As businesses continue to eliminate the human element of customer service and push consumers to doing more and more business online, they've given rise to growing danger for those who end up sharing a lot of info online: identity theft.

Most at risk, according to a new report from British insurance company Willis Group Holdings, are business travelers who book hotel rooms and resorts online.

“Insurance claims for data theft worldwide jumped 56% last year, with a bigger number of those attacks targeting the hospitality industry,” says the report, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The largest share of cyber attacks — 38% — were aimed at hotels, resorts and tour companies.”Continue reading...

The platforms are built, the cash from VC’s in place, and marketers poised to cash in on the ample advertising opportunities…all that’s missing from mobile social brands is, well, you. Turns out Web surfers aren't flocking to virtual check-ins as quickly as the tech brands behind them would like.

In its first report on the use of “geosocial” or location-based services, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project finds that 4% of online adults use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows them to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby. On any given day, only 1% of internet users are using these services.

Of course, this was before the juggernaut that is Facebook launched its Places check-in feature, and invited brand marketers such as Gap to the dance.Continue reading...

What price technology? As Apple unveils its next wave of products at its worldwide developers conference today, one of its key tech suppliers is in the spotlight and under fire.

The allegations that Foxconn, headquartered in Taiwan with production in southern China, is a tech sweatshop and a human rights flouter, are having such an effect on Apple's brand that CEO Steve Jobs was forced to address the situation at last week's D8 conference in Silicon Valley. In the clip above, he called the rash of employee suicides at Foxconn " very troubling" and reassured Apple-watchers, "we're all over this."

Jobs also said that Foxconn's manufacturing facility "is not a sweatshop," and that "for a factory, it's a pretty nice factory," citing its on-site hospitals, restaurants, movie theaters and swimming pools. That appears to be part of the problem for workers who live there 24/7 and never get away from Foxconn.

Apple, which relies on Foxconn for production of products including the Mac mini, iPod, iPad, and iPhone, isn't the only mega-tech brand to rely on the supplier.Continue reading...

Now that Google has finally decided to take on the Chinese government, the complications for its brand in the world’s largest consumer market keep piling up.

Today, Google said that it and a Chinese cell phone-service company had postponed the release of two new phones that would use Google’s Android software.

Google and China Unicom were to release phones on Wednesday made by Samsung and Motorola, using Google’s open-platform Android software. Its source code can be downloaded by anyone, installed on his or her cell phone, and then customized. Google applications were to be carefully packaged with these phones. Continue reading...

AOL is finally separating itself from Time Warner, which it acquired in 2001 in a transaction that exemplified “buyer’s remorse.”

After spending untold sums of money on its latest attempt at rebranding, the company is replacing its longstanding logo (the circle imprisoned inside a triangle), and changing its name from “AOL” to the following:

Aol. (The period is part of the name.)

Get it? Aol… period! The newish name will be placed in front of an ever-changing series of backgrounds, though if you’re an Internet brand trying to update your has-been reputation, perhaps you should select images that aren’t as “Grandpa’s brand” as Polaroid cameras and View-Masters.Continue reading...

Another holiday season, another supply-and-demand problem for Sony. The beleaguered brand is revamping its marketing strategy, but a multimillion-dollar ad campaign can’t solve a product shortage that turns away customers who are dying to give you their money.

In 2000, it was the PlayStation 2. In 2005, the PlayStation Portable. In 2006, the PlayStation 3. This year, it’s the Sony e-Reader that many people want, but few will be able to get in time for the holidays. Once again, the Wall Street Journal notes, Sony failed to navigate “the difficulties of forecasting orders and coordinating a supply chain that includes component makers, manufacturing services and others.”

These shortages fuel conspiracy theories that Sony and Nintendo, whose Wii supplies seem to run short every year, simply pull back on production to create hype. But while having a product so in-demand that people will (literally) fight for it might boost the brand’s cachet, does it help the bottom line when said product – whether it’s Wiis or waffles – is out of stock? The risk is that disappointed and mall-weary shoppers mayget angry at the brand – and sometimes go with a competitor.Continue reading...

Once a company with a reputation for being first in innovation – the Trinitron color television in the 1960s, for example – Sony is now widely seen as a technology has-been. The company has two basic problems: the Sony brand is being out-maneuvered in virtually every product category, and its products are generally not up to the standards of its halcyon days.

Samsung and Vizio in televisions, Nintendo in video games, Dell, HP, and Apple in laptops, and Amazon's Kindle in e-book readers – all of these brands are formidable competitors that are winning in Sony product categories.

That's why Sony is ready to "reinvent its marketing," says the company's senior executives. "We cannot just rely on the brand to sell products."Continue reading...

The iPhone has come to China. As was widely predicted, sales nosedived as soon as the sleek new model hit the stands.

In the iPhone’s first foray into the land of one billion potential customers, Apple is making a rookie's mistake, taking a marketing strategy that has worked well internationally and forcibly applying it to the unique Chinese market.

The problems are multiple: ridiculously high prices for the targeted market, unlocked iPhone models imported from Hong Kong, China Mobile’s “OPhone” rip-off. It makes one wonder just what rock Apple had its head under while building a China strategy.Continue reading...