This is a picture of the new PayPal Storefront Widget. I have been tracking and marveling at the growth of the widget/gadget industry over the last six months. This is an elegant example of what I like about widgets. In this case, PayPal is using this small Web-based application as a Trojan horse to drive more transactions. This of course drives more usage and revenue for them. In this case, I have no issue with the Trojan horse concept because it is a win/win with the retailers that use this product. I have friends that love specific brand names of products, or specific stores and they would be enthralled with loading this widget on their desktop so they could access a stream of products that are of interest. The bigger picture here is the use of a widget to drive retail sales at all. I am a strong believer that anyone who is delivering a service of any kind, from lawyers, to CPA’s and travel agents, should look to develop a widget that markets their services. They are inexpensive to build and a powerful marketing/relationship tool when customers leave the widget/gadget on their desktops. The only issue is that we need standards around the development platforms for delivering them. If you just read this entire post and have no idea what we are talking about as to the value or use of widgets, you might want to dig deeper. These are going to be powerful tools from now on.

Welcome to the Dead Pool. I have been trying to sort out my feelings for the fact that CompuUSA is closing its doors. On one hand, I hate to see a computer chain close. On the other, I can understand why. The most interesting point in this failure is not to ask all the reasons why they could not make money, but why Apple is able to succeed with their stores so well. The comparison of these two retail locations points out some interesting trends in consumer movements these days. The Apple Store provides a deep display of all their latest products, and adds nice touches like emailing your receipt to you instead of handing you paper. The “sales” people are more like your friendly tech savvy nephew that just wants to tell you what he knows. They never push themselves on you unless you ask, and when you do solicit their help, they are more than happy to be patient and get you what you need. At the CompUSA stores, you were either accosted by multiple people as you walked the aisles, or could not find anyone that was clued in enough to give a sane answer. The bottom line is, the Apple Stores are cool, CompUSA was not.