August 17, 2004 - Many products live or die by word of mouth, but marketers have never been able to fully measure what the public thinks outside of limited focus groups and surveys. Increasingly, they're turning to Weblogs, online discussion groups and product review sites to hear what consumers are saying. One of the companies they hire for such research is BuzzMetrics , which counts dozens of Fortune 500 corporations among its clients. This week the company released a study which monitored online consumer discussions about the dangers of trans-fat in foods. BuzzMetrics says those discussions are leading the packaged food industry to change the way they manufacture and market food.
August 19, 2004 - Minnesota Public Radio President Bill Kling joins Gary Eichten to answer questions from MPR listeners about buying WCAL and a range of other topics.
August 19, 2004 - A new study says for the first time, more Americans are using fast cable or DSL connections to access the internet than dial-up accounts. Broadband makes for much faster music and video downloads. For example, a three minute song that might take a half hour to download over dial-up will take only a few minutes over broadband.
August 20, 2004 - Frustrated by the worldwide digital divide, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University has created a combination computer/television/DVD player/videophone designed for the billions of people who make less than two thousand dollars per year.
August 24, 2004 - People collect all sorts of things, but banner ads are extremely unusual. Tari Akpodiete has 17,000 of them saved to her computer. Website ads for movies, books, porngraphy sites, and lots more. She display them at BannerReport.com, a site that has become a resource for people who design ads, and a bit of an Internet museum. Seeing an ad that caught her fancy one day, Ackpodiete saved it to her hard drive. One thing led to another, and an obsession was born.
August 25, 2004 - About two years ago, the recording industry and 43 states settled a lawsuit that accused record companies of inflating the cost of CDs by requiring retailers to sell them at or above a set price in order to qualify for advertising funding. As part of the the $144 million settlement, the companies agreed to provide more than $5 million worth of CDs to public libraries.
August 27, 2004 - It's called "Really Simple Syndication," or RSS for short. It's a method for reading web sites without actually visiting them, or having to subscribe to newsletters that deliver content through e-mail. You can subscribe to many major news sites with RSS, and most major blogs, too. You can even get some of your favorite comic strips.
August 30, 2004 - Life's not easy for small businesses. Either a big corporation is squeezing your future or you're scratching for money to fix some machine. Survive ten years and you're an old-timer. Last 144 years and you're a legend. The August Schell Brewing Company of New Ulm has managed that trick. The family owned business has survived war, prohibition, the Great Depression and cut-throat beer competition. Mainstreet Radio's Mark Steil reports.
September 1, 2004 - In Paris yesterday, Apple Computer unveiled its new iMac desktop computer. Disk drives and processors are tucked into a flat display less than two inches thick. With the iMac G5, the monitor is the computer.
September 2, 2004 - Nearly half of Americans online use instant messaging on the internet, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That amounts to 53 million people. Twelve million Americans use IM more than e-mail. The survey finds that AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger and other similar software is especially popular among younger adults and the tech savvy. However, Pew researcher Amanda Lenhart says IM still has a ways to go in the workplace.