Garanti Bank in Turkey has an interesting card program that is “Tailor made for each card holder”. Consumers can specify amongst a batch of parameters including rate and fee to customize their card product. From their site:

During the application process on the web, applicants can manipulate over ten parameters such as the reward rate and type, interest rate, card fee, and campaign type to create their preferred combination. Customers who want a simple approach can choose to select one of the four ready made packages…

Considering the rate vs. fee vs. rewards conundrum that haunts acquisition managers on a daily basis, seems like a logical approach to allow individuals to trade off values in each to their liking. It will be quite interesting to see how you can actually get people to take a higher rate or fee. Seems like a great test ground. Garanti also allows people to upload a photo for the card design or to choose from a menu of colors.
I cannot seem to shake the feeling that this is the NextCard folks resurfacing after that debacle here in the States. I have yet to find evidence that they are driving it. The card design is a bit derivative.

Seems that innovation in the financial vertical will turn a corner eventually and the first ones to get there will be the more open-minded North American inhabitants of Canada.

This contest is an interesting hybrid of the retro sort of Westinghouse, Intel Science competitions geared towards school-aged, budding scientists and those late-night patent office advertisements suggesting that your idea for a combined garden rake-can opener is intellectual property that requires protection.

This contest solicits college students, so a slightly older bunch, and focuses right on the specific problem of financial services 2.0. In fact the guidelines pages suggests that teams focus on such areas as “trends”, “partnerships” and even “pricing”!

Seems to me like RBC is trying to get some customer insights at a cut rate. The prize for this competition is $20K so the cost is near nothing. Can’t blame them for avoiding the customer insight “specialist” firms that dot the new innovation landscape. They could have made the reward for participation a bit richer than just the moral satisfaction of helping define the next generation of banking services. Throw those kids a few chips RBC!

The Google+YouTube deal is a huge deal for the web. Good commentary here, here and here.

Two logic flows on this deal could be:

1. Google Video totally sucks regardless of all the investment and people the folks at Sunnyview have put into it. Given the importance of video and the growing ease of delivering it via the web, Google would have had to acquire a player just as Yahoo acquired Jumpcut. If you have to open your wallet, why not buy the vertical.
2. Video specific searches and web start pages will proliferate. Already I know enough folks who skip all the Googles and Yahoos when they are looking for an image or photograph. They go straight to Flickr, and get what they want without all the web optimized, thumbnaily business that the full web crawlers deliver. Given videos ability to carve out a niche (portable media players, cameras, art), you could see a scenario where the video focused vertical player is siphoning off Google’s search traffic and pulling what will undoubtedly be tagged by the rejuvenated online advertising industry as the most valuable CPMs.

Congrats to the YouTube boys, $1.6 billion is a better exit than I thought they would get. I have said before that Google’s integration of video into their advertising channel could be the start of something big. With the acquisition of all that Diet Coke-Mentos content from YouTube we’ll see what pops.

Recently a colleague at Citigroup handed me a thick book that eerily reminded me of the VBScript and Core Java tomes I used to tote around in my web developer days. The Purplebook 2006 is the “definitive” annual list of best online shopping sites. Kind of a Zagat’s for the web.

Considering the speed of construction and velocity of the restaurant failure cycle, the Zagat’s paper model is unlikely to survive for restaurants in major cities. The web, with no construction costs and built on fluidity, should not be attempted. Please cross-apply everything in the blogoshere about the long tail, access to distribution, etc. Now frown in a “wow, that is a really stupid idea” face.

The purple site offers icons to indicate when sites offer high, medium or low shipping fees. How they do this in a book in a book when shipping is a variable cost based on distance is beyond me. The only really interesting thing they do is measure the usability of various sites on the same high, medium, low scale. Interesting but hardly useful, considering that such nuances of site usability are a subjective matter. Not to mention, if you can’t use a particular site, you just move to the next hit on Google.
$29.99 for access, no way to promote users views and static. Three strikes.

Yesterday Apple announced that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was elected to their board of directors. The argument for lining up the immense resources and expertise of these two companies is bulletproof. Apple has reached a point where their device strategy needs to service sophistication to fully leverage the customer franchise they have built. Google and it’s expansive service offering has come to the political boundary of hardware to ensure top of desktop position for its products.

One of the often cited shortfalls of AOL circa 1998 was the lack of a well developed hardware or device strategy. AOLMail had become beyond ubiquitous and was even accepted as a business email suffix. An AOL Blackberry or Sidekick would have been a much better platform to build from than what they have today.

With Microsoft’s impending desktop deadbolt Vista and their Zunepod on the way (how come nobody talks about XBOX360?), the timing of this union is a good one.

The form is also good: it is not some non-specific MOU between companies or a hastily planned JV. With a board seat, they will have time to sort out a working model for current products and a venturing model for future development.