Best of ECT News

Here in Silicon Valley we are currently worried about a major transportation strike, and I doubt many on either side yet realize that this is likely to accelerate the move to automate most of the related jobs. There is little doubt the problem we are currently seeing here will be virtually gone in a...

One of the phrases CRM vendors love to toss around these days is this saw: "CRM makes every employee a salesperson." I'm sure the VP of sales loves this vision, in which he suddenly is served by a quadrupled or quintupled number of salespeople, many of whom he doesn't have to manage and to whom he d...

In an effort to catch up with their data-swamped online counterparts, brick-and-mortar retailers are turning to a new tool to help them better monitor shoppers and maximize sales: shoppers' cell phones. Approaches include tracking shoppers as they move about the store using their phones' connection ...

A teacher standing at the front of the room at a chalkboard is one of the iconic images of education. Smartboards and other digital technologies, however, are changing how classrooms are structured, how teachers teach, and how students learn. "We're all about increasing student engagement and achiev...

It is difficult to overstate the importance of social CRM to retailers given the almost tailor-made suitability of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest et al. for reaching out and engaging with customers. What's less clear, however, is exactly how retailers should use social CRM to talk with those customers...

No one expects a free lunch. So when people use a free webmail service, many assume they will be bombarded with advertising. Why? Obviously, because the webmail services make money by commercializing the content of the webmail! Actually when you sign up for free webmail, and click "I Accept," or som...

Scientists from Harvard, MIT and CIT have demonstrated that light can behave in a way previously observed only in science fiction -- that is, photons can bond and create a molecule. The fundamental properties of light derive from the fact that photons, which are the quanta of light, do not interact ...

In examining airplane crashes, investigators often discover that it's not one thing that causes the disaster. It's a chain of interrelated things that go wrong: A mechanical failure or weather event can elicit the wrong reaction from the pilot, which worsens the initial problem and starts a sequence...

Researchers at ETH Zurich have teleported information from one end of a superconducting circuit to another -- a distance of 6mm. The experiment has two unusual features: 1) It is the first time quantum teleportation was conducted over a circuit without the use of a powerful laser beam; and 2) the in...

Shopping for groceries might not be top of mind for many rail commuters -- at least, not until they see one of Peapod's virtual supermarkets in a train station. Peapod, which has long been at the forefront of online grocery sales, has pushed its virtual offerings into the real world, and its strateg...