Ryan Kane

There's a consistent need from historians, documentarians, and genealogists to colorize black-and-white photos, not to mention the interest from families wanting to rediscover old photos in color. But for decades, the process of image colorization has required painstaking work, making it inaccessible to most people.

Today, AI tools make image and video colorization fast and widely available. One example: Palette, which uses a ...

To-do list apps aren't just about getting stuff done. Something deeper is happening. When I create a list of tasks, what I'm really looking for is a feeling of control, accomplishment, and momentum. To-do list apps need to provide that feeling in order to succeed.
Because the act of helping yourself get things done is so personal, there isn't a single Android to-do list app that's right for everyone. But there is a boatload of them to choose from o...

If you’ve ever used the meditation app Headspace, you might recall its brand visuals: bright, sunny, playful, and cartoonish. Not exactly what you might expect from a product promising calm. But Headspace’s brand promise is to make meditation simple and accessible for everyone. Or, as Headspace puts it, “Think of Headspace as your mind’s best friend.” Everything about Headspace’s brand experience, from its typography to its brand voice, reinforces that mission.
That’s an aligned brand experie...

When I was ten years old, there was no greater fashion statement than walking through the doors of my elementary school with Nike logos emblazoned head-to-toe. Basketball shorts and t-shirts were the big ones at my school, but you’d see some kids with Nike logos on their hats, shirts, shorts, socks, and shoes. I remember the shorts, in particular. Nike had this way of manufacturing glossy basketball shorts with premium materials, colors that popped, and of course, that iconic logo.
At ten yea...

Recently, I decided to become a meal prepper. Enough with cooking dinner from scratch every night, I thought! Better to cook a whole week’s worth of food in one fell swoop on Sundays. I read meal prep blogs, added new Ziploc bags and Tupperware to my Amazon cart, and generally paved the way for my new life as a meal prepper.
But then a realization hit me.
All of this meal prep activity still felt like a lot of work. What I really wanted was to find some way—any way—to get food on the table ea...

Ever feel like you’re getting swept up in the day-to-day of your CX role—and losing track of the bigger-picture trends and strategic changes going on in the industry?
Not to worry. In this article, I’ll introduce you to a carefully selected group of people, programs, and events that are sure to enrich your career and enhance your CX leadership skills.
Whether you have time to fly to a conference, take an online course, or simply follow a few CX thought leaders on LinkedIn, consider using this...

Zappos, the online shoe retailer, once had a customer reach out urgently after arriving at her hotel in Las Vegas without her favorite pair of shoes. Although Zappos no longer carried the model she wanted, a customer service rep went to the mall, bought a pair of shoes at a competing store, and hand-delivered them to the customer’s hotel room. It’s hard to overstate the positive impact this level of customer-centricity has on a brand and its customers. But as companies scale, they often lose ...

My experience working with generative image AI tools has been mixed. Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL·E 2 are incredible tools for design and rapid ideation. But each one has drawbacks: DALL·E 2's output isn't very photorealistic, Midjourney is hampered by its clunky Discord-based user interface, and Stable Diffusion has a bit of a learning curve.
Automatically generate blog images
But there's a new player in town. Adobe recently launched Firefly, and it has a unique set of advantages: ...

There was a time when BlackBerry, the electronics manufacturer, was the undisputed smartphone champion in the business world. But in the late 2000s, Apple and Android entered the arena, armed with cutting-edge, user-friendly devices and operating systems. BlackBerry didn’t adapt. Its market share shrank from 20% in 2009 to a minuscule 0.1% in 2016.
Customer churn—the rate at which customers leave your business—can be a silent killer. When it goes unchecked, as in BlackBerry’s case, it eventua...

The average business loses 5.6% of its customers per month to churn. That means if you’re like most businesses, you’re replacing half of your customers annually just to break even.
But finding new customers isn’t your only option—which is a relief, because acquiring new customers costs five times more than retaining existing ones. By identifying why customers are leaving and nudging them to stay, you can speed up your company’s growth without busting your budget.
You probably already have a h...

There’s no more universally-repeated marketing principle than “make data-driven decisions.” But when it comes to account-based marketing (ABM), many companies are still figuring out how to gather intent data and use it constructively. According to a 2022 survey, 45% of new ABM programs and 34% of mature ABM programs fail to use intent data.
If you’re pursuing an ABM strategy, you already know the power of focusing your marketing and sales teams on the most valuable accounts. But properly inco...

Most digital marketing ads—Instagram ads for H&M clothing or display ads pushing a Disney+ subscription, for example—are for low-ticket items. For consumers, making the decision to spend $10-$20 only requires a short buying cycle. Many low-ticket items are impulse buys, particularly if they’re listed on Amazon, where conversion rates are considerably higher than other platforms.
But high ticket digital marketing requires a different approach.
For pricey items like enterprise software, jewelry...

There's an endless supply of apps promising to organize my life and work, but I still haven't conquered my digital clutter. Even being a loyal Notion user hasn't eliminated my organizational Achilles heel: the dozen or so .txt files cluttering my desktop at any given time.
But recently, I came across Mem. On the surface, it looks like other Notion alternatives: a clean, minimalist workspace environment that brings notes and project management together. But the vision for Mem is bigger than th...

We’ve all had some harrowing digital purchase experiences. My latest? A small Central American airline with the sketchiest checkout page I’ve seen since 1999. But hey—it was the only direct flight available, so I crossed my fingers, took out my least favorite credit card, and pressed “Buy now.” Luckily, it worked out. Still, I found myself firmly among the 90% of less-than-satisfied customers who feel most brands don’t deliver a good digital experience.
Fortunately, companies are slowly awake...

Over the last year, I've edited over 100 documents with Grammarly. So when I heard that Grammarly was adding generative AI functionality, I jumped at the chance to test it. Like most AI writing tools, GrammarlyGO is built on GPT-3, so it's not at any advantage in terms of the quality of its output. Instead, its edge is the fact that Grammarly is already a powerful editing tool.
How to create an AI writing coach
Could the convenience factor—the addition of AI tools directly into my editing wor...