Need to Know - Small Business Technology: January 23, 2012

Thou Shalt Covet What Thy Neighbor Covets - Its not Paco Underhill, but a Fast Company article on how we are influenced by others to buy stuff. It's always amazing to pause and ponder the economic impact of consumer "sheep following the herd".

Target Looking to Halt 'Showrooming' by Shoppers - Short 4 minute video on problem of "showrooming" and Target's response to develop exclusice products that can't be price compared via mobile phones and apps.

Innovative Ways to Leverage QR (Quick Response) Codes for Your Small Business - Blog post by ASBTDC center director Herb Lawrence. Herb is probably the best informed person in Arkansas on QR codes. Feel free to ask him a challenging question in his comments.

QR Codes – 21 Ways To Use Them To Build Your Business - A simple, easy to read list of 21 good ideas. You can likely skim this list in less than 30 seconds and come away with something new to try.

TrakQR.com - New start-up with a great public beta program: create up to 50 QR codes that you can re-purpose/redirect at anytime. TrakQR provides full analytics for each QR code. Currently free, so try them out!

Using 'Quick Views' to Increase Conversions - In today's onlin retail environment, you need every conversion you can get. Practical Ecommerce provides a detailed article with photos showing what to do.

How many of your 100K+ Twitter Followers are Real? - Short article on using SocialBro to segment your followers by when they last tweeted. Helps in spotting deadwood and Twitter bots.

12 Most Effective Ways To Generate Leads On LinkedIn - The site is 12most.com, so this is a "bait" article, but it does provide a good overview of where and how to use LinkedIn.

The 7 Don’ts of Mobile Marketing - If you really thought about it, these should be self-explanatory. That someone had to post these, indicates they're not self-evident. Read & head. Won't take long.

Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period - Heard about this new Pew Internet report this morning while shaving. There are some other interesting trends in this research. Take 5-10 minutes and explore Pew's data. Seems if you didn't give or receive a tablet for Christmas, you didn't "covet what thy neighbor covets."

Seven Ways to Use the iPad for Workplace Learning - A repost of a February 2010 article. Amazing that these 7 uses are still applicable two years later in a rapidly evolving mobile device market.