Tortus Technologies - Home

Pixels & Mortar

2010-01-21T17:49:00Z

We've unveiled our new newsletter -- read it here!

the difference a year makes

2010-01-17T17:39:00Z

50 things we know now that we didn't know this time last year

A picture is worth...a lot!

2010-01-15T16:25:00Z

I'm gearing up for my social networking seminar next week here at Tortus, and I wanted to share this very good article on using the photo sharing site flickr to market your business. If you already use flickr for your personal photos, why not consider giving it a try for your business or organization? Using flickr can be an indirect marketing method that drives traffic to your website and builds community with your customers. In contrast to the opinion of the article's author, I do believe that flickr can be utilized for nearly every type of business, whether you sell products OR services. Check out flickr today!

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T17:15:00Z

From all of us at Tortus, wishing you and yours a happy, healthy, PROSPEROUS 2010!

Brilliant or Bust - You Decide!

2009-12-24T13:00:00Z

Here we are just before the start of the holidays - the indulgence, the conversation, the goodies, the family gatherings - and I get an email titled: Swim 2010 is here. I'm thinking of buckeyes (peanut butter and chocolate treats), cookies, cakes, candies, turkey, meatballs, roasts: and they go and spoil the party. Images of myself standing at the buffet table with my plate in hand conjure in my mind, and I watch as I skip over items I'd normally enjoy just because I'd read two dreaded words: Swim 2010.

It's a tease to be sure, as I look outside at the winter wonderland, I can't help but dream of soft sandy beaches and warm waves. Swim 2010 is here.

As a consumer, I'm conflicted. Do I look at it, knowing that I have at least 5-6 months before I can even think about donning a bathing suit? Will it make those months feel so much longer, especially if there's a cute suit I'm interested in? And yet, I'm tempted. Maybe it'll give me something to work toward. Maybe it'll make me think twice about going up for holiday seconds. Maybe I'll have something to envision while I'm at the gym.

You can bet I know the name of the company that sent out that email. And you can bet that I'm spending time thinking about whether or not I want to open the email. I'm curious to say the least.

But then again, it's the holidays. And they only happen once a year.

seasonal strategies

2009-12-01T14:38:00Z

What e-commerce strategies are businesses taking during the 2009 holiday season? e-Marketer takes a look; see the full article here.

Are you one of 134 Million?

2009-11-27T14:33:00Z

Tightening personal budgets are not putting a damper on Black Friday shopping this year. In fact, a whopping 134 million people said they will shop on the Friday, Saturday or Sunday following Thanksgiving, up 5% from 128 million people in 2009. About 41% will shop at electronic stores, 36.3% at clothing stores, and 28.8% at grocery stores, according to a survey by the NRF.

How can you maximize your Black Friday revenues? Make sure your doorbuster deals extend to your website as well! 27.6% of consumers said they would shop online this year instead of visiting brick and mortar locations.

Tortus Newsletter November 2009

2009-11-23T18:51:00Z

Libraries without books? Ten fantastic new websites! And a geographical quiz question. All this and more, here.

when you believe in things that you don't understand

2009-11-23T17:32:00Z

I admit, I could be deemed a superstitious computer user at times. See this video by TechRepublic's "dojo" Bill Tetweiler about the amusingly irrational things that supersititious computer users do (and don't do).

Recycle, reuse, resist

2009-11-19T15:32:00Z

During our (always lively!) Monday morning meeting this week, several Torti mentioned a recent National Public Radio segment on printer toner cartridges. Perhaps you've contemplated buying a new printer rather than replace the cartridges--it seems cheaper and comes loaded with (half full) ink cartridges! Or better yet, you have decided to replace your color printer (which doesn't allow you to print in black ink unless every single one of the many color ink cartridges are also full) with a black-only printer. Or perhaps best of all, you've decided to do everything on your computer and never print again. Print is dying, after all. I personally started buying recycled, refilled ink cartridges several years ago for a fraction of the cost of new, brand-name ones. Apparently, companies like Epson are not amused by the eco-friendly resourcefulness of this approach. Why? As NPR host Renee Montagne explains, the cost of a brand-name ink cartridge, ounce for ounce, can cost more than vintage champagne or Russian caviar. Listen here to find out how Epson is trying to stamp out refilled toner cartridges.

Reinventing Color from 1950 to Today - Color Chart

2009-11-11T15:05:00Z

MOMA's latest intriguing online exhibition includes this fascinating exploration of the commercial color chart: how artists rebelled against it, interpreted it, stretched it, and disobeyed it.

In web design, the commercial color chart is just one of the tools we use to make sure that our sites evoke a certain feeling through the use of color. As you'll notice in the works of art from the MOMA exhibition, the use of a particular color can draw you in like a warm embrace. Others make you want to turn away. Some of the pieces make you wonder about color combinations, while others make you strain to see the differences.

John Chamberlain's U.S. Bonds. from 1965 stands out as the piece I most remember once I've turned away from the site, perhaps because the black is not easily discernible, but the orange such a stark contrast, I can't help but remember it. Jennifer Bartlett's Binary Combinations. from 1971 is one of my favorites as it uses only two colors to achieve every possible combination. John Baldessari's Common Memory Colors: Flesh, White, Grey, Black, Sky, Grass, and Sand. from 1976 is interesting because, according to Kodak, people are most critical of these "Common Memory Colors" in any photograph. Is his photographic representation of these colors correct?

Which piece is your favorite?

The Internet is Over the Hill

2009-10-29T16:11:00Z

It was 1969 and a busy year for making history: Woodstock, the Miracle Mets, men on the moon -- and something less celebrated but arguably more significant, the birth of the Internet.

On October 29 of that year, for perhaps the first time, a message was sent over a computer network. Leonard Kleinrock, a professor of computer science at the University of California-Los Angeles, connected the school's host computer to one at Stanford Research Institute, a former arm of Stanford University.

Forty years ago today, the Internet may have uttered its first word.

Video killed the radio star; the Internet is killing TV.

2009-10-22T16:07:00Z

Television is no longer the 'mainstream' in America, the Internet is...things have changed, unalterably, and essentially, right in your own living rooms.

Abandonment Issues

2009-10-13T14:52:00Z

A new article in the New York Times talks about online shoppers' propensity to fill up their carts on e-commerce sites and then abandon them, an action which only the most bold of us would do in a non-virtual store. Why do online shoppers fail to make that final step and commit to a purchase? Sometimes distractions prevent them from following through. Oftentimes, shoppers know that they can comparison shop much more easily online than they can in person, and will do so. Worst of all, technical glitches can prevent shoppers from making a purchase. The article tells how the upscale clothing retailer Bluefly discovered last month that some international shoppers were unable to use the site's checkout, a problem that went unreported and undiscovered for a year.

So how can online retailers get shoppers to follow through to purchase? The article offers a number of good ideas, including incentives that call for immediate action, and more convenient checkout processes. The good news? E-commerce makes it easier to track shoppers and encourage them to make a purchase.

What are they saying about you on the Internet?

2009-10-07T13:56:00Z

Some of you may be familiar with the saga of unhappy Maytag customer and well-known mom blogger Heather Armstrong, who writes the blog Dooce. In her post “Containing a capital letter or two”, Armstrong described her arduous attempts to get her brand new Maytag washing machine repaired while coping with the monumental amounts of laundry generated by her newborn baby. Armstrong finally resorted to tweeting about her Maytag misery, setting off a chain reaction of help from Maytag executives as well as offers of a free new washing machine from competitor Bosch (Armstrong asked Bosch to donate the machine to her local homeless shelter). Her Maytag got fixed, but at what price to the company’s reputation?

Angry consumers posting on Twitter or other websites about bad experiences with companies’ products and services don’t inevitably have to result in negative publicity. NPR host and Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield founded the website Comcast Must Die after repeated and frustrating attempts to get help from Comcast’s customer service department. According to Slate magazine columnist Farhad Manjoo, the end result was unexpectedly positive:

Over the next few months, the site attracted thousands of visitors, lots of press coverage, and, most surprisingly, Comcast's ear. The company began responding to complaints posted on the site. People who hadn't been able to get through to Comcast on the phone were suddenly getting personal calls from executives eager to help them resolve what had gone wrong. Now Garfield and his Comcast-hating partners are declaring victory; they've transformed Comcast Must Die into a more general-purpose gripesheet, Customer-Circus.com. Comcast, Garfield writes, is still "a vast, greedy, blundering corporate colossus"—but at least it's no longer tone deaf, and that's a start.

This is an astonishing reversal. To be sure, Comcast is still reviled—Consumerist's readers recently voted it the country's second-worst company. (AIG beat it out to take the blog's coveted Golden Poo award.) But as Garfield documents, Comcast has taken a number of positive steps to address complaints, including setting up a team to respond quickly to online grumbling about the firm. If you grouse about Comcast on a blog or Twitter, there's now a good chance the company will seek you out and try to fix your problem.

I attended a social networking seminar this past spring in which the presenter confidently proclaimed that “all social media press is good press, even if it’s bad”. His philosophy was that all criticism on the Internet should be viewed as an opportunity to learn more about your organization than you can from your insider’s perspective. It’s certainly food for thought.