Subscription boxes

In the last couple years, the concept of subscription boxes has grown exponentially.

How does it work?

You subscribe to one the subscription boxes’ websites, enter your personal information (including skin type for beauty boxes, shoe size for shoe boxes….) and answer a few survey questions to help assess your taste. Then, every month, the merchant chooses a few sample size products, puts them in a box and mails it to you.

Why does it work?

For the customer, it is a great and cheap way to discover and try new products or to send a nice care package to a loved one.

It also taps into an important trend that runs parallel to social media: trying new things. So many consumers today use their favorite social network to ask for suggestions on what to eat for dinner, what show to see, what nail polish to use, which outfit to buy, and so forth, making many decisions based on input from friends and even strangers, which has caused countless people to expand their horizons.

For the retailers, it is an easy and convenient way to make consumers try new products and increase brand awareness.

Additionally, retailers get valuable information about their consumers and can therefore reach out and promote other products and services to them.

Some of the most popular boxes in Canada include: Glossybox, Glymm, Luxebox, JustFab, BarkBox, gourmet spotting, LePetitBallon's ….

The Google Glass revolution and g-commerce

What we currently know about the new device is that it will allow hands free access to information such as weather, stock prices, GPS, e-mail, video calls…It will also allow taking pictures and videos and all that though natural language voice recognition.

With the launch of the Google Glass explorer program, and the approaching public launch of the device, we decided to dedicate this post to the impact the device will have on e-commerce or as some early-birds started calling it G-commerce.

While the true impact and use of Google glass will only be known after the public launch, a lot of people have started predicting potential uses of the Glass. One of the main impacts of the Glass will definitely be the ability to search on the go and as we know the Google mobile search app already allows image capture search. We can therefore imagine walking into a bookstore and looking at/scanning a barcode would bring up information about the book, Google shopping would allow price comparison with other vendors and combined with google maps show the best location to get the book in question. Even more impressive, imagine entering a clothing shop, finding a nice shirt, scanning it and have google shopping find it online, automatically suggest the cheapest vendor including shipping costs and allows you to add it to you shopping cart and buy it online without having to take out your wallet or share your financial information with a third party.

Google Glass could truly revolution the way we shop!

Cloud Gaming

Last week, we spoke about the business applications of cloud computing, this week we will see how the cloud is changing the world of video gaming.

Cloud gaming is the new big trend in video games.

Cloud gaming refers to a game that resides on a company server rather than on the gamer’s computer or device. The gamer enters the game by installing a client program that can access the server where the games are running. The main advantage of cloud gaming is that the company can upgrade the games without having to worry as much about the capabilities of users’ computers.

The idea of cloud gaming was first introduced by G-cluster on Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3. Initially, the idea was to offer cloud gaming service over WiFi to handheld devices. In the 2009 Game Developers conference, OnLive demonstrated cloud gaming by streaming the game Crysis over the Internet from a remote server. It officially turned on its service in the US on June 17, 2010, at an initial monthly service fee of $4.95 but later canceled this subscription fee. A year later, Gaikai, which allows game publishers and others to embed free streaming game trials on their web sites, launched its open beta with games from Electronic Arts including Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 2, and Sims 3. Gaikai’s main strength was that it allowed its games to be embedded directly inside websites, on Facebook, or on mobile devices.  The company grew in popularity over the years until Sony eventually bought it in July 2012 for US$ 380 million. This acquisition allowed Sony to use the cloud gaming technology for the PS4, the company’s newest console introduced about two weeks ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8085937.stm

http://cloud-gaming-the-new-gen-gaming-trend.blogspot.ca/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/cloud-gaming/