It's only mid-December and the news is slowing down…..really slowing down. As the year ends we're seeing more "recaps" and "best of's" earlier and earlier. Given a long Thanksgiving week replete with CyberMonday, the last six weeks of the year are turning into a news graveyard of business deals and politics. And what's worse is the media is letting it happen. Instead of "looking" for stories, the media is basically letting itself be "fed' the news vs. finding the news.

That's why today's "Communique" is mostly tips and insight on topics that may interest you with a few pieces of news scattered through. 

Please let me know what you think….Andy Abramson

Is Tech Innovation Transforming the Agency Industry for the Better?

For the past decade, the digital advertising industry has been singularly focused on one thing: building technology to make digital media smarter and more efficient. This activity has been touted as innovation, but what have we actually achieved as an industry? Not much, considering we devote a mere 20% of our time to tasks that improve performance.

The Death of Bank Products has been greatly under-exaggerated

Since 2005 I've been predicting the decline of branch banking. For almost 10 years I fought bankers who decried my assessment that branches would cease to be the most important channel in banking, to be replaced by far more efficient mechanisms for revenue generation and relationship.

How the Product Hunt community drove 1 million clicks in 10 days for AppAction.io

TL;DR Focus on conversations and you'll reap the rewards of launching on Product Hunt. Launch Day #1 On December 2nd, we launched AppAction.io on Product Hunt. It was a pretty average Wednesday and we were buried in the upcoming section of the site.

A Beginner's Guide To Social Media Marketing From The 10,000 Small Businesses Program

In July, I had the privilege of serving as a social media panelist for the New Orleans cohort of Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses program. Along with two other online marketing professionals from the area, I was to host an interactive session with the business owners and entrepreneurs about leveraging social media for their businesses.

This Brick-and-Mortar Store Wants To Sell You the Internet of Things | CRM Daily

In a store under construction off the University Avenue shopping strip in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, workmen tinker and tarps cover the walls. The new retail shop is unlike those around it and will offer unique items: It will sell the Internet of Things. To the layman, this may sound like tech garble.

Salesforce Has Acquired An AI Startup Called MinHash To Build Out Its Marketing Analytics

Salesforce has made another acquisition to build out its big-data analytics for marketers. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed with Salesforce that it has acquired MinHash, a young startup based in Palo Alto co-founded by two data science engineers formerly with eBay and Avaya.

Stephen Wolfram Aims to Democratize His Software

For nearly three decades, Stephen Wolfram has built software technology that has attracted an avid following among mathematicians and scientists. His Mathematica program for symbolic mathematical computation and its programming language, Wolfram Language, are favorites of the intelligentsia of the quant world in universities and corporations.

Google updates Trip Bundles for road warriors using Inbox | ZDNet

Google may have given me another reason to use its Inbox app instead of Gmail: The company has improved its Trip Bundles functionality. Trip Bundles for Inbox rolled out in June, but I stuck with my tried and true travel planner: TripIt.

The Best Wireless Carriers

After 90 hours of crunching numbers, poring over the fine print buried in plans, and making sense of complex pricing schemes, we found Verizon Wireless is the best wireless carrier for domestic use. It's the fastest, most reliable network in most parts of the United States, and while other networks may offer some compelling deals, Verizon remains the clear leader in most regions.