With Internet-connected television heating up, Yahoo!, Intel, and Samsung are taking a page from Apple’s design book as they aim to bring Internet to a television near you.

A key element entails widgets; small software applications that offer tailored, pared-down versions of sites found online. Using the regular TV remote and clicking at a normal-looking TV, you can access the Web via a wireless or broadband connection.

Just four widgets are currently available: Yahoo’s news; weather; finance; and Flickr photo-sharing. Future partners include MySpace, Netflix, Amazon.com, Joost and Twitter.

While the initial TV sets are expensive — $1,800 and up for Samsung’s versions — prices are expected to fall sharply, and more firms (including cable companies and pay-TV operators) may soon jump in.

Read: Business Week’s Can Widgets Save the Television Industry?

Forrester Research recently noted that making the leap from technology-centric architecture to business-centric architecture might be enterprise architects’ biggest challenge yet.

“Business architecture is not simply another enterprise architecture view,” reported the research company’s Jeff Scott. “It is an entirely different way to think about architecture with its own set of goals, processes, and deliverables. Though the shift to business technology will be difficult, the rewards will be great.”

He went on to state business architecture will provide the major vehicle for aligning IT capabilities with business outcomes. For instance, a well-defined business architecture will provide new business insights, uncover unseen opportunities, and guide business investments to where they deliver the most value.

Scott suggested CIOs should direct their enterprise architects to sharpen their business skills, increase their business interactions, and develop their business architecture road map.

Our take is the architecture of an enterprise exists, regardless if it’s documented in detail. However, architecture must go beyond technology and the business. To lead the way, companies must embrace a customer-centric focus, along with effectively integrated systems.

The colours you choose to represent your business say a lot about you, suggests Juliette Schmerler of SPECTRAMEDIA Strategic Design Solutions.

“Politicians, fashion designers and brand managers pay serious attention to colour trends and colour psychology,” she said.

And so should you. After all, she explained, colour can play a large part in how your audience reacts to you. But be aware choice of colour isn’t just about personal preference.

“There are some colours that are rather obviously associated with particular industries, such as blue for water companies and green for environmental agencies,” noted Schmerler. “However, the choice of warm versus cool colours can also play a part in our perceptions.”

As an example, the Vancouver website and graphics designer explained owners of a bed and breakfast could opt for the coziness of browns, burgundies and mustard yellow in their marketing materials. In contrast, they might want to create an ultra-modern, sleek look with silver, teal blue and crisp white — all very cool colours.

“It is also important to find colours that reflect your company image while differentiating you from your competition,” she stated, making reference to major banks. “Chances are most of us could quite easily tell you which colour each one is associated with: CIBC, red; Royal Bank, blue; TD, green.

“It’s no coincidence that they have chosen very distinct colours to differentiate themselves,” she said. “Ultimately, your choice of colour will be influenced by your company’s goals, philosophy and the image you want to portray.”

So her number one rule when it comes to colours in design? Do not use colour without a specific plan or goal.

Colour Symbolism and Psychology

Assorted sources suggest these interpretations of colour:

• RED: urgency, passion, heat, love, blood
• PURPLE: wealth, royalty, sophistication, intelligence
• BLUE: truth, dignity, power, coolness, melancholy, heaviness
• BLACK: death, rebellion, strength, evil
• WHITE: purity, cleanliness, lightness, emptiness
• YELLOW: warmth, cowardice, brightness
• GREEN: nature, health, cheerfulness, environment, money, vegetation

Your brand on the Web goes far beyond logos and colours. The digital experience your website provides visitors heavily shapes perception.

In fact, your brand is what your visitors talk about to friends, family and peers after they use your website, products or services. And it can be negative or positive.

The scary thing for businesses on and off the Web is that people tend to talk a lot more about negative experiences than the positive.

Consider all the times you’ve dined at restaurants. How many times have you or others around you complained to a manager? And now think about how many times you or the people at your table asked to speak to the manager to give praise?

Your online brand is created with every single click, image and word. So be sure to treat your visitors with respect.

At the end of the day, their perception is reality.

So, your shiny new website marketing copy is finally in place. Congratulations! Even better, that same marketing copy is starting to bring in business. (Must be all those precise keywords and cleverly phrased calls to action.)

Before you amortize your investment, consider how those carefully crafted words can work for your business in other places. Repurposing your website marketing copy will:

• Reinforce your brand identity
• Establish consistent messaging
• Increase customer recognition

It will also give you more than your money’s worth.

Here are 10 possible ways to repurpose your website marketing copy so it works overtime for your company, online and offline.

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More is not enough. People want more than others, suggests a new study on how money motivates.

University of Bonn researchers used brain scanning to show how much people take others’ earnings to measure our own success. Economists and brain scientists tested male subjects in pairs, asking them to perform simple tasks and promising payments for success. Using magnetic resonance tomographs, the researchers examined the volunteers’ brain activities.

Participants who got more money than their co-players showed much stronger activation in the brain’s “reward center” than when both players received the same amount. So it’s not what we have that matters most, but rather what we have in relation to others.

It’s an odd trait, to be sure. “Keeping up with the Joneses” robs us of being grateful for what we have, and living blissfully in the present.

As far as marketing goes, “get ahead of your peers” proves to be a powerful motivator, and marketing and sales types will likely exploit this on an increasing level.

Leave the Joneses in the dust might appear on billboards and websites near you.

The Internet has entrenched itself within the landscape of business in a big way.

While the phenomenon made many entrepreneurs incredibly wealthy, many traditional industries were too slow to adapt, resulting in vast casualties.

Here’s a neat, quick read about six industries and businesses that were too slow — or perhaps too afraid or arrogant — to catch the powerful wave of the Web: Six industries / businesses the Web changed forever.

Why should prospects invest in your product or service? If you can make a strong claim and support it on your website, you’ve got a winning brand.

Are you the biggest? Provide the widest selection? Offer patented technology? Feature convenient locations? Or are you young and small, allowing you to churn out customized solutions swiftly, unlike your much larger and slower competitors?

Define your strengths and leverage them. And be sure you get them right because they are key to your short- and long-term success.

Paint a picture that clearly demonstrates how your prospect’s world will be easier, more lucrative, healthier, happier, etc. with you in the picture. The overall messaging can then be continually reinforced not just in your web content, but also your print materials, advertising, tradeshow presentations, press releases and so on.

Remember, web designers aren’t the only ones with the ability to shape your brand. Well-versed web copywriters can also build your brand with words.

Buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for consumers, suggests a new San Francisco State University psychology study.

The study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased wellbeing because they satisfy higher order needs — specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality.

“These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being,” said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.

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Whether you’re a small business owner, web designer or consumer, this is an opportunity Canadians should embrace.

Starting in 2009 any Canadian over the age of 18 can annually put up to $5,000 in a tax free saving account (TFSA). Income earned by the TFSA is non-taxable, but you won’t get a tax refund on the amount invested like an RRSP contribution.

Your TFSA can hold the same things as an RRSP: cash, guaranteed investment certificates (GICs), term deposits, mutual funds, government and corporate bonds, stocks traded on public exchanges, and shares of some small business corporations.

Conveniently coinciding with the economic downturn, most people feel the TFSA represents a great way to save money, particularly if filled with high tax investments. However, critics cite that with the marginal interest rates, not much money will be saved for the average household.