analysis

Online Coupons Get Smarter

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When Jennifer London cut a deal with Groupon Inc. to promote her smoothie shop in an email, she wasn’t sure how many people would show up for discounted drinks.

Thirsty New Yorkers bought more than 1,300 of her online coupons, and “it kind of blew my mind,” Ms. London said. People redeemed roughly 900 of the coupons over six months at her small Xoom NYC Inc. shop, including a crush in June, but she was disappointed that few became regular customers.

“Most of the people who came are not from this neighborhood—I most likely won’t see them again,” Ms. London said, adding she wished she had limited each person to three coupons rather than 10. Fortunately, she said, not all the coupons were redeemed. “I definitely would have lost money if everyone had shown up,” she said.

Groupon and its competitors, which build buzz by sending out a daily email alerting subscribers in a city to a local bargain, are listening to gripes like Ms. London’s and recasting their operations. Among the new approaches: computer programs to better target consumers with personalized deals and staff on the ground to help merchants.

Dell Puts Hope in Health-Services Unit

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Dell Inc. hopes customers like Methodist Hospital System will help cure what ails it.

Methodist has contracted with Dell’s services since December 2009 to help it create and maintain an electronic medical records system. Dell’s technicians are also customizing software for Houston-based Methodist’s 2,600 doctors so those records can be accessed by staff at any of its four community hospitals.

The Methodist contract is one of the most visible examples of what Dell hopes to accomplish with its $3.9 billion 2009 acquisition of Perot Systems, a specialist in health-care information technology.

Delving into Intel’s results? Try flying to China

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To get accurate projections for Intel Corp, Wedbush Morgan analyst Patrick Wang often finds himself hopping on a plane to Asia.

Wang — who normally crafts complex mathematical models and pores over financial statements — finds, in Intel’s case, it helps to use his fluent Chinese to gather information directly from its customers: top computer manufacturers in the Orient.

“They’re just such a large semiconductor company and to get color in terms of the overall scale, you need that,” he said.

Wang and many other analysts’ predicament may underscore why the world’s top chip maker has beaten expectations in six of the last eight quarters. More than 80 percent of its sales are abroad. Analysts estimate over half its revenue comes from less transparent markets such as China, Africa and India.

Apple’s iPad: trouble for Intel’s mobile push?

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When Apple Inc unveiled its iPad last month, one crucial detail almost got drowned out in the hoopla: the new tablet computer will be powered by an in-house chip called the A4.

While Apple likely will not market the chip publicly, analysts say the new processor underscores how rival chip designs may eventually win out over Intel Corp’s designs in the emergent hot category of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Intel says the first smartphones using its chips go on sale by 2010’s second half, as it tries to stake out a corner in the wireless market and replicate what it did for the formerly red-hot netbook category it now almost completely dominates.

But analysts point to an uphill battle against Nvidia Corp, Marvell and Qualcomm Inc, already making headway with cheaper, low-power processors based on designs by ARM Holdings PLC.

“They (Intel) don’t have a track record in delivering these types of chips,” said Wedbush Morgan analyst Patrick Wang. “They haven’t been successful in the past, and they’re trying to get in.”

Spending on U.S. rail seen stuck at the station

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CHICAGO (Reuters) – ANALYSIS – Major U.S. freight railroads and their advocates have argued for years that government investment is needed in the country’s rail system to take freight off congested highways and keep the economy moving.

But supporters say rail investments have been largely ignored by Congress, suggesting political support is lacking, despite warnings action must be taken sooner rather than later.

Contact Elation: Voices from Inauguration Week

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For Tim McBride, this is bigger than Woodstock.

It is 12 hours until the inauguration, and McBride is looking at the White House from across the street in Lafayette Park. He‘s standing with his son, Eamonn, and his son‘s friend, Kacey, who grew up so poor that he‘d never had a chance to visit a big city.

McBride has been here before, and so has his son. But this time is different for both of them. This time, it‘s like a pilgrimage.

“It‘s a thing from my generation, but have you ever heard of a contact high?“ McBride asks. “It‘s like contact elation.“

Old Fashioned Games? They Really Are.

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We all have fond memories of playing Monopoly, Scrabble and Connect Four when we were kids. But when you‘re an adult, it‘s really hard to find people who can dedicate the time to play. After his friends and family turned him down for a game of Risk, Ian Sherr went in search of more *worthy* opponents at Board Games night at Games of Berkeley.

A tradition of home-cooking from mom, who didn’t cook

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My father can cook. Or so he says.

I grew up hearing stories of how my father wooed my mother by cooking her fabulous dinners and serving them to her over his grand piano in his tiny New York apartment.

The story, as my father tells it, was that his apartment was too small to hold a table and his piano and, being a world-class concert pianist, he chose the piano. So he bought a cover for the piano and fed his dates. I imagine he probably serenaded them, too, but the details have been lost both to time and trailing mumbled memories.

Still, what I’ve been brought up to believe is that my father can cook. And my mother – she grew up in Atlanta in the ’40s. Of course she can cook.

So what shocked my girlfriend, Laura, was that Thanksgiving this year was going to be catered by Marie Callender’s.

I said my parents could cook. I didn’t say they did.

Count the delegates, if you can

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Just when I thought I had figured out why the Democratic Party has superdelegates, Nancy Pelosi comes along and says I have got it all backward.

“The superdelegates were established to give many more people at the grassroots level the opportunity to go to the convention and be really the overwhelming majority of who will decide this convention,” the House Speaker told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last Thursday.

With a straight face.

That was after Super Tuesday, which was supposed to decide the next Democratic nominee. Instead, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have battled themselves to a delegate draw that party elders may have to settle.

I don’t know what’s worse – Pelosi pretending that rank-and-file Democrats will get to decide anything this year, or the convoluted system created to ensure they would not. It was adopted in 1976, to reformulate the reforms of 1972, which came in response to the chaos of 1968, when the Democrats tore themselves apart in the streets of Chicago after convention delegates chose Hubert Humphrey, who had never won a primary that year.