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Let the top 10/20/30 lists begin! Here’s my top stories round-up, using information I collected as I write my latest article for Business Lexington. I’m almost certain to come back and adjust links, so bookmark me, and add your own - cause I know I’m missing some!

iPhone Stirred the Mobile Internet marketplace. While the iPhone earned raves for its interface and sleek styling, it still was designed to operate only on the AT&T/Cingular wireless network, lacked a keyboard and did not operate on 3G broadband networks. Buyers still swooped in after the device, buying one million iPhones in 74 days. The iPhone platform readily integrates a number of Internet technologies that will benefit greatly from the planned 3G version in 2008. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind that the iPhone is still only around 1% of the marketshare. Later it was announced that a 3G iPhone will be available soon.

Merger and Aquisition Madness in the Search Advertising Google acquired Internet Advertising Company Doubleclick for $3.1B, Microsoft bought Ad Agency aQuantive (including Avenue A/Razorfish) for $6B, and Yahoo! bought Right Media creating a potential for conflict of interest in the web search advertising giants that some see as an unfair monopoly.

Google’s Street-Level View Google’s “Street View” solutions for Google maps allows a “virtual drive” of certain cities via 360-degree images captured by specially equipped cars. Privacy advocates quickly found people in compromising positions on some images and Google offered a “blur-out request form” on their website. Microsoft’s version garnered some attention as well, showing scenes through the windows of a race car.

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The small transit operator Fredericton Transit Division had their routes added to Google Transit tonight for the Fredericton (85k) area, adding yet another Canadian location for the terrific trip planning service. The University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University students in the area will surely benefit from this trip-planning service.

The City of Fredericton Transit Division operates 28 buses on eight routes, Monday to Saturday, 6:30 am until 11:00 pm, providing safe, affordable mobility to those in the community who do not have access to or choose not to use a private vehicle. In addition we operate chartered busing to various school, tour, and conference groups in and around Fredericton, and a parallel service , Dial-A-Bus, for persons with a disability.

On my pay per click campaign summary I see this:

I’m not sure but this seems like the first time they’ve made specific traffic increase predictions. Here, they point out

Daily budget of $100.00 met on 13 of the last 15 days. Increasing your budget to the recommended amount would allow your ads to show 118% more often and get approximately 784 more clicks per month.

Yeah, more traffic. But is it the right kind of traffic? Only a watchful eye can tell that. Sadly, many amateur PPC marketers will just go with the recommendation without thinking.

Wow, today I went to change the flickr search on my eStarling frame and found that the previously awful seeframe.com site has now been totally re-worked. Now, a simple drop-down interface allows you to manage image stream sources, such as Photobucket and Flickr via integrated search.  Tags and Playlists are far easier to understand and adjust.

Playlists are cool. Here, you might have your family’s flickr collection for the holidays queued up to start after Thanksgiving. I currently have the RSS feeds from flickr set to show me interesting autumn color landscapes as shown in these screen grabs.  It’s so nice to see new photos on the frame each time I walk by!

One thing is definitely missing for Flickr - feeds for sets and groups, so an absolute must for users wanting to pipe Flickr photos into the estarling frame is the Greasemonkey Script that allows you to see feeds for many more combinations, such as tags. While the seeframe search has definitely improved, it’s still nice to be able to customize your feed even more on Flickr.

The Sacramento Regional Transit District (RT) operates 97 bus routes and 36.87 miles of light rail covering a 418 square-mile service area. Buses and light rail run 365 days a year using 76 light rail vehicles, 254 buses powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) and 17 shuttle vans. Riders can now use Google Transit to plan their mass transit routes.

While the SRTD already had a route planning system, Google Transit offers directions on Google Maps, making for a very simple way to get around.

....Annual ridership has steadily increased on both the bus and light rail systems from 14 million passengers in 1987 to more than 30 million passengers in FY 2005. Weekday light rail ridership averages about 43,600, which accounts for approximately 40% of the total system ridership. Bus weekday ridership has reached an average of 67,000 passengers per day…..

See also the Friends of the Light Rail and Transit site.

According to the New York Times:

“As part of what Wal-Mart is calling its “Customer Contact Reduction” program, by next week, Walmart.com, the company’s online arm, will no longer give customers a toll-free phone number to call–or any phone number, for that matter–if they have a question.

Instead, they will have to rely solely on the Wal-Mart Web site as their guide to the solution for whatever problem they might have, whether it is a question about a credit card charge or the status of an online order.”

Now, they can move their support centers anywhere in the world without getting middle America upset.. because emails and help files have no accent. Mr. Sam Walton might frown on this. But Sam Walton knew a good deal when he saw it.

Some CRM solutions that are entirely web-based can save a company $20-25 per customer interaction. And if these people are already using the Wal-Mart website to order items, this is not a huge leap.

Postscript:

Seth Godin focuses instead on a system where efficiency (i.e. customer buy or repeat buy rate) is the reward offered to successful operators.

I’d focus on building a system that measures [sales rate before call] vs. [sales rate after call]. If the sales rate goes up, give the call center person a raise. It’s that simple.

I’m trying to envision how one could set this up for customer service organizations.  Sales call centers, yes, but service oriented businesses?  Now we’re thinking long-tail.  We’re talking relationships. You would need some rather sophisticated operators to think in terms of the long tail, but if the philosophy was drilled in from day one, you’d get service centers that acted a lot like brand welcoming committees, who are there to improve your brand BY WAY OF fixing problems.  THAT sounds good.