Zappos.com, the recently acquired online apparel retailer, is known for its quirky company culture, from the top down. Their CEO, Tony Hsieh, has some of the most entertaining tweets. And their new series of commercials featuring the Zappets reflect their fun personality.

Sustaining innovation while growing is difficult for most companies, but some seem to consistently deliver like Apple, Amazon, and Walmart. Take Amazon for example. After reading several interviews with Jeff Bezos, I took these things away:

I text on my phone on rare occasions, usually when I need an immediate response like, "where are you?" It seems like a crude way to do advertising, unless its contextual as in the case of Placecast and the like. But its one advantage is that every mobile phone supports SMS/texting, so it has maximum customer reach.

Since upgrading our blogging platform I've lost all comments posted since January 1, 2010. If you entered a comment and it didn't post, I'm very sorry. It seems the anti-spam filter was too aggressive and everything was considered spam. I'll keep a closer eye on comments from now on.

Regards,
David Dorf

In some cities when I walk down "restaurant row" I get people trying to pull me into their restaurant to eat. "Best deal in town," seems to be a popular phrase. We've been promised the technological equivalent to that scenario, in the form of location-aware advertising via SMS, for at least six years, but it hasn't really hit the US shores yet. That is until now.

After creating a successful pop-up shop in Facebook for their Rachel Roy brand, Jones Apparel Group decided to create a "fan shop" for their Nine West brand. Only fans of Nine West on Facebook can access the "Shop Lookbook," and they get a 15% discount through the end of the month on the items offered.

Have you ever been watching a movie then suddenly realized you've seen it before? Today Walmart announced its acquiring streaming video company Vudu.

I remember not that long ago using my 300 baud modem to connect to a BBS where I could post on forums. That was sorta social; demented and sad, but social. Things have come a long way since the days of my Apple ][+. For example, Oracle Retail maintains this blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Wiki, Forums, and a YouTube channel.

A tough problem for store systems is reliably moving data between the home office and stores in both directions. There are many solutions to this problem, each with its own positives and negatives. One solution is using the open-source software SymmetricDS, which was created for this very problem during the Oracle Retail POS implementation at BigLots. The original developers formed JumpMind, a company specializing in helping retailers use open-source to solve difficult problems.

Regular readers know I think augmented reality is the next killer app for mobile phones, but why limit ourselves to mobile? Let's take this journey in three easy steps.

You've heard of e-commerce and m-commerce, but how about v-commerce? A company called Pixazza is trying to make images displayed on the web act like a product catalog where anyone can click on an object within the picture to buy it for themselves. How many times have you seen an image and wanted to know where you could buy the products shown? If Pixazza has its way, the entire web could be a giant billboard for products. From their website...

Whenever we talk about leading-edge retail, Apple always seems to come up. Their stores seem to defy conventional thinking, especially the fact that there are no visible checkout stands. Their switch from a traditional POS to a mobile POS has changed the way we think about the in-store experience.

I've been preaching the benefits of Java-based POS systems for years. It comes down to two things: freedom of choice (regarding hardware), and future proofing (so you can change your mind later). Java abstracts the software from the hardware so the two can be selected independently, which has many advantages for retailers. While this concept is certainly important for POS, its really important if you want your mobile apps to reach all your customers. Unfortunately, there are no real standards across phone manufacturers, so you'll need to port your app to each platform.

So did you watch Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison yesterday? I have to admit, I monitored a streaming blog to see the new iPad announcement. So this morning I went back and checked what Larry had to say about the Sun acquisition. I wasn't surprised by anything they revealed -- makes sense to me.

Since I travel, I always have a wad of receipts in my wallet waiting to be scanned into an expense report. My wife has a box in the kitchen where she tosses store receipts, hoping to never have to search them. Let's face it, receipts are a pain to manage. Chadwick Matlin said it best in his article Death to receipts! (I really identified with the "Costanza wallet.")

My wife recently joined Lifetime Fitness, so she asked me to setup her account on myLT.com. The website provides members an online community where they can communicate with friends, join groups, use tools to track workouts, and see the schedule of upcoming classes. In many ways it reminds me of Facebook minus the games plus useful tools.

Sunrider is a health food company based in California that operates in 42 countries. In addition to manufacturing many varieties of health foods, they also operate 7,000 retail stores in China. After thorough research, Sunrider selected Oracle Retail's Point-of-Service software for use in their stores. Over the course of 12 weeks, implementation partner Infogain was able to bring Sunrider's first pilot store online in Guangzhou, China.

At the tail-end of the Mobile Retailing panel at NRF, I was asked "what will this panel be discussing next year at NRF 2011?" I gave a quick answer that I think merits further explanation. From a mobile technology perspective, especially with reference to the iPhone and similar devices, I think we're in in our third generation of "killer tech" (similar to killer apps).

One of the trends I saw at NRF was using mobile phones as a POS much like Apple does in its stores.

Today at NRF I attended the session "How Leadership, Loyalty, and Transparency Fuel Growth" given by Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco. Twenty years ago, Tesco was a distant third in the UK market, but after focused execution they are now clear leaders in not only the UK but also across the globe. As a driving factor behind the growth, Sir Terry related Ten Management Lessons from the experience.

This year's National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show should see a 27% increase in attendance, yet another sign that the economy is looking better. Of course Oracle Retail will be there, in the same booth we had last year.

At Oracle Retail we do a lot of experiments to explore technology and its potential use for retail. These projects are treated as learning vehicles, with some going on to be incorporated into products but most "hitting the cutting room floor." This is pretty typical for innovation. Our most recent endeavor is an iPhone application called Oracle Retail Shopping Assistant, a consumer-facing application that helps with in-store shopping. Below is a description of what it does. Click on the images for larger screen-shots.

To end the year, I thought I'd share some statistics about this blog from Google Analytics. This year there were 12,402 absolute unique visitors to this blog from 126 different countries. 85% were using Windows, 11% used MacOS, and 2% used Linux to read the blog; the remaining 2% used mobile phones.

I'm such a geek that I read MaximumPC, a magazine for people that build their own PCs (which I do, by the way). Anyway, each month they publish a list and I wanted to share this month's:

 Insight-Driven Retailing Blog

Now is the time of year people make their predictions for next year, so I'll take a crack at making 10 predictions for 2010.

1. Borders and Blockbuster bite the dust. I would have never predicted a strong brand such as Circuit City could die, but now I know it can happen to anyone. Borders has lost the battle with Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster has lost to Netflix. And just to be sure, Amazon put an extra nail in each coffin.

Google is doing something interesting with their Favorite Places project, as described in their blog yesterday. They've mailed 100,000 decals to popular places across the U.S. The stickers have a QR code, a special barcode that is easily interpreted by mobile phone cameras, that links to the location's "place page" where users can get information about the location.

I recently participated in a RIS News webinar titled 2010 Rebound Strategies: A Retail Symposium.

For small retailers, especially those that are mobile or work weekend craft shows, taking credit cards can be expensive and cumbersome. But Jack Dorsey, co-creator of Twitter, has a rather elegant solution that should be available sometime next year. Why not use an iPhone? His company, Square, is working on an iPhone application that authorizes a credit card, captures a signature, and emails the receipt. They even have a magstripe reader that connects to the iPhone.