Why do I have to go in 2011? Only because it’s one of the most interesting events to hit “The South”. Along with a great list of sponsors, SXSW has been a solid platform to showcase really exciting innovations in the technology industry.

To give you an example, Twitter was launched at SXSW Interactive in 2007. It is commonplace for entrepreneurs and start-ups to congregate, which is why I’m mostly interested in the Interactive section (although, I love music & film).

As SXSW States on their site:

“SXSW® Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer. Join us March 2010 for the panels, the parties, the 13^th Annual Web Awards, the ScreenBurn at SXSW® Arcade, the Film and Interactive Trade Show and Exhibition, Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW® and, of course, the inspirational experience that only SXSW® can deliver”

It’s interesting to note the new startup ideas that come out of SXSW and being a part of this makes being an earlier adopter of revolutionary sites that much better.

This year, there has already been a few interesting promotional techniques designed specifically for SXSW.

Chevy for instance was giving attendees free rides downtown to a select number of Gowalla-users that checked in at a certain place by a certain time.

Chevy was also giving attendees a place to recharge their devices and themselves with the Chevy Volt Recharge Lounge; “a charging bar, tables, and couches are available with lots of outlets for your charging needs.”

I think one of the more interesting things is the my.SXSW iPhone App, which had thousands of downloads months before the event even started. Keep track of schedules, maps, messages from people you meet at various events and general information about the whole convention.

Check back here, and see what we report on the new discoveries that come out of SXSW 2010.

Today we are hearing about how the print industry is in trouble and how the mass medium is struggling to adapt in the digital information era. Thanks to devices like iPod, Touch, readers like the Kindle and the iPad, as well as various smart phones, reading magazines and other traditionally print pubs in digital format is now obviously in vogue. This is just one of the ways print is trying to adapt, but Lucky is making a good example of another kind of media convergence.

There still is demand for printed magazines; to take advantage of new technology Lucky has incorporated an application available for a variety of smart phones called the “Tag Reader.”

As I was flipping through the pages, I noticed that this latest issue had instructions on the pages to snap an image of a 1”x 1” square with my Smartphone. If you go to http://www.gettag.com/go/mobile , you can download a free application called Tag Reader. When you download this application, your phone’s camera turns into a scanner that identifies a code found in a square image that contains positive and negative triangle shapes that are organized in assorted directions. The camera lense will detect the code and snap the square image. The image then triggers the application to go to a video that supplements the article or feature you are reading about.

In this case, I was reading a page about mascaras and how to create beautiful eyes. When I snapped the image, I was taken to a “How-To” video that was relevant to the article. The possibilities here are endless when it comes to advertising. You can create a video about anything and include featured products, as well as how to use them; very beneficial stuff for the user.

So far, I have only seen this in Lucky magazine; however I can’t say for sure if anyone else is trying this yet. I’m glad to see traditional media adapting to digital media and making it work for their publications and readership. I thought this new function was pretty neat and the great thing is the application is available for a multitude of smart phones; not just the iPhone. Congrats to Lucky Mag for making their readers experience more interesting.

Content Management Systems manage the web content on your site. In order for a website to be optimized, before any on site or off-site optimization can begin, picking an SEO-friendly Content Management System can make all the difference. When we have a client that is requesting a re-design and / or has an outdated CMS, we upgrade the site’s structure to a Search Engine Friendly CMS; this means that the website content throughout the site’s pages are easily understood, not only by us humans, but also by the search engines that have specific requirements of website content so that the pages are properly scanned and indexed.

An example of a great and easy to use content management system is WordPress. For lead generation and blog sites, we have been using WordPress for well over a year and have seen great results. The reason we chose WordPress was because of its “Thematic” theme basis. Google engineer, Matt Cutts has also mentioned that the new updated version for WordPress will be better equipped to fall in line with Google’s new faster indexing search engine, Google Caffeine.

Recently, the thematic theme developer, Ian Stewart was hired by Automattic, the creators of WordPress. We speculate Automattic will make a big push into theme development and that the thematic theme will be the foundation of all properly built themes in the future.

The best clients you could ask for have just enough knowledge about SEO to know when they need help; however those that are too scared to “give you the keys to drive,” can actually block the progress of SEO processes. After investing lots of money into a web developer to construct a site, it is understandable that a client is not thrilled to hear that their site is actually part of the problem. This is an, all too often example, of incorrectly thinking that website design and website promotion (SEO) are in separate worlds … the truth is quite the contrary.

SEO strategies continuously evolve because search engine ranking systems evolve mainly due to technological advances that provide added insight that improves ranking effectiveness and ultimately human satisfaction. SEO companies know what they are talking about when it comes to SEO-Friendly elements; Content Management Systems are a central consideration here. This is not to say web developers have no idea what their talking about, but if they don’t practice SEO daily and only adopt the first principals used back when people realized there was a science to the search engine algorithms, then they are no expert in SEO.  Make sure the CMS system you choose will benefit your website and not just benefit the developer.

Twitter announced at SXSW that they will be launching a new platform called @anywhere. The idea is to take the Twitter experience and allow it to be implemented anywhere on the web. As Twitter states it in their blog, “Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com.”

The new platform is supposed to be simple, at least from the sound of their description; “Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.”

Twitter recently implemented some new features on the site, which include geo-location and a small window that pops up when you hover over a user’s name—showing a full name and location—but for  me this new @anywhere feature sounds a lot more interesting.

Here is TechCrunch’s List of features:

• When you browse a site that uses @anywhere, people and brands that have Twitter accounts will be highlighted with a hyperlink. Mousing over that hyperlink will show a small box (a “hovercard”) containing their Twitter information, including their most recent tweet (in effect it means you don’t have to click over to Twitter’s homepage to see their Twitter profile)
• Publishers will be able to more deeply integrate their own Twitter profiles, making them easier for their readers to ‘follow’ them
• Sites will be able to implement @anywhere with a few lines of Javascript.
• The new platform is launching with a number of major sites and services, including the New York Times, Huffington Post, Meebo, Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, and eBay.

The details surrounding this new platform are vague, but check back with us for an update on this developing story.

While Home Entertainment Systems already can integrate Internet through PC and Mac through a home TV, based on the ability of the PC or Mac to output HDMI signals, I’m thinking more along the lines of getting rid of Cable/Satellite altogether.

I don’t think we will replace our living room TVs with computers, but we very well may connect all of our computers to the TV or some smart company will create a system that gives us the same couch-potato/remote user-friendly experience that we have enjoyed for last few decades.  As mentioned we already see this; but with innovation and further integration could “internet” just be another channel or network on your TV?

Where is all this hysteria coming from? Well, Patently Apple discovered that “Apple is working on a system that replicates TV commercials for online video.” I’m not quite sure why this is any different from what we see while watching other online advertisements (i.e. the ads you watch before being given access to Hulu videos), but it does make me look at a bigger picture.

According to Gizmodo, “Apple’s reportedly been heavily pitching networks both on selling TV shows for cheap—99 cents—and signing on to an iTunes TV subscription service that would bundle a selection of TV shows from major networks for 30 bucks a month… The networks have been cool to both suggestions, given that TV’s expensive to produce and stuff.”

With Apple purchasing this patent and pushing these ideas, it’s not unbelievable that they would want to come up with an advertising system and monetize from it. It’s extremely smart for the hardware manufacturers to take charge of the system so they can continue to monetize even after the initial purchase.

If Apple releases its own system for advertising they will more than likely push watching content online rather than on TV. Think of it as high school and Apple is the head cheerleader telling everyone what is popular. Most want to fit in, so they listen and her influence is undeniable. With a shift of TV viewers going from cable/satellite, Apple can corner another market, and it seems they are setting up to do just that.

With Apple’s iTunes store and hardware for making watching TV a more comfortable and familiar experience on the computer, Apple is definitely setting up to be a rival to Comcast, DirecTV and the like.

With the recent removal of “sexy” apps from the Apple App-Store it should come as no surprise that Apple wants to remove even more apps to show a more useful side; reinforcing a sense of exclusivity (you decide if it’s false or realistic).

Numerous sources say that the ban is specifically for template-based iPhone applications; stating that the new ban isn’t suppose to get rid of current apps, but forewarn the disapproval of future apps with this format.

To me, it seems like this is a sensible move by Apple. The company that boasts over 100,000 apps is realizing that quality is definitely a more desirable characteristic than quantity. A move like this can give Apple the power to claim that they have the “#1 recommend app store” or any variations of that phrase since other app stores—Android—are slowly but surely playing catch up to Apple’s 100,000+ apps.

On the other side, I do think many of these so-called “cookie cutter” apps may be very useful (although unnecessary) to those shackled to the Apple/AT&T app store. While I understand a desire to have the more distinguished app store, should Apple really have the ability to decide what content you should have on your iPhone?

In the article, Apple’s New Stance On ‘Cookie Cutter’ Apps: Add More Features Or Perish, Jason Kincaid says “Apple wants iPhone apps to be superior to Web experiences because they are extremely sticky and drive people specifically to buy the iPhone over competing smartphone platforms.”

This all makes sense, from a business standpoint, the more exclusive the apps, the better the app store, the better user-experience, the more phones sold. Another question that comes to my mind… will app developers continue to play a long with this exclusivity technique?

With Google announcing earlier this year that they are shipping  60,000 Android phones a day, is it only a matter of time for people to realize that the iPhone is grand and all, but they would be just as happy without all the excess?

Okay, I know I answered my question with another question, but without bashing Apple for the despicable way they tend to take advantage of consumers, I can’t help but ponder what ridiculous move Apple will make to cause it to be pushed back from the forefront, and which company will be able to (if any) knock it down from its pedestal.

While I completely understand the need to charge for the videos that Hulu shares—TV Shows like The Daily Show and Family Guy—doesn’t mean that I like it. The fact is, for me, and the majority of users, this will drive me away from the site altogether. Why would I pay for content that I can easily find somewhere else online with a quick Google search?

According to the article, Comedy Central is being pulled by Viacom from the site, which I confirmed on Hulu’s blog, where they called it a “Fond Farewell.” This may hurt The Daily Show’s viewership if the viewers don’t know how to find this show elsewhere, but I also think most people will react the same way I will and find a new place to watch the show they love. Like Yao states, “many viewers are drawn to Hulu because of its ease of use, not because they couldn’t get much of the same content elsewhere.”

With Comedy Central being one of the first to bid the site adieu, it is not unimaginable that other shows will be soon to follow, forcing Hulu to make a compromise that will dramatically affect the current flow of the site.

One of the most interesting things in this article was the reporting of a Leichtman survey, that said “81 percent “strongly disagree” with the notion of paying $9.95 a month for a service like Hulu, while only 5 percent “strongly agree” to pay.” Can you imagine 81% of your sites’ users leaving, while 14% teeter on the fence? If these survey results are like Tarot Card reading predictions, then I’ll be Ms. Cleo and say that the site will definitely be going down.

Yet, there are ways to keep the site up, for instance, if Hulu decided to go the movie rental route, they can sustain a business by offering a cheaper video on demand rental system. In essence, the way for the site to stay afloat is to offer some sort of exclusive content that viewers cannot easily access anywhere else, and would be willing to pay to watch—bringing them into direct competition with iTunes, Amazon and a few others.

I like Hulu, and would feel a bit at a loss if I had to watch it go, but is it just another sad reminder that all good things must come to an end?

While I opt for a simple and often reliable Google search, it seems that some actually do use the services that KGB provides. Now I’m not here to bash KGB, but since I like Google, I feel free to stomp out KGB’s flame of success because their approach towards promotion is to showcase Google search from a mobile device as a waste of time:

It is a little known fact that Google offers a similar text message query for the irresistible price of FREE, which is a no-contest bargain in comparison to KGB’s $0.99/answer service. Google’s service is called Google SMS. You simply send a text message to GOOGLE (466453), with your query and you will get results based on what you sent.

For example, I sent “Pizza 33166” to 466453 and instantly got a text message back with Google Local Listings highlighting the various pizza places in the area. I also typed in a question, “What is Search Engine Optimization?” Google instantly texted me back with “Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via ‘natural’ or…” While I’m unsure why the results ended there, I was given a link to the source’s answer on Wikipedia.

On the website Google has a list of shortcut tips:

While KGB seems to be a useful service, with clever advertisements, it also seems to be a complete waste of money. And while I understand their approach to promoting their service—“Get Answer’s, Not Links”—I think their promotional tactics are misleading and the other half of the truth about Google should be brought to the light.

Google offers tons of ways to receive information quickly and accurately. Along with this Google SMS service, that, by the way comes with a free downloadable app on Android phones, Google also offers a free 411 service via 1 (800) GOOG-411.

Sorry KGB, you just don’t compare!

The first reaction is, that this device will not compare to a Kindle or Nook in this initial version. I believe that this statement is true, but if Nintendo sees a growing market for consumers wanting to use this product for eBook reading in conjunction to gaming, I believe it will expand this feature and take the device to the next level.

Even though this gadget is mostly for gaming, the Nintendo DS has marketed itself to an older audience (other than teenagers) by casting Lisa Kudrow and even Beyonce in commercials to show the diversity of the product. Lisa used the Nintendo DS to help her prepare a meal with her daughter by using an interactive recipe game that walked her through the prep and cooking process. Beyonce used the device by playing a video game that helps train her singing voice.  Liv Tyler was also in a Nintendo DS commercial playing a game that helped her practice her piano playing skills on a piano training game. Also, with games like Brainage to help keep an aging mind young, this product is fun for all ages.

Will the Nintendo DSi be a competitor for the iPad? If you think about price, then yes. At $190, the DSi sounds more affordable than $499, the least expensive of the iPad versions. In portability, the DSi is more convenient due to its small size. It also features two screens and comes in a variety of colors. I might sound pretty excited about it, but the truth is, if you have the extra cash, the iPad is ahead of the Nintendo DSi if you want a well designed device that does everything the DSi does, but also allows for reading printed media interactively and playing your iTunes. Well, one thing the iPad does not have is a camera.

So the verdict is, apparently, everyone wants a piece of the eBook reader pie. It also doesn’t hurt to mention your device includes a book collection while there is so much buzz going on about eBook readers. Overall, this is an excellent product for its functionality and value. Anything that gets you or your kids excited about reading is a good thing.

According to Samsung, this phone is the real deal in eco-friendly innovation. They hecave thought of everything from the emissions used in the manufacturing process to the removal of harmful substances used in the materials that make up other phones.

So who does this phone appeal to? Well, obviously the people who are really into being “green”, but I actually think the phone is pretty stylish and if you want to be more green, this phone shows you how. Therefore, this phone could be helpful to people who want to change their environmentally conscious ways, but don’t know how.

The interface on the phone helps you be more eco-friendly and has a built-in pedometer to help you calculate the emissions you are saving by walking to your destination. The value of your footprint is calculated through the number of trees that have been saved. Features like this have also been seen in eco-friendly cars. It motivates a user to try and reach a goal in being environmentally responsible.

Most of the reaction I have read has been positive. Some consumers are hoping that more mobile phone manufactures follow Samsung’s lead. There are some skeptics that say comments like “Your phone is usually in your pocket” and while that is true, I feel every bit helps and the phone does not have to be in direct sunlight to charge. There are times when it won’t be in your pocket and you’ll be happy at how conveniently your phone is charged as you go grab a cup of coffee or take your dog for a walk.

As for me, I am actually excited that there is a product that is truly eco-friendly and the aesthetics were not sacrificed. Here is the big question, how much does it cost? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I can’t seem to find that information anywhere. I have a feeling it will be more expensive than other smart phones since they did not release that important tidbit of information; most green products tend to be pricier. The other reason could be that Samsung wants to screen consumer reaction in order to allot a balance between price and the value given by the consumer.

Image Attained via TechCrunch

Alex Payne, Lead for the API team at Twitter, sent out a Tweet hinting at new features that may render Twitter third-party clients useless.

This led me to wonder… why hasn’t Twitter been able to self-sufficiently maintain a user-friendly interface?

It seems like I end up using third-party clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic more often than I use the actual Twitter site.

While features like List, ReTweet and the less noticeable timeline count in a browser’s tab are features that make it more convenient for users to go straight to the site, the alerts/notifications are still lacking, at least from my point of view.

One of the more annoying things is that Twitter itself still hasn’t developed an application for smartphones, while Facebook managed to update their application and make it more useful than ever.

While reading TechCrunch’s MG Siegler’s article discussing this ambiguous tweet, I was reminded of a great point:

While new features are great, Twitter has to be careful not to make things too complicated. The core of Twitter has always been its simplicity — if you start tacking on features, that goes away quickly.

Twitter has had much success and with the addition of their soon to come advertisements, I’m sure the company will grow to greater heights and possibly even overtake it’s still growing elder Facebook. This company has the advantage of learning from other social networks (i.e. MySpace), and has the opportunity to integrate the strong points, while avoiding the mistakes. They simply need to keep in mind that they are seen by most as a unique social networking experience and avoid the temptation to be like others.

Follow-up Tweets:

The idea behind the purchase is simple. Walmart wants to compete with rental companies like Netflix and Coinstar’s Redbox. Imagine walking into your local Walmart and alongside your impulse buys of gum, soda and assorted varieties of ChapStick you have movies? Even better, you have a reminder that says you can go to Walmart.com and watch these videos whenever you want and not worry about returning a DVD.

Vudu is one of many video on demand websites (Amazon.com and the even more popular iTunes both offer this service), so there isn’t anything too particularly special about Vudu, but they are good enough for Walmart. Bottom line is, as long as its functional, Walmart can handle the marketing and distribution; whether you like Walmart or not, you can’t argue with the fact that they are the #1 retailer in the world with over 1.3 million employees.

The only issue I see arising from this is pricing. While renting movies from Comcast can be a little pricey, Netflix offers a flat-fee for as many movies as you want, and Redbox is cheaper than the popcorn you would find in aisle 3.

I was didn’t know Walmart attempted this service before, but headlines rarely lie “Walmart Stores quietly canceled its online video download service less than a year after the site went live…” (via ZDNet)

This adds yet another dimension to Walmart; one that will definitely boost sales and bring stiff competition through its shear marketing strength and legendary pricing power.

The debate can also be seen on the usual news media channels, but if you are at work, it is harder to tune in. Many Americans will have headphones on at work, listening to music or talk radio shows as they go through daily tasks. This works very similarly. As I blog, I have the video opened on a tab in my web browser and I am able to hear what is going on. Granted the topic is not exciting, but if you want to get informed, this is a pretty up-to-the–minute and seamless way to do so.

I am pleased that the White House has decided to share this debate with us and that they have given us an official channel to see what is going on. Citizens have access to a bipartisan meeting that promotes transparency and allows them to see what the congressmen, voted in by the people, for the people, are doing in Washington.

While watching, the users on YouTube can submit questions and ideas on healthcare reform as well as get involved in some social networking on the subject. If you log on to http://www.citizentube.com, there is a blog you can visit to read up on what is happening in U.S. politics.

Our government may have some flaws, and our country may have some cracks in the foundation, but I think it is a great idea to utilize a social networking technology like YouTube as a platform for interaction with the average American. Most of us want to see our tax dollars at work and if the government seemed more approachable, I feel like more of us would vote, or feel like we mattered. What do you think? Do you really care what is going on in Washington DC? Or is this a good step in getting Americans informed; besides the ones who watch C-Span informed?

Microsoft has tried to acquire Yahoo in the past, but the deal was turned down because management was greedy, even delusional; the company now sells for a small percentage of Microsoft’s offering price. Now that Microsoft has released Bing, Yahoo has changed its tune since there is evidence the revamped search engine is able to compete with Google by gaining a few points back in market share.

From now on, when you search in Yahoo, you will really be seeing the indexed pages provided by Bing. Yahoo will save money by outsourcing the indexing process, which includes web crawling. Where the two are hoping to make more revenue is in the advertising associated with Pay per Click. Yahoo will focus on the paid ads and give a percentage to Microsoft. Site owners who have a PPC programs with Bing will also be shown on Yahoo giving their customers a visibility bonus.

The search community that utilizes these two search engines will not likely see a change until 2011; but change is coming. What does this mean for the search engine marketing industry? For one, Bing ranking guidelines will become increasingly important. If more site owners begin to use paid search on YaBing, I assume there will be more of a requirement to become certified in PPC management for Bing, and not just Google. Also, SEM experts use the link and link domain metrics for Yahoo to quickly measure backlinks. This will now also be influenced by the importance of Bing’s metrics.

I think this could help Bing gain market share; but to really compete with Google or to loosen the stronghold that it has, there needs to be way more innovation by Bing. So far, they have done a great job in search, but it is hard to compete when Google is diversifying its efforts and getting people to use them for every online need they might have i.e. a full service search engine.

Revenue = Over $1 Billion
Sales Qty = Average of 28,000 packages shipped per day
Net Profit = 10%
Success = $1 Million to $1 Billion in ten years

ZAPPOS OBSERVATIONS

This is a comparison of Zappos.com. Arguably one of the most successful online retailers today. In this comparison we will take Zappos earliest incarnation (1999) and compare it to it latest beta, or ‘zeta’ version of its website. (Disclaimer-The Zappos Zeta site is in beta and actively being developed, so it changes daily.)

By scrutinizing the differences between both versions of this site we can determine which designs, colors, graphics, call to actions where changed in order to increase sales and/or conversions. Let’s begin with the overall design.

DESIGN

Its very interesting to view the beta version of Zappos.com. since Amazon purchased it. One can assume that the web dev team at Amazon is somehow involved with the site’s overhaul. What we’re seeing is Amazon’s take on the Zappos website. The horizontal, wide layout. The navigation, simplified graphics, it smells just like Amazon.com. By studying this site for the next month or so we can observe the Amazon team at work.

Update: Some of our readers commented that the Zeta version was up before the Amazon Acquisition. This is correct and we are well aware of this, however we still believe that Amazon had influence in the way Zappos.com looks today and we expect to see more changes soon. We will be watching closely.

LOGO – Figure (a)

Logo has not changed too much over the years. The original logo used a footprint that symbolized an exclamation mark. It now sports a more traditional exclamation mark. The dot was changed to a perfect circle and separated from the vertical stroke. In addition, the exclamation mark was converted to one color rather than two color to simplify and reduce the visual ‘noise’. Give them another few years and I’ll bet they’ll remove the hidden z within the exclamation mark altogether. The tag-line changed of course. It went from ‘the worlds largest shoe store’ to ‘powered by service’. Which is smart. Zappos has already established itself as a huge virtual shoe store. That is no longer a novel idea like it was in 1999. Zappos built quite a following on their exemplary service alone. Shipping is always free, returns and exchanges are almost too easy, and most importantly, you will NEVER speak to a recording, it will always be a person on the other end of the line. It makes perfect sense for them to change their tag-line to highlight what makes them different.

MAIN NAVIGATION – Figure (b)

The main navigation has been expanded to include bags, housewares and beauty supplies. Rather than having two duplicate sets of buttons, i.e., the women section for dress, casual, athletic and the men section for dress, casual, athletic. They removed those duplicates and fleshed out the filtering system. They added an alphabetical list of all their products. This makes much more sense. Users are very educated nowadays and usually have a very definite idea of what they want to purchase online. Offering the user the ability to immediately navigate to their brand of choice is priceless and can save 5-10 clicks at least.

UTILITY NAVIGATION – Figure (c)

The utility navigation usually includes links and tools for repeat customers. It is meant to streamline the user experience. In the first version they have customer service, shopping bag, and acct/register links stacked on top of each other. Not the greatest, but not bad by 1999 standards. The new utility navigation offers EVERYTHING a return customer could want at a moments glance. Placed at the very top the website. Featured in the utility nav is the 24/7 customer service number and a separate number for spanish speakers. Pretty logical if you think about it. Front and center in the utility nav is the shopping cart button that is impossible to miss. On the right is access to ‘log in and register’, ‘my account’, ‘favorites’ and ‘help’ links laid out horizontally.

SEARCH FUNCTION – Figure (d)

The search function has different filters that allow you more targeted searches; search by size; search by width; search by price. In 1999 this search function was on the lower left and the filter links were stacked on top of each other. Today its been moved to the top utility nav section and the filter links have again been laid into a horizontal format.

CALL TO ACTIONS – Figure (e)

The “Free Shipping & No Sales Tax” call to action was almost hidden in the first version of the website. In the new version The color has been changed to an alarming red. It has been reworded to, “Free Shipping Both Ways! 365-Day Return Policy”. The sales tax bit has been dropped. They expand on their shipping policy and neatly tie it into their return policy. In one fell swoop they have appeased 90% of all users. In the early version they might not have fully realized the power of their 24/7 (human) customer service. So they didn’t make a big deal out of it. Nowadays, they realize that its the driving force behind their brand. As you can see they feature it as prominently as they do their free shipping and return policies.

CONTENT AREA – Figure (f)

The content area on the early site is insignificant. In the new version they have gone with your standard featured content slider. A large image with a good call to action. ‘FIND Your Style Boot’ Below the main image the slider navigation highlighting their new categories: bag, beauty and housewares.

Disclaimer: The observations would be more complete if we had analytic information to analyze the results of site optimizations.

I figured Kindle had a market share that would be faithful because of its simplicity and clear application. But even with simplicity, the Kindle was not exactly increasing the desire of advertisers wanting to put their dollars back into magazines and periodicals. Beyond the fact that the iPad has other functions and capabilities, what really makes it a revolutionary product is how easy it makes printed media available to its users. How can we forget about the iPad’s application technology? It’s not about what fancy things the iPad can do. It is how it can do them. The iPad has much more application functionality than the Kindle.

If you haven’t yet, I suggest taking a look at Wired Magazine’s new application for the iPad. It is an electronic edition of the monthly magazine available in one touch. I’m sorry Kindle but, that’s pretty awesome. This is exactly how the iPad is going to save print media. The Wired Magazine application will have expandable pages that can be read horizontally and vertically and get this … the advertisements will have 360 degree views, and stories or features can include embedded videos.  One thing I would look out for is the functionality of the ads being able to be shared, which will increase visibility as well as new innovations in interactive advertising.

Flipping through magazine pages got very basic for us, but what is going to boost consumer sales and ad revenue is this interactive approach that will give consumers the experience they have evolved for. Over the past few years Americans have been getting used to using multi-touch screen devices in their everyday lives. Keep in mind the flexibility in application customization for specific audiences that are targeted for each magazine or periodical market. Imagine Rolling Stone being able to embed a music video or interview in an editorial about a featured artist.

The Wired Magazine app is just an example of how the print industry can bring back advertisers and attract new customers while bringing back the old ones. Since the 1950’s mass media has moved towards special interests and niche subjects. I was one of the skeptics that thought the iPad was a bust, but I must retract! Historically, print media has been able to adapt since the first newspapers centuries back, this new digital era will not be any different.

The first one seems the most obvious, but you would be surprised how many people do not know there is a dedicated site for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games. This site is a page rank 8 with a user-friendly design.  The medal table section is above the fold and you are able to copy the code in case you would like to embed it in an email or a blog.  There is a latest news section and a latest videos section, but the best thing about this site is the navigation at the top of the page that is organized by the name of each Winter Olympic Sport. This is great because you can easily see all the different sports and go into the one you are interested in. Each page has further detailed information about the sport and even weather information on for the location the sport is taking place.

Then we have the NBC Olympics site. This site is a page rank 7 and has tons of videos and slideshows, which seems to be the focal point of their page. Like other sites I posted here, they include a medal chart section, a live blog, and results. What stood out the most about this site was the focus on the US and some Canadian Olympic Athletes. Go down below the fold and check the athletes’ profile section.  When you click on the athlete, you can see a bio, get connected to their Twitter accounts and see special coverage of them as well as photo albums and stories. I also like the Olympic Pulse feature that shows tweets of the athletes who are updating their Twitter during the Olympic Games.

Yahoo Sports has a decent page in their sports section for the Winter Olympics that has Olympic headlines, a sports blog where you can communicate with other sports fanatics, and videos of event coverage. On the Olympic homepage you can see a chart of the overall Medal Count with an easy to follow format.  If you scroll down the page, you will see a chart that is updated with the latest medals. The name of the winner of the medal is displayed and clickable allowing you to view stats and a current medal count for the athlete that won the medal.

Alright everyone, that is my coverage of the best websites to get your Winter Olympic fix; hope it helps. If you know of any other good sites, please feel free to post here. If you visited these sites or are currently using one for your Olympics coverage information, let me know your likes and dislikes.  Go USA!

In the article “You, Too, Can Soon Be Like Tom Cruise in ‘Minority Report’,” written by JENNIFER 8. LEE, we are given a major dose of the future of computing. Lee introduces John Underkoffler, co-founder of Oblong Industries, and the creative brain behind the futuristic computer interface that is used in the movie Minority Report.

During the annual TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., Underkoffler uses special gloves to demonstrate the gesture-activated interface.

The interface allows you move “photos and forms” on a screen; using movements like push, pull, stretch, zoom in/out and rotate using six degrees of control.

According to the article, “Mr. Underkoffler said this gesture technology was already being used in Fortune 50 companies, government agencies and universities, and he predicted that it would soon be available for consumers. ‘I think in five years’ time, when you buy a computer, you’ll get this,’ he said.”

The New York Times also recently reported video games soon to come out with gesture controls, which I think are sure to put Nintendo Wii to shame.

This technology is a work in progress towards eliminating the use of a traditional keyboard, mouse and screen setup. Many technologies have been working towards computing in a more seamless and user-friendly way; especially Apple products (i.e. the MightyMouse and the iPad).

This interactive technology is sure to change the way we use computers and overall the way we work at our desk.

I am now eating my words with the release of this technology, and can’t wait to see how it is commercially sold and incorporated into our everyday lives.

Not too long ago Google enlarged the size of the search box on their homepage. Soon after, they cleared all additional information (anything that wasn’t the search box or the logo) from the homepage and have all additional links on the page appear after about a two second delay.

I recently noticed that now, it seems that the information doesn’t appear until you move your mouse across the page.

Another thing that Google implemented within the last few months with their search is the suggestive searches that work like predictive text to help you quickly find what you are looking for.

Google has also implemented some new features into its search results! They added a real-time feature to results by having Tweets and breaking news show up in a scrolling box based on a search query.

More recently, Google got creative with their music queries by having a play option on the top of the search results that allow us to hear if the song you’re looking for is really what you were trying to find.

Even this week, Google is testing out Trending Topics on their Google News section, which is similar, if not the exact same, as Twitter’s extremely popular Trending Topics; being sure to stay in stride with all popular forms of search.

These ingenious little tweaks make it seem like Google is reading our minds, but let’s not forget that Google has tons of data that no one else could possibly have.

John Gruber author of the blog Daring Fireball recently posted a short blog related to Google Search that gives you an idea on the kinds of data that Google has. He states:

“ReadWriteWeb has a weblog post that ranks highly in Google’s search results for ‘Facebook login’. The comments on the post are filled with complaints from confused people who think that this is the new Facebook login page… it’s a fascinating glimpse at just how confused many people are about how web sites and browsers work. They don’t use bookmarks, they don’t type ‘facebook.com’ in the location field. They just Google for whatever they’re looking…”

This shows just how dominant, how ubiquitous Google is.  It also shows the kind of information Google is collecting to tailor their services and be even more user-friendly! Search is not going anywhere, but it is definitely evolving in its everlasting effort to remain the #1 platform on the web for as far as the eye can see.

Many web developers are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to bring interactivity to the web. With new methods like HTML5 and CSS3 starting to pop up, will old technology like flash disappear from the face of the internet?

Don’t get me wrong, I like Flash as much as anyone, but sooner or later something is going t to give. Now-a-days, many effects created in Flash can be replicated with JavaScript and JavaScript libraries like Ajax, J-Query, MooTools, etc.

Recently one of my colleagues, Anthony Calzadilla, created a really cool and innovative animation using nothing more than CSS3, which you can find here: AT-AT Walker from Star Wars.

He made this without the use of any animation programs; no Flash, Toon Boom or After Effects—and I’m not saying this just so everyone will start using CSS3 instead of Flash. My point:  With the problems that do, in fact, come with Flash Animation, it is inevitable that web designers and developers will seek different and better solutions.

Will Flash become out-dated? To answer this question we have to look at what it is mainly used for, as well as look at what it lacks. Flash is best known for its ability to play videos on the web and for gaming, but one of the biggest internet video sites, YouTube, is slowly drifting away from Flash and working on ways to start implementing HTML5 into their website. If more sites start to follow YouTube’s path toward HTML5 where will that leave Flash?

The future is going to be pretty iffy for Flash because with HTML5 you can use a browser without Flash installed and still be able to watch videos and listen to audio. Currently the only browsers that can support this are Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Internet Explorer, but only if you have the Google Chrome Frame plug-in installed.

Will Flash be the Lotus 123 of the early 21^st Century?  Is online video animation and Flash no longer virtually synonymous?  What about Flash Games? Oh, oh!  You can now create games with JavaScript … time will tell … stay tuned!

With new reports of yet another problem, this time with their 2010 Prius Hybrid, Toyota’s public relations department must be reeling from this daily string of bad news! Formal investigations are planned by Washington politicos amid cynicism of their motives now that government (us) now are owners of Toyota’s competitors, GM and Chrysler.

While maintaining a low profile, the president of Toyota Motor Corp, Akio Toyoda finally came forward in a press conference held in Nagoya, Japan to formally apologize for the recent safety problems. During the press conference, there was announcement of a new quality committee that will include inside and outside sources. I understand the PR angle, but it might make consumers question if there were any prior quality control efforts in their manufacturing process.

A better PR move is being executed by Jim Lents, the COO of Toyota Motor Sales, USA who is participating in Digg’s popular segment, Digg Dialogue. Just a quick recap of Digg Dialogue; it is a platform where public figures answer questions submitted by the Digg community. Past Digg Dialogues include Matt Damon, Adrian Peterson, and Al Gore. Keep in mind a prominent picture and a short bio is also made viewable on this page which gives some sense of transparency.

As I read through the questions and comments, Jim Lents is facing a tough crowd here, but for the most part, the questions are well thought out, and they seem genuinely important to the people who are asking them. The questions with the most votes will be answered. The consumers that are taking the time to log in or create new accounts on the social bookmarking site in an effort to voice their concerns are the real customers Toyota should be worried about. Bad publicity is still publicity and eventually it goes away and could be erased with the right line of attack. This is absolutely a step forward and worthy attempt to help ease the public’s concern.

Of course, in the end, it’s up to Toyota to fix the problems and make good for the consumer as a first step.  PR and using the social media is fine; but actual deeds from the car manufacturer will win the day in the end.

Hands down my favorite advertisement from Super Bowl XLIV is the Google spot! In a simple and effective way Google told us a man’s love story with just the view of his browser and Google’s search engine. Noticeably touching many users on my Twitter Feed, and those following the #brandbowl hashtag, the ad ends with a smart call-to-action, “Search On.”

The advertisement says more about Google than I thought initially. If you think about it, most people use Google, so why even bother making an ad in the first place? Is it possible that Google is losing market share to its competitors (i.e. Bing which is known for airing TV advertisements)? Or maybe they just wanted to send us a friendly reminder about how they are there for us when we need answers.

Some find it stupid for Google, an internet-based company that generates most of its revenue from internet advertising, to go on television to advertise their company. Frankly, I disagree. You go where your audience is, not waiting for them to come to you. Yes, they are a web-based company, but that is a large audience, and although Super Bowl viewers may not currently be on the internet, they will more than likely be on the internet soon enough, where Google may be the first site they go to considering it is fresh in their minds.  I am apparently not along in my praise of this ad; it is getting a load of positive comments throughout the social media.

Google also has other videos with the same theme on YouTube called Google Search Stories. I find this to be a brilliant campaign by Google. I really have no negative critiques of the Super Bowl ad by, or the events leading up to it (i.e. the Tweet sent by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt hinting at the Super Bowl ad airing).

Most people seemed to enjoy the commercial and it is getting positive reviews! Overall, this was a well-calculated move by Google and I look forward to more savvy moves by the most trusted, most reliable name on the Internet and quite possibly anywhere.

Gmail users currently have the ability to update their status, but it’s more of a signature type of status rather than a “what’s-happening” kind of status through the Gmail Chat feature; which, by-the-way I find to be a lot more useful than other instant messengers.

Apparently, this new feature will show a time-line of what others in your network are doing, similar to that found on Twitter and Facebook.

The Wall Street Journal also says that it will integrate YouTube and Picasa into the stream. My question is will they integrate Google Wave into the equation?

This new element sounds like a new support feature or even a rival to Facebook and Twitter. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on, so that’s exactly what I’ll do. Check back to see how this story develops.

UPDATE:

Google Buzz has arrived!

In a recent blog post, Google announced a new venture, Google Buzz. This is, in essence, bringing Google into the world of Social Media.

Here’s part of Google’s statement on their new feature:

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

Yahoo responded to the buzz about Buzz by “reminding” everyone that they themselves have Yahoo Buzz … which I was completely oblivious to; it’s just another testament to Yahoo’s backseat position and its inept marketing.

Go Daddy.com is famous for putting themselves on the map as a web hosting services site by showing racy commercials during the Super Bowl. It makes sense why a gay dating site named Man Crunch wanted to run an advertisement during the Super Bowl. According to reports, the commercial features two men playing “tonsil hockey.” Needless to say, CBS rejected the commercial.

From a responsible mass communication standpoint, I feel CBS was right to reject the ad.  You have to keep in mind that with a TV event of this magnitude and the time slot of a Super Bowl, children will most likely be watching. This would probably not sit well with most parents, people who are anti-gay, etc. For me, it’s not so much that the ad is about a gay site, I think that running an ad with a male and female making out would also be inappropriate to run during such a mass broadcasted event.  Glad to hear CBS rejected a controversial ad from Go Daddy as well.

There was a rumor that CBS had approved an anti-abortion ad to run during the Super Bowl. The rumored ad was supposedly paid for by a known right-wing Christian organization. Running this commercial would probably be too heavy of a subject depending on how the commercial is presented. We do have freedom of speech in the U.S. but in that case, why not let gay male dating site commercial air? Just my two cents. This is a strong opinion that is shared by a certain demographic, but absolutely not everyone. Just like with the pro-gay ad, some people could be offended.

Regardless of what your opinion is on gays and abortion, these are issues where people tend to rigidly pick a side. There is usually no gray area here. Both advertisers might have more success advertising directly to their niche audiences. The audience that watches the Super Bowl would rather see funny or lighthearted commercials while gathered around with friends and family. We like to see beer, chips, pizza, cars and the E-Trade baby! Take us to our happy place. Ease up on the political/religious agendas.

Why is Pepsi doing this? The conclusion is after many years of TV advertising campaigns, running an expensive commercial for the sake of entertainment is just not enough anymore. Even with Pepsi’s endorsement deals with major celebrities, Pepsi has never been able to pull itself in front of its rival, Coca Cola.

The brand has already achieved becoming a household name not needing the exposure of another costly commercial during the Super Bowl. Deciding to put their advertising dollars to work is a smart move by Pepsi, who will now use their brand power for the greater good.

At $2.5 million a pop for a 30-second ad spot, a small jump in sales is just not as important as working towards a new long term marketing goal. The shift will help Pepsi achieve a positive image in the public eye.

Something to note, Pepsi is using the internet rather than TV as the medium to engage and build its followers. I recently wrote a blog post on how Pepsi has a notable website and a social media campaign that included a Twitter profile, a Facebook page and an attractive YouTube channel.

Other than marketing with social media, the focal point of their online cause marketing campaign is their Refresh Blog Project that provides a platform for people who have a great idea for charitable projects. The best or most “refreshing” ideas will be voted on and Pepsi will award a grant and donate funds to see these projects through.

Personally, I am excited to see a large corporation use this kind of marketing strategy. Cause marketing is not a new approach, but it fits the mood of the current times. By using the name “refreshing” Pepsi is trying to invoke a feeling of something modern, sincere and invigorating. For Pepsi, that should be the exact sentiment you would want a consumer to think of when deciding one cola over the other.

Promotion is nothing new to the Grammy, I mean, they even had Steven Colbert do some product placement for the iPad, but the most prominent promotion to me had to be the efforts put on by our old, not-so-popular-anymore, friends at MySpace. They had a few plugs during the show, but most of their efforts seemed to focus on the red carpet interviews and where to find your favorite artist on the social networking website.

Previously I spoke about MySpace’s efforts to stay afloat by acquiring imeem.com. The buyout turned out to be a monopolizing effort since they closed down the music sharing site that allowed users to create playlists and embed players from various social networking sites.

On Grammy night, their efforts were focused on bringing us all back to where they felt music began getting popular on the internet. It’s undeniable that MySpace had a major affect on the music industry, but I was taken back when one artist said something along the lines of “We gotta take it back to where it all started… MySpace!”

I felt that the promotions were a bit desperate, but desperate times do call for desperate measures. Question is… did these efforts help?

I personally can’t answer by what magnitude, but I will say that it caused me to log into my own MySpace account after months of forgetting its existence. The main issue with MySpace now is that many have moved on; if you’re no longer connecting with the people you once connected with, the reasons for going on to MySpace are limited … probably why they are focusing their efforts more on the music sharing aspects of MySpace rather than the social community.

Godspeed MySpace, hopefully your marketing efforts are not all for nothing.

In their new TV ads, they bring to light the hurtful comments made by focus groups after tasting their pizza, which is a clever segue to introduce their new and improved pizza by adding better ingredients.  It was a rare mea culpa moment in TV commercials where the advertiser faces up to its shortcomings and demonstrates the willingness to listen to their consumers and make changes to improve their product, their image and ultimately their bottom line.

Domino’s has produced funny commercials in the past and they have always had great deals on their pizza, but the problem is their pizza wasn’t cutting it as far as taste. To me, they dropped down to a level of discounted pizza similar to Little Caesars. In what I believe was a choice spawned by desperation, in effort to improve their downhill sales, they added sandwiches that rivaled Quizno’s toasted subs to their menu.

Domino’s also impressed me because they were one of the first pizza chains that optimized their website early-on and allowed you to place an order online, keep track of your pizza delivery and receive an email confirmation of your purchase. It seemed like they were ahead at the game considering how long ago they added these desirable functionalities to their site. Even though their website gave great face, their sales were still unimpressive.

Was airing their dirty laundry a good move? Absolutely! I really take the time to notice commercials and this one stood out compared to everything else that was running. Domino’s took an approach of honesty and vulnerability that the American consumers are looking for. In times of recession, the population grows weary of big corporations and their promises that do not deliver. As someone in their own commercial mentioned, they did not hide their flaws, instead they dealt with them…and found a clever way to bring that to life. Bravo!

The Kindle is an e-book reader that is limited to storing and displaying monochromatic text. Newer versions of the Kindle do include web browsing capabilities, but there is nothing else really tech-y about it. There are reports surfacing about Amazon wanting to add gaming features to the Kindle to offset losses they are anticipating by Apples new e-book friendly device. According to Business Week, Amazon has enlisted the help of game developers to do just that. Is this a good move by Amazon? It might do more damage than good. The consumers that chose Kindle as their e-book reader of choice were probably not interesting in gaming. They value the device for its ability to allow them to curl up and read a good novel.

For the most part, the Kindle is marketed towards an older audience that really loves to read, and not necessarily the twenty-somethings that are looking for the trendy glitz of an Apple product. If the Kindle keeps advertising to this demographic, then the fact that the Kindle is just an e-book reader is one of its positives. As far as being a great e-book reader, supposedly the iPad does not match up due to its technology for viewing the text. Kindle’s screen is easier on the eyes, it was made specifically for reading while the iPad has and LCD screen that lights up to highlight reading and other shared functionalities. However, I believe this is all relative. The Kindle has the advantage that it looks like an actual printed page, but younger audiences might want to see graphics and images when reading printed text that go along with it. The attractive graphic display will come into play when users are able to download Marvel Comics from the Apple App Store.

Where I feel there will be a sense of competition is in the newspaper industry. The Kindle can currently provide e-reader versions of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal among others, but many reviews say the format in which it is presented is lacking. Some users are angry about paying for newspapers on a subscription basis, but do not see the whole edition.

So how should Amazon get ready for the iPad? I think they should keep trying to optimize the product they already have. The iPad has been able to conjure up some significant deals with publishing companies, but people who buy textbooks and read Marvel comics don’t necessarily want to download romance novels or travel books. Zeroing in on the right demographic and improving their newspaper and magazine reader formats will help the Kindle maintain its current leading market position.

In the article Inside the iPad: Apple’s new ‘A4′ chip, written by CNET’s Brooke Crothers gives an excellent definition of what the A4 Chip is:

“…the A4 is a system-on-a-chip, or SOC, that integrates the main processor, graphics silicon, and other functions like the memory controller on one piece of silicon–not unlike what Intel is trying to achieve with its future “Moorestown” Atom processor. And a similar SOC chip architecture is already used in the iPhone and other smartphones, such as Google’s Nexus One and Motorola’s Droid.”

This chip is meant to make processing the much quicker/seamless, which in turn makes the use of the Apple Tablet more user-friendly. Indeed user-friendly devices are nothing new to Apple, but it adds onto the sheer excellence that Apple is known for delivering.

In the video introducing the iPad, Bob Mansfield, Senior Vice President of Hardware for Apple says that it gives you “… a level of performance that you cannot achieve any other way.”

With performance improving a lot, this may actually make using an iPad more functional than using a laptop. It’s obvious that you don’t have all the functions of a laptop, but apparently you would have enough functionality on a smaller more portable device, and with a chip’s processing power comparable to that of Intel it is definitely worth taking a deeper look.

The chip was “breathtaking” in terms of speed and execution as it launched programs on the iPad instantly said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64 in an interview with PC World. “Apple is trying to gain larger control over chip development for an advantage over its rivals.”

This is a big deal for the technology industry, so why are they not making a bigger deal about it? I mean sure they don’t want to overshadow the overall functionality of their new product, but why not use the A4 Chip as a major selling point?

In essence this is the key in making the iPad so functional; its speed, its processing of graphics and even the speed of reaction to the touch-screen, which is all rooted back to the A4 Chip.

My speculation on downplaying the A4 Chip, they’re about to do something bigger with it. What could it be? Well, your guess is as good as mine, although, there are some rumors spreading about the next iPhone coming equipped with the A4 Chip.

Constructing a website requires a lot of tools and coding to remember. Luckily the iPhone has “got your back” for help with font types, HEX color conversions, HTML safe colors, FTP information, HTML code, CSS code and JavaScript. Here is a list of apps that a designer or developer should have on their phone:

cliqcliq’s Colors: This is an app that allows you to come up with an interesting color palette, and afterwards you can email it to yourself so that you can use it within Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.

Color Expert- This app allows you to use a color wheel or picker to create a custom color palette as well as provide you with the Pantone shade. This beats having to figure out the CMYK or the RGB value for the color that you desire.

Photoshop.com Mobile- This is a “lite” version of Photoshop for the graphic designer on the go. If you need to quickly adjust an image and there isn’t a computer around with an image editing program you can use your iPhone. Just take a picture or use an existing image on your iPhone and start editing. Photoshop.com Mobile is limited, but it’s still free and best of all it is mobile. This app will let you crop, change levels, hue & saturation, and has other useful features.

The Typography Manual- This app is good for those designers who skip typography class or just want to brush up during a lunch break. With this app you can learn everything you need to know about selecting great type for your design material.

Source Viewer- This app is most useful for web developers that are surfing the web on their iPhone and wondering how and what the site is made up of; for example HTML, CSS and JavaScript. With this app you can see all the source code that makes up a website.

ServersMan-This app allows a simple iPhone to be used as a storage device and/or a server by using the Wi-Fi or 3G. ServersMan can come in handy when a client sends you a file to store for later usage.

SEO it- This app analyzes how SEO friendly your website is from source code all the way to backlinks and meta-tags. Perfect for an Internet Marketer on the go!

WordPress-Is your site or blog managed with WordPress? Ever want to update your website or blog on the fly via your phone? Well with the WordPress app, you can; just enter your login information and you can start posting and editing pages to your heart’s content. The only problem is that you do not have the HTML window which allows you to write HTML code.

Analytics App- This app is very handy, especially when it’s analyzing how well your website is performing based on your keywords, content and visitors.

In this article we’ll quickly walk-through the process of creating a CSS3 animation of an AT-AT Walker from The Empire Strikes Back. We’ll start off by reviewing some CSS3 properties that made this animation possible. Then, follow up with a list of the sections required to construct the AT-AT and the CSS3 code to move each section. I wont go too deep into the explanations of CSS3. There are various resources online to get you up to speed with CSS3.

Lets review some of the important CSS3 properties:

TRANSFORM: TRANSLATE(X Y) ROTATE(X)

-webkit-transform: translate(x,y) rotate(x)

These CSS3 transform properties are pretty self explanatory. Translate allows you to move an object left, right, up, down and the rotate property, well… rotates.

@-KEYFRAMES ‘ANIMATION-NAME’

@-webkit-keyframes 'bounce' {0 {top: 20px;}
40% {top: 0;}
60% {top: 20px;}
100% {top: 0}
}
#ball:hover {
-webkit-animation-name: bounce;
-webkit-animation-duration: 4s;
-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
}

The keyframes function/property allows us to define a keyframe animation over a specified amount of time. Let me describe how the keyframe property works by explaining the code above of the bouncing animation.

At 0%, the keyframes function is placing the object 20px from the top. 40% into the animation that object should move up to be 0px from the top. At 60% into the animation, the object should move back down 20px from the top. By the time the animation gets to 100% it should move back to 0px from the top again. In the second rule we apply this animated behavior to the #ball element upon hover.

When the user hovers over the link with an id of ‘#ball” it will activate the bounce function. We have specified that the animation duration should last 4 seconds. Meaning that it will take 4 seconds for the animation to run from 0% to 100%. Finally we allow the animation to run infinitely. If we wanted the ball to only bounce a couple of times and then stop we would just put a 1 or 2 in the webkit-animation-iteration property.

TRANSFORM-ORIGIN: X Y

-webkit-transform-origin: x y;

This is an extremely important property for animation. The transform origin property allows you to change the point from which animation or transformation for any given object occurs.

Figure (b – We have moved the transform origin point to the top, center of the arm image. Now if we rotate the image from this transformation point it would rotate correctly like a properly hinged arm.

Lets Move On to the AT-AT, Its Sections and the CSS3 Properties That Apply to Those Sections:

THE SHELL – one png image; keyframes and animated rotation properties are applied to coincide with the movement of the legs. The shell will sway a little as each leg steps forward.

@-webkit-keyframes rotate-shell {
0% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
20% {-webkit-transform: rotate(3deg);}
40% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
50% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
70% {-webkit-transform: rotate(-3deg);}
90% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
100% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
}
#atat #shell {
-webkit-animation-name: rotate-shell;
-webkit-animation-duration: 4s;
-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
}

@-webkit-keyframes shin {
0% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
20% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
30% {-webkit-transform: rotate(23deg);}
50% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
100% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);}
}
#atat #leg-a .leg-shin {
-webkit-animation-name: shin-a;
-webkit-animation-duration: 7s;
-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
-webkit-transform-origin: 50% 0;}

THE HEAD (neck and skull) – The animation on this is minimal. The skull and neck extend out of the shell of the at-ats body. then the skull section swivels up and down a bit.

@-webkit-keyframes rotate-head{
0%{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg) translate(0px,0px);}
40%{-webkit-transform:rotate(10deg) translate(15px,5px);}
80%{-webkit-transform:rotate(-5deg) translate(8px,5px);}
100%{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg) translate(0px,0px);}
}
#atat #head {
-webkit-animation-name: rotate-head;
-webkit-animation-duration: 7s;
-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
-webkit-transform-origin: 0 50%;
}

Well, that’s it. That is the basic concept to animating a diabolical war machine using only CSS3. Feel free to post a comment or question. I’ll make sure to try and post a response quickly. Take another look at the demo, dive into the code and try to build your own.

My boss was listening to NPR on his drive to work, and apparently they discussed this new application as though it were really being offered by Google Inc. Although it wasn’t quite the War of the Worlds broadcast, it definitely sparked some curiosity.

While my boss explained this application to me I found the video and watched it in utter disbelief. What everyday user would take social media so serious to the point that they themselves couldn’t interact with others and needed a system to do it for them? It’s like auto-tweets on steroids with a dose of amnesia, taking anti-social to the next level.

According to the LA Times’ Blog, Philipp Drössler was the creator of this and, even tweeted a link on a phony Google Labs twitter account linking back to the site that is now listed as a “Phishing Scam!”

There are many security implications, especially considering the fact that users were given the option to plug in their account information for sites like Facebook & Twitter.

Fortunately, a Google spokesman confirmed that “Google is not affiliated in any way” with the site.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Don’t always believe the hype!

So what exactly is the Tablet? It is a multimedia touch screen device where you can access iTunes, applications, surf the internet, have gaming capability, watch videos as well as read traditional printed media electronically and conveniently.  If you already have an iPod Touch, then you have experienced something similar to a mini version of the Tablet. Even now, a week before its release on Wednesday, Apple is still making moves with educational publishing companies like McGraw-Hill.

According to the Apple Insider website:

“The negotiations with McGraw Hill are seen as an attempt by Apple to keep a prominent role in the U.S. education system. BusinessWeek cited research firm Gartner, which claims Apple held 28.3 percent of the U.S. educational market in the third quarter of 2009. While the institutional market struggled last year, Apple spent $390,000 in one quarter alone, partially to support funding for education.”

How is the Tablet going to change it all? Many speculate that the Tablet will be a competitor of the Amazon Kindle because of its usefulness as a device that can be utilized to read textbooks and other printed media. For students, the tablet can be an excellent resource and alternative to carrying heavy books around campus.  As a female full-time student that works a day job, walking across a huge campus in the evening with heavy books and a laptop is not an ideal thought. I have already taken advantage of purchasing eBooks before and I think it’s an easier, more affordable alternative. Even having your magazine and newspaper subscription available on your Tablet would be much more convenient and eco-friendly.

Apple revolutionized how we access our music, then videos. It looks like the Tablet will be the answer for how we connect with text of all kinds.

Of course, we don’t know what we don’t know yet. So, stay tuned and I’ll share what I learn about Apple Tablet as it becomes real.

Recently, there was an awkward change in my usual Facebook News Feed. I noticed that many of the women in my feed were changing their Facebook Status’ to a color, and most of the comments in regards to these status updates were comments of confusion—mostly from men.

I immediately went to Google to clear up my confusion, and found out that the color represented the color of the bra the users’ were wearing. This trend was part of a breast cancer awareness initiative. The results on Google were limited to two or three sites with information relevant to what I was searching.

My SEO mindset kicked in and I decided that this would be a great opportunity for me to bring in more traffic to the blog. I quickly wrote a blog post that I felt would grab attention and engage the reader and posted it including all keywords I felt were relevant to the topic.

About 10 minutes after posting the blog, it was already on page one of Google, and quickly moved up the ranks to position 6.

Unfortunately, there were some issues; one being that our blog’s bandwidth couldn’t accommodate the large amount of traffic in such a short period of time.

In just over an hour, I was able to get over 1,000 viewers to our company’s blog, right before the site went down from being over capacity.

One thing that needs to be said is that this traffic wasn’t constant. I did not have the same 1,000-plus traffic that I did the previous day. It seems that it was such a hot topic that larger companies, like Mashable and ABC News, picked it up—along with just about anyone else that had a blog.

One way to keep this from happening is to offer your readers more information, such as an update, that will hopefully bring them back. In this case, an update that offered to find out where this breast cancer initiative started.

Most importantly, even though this may lead to rushed publishing of information, content is still king, so make sure what you post is accurate and free of grammatical errors.

While China says it wants to protect its citizens from the Internet’s “immoral and harmful content,” the actions of this attack speak volumes in the silence that citizens are forced into with regard to freedom of speech.

In the article, Google Search Engine’s Future in China is Unclear, Michael Liedtke says that “For years, Google faced withering criticism for what activists and lawmakers said was a willingness to abandon social responsibility in return for greater wealth.” Google is very public about the attack it sustained and is clearly drawing a line which may well serve to stir the pot and possibly evoke protest among the Chinese populace.

“We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech,” says Google.

I’m not so sure Google should be praised so highly for threatening to pull out of China. In reality, the corporate giant will sustain minimal loss in leaving one of its weakest markets and is likely to gain favorable publicity, which should, in-turn, increase  its revenue by increase in traffic, increase usage of their various applications and possibly an increase in stock investments.

Not to say that this wouldn’t be a positive move for Google to make, but the question still remains as to whether or not they will decide to leave the country altogether or work out some sort of compromise that will make both parties slightly happier.

At this point if Google decided to stay in China, it may very well do more damage in its other markets since the company is currently getting tons of praise for its stated positions and potential threat to abandon the Chinese internet market.

The way to execute a customer relationship program has changed in the last few years. Most businesses like to hand out discounts or special customer appreciation promotions as well as personalized customer service. Today, social media is helping corporations get closer to their customers in a way that is less expensive and more effective.

Social Media marketing has many considerations. First, you must identify what social networks your audience will most likely be a part of. The most popular social sites include Twitter and Facebook. Keep an eye out for company TV commercials and radio advertisements that include call-to-actions and contact information for company pages on these sites. These sites usually have mobile phone applications that will also increase the reach of your social network page through access via a mobile internet service that is becoming more increasingly available to the masses.  For instance, do a search on iPhone for an app that is specific to the company and customer service issues.

As I usually do, I wanted to give some good examples of companies that are using social media to develop and encourage relationships with their customers:

• Best Buy has set up Twelp Force, a dedicated Twitter page at http://twitter.com/twelpforce that is used to answer tech-related questions to current and potential customers about their products. This page is separate from their general Twitter page and I think this is a great idea to be there for customers.

• Progressive Insurance has one of my favorite marketing campaigns going. Other than having both a Twitter and a Facebook page, they have a blog site at http://www.progressive.com/progressive-blogs.aspx with lots of great information. Even better, they have a YouTube page with their great commercials supplying people yet another channel of communication.

• Pepsi has long been a rival of Coca-Cola and has tried to make its image to be more youthful; a cooler corporation than Coca-Cola’s all American image. They want to be the soda of a generation.  In this case, Pepsi has taken to the internet and taken advantage of the social sites that younger people frequent. They have developed a multi-channel campaign that includes a very attractive Twitter Page, an official Facebook Page, and a Refresh Blog where they are currently running a campaign where they give away grants to people with “refreshing ideas”. They even have a very hip-looking YouTube page.

I bet when Nintendo Wii first introduced their product, they never thought that they would be marketing fitness. Let’s face it; we see many fitness promotion programs out there that talk about getting kids off the couch and away from video games in order to prevent childhood obesity. Technology is helping us advance in all ways; why not let it help you improve your health and fitness?

Nintendo Wii has been out for a few years and if you haven’t taken the time to get into it or feel like you have outgrown video games, maybe it’s time you take a second look. I was pretty skeptical at first about getting fit with a video game in your living room but if you think about it, it’s no different than popping in a fitness DVD and getting fit in front of the tube. After all, this is how I work out. If you are interested in trying the Nintendo Wii, here are some sophisticated games that can help you get in shape, track your fitness goals, and keep you motivated:

Wii Fit Plus – This game is inexpensive and gives you a huge variety of workouts from Pilates, to kung fu, to skateboard arena. The great thing is that everyone in your family can work out with this game because it appeals to all ages and all fitness levels.

EA Sports Active – This game gets high ratings from most of its users. With EA Sports you have a personal trainer and several workouts from a six week challenge to abdominal workouts. Play a variety of sports to keep you from getting bored. There is even an integrated nutrition book to help you stay on track with your weight loss goals.

Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout – This game also has great ratings and claims to “kick your butt and get you sweating,” which is great considering you don’t have to leave your home. This is one of my challenges when working out at home. I always worry if I am getting a sufficient cardio workout without running or walking outside.

Your Shape by UBI Soft – This game features Jennifer McCarthy and uses a web cam to track and detect your movements helping you get an accurate work out every time. The workouts are personalized and focused on you.

Sadly, along with the positive efforts there are many scams out there taking advantage of the endeavors of many organizations. This blog post is to help those of you looking to find a safe place to donate and have your funds reach the people you are attempting to help.

Life Hacker recently wrote a post that gives some tips for you to donate money while avoiding scams and verifying non-profits:

• Send money, not stuff. Charity organizations can use your financial help to restock their supplies, but, as the GlobalPost explains, sending clothes, food, or other items is, at best, misguided.
• Charity Navigator, an independent evaluator of non-profits and aid organizations, has compiled a list of relief organizations working in Haiti that have attained three- or four-star ratings from their studies, and are generally considered trustworthy and efficient.
• TIME points out the popularity of text message donation campaigns, but also suggests being cautious of online scams:

As with any kind of giving, it’s wise to verify that the cause you are donating to is a legitimate organization before pledging your funds. This is especially true when you learn of a nonprofit on Facebook, where phishing and other scams can give the impression that your friends are sending out links, when really a spammer has hijacked their identity.

Legitimate organizations also send a confirmation text moments after you donate to verify that you really want to give the specified amount, typically $5 or $10. If you say yes, then the amount will appear on your next cell phone bill. If you did not intend to donate, you can cancel your pledge.

• CBS News recommends checking out any group you’re about to give to at The Foundation Center web site, where you can look up that group’s most recent tax filing and non-profit status.

Many companies are showing major support by donating the services to consumers for free in hopes of bringing more relief to the country. For example, American Airlines is sending doctors and nurses to Haiti for free. According to CNET, T-Mobile has dropped all charges for calls and texts to Haiti until the end of the month, while various service providers are waving charges for all text messages sent to the Red Cross for their cause, and Skype has sent $2 vouchers to customers in Haiti, giving them the chance to make up to an hour’s worth of calls to the U.S.

Here is a list of places to donate provided by Life Hacker:

• The American Red Cross is one of the most widely known organizations working in Haiti. They accept online donations, help volunteers arrange to give time or other support, and can accept $10 donations, charged to your cell phone bill, by texting HAITI to 90999.
• UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders, two other groups showing up frequently in calls for help, have set up sites for their Haiti efforts.
• Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean has harnessed Twitter to gather support for his Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund, which also offers $5 text message donations.
• The Daily Beast, a news and opinion blog and aggregator, does a good turn by compiling this list of non-governmental organizations helping in Haiti, with some context on each organization and where your money goes.
• Caroline McCarthy’s helpful CNET explainer points to lists compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR News, and CBS News.

Check out Google’s Haiti relief and imagery page here.

In a brief article from CrunchGear, written by Devin Coldewey he says “It’s good to note every once in a while that the technology we take for granted can actually be used for things other than finding the nearest coffee shop. This kind of quick and helpful response is heartening.” I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Google recently acquired the AdMob for $750 Million, which currently serves over 145,000,000, 000 worldwide mobile impressions so far. In their blog Google stated, “iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google’s 5x mobile search growth over the past two years and a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices …”

This was a blow to Apple, which was looking forward to acquiring AdMob, but was outbid by Google. Instead Apple acquired Quattro Wireless for $275 Million.

There seems to be a big shift in the amount of attention placed on mobile advertising, especially considering that corporate giants like Apple and Google have both taken notice to its value.

Paul Rosenfeld, a writer for Small Business Trends wrote an article titled “Five Can’t-Miss Mobile Marketing Trends for 2010,” where he gives the following five predictions:

1. Text message marketing goes mainstream.
2. Texting will be offered by local media (e.g., newspapers).
3. Retailers will move beyond mobile marketing to enhance the overall shopping experience – raising consumers’ expectations of what they can do with their phones.
4. Inventive smartphone applications will dazzle with new ways to engage customers – but ultimately disappoint in 2010.
5. In 2010, you’ll have it any way you want.

I left a comment on the blog post “Mobile Advertising: 5 Things You Need to Know to Succeed in 2010,” a guest post written by Kevin Nakao. My comment was: I wonder how profitable Mobile Marketing will be in 2010. I mean impressions are great, but clicks are even better =)

Although I didn’t expect a response, the author responded with the following:

“I can’t predict how profitable mobile marketing will be, but I do know that it takes time to test and optimize for results. We have been eating our own dog food and have been buying ads in text messages, mobile websites, and in application – it took some time to get to break-even and now some of the campaigns are ROI positive. Thus, I think it’s important to start now because it takes time and brands need to jump on the learning curve for marketing profitability.”

I think Nakao has an extremely valuable point. Now is the time to invest in these ventures. It’s important to be one of the first companies. It’s definitely a risk, but many risks have positive results. I would definitely suggest doing research and seeing how relevant mobile advertising would be to your business, but I also think that with the massive amounts of searches conducted on mobile devices each day, the reach of this industry is vast and only expanding.

Let’s start with a review of the Google Nexus One phone. Personally, I hate the name of the phone, but the features seem to make another phone that is very comparable to the most coveted iPhone.

The phone has a 5 megapixel camera with LED Flash, autofocus, and the camera has the ability to record video at 20 frames per second.

The user can include the location of photos from phone’s AGPS receiver, which is consistent with reports that location is going to be one of the big trends of 2010.

The phone has up to 7 hours of talking time while on 3G, and up to 5 hours of internet usage, all viewable on a 3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen touch-screen.

One of my favorite features on the phone is the ability to tweet & text while driving with voice recognition.

You can get a full review of the device from Engadget!

So, what takes this phone beyond being just a phone? Well, think about it. Usually you choose your service provider and decide what phone you want from their selection.

What Google is doing is giving you the option to choose the phone you want and then choose the service provider that is best for your needs.

The phone unlocked, which means it’s available to use no matter the service provider, is $529, which is a bit steep, but the point here is that you have the option to choose your service provider after choosing the phone you want. No more ball and shackle contracts just to get the phone that fits your needs.

With Google flipping the script, AT&T just may have more problems losing more customers to its competitors; Verizon, which is said to have a better 3G network AT&T, and T-Mobile, which is known to have more affordable rate plans than AT&T.

Here’s a graph from BillShrink that depicts the cost associated with the popular cell-phone devices:

MG Siegler of TechCrunch has a valid point when he states “Every carrier not named AT&T does not have the iPhone, but wants it. Since they can’t have it (not yet, anyway), they’ll settle for the next best thing, which is, now more clearly than ever, these Android devices.”

Android, Google’s direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone operating system, currently only holds 2.8% of the mobile phone industry’s market share; which pales in comparison to Apple’s 13.7% market share.

Although their current market share isn’t as large as their competitors, we have to keep in mind that Android isn’t even 2 years old yet, and Google has a history of dominating.

With the introduction of Android phones we noticed that Google was aware of the shifting market and were attempting to control their own destiny by starting off strong in the mobile SEARCH industry. This is all an attempt to maintain dominance as the leaders of search, and with the latest phone releases (i.e. the Motorola Droid and The Nexus One), Google’s Android is showing how serious they are.

I think these phones are just the beginning of the change that is about to happen with the mobile phone industry. Search Marketers like Optimum7 are keeping a close on eye on these developments as mobile search continues to evolve.

I have noticed that many insurance companies not only market their services, but they also spend a lot of time marketing and promoting their website URL during TV ads and other promotional platforms. Geico has even included a call-to-action in a version of one of their commercials that tells the viewer to log on and get a free quote. To further their famously customer service oriented reputation, Geico has taken to mobile-marketing by releasing an iPhone App promising to help the customer have easier access to their account right from their phone.

If you log on to Geico.com, you’ll see an incredibly optimized website and a banner advertising the download of their new application.  This new app aims to deliver the same level of customer service and improved access for the customer at times when a customer needs Geico’s services. The name of the app is called the Geico glove box. Just like in real life, you don’t have to be a customer to experience the app and its benefits.  I do not currently have a Geico policy, but I have experienced their customer service by being involved in an accident with one of their customers. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised how great their service was.

Although Geico has a great website with this new app you can pay your bill, view a copy of your insurance cards, call for road side service, contact customer service, rent a car or call a taxi, and watch some videos starring the famous Geico Gecko, all from your iPhone. There is even an accident helper that helps you organize photos of the accident!

This use of new technology is very smart on Geico’s part. Not only is this a great tool and a great way to market to its customers, but it makes insurance transactions a lot easier and more efficiently.  It also is just plain cool and promotes Geico as cutting edge. Who would have thought five years ago that iPhone apps were going to be a new way to drive customers to a business? IPhone is just one platform; with the continued release of new iPhone competitors like the Google Nexus and Motorola Droid specific customer-centric applications are sure to make their way to your mobile screen.

Businesses have sought marketing strategies to make spending more appealing to consumers. More than ever, these companies promote donations and are exemplifying a level of personal and social responsibility and giving back. This new strategy replaces the sense of guilt with a sense of purpose so that when they decide to buy, they are also helping those less fortunate, or worse.

Here are a couple companies that have adopted this strategy pretty successfully:

Southwest Airlines – When booking a flight on Southwest Airlines you are not asked to donate money, but the impression they want to give consumers is that their company structure focuses on giving their employees the opportunity to volunteer. Other than their “Bags Fly Free” and “Want to Get Away” campaigns, here is a full version of a current TV Ad spot they are running:

The Gap – The Gap has been a long time supporter of the (RED)  Foundation that helps to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in regions of Africa. When you purchase one of their (RED) products, they vow that fifty percent of the profits will go towards this foundation.

Starbucks Coffee – This popular coffee house chain also takes part in the (RED) Foundation with the sale of special gift cards. They also have a webpage for their Shared Planet Program which emulates a reputation of environmental stewardship. You can see their efforts at http://www.starbucks.com/sharedplanet/index.aspx.

The list of companies that use cause-related marketing tactics is extensive. It would be cynical to say that the origin of these efforts is based solely on marketing and advertising. Genuinely, most companies want to make a difference in the world if they have the means to do so. However, getting you to spend more bucks and making you feel better about it doesn’t hurt their bottom line either.  Just for kicks, take some time to notice just how many commercials you see today that mention some kind of “giving back” incentive to their customers…do you think this is effective marketing?

As I previously wrote in my article “Looking back at the last Decade,” the last ten years have brought us many new technologies that change the way we live today. This blog post will focus on some of the things that I think will be useful to us in the next year.

In 2010, I continue to see a huge development in social media, with Google having a strong, if not dominating presence, with Google Wave.  I’m not too sure where Twitter and Facebook will be in the coming years. It is clear though they are noticing the trends and adding features that users are happy to use (i.e. Facebook Chat, Twitter List, and ease of sharing information). One of the social media sites to be on the lookout for in 2010 is FourSquare.

With Social Media comes the integration of real-time search. In a guest post for Tech Crunch, Edo Segal talks about “Ambient Streams.” Segal states, “…humanity is constructing its own synthetic sixth sense. An ambient sense that perceives the context of your activity and augments your reality with related information and experiences.” This is definitely something I personally will be keeping an eye on to see how it develops and how it will affect the Internet Marketing industry.

I also think there will be a strong focus on “Cloud Storage.” Google is one place that has already started to take the forefront with its many services, including Google Wave, Google Docs, Gmail and Google Chrome, but it will be interesting to see what kind of storage system they come up with that integrates all of these services into one, similar to the functionality on Android Phones.

We’ve discussed several times how print media is dying, and social media may be the thing that either pulls the plug or revives it altogether. Another thing that may save print media is E-Books. Kindle was the first to do this and soon after others jumped on the development technology. As of right now, Barnes & Noble’s Nook is Kindle’s biggest competitor.

It’s been a great decade, and I’m glad I grew up in it. Every decade brings on many changes, but this past decade has been one of the biggest in technology growth ever. Many of the jobs we see today were not even being thought about in the previous decade, and the next one looks even more promising for growth.

For those that want to get a jump on what’s to come in 2010, here are some useful resources:

Social Media: What’s Next?

Social Media Experts Make Their Predictions for Trends in 2010

Marketing in 2010: It’s All About the Data

Where Digital Marketing Is Heading in 2010

For instance, all of the online services that we may take for granted; online movie rentals, online banking, bill payments, streaming video and one my favorites … internet radio.

Apple, a company that continues to bring us some of the most innovative and esthetically appealing technologies, brought us the iPod + iTunes duo which changed the way most of us listen to music, and a few years later we received the iPhone, which revolutionized the capabilities of cell phones. Apple brought us Mac OSX which brought us a more efficient user-friendly interface. It was the answer to Windows XP which is still one of the most popularly used operating systems.

How we watch TV has changed quite a bit. Although my generation was born with color TV’s High-Definition and LCD screens were big developments in TV. Let’s not forget about TiVo which delivered the final blow that killed off the VCR.

Lately, there has been a big focus on Social Media, and how it has changed and will continue to change the way we communicate. Facebook, currently the reigning social media champ, has grown to over 350 Million users and presently consumes 5.5 percent of all the time spent on the internet. Twitter has been the social media that has seen the most growth this year and MySpace, the social site that started the social media craze has seen a large slide in users with developments that Facebook started to integrate into its user-friendly interface. This has taught us a great lesson in being adaptable and the importance in staying ahead of the curve; and all this just happened within the decade

One of the tools I have found to be most useful this decade has been Wikipedia. Even though I tend to search for information on Google first, I more often than not am given a result that leads me to the reliable Wikipedia service. Although I wouldn’t write a term paper based off of the information I find on Wikipedia, I would definitely have them as my “phone-a-friend” if I was in the hot seat on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

I’m excited to see what the upcoming years will bring us and the kind of world we will be living in. I just hope it doesn’t become too much like the movies that see our future as bleak (i.e. Wall-E, Surrogates, Gamer, Avatar, Children of Men, etc.).

After taking a moment to realize that 80% of the women among my facebook friends couldn’t all be going crazy at the same time, I did some research and got to the bottom of what was happening.

After a quick Google search you’ll get the answer. Apparently, the Facebook color meme is part of a cause to raise breast cancer awareness. This is not just going on in your area; it seems to have spread across many parts of the US and even Canada.

According to Jake Cormier, a writer for SooNews.ca, the following was posted in a forum:

“We’re having some fun…put the color of the bra you are wearing in your status (if you are not wearing one now then put the color of the one you had on last or your favorite) let’s try to get this going to spread the wings of breast cancer awareness and have some fun w/ the guys!! Send this to all your fb girls–no guys! Lets see how long it takes for the guys to question what is going on!”

It is definitely already becoming a buzz topic and I’m interested to see how far this will go. Pink, Beige, Red and even Black & White Zebra Print are sure to be memorable status updates and will definitely bring more awareness to breast cancer; along with cause some awkward moments among the Facebook community!

Come back a bit later, as I will definitely be giving an update on this!

Design that is easy on the eyes is all about aesthetics. Aesthetics is a philosophy of beauty.  We see; then we can judge if we like something or not. You are surely not to find something pleasing if the objects you see are either jumbled up or scattered about. In web design there are many methods that you can use to prevent this jumbled appearance; these include a grid system, clean typography, and white space. These organizational / design tools help present better composition and sense of balance.

The Grid system provides design in a more organized and cohesive manner. The system of using grids has been a basic part of the print world since the 1930’s. The amazing thing about the grid system is that it aids in many functions like spacing, aligning, and measuring. As a designer and illustrator, I automatically use this system every time I start to design anything. Your end result will be a sense of balance and focus on precisely what you want the reader to see and remember.

Typography is also essential and has its origin in the print world. The purpose of using typography is to create a visually coherent and satisfying experience for the reader. Wikipedia defines typography as “the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs.” If the reader is not able to clearly read your ideas due to your typeface or font, it will distract them from appreciating your website. Typography also can help establish the look, the feel, the mood you are trying to capture and transmit to the reader.

Last, but not least, using white space. When I think of white space, I remind myself that less is more. White space is a really simple technique for focusing on the main factor of the page and not having a cluttered design. When using white space you give a feeling of calm and bring importance to the main focus… Many elements on one page will communicate a feeling of busyness and desperation. A viewer can feel claustrophobic, or at least uncomfortable with a busy, hyperactive page. In real terms, lack of white space and too much “busy” space will increase your bounce rate; in other words you lose a potential customer because they have left the page or your site entirely.

Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that having a good sense of balance and harmony is needed to create an aesthetically pleasing website. We all have different opinions of beauty but the most simple design techniques for creating universally good design can be achieved by using a grid system, typography and white space.

Videos are a great tool to showcase your products and/or services online. I can’t tell you how many times I went online to buy a program and didn’t know whether I should buy it or not; but when I saw a video that answered all my questions about the product, I immediately knew that it was for me and I took out my credit card and bought it. Videos can be very persuasive when someone is actually ready to buy. When you watch a video, you can actually see what you are getting with greater detail then just reading about it. It just feeds more of our senses and sensibilities.

Many sites also produce “screen casts,” or video tutorials, to educate the customer how to use something. For example if your website is about “how to design a website using Photoshop” you can record yourself, or one of your employees, designing a website in Photoshop while narrating important functionalities step by step. To record your self performing a demo, there are many programs and application out there, such as jivox, sceenr, pixorial, animoto, or jaycut. The way I see it: if people go to YouTube to watch things that don’t really make any sense, they can just as easily go to a website that provides valuable information.

Video media isn’t that difficult to add to your website. You can create your video, upload it to YouTube or Viemo and then copy and paste the embedded code provided for your video onto your website. With all of the technological advances in today’s media, video is the most obvious to add to your internet marketing strategy.

I’m a search engine marketer, so maybe you could understand why my approach was so aggressive. Once I would get a submitted story onto the front page, there was a great payoff for traffic. The only drawback was the bounce rate would suffer since the traffic was not as targeted as an organic search.

Eventually Digg started blocking me and even after various screen names, my IP was blocked even after I had toned down my routine. It was obvious they were on to me.  I gave it a rest, but vowed I would be back with a new game plan. Now, Digg has added Facebook Connect and using this feature will help you get good sharing capability for your submitted content.  If you already use Facebook to post random links that you like, why not submit them into Digg and then connect them to your Facebook Feed?

Digg used to allow you to shout your submissions, which would go within the Digg social network to your mutual friends and fans. Eventually the site put an end to this and added sharing available through Email, Facebook, and Twitter only. This reduces spam or over aggressive Diggers, like me, trying to share every submission.

First, connect your Facebook account to your Digg account. You will be able to choose an option to share your comments, Diggs and submissions on Facebook.  This will work best if you only plan to submit a few pieces of content per week. I would say to leave just the option for stories Digged and submissions checked on. You want to use this in moderation to keep your current followers from getting the urge to suddenly hide your feed. The biggest advantage here is the ability to sync your friends between sites and you can immediately ask your friends on Facebook to Digg your story.  This is one feature that you should not overlook.

Facebook connect is probably the most genius of Digg’s new features, but always look for new and efficient ways to sync your friends and share your submissions. Digg has also added a share option to post your submissions on Twitter, but you cannot sync your followers as of yet. Twitter is another viable option to share your submissions to gain visibility.

Good Luck and Happy Digging!

The online shopper wants to shop online either for convenience or to buy something they cannot find locally.  Chances are you are not the only one selling this product. How do you set your online store apart from the rest? One key is by making sure your site offers the best product descriptions for the items you sell.

Product Images: Product images are essential to help the customer choose your product. Here is an example of great product pictures from a very successful ecommerce site, Zappos.com:http://www.zappos.com/nike-kids-nike-shox-turbo-8-alt-youth-metallic-silver-black-italy-blue.

Product Information: Recent studies have reported that bulleted product descriptions are easier to read and preferred by site visitors. If you do not want to use bullet points, separate each section of the product information with bolded areas. This helps the shopper find the information they need as fast as possible. You can find examples of this on websites like zappos.com and sephora.com.

Remember to include descriptions, the size and weight of the product, and anything else that makes this item special or noteworthy. Some sites like to add some flair to a product description however; too much flair can be annoying.  There should be a happy medium. The following excerpt is the product description taken from the Victoria’s Secret website: “Spend the night in something soft and cozy. Grosgrain trim. Top has notch collar and covered buttons. Full-length pant has drawstring elastic waist. Imported cotton” This is a good example of some flair, but still keeping it simple.

Showing color options and available sizes are also important. If you cannot supply a picture that shows the product in each color, swatches are a must. Also, make sure your ecommerce management system only shows what sizes you currently have available.

Adding a share button is a great way to get some social media traffic coming into your product pages. Shoppers who like your product might want to share the item on a site like Facebook or Twitter, or bookmark it on a site like Delicious. This is recommended, but not necessary if you like less clutter. Many successful sites have opted to just focus on showcasing their product reviews.

Product Reviews and Ratings: I have said this many times before; I love to shop online. I consider myself a pro! One thing that will absolutely deter me from buying a product is not having a product review to refer to. I will go from one site to another and purchase from the one that has the most reviews and information. Reviews help shoppers decide whether or not to buy a product and helps clarify if what they are buying is the correct product for their needs. Reviews can either market your product or provide a warning; not all warnings are bad. Customers that have better shopping experiences will always come back. Obviously, if they buy from your site and they are not happy with the product or it wasn’t what was expected, it’s your site that will get the blame.

Product Media: We are talking video here or at least rotational images … virtual reality!  Adding a video or audio to your product description turns it up a notch when competing with other sites. Here is a great example used by Victoria’s Secret makeup section: http://www2.victoriassecret.com/collection/?cgname=OSMKPALLZZZ&cgnbr=OSMKPALLZZZ&rfnbr=5756. Women are always clueless about how to apply “sexy” makeup; this is an ingenious video that helps take away the intimidation factor about their makeup products.

Here is one more example shown on the Dr. Denese skin care site: http://www.drdenese.com/productdetail.cfm?c=s&cat=11&pid=46&v=1. This video is actually very simple; it establishes credibility by having Dr. Denese herself explaining what the product is and the results you are sure to get.

Keep in mind that the most interactive product descriptions are the ones that have higher conversion rates. So don’t argue or quibble with success.  The longer a shopper is on your site the higher the chances are they will soon whip out a credit card and keep looking on your site for more products, bookmark the site and keep coming back.

While “Twitter” was declared the most popular English word of 2009, Google Wave may have been 1^st runner up. While many were asking “Where is my Google Wave Invite?” others sat around wondering how to use the communication tool that had “real-time” communication capabilities.

Twitter has a list of their top trending topics of 2009. Although I find them a bit  off, in that True Blood is not a movie, but rather a television series; nevertheless, I will see it as valuable source of information of what the social media society finds to be important.

Of course Social Media, in and of itself, was a huge hit this year with Facebook being the social site with most users and Twitter being the social site with the most growth and YouTube maintaining its number one spot in regards to biggest video sharing website. There are some predictions as to the growth of these sites, but I personally think we need to keep an eye out for Four Square!

Being a search engine marketing company, we pay a big deal of attention to highly searched topics. Quite a few people have written posts on the top searched terms this year. I’ll break them down for you:

Michael Jackson, also known as the “King of Pop” was the most searched topic of 2009. Anything and everything surrounding his life and death has been searched for. The documentary, “This Is It,”  filmed on his final tour was a hit in the box office and his long list of chart topping songs were among the top downloads of 2009!

To round off my list of the top things of 2009, I leave you with these resources of other things that relate to looking back at the year, 2009!

Most Viewed YouTube Video of 2009:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

Time.com:

Best Websites of 2009

“The Year in Pictures”

Top downloaded songs of 2009:

Reuters’ List

The site lists all the videos that are being shortened on its bit.ly site and has a simplified visual list of these videos. If a video is clicked it, opens a player with a real-time view of Twitter feeds displaying users that use the shortened URL for that specific video along with their tweet.

Give it a try and see what happens! Considering that it was a trending topic, I’m sure you’ll be able to find the controversial clip of “Snookie” from MTV’s Jersey Shore getting punched, which was censored due to public backlash against the station for airing violence against women.

Bit.ly recently launched Bit.ly Pro which gives web publishers the ability to create and track their own shortened URL’s. TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld says, “Publishers also get an analytics dashboard which shows real-time stats like the total number of clicks, and their distribution by geography and referring sites. The data around URL shorteners is incredibly valuable, and even Facebook and Google are jumping into the game with goo.gl and fb.me.”

Mashable’s Benn Parr raises a good question when he says, “Bitly.tv makes sense, but we think this is only the first step. If Bit.ly can perfect the algorithms for videos, it certainly can do it for blogs and news articles. And because it utilizes link sharing over Diggs or “upvotes,” it may in fact be a more accurate tool for figuring out what’s hot on the web. We think this is just the beginning.”

Is it possible for Bit.ly to beat Google at real-time search and become a hot spot for breaking news? It’s definitely possible considering that Twitter News didn’t seem to take off; at least I haven’t heard much about it lately, although Google seems to have done a great job of seamlessly integrating this real-time search feature into their news search.

We’ll definitely have to keep an eye on how this develops in the coming months!

What’s the solution to this epidemic problem? Internet!

What doesn’t the internet have now-a-days? I can invite friends over, order a pizza and rent a movie all without leaving my chair. So, why not avoid the mall fiasco as well?

Online shopping has been around for years now, but for you late shoppers in desperate hopes of avoiding the packed malls here are some places that you can find great deals on quality products:

Gifts.com:

This is a simple but ingeniously user-friendly site that helps you match gift ideas for the type of person you are shopping for. You have a list of visual categories that let you choose from Man, Woman, Teenage Boy, Teenage Girl, Boy, Girl, Baby and even pets! It goes into further details of the characteristics of the person you are buying for to help you narrow down the gift options.

This site should definitely help you in your decision making process.

Barnes & Noble:

Buying a thoughtful book shows that not only do you care about someone, but also that you care about their knowledge; depending on the type of book you buy of course.

Barnes & Noble has a “Gift Suggestions” widget that lets you vary from Adult or Kid. The kid option lets you expand on age range. When hitting the adult section, you can select by price. There is then a list of interests to choose from. The  kid’s interests section has variation of things like, cars, trains, planes, animals, and dolls. They also have select toys, games, and DVDs alongside their books.

Of course they also advertise their new electronic book reader the Nook!

GiftGen:

Is a very simple website that lists gifts by price ranges, ages, sexes and also lets you choose the “couple” category, so you’re not forced to choose one gender over the other.

They even have an option to spend “nothing”! In which they give you ideas for creative gifts that you can give all without spending a dime. For example “get a library book, visit a gallery, or make a meal, just to name a few.

The web site also offers an embeddable widget and iPhone and BlackBerry apps.

For my fellow Twitter-obsessed, here is a list you can follow that gives updates on major deals: http://twitter.com/ErinGifford/holiday-deals

These were a few ideas, but there are dozens of resources available for you to shop online and find great gifts.

For those of you that don’t think online shopping is a better move check out Mashable’s compilation of videos in an article titled 7 YouTube Holiday Shopper Videos That’ll Make You Glad You Bought Online. They just may scare you into never going to a high traffic store ever again!

Although Facebook has more users than Twitter, it is interesting to note that Twitter does have one huge upper-hand… real-time search!

Recently the social media giant Facebook reset the default privacy settings for its 350 million users. The initial settings were meant to keep the information of users private, but the recent changes have flipped this idea on its head. The new default settings persuade users to make their information viewable for EVERYONE!

As a public relations graduate, I don’t fall for spin tactics very easily, so when the company released a video in their blog that said they were doing this to “give you even greater control over the information you share,” I was a bit suspicious.

After a bit of research I confirmed my suspicions and got to the real reason behind a change that seemed to have come from left field.

Writer’s at ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Electronic Foundation and TechCrunch all agree that this is all a part of Facebook’s goal to become part of the real-time search that Twitter has already taken advantage of.

Jason Kincaid, writer at TechCrunch says in his article, The Facebook Privacy Fiasco Begins, “Facebook is giving up its reputation as a ‘private’ social network — where the default is to restrict access to everything that is shared — in favor of something that can challenge Twitter head on.”

Granted, this is a good thing to help Facebook grow, which in turn should create a better experience for users, but the backlash that will come from such an enigmatic and drastic change can hurt the company’s credibility and end up doing more harm than good.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories of users that tend to over-share information and end up getting in trouble; whether it’s a cheating spouse, a disgruntled employee or a parent/child relationship.

We’ll have to wait and see how this story unfolds, but I’m sure the “stuff” will hit the fan soon and cause a massive outrage from the majority of users that are sure to ignore these new privacy settings as most do whenever Facebook gives an update on a new feature.

Here’s an update on the issue from Read Write Web:

Some users are saying that their default options are in fact on “old settings” and not “everyone.” We’re hearing that “old settings” as private is the default for users who have ever changed their privacy settings and set them to private. People who have not changed their settings ever or who have set them to public already will be defaulted to public. That’s what we think; it’s hard to know for sure. Facebook is maddeningly unclear about what exactly is going on. Part of the problem is that they are willing to tell press that they want to move users toward being more public, but when communicating with its users they appear to put more emphasis on communicating about privacy than is warranted by the changes at issue.

When the search bar on Twitter began getting significant search traffic for those wanting to find out what people are talking about, Twitter created its own official Twitter search site. It is meant for someone to be able to search what people are saying right now; and in real-time. I am not sure if Twitter has an algorithm that posts only the most relevant tweets or if it just continues refreshing the feed to include all tweets in real-time. These search results have been significant enough in generating traffic to be an integral part of Social Media Optimization (SMO) techniques used by Internet Marketing Professionals.

Until recently, Twitter search had an advantage over Bing and Google whereas Twitter Search was a real time search engine. Google and Bing “crawl” and then index pages in order for them to show up in search engine results.  Google has been getting closer to real-time search capability with Google Caffeine (their latest version search engine still in beta), which promises to index pages faster.  Now Google Labs has created Social Search. The results will include Twitter, Flicker, and Friend-Feed and other major social sites. The search results look similar to any Google search result page; but the system has been down in recent days so it certainly isn’t without its bugs and warts, at least at present.

Bing actually started producing social searches first, in particular with Twitter, by providing results for recent tweets on the hottest topics being discussed on Twitter. Their results also include Facebook.  Bing has created a designated page title at www.bing.com/twitter.  When logging on to the page, it gives you a word cloud with the hottest searches. I think this is a cool feature. Second up is the shared links section about the hot topics. Once you click on a word in the word cloud, you will have search engine results showing recent tweets from the user; their profile pic and an option to RT (retweet) right from the results page.

So far, Bing seems to be the winner in social search. Although Bing focuses on Twitter, the way they display their results and features is much more interesting. For search engine marketing, Bing is a useful sight to easily see hot topics and offers potential for link baiting within social media. Social Search is only growing in popularity and could become just as popular for searching products, services, and information. Bing is a major search engine, but Google still commands the dominant market share. Stay tuned as Google and Bing continue developing Social Search as part of their search results.

Google’s Pagerank Algorithm selects the most important websites or web pages to display in search engine results relating to a relevant topic that is queried by a user. Google determines this by sending crawlers to a site and indexing the information and computing its relevancy. Search engine optimizers have to make sure they have optimized their site well enough to be considered number one or ranked high in search engine results to give a website higher visibility, steady growth in traffic, better leads and a better conversion rate.

Other than having a highly relevant page, a large part of getting ranked on the top of Google is having a page that has in-links from other sites. This is why link building is very important for page rank. When your in-links are coming from high page rank sites, it benefits your page and it will grow in popularity itself, helping the web page survive in a sense.

The scientists used the formula in Google’s Pagerank Algorithm and were able to apply it to animals and how they relate to each other in the food chain. Instead of measuring importance of sites that interlink on the internet, they are measuring the importance of animals that interlink in an ecosystem.

“The world features countless interconnected systems ranging in size from the minuscule (metabolic networks within a single cell) to the immense (international financial markets). After publishing the paper, Stefano Allesina, of the University of Chicago, received e-mail messages from dozens of researchers interested in adapting the PageRank algorithm. “PageRank is a technique for finding hidden flows in huge quantities of data,” says Yonatan Zunger, a Google software engineer who used to work on search technology and who contacted Allesina after seeing his research. “There are all kinds of networks. PageRank is enormously applicable beyond the Web.”

I felt this article was a great read and really interesting. To read the original article, click here.

The great thing about the newspaper is that you can hold it in your hand and perhaps save it and go back to it and read it another time. Once you watch the news on T.V. it is only covered once and then it is gone. The bad news is although it seems simple and light enough to carry, it can be destroyed on the go; and getting news on your computer or on your phone is more convenient…and most of the time it is free.

Search engines like Google are accessible on computers, and now mobile phones. These search engines are constantly working to make page indexing faster, which is making it easier to access breaking news from a variety of sources. This too negatively affects newspaper sales as online information is always fresher than newspapers, magazines, etc.

The point is people want to know the news. We enjoy reading about sports, current events, weather or even our own local news. The demand is there, but print media has had to diversify their method of delivery to cut some of their losses.

Many print media companies have recognized that new internet capabilities and sophisticated browsers on phones have allowed customers to log on and get news on demand. To support this idea, newspapers, like USA Today, and magazines, like People, have created mobile apps, or applications, that allows them to monetize (generate ad revenue, for instance) from their news websites. The great thing is web graphics and media make viewing a news story from your phone more exciting and interactive.

Giving readers news on the go, by purchasing apps has so far been successful even if an app is only purchased once. The trade off is that it is cheaper to publish information on the web rather than running a printing press. While this alone won’t save the print media, it slows decline, buys time for more innovation and development, particularly in the key revenue generating areas of banner ads and other online marketing methods.

The downfall to the version that was released for Mac is that this is only a beta version. This means that you are currently unable to use applications like Gmail. As soon as a full version becomes available, the true convenience of having a browser that is always connected to your email and documents will become apparent.

Although this is not a full version, those that have Macs and have wanted to try Google Chrome will be able to test it out and benefit from its convenient functionalities such as speed, easy to find downloads, incognito search windows and the ability to search directly from the address bar.

As I have stated before, I desperately would like to have some add-ons available in order to move on from Firefox. Don’t get me wrong, Mozilla is great, but there is just something about Chrome I really like. Add-ons and extensions have taken a while to develop since Chrome only has about 3% market share. Currently only the developer version of Chrome offers some extensions. To take a look at some of the extensions available for this version, you can go to ChromeExtensions.org or ChromePlugins.org. I have taken a peak and I’ve seen a nifty Facebook notification extension that alerts you right on your browser tool bar when you have a new message or notification.

Every month, there seems to be a new development from Google. The engineers are hard at work in the lab making sure they stay ahead of the game—leaving others in the dust. The release of Google Caffeine, a faster version of their original search engine, will merge with the velocity of Chrome to make one powerful browser.  To stay up to date, or to see what else Google is cooking up in the near future, visit their latest ideas page at http://www.google.com/experimental.

As stated by Google, a Google Local Listing is, “The free way to attract more customers.” In other words it’s a good way for small businesses to do marketing in their local areas.

According to the letter, “Every day, more people are using Google Maps—and not just to look up an address or traffic.” If people are really using Google Maps to choose places to eat, shop or stay, as Google would like us to believe, then having your company listed can really prove to be beneficial.

Maps often appear at the top of organic search results displaying local listings in your areas. I, for one, look at these all the time, mostly when looking up phone numbers, but at times I also use it to reference different providers of the same service/products.

Google Local Listings is extremely simplified for businesses to use, and has a variety of tools to help bring more traffic to your website, or foot traffic in your store. They even give you a little snippet of Google Analytics, by allowing you to see statistics based on the traffic related to your Google Listing.

On their LinkedIn Group profile they give the following definition of what Google Local Listing:

Google Local Listings is a hot new source of REAL organic Google traffic for business owners. We’re optimizing such listings for increases in organic Google traffic – we’ve seen increases of up to 100% in Google organic traffic! Please feel free to share your experience or ask a question.

For those that didn’t receive the letter and want to take advantage of this opportunity, here is what you do:

1. Go to google.com/localbusinesscenter. Click “sign up now” to create a Google account, or use your existing Google account to log in.
2. Follow the instructions to verify that you are the business owner. If you have another business location, you can add that too.
3. Keep your hours, website and other details up to date. Stand out with photos, video, even coupons—all for free.
4. Use your personalized business dashboard to check how many visits your listing is getting, which zip codes people are coming from to reach your door, and more.

For more information, here is a video created by Google that gives you a better insight of what Google Local Business Listings does:

Reporter Maria Bartiromo was given the opportunity to get a firsthand look inside the Google headquarters in Mountainview, CA. Fortunately, she decided to take us on along for the journey and dive us even deeper “Inside The Mind of Google.”

The show started with a look inside the headquarters.  Their conference rooms have a movie like feel with conferences rooms that have monitors with international attendees displayed in real-time on the walls. Keeping in stride with the work environment that most of us can only dream of, employee benefits are more like pamper packages and Google has just about everything available in the office to keep its 20,000 employees minds off of daily task, that way they can focus on the most important thing—their work.

Bartiromo discussed with the founders the starting point of the company—it’s search engine.

She got them to be able to retell the success story of two grad students expanding on a class project and coming to the current status of the world’s most powerful technology company.

One of the things that may have gone under the radar was a method one of the employees was using to track Google searches. Imagine a globe being displayed. On this globe was points of light with various color. Each light represented a search and each color represented a different language.

Bartiromo explained how Google uses its advertising service, AdWords, to cash in on Google queries. According to MSNBC, “Google is pulling more and more advertising dollars on to the Internet and away from traditional media like print, radio and television.”

The show got a hold of a shoe making company that used AdWords to keep its company afloat and still uses AdWords today to reel in targeted consumers.

We also got to see how and why Google is expanding from its foundation of internet search to the development of Android, an operating system tailored for use on mobile devices.

Handing out free Google cell phones at a mobile conference was Sergy Brin, co-founder of Google. Why was he at a mobile conference? It is because mobile use is rising, more than 4 billion worldwide, and Google want to get in on the profit margin available. “We’re investing now, not just in search, but the platforms that can bring the content that you find to people more efficiently, more interactively and with greater availability,” said Brin.

In charge of doing just this is Vic Gundotra, Vice-President of Engineering for Google. Gundotra said “We are seeing a very fundamental shift, particularly among a young demographic and in Asian countries, the primary access to the internet is not through the PC, but through mobile devices.”

One of the controversial topics during this show was when Bartiromo discussed privacy issues with Kevin Bankston, from the Electronic Freedom Foundation, and Marissa Mayer,  from Google, using the 2006 “AOL blunder,” in which AOL published over 600,000 users search histories for research use.

Keeping this in mind Google has a very strict protocol around their logging infrastructure to protect the privacy of users as it relates to their searches.

This sounds great and all, but we can’t forget the issues of privacy as it relates to such a large and powerful company, that may be powerless against certain governmental powers. Google is susceptible to the government and will turn in private data if asked to do so.

I want to leave you with a quote from an article written by Jerry Cobb, a reporter for CNBC:

“The Internet is the only medium that’s growing,” said Stewart Barry, a research analyst at ThinkEquity Partners. “TV’s in decline, news print circulation is in decline and the Internet is expected to grow in usage in the U.S. by at least double digits over the next three years.”

For me it is both fascinating and frightening to see the shift in the dominating power of the media and the nearly monopolizing rule that Google has gained throughout such a short period of time.

If you would like to know more about getting visibility on Google or ways to gain more business and leads from Google, contact us! We can help.

-Shervin Bain

To find out where you stand on Twitter, I recommend using Klout, which is a tool that helps you measure your influence on Twitter. Why is it important to measure your influence on Twitter? Well, it’s important to know how effective your sharing efforts on Twitter are. When I registered on Klout, I was given a reality check when I saw how low my score was. Klout also measures your influence on a neighborhood comparison chart. It also shows you followers you have connected with and are influential in order to grow your relationship with them.  You can also see your top re-tweets and how far the reach potential of those re-tweets are.

Apps like TweetDeck or Seesmic are popular for staying connected to Twitter and filtering key terms. I might have social media A.D.D., but these apps are a bit too involved for me. I was introduced to an easier way to stay connected through Twitbin. This cool Firefox plug-in lets you stream your Twitter feed on your web browser.  Most of my work takes place on a web browser so I really like this plug-in. The Twitbin app runs smoothly and simply allows you to tweet, see your @ replies, your direct messages, upload pictures, and search on Twitter. In the preferences, you can add custom tabs to follow up to five twitter profiles.

Last, but not least, CoTweet is a useful tool if you manage more than one Twitter account. I work at a full service internet marketing company (Optimum7) and one of the services we provide for our clients is Social Media Optimization (SMO). This tool is a great way to manage our multiple client Twitter accounts. For now, CoTweet is a free third party application, so hurry if you think you could benefit from this tool. This would also work for affiliate Twitter accounts.

What keeps me weary about Twitter is the spam tweets. For a long time I never realized I was sort of contributing to this spam. Even though I do not use an auto-tweet system, and do not tweet every hour on the hour, my tweets lack character and show low interest for any kind of conversation. After learning about these tools at Pubcon, I have a new outlook on Twitter and hope to increase my influence by at least 20 points. Look for my follow up on this post! I will be sure to let you know how my efforts are going.

My Observations:

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has taken off in the past 3 years. Affiliates are smarter about SEO and conversions than they ever were. This is one of the few mediums that work for the advertiser and the publisher. Since the compensation is based on actual conversions and sales, advertisers Affiliate Programs attractive and desirable due to the direct correlation between sales and dollars spent to get the sales.

Lots of serious revenue is being generated using affiliate marketing. SEO experts are using their knowledge to build long lasting, rich-content sites to generate traffic and commission dollars. Many marketing companies are attracted to Affiliate Marketing as the marketplace itself is still ripe for continued innovation and opportunity i.e. niche content and concepts.

If you are an Ecommerce company, at least 20% of your revenue should be from affiliate programs. If you are an affiliate, you need to be involved in more networks and generate higher quality and quantity of content.

PPC Management

Optimum7 does not rely heavily on PPC. We believe that PPC is not an appropriate long term strategy for the overwhelming majority of clients unless they are seeking to promote a brand name where visibility is equally important in all search segments including paid search.  Typically, we use PPC as a short to intermediate term strategy for our Internet Marketing clients while our organic SEO processes take hold.  In this way, the client can get immediate visibility, traffic and conversions while SEO is “in the oven.” PPC was not discussed a lot during the PUBCON conference. I think everybody knows what it is and that, for the most part, the only company turning profits from PPC is Google. However, there was some discussion of paid search as many agencies still rely heavily on the management fees / commissions from PPC and Yahoo Paid Inclusion programs.

We do use PPC at Optimum7 and we are an Adwords Qualified company. We believe that PPC should be used only if it’s absolutely necessary. The panelists discussing PPC merely confirmed what Optimum7 has written about so extensively; that PPC can be very effective but this cannot be done without a strong commitment to statistical analysis to optimize conversions and click-throughs.

International SEO

This was the most impressive panel for me. Optimum7 does provide service internationally; language and translations are issues that require serious attention and commitment.  However, the opportunities are enormous as both developed countries and the emerging markets are in serious of need of SEO and all Internet Marketing Services.

Baidu, the largest Search Engine in China was discussed and a point that we were well aware of was made; “What we consider to be gray hat or black hat SEO in USA, might be white hat SEO in China”. This means that Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia) technology is still not as good as Google’s. However, in our experience with Google in countries like Turkey (google.com.tr) and Africa (google.com.za), we observed the same thing. High concentration of terms and meta tags still play a huge role in rankings in other countries.

In-House SEO
There was a lot of emphasis in “In-House SEO” during Pubcon. Some of the reasons include;

• The bad economy
• The unwillingness of certain companies to outsource SEO
• Large companies trying to do more and better SEO
• Too many bad experiences with existing SEO Firms

We believe that for a small or a medium sized business, it’s ideal to outsource SEO to a proven professional as this will be much less costly and much more revenue producing. We have an obvious bias, but it is based in the proven understanding the a dedicated Internet Marketing Company or SEO will always produce better business results at considerably less cost., It would be impossible to fully fund an in-house effort for less than $100k; compare that number with an average of $15K-30K for better results … there is no comparison.

Social Media

The hype about social media continues. As the panelists were speaking, many attendees were on Twitter instead of listening to what’s being said. We agree that Twitter is a good place to get across a message however I find Facebook, LinkedIn and the Social Bookmarking sites (Digg, Delicious, Stumble) much more useful in terms of generating traffic and actual revenue for businesses.

I actually specifically asked the question to the panel, “Traffic is always good and visibility cannot hurt; but how about conversions and ROI from social media? Will it ever happen?” I wanted to see the reaction. After a period of silence, the answer was “Not yet.”  Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

Contextual Ads & Google Adsense

This segment of Internet Marketing is similar as to its present stage of development as Affiliate Marketing. There are many individuals generating great revenue from contextual ads. There are also many advertisers spending a lot of money on Adsense. I believe that there’s potential there for the both. However, the technology to monitor clicks still needs to be improved by Google. For publishers, niche sites with rich and unique content can get a lot of ad revenue.  This is one of those topics that include SEO, Conversion Optimization, Design and a lot of science to find the right combination towards generating reliable sources of revenue from contextual ads.

Conversion Friendly Design

Conversion Optimization is a big part of what all good online marketers do.  Whether you are seeking actual sales directly on the site, leads, subscriptions, etc, it all is ultimately measured in ROI.  All internet marketing must be solidly focused on increasing the rate of conversions through visibility, increased traffic, relevant and engaging content presented in a carefully crafted to lead the visitor to a favorable conclusion and ready to act.

Overall, Pubcon 2009 was very useful and a bit of an overdose for many newcomers. It’s always good to see an industry move in the right direction.

-Duran Inci

Call me a dork, but one of the things that excite me most about the Google Wave is how the news can use it to create live reader interactions. In essence, I can be a big part of a report with the information I may hold on my phone!

I can see it now… “This is Shervin Bain, reporting live from my car on the way to work. It appears that an 18-wheeler’s attempt to take the Palmetto’s Highway’s detour was thwarted by the clearance level, which the driver said he was “unaware of.” Then, I attach a picture of the incident, while another “impromptu-reporter” shares images of how far traffic is backed up and suggests the best route to avoid the traffic that will tie up commuters for hours. Although I have no plans of being a reporter, I do live in a hypothetical world, and hypothetically, this seems awesome to me.

Reported by Mashable, Chicago Tribune’s RedEye blog has started a public wave on November 10, and has attracted more than 300 blips since then. Because of the Wave’s success, Stephanie Yiu, RedEye’s web editor, and Scott Kleinberg, senior editor of digital and print, now lead a half-hour public wave session every day.

Since I know little to nothing about Chicago, I’m reluctant to surf this wave, but I do have to admit that if this was one of my local new sources, I would probably comment on just about everything that was reported. I think this is another tool that can be used to save print media!

In the same article written by Leah Betancourt, she discusses the significance of using Waves as “Town Squares.” Now, while I find this to be a bit hastier, I guess this is possible, but I can’t help but think about how quickly this can fail. Quoting from her article during an interview with Robert Quigley, social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman:

“…the challenge right now is keeping public waves on topic. If they get more than 50 blips, discussion grinds to a halt… in order for Google Wave to work during a news event, there needs to be the ability to moderate and or easily spin something into another wave and link to it in the first wave to keep it on topic.”

So, while Google Wave has potential to be a virtual “town square,” it will take me a bit more convincing to actually see this panning out as an everyday useful tool in open forum discussions.

One of the more obvious uses that Betancourt discussed in her post was “Turning Blog Posts into Public Waves.”

This opens floodgates for new information and relevant opinions from your blog readers. It allows for collaborations, editing and possibly most important, transparent writing.

There are numerous—I can’t say endless—possibilities for Google Wave, and after doing some research on Google Wave, I, for one, am excited to jump on another bandwagon and experience this new technology.

I’ll do my best to avoid filling you in on all the boring details of why MySpace lost it’s crown, but I will tell you one thing MySpace is doing to capitalize on it’s strength—music.

For $1 million in cash, as well as a few of the company assets, MySpace bought imeem; imeem was founded in 2003 and first debuted in 2005. MySpace will retain about half of the 55 imeem employees while also resolving past due debts. Imeem suffered tremendous losses due to the catatonic state the online music playing industry along with a slew of litigation filed against the company for label infringement.

We are unsure of what this really means for either party involved, but it is a notable acquisition.

For those who may not know, imeem is a social media service where users interact with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos.

Complete with customizable and embeddable playlists, imeem was ahead of the curve when it came to online music players.

Imeem generates revenue through a combination of direct and indirect advertising sales, sales of MP3 downloads, ringtones and concert tickets, as well as subscription revenue from premium services.

Acquisitions can be deadly for both parties. On one side you have a company that has been plagued with lawsuits and losses and was willing to sell its soul to another company. On the opposite end, you have a well-known company that buys another in hopes of saving itself and increasing its own profitability.

There are quite a few ways this whole thing can play out. As someone heavily interested in the music industry, and well aware of how this tool can be used for marketing music, I can only hope for the best.

I’m not too aware of any site that is as customizable for music as imeem is, and although I don’t think this move can hurt MySpace any more than it’s hurting now, I can only hope for the sake of the users, that there are no drastic changes. Simple improvements and better marketing strategies will increase the user experience and help the website grow to it’s full potential.

It is never too late for SEO!

Creating a new site from scratch and using an SEO friendly site structure is easier than taking an older site and revamping it; however it is never too late to implement SEO.  A beautifully designed site that is hiding somewhere in the internet is pretty much a dead site. It can only count on direct traffic and will lose traffic from a lack of visibility on search engines.

What are your marketing goals? Even if the site has been running for many years, there may be concepts that should be revisited.

1. Does the site work for its main marketing purpose?
2. Refresh your keyword strategy to match your marketing goals.
3. Optimize Meta data with keywords to help visitors find your site and confirm they are on the right page

Information architecture including navigation and menu labels can also be optimized for SEO. Menus and navigation help the visitor figure out where they are and what they can do there. To optimize the experience and increase activity:

1. Use call-to-actions on the menu or navigation bar instead of naming the section. In other words, use action verbs instead of nouns.
2. Stick to logical structures to help the users read and the spiders to crawl your site correctly.

Optimizing your site structure, files or page links Helps search engine page rank and visibility.

1. Use keywords in your files and avoid using underscores.
2. Most keywords or phrase (long tailed keyword) searches are done in lower case so keep file names in all lower case letters.
3. Optimize “404” pages.
   1. Use a custom site template and use this space to add call-to-actions. If the visitor reaches this error page, then they will have a way out to keep navigating through your site.

1. All site structures should contain a body, H1 tags, textual content, related links, navigation links, a header, and footer.
2. Strategically place keywords in the content and in the H1 tags.
3. To enrich the content and provide important internal linking, use anchor text on relevant and topic-specific keywords.

SEO friendly sites are not just optimized on the outside but also on the inside. These techniques are used by the top search marketing industry professionals to help websites obtain visibility and get pages indexed without any hiccups. The amount of traffic generated from search engines is a significant number making SEO a very important part of web site strategy. Once switching over to an SEO friendly website structure, you will almost immediately start to see the results of your efforts.

Great and effective marketing is just as important as any other part of your business plan s. As business owners, you need to promote your products or services. When deciding to take your business to the next level, and really begin pushing an SEO campaign, you must decide if you want to hire a search engine “operator” or search marketing “professional” either hired in-house or outsourced to an Internet Marketing Company.  This decision is based on several factors including size of your company, the marketing objectives, website marketing objectives, the “job description” of the website, competitive factors and, of course, budget.

When companies consider outsourcing SEO, there is a misconception that paying for these services will be more costly than hiring one or two employees to work in-house. A continuous and detail-oriented service like SEO might sound like a great investment at first but business owners often do not consider all factors involved when adding up the costs. Few recognize that you will have to hire a copywriter or more than one person to divide the various processes. Consistent (weekly) new textual, audio and video content is essential for any SEO Specialist (in-house or sub-contracted) as fuel to drive SEO metrics and results. Now think about the time that goes into finding dependable talent, paying for yearly salaries, benefits, training and the cost of yearly seminars your employees will have to attend to keep up to speed with new processes. Internet Marketing and SEO are constantly evolving so new tools, techniques and processes need to evolve to keep pace with your competition.

After calculating all the time and costs required to have a successful SEO “department”, it will make much more sense to outsource your SEO services. When you outsource SEO, look for companies that charge a monthly fee that covers all aspects of SEO including copywriting, content syndication, link building, viral marketing, social media marketing, and ecommerce solutions.  Moreover, look for results … see live results for many keywords and many clients.  In addition, does the SEO offer a Pay for Performance model where a significant portion of its fees are contingent on actual stats

As opposed to hiring one, two or three employees who may or may not possess all of the expertise in all SEO processes, strategies and techniques, hire a full service Internet Marketing Company that offers a fully-staffed well coordinated group who can bring their full complement of talents to your online marketing strategy.

1. Think about your objective. Why are you joining Twitter? Are you a company trying to build brand awareness? Do you want to interact with your customers? Will you provide customer service via your tweets? Maybe you are an individual that wants to find a job or work opportunities. Do you want to meet people and learn about others? Asking yourself why you are on Twitter is essential to creating a successful profile page.
2. Be real. Sometimes we want to create an online persona of ourselves that might seem cooler or more eccentric than who we really are. When I say be real, post an honest profile picture. Just a picture with yourself and a sincere smile works better than a staged picture. Statistics show, that people who display a simple picture of themselves will continue to have a steady stream of quality followers. Those people who post a “cool” picture will have a fluctuating rate of followers. The reality is most of us are not rock stars and when we see people we could relate to, we feel more comfortable to become friends and communicate with them. If you are a company on Twitter that wants to build brand awareness or interact with your customers, you can use your logo, an illustrated character relating to your company, or a relevant image that your customers can identify with.
3. Customize your background. This tip correlates with the first tip. Depending on your objective on Twitter, you should customize the information or image you want to post on your profile background. For people who are on Twitter for fun and friendship, find a cool Twitter background that expresses your personality that shows your interests. Even a nice photograph is a good idea. If you want to promote yourself for employment, there are great examples that can display a professional picture of yourself; your contact information and displays your Linked-In page address. You should be confident enough to direct potential employers to your Twitter page after an interview. For a model or singer, choose a shot from a prior photo shoot which shows versatility and star quality. An artist might want to use one of their pieces as a background. For companies, this is your chance to really build your brand presence. You can outsource to a company that specializes in creating corporate backgrounds or have an in-house designer create a nice page with website and contact information.

These are just some important factors and of course, more ideas will come to mind as you move forward as I am suggesting. However, if you concentrate on these main points, the rest will be easy. Good Luck!

Now, you may be wondering what kind of show can possibly be spawned from Twitter; I’m still pondering the same thing myself. According to Mashable, “The creators of Will & Grace, David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, are already on board to executive produce the show, planned as a family comedy. Halpern will co-write the script with Patrick Schumacker.”

Although this may be another Fall Season Flop, it still says a lot about the power of Twitter and the social media.

Shows like Tosh.0 and Web Soup (the web version of The Soup) have become extremely popular, and while I wouldn’t consider them to be the best shows on TV they do bring something different to the table, in essence, giving us a new way to look at the trivial or hilarious things we find on the internet.

Like I previously blogged, many TV shows have embraced the internet to engage viewers and keep them on the show during what I like to call the pay-the-bills session (i.e. commercials), but there are currently few television shows solely focused on what is going on in the web 2.0 world.

SouthFlorida.com is both a website and a TV show that focuses on everything South Florida, news, entertainment, sports; they even have a Morning show! Question is, will shows like this continue to pop-up over the years; is this going to be the next television trend like “reality tv,” or is mixing TV with internet something that will fade quickly? Do viewers and users want to comingle and be both one and the same?

A better question is, since the print medium is dying out, is it plausible that television may also be replaced by the internet? It is certainly true that many watch TV on the internet and there are many web-based shows now. Will the next season of House be only viewable to subscribers on the web?

The future is uncertain, but focusing on the trends will lead to strategic guessing and proper implementation of marketing tactics for today’s ever-evolving target audience.

I went to the mall this weekend, and no surprise… they’re decorating for the 2010 Holiday Season, to which I’m definitely not ready for, which usually ends up with everyone getting a gift card. Google, of course, has to more than one-up me by giving out free Wifi, which I’m sure is going to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Mashable reports, “Google has worked with Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and other companies to provide this free service,” which if I may ad is currently available at 47 airports; Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Houston, Seattle, Miami, Orlando, and Charlotte, just to name a few.

Google continues to show their holiday support by putting a selfless twist to the whole campaign.

“…once you log in to one of the Wi-Fi networks, you’ll have the option to donate to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative… Google will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000… the airport network that generates the highest amount per passenger by January 1, 2010 will receive $15,000 to donate to the local nonprofit of their choice.”

Many of you might also remember that Google is also doing a Free Wifi promotion with Virgin America, offering free WiFi for passengers.

You can find more info about this initiative, as well as a full list of participating airports at: www.freeholidaywifi.com.

These promotions should prove to be very helpful to the airline industry which continues to suffer due to increase in flights and numerous increases in charges associated with flying.

Not to be out done by its competitor, Yahoo is also launching a free WiFi campaign.

Yahoo has partnered with the Times Square Alliance to offer both visitors and locals free Wi-Fi in Times Square.

It’s definitely a good idea for Yahoo to take advantage of the 500,000 visitors and locals that stroll through Time Square every day: not to mention the 1+ million jamming Times Square waiting all those hours for the magic moment when the big ball drops.

The company has even created news and content tailored to Times Square denizens.

With a specialized start page, I’m sure they hope to monetize from this by having all these WiFi-ready devices use the Yahoo Wifi and hopefully use Yahoo as a starting point for browsing the seemingly infinite mobile-cyber world.

I downloaded the new browser when it first came out because I was curious what kind of a browser the search engine giant would produce. Google’s search engine algorithm sets the standard when it comes to search and therefore really directs how search engine marketers craft their processes. Other products like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Voice have turned out to be great products that really benefit users. I was optimistic that Google Chrome would be another addition that would deliver.

This browser works like any traditional browser, but the feel is different. After using the browser for a couple months, and using it more consistently, I realized I preferred to use Google Chrome more than any other browsers including Explorer and Firefox. I tend to like having choices, even when it comes to web browsers so I switch between Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer (IE), and Google Chrome (in that order). Mozilla Firefox has tons of great add-ons, however, Chrome is the only browser that allows visual customization, and it lets you search the internet with privacy features such as an incognito window that does not record your browsing history.  I download lots of documents from the web throughout the day and Chrome displays them clearly; saving them is easy too. I also like the search functionality from the address bar. Firefox offers this, as well but Chrome brings up keywords and popular websites similar to how their search engine fields work on their home page.

The problem with Chrome is that it is still not viewed as a “real” web browser. People look at my screen and are always curious to know what browser I’m using. When I tell them, they either dismiss it or they laugh. Market share is dominated by IE and Firefox therefore many add-on developers have not provided the useful add-ons that are available on these browsers. For me, SEO Quake and Firebug are important add-ons that web designers and search engine optimizers use on a daily basis. There are also no social media add-ons, like Delicious and Stumble Upon, which could make content syndication a very efficient process.

I would love to have Chrome as my default browser, so I will wait patiently to see what developments the browser will have in the future. For now, Google might have their hands full with the release of Google Wave; however, there is promising news with a new feature added for bookmark synching across multiple computers. I think there is great potential for Chrome because if you are logged into a Gmail account, it’s great to have a browser that is connected to your documents and your mail. It’s definitely a strong plus for Google Chrome.