My wife and I were shopping in a one of our favorite department stores when I noticed a small nondescript sign between the racks that read, “Free WiFi – sign in to get discounts.”
(BTW: that’s not my wife on the left; that’s our dog, Nickie in case you were wondering.)
So I pulled out my iPhone and logged in. A coupon popped up on the screen, “15% off your entire order – today only!”
I was thrilled. My wife was looking at several blouses she liked but she thought the price was too high so I told her to pick one out.
What just happened is a harbinger of in-store interactive, personalized marketing in its infancy. I say infancy because logging into a WiFi network will soon be paramount to taking a horse-drawn wagon cross the country rather than a commercial jet.
What is currently happening in some retaiI stores and what I envision will be in all stores eventually in the not too distant future is the following scenario:
My wife and I walk into a department store. The store’s WiFi detects our presence from the store’s app or MAC addresses on our phones or smartwatches. We had agreed when we loaded the app to allow detection because the feature would provide discounts. We wander over to the men’s jeans department.
A text arrives, “Hello Anthony. Interested in jeans today? Buy two pair and get the third pair half off. I decided not to buy the jeans as good as the deal was at the moment.
We head over to the women’s section and my wife is looking at dresses. She picks one off the rack.
“Do you like it?” she asks holding it up to her shoulders.
“Yeah, the color accents your hair. You should get it,” I said.
“Maybe, it’s a bit expensive.”
My wife’s phone chimes. She takes it out her pocket and reads the text, “Look at that!”
She shows me the text; it was from the store, “Hello Joann. Looking for a new dress? Take 15% off for being a loyal customer.”
She buys two dresses.
At home, I grab my tablet and check ESPN for the latest basketball scores for my favorite teams. A display ad from the store we had just visited pops up with the message, “Just for you. Buy two pair of jeans, get the third on us. Today and tomorrow only.”
Spooky, but we had agreed to allow the store to access our devices and to receive messages.
What transpired is just one future scenario in marketing. The WiFi in the store detected when we walked into the store and Near Field Communication (NFC) or Bluetooth technology or iBeacons detected when we were near specific clothing racks.
It was like having a virtual digital sales person standing near us with the power to give discounts to close a sale except the sales person is an algorithm. I purchase all my jeans at this particular store and my purchase history is in the store’s database as a frequent buyer of jeans. The algorithm detected my profile and pushed out the text message discount to my phone.
This is tracking of customer behavior similar to website analytics only in the physical realm.
My wife, Joann, has made many more purchases at this store than I have over the years, so her profile is that of a high value, loyal customer hence the 15% discount on the dresses.
All sorts of retailers — including national chains, like Macy’s, Nordstrom, American Eagle, Family Dollar, and Cabela’s among others — have been testing these technologies as early as 2013 and using them to optimize store layouts or offer customized coupons, according to The New York Times.
 |
| Screenshot of Nomi Technology’s In-Store Customer Analytics Dashboard |
One company, Nomi Technologies, which provides the technology to track customers in store, recently settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for allegedly lying about tracking customers in stores, according to a report by the International Business Times.
“Nomi previously defended its use of phone-tracking tech, telling the New York Times in July 2013 that offering retailers the ability to keep track of a shoppers’ habits is similar to the way Amazon and other online retailers use cookies to keep track of their customers,” reported the website, circa.
According to a video on Nomi’s website, their technology can track the number of customers walking into the store, track where they browse and push relevant messages out to their smart phones.
This is tracking of customer behavior similar to digital website analytics only in the physical realm.
While most consumers are Ok with being tracked online with cookies, database profiles of their buying habits and cookie matching used by most e-commerce retailers, there are those who bristle with anger and fear over being tracked physically.
In a March 2014 survey by Chicago-based Opinion Lab and reported by AdWeek, consumers feel this way about in-store tracking:
The study was based on feedback from 1,042 consumers.
In-store tracking won’t go away and what will foster its widespread acceptance are the incentives retailers offer to convince consumers to buy in and reap the fruits of a great discount or free merchandise in exchange for a little less privacy.
What’s your take on in-store tracking? Do you feel it is a violation of your privacy or are you Ok with in-store tracking? Feel free to leave a comment.
Within the past few years there has been a lot of talk about the Cloud and the Internet Cloud. Store all your stuff on the Cloud, free-up your devices, access your stuff from anywhere, anytime. You’ve heard the hype.
Well, the hype doesn’t mention that you need power and an internet connection to get to all your stuff, and when you have neither, all your devices aren’t even good paperweights anymore. But most people know that’s a given or do they?
We recently experienced one of those memorable summer thunderstorms that you only see in horror movies…you know, rain falling sideways defying the laws of physics, downed trees, wind damage and no power, no Internet.
Fortunately, there were no zombies or vampires lurking around. At least I didn’t see any.
We had to suffer through a few days with no Internet. OK, not the end of the world, but close enough. I would open a browser window and then sigh and oh yeah, it doesn’t work. Ok, I’ll figure out something else to do, like clearing out all those unused files on my computer or typing all my passwords in an Excel sheet…boring.
As the internet-less days progressed other thorns stuck me in the side and some right in my eye.
 |
| Our dog trying to hide from the thunder |
Lucky for me, everything I have on the Cloud is backed up on my computer, flash drives and my iPhone.
I have books and magazines in print form to read.
The telephone still works so I can call any of my friends.
I did buy a TV, so I can get the news and weather and whatever else I don’t want to hear about.
So the Cloud is useful to an extent, but don’t totally rely on the Internet. Make sure all your stuff is backed up somewhere so you can get to it without the Internet. Otherwise, you’ll wish you had.
Author James Patterson, former President Clinton (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times; Diedre Laird / Charlotte Observer)
Have you heard…former President Bill Clinton and iconic author James Patterson have teamed up to write a novel, The President is Missing, that will be published June 2018.
Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Company will jointly publish the novel, which represents a rare foray into fiction for a former president, according to the report published in The New York Times.
You can read the rest of the story in the Times here.
Outer Banks Publishing Group author Scott Fields’ novel, The Mansfield Killings, based on the true story of the horrific murders of the Niebel family in 1948, will be made into a major motion picture in 2018.
Produced by Forbidden Tears Productions of Waldron, Arkansas, the movie will be filmed in Waldron and on location in Mansfield, Ohio and at the historic Ohio State Reformatory (OSR) also in Mansfield, where the story started. The Shawshank Redemption and Air Force One were also filmed at the reformatory.
Jennifer Anderson-Bounds, owner and producer Forbidden Tears Productions, was chosen as Female Producer of the Year 2016 and won the Humanitarian Award from WIND International Film Festival 2016. She was also awarded 2nd Place in Indie Film Festival 2015, along with a nomination for Best woman filmmaker 2015 in Barcelona.
Scott Field’s literary agency, Gilbert Literary & Film Agency International of New Zealand, secured the movie contract.
Scott, who was three years old when the killing spree occurred, said he had dreamed all his life of writing a story that would become a movie. When he heard about the murders, he became obsessed with writing the story into a novel and completed the manuscript in four months.
When asked about his reaction to the movie deal, Scott said,
“Without doubt this is probably the most fascinating and exciting thing to ever happen to me! When I was just a little boy, my parents took me to a movie, and instead of wishing that I could be an actor, I wanted to be the guy who wrote the screenplay. It was the beginning of a dream that has been with me for about 60 years. I am not talking about an occasional dream…it was with me practically everyday.”
“My mother w
as a great writer, but she never pursued her talent. I inherited it but being a Kmart manager and raising a family of three kids, I had no time to write even a short story. Then after 30 years in management, I became a common worker and began to write. After having a few short stories published, I decided that it was time to try writing a novel. Since then I have had 16 novels published, but the dream was still there.”
He said at times it was difficult to write the novel because the killings were so atrocious and brutal.
The Mansfield murders was the worst two-week killing spree in Ohio’s history. On the night of July 21, 1948, Robert Daniels and John West, former inmates at the Ohio State Reformatory, entered John and Nolena Niebel’s house with loaded guns. They forced the family including the Niebel’s 21-year-old daughter, Phyllis, into their car and drove them to a cornfield just off Fleming Falls Road in Mansfield. The two men instructed the Niebels to remove all of their clothing, and then Robert Daniels shot each of them in the head.
The brutal murders caught national attention in the media, but the killing spree didn’t stop there. Three more innocent people would lose their lives at the hands of Daniels and West in the coming week.
The two parolees were captured after a 14-day manhunt in Ohio when West attempted to shoot it out with police and sheriff’s deputies at a road blockade north of Van Wert, Ohio. West was killed by police and Daniels was captured, tried and convicted. He was executed in the electric chair on January 3, 1949.
The scene at the Van Wert roadblock, where West was killed and Daniels captured while sleeping in the car on the front top rack – July 22, 1948
Scott Fields tirelessly researched the killings, the capture and trial of Daniels and even interviewed a surviving member of the Niebel family to weave this tragic story bringing the reader back to those dark days in the summer of 1948. What led to these brutal killings, and why was the Niebel family singled-out to be savagely murdered? It has been more than sixty years since the tragedy, and, yet, this question still remains unanswered. The killing spree is not only remembered to this day, but is an important and dark part of Mansfield lore.
___________________________________
If you are ever in Mansfield, Ohio, be sure to tour the historic Ohio State Reformatory, the most haunted location in Ohio and one of the shooting locations of The Mansfield Killings.
Hauntings have been documented over the years by professional paranormal investigators and TV shows on the paranormal, including Syfy’s Ghost Hunters and the Travel Channel’s popular, Ghost Adventures.
View the informative video about the OSR and its rich history.
Order a copy of The Mansfield Killings at our bookstore.
“It was a difficult book to write,” Ron Rhody said. “The stuff about Fallis has never been pulled together in a story. There are all these anecdotes, conversations and suspicions out there about the guy and the sort of things he did. My concern was that, in the writing, that I’m fair to the record that exists and fair to the man.”
Author Ron Rhody
Outer Banks Publishing Group author Ron Rhody interview was recently published on the front page of Frankfort, KY State Journal newspaper in anticipation of the launch of his new novel, Concerning The Matter of The King of Craw Nov. 5 at the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort, KY.
Read the rest of the story>
He brooked no insult, would not be cheated, would not be pushed around. He bent a knee to no man. He was the King of Craw and the powers-that-be wanted him gone.
List Price: $16.99
6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
288 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0990679042
ISBN-10: 0990679047
BISAC: Fiction / Historical / General
Now $11.99 – Order here
One of Kentucky’s baddest bad men is being resurrected at the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort Saturday, November 5 —baddest of the bad if you believed the press of the day, but a hero to the downtrodden if you listened to the poor and the powerless.
John Fallis is his name. He was the King of Craw—the notorious red-light district in Kentucky’s capital city that flourished during the Roaring Twenties and was famous all the way down to New Orleans for its wild and licentious ways. He was a political power, a gambler, a bootlegger, a legitimate merchant, and a charismatic Lothario who brooked no insult, would not be pushed around, who bent a knee to no man.
The men who ran the town thought him Lucifer unleashed. The common folk thought him their protector and benefactor. His rise and fall is the stuff of which legends are made. Which the new book Concerning The Matter Of The King Of Craw attempts, for the first time, to draw out and illuminate. Its formal release is set for the opening of the Kentucky Book Fair at Frankfort’s Convention Center, Saturday, November 5. Ron Rhody, a Pinehurst, NC resident, who wrote it, grew up in the Capital City where stories about John Fallis are still being told.
Concerning The Matter Of The King Of Craw is a work of fiction, for no formal biography exits, but it is based on fact and hews as close to the actual record as such a record exists The book begins with the night of the Big Shoot-Out when he takes on the entire city police force and ends with him dead on a craps table in Craw in what the newspapers deemed the aftermath of an argument over a game of dice, but which many believe was a hit ordered by powerful members of the city’s elite.
The Kentucky Book Fair, operated by the Kentucky Humanities Council and the Kentucky Book Fair Board, is one of the biggest in the Southeast. It regularly attracts a crowd of 3,000 or more and this year will host 170 regional and national authors. It is set for the Frankfort Convention Center, hours nine to four-thirty, Saturday, November 5, 2016.
CONCERNING THE MATTER OF THE KING OF CRAW can be ordered from our bookstore for $11.99.
He brooked no insult, would not be cheated, would not be pushed around. He bent a knee to no man. He was the King of Craw and the powers-that-be wanted him gone.
List Price: $16.99
6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
288 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0990679042
ISBN-10: 0990679047
BISAC: Fiction / Historical / General
Want to know what it takes to write a novel? Talk with Outer Banks Publishing Group author Ron Rhody, who will be one of 170 prominent authors featured at the Kentucky Book Fair (KBF) on Saturday, Nov. 5 at the Frankfort Convention Center in Frankfort, KY.
Ron has written four novels, including the bestselling THEO trilogy, all taking place in Frankfort, Kentucky, where he grew up and was exposed to local lore, legends and its rich history.
Author Ron Rhody
The Kentucky Book Fair attracts writers of all genres and patrons of all walks of life in a celebration of shared passion and mutual interest — the importance and promotion of writing and reading.
In its 35th year, the book fair attracts approximately 4.000 patrons from Kentucky and surrounding states. Each author has a booth where they sell signed copies of their books and talk with patrons about their work.
Net proceeds from the KBF fund goes to Kentucky schools and public libraries for local book purchasing and other literacy-related causes.
The KBF makes every attempt to invite writers of all genres, current events, fiction, children’s books, poetry, cookbooks, mysteries and other genres.
In recent years, KFB celebrated the attendance of authors Sue Grafton, Rick Pitino, Christy Jordan, Eleanor Clift, Laurien Berenson, Duffy Brown, Ann Ross, Mark Kurlansky, Mary McDonough, among others.
______________________________
He brooked no insult, would not be cheated, would not be pushed around. He bent a knee to no man. He was the King of Craw and the powers-that-be wanted him gone.
List Price: $16.99
6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
288 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0990679042
ISBN-10: 0990679047
BISAC: Fiction / Historical / General
Now $11.99 – Order here
The Kentucky Humanities Council presents the35th Annual Kentucky Book Fair
November 5, 2016 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Frankfort Convention Center
405 Mero Street, Frankfort, Kentucky
Sixth Annual KBF Kids Day, Friday, November 4th |
Each year, more than 170 local and national authors participate in the event, signing their latest books and meeting readers from Kentucky and surrounding states. On average, nearly 4,000 readers flock to downtown Frankfort to meet their favorite writers and learn about new authors.
Since its inception in 1981, the Kentucky Book Fair has been connecting readers and authors in a celebration of shared passion and mutual interest: the importance and promotion of writing and reading.
In addition to the 35th anniversary of the Kentucky Book Fair, the organizers are celebrating the 6th Annual KBF Kids Day, on Nov. 4, where hundreds of Kentucky students are given the opportunity to interact with authors in a series of engaging presentations.
In addition, Pulitzer Prize winners Maria Henson and Joel Pett will be featured at the fair.
Contact Brooke Raby, Kentucky Book Fair Manager for more information.
brooke.raby@uky.edu or by phone at 859/257-5932.
Featured photo of the book fair courtesy of Hannah Reel/hreel@state-journal.com, the Kentucky State Journal
Frankfort native Ron Rhody’s newest novel, Concerning the Matter of the King of Craw launches Thursday, Oct. 27 at the Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort, Kentucky.
Rhody, a resident of Pinehurst, NC, will be on hand to read from and discuss his new historical fiction release, with a book signing to follow.
Set in the Roaring Twenties in Kentucky’s capital city, the story spins around John Fallis, a handsome, charismatic grocer, g
ambler, bootlegger, and political boss, and the two boys who fell into his orbit.
Also featured will be Jim Wallace, well known oral historian of Frankfort’s Crawfish Bottom. Copies of the book will be available for purchase from Poor Richard’s Books.
Rhody was born and raised in Frankfort and attended both Georgetown College and the University of Kentucky. He worked as a reporter, a sportswriter, a broadcast newsman, and covered the Kentucky legislature before moving on to a career as a corporate public relations executive in New York and San Francisco, and later as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies on communications and public relations issues.
He is the author of The Theo Trilogy which includes Theo’s Story, Theo & The Mouthful of Ashes, and When Theo Came Home. Rhody currently resides in Pinehurst, North Carolina with his wife, Patsy.
This free event will take place in the Library Community Room. No registration is necessary. For more information, contact Diane Dehoney at 352-2665 x108 or by email at diane@pspl.org.
____________________________
CONCERNING THE MATTER OF THE KING OF CRAW can be pre-ordered from our bookstore for $11.99.
He brooked no insult, would not be cheated, would not be pushed around. He bent a knee to no man. He was the King of Craw and the powers-that-be wanted him gone.
List Price: $16.99
6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
288 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0990679042
ISBN-10: 0990679047
BISAC: Fiction / Historical / General
Author Mary L. Tabor
Do you live in Boston or near Newton, Massachusetts?
Outer Banks Publishing Group author Mary L. Tabor will give a public talk this Tuesday, Oct. 18 at Mt. Ida College as their Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow this week.
Wadsworth Lecture: Mary Tabor on Business and Art
When: Tuesday, Oct. 18th
Where: Campus Center Theater
Contact: Jamie Elliott
(617) 928-7351jelliott@mountida.edu
Mary will give a talk on her journey from high school English teacher to corporate
executive and the leap to creative work, to art. She will end the talk with a short
reading of one of her stories.
MARY TABOR
Author; former public affairs director, American Petroleum Institute
Mary Tabor published her first book of fiction at age 60 after a 16-year career in corporate
America, a senior executive, director of public affairs writing for the oil industry.
She was a high school English teacher who joined the business world, then made
a transition from the business world to the creative world, leaving her corporate
job when she was 50 to earn an MFA degree in Creative Writing.
Her first book, The Woman Who Never Cooked, won Mid-List Press’s First Series Award.
Ms. Tabor’s experience spans the worlds of journalism, business, education and fiction writing.
She was a visiting writer at University of Missouri in Columbia, and has been a long-time professor of Creative Writing at George Washington University and she works with the Washington, DC, library to reach less-privileged populations on how to begin writing.
Mary’s books will be available for sale at the event: The Woman Who Never Cooked: connected
short stories, (Re)Making Love: a memoir, and Who by Fire: a novel.
Or you can purchase any of them at our bookstore.
______________________________
Who by Fire
by Mary L. Tabor
List Price: $17.95
6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
248 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0982993149
ISBN-10: 0982993145
BISAC: Fiction / Literary
Who by Fire breaks new literary ground.
Mary L. Tabor has written a complex tale of love, betrayal, discovery and the search for self.
The form of the novel itself breaks ground. A male narrator tells the story he does not actually know but discovers through memory, through piecing the puzzles of his marriage, through his wife’s goodness and her betrayal. He confronts paradox with music, science and a conflagration he witnessed in his native Iowa. Underlying his search is the quest for heroism and the search for his own father.
Quite simply, Who by Fire is like nothing else you have read and has earned its place among books that matter.
Buy a paperback copy for $10.99
(Re)Making Love
by Mary L. Tabor
List Price: $11.75
6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
212 pages
Outer Banks Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 978-0982993170
ISBN-10: 098299317X
BISAC: Biography & Autobiography / Women
When Mary L. Tabor’s husband of 21 years announced, “I need to live alone,” she cratered and turned to the only comfort she had left: her writing.
What resulted was (Re)MAKING LOVE: a sex after sixty story, a fresh, witty, funny and brutally honest memoir of everything she felt and did during her long journey back to happiness.
This deeply personal account of her saga takes the reader from Washington, DC to Missouri to Australia through the good, the bad and the foolish from Internet dating to outlandish flirting and eventually to Paris where an unexpected visitor changed the author’s life forever.
Her story offers hope and joy told with passion and brilliance that is highly refreshing with the single and most prominent message—it is never too late to find love—and oneself even after age sixty and beyond.
Buy a paperback copy for $9.99
The Woman Who Never Cooked – Out of Print – the second edition is available here
by Mary L. Tabor
Series: First Series: Short Fiction
Paperback: 175 pages
Publisher: Outer Banks Publishing Group
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0922811687
ISBN-13: 978-0922811687
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
“The American adult woman is featured in this debut collection of stories about love, adultery, marriage, passion, death, and family. There is a subtle humor here, and an innate wisdom about everyday life as women find solace in cooking, work, and chores. Tabor reveals the thoughts of her working professional women who stream into Washington, D.C., from the outer suburbs, the men they date or marry, and the attractive if harried commuters they meet.”
Her collection of short stories The Woman Who Never Cooked, published when she was 60, won the Mid-List Press First Series Award. “Mary Tabor writes with astonishing grace, endless passion, and subtle humor,” one reviewer noted.
If you vote for Trump and his MAGA GOP members you may indirectly start World War III.
If Trump and his MAGA GOP take control of our Congress, they will cut off support for Ukraine. They already cut support on the advice of Trump when the Congress was ready to approve the spending bill with support for Ukraine.
What will happen next?
said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “This is supposed to be the party of conservative principles, of tradition, of respect for customs and rules that make society governable.
“The idea that the law does not apply to Republicans is something that has now become part of the mainstream of the Republican party. We see it in terms of the approach to elections. We see it in terms of the treatment of immigrants. Some of the actions with regard to abortion may approach that level. The Republican party appears to consider the law and the constitution to be optional and to have lost legitimacy.”
From The Guardian
Republicans’ lawless leaders at odds with midterm law and order message | Republicans | The Guardian
If you vote Republican you are supporting:
– 19 GOP red states have pending laws suppressing voter’s ability to vote. Historically, dictators and Fascists have suppressed votes to stay in power.
– The GOP has come out in support of QAnon, The Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys
– You may lose a loved one, a relative or a friend in a train crash, a bridge collapse or a plane crash as Republicans strip funds from President Biden’s infrastructure bill.
– The Texas abortion ban if left to stand will be passed in several other GOP states. Idaho will pass an anti-abortion law based on the Texas law. 16 states have “trigger” abortion ban laws.
by the US Supreme Court.
https://cnn.it/3RaW1zm
https://nyti.ms/3IcANNo
With the recent Supreme Court banning EPA authority from polluters
https://bit.ly/3IfQ1Bf
on Gun Purchases – will never get passed.
Watch Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional plea to improve gun purchase background checks
https://cnn.it/3AnRweO
– will never go up leaving 18 states still paying $7.25 an hour.
– the last thing America needs are conservative leaders, especially some Republicans who want to keep America from progressing. The last thing America needs is backward-thinking leaders in the 21st Century.
– Republicans have turned to cheating to stay in power or to get back into power…and nothing is getting done by them for the American people.
The enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
and everything America stands for: Truth, Justice and Liberty for all? Look what is happening in Ukraine.
*Of course, not all Republicans are like those described above. Here is a list of those who should stay in office.
House of Representatives – those who voted to impeach the former president
Senate – The Republicans who voted to convict the former president after impeachment:
YOUR VOTE COUNTS. It’s a lie to think otherwise.
Paid for by Jake Stone for American Democracy
VOTE like your freedom depended on it…because it does.
Books of the NY Times
