Tag Archives: Charity

Another Episode of “WHAT IF…” this BIZ meets that Tech

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The idea for the “What If…” Business and Technology series for me, comes directly out of Marvel comics.  The comics ranged from “fictional” battles or plots that were so abstract yet tangent that it was nearly impossible to happen other than in a “one-off”, alternate reality, comic book in the Marvel Universe.   On the same premise, I will spin several stories that will most likely not happen in the “real world”, but we will bring them to light.

Apple Adopts the Palm OS Business Model

Apple spins off its mobile hardware business and focuses on the iOS operating system.  The mobile OS business unit, in theory, will have a robust and direct focus to drive revenue to their area.  We may see partnerships that would have never developed if these units are continued to be tied together.  Mobile iOS on OEM, 3rd party devices?   Multiboot mobile hardware for Android, Linux, and Mac iOS out of the box.  Competing and evolving lines, between the iOS tablets. How about mobile hardware from Motorola, Nokia, or Blackberry using iOS?

Allow Customers to Buy Gasoline as Units at Current Price on Loyalty Debit Cards

A legitimate reason IS NEEDED why in this day and age of commodities trading, storage, pipelines, trains, tankers, and trucks, why if I can buy stocks at current market value, or go on Ebay and buy 50 yards of antique bobbed wire at an auction, why can’t I go to a gas station and buy 50 UNITS of gas at the current price of gas that day? Upon return to the same brand gas station, I should be able to use my same loyalty debit card and subtract units of gas from the card, instead of the current price of gas that day.

EVs “in the field” Use Existing Home Energy Provider, with Transportation Charges Applied

Similar logic can be applied to Electric, and EVs but with a twist, incorporating the use of your home “energy provider”, and when charging ‘on the go’, only pay local “line usage/distribution” fees.

Full Article Here

Fundraising Using Public WiFi, and an UL/DL MB Meter Reading

What if commercial, public WiFi Hotspots partnered with a fundraising cause, and every MB exchanged (up and/or down), a donation of N cents would go to a charity-sponsored by you with Paypal. The business providing the WiFi would match the donation.

Greece Prosperity / Tourism: The World will Come See You in Augmented Reality (AR)

While perusing through all of the ruins, looking at the sites, watching the tour groups, and the tour guides explaining these empty ruins, I pondered, wouldn’t it be amazing to see the people of ancient times dressed in their clothing of the times, interacting with each other through the ruins as though the tourists were not even there. In effect, acting out scenes that perhaps took place thousands of years ago, echoes of the past. I thought why wouldn’t for starters, the government pays the people of the Arts and Sciences to go through scenes, such as basic interactions with a Librarian, studying in one corner, ignoring the world, and just reading and thinking, and in another corner of this library, there might be a quiet debate going on, in Greek of course, and through a translation application, any foreigner could hear their native language the interactions. It could be ancient commoners, to known ancient people of the past acting out scenes like echoes of the past, while tours just come up close and personal, pass by, even wave their hand in front of an actors hand, and he continues to act as if the tourists were not even there. All of these Greek actors would be prerecorded and play out in Augmented Reality (AR).

Full Article Here

 Tune in next time for more “What If…” episodes.

Twitter’s New Tip Jar for Charity Funraising

I’m excited to enable the new Tip Jar feature for fundraising for charities. Twitter users should be able to create a campaign to raise money for a charity boasted with Tweets related to the charity.

The Twitter Tip Jar should allow users to raise money, goal oriented with a tweatable bar chart that indicates progress, current money raised, and target goals.

Twitter Tip Chart should allow multiple fundraising initiatives in parallel, and tweet tags indicate which charity donation.

Twitter Advertising should allow tweet goal oriented tip jar fundraising, and extend the Twitter Advertising model to pause funding tweets based on daily fundraising goals.

Big Data Creates Opportunities for Small to Midsize Retail Vendors

Big Data Creates Opportunities for Small to Midsize Retail Vendors through Collective Affinity Marketing outside Financial Institutions.

In the Harvard Business Review, there is an article, Will Big Data Kill All but the Biggest Retailers?  One idea to mitigate that risk is to create a collective of independent retailers under affinity programs, such as charities, and offer customers every N part of their purchase applies to the charity to reach specific goals as defined by the consumer.   Merchants, as part of this program, decide their own caps, or monetary participation levels.  Consumers belong to an affinity group, but it’s not limited to a particular credit card.  The key is this transaction data is available to all participating merchants for the affinity.  Transaction data spans all merchants within the affinity and not just the transactions executed with the merchant.

Using trusted, independent marketing data warehouses independent retail vendors share ‘big data’ to enable them to compete and utilize the same pool of consumer [habitual] spending data.

Affinity, marketing data companies can empower their retail clients/vendors with the tools for Business Intelligence and pull from the collection of consumer data.  Trusted, independent marketing data warehouses sprout up to collect consumer data and enable it’s retail vendor clients to mine the data.

These trusted loyalty affinity data warehouses, not affiliated with a single financial institution, as previously implemented with credit cards, but more in line with, or analogous to, supermarket style loyalty programs, however, all independent retail vendors may participate OR may cap these affinity program memberships for retail vendor from small to mid-size companies.

Note: Data obfuscation could be applied so customer identification on fields like social security number will not be transparent, limiting any liabilities for fraud.