CRM Update – Jun 13 : 1:08 pm

Jonathan’s sons sometimes want to buy downloadable content for their Playstation 3 games. He’s perfectly happy to buy this content for them, because he’s a nice dad like that. Unfortunately, his money is no good at Sony. He uses his credit card to add $10 to his virtual wallet. Then the same card won’t work immediately afterward. Neither will a different card.

Every now and then one of my sons wants to buy an add-on to one of their PS3 games like Rocksmith or Call of Duty. I went to my PSN account as I have always done in the past to add funds to my wallet…

PC manufacturer Acer launched on Wednesday its latest Android tablet to hit the market, boasting an HD display and a series of powerful specs.
The 32GB Iconia Tab A700 tablet — which is currently available for pre-sale in U.S. and Canada for $449.99 — runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Google’s latest mobile operating system.
Available in black and silver, the tablet features a 10.1-inch full HD 1080p backlit display that produces beautiful images and HD video, with 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution that’s 55% higher in pixel density than many other tablets on the market…

Let me just cut to the chase here: When it comes to business blogging, there is content, and then there is content that sells.Ask any business owner or marketer which they’d prefer and the obvious answer would be the latter.The fact is, all the business blogging in the world doesn’t help a bit if it’s not increasing sales. Make no mistake—a business is a business and it needs to make money.In this article I’ll discuss 4 ways companies can create blog content to bring in more sales…

During his misspent youth, Jake’s PayPal account was frozen. He tells Consumerist that it was due to “suspicious activity” that he knew nothing about and that Paypal/eBay never identified. He was never able to prove his identity to their satisfaction, and PayPal apparently didn’t want a no-good ruffian like him as a customer. Even if they never told him what it was he did that was no good. Half a decade later, as a responsible adult with a real job and a good credit score, he bought something on eBay and set up a new PayPal account to pay for it…

Last summer, an elderly woman in Brookline, Mass. disappeared overnight. When she was found, the 60-year-old resident was wandering in her bathrobe and slippers in a front yard 6 miles away in neighboring West Roxbury. Incidents like this one have helped spark the Brookline Homesafe Program, a new initiative by area police which will make it easier to find residents with Alzheimer’s or dementia who have become separated from their families.
For $30 a month, residents receive a GPS bracelet that can be tracked remotely…

Imagine walking up alongside a stranger and casually holding hands, just reaching out gently and grabbing those swinging digits. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Someone is sure to get punched or arrested.
The YouTube video troupe Losing All Hope Was Freedom (LAHWF) managed to pull it off without violence, screaming or any run-ins with the law. At least that’s what this now viral (“Holding Hands” was trending on Twitter this morning) and edited YouTube video makes it look like…

Amy Porterfield’s Facebook Advice From BlogWorld Expo New York
As social media’s 800 pound gorilla, marketers feel they must incorporate Facebook marketing into their overall plans, even if they’re not sure it will yield measurable results.
To get your social media strategy on track, Facebook marketing expert and author of Facebook Marketing all In One for Dummies, Amy Porterfield, shared these nine secrets, at BlogWorld Expo New York, to attracting clients and profits on Facebook after its recent enhancements…

A new survey finds that British business owners would rather be known as “self-employed,” or, simply, “business owner.” Is “entrepreneur” still a dirty word?Entrepreneurship is hot at the moment. Rich founders are being profiled as eligible bachelors in the New York Times, young people increasingly claim they aspire to be entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial mindset is being hailed as the cure for many of the social ills that ail us. But apparently there’s one group who are less keen on being associated with this oh-so-hip term–entrepreneurs themselves…

Google has updated its Hot Searches section (previously known as Hot Trends) to be more visual and informative.
The Hot Searches are Google’s equivalent to Twitter’s trending topics — they show what people are currently searching for on Google.
Now, instead of a mere list of topics, Google shows an image next to each item along with links to related news articles. You can also see an estimate of how many searches have been performed for a particular topic in the 24-hour period when it was trending…

Has social media become so omnipresent that companies can no longer afford to train just marketers, sales and public relations people in Twitter, Facebook and other networks?
That’s the premise behind an expansion in service for the social media strategy firm Digital Royalty and its founder Amy Jo Martin. The company is preparing to roll out a new set of online courses meant to train entire corporate workforces — not just people whose primary tasks are interfacing with customers. Martin says it’s a first for the still-emerging industry of social media management…

It’s been a while since Apple devoted a TV spot to a Mac product, but the company has now decided to give the star treatment to its new MacBook Pro with Retina display.
The ad, by longtime Apple ad agency TBWA|Media Arts Lab, features the usual product-as-hero theme common to many Apple ads. “The radical new MacBook Pro with Retina display,” narrator Peter Coyote says over a shot of the MacBook Pro displaying high-res photos of waves and other colorful images. Then the camera reveals the laptop’s thin silhouette to set up the double-entendre: “Innovation in every dimension…

Family-owned businesses are vital to the economy–but most can’t transition successfully to a second generation. There’s a better way to preserve your company’s success.I work with a lot of family businesses as clients. I have seen a wide range of behavior in the interplay of family members–much of it really unpleasant.But still, I had no idea how prevalent family-owned businesses were until I read an article from Gaebler.com’s Resources for Entrepreneurs. Among the stats cited, U.S. family-owned businesses:50% of the U…

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.
Twitter Announces Tailored Trends
Twitter has announced it has improved its algorithms to display tailored trends to users, based on their location and who they’re following on Twitter.
The tailored trends will appear to users by default on Twitter’s web site as well as Twitter’s mobile apps for iPhone and Android…