Father’s Day is just around the corner.  If you have not made up your mind and want some ideas, we suggest pieces from Jack Georges. The leather briefcase company has a unique portfolio in their e-commerce store, with some great gifts for your dad.

This example from the Jack Georges Elements collection is a best seller for many reasons.  The triple gusset flapover briefcase (Elements #4505) is handcrafted from European leather. The beautiful, rich grain has a scratch resistant coat with a steel frame top that folds reflexively.  Inside the bag, you get a padded compartment storage for a laptop equivalent to 15.6” along with an Easy Access Organizer for writing utensils and accessories.  An open back pocket rests on the side panel for your file documents.

Jack Georges has other fine products available for shipment when you order by 12 noon EST on Thursday, June 16th. Here is a second suggestion.

Nevada Collection 19” Duffel Bag.

Built for the weekend trip, this gorgeous duffel bag is made from a pebble grain crushed fabric and flecked with suede pieces.  It comes with durable handles made from full grain leather, containing zippered pockets on the outside and inside of the case.

10:43:  Keynote Presentation by Robert Bowman

MLB Advanced Media CEO Robert Bowman is talking about the mobile experience enhancing interactivity for the fans.  In his mind, baseball remains the ultimate representation of theatre in sports.  They are also talking about the interactivity that spreads beyond the diamond with fantasy leagues and microsites like MLB FanCave.  The actual fan cave exists in the old Tower Records space in New York’s Greenwich Village, and it has offered exclusive program with baseball figures. Their Twitter feed has grown with followers by the day as content continues to gain traction.

11:10:  The Art Of The Side Project

Rick Webb of The Barbarian Group moderates a panel of serial entrepreneurs who talk about the balance between a full-time career and working with a side project.  Again, the crowd din makes it difficult to hear the panelists clearly. If they do it here next year, I’d recommend better audio equipment or hold panels in a separate auditorium. According to them, motivation is something that ebbs and flow with side projects.  Content must be regulated to attract unique visitors, advertisers, and so forth.  Once the side project rises in economic value, decisions must be made. The most common factor is enjoyment.  Is there a desire to leverage this into a career? You’d be surprised that sometimes, it is not.

11:20: Noah Brier talks about selling off Brand Tags for this particular reason. Brand Tag is deemed “a collective experiment in brand perception”.  He felt that the project grew into such a livelihood where other minds can carry it to a full potential. He also mentions that he never consciously refused to apply this side project in his traditional work setting. The time was just not available to direct focus in that space.

11:31:  Who Is Alex Blagg?

On the AOL stage, Alex Blagg of Bajillionhits.biz talks about how the Internet has statistically filled the Internet with endless content.  The effect on human discourse is brought out.  According to him, “A Grilled Cheese Sandwich Store just raised 10 million dollars in venture capital.” He also states that Internet hits are worth more than Dollars, Euros, and Yen combined. The dude is hilarious. He correlates content with basic internet principles, like SEO and online advertising scale. Only content exists, and there is a way where great content stratisfies the future. His keys: Not Too Many Words, Cheap, Disposable, Addictive, Effortesly, and mostly insanity. The mocking is classic. If only you could sit in front of him. He called MySpace “an apocalyptic wasteland where content zombies roam”.  My words don’t do it justice.

That’s the first half wrap. More to come in the afternoon.

PayPal has been a steady performing company for years with the stewardship of eBay.  The revenues have tripled since 2005, making them the market leader of mobile payments.

Google has announced the release of an application that will allow consumers to make purchases with a wave of their mobile device. Tablets are also eligible to make payments with participating retailers.  Google is taking on the leader of daily e-commerce coupons, Groupon, with a new coupon service.

According to this piece in the Journal, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and J.P. Morgan Chase are the banks looking to launch a  mobile payment system where customers send money from checking accounts to merchants with a phone number or email system.

This shift could be a watershed for e-commerce retailers who do not have existing debt in brick-and-mortar venues.  It could also intensify security encryption for personal data. Stay zapped.

It will involve a different methodology of storytelling.  You wonder if parents will be able to read with their children off of an Amazon Kindle or iPad at bedtime.  Primary school teachers who nurtured the art of penmanship complemented with illustration must develop new strategies for engaging young minds.  Will literacy develop a wider class gap in correlation with access to new tech equipment?  

A second topic discussed involved the general operations of the book publishing industry.  We have seen corporations with e-commerce stores enter bidding wars on book price scaling. Authors have eliminated agents by self-publishing novels before they are distributed in print among declining book hubs. Licensors worry about intellectual property rights being infringed upon, not to mention piracy.  Internet giants like Amazon are also creating original content for publishing.

Executives are clearly losing sleep these days. HarperCollins’ international CEO Victoria Barnsley wonders about web developers entering the industry, especially titans with social media tendons. She also wonders this:  ”Can publishers replace their lost revenues from physical through digital sales? The answer is probably ‘no’, unless they can significantly lower volumes.”

Web applications for tablets and smartphones get mixed reviews so far, but their maturation as a commodity will allow publishers to scale for subscriptions.  Lenders can also, as mentioned, assure that encryption is mandated to protect the integrity of business relationships in which so many people latch onto in the sector.  These are fast times for Publishing High.

These acquisitions are interesting for several reasons.  Both deals consist of longtime corporate entities (Microsoft, Live Nation) who have lost their energy due to a flagging economy, improved competition, and bad strategic decisions. Groupon is rising quickly to become the Amazon of the online deal marketplace. Like Amazon, they started from a segmented portfolio of services (deals for health, beauty, and wellness patrons) then branching into endless consumer goods and assisting with brick-and-mortar experiences.

Skype has been an internet darling since its inception.  eBay attempted to bring the VoIP service provider into its online marketing strategy, but logistics and software problems persisted. The growth figures never reached satisfactory levels, and Skype was sold to Silver Lake Partners.  As the WSJ mentions, Microsoft could face resistance for wireless share from customers and telecommunications agencies.  Groupon is looking to leverage their partnerships and investors for an IPO. The alliance with Live Nation comes at an opportune moment with summer festivals on the horizon.

All of these acquisitions are filled with potential to market several products across different hardware. I see Live Nation especially engaging viral strategies like online video advertising attached with a deal to entice consumers. Microsoft’s entry into the marketplace with Skype is unclear in that businesses have yet to assimilate Skype into their international phone service at a high volume. The folks at Blueliner have used Skype to maintain operating margins and flatten communication channels with SMS and VoIP. So far, so good for a company on our scale. On a wider scale, Skype’s growth remains to be seen. Microsoft has made a stronger effort in marketing their new portfolio of digital services.  Hopefully, the Excel spreadsheet adds up.

I think it depends on your personal reading desires.  Like hot financial markets, the daily deals marketplace is a bubble getting larger by the week. Facebook announced Deals to complement its geolocation strategy where personal data connects everyone in real-time. The New York Daily News offers a daily deal service. The outreach is a boon for web developers at the moment, but time will decide who sets the standard.  The saturation of the marketplace is too thick.

As we know, Groupon led the daily deal phenomena just two years ago. I have chronicled the rise in valuations, a failed Google bid, and the Super Bowl advertising fiasco.  But Groupon built its equity through offering special deals on expensive health and fitness items. Services which people want, but don’t place a premium on unless they fit your personal budget.  Retailers have limited marketing strategy at the moment in terms of product offers. They can provide a coupon, but not expect a heavy or immediate commission from the coupon distributor. Not every industry is privy to offering services at such low intake fees.

This particular article in the Daily News shows that reading diligently in short time frames and applying common sense will protect you from going insane over coupons. It is understandable to look for the best transaction since incomes are stagnating while expenses rise north. Not unlike sports trading deadlines, though, sometimes the best deals are never made.

Milano Collection Clutch Wallet #3716

Elegant. Sophisticated. Stylish.  Versatile. These adjectives describe the Mother who holds this gorgeous leather wallet from the esteemed Milano Collection.  Hand crafted with real Italian leather, this clutch is the perfect anchor for the active woman. The wallet has versatile features to satisfy the professional or residential mother. These include 12 credit card slots, a zippered change compartment, and two massive pockets to hold singular items (change, receipts).  This product is available in a wide color palette to satisfy the vivacious Lady in Red or the brooding Black Diamond Queen.

Your mother taught you to be prepared for the day.  She also wanted you to look your best.  This Mother’s Day, buy her a gift which shows your appreciation. Click on the wallet to purchase today.

We are back with another edition of the Weekly Blueliner Newsminer.  Let us begin.

1.  Coachella Streams From YouTube

Some of us would love to pack into an RV for that Great American Drive across the Midwest and Rockies for Coachella.  Others would fly into Los Angeles, and battle the highways out to the desert.

Of course with the interactive capabilities of technology, you can click to see the action through YouTube. Video sharing has been a phenomenon for awhile in terms of livestream content, but now you can catch Cee-Lo, The National, !!!, and Damian Marley on your monitor. Then save your frequent flier miles for another destination.

2.  Blackberry Releases Playbook

Blackberry’s new tablet device was released this week, and the reviews have poured out.  My fellow colleague Mohsin Sharief gives a detailed review on the programming structures.  This new edition to the tablet marketplace steams from middling reviews. It appears that the Canadian manufacturer released the Playbook as an unfinished product on purpose. I just can’t understand how a company whose reputation is their encrypted email client server and fail to include it on a new, segmented device. Hopefully, this mistake will be rectified soon.  This strategy will not be in the year’s best at the end.

3.  Best Buy To Shrink “Big Box” Strategy

The headline is a strategy by the Minnesota company which sends a direct message to retailers with large spaces:  slim down. The demise of Circuit City was the first domino in a stream that demonstrates the influence of mobile technology on consumer products.  As content distribution diversifies, the use of a large space hurts on many levels.  It hurts operating margins. It wastes energy. It destroys land that can be used to develop agrarian initiatives. It wastes time.  So Best Buy has optioned to not only reduce the scale of their stores. They also will find landlords with less restrictive leases. They will sell more items of the mobile variety. It’s a solid move, but we’ll see if they can keep up with Amazon.

4.  President Obama Calls For National Single-Password Encryption

I just came across this headline on Wired and the first thought that struck my mind was: intrigue.  The Obama administration has made no secret of their desire to bring the national telecommunications sector to a modern level. They will scrutinize the upcoming AT&T/T-Mobile deal. They want to ensure that an improvement in network infrastructure will legitimately suffice. They are also seeing if corporations from the private sector will rise to the occasion for this cause.  Security encryption will be more pertinent as more devices access content from real time to complete trivial tasks.  In theory, it sounds good. The practice will have to be beyond perfect.

5.  Cisco Eliminates The Flip Camera

This news was released earlier in the week. Cisco has struggled for years to gain traction in the consumer marketplace.  They also attempted a videoconferencing console for the living room, featuring Ellen Page of Juno fame.  The shutdown of production for the Flip shows that more is going on in Cisco’s video cone.  This article in paidContent.org talks about the shutdown killing two internal enterprise solutions in one swoop.  I personally thought the Flip had potential to differentiate itself, but felt the price point was a tad excessive. I tested a friend’s version and found the control interface simple to use.  The lead article argues that video quality in smartphones has improved substantially to eliminate niche devices, but I disagree.  In time, that could prove correct. Not at the moment. If marketed properly, Cisco could have kept the switch on. We’ll never know.

That’s the Blue news this week. It’s time to point and shoot forward. Enjoy.

Doubts are surfacing whether Etsy can sustain itself without a traditional business structure. Online advertising would pay tremendous dividends if Kalin aligns the company with appropriate partners.  Listing fees would enable the site to build a proper set of meta tags to climb the search engine rankings. You would also take care of the vendors that he claims to fight for every day.  Proper SEO methodology would put sellers in front of consumers who want to buy products from more credible sources.  It would also build communities that can collaborate on geolocal advertising campaigns to raise traffic, not to mention revenue.  Keyword lists can be tailored to the needs of vendors to reach premium eyes.  As mobile marketing ventures into tablets that can load pictures with rich pixellation capability, Kalin must investigate for the benefit of his sellers.  Crafts need to been seen, not heard.

Kalin, as the Inc.com article mentions, is a liberal arts guru by education.  He now trades as a businessman.  The goal of any business is to maximize profit for the benefit of your vendors.  Even Fugazi understood this at the end of the day, creating incendiary music to accredit their business model.  Mavericks have come in and out of time to provide goods and services while remaining true to themselves.  The online marketplace is waiting for someone to challenge eBay. Is Kalin ready for it?

That being said, the move did take a long time. But it’s smart for eBay to solicit more merchants in light of their past legal struggles.  This proposal for GSI advances their model to compete with Amazon in the fixed price e-commerce sector.  PayPal’s emergence as a revenue stream also bodes well for interested merchants.  They have a portal to encrypt secure transactions if independent costs are prohibitive.  Their outreach will also bring in new consumers to eBay who were put off by the notion of bidding.  The deal cannot be completed until the third quarter of this year. An investor hurdle has popped up. Some investors also think that eBay could lose for winning, questioning their capability to invest new capital.  This bid is still on the clock.