestyle.

“A crop of green shopping sites has emerged to help consumers find eco-friendly products and get tips on how to incorporate green practices into their lives,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Green E-Commerce: Gaining Momentum. “In addition, savvy consumers use the Internet to evaluate the legitimacy of brands’ eco-friendly product claims, and social network sites are becoming hubs for a wide range of environmental causes.”

Surprisingly, the recession has not stymied consumers’ plans to buy green products.

In a Cone survey, over four times as many respondents said they were more likely to buy green products today than expected to buy fewer.

Overall, eight out of 10 respondents indicated they planned to spend at least as much on green products today as they did in the past.

“Brands are ramping up their green product launches in response to growing consumer demand,” says Mr. Grau.

According to Datamonitor, the number of eco-friendly product launches more than doubled in 2008 compared with the year before.

“For green consumerism to really take hold, marketers need to be creative in targeting people who are likely to benefit from their products,” says Mr. Grau. “Then they must explain how their products improve these people’s lives.”

And the Internet may be the perfect place to start the conversation.

置入性行銷接受度起起伏伏，使用者反應不一

Does Product Placement Work?

JUNE 15, 2009

Brands are ready for their close-up.

Does seeing the latest model of the Corvette Stingray in “Transformers” or hearing the new Rihanna hit on the soundtrack of “Gossip Girl” motivate consumers to buy?

“The way product placement works best,” said Adam Erlbacher of PlaceVine, a brand integration service, “is maybe the hero drinks a branded soft drink in one scene, then it’s used as a murder weapon later.”

According to Myers Publishing, branded entertainment, including product placement, is one of the fastest-growing advertising media. In 2009, $9 billion will be spent in the space, growing 4% from the previous year and accounting for 4.5% of the total media share.

How much of the branded entertainment spending is for product placement is impossible to tell, but the latter probably accounts for a small percentage of the total.

Many consumers find product placements bothersome.

Less than one-third of Internet users in a fall 2008 GfK Roper survey thought product placements were “quite acceptable,” and 36% found them annoying. In contrast, 42% and 37% of respondents said TV commercials were acceptable and annoying, respectively.

In addition, a BIGresearch survey indicated product placements were not highly effective. The method worked best for grocery items (such as branded soft drinks), with nearly 15% of consumers believing such placements influenced their purchases, followed by electronics, apparel, home improvement and restaurants.

African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians tended to be more influenced by placements than whites.

Seeing a product on the big (or small) screen might boost a brand’s image, but it may not increase sales. Of course, you could say the same about seeing an ad.

Marketing isn’t easy. In product placement, as with all other tactics, you have to find what works best for your product.

音樂市場朝向數位化，傳統方式日漸衰退

The Entertainment Industry Plays a Sour Note Online

JUNE 15, 2009

The tryouts have not been boffo.

Three pillars of the entertainment industry—music, movies and video games—are facing economic challenges due to the disruptive influences of digital distribution.

“The music industry was knocked off balance by the emergence of the MP3 in the late 1990s and has not recovered, and Hollywood’s two core businesses, box-office receipts and DVD sales/rentals, have stopped growing,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Digital Entertainment Meets Social Media. “And while the sales of video game consoles and software titles remain relatively strong, the industry’s future is shifting to digital distribution and ad-supported models.”

To take music as an example, spending on CDs and other physical sound carriers dwindled to $5.8 billion in 2008, down 60% from a peak of $14.6 billion in 1999.

“In 2009, the US recording industry will mark 10 consecutive years of declining CD sales,” says Mr. Verna.

US sales of recorded music will drop to $5.52 billion in 2013. This downward trajectory will extend a pattern that began in 2000, when physical sales started to decline after rising dramatically during the heyday of the CD.

“Online will experience healthy growth, mobile will trend slightly downward and physical will continue to plummet at accelerating rates,” says Mr. Verna. “Unfortunately, the sum of online and mobile will not compensate for losses in physical, but it will slow down the rate of those losses to a 2.9% drop in 2013.”

In 2008, single downloads made up the bulk of digital music sales, over $1 billion.

An NPD Group survey revealed a nexus between music and social media, finding that the percentage of US teens who downloaded or listened to music via social networks increased from 26% in 2007 to 46% in 2008.

Many music fans are gravitating to social sites via iPhone applications.

The Pandora app has been a huge success, with more than 4 million users as of May 2009, and about 20% of the 1 million songs per month downloaded through affiliate links were from Pandora’s iPhone app.

“The iPhone was game-changing for Pandora,” says Jessica Steel of Pandora. “It was the first device where the light bulb went off for listeners and those in the industry that Internet radio isn’t about just a Website and a PC anymore.”

“Clearly, this is a period of experimentation for the music business and social media,” says Mr. Verna. “The next step for these services will be to broaden their offerings into a user experience that straddles platforms and devices.”

環太平洋地區行動應用調查（香港、日本、新加坡）

Japanese Mobile Moves Online

JUNE 11, 2009

E-mail is important, too.

For many years the mobile market in Japan has served the rest of the world as a model of the future of mobile development. If that holds true, expect more mobile users online.

According to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, mobile Internet in Japan reached nearly 83% penetration among mobile phone users.

A total of 75.1 million users in Japan accessed the Internet via mobile phones in 2008.

One of the most popular mobile phone activities for young adults in Japan was e-mail, with 72% of users ages 8 to 24 reading and answering e-mails on the go.

Japan’s culture of connectivity pushed penetration far above the 13% average for Asia-Pacific, according to a Synovate study sponsored by Microsoft Advertising, MTV and Yahoo!.

Marketers should be cautious about tapping into this tech-savvy demographic with tried-and-true e-mail marketing, however.

According to a survey by Point On Research, 86% of mobile phone users in Japan check their e-mail every day—but they are highly sensitive to spam.

Mobile spam was seen as unsettling by more than 85% of respondents surveyed by goo Research.

The same survey found that 33% of those users received at least one piece of spam in their mobile e-mail each day.

Mobile marketing campaigns should take a more personal route.

“The ability to stimulate user action will be the key to success in mobile advertising,” said Yeunsil Lee, an ROA Group analyst.

Just don’t “stimulate” them with anything that looks like spam.

Macally 三合一 PowerLink

話說用了 陣子的iPhone之後，總覺得出門在外，那一條白色的線很討厭，有時候也不是要作什麼，就需要拿出場長的線充電什麼的，看了礙眼，包包裡面又多了一條線，不能共用。

所以就找了下面這個產品，其實他的定位很簡單，就是三種功能：

iPhone 行動充電器：插了可以補充電源

iPhone 同步轉接充電頭：就是取代那一條專用線

2GB的usb拇指碟：這個不用多說，就是存檔案用。

外觀看起來就像是一個小印章，體積很小，重量也很輕，不過還滿有質感的，兩邊的蓋子蓋起來就是一個小方塊。

蓋子上面的線代表的是裡面的接頭，這樣就不容易開錯邊。

當充電器使用的時候，把開關打開，上面會有電源顯示，資料上面說可以增加60分鐘的iPhone通話時間，不過我還沒有實際測試過容量就是了。

另一邊就是USB拇指碟的功能，插到電腦上面就可以存檔案，大小是2GB。

雙開的話就是長這樣。

接在電腦上面的樣子，可以同時充電、傳輸、當拇指碟三個願望一次滿足，很方便。不過如過是接在電腦旁邊的話，下面要稍微注意一下，不然接頭斷掉就不好看了。

出外可以充充電，插在iPhone上面的高度是剛好，不會翹起來。

iPhone跟iPod系列的產品因為接頭都是專屬的，每次包包都要多一條線，其實滿麻煩的，這次剛好看到這個產品解決了我的問題，跟大家分享一下。

ANS-9010 32GB 超大 SATA RAMDISK

話說有一陣子大家都在找在visat 64bit裡面可以用的ramdisk軟體，不過一般的主機板大概都只有8GB的RAM，想要插更多RAM還要換新晶片組的主機板，加上4GB單條RAM實在是太貴，所以想要開大一點的ramdisk，實在是很痛苦。

這次入手的這個產品，可以插八條4GB的ddr2 RAM，是的，跟之技嘉只能插ddr的產品相較，這個比較有賣點。畢竟DDR的記憶體大概只能買到1GB一條，這個產品可以插4GB的ddr2記憶體，來到32GB的容量，比較接近堪用的地步，之前也是超受注目跟期待的。

不過也不用太高興，因為產品的價格實在太高了，整組要會動，需要花費三萬多台幣，比電腦還貴…

下面這張圖是RAM插上面的樣子，一邊四條，兩邊一共是八條。有低階一點的只能插六條版本，不過基礎的設計應該視差不多的。

可以看得出來，這是由RAM的模組廠商出貨的，所以這邊的RAM也有寫著專用的型號。

機板上面有大大地鋰電池，可以提供關機時候的資料保存，不過能撐多久就不之到了，這一點可能還要在觀察一下。（沒電就全掛了...所以當然需要另外的機制處理）

這是錢方面版的照片，有一個CF插槽作備用跟還原之用，也就是說，可以按下去，會將ram的資料送到cf卡裡面，另一邊按下去就可以還原ramdisk，滿方便的設計，也可以作為還原系統之用，安裝別的東西很方便，隨時可以復原整個磁碟。

兩邊的燈號有不同的代表，左邊有三個燈號，分別是電源、通道一、通道二，這個版本可以支援雙SATA通道，變成兩顆16GB的磁碟，再拿來作raid0的話，可以達到更高的效率。

另一邊得燈號是鋰電池，可以知道現在電量還剩多少，需不需要開機充個電，免得東西都不見。

左右兩邊的按鈕就是備份跟還原鈕。

面板是有鋼琴烤漆樣式，還不錯看。

背後是SATA的接頭，有兩個sata接頭，如果走雙通道模式，就可以變成兩顆實體磁碟，用軟體作RAID（這台沒有支援硬體的raid）。

最後來看看這個裝置的效能，接在asus p5B主機板上面效能大概是寫入157MB/s，讀取大概是192MB/s左右，還算不錯，seektime就不多說了，ramdisk不用考慮這個部份。

這個產品除了價錢太貴之外，其實還算不錯，比起吵的熱熱鬧鬧的ssd，這種裝置如果管理得當的話，就更適合當成工作系統碟，相信以後應該也會有更多類似的產品問世。

家庭氣象台

前一陣子從美國買了這個回來，其實還有一個無線的接收器，不過因為放在室外，所有沒有特別去拍，有興趣的朋友可以看一下該公司的網頁。

這個東西其實是滿簡單的，我上次在台灣的家樂福有看到類似的，不過只有溫溼度計，功能比較簡單，也沒有中間那個穿衣服的小人。（這個小人是我買得主因，因為看圖比較清楚，不用管那麼多數字，對家中比較搞不清楚狀況的人也不需要解釋。）

這個小人會依照天氣換衣服，預測要下雨的話，會出現一隻傘，出門就帶支傘，雖然不一定會下雨，不過因為是靠氣壓變化所推算的，還是有一些準確度，反正中央氣象局也不見得準確，看看自己家中附近的天氣，可能稍微準確一點。

購買得時候還有看到整套的氣象站，有雨量跟風力的紀錄，還可以接到電腦上面，紀錄整年的狀況，不過想想我好像也不需要作到這麼精細的紀錄，所以直接跳過。還有一種產品是接到網際網路上面的氣象網站，抓下來的區域預測，價錢也不貴，不過因為我家四處都有電腦，需要的話開開電腦看看也很快，所以還是pass，買了一個比較傻瓜的回家。

這個天氣鐘，其實還有無線對時跟美國時區微調，但是因為我不住在美國，所以這方面的功能就沒有用到了。