You can learn a lot by monitoring consumer conversations in social media. It can predict political elections, the Oscars and even the next reality show winner. If you are a CPG marketer, social media can also be a real-time predictor of your new product's success.

Retail theft, including shoplifting, employee theft, administrative error and vendor fraud is down, according to an annual survey recently conducted by the University of Florida. The National Retail Security Survey 2011 report found that theft as a percentage of revenue was 1.41 percent, down from 1.49 percent in the previous findings. This calculates to an approximate $2.6bn decline in losses.

Eighty percent of manufacturers responding to a recent survey rate reducing overall supply chain costs as the number one supply chain priority in the coming year, according to IDC Manufacturing Insights. Nearly 55 percent suggest supply chain agility is second and 52 percent suggest improving product quality and safety is the third-most important priority.

Just when you thought cloud computing couldn't get any more complicated and fraught with hidden gotchas, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue has jumped in to sprinkle taxation magic on your cloud business cases. What the Keystone State did - and other states are likely to follow - doesn't make cloud any less profitable, but the specifics of the cloud deployment could now impact tax costs.

Fair Factories Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization that helps major brands and manufacturers collaborate to ensure cost-effective, well-informed business transactions and improved workplaces worldwide, has enhanced its software and collaboration platform that support a new approach for manufacturing audits.

Everyone wants their business to grow, to broaden its operations within a territory or country and, eventually, across borders to other countries and continents. However, business expansion abroad entails a great deal of forethought, especially with regard to enterprise software applications.

Syncron International AB, a provider of supply-chain and price-optimization technology, has released its 2012 solution suite.

When prices are updated at the E.Leclerc supermarket in Saint-Jean-du-Falga, France, as many as 30,000 labels can change automatically, bringing an end to a time-consuming process by which staff previously had to manually print and swap out printed labels on store shelves.

Webgistix Corp., a provider of order-fulfillment technology for electronic commerce, has integrated its SmartFill platform with the online shopping cart of BigCommerce. As a result, the vendor said, retailers can build online stores in BigCommerce environments with two-day ground delivery of e-commerce orders to more than 98 percent of U.S. consumers.

Wavelink Corp. has released Velocity, a mobile browser which provides fast delivery of Web-based applications to rugged mobile devices.