Articles by Pam Baker

The budding online cannabis industry has a long way to go before it delivers bumper crops. The market for both recreational and medicinal cannabis has been plowed and pre-seeded by the previous underground market and the impetus of state laws legalizing its use Still, the cannabis industry is almost invisible online, cloaked in a broad ad and searc...

When it comes to business, you're only as good as your reputation. Indeed, your reputation is your brand. It is the substance your logo represents; it is the glue in customer brand loyalty. In a word, reputation is everything. Yet it's not entirely under your control That doesn't mean you are helpless as a victim of false accusations, ratings, or w...

When it comes to business, you're only as good as your reputation. Indeed, your reputation is your brand. It is the substance your logo represents; it is the glue in customer brand loyalty. In a word, reputation is everything. Yet it's not entirely under your control. That doesn't mean you are helpless as a victim of false accusations, ratings, or...

When it comes to business, you're only as good as your reputation. Indeed, your reputation is your brand. It is the substance your logo represents; it is the glue in customer brand loyalty. In a word, reputation is everything. Yet it's not entirely under your control That doesn't mean you are helpless as a victim of false accusations, ratings, or w...

Google believes that all the important consumer buying decisions happen in a brief flash of time. Understanding and responding to customer needs in those all-important, tiny moments is key to successful marketing, the company says. Specifically, they are the exact moments when people turn to a device because they want one or more of four things: to know, do, go, or buy...

Parents don't need a poll to tell them their teenagers are addicted to smartphones. After all, smartphones are a permanent fixture rather than accessories on the visages of kids of all ages these days. Even so, polls move these everyday observances from anecdotal to official problem when the numbers tilt in that direction -- and a Common Sense Med...

While hobbyists, inventors and innovators alike have been experimenting and producing a variety of do-it-yourself projects, their world is expected to undergo a hard shift as DIY moves to the next level 3D printing is the cornerstone of the coming shift, and its effect on our daily lives will be multiplied by several converging forces: the collabor...

What happens when you're 220 miles above Earth on the International Space Station, and you need a tool you don't have? You can print one yourself In 2014, American astronauts, for the first time, printed a tool -- a ratchet wrench -- using a design file sent from NASA on the ground to the 3D printer spinning about in space....

To many, 3D printing is little more than a toy. A toy that mostly prints toys. To others, it's a prototyping tool good for a hands-on feel of a manifested idea but not much more Yet for a select few, 3D printing is the heart of innovation, and each new iteration is pumping the future's lifeblood....

It's one thing to ship books and electronics across the U.S. -- but it's quite another to get fresh fruit, baked goods, meat, fish, prepared meals, raw meal ingredients, and other perishables to consumers' front doors in prime condition Once perishables are delivered to a customer's door, they often have to sit there for an unpredictable amount of ...

Quite a bit of buzz broke out recently in sports circles when a Stanford quarterback was caught on ESPN sporting an Oculus virtual reality (VR) face mask. Not that VR is totally new, but fans want more out of their athletes and the sight of such a souped-up technical edge on the field was a novel thrill. But that thrill won't be novel for long as VR is headed for mainstream use in all sports from pro to little league and T-ball levels.

There's no question that books have gone digital. Sure, there are still paper books aplenty in a smattering of brick-and-mortar bookstores -- and available online as well -- but there's no escaping the proverbial writing on the wall that book-selling behemoth Amazon now sells more electronic books than hardcovers Newspaper publishers' efforts to st...

Movie studios and TV networks increasingly are turning to social media for help with generating buzz about their upcoming releases and programming. Communities are building around favorite movie franchises like the Twilight and Avengers series and TV shows like Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead. Have movie and show producers really been listening -- and if they have, has anything changed because of what they've heard?...

The Federal Trade Commission recently updated its guidelines for online advertising to address the growth in mobile and social media marketing. Now a paid tweet has to begin with the word "ad," as obvious disclosure now must be included with all commercial speech. Is the link you're tweeting from an employer? A client? You have to mention that. The new rule: If money is changing hands, disclose it.

The world cheered -- well, at least the nerds cheered -- when Google's autonomous cars drove 1,000 miles with no human intervention and another 140,000 miles with occasional human intervention in 2010 ...

This story was originally published on May 3, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series The educational e-book market has grown fiercer in the last few years, raising the question of where the end game will leave educational institutions in their attempts to reduce student churn, increase productivity and radically re...

The educational e-book market has grown fiercer in the last few years, raising the question of where the end game will leave educational institutions in their attempts to reduce student churn, increase productivity and radically reduce costs. As the battling e-textbook giants try to cut exclusive deals and limit competitors' supplies of e-content,...

By now, you've seen the "Kony 2012" video, or at least heard of it, and you've heard the criticisms. And whether you are a supporter or a detractor, you likely think the story's done, a passing fad lost already to shortened news cycles, fickle Twitter trends, and Facebook app archives. But that is not the case Whether the newest chapters to the "K...

Online Ad Scams, Part 1: Tip for a Tiny Belly and Other Snake Oil Victims bilked of their money by fake online ads are not the only ones hurt.

You've seen the ad a thousand times on the Internet: "1 Tip for a Tiny Belly" says the hand-lettered headline above the crudely drawn swelling-and-shrinking belly. "Cut down a bit of your belly everyday following this one weird tip," it goes on to say. If starvation caused by having funds continuously siphoned from your bank account counts as a we...