Joe Taylor Jr.

Article Archives

  • Scams, Lies, and Credit Cards: Fraud Rings’ Five Favorite Schemes

    Scams, Lies, and Credit Cards: Fraud Rings’ Five Favorite Schemes

    Even if you’ve become religious about shredding your credit card statements before you toss them away, criminals can still find ways to cheat you out of time and money. Investigators want you to watch for five of the fastest growing sources of identity theft and credit card forgeries… Read the full article at CardRatings.com…

    ,
  • Top 5 Things You Shouldn’t Do with Your Corporate Credit Card

    Top 5 Things You Shouldn’t Do with Your Corporate Credit Card

    We’re having a lot of fun over at the CardRatings.com blog, posting some Top 5 lists and looking at some of the unusual credit card news that’s cropping up. I tracked down five of the wildest corporate fraud cases involving credit cards, and came up with some stories of greed, ambition, and just plain cluelessness:…

  • Five Ways Credit Cards Can Save Your Marriage

    Here’s another highlight from our CardRatings.com blog that I’ve been getting some great feedback about: A slumping economy, a soft job market, and rising credit card debt can strain relationships. If you didn’t manage to stun your spouse on Valentine’s Day, you may have to call for reinforcements to save your marriage. Fortunately, credit cards…

  • Know Your Credit Card Foreign Transaction Fee BEFORE You Travel

    Posted last week on CardRatings.com, here are some of my favorite tips for folks planning to travel outside the U.S. with a little cash and a lot of plastic: With new credit card rules squeezing profit margins at major banks, foreign travelers have become an even easier target for special fees and surcharges. Credit card…

  • Five Steps for Social Media Marketing Using Free Web Technology

    Social media have become a powerful small business marketing technology for entrepreneurs who truly understand how to network effectively. Just posting ads or special offers won’t work on systems where viewers can easily tune you out. Follow these five steps to turn your own social media marketing effort into a success. Social Media Marketing Step…

    ,

  • Five Decades of American News Radio History

    It's been about ten years since I wrote for AOL's content team, and I'm excited to be back on their roster. Here's the first piece I did for the AOL Radio Blog: Although news reporting had been a regular component of American broadcast radio since its invention, the "news radio" format didn't emerge until the…

  • The Secret History of Used Cars

    When we lived in Athens, Lori and I had fun times with a couple of used cars: a Honda Civic that my mechanic declared "an impossible perversion of Japanese engineering," and a Pontiac Sunfire that ran great and was almost absolutely a salvage vehicle. I liked the Sunfire, but had to give it up when…

  • CRM Systems Thrive with Five Kinds of Data

    First-time buyers of CRM systems often wonder what makes customer relationship management software tick. Effective CRM tools go beyond lists of names and addresses. They collect and help teams interpret five critical types of data… Read more on the Small Business CRM Software Blog…

  • CRM Software Helps Drive Customer Loyalty

    A third of consumers make purchasing decisions based on the level of customer service offered by companies with effective CRM applications. Recent results from a British consumer survey suggest that retailers must do more than institute reward programs to maintain customer loyalty during a recession. Although the latest generation of customer relationship management software makes it…

  • Social CRM Software Helps Companies Evolve Customer Contact

    While business leaders grapple with Twitter and Facebook interactions, experts advise companies to master the art of the direct message in under 140 characters. CIOs and other company leaders with questions about their investment in social CRM applications can review previous innovations to understand the importance of communicating with customers using their favored systems.  Read the…

  • Higher Minimum Credit Card Payments Offer Fast Track Out of Debt

    In a recent column for the NY Times, Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt explained the genius behind the concept of low credit card minimum payments. When studied by academics, test subjects who selected their own minimum payments often paid far more than monthly bank statements required. Read the full article on the CardRatings.com…

  • Can Spotify Satisfy American Copyright Laws?

    As we hear more about Spotify, especially involving mobile apps and in-car services, I fear we might be getting ahead of ourselves. Specifically, I worry that users’ fervor for the system overlooks the core reason why similar concepts have failed in the U.S.: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Read more at spinme.com…

    ,