Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Even a 20-something billionaire could use a little help. He just got it from Microsoft--via a huge heap of AOL patents.

No, not because Buffett said so. Because 2012 could be a year in which paying more now could mean paying less later

SCVNGR and LevelUp Chief Ninja Seth Priebatsch shares three design guidelines to help early-adopter tech startups rocket out of the gate. Good design is like pornography: You know it when you see it

So, you've landed a huge enterprise client. Here's how to close the deal without getting stuck in a legal maelstrom over the contract. It's bound to happen.

The startup Womply recently brought us Groupon-like "effortless offers." Today it launches Loyalty Cloud, hoping to slice through the messy customer-loyalty market with the "simplest loyalty program ever for local merchants." Last month a new startup, Womply , launched to bring "effortless offers" schemes to local merchants--coming with an impressive pedigree because it's co-founder Brandt Squires was formerly GM and Head of Sales at LivingSocial . Just weeks later, Womply has an additional offering--Loyalty Cloud--that promises the same sort of effortless experience but for customer loyalty schemes, rather than Groupon -style "special offers." According to the new sitei, it's simplicity rests on the fact that, "Merchants create offers that reward customers for repeat visits and Womply handles everything else, from marketing and remitting offers to customers, to providing analysis and insight on the amount of revenue generated as a result." To this end, Womply's new Loyalty Cloud is trying to be a complete one-stop shop for local business loyalty schemes: Simpler even than stamping a rubber stamp on a collector card, and providing deep customer analytics that would be tricky to get any other way. It manages this by being seamless from a customer and merchant point of view, with the transaction happening "in the cloud" via "Womply's high-tech platform that enables the company to spot credit and debit card transactions at participating merchants and to push cash credits to customer payment cards." The whole thing is designed to be merchant-centric, rather than focussing on the deals or the end-user customers.

Nokia's recent woes multiplied this week as the beleaguered Finnish firm shuttered online stores in the U.S.

A social network for renting and borrowing aims to bring the concept of "sharing" back into the real world. NeighborGoods , the SXSW Accelerator winner for Best Bootstrapped Startup, wants to revitalize neighborly sharing by offering communities a brilliantly practical incentive to interact: everyone else's unused stuff.

The push for efficiency defines many organizations, and Greenleaf Book Group is no exception. I push my staff to eliminate silly wastes of time and money as often as I can. We've adopted best practices from many organizations and have become a training ground for operational efficacy.