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Technology is Closing the Gap Between Companies and Consumers
To the consumer, technology represents another opportunity for aggressive marketers to invade their privacy. Those dinnertime phone calls from rude insurance people immediately come to mind.

But to the company marketing products and services, technology is providing new ways to reach sales objectives.

Data mining is a powerful new intuitive technology that finds hidden predictive patterns in seemingly unrelated data. By finding hidden relationships in a customer’s past purchasing habits, for example, data mining enables companies to better understand their customer’s wants and needs, and to react to them in record time. This ability to anticipate a customer’s needs enables companies to take Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to an entirely new level.

The key, however, is to gain the confidence of the consumer so that marketing messages are welcome, not scorned. This is where marketers must understand the concept of relevance and provide only pertinent messages that make sense to the individual user. By keeping messages targeted, customized and relevant, marketers will avoid bombarding consumers with unwanted, annoying solicitations.

Consider the following five marketing applications. Some are already being used and some are right around the corner, but they all utilize data mining technology that opens up possibilities to a closer relationship with the consumer than ever before imagined.
• Interactive TV (ITV). Interactive TV enables companies to target specific commercials to entire households and the individuals within. Using detailed purchasing information provided by data mining technology, marketers can place advertisements within a show targeted to each viewer’s tastes. A single woman in one household watching “Friends” could receive an ad for perfume, whereas a married couple with a baby watching the same program might see a diaper commercial instead. Interactive TV is a powerful tool for companies to showcase their products to a consumer who has already indicated an interest in similar, competitive products.
• The Web. Technology utilizing Interstitials allows marketers to target consumers on a very personal level via their web browser. Interstitials are windows that pop up in between two web sites, delivering everything from a static advertisement to a full-fledged streaming media commercial up to 30 seconds in length. Superstitials are an even larger version of an Interstitial, taking up most of the screen and providing a very rich online experience. Utilizing this technology, marketers can create streaming media e-mercials that are targeted directly to a consumer’s preferences. If purchasing habits have shown that the consumer enjoys skiing, the e-mercial might showcase the advertised product in a skiing-related environment. The thought process is, of course, that the closer the emotional identification with a product, the more likely we are to purchase it.
• Point-of-Purchase. We’ve all been on the check-out line at the drug store or supermarket and noticed an item right by the register that we impulsively place in our shopping cart. That, in essence, is the beauty of Point-of-Purchase (POP) marketing. It is capable of delivering an immediate response at the most important point in the marketing cycle -- when the customer is ready to purchase. Now data mining technology is revving up the whole concept of POP marketing. One POP program already underway is at the check-out terminal in the supermarket. The bar code scanners at these terminals can extract and database a wealth of information about our past buying habits and predict what will interest us in the future. If you are a fan of Ivory soap, for instance, while you are checking out Dove might generate a coupon offering you a 50 cent discount if you purchase its product instead. POP marketing enables companies to offer promotions at the point in the purchasing cycle when we are most likely to take advantage of them.
• Wireless and mobile marketing applications take CRM to the highest level, since they are contextual as well as content-related. Contextual marketing enables advertisers to not only reach potential customers with relevant promotions, but to do it when and where the customer is ready to buy.
• Wireless. It’s predicted that by the year 2007, sixty percent of the U.S. population will be using wireless devices, as compared to two percent today. According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, in 1999 alone the number of cell phone subscribers grew 25 percent. Smart companies will take advantage of this explosion, utilizing wireless marketing applications as a direct connection with the consumer and a powerful CRM tool. Reaching consumers on their wireless devices allows marketers to entice customers with promotions on products and services in which they have already expressed an interest. For example, a frequent flyer who has just finished checking flight schedules on Delta Airlines via their Palm Pilot will no doubt be interested in receiving a promotion from United or American.
• Location-based. Back in the 1960s, when Captain Kirk pronounced “beam me up, Scotty” from his tiny hand-held device, the notion of being able to pinpoint someone’s exact location seemed light years away. Now, thanks to GPS tracking technology, a person’s location can be identified –via their wireless device – to within as little as a few meters. GPS and other wireless location services are fast creating opportunities for companies to deliver highly personalized, contextual marketing to a consumer who is not only ready, but also in an environment, to purchase at the moment the marketing pitch is offered. Location-based marketing enables hotels, restaurants and retail stores to point consumers toward their nearest location. For example, Barnesandnoble.com already supports Palm VII’s auto-find feature, enabling customers to locate the three closest Barnes & Noble store locations. Other location-based applications range from retail promotions to pointing travelers toward the location of the nearest hotel or gas station to finding out seating availability at your favorite restaurant or movie theater.
Data mining and data-basing technologies are creating exciting opportunities for marketers to cultivate personal relationships with their target market, but these relationships can only thrive with a healthy dose of respect for the consumer’s privacy. No one, after all, wants to develop a reputation as an irritant to their target market – much like the telemarketers who call when we’re sitting down to dinner.

To establish what can be a mutually beneficial relationship, ask the consumer for permission to contact them. Once you get it make sure that you only give them information that is relevant to their needs. Don’t abuse the relationship by bombarding consumers with irrelevant messages that will only annoy them.

Marketers who employ the new technologies while at the same time respecting the consumer’s need for privacy and relevant information will find an exciting new opportunity that can benefit everyone involved.

ASP.NET Programming provides the ultimate security for data and this development will provide you ultimate business solution through development of dynamic website which is gaining its rage at present.
ASP.NET programming has been developed in the year of 2002. The main purpose of this framework is to help that entire individual purpose exclusively for the web pages because previously or earlier it was very much difficult to update manually constant pages before the invention of ASP.NET Programming. Tough it plays very important role in the development of dynamic website development its popularity and need has grown drastically worldwide.

ASP.NET programming has gain its name by constant performance as ecommerce has been immerged in business so fast. Today every single business needs a website to present its business to the world and it should be dynamic in nature and attractive by looks. Then and only it can gain the customer attention.

Security of your highly confidential data is one of the other reasons why one should choose ASP.NET Programming for the development of your website. Any business or organization would prefer to secure data in a very well manner. ASP.NET Programming is known for the securing data by sophisticated techniques. This is the main reasons why government chooses this framework to secure their highly confidential data through development of any government website using ASP.NET Programming.

For the development process you can hire developers from any outsourcing country like India from where you can hire expert and highly experienced developers with the higher affordability. This way you can save thousands of dollars on website development.

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Online security is about the most important infrastructure concern for small businesses. Owners should pay attention, because the vendor world is going through some changes that could make life easier and, most importantly, safer.

Here are two examples: Recently, Symantec launched "Security 2.0," which is intended to be a more comprehensive and holistic approach to security. Reports say that part of the effort focuses on providing enterprise-level security to consumers and, presumably, small businesses. In addition to catering to the lower end of the market, Symantec is expanding to include tangential elements, such as compliance, in the product.

Another example of the changing face of security is the introduction earlier this year of Microsoft's OneCare. This is the first standalone security product offered by the company. As one may expect, Microsoft getting into a business—any business—is a big deal. Another example of increased attention to security products also involves Symantec. Last summer, the company teamed with Yahoo to offer the Norton Internet Security Suite.

There surely are more examples. The bottom line is that Internet security—always a fast-paced subject—is evolving more quickly than ever. A lot of this activity is aimed at small and medium size companies, the new darlings of the vendor community. This means several things, all of which are axiomatic of sectors gaining increased attention: There will be more products available, and these products will be more differentiated from each other, more granular and, pound for pound, cheaper.

That's pretty good. Small businesses should take a fresh look at their security infrastructures, and keep in mind that their options likely are far greater now than when they originally bought their products.

PHP generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating Web pages as output, however you can also use it for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications. PHP is an extremely versatile language which enables you to create high-end, stable Web sites with plenty of bells and whistles. Here are just a few of the things you can do with PHP:

Make HTML Web Forms

Store Information in Databases

Remember Web site visitors (cookies and sessions)

Work with Arrays

Work with Files (File Management and downloads)

Parsing and Generating XML (also useful for large quantities of products on e-commerce)

Check which browser your visitor is using

How does PHP Work?

As its name ("PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") suggests, PHP derives its power by "preprocessing" hypertext on the server side. This generally means that when the PHP script (saved as a .php file) runs on your web server, it performs the programmed actions, and returns HTML code that will then be sent back to your customer's web browser. The PHP script itself is not included in the HTML that is sent to the browser, so the PHP code is invisible and secure to the user.

For example, let's consider the following simple PHP statement. (This example is merely to show the basic syntax of PHP in action. Any detailed discussion of PHP code is beyond the scope of this article.)


Hello World"; ?>

In this statement, is the closing tag, and echo is a PHP instruction that tells PHP to output the text that follows it as plain HTML code. The PHP software processes the PHP statement and outputs the following:

Hello World

This is a regular HTML statement that is delivered to the user’s browser. The PHP statement itself is not delivered to the browser, so the user never sees any PHP statements.

Using PHP to Improve Your Website.

PHP has many capabilities features designed specifically for use in Web sites, including the following:

1. Securing Your Website.

PHP can be used to secure your website (or certain areas of your website) so that your customer must enter a valid username and password. This can be used to reward preferred customers and to build an exclusive "membership" component of your business.

2. Working with Web Forms.

PHP can display an HTML form and process the information that the user types in. This can be an excellent way to learn more about your customers by asking them to provide profile information, and to collect information about their specific interests.

3. Communicate with Your Databases.

PHP is particularly adept at interacting with your databases, and storing information from the user or retrieving information that is displayed to the user. PHP handles connecting to the database and communicating with it, so it's not necessary to know all of the technical details for connecting to or exchanging messages with the database. You tell PHP the name of the database and where it is, and PHP handles the details. All major databases are currently supported by PHP.

4. Customer Loyalty Functions.

You can also use PHP to create a number of different functionalities on your website that will further help you to build customer loyalty, including interactive polls, a guestbook, and a message board.

The popularity of PHP continues to grow rapidly because it has many advantages over other technical solutions. PHP is fast (because it's embedded in the HTML code, the time to process and load a Web page is relatively short), PHP is free (it is open-source software), and PHP is versatile (is runs on a wide variety of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and most Unix variants).

Perhaps most importantly, PHP is a very well-established language. There are many user-run Internet communities that make very large amounts of information (and scripts) available. With so much experience behind it, using PHP for certain dynamic features can be a cost-effective and low-hassle way of increasing the stability of your website.

PHP is popular because it can be embedded directly into HTML coding.

PHP can be used on all major operating systems and is supported on most web servers.

PHP's main focus is development for the web, so it has a quick development time and can solve scenarios much quicker than some of the other web design languages.

The latest version of PHP is a very stable and mature language used for web programming much like Java and Microsoft C#.

It is open source so it is free!

Database: It is very easy to write simple scripts which allow your Web site to interact with a database.

Cross-Platform: Both the PHP engine and the PHP code can be used on almost any platform, making it extremely versatile.

Development Tools: You only need a text editor to work on PHP; you do not need any development environment or compilers.

What is PHP? PHP was originally designed for use in Web site development, but rapidly grew to become a much more robust language.
Practical Uses of PHP

It almost goes without saying that you will want your business website to be compelling, interactive, and secure. All of these characteristics will make your website more effective at bringing in and keeping customers. But how to go about it in a way that is stable, cost-effective, and easy to manage? One popular solution is to use the server-side scripting language PHP to help you solve those problems.

What is PHP?

Created in 1995, PHP originally stood for "Personal Home Page", however it is now generally understood to mean "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". It was originally designed to create dynamic or more interactive web pages. It is a widely-used, open-source, general-purpose scripting language. PHP is a "high-level" language, meaning that it's generally more human-friendly (and easier to learn) than other programming languages such as C, ASP or ASP.net.

PHP was originally designed for use in Web site development, but rapidly grew to become a much more robust language. PHP's primary use is as an "embedded" scripting language, which means that the actual PHP code is embedded in HTML code. When used in this way, PHP enables your web server to process web pages before they're displayed in the user's web browser.

Learn how outsourcing your IT can benefit your small to medium business.
Over the last ten years, the growth of the Internet has allowed small businesses (who previously had to compete at the local level) a chance to stand toe-to-toe with the big international players in their category.

With the competitive field broadened, SMBs need to take close looks at how to build a strong infrastructure without compromising their growth.

One of the most critical areas that many businesses are paying close attention to is their Information Technology department: Should they build it in-house, or outsource it?

Why Your Business Can Benefit From Outsourcing Your IT Infrastructure:

Get access to big business support at small business prices: The "big guys" can afford to have full IT teams with a great deal of experience, but smaller companies generally can only afford one or two people (sometimes part time), with varying degrees of experience. Outsourcing means you get access to a large, experienced team that you otherwise wouldn't be able to work with.

Leave areas that require expertise to experts: Many business owners spend a lot of time as their own Information Technology department. It ultimately comes down to a question of time: how is your time best used? Most business owners would agree that their time is best spent developing their business, rather than worrying about IT issues.

Outsourcing IT usually means much lower personnel costs: If you keep your IT in-house, you have to pay fulltime salary, benefits, and much more. When you outsource, you only use your team when you need them - keeping costs low.

Outsourcing IT also means much lower physical costs: If you're keeping your IT on site, you likely have servers for your email / shared directories, a dedicated server room, and much more. Servers are very expensive, and prone to problems, but when you outsource these needs you get access to a "cloud" of servers, paying only for what you need, when you need it. The savings can be huge, and add up very quickly!

Want to learn how outsourcing your Information Technology can change your business?