As Josh mentioned on Monday, Google is about to introduce their new privacy policy and there are significant implications for you personally. Effective Thursday, March 1^st 2012 - tomorrow – Google will begin harvesting your web history and neatly filing it away under your personal profile. Google will then be able to utilize this data to personalize your user experience in a sometimes helpful, but oftentimes creepy fashion. This type of data collection, tied directly to your identity, gives Google a wealth of information to not only utilize for their own benefit, but to sell for huge amounts of money to third party sources.

Again, check out Josh’s post for a set of instructions on how to delete your browsing history (this includes YouTube, Gmail, Picasa, Google+, and the Google search engine) and/or read this very helpful IT World piece that details some of the same.

While you’re at it, be sure to log into Twitter and nuke your old forgotten tweets, as well. It turns out Twitter is going to allow third parties to sift through your old tweets for marketing research information. As Naked Security states, “ Regular Twitter users can only search the site for messages posted in the last seven days or so, but Twitter has granted DataSift access to the full Twitter Firehose, allowing the UK-based firm to monitor and analyse tweets from the last 24 months, and even record sentiments and the location of Twitter users.”

Similar to Google, Twitter has been storing permanent records on all their users and don’t appear to have any issue selling this goldmine to outside sources.

As we’ve said time and time again, if you want to keep something private, don’t post it on the internet.

A couple weeks ago, we got a glimpse of what 21st century marketing research can accomplish. After his teen received pregnancy-related coupons from a Target mailing, a Minnesota father drove to his nearest Target store, berated the manager and left. A couple days later, the store manager called the father to apologize once again, but it was the father who was saying sorry this time. Much to his surprise, his teenage daughter was indeed pregnant. So how on earth did Target figure out this information before anyone else?

Many of today’s most successful companies invest thousands of dollars into marketing research. Everything from consumer spending habits to internet search topics are gathered and aggregated into usable data. Much of the information is anonymous, stored in separate silos or is not readily available, but that is about to change.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Oscar week, which means thousands will be glued to television sets to view the glitz and glamour of Hollywood as they reward the best in show for 2011. Will Meryl Streep finally win another Oscar (we’re going on 30 years)? Can a silent film win best picture? Who will wear the most ridiculous costume (remember Bjork’s infamous swan)? Here are your Oscar-inspired RJS Friday Fun Links.

First off, if you’re hosting an Oscar party or are just interested in learning who the nominees are, this ballot by Rotten Tomatoes will greatly assist you.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the summer of 2011, the Global Innovation Index ranked the United States as just the seventh most innovative country in the world. Furthermore,  a related study by the ITIF examining 40 advanced economies placed the United States dead last in innovation competitiveness from 1999 – 2009. This begs the question, are less-developed economies finally starting to catch up, or is the United States in a bit of a creative lull?

I think it is a little of both. Countries like China and India are seeing explosive economic growth and their ITIF innovation competitiveness scores for the 1999-2009 decade are jumping as well  - China is ranked #1 and India, #14. In regard to what’s limiting our homeland creativity, look no further than our trending test scores as an indicator. The United States ranks fairly poor in math (25th of 34 countries) and merely average (17th) in science.

So what can the United States do to promote creative growth? One idea would be to go extremely hard after an emerging technology and completely own that market. The mobile market is one such opportunity, where mobile advertising impressions grew 251% last year and by 771% in the tablet market alone. In fact, the mobile app economy has created over 450,000 jobs since the advent of apps in 2007. Here are four examples to follow of American businesses thriving with creative technology in the mobile market.

Read the rest of this entry »

RJS solves difficult problems and streamlines business processes for customers big and small. Whether it is a substantial “paperless” solution with multiple products, or a small company needing an affordable, yet robust security suite in Sophos, we’ve found that no two sales are the same.

Although many of our customers want to go paperless or automate a business process, each situation is unique and needs a solution that is tailored to their business environment. We take pride in providing that personal touch to our customers. Here are a handful of our favorite success stories of 2011. 

If you’re having chicken for dinner, there’s a good chance the package has a Gold’n Plump logo on it. Looking to capture web-based forms while integrating with their Lawson portal, Minnesota-based Gold’n Plump is soon rolling out WebForms to capture HR documents. Gold’n Plump also embraces the entire document management lifecycle by managing and distributing documents with WebDocs and securing their data with Sophos.

Read the rest of this entry »

Congratulations, you’ve made it through another week. Your reward: another batch of RJS Friday Fun Links!

Target made news this week with an interesting New York Times report about their behavioral marketing strategy. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the column was the example they used to show how in-depth their analysis has become. Basically, Target has a statistical formula that can identify pregnant women often before the expecting mother has even announced the impending birth. In fact, an angry father recently stormed into a Minneapolis Target store demanding why his teenage daughter was receiving coupons for baby clothes and cribs. The store manager apologized and then called the residence a few days later to apologize again. This time though, it wasn’t the store manager apologizing:

“On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Last June, many top websites and ISPs participated in a 24-hour test of the IPv6 protocol to see the impact of running dual TCP/IP stacks, IPv4 and IPv6 together would have upon their networks. This joint venture, known as World IPv6 Day, was heralded as a resounding success as customers switched enabled IPv6 on their home and business hardware and easily accessed Google, Facebook, Yahoo and more than 1,000 participating websites.

This year’s World IPv6 Day is for keeps. It’s going on and staying on.

Read the rest of this entry »

We have three upcoming webinars this month. Take a look and register if something suits your fancy!

Document Management 101
Thursday, February 16
11am CST
Register for this event

If you’re still manually managing paper documents and data, you’re throwing money away. Attend this webinar and learn how to go paperless by digitally managing, storing and distributing documents and data from a secure, web-based repository.

You’ll also learn how paperless document management can improve document access, speed up workflow and dramatically reduce paper-related printing, storage and distribution costs.

What we’ll cover:

• Intro to document management
• Document management systems vs. network storage
• Cost-saving scanning options
• How to get started

Read the rest of this entry »

While the bread-and-butter of RJS Software’s business has always been our document management software products, we made a strategic decision three years ago to add a security consulting wing to our organization. Since then, security has become an integral part of the document management lifecycle and how we protect your data and sensitive corporate information.

In the last three years, we’ve also come across an industry-wide complaint about security consultants. They’re too expensive and projects take too much time. You know what … we couldn’t agree more. That’s why we have developed a security methodology called, “Lean Security.”

There’s a way to make your security strategy work smarter, not harder. Perfect security is a pipedream. So use what you have and learn from what works. Simply follow these six principles when building your lean security strategy.

The idea of perfect security is a trap.
Embrace the 80/80/80/80/80 rule. You’re better protected with several slightly imperfect layers, than one single line of defense.

Make changes. Measure results. Do more of what worked. Repeat.
Stay one step ahead of attackers by enhancing your operational efficiency. Take the time to learn and minimize resource waste.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know about you, but I thought the Super Bowl was fairly boring this year (until the final 5 minutes). Big plays were few and far between and most of the commercials were duds. At least your RJS Friday Fun Links are never dull!

Speaking of which, big companies spend big money to air commercials to millions of people watching the game. The risk of course is when your ad flops and you’ve just flushed $3 million+ down the drain. So why not follow Old Milwaukee’s route?

The American brewery featured a 30-second spot in the country’s second smallest TV market – North Platte, Nebraska. The ad is simple, endorsed by Will Ferrell and produced significantly more social media buzz than national spots from Cadillac, CareerBuilder and others. As Bloomberg Businessweek accurately states, “Old Milwaukee spent $1,500 to broadcast a Super Bowl spot that’s generated more social media buzz than rivals’ $3 million commercials.” Old Milwaukee has been showcasing this unique campaign in other small cities as well, with humorous Will Ferrell commercials running in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Terra Haute, Indiana and Davenport, Iowa.

Read the rest of this entry »