Starbucks Digital Network

Beginning Wednesday, Starbucks customers who use the free Wi-Fi at more than 6,800 U.S. company-operated stores will be greeted with the Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) — an exclusive content network curated by the company and designed to enhance the customer’s in-store experience.

Starbucks has been teasing SDN for months, but now that the network is about to go live we have a much clearer idea about the type of content provided and the purpose behind the digital endeavor.

Starbucks’s Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman:

“The vision,” he says, “is for Starbucks Digital Network to be a digital version of the community cork board that’s in all of our stores.”

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of each channel:

News: This section of SDN is comprised of Starbucks media partners offering premium or exclusive content to customers. The New York Times has opened up access to its Reader 2.0 subscription-based service for free, all content from the The Wall Street Journal is available minus the paywall and the exact replica of the USA Today newspaper is accessible to users on the network. Newly signed content partner GOOD is providing early access to its infographics, so Starbucks customers can view them before anyone else.

Entertainment: Starbucks has populated the entertainment portion of its network with music, apps and books from Apple’s iTunes, full access to a selection of books picked by Starbucks and provided by the Bookish Reading Club (via an HTML5 reader), business e-books courtesy of New Word City, a kid-rich experience powered by Nick Jr. Boost and handpicked documentary films provided by SnagFilms.

Wellness: Health and fitness publisher Rodale is the primary content provider for this SDN channel. Customers have access to specialized content — not available to anyone other than Starbucks customers — from Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Bicycling, Prevention, Organic Gardening and Eat This, Not That!, along with a custom built “Map my Ride, Map my Run” application.

Business and Careers: Professional social networking site LinkedIn (LinkedIn) is making exclusive video and blog content available to Wi-Fi users in this channel. The network also provides LinkedIn job search and suggestions, and offers users a 30-day free trial for the premium account.

My Neighborhood: Starbucks is adamant about creating a localized experience to connect customers with the community around the store. The company delivers on this objective by serving up content to users based on the exact whereabouts of the store where the user is accessing the free Wi-Fi. Community fare includes local news from Patch and a look at nearby DonorsChoose.org classroom projects that could benefit from small contributions. Foursquare (Foursquare) users can check in via the web from Starbucks stores, and Zagat makes available full ratings for restaurants in the surrounding area for free.

Starbucks: This channel provides a personalized customer experience for Starbucks account/card management and also amasses all of Starbucks social (Twitter (Twitter)/Facebook (Facebook)/MyStarbucksIdea) and digital properties under one umbrella.




SDN certainly packs in a variety of content that makes for interesting material to explore on a laptop, but the network was also designed with the mobile user in mind.

Users accessing the network via mobile devices and tablets will benefit from the HTML5 smartphone-optimized network. SDN for mobile is also touchscreen-friendly, offering a hands-on, swipe-able experience.

More than 50% of users logging on to the free Wi-Fi are doing so from mobile devices, so the company was motivated by usage behaviors to build a mobile web experience just as good, if not better than, the standard web experience. Content was also designed to be “snackable,” so the mobile user can get value even while waiting in line, says Brotman.

Mashable

Old Navy’s “Booty Reader”

From the sophomoric cauldrons of humor at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, the same agency that brought Burger King’s Shower Babe and the Whopper Sacrifice campaign to the Internet, comes Old Navy’s “Booty Reader” web application, which asks women to upload a shot of their derrières to find the most suitable pair of Old Navy jeans.

Visitors to the microsite are prompted to choose three scenarios in which they would wear the jeans they’re looking for (on a date, lounging at home, to the office on a Casual Friday, etc.), and then to use a web cam or photo so that the app can gauge their body shape. Women who are too uncomfortable (or lazy) to use a photo can choose diagrams to inform the app about their proportions.

Although hundreds upon hundreds of branded apps and magazine articles have taken consumers through the same jeans-fitting process, Old Navy’s app was named in such a way that it is guaranteed to attract press without generating controversy, unlike American Apparel’s Best Bottom campaign [Warning: Explicit]; according to Adweek, the Booty Reader was designed by a team of female creative directors for female shoppers.

Nevertheless, we question whether the app is really “on brand” — both the company’s brick-and-mortar and online stores emphasize its offerings for plus-size and pregnant women, as well as men, infants and children. How many Old Navy shoppers do you know use the word “booty” — or want to engage with a web application with that word in its name?

Lauren Indvik for Mashable

Buy gum With PayPal, Your Phone and Twitter

A proof-of-concept vending machine shows how we can dispense with cash for everyday purchases, skipping credit and debit cards altogether and going straight to electronic transfer.

The vending machine uses QR codes, PayPal, a smartphone camera and Twitter. And, to complete the geek-buzzword bingo checklist, the hardware is based in part on Arduino, an open source hardware platform.

“We’re experimenting with ways of taking PayPal payments beyond the web,” PayPal Labs’ Ray Tanaka said. At the PayPal X Innovate 2010 developers’ conference, he showed off a gumball machine that lets people use their smartphone to scan a barcode instead of fishing for change.

Tanaka and his team put together their gumball machine using an ordinary mechanical vending machine, an Arduino processor, a WiShield and a few other smartly chosen basic parts.

Scanning the QR barcode sets the gumball machine in motion. Then the customer gets a Twitter notification that their PayPal payment has gone through and how much they’ve been charged. On the merchant side, Tanaka showed off an instant payment-notification system using an LCD display.

Candy is cute and “gives good demo” (as Steve Jobs puts it), but I can easily imagine 101 even better uses for a simple electronic payment system like this where cash is short and speed is essential. Here’s a short list to get you started:

* parking garages
* public transit
* toll booths
* grocery checkout
* gas stations

In short, anywhere you need to be on the move and would rather not whip out your wallet.

From: Wired

Gap's model search through iphone app

If you’ve ever looked into the windows of a babyGap or GapKids storefront and thought to yourself: “Wow, my child is way prettier than all of these kids photographed in the window front, it’s too bad I’m too lazy to take a quality portrait on my digital camera, and upload it to Gap’s website for its annual babyGap and Gap Kids Casting Call contest,” today is your lucky day — if you own an iPhone, that is.

For the fifth year of its Casting Call campaign, Gap has developed a special iPhone app [iTunes link] to make it easier for parents to enter their 0 to 10-year-olds into the contest, the four winners of which will be featured in the company’s babyGap or GapKids store window advertisements, and other promotional materials. Gap judges will select and fly 20 finalists to San Francisco for a professional photo shoot in mid-November. Fans will be able to vote on the final winners from December 6-20.

Parents can enter their 0-10-year-olds using the mobile app. After registering, you’ll be asked to fill out a short entry form including your child’s name, sex and date of birth, as well as your contact information. You’ll then be prompted to take a photo of your child using your iPhone or to pick one from your existing library, which cannot be more than three months old.

After you’ve entered it’s time to beg your friends to download the app and start voting for your kid; the one with the most votes will receive a $1,000 Gap gift card for receiving the most votes, though s/he will not be flown out to do a photo shoot, unless s/he is also a favorite of the judges. You can then keep track of how many Fan votes your children have garnered under “My Entries,” as well as keep track of how many votes the competition has received in the Gallery section.

In all seriousness, the app is a smart idea that should substantially increase the number of submissions, which numbered more than 1 million last year. Gap has pursued an aggressive digital and mobile marketing strategy as of late, having offered discounts via Foursquare (Foursquare), Loopt, and Groupon all within the last six months.

From: Mashable