Archive for the ‘Tools/Gadgets’ Category

Fans of NFL Football- First Downs Along with First Adopters?

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Advertising, Industry Research, Marketing, Media, Mobile Technology, Social Media, Sports, Technology, Tools/Gadgets, TV
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September 12, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978513602

As the 2010 regular NFL football season begins, fans are reminded of everything they love about the game- the rushing roar of the home team crowd, the crisp fall weather, the complex plays, the strut and swagger of the scoring players. But fans should also take note of the new technology constantly being deployed and tested on football’s biggest fan base- the TV audience.

It may not be obvious why football fans would be such early technology adopters, but it begins to make more sense as you consider how statistically obsessed and fantasy football-involved the modern fan is. A Democrat and Chronicle article reporting on the effects of technology on modern NFL football consumption reported that one average fan they interviewed for their article is “never without his iPhone as he is constantly fed game updates and statistics each Sunday. At home, he watches games on his new big-screen plasma high-definition television through the Dish Network and writes a fantasy football blog at http://www.ffgeekblog.com.”

The same article listed some interesting stats on NFL media consumption, “While 1 million fans watch NFL games in person each week, an average of 16 million watch on television.” TVbytheNumbers.com reported that, according to Nielsen, this year’s first regular season game between the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints on September 10th was the most watched first regular season game ever.

With technologies such as high definition quality, the virtual visual 1st down line, access to any game via the Sunday Ticket, replays, and other league scores rotating on the screen, there’s no doubt that the ability to consume NFL games on TV is better-than-ever. But at stake are ticket sales for the live games, which suffer in terms of convenience and overall costs. Fewer people buying tickets to live games means more local blackouts. NFL team owners and stadium managers are investigating options such as seatback tv screens to bring that experience to the live game, but mobile and wireless technologies are still reigning supreme.

All of this adds up to make American football fans (college as well as NFL) some of the biggest consumers of home entertainment centers, TV equipment, and cable and satellite TV packages. However, as the future of network and cable TV looms ever more uncertain, and as web-based offerings work harder and harder to enhance the scope of their offerings, it seems inevitable that newly emerging products that incorporate the TV and web-browsing experience such as Google TV and Apple TV are perfectly suited to cater to these NFL early adopters with cutting edge offerings. How they do so and how much they cater to this influential demographic of TV fans still remains to be seen.

Google Instant- Google Just Got Even Faster

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Industry Research, Search, Technology, Tools/Gadgets
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September 08, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978505328

Banking on the fact that people read more quickly than they type, and that they have once again designed a feature that will change the way the world searches for information, Google has launched Google Instant.

Instant provides real-time potential search results based on each letter typed into the query box, and works with lightning-quick speed.

Currently Google claims that Instant “saves two to five seconds per search” and “will cumulatively save people more than 3.5 billion seconds every day, or 11 hours every second.” Was searching taking us all too long before? Was it, say, so tediously long that it was preventing us from spending time with our families or volunteering at our local charities. Not likely. However, there are those who would say that faster is always better.

Still, there are bound to be skeptics, many of whom will and are saying that Instant is merely a ploy to make Google look more cutting-edge, without necessarily representing truly large changes in how Google “organizes the world’s information.” In fact, Google itself admitted that “While the behind-the-scenes engineering that generates those results is a big reason Google gets the majority of searches, it can be hard for average users to notice. The instant results make this much clearer.”

PC Mag compared Google Instant to Bing’s Type Ahead functionality, which has been in place for a while, and found that Google Instant doesn’t necessarily come out on top. Specifically, reviewer Lance Ulanoff mentioned “Google Instant, for now, only works when you’re signed in and may be using some search history to intuit results. It combines type ahead with live results, while Bing only offers you a list of probable word matches. Still, the word matches in Bing are pretty solid, and if Google Instant is showing you a page you weren’t interested in anyway, then what’s the value in it?”

For the skeptics, cynics, and those with sensitive eyeballs, Google Instant does offer the chance to opt out (hint: look to the right of the search box, see the blue link reading: “Instant is on.” Click that), as Gadgetwise reports along with other tips on how to use the new feature.

As Gizmodo reported on the announcement event, Google Instant will be available on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8 starting today. Additionally, it is not yet available on browser toolbars or for mobile phones. That rollout is expected to occur in the coming months.

Every new browser innovation that is announced also reminds us again about the delayed promise of the “answer engine,” embodied most famously by the “computational knowledge engine” introduced to us by the Wolfram Alpha people a couple years ago. Answer engines such as Wolfram Alpha, launched in 2009 are supposed to collect and organize all of the information from authoritative databases and engines to obtain the answer to a specific question. In other words, the next step was supposed to be to skip the list of search results, and to send us straight away to the answer backed up by authoritative and well listed information.

Clearly Google has not yet come to adopt that model of search engine, and Wolfram Alpha has not yet even begun to compete with Google’s search market domination. Alas, as users we shall all have to be satisfied with how much faster we are delivered the search results that Google supplies, and follow the progress and promise that answer engines still have yet to deliver on.

Looking for more about Google Instant? Check out Google’s YouTube video about Google Instant.

Old Spice, Chickens, and Bears- Oh My! A Look at the Art of Interactive Advertising

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Academics, Advertising, Art, Branding, Industry Research, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Tools/Gadgets, TV
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September 02, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978491387

Smart advertisers and marketers know that part of building awareness of a brand and attachment to a brand these days involves allowing the consumer to feel as if they are a part of the brand, and the brand is a part of them.

The most innovative way to elicit this feeling among increasingly jaded consumers is to allow them to participate in the way a product is sold to them, or presented to an overall greater audience. In other words, to integrate elements of “interactive or collaborative advertising” into their overall marketing strategy.

Some of this is revolutionary stuff, and is still regarded as too dangerous by most traditional advertising, marketing and brand agencies the world over. Ostensibly, what it means is giving consumers permission to experiment with, and command some control of, a brand. If I may go down a yellow brick road of an analogy, this is no less than cutting down the Wizard’s curtain and revealing the small man behind it, subsequently allowing the consumer to revel in his or her discovery of the small man, and as a result of said revelation, being amply empowered to get Dorothy back from Oz to Kansas his or her self.

But when it works, it works so, so well.

Let us take, for example, the Old Spice Guy. If you’ve never seen or heard of Isaiah Mustafa, or any of the YouTube response videos that the company launched in response to Tweets it was receiving, then you must be dead or on a remote desert island with no smartphone. This ad campaign which has incorporate TV ads, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube so well has dominated most of this year’s buzz conversations.

How about something more recent? Tipp-Ex is a correction fluid brand (think White-Out), who recently launched a YouTube video ad campaign which allows the viewer to determine the end of the story. The viewer first watches the setup video where a guy camping with his friend is alerted that a bear is right behind him, and is urged by his friend who is videotaping the event to shoot the bear. The video viewer is at this juncture permitted to decide if the man should shoot the bear, or not. After making the decision, the viewer is redirected to a video in which the camper urges the viewer to rewrite the story.

The whole thing is highly reminiscent of “advertising and design factory,” CP+B’s groundbreaking 2001 “Subservient Chicken” campaign for Burger King, where visitors to the website can type in any command and a man dressed in a chicken suit on a webcam performs the requested function. So while Tipp-Ex’s overall concept isn’t new, their delivery is.

Largely what’s interesting about interactive or collaborative advertising is that it nicely paints the line between earned media and paid media. A company pays to create the initial ad, but then by virtue of the fun of interacting with it and collaborating it, consumers share and continue to virally promote that ad, which is where your earned media begins to kick in.

These concepts aren’t exactly brand new, but their integration into basic marketing strategies is, and increasingly larger companies are beginning to take notice of how much buzz can be generated through earned media without having to necessarily pay for every step of it. In addition, not every company has experienced skyrocketing revenues as a result of investing in interactive advertising, so the science here and how to master it is still relatively new.

One thing’s for sure, however. It sure makes advertising a lot more fun from the consumer perspective.

Get the Feeling You’re Being Followed? You Are.

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Advertising, Industry Research, Marketing, Media, Mobile Technology, Politics, Search, Social Media, Technology, Tools/Gadgets
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August 30, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978482524

At the beginning of this year Mark Zuckerberg famously announced that privacy was dead, stirring the pot and increasing concerns among the majority of internet users that their identities and personal information were being appropriated for capital gain.

Arguably, 2010 has been the year of “location aware technology,” whether the location is two dimensional or three dimensional. These days your computer knows where you’ve been online, where you’re going, and why you buy things there, and your phone can tell any satellite where you physically are on the globe and what advertising you’re passing at that very moment. Clearly, marketers are doing their best to collect as much of that information as possible and to use it.

One of the main issues in the ongoing debate about whether location aware technology and geotagging are net-positive or net-negative developments (or somewhere in between) centers on the concession that advertising and marketing are not going away any time soon. Advertising is an institutionalized facet of American life, especially in major urban centers. That being said, marketers like to argue that with more information they can better speak to a consumer’s interests and needs, as opposed to leading a consumer to buy something he or she doesn’t need.

Leaving that argument for a minute, the real concern here is over privacy, and educating the masses on how to protect their own privacy. A recent article in the New York Times cautioned readers against geotagging photos at their homes, and cited the example of Adam Savage, one half of the “MythBusters” team who had geotagged a Twitter photo of his car in front of his personal residence in the Bay Area. The Times pointed out that by doing Adam Savage had just informed all of his Twitter followers of his personal address, the make and model of his car, and that he was leaving for work at that very moment, “geotags… are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras. Because the location data is not visible to the casual viewer, the concern is that many people may not realize it is there; and they could be compromising their privacy, if not their safety, when they post geotagged media online.”

Now with Facebook Places, a new feature which allows its users to tag their locations in their status updates, and the increasing use of Twitter and FourSquare, organizations such as the ACLU are concerned that the spread of technology is one again outpacing usage education and awareness of the risks of information abuse, “The organization highlighted the element of the new service that allows users to “tag” an accompanying friend and post his or her location to Facebook – even if the friend does not have an iPhone, which is currently the only platform on which the application is available.”

The other side of this coin involves how browsers and advertisers track our movements online. After all, this is a huge market that Facebook plans to tap, 50 percent of Facebook’s over 400 million users log in to the site at least once a day, and more than a quarter of that overall number access the service from mobile devices. However, despite all of the hype, new research shows that most users still decline to announce their location publicly.

According to a recent Forrester Research report, “Just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and 1 percent use them weekly…Eighty percent of those who have tried them are men, and 70 percent are between 19 and 35.”

Returning to the modern marketer’s argument that the more information they can gather on a person’s interests, habits and locations, the more applicable an ad will be for a consumer, there is strong evidence to support this. Personalized ad retargeting, where ads for specific products that consumers have perused online follow them around while they continue to browse the web, are becoming more pervasive. And marketers are big believers, “‘The overwhelming response has been positive,’ said Aaron Magness, senior director for brand marketing and business development at Zappos, a unit of Amazon.com.”

Still, consumer sentiment about being monitored, whether online or off, reflects overall concern and creepy feelings. Ongoing education about how browsers and advertisers collect behavioral information both online and off might serve to eliminate the two-way mirror feeling that many consumers experience. However, it has not yet proven to completely allay consumer fears and concerns about a potentially serious breach of privacy.

In other words, while consumers feel uncertain as to where all of this leaves their privacy, advertisers are increasingly certain of where consumers stand. Literally.

What Your Phone Says About Your Views on Democracy

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Mobile Technology, Politics, Technology, Tools/Gadgets
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August 18, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978453348

Is your phone listening to what you say? What role does your mobile phone play in aiding the government? Have you ever considered which side your phone is on?

In two different countries mobile communications equipment companies are currently under the microscope for two distinct, but very related problems. For Research in Motion (RIM), the popular company which produces the Blackberry, the company stands accused of failing to provide the Indian government with the help it needs to monitor terrorist activity. For Nokia Siemens, it is quite the opposite: they are being sued by a citizen for aiding the Iranian government in ferreting out political dissidents.

In India RIM is in negotiations with the government to find a common ground which would not force RIM to supply the Indian government with access to the corporate email and SMS messages transferred on its Indian networks. RIM is quickly coming up against an August 31st deadline after which time a cease and desist order has been issued, as the New York Times reported, “wireless phone companies said they had received a formal notice from the government to shut off BlackBerry Messenger and corporate e-mail services on Aug. 31.”

RIM, it would seem, is between a rock and a hard place. The rock, in this case, is the enormous potential of the Indian wireless market. The New York Times estimates “there are an estimated one million BlackBerry users here, and the popularity of the devices is growing as more Indians use e-mail and smartphones.” The hard place is its own commitment and reputation as a company which has done more to protect its corporate customers’ privacy. RIM owes its outstanding success, in large part, to the fact that both corporate and government clients believe in its ability to protect the security of their messages. Let us not forget that President Obama has was granted the right to retain his own Blackberry, and has even stepped in to defend the company in this debate.

For the moment, it seems that in order to retain some chance of serving the second wireless market in the world, RIM has conceded to identify corporations whose servers hold readable, or unencrypted, versions of messages. This would then allow Indian authorities to seek access to the messages from the corporation through a court order. Reportedly, Indian authorities are already working to streamline those legal processes to ensure that the government can access the target messages as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, in Iran, Isa Saharkhiz has filed suit against Nokia Siemens for aiding the Iranian government in surveilling its networks to ferret out political dissidents. Saharkhiz claims that cell phone surveillance was instrumental in her arrest in the events following the 2009 presidential election in Iran.

Specifically, Saharkhiz is accusing Nokia Siemens of helping the Iranian government to violate human rights, a charge which aligns with previous claims by Nobel Peace prizewinner Shirin Ebadi, that Nokia Siemens was “sending ‘the Iranian state software and technology that it can use to monitor telephone calls and text messages.’”

A Nokia Siemens spokesperson recently told AFP “We believe that communication and mobile phone technologies play a significant role in the development of societies and the advancement of democracy.” If the American President and his administration are stepping in to attempt to facilitate some type of cooperation between RIM and the Indian government, and Iranian citizens can sue mobile phone companies for conspiring with the government to infringe on human rights, in the modern age, is one’s choice of phone truly also representative of one’s sentiment toward democracy in general?

Wikileaks and the Future of What America Knows

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Media, Politics, Tools/Gadgets
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July 28, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978401470

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is frequently referenced by members of President Obama’s administration in the context of their own transparency efforts. However, most Americans are not aware that the Freedom of Information Act was actually signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 6, 1966.

As a refresher, the act allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information controlled by agencies which report to the executive branch of the American government. The act was significantly strengthened between 1995 and 1999 when President Bill Clinton extended the amendments to the FOIA to include the release of previously classified national security documents after a period of 25 years.

President Clinton’s extension of the act specifically released information which revealed a bevy of new information about the Cold War which had been previously unknown to the public, thereby creating a precedent and deadline for delayed but perhaps more educated public debate on the wartime strategies of the US government.

However, it now appears that the latest era of information dissemination might be effectively subverting the original intentions of the FOIA. On July 25th, website Wikileaks which operates in order to publish “leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct” released documents in a set entitled the “Afghan War Diary.” The set of documents comprises over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, essentially reducing FOIA’s 25 year window to zero.

Predictably, the documents which have created an unhappy stir among military and intelligence leaders. The reports are written by a number of different sources at all levels of command and from within and outside the operations in Afghanistan themselves.

The general sentiment of the modern information era claims that with more information we are all better, smarter, healthier and safer. However, this latest leak of classified documents and reports forces us all to re-examine whether we are, indeed, safer as a result of having this type of knowledge? The Wikileaks site itself admits “We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits,” which would suggest that the original restrictions allowed for by President Clinton’s original extension of the FOIA may still hold some water.

While delaying those documents, can we really engage in fully educated discourse about US strategy in Afghanistan? Without the luxury of hindsight, can we accurately determine what works and what doesn’t? These are the tough questions that the US government will continue to face as they grapple with keeping secrets in the face of a world wide web that seeks every day to uncover them.

What the Smartphone “Jailbreaking” Ruling Really Means

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Media, Mobile Technology, Politics, Tools/Gadgets
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July 28, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978401386

On Monday July 26 the U.S. Library of Congress reached a groundbreaking decision concerning modern copyright laws and thrilling open source advocates the world over. The decision ruled that it was now legal to “jailbreak” a mobile phone. Or, in more vernacularized terminology, it is now legal to open up a phone’s controls to accommodate software that the phone maker had not previously authorized.

The ruling is the result of lobbying by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group who had argued for these “exemptions” to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for several years. Enacted in 1998, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is a law which specifically extends copyright laws in the US to protect intellectual property and prevent copyright infringement on the Internet.

But what are the implications of the ruling? This decision opens up a huge debate about the differences between hardware and software and the way modern users will approach each as they apply to smartphones. As smartphone adoption and the numbers of application developers continue to rise, it is highly possible that users may begin to regard smartphone services and applications as they regard wifi, music and computer software: as something that should be free, and something that should be easy to share. Could it be that in the future hardware will continue to be something that you buy and invest in, but that software is destined to be free?

The ruling has been widely projected on Apple and its dominantly successful iPhone. As the New York Times wrote in its July 26th article covering the decision, “The issue has been a topic of debate between Apple, which says it has the right to control the software on its devices, and technically adept users who want to customize their phones as they see fit.” Apparently, Apple’s arguments with the US Copyright Office in the past claimed that jailbreaking phones would infringe on Apple’s copyrights by using an altered version of Apple’s OS.

However, hackers should be forewarned that this may not prove to be the complete ‘get out of jail free’ card that they are envisioning. Some mobile phone manufacturers, such as Apple, have countered by threatening that phone warranties will not be honored once a phone has been “jailbroken.”

What do you think of the ruling? Is this the newest banner issue for the open source movement? Do you think of hardware and software separately in this regard?

When Early Adopters Ruled the World

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Academics, Industry Research, Technology, Tools/Gadgets
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July 23, 2010- http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978389762

Are you an early adopter or a laggard? Are you neither? Do you even know what these labels mean? Every technology company does, and how you respond to this question determines their relative level of interest in you as a tech consumer.

Incase you have never before encountered these terms, here’s a quick synopsis: Everett Rogers’ “diffusion of innovations” model organizes people based on how long it takes for them to adopt and adapt to new technologies.

Rogers’ theory comprises five groups. First, the “innovators,” which should be relatively straightforward. These are the people who are inventing and pushing the envelope. Next, the “early adopters” are big believers and big influencers who adopt technology right as it enters the market. The “early majority” follows. Those who belong to this group listen to early adopters and, based on their review and expert reviews of technology, will generally adopt and adapt to innovations. The “late majority” are those who are largely skeptical of emerging technologies, but realize when new technology becomes omnipresent that it’s time to get on the bandwagon. Last, but by no means least are the “laggards,” the strong skeptics who often blatantly disregard new technologies and publicly reject the latest innovations.

Laggards may often end up adopting technology further down the road, but can actually miss whole stages of innovation in between. For instance, a laggard might go straight from a Walkman to an iPhone without ever owning a single CD or minidisc.
But how does this all really break down into numbers? Early adopters generally only represent 13.5 per cent of the population, while early majority and late majority members represent 34 per cent each, making for a combined 68 per cent of us. The laggards represent just slightly more than the early adopters, at 16 per cent of the population. But why, then, does it feel as if everyone already owns (and complains about) an iPhone 4?

One theory is that early adopters and innovators are the most talkative about new technology. They love to show off their new gadgets and discuss them constantly.  The early majority and late majority assume everyone else has already heard enough about their gadgets by the time they acquire them. For laggards, chances are they are only interested in the fact that their technology works the way they want it to. Beyond that, their interest in the subject pales.
For these reasons early adopters and even the early majority have often been the darlings of the technology sector, who mostly focus their marketing and advertising on this 47.5 per cent segment of the population. However, now that the interwebs have been around for a while and we can reflect on some of the early fervor that the Web incited, some who were early web app and website adopters are now beginning to regret the information they put out there so early.

After all, the web has proven to be incredibly sticky with information, and increasingly website privacy controls evolve over time just as much as any consumer hardware design. That means the information entered ten years ago might be in the same condition as when you inputted it, but it might be visible to about 10 million more eyes than it was in the very beginning. In addition, consumer reviews of new gadgets, especially groundbreaking new efforts by technology companies, increasingly seem to suggest that the first generation of anything isn’t actually ready to own.

Do these frequent, and increasingly public failures in high-tech gadgetry suggest that a new era may emerge where late majority and laggard segments of technology consumers may be growing? If so, will technology companies begin to market more to laggards, and if so, how exactly would that look?

To quote an expression oft-used by a laggard friend of mine, “only time will tell.”

How FourSquare Will Control Your Local Billboards

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Advertising, Branding, Industry Research, Marketing, Media, Mobile Technology, Search, Tools/Gadgets
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July 22, 2010: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978387268

The news recently broke that Foursquare is forming agreements to start charging search engines such as Google and Bing for their geographic location data. Instantly various news sources launched stories seeking to satisfy user curiosities by positing what these information transactions might lead to in the future. Among the many educated guesses were enhanced real-time search, social mapping, and more strongly developed mobile search. I would add one more: more strongly targeted traditional advertising and marketing media.

Internet analysts and emerging media connoisseurs may write disproportionately more about innovative new technologies, but if you ask the advertising and marketing executives of the world if they have abandoned traditional media as part of their integrated campaigns, the answer would be a resounding “no.” The data that Foursquare will provide is a solid reinforcement of retaining those traditional marketing strategies. What we physically see and interact with outside of the realm of our computer and television screens still matters.

Still, it might surprise most people to learn that the data they generate by using Foursquare’s geo-location technology will be used to determine what shows up on their local billboards. Yes, you heard right– billboard. Even if, admittedly, these days that billboard might be digital and therefore closer to a television than the enormous printed posters the term still conjures.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Geo-location data brings the internet back to the earth by collecting information on where you were when you saw what. With apps like Foursquare, suddenly it’s not who you are, but where you are and when that matters most again. That means that physical advertising efforts such as billboards can be even better data-driven and targeted to the interests of local populations.

How do you feel about these types of emerging social media and GPS-oriented advertising ventures that will know where you go, where you shop, and where you eat? Do you think of this type of geographically-targeted advertising as convenience, or as an invasion of privacy?

Cream and Sugar with Your Wifi? A Look at the New Starbucks Digital Network

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Advertising, Branding, Industry Research, Marketing, Media, Mobile Technology, Music, Tools/Gadgets
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(This post can also be found on Gather.com here: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978618733. It was originally posted October 20, 2010)

Although the coffee giant has been offering free Wi-Fi in the majority of its U.S. retail locations since July 1st, a new exclusive content network called the Starbucks Digital Network (“SDN”) launches October 20th in more than 6,800 of its U.S. operated stores.  The new content network will be specifically curated by the company and is being launched to enhance the customer’s in-store experience on what some might call a fourth dimension- the Web.

“The vision,” Starbucks’s Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman told Mashable, “is for Starbucks Digital Network to be a digital version of the community cork board that’s in all of our stores.” The move is a strategic one, despite the financial free-wheeling philosophy it seems to represent.

Starbucks has struggled publicly in the last few years with its big-brand, corporate generic image and how to compete with much-loved “mom and pop” coffee stores in big cities. The initial backlash was palpable, but with CEO Howard Schultz back at the helm, Starbucks is now trying to improve its public dedication to the local communities it moves into, and to incorporate many of the elements that make the neighborhood coffee joint a favorite for locals.

Because Starbucks relies so heavily on the in-store experience, the company is attempting to enhance the “third space” look and feel of the retail locations while also providing a stellar “fourth dimension” experience online.

As part of its extensive content network, SDN will offer access to news sites such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today, but will also offer additional content channels such as “entertainment, wellness, business and careers, my neighborhood and the customer-personalized Starbucks.” The incorporation of the “my neighborhood” content channel is a pillar in the giant’s strategy to compete with the local feel of smaller community-based coffee shops.

As Brotman told Mashable, SDN “delivers on this objective by serving up content to users based on the exact whereabouts of the store where the user is accessing the free Wi-Fi. Community fare includes local news from Patch and a look at nearby DonorsChoose.org classroom projects that could benefit from small contributions. Foursquare users can check in via the web from Starbucks stores, and Zagat makes available full ratings for restaurants in the surrounding area for free.”

But when is too much, just, too much content? Reportedly, Starbucks will be tracking user activity via web analytics to get a sense of what users respond to. From there they plan to taper the content network and its offerings based on usage research what is most popular.

From the research the company has already gathered based on its free Wi-Fi offerings since July 1st they now know, according to Brotman, that “more than 50% of users logging on to the free Wi-Fi are doing so from mobile devices, so the company was motivated by usage behaviors to build a mobile web experience just as good, if not better than, the standard web experience.”

As a boon for what many regard lately as a foundering hi-tech company, Yahoo is the coffee retailer’s technology partner for the SDN, having developed the site, hosting the SDN, powering search and also providing content. Yet Starbucks is not exactly following a hi-tech profitability model. The coffee behemoth is not charging its content partners for placement on the network, and no financial transactions are taking place unless SDN users make purchases.

Yet as traditional tells us, location is everything. As emerging technologies and social media allow consumers to make more educated, location-based purchasing decisions, perhaps this is Starbucks’ and Yahoo’s way of embedding themselves in communities via an increasingly location-based technology market. As Brotman said, “We’re really excited about the fact that we can leverage the location-based nature of the site to connect our customers with the communities around the stores,” he says.

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