Vampire Power is the electricity that consumer electronics waste when they are plugged in and not turned on.  In the case of handheld consumer electronics (such as phones and digital cameras), the wall chargers waste power, even when the actual device isn’t connected to them. Recently AT&T began selling the Zero Charger that shuts itself [...]

How do you like it? That’s certainly the most popular question, and a surprisingly difficult one to answer. When someone asks how you like the new lawnmower you just bought, there is an implied context to the answer (the questioner has a lawn that needs mowing). The challenge with the iPad is that it doesn’t [...]

 I’ve spent the past couple of months visiting clients and talking about key takeaways from CES this year, and I’ve promised to blog a quick recap.  So, belatedly, here it is. CES is the largest trade show in the US, it’s hosted in Las Vegas every January and it focuses on the Consumer Electronics industry.  [...]

In a recent post about Microsoft’s new retail initiative, I suggested that that there are aspects of Apples customer experience that could be improved.  Several readers responded, asked for more specifics thoughts. Let me start by saying that Apple has the best dollars per square foot metrics in all of retail.  They don’t need to [...]

The PR folks at Microsoft have to be feeling pretty good. On March 26th Fortune Magazine and others reported that Microsoft’s often hyped multi-touch user interface product, Surface, would not be ready for consumers until 2011. Less than a week later, AT&T Wireless stores and Microsoft announced that Surface would be going live in select [...]

Dusseldorf, Germany February 23-27. Euroshop is held every three years in Germany. I always get a kick out of the fact that Europe has the largest retail show in the world with over 100,000 attendees and over 1900 booths and they call it EuroShop, while in the US we have a retail show with 15,000 [...]

  January 7-10, 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I didn’t realize this until after the fact, but this year marked the 25th anniversary of my first visit to CES. CES has changed a lot in 25 years and sadly I don’t think it’s what it once was. Back in the 80’s, tens of thousands of [...]