Tom Funk's Blog, page 10

Timberline Interactive and CommerceV3 Announce Merger

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MIDDLEBURY, VERMONT, SEPTEMBER, 10, 2009 -- Fast-growing e-commerce platform provider CommerceV3 and leading online marketing agency Timberline Interactive of Middlebury today announced a merger. The combined company will unite a proven online store platform with a vast array of e-commerce marketing services.

"Our team was already working in the CommerceV3 environment to grow orders and sales for many of our clients," says Bud Reed, founder of Timberline. "In many ways, this...

Wine of the Month Club Launches New Website

Let's raise a glass to Paul Kalemiarian and the whole Wine of the Month Club team. Last week their new website, designed and built by Timberline Interactive, was launched with a great new look and lots of new features to serve the club's members, wine lovers and gift-givers. The new website is hosted on the CommerceV3 ecommerce software platform.

The Original Wine of the Month Club®, founded in 1972 to take the guess work out of fancy labels and expensive price tags in choosing a great wine

From Dollar Signs to Little Black Dresses, These Aren't Your Mother's Cookie Cutters

Ann Clark Ltd., America's leading maker of cookie cutters, has released a number of new products that are a but more cutting-edge (pardon the expression) than you might remember from childhood.

A little black minidress. A martini glass. A dollar sign, in green packaging bearing the word "Dough" (yes, the puns are coming fast and furious now). A sleek penguin with the inscription "Chill Out."

These are not your mother's cookie cutters! Unless, of course, you're Ben Clark, VP of the Rut

Google Caffeine -- the "New Google Results" Unveiled

Google has unveiled its Caffeine project, a remaking of the infrastructure of how the search engine crawls and indexes sites. The ranking algorithm will undergo changes, too, but at first look, the changes are pretty subtle.

Test-drive Google Caffeine search engine here.

At CompareCaffeine.com, you can also compare the new results to the old results, side by side.

Hey, Merchants: Let Your Real, Quirky Voice Come Through

In this day and age, none of us have a lot of patience for "corporate-speak." And techno-speak is even worse.

Most of what we read is on a web page, an email message, a text message. We're too busy and too easily distracted to put up with empty words -- so cut to the chase.

A bug-tracking and project management software we use at Timberline generates regular status-update messages whose subject lines only a programmer could love: "Work Item Raised Alert Change Email." Huh?

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Lies, Damned Lies and Web Analytics

I just read in Forbes that the majority of US families have zero credit card debt.

What? How can that be? For decades we've been hearing about Americans' increasing reliance on credit cards. And the most recent Nilson Report data confirms that the average household credit card debt is $8,329.

The discrepancy lies in those two different statistics: Average and majority offer two very different perspectives. In this case, about 22% of US households don't even possess credit cards. Anothe

Twitter Denial of Service Attack

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Twitter was down much of this morning thanks to a DDoS attack.

The site is back up now but responding slowly. To check on the status of Twitter, visit the Twitter status page. Which is very helpful, um, when Twitter is up. And when Twitter is unavailable? Not so much.

Worldwide & US Internet Ad Spending Report, Q2 2009

 Online Advertising Shrinks in Q2

Global online advertising spending dipped 5% in the second quarter, according to a new research report. The year-over-year decline reflected the worldwide economic slowdown, and it fell disproportionally on two already beleagered online ad formats: display advertising (off 12%) and classified ads (off 17%).

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Search was relatively unaffected, remaining flat year-over-year. Google maintained its dominant search ad market share "despite the launch of Bing</>

Ann Clark in the News

Vermont-based cookie cutter company launches its new promotional products Web site, turning corporate logos and industry icons into quality custom cookie cutters. These fun and functional promotional giveaways are a sweet way for businesses to keep their brand in the forefront of customers.

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Rutland, VT (PRWEB) August 5, 2009 -- Businesses of all sizes are always in the market for unique ways to keep their brand in front of customers, often choosing to place their name on pens, pads, mugs a</>

Ning Social-Network Sites: This Is Your Blog on Steroids

While Timberline's primary business is building ecommerce websites and helping their owners market them, we do find ourselves designing blogs and other side-projects for our clients from time to time.

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Blogs as a phenomenon were certainly overhyped a few years back. Douglas Quenqua recently wrote in the New York Times that according to a 2008 survey only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the Times tracks had been updated in the past 120 days -- with "95 percent of blogs being essenti</>