In-bound Marketing
Find the people who are already looking for what you are talking about or offering.
In-bound marketing.
In the past marketing was solely placed around TV and radio, newspaper ads and HTML emails— these forms of marketing really hit people over the had with your marketing message. These old school way of marketing are becoming more and more less effective due to TiVO, spam filters, DVR, and customized content becomming overwhelmingly popular and the norm. So we now look toward placing marketing and ads, in places that are already reaching your targeted audience.
Meet people and start conversations. Answer questions and help others, from this trust is gained and a relationship is likely to be formed. Social media is the business networking event of now! In the past at a networking event or a cocktail party your reach is limited...now your reach is much much broader, more authentic and personal, if done properly it is a much more effective conversation with "real people". Engage genuinely and interact with people, build authentic relationships, add personality, and converse with your audience.
Reasons for blogs:
- Showcase your personality
- Create a feedback cycle
- Build a loyal community
- Create an emotional investment
- Increase your credibility
Be proactive...whatever industry you're in, start building relationships now in the community because you may need to pitch something in the future. While blogs are now considered mainstream with more businesses using them to get their message out if you don't have one start today! And don't forget to engage in customer conversations and respond to negative comments.
What about facebook?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Create a business page, become a fan of your page to affiliate yourself with the business page. Create an engaging page...no body cares about you or your services except for you...so what do you do? Host events, videos, discussions, articles...things of interest and things that engage people with your content. Leverage the viral nature of things like news feeds and social bookmarking features.....engage your users and fans...that activity becomes published and all their "friends" get to see this, further extending your reach.
A few tips on your business page with facebook:
- Create your ad...add social actions.
- Choose PPC beacuse CTRs are very low on facebook.
- Find the URL then make a "find us on facebook" link
- Create applications that your audience will want to have, and they will pass it on
Strengthen. Empower. Amplify.
Strengthen. Empower. Amplify.
We are living in transformative times. Social media influences mind decisions...there is more persistence of information...now opinions are out in the world on an exponential scale. Leveraging those opinions and gaining loyalty for your brand or small business, when done positively, will surely boost sales and business potential.
Respond out loud (blog) if your good and it's worthy of sharing...people will look at it and do the marketing for you. It can change your emotional outlook and hopefully that of your potential customers. Things that people can relate to, especially if they are honest and real; become viral. This means that if people are compelled by your content, then they will be compelled to share your content, resulting in free marketing for you.
This already is conventional and is today's public relations in today's marketplace.
Make sure people know your integral value !
Strengthen, empower, amplify refers to :
Trusted relationships.
I've done it...10,000 visitors
So...the first milestone to reach more customers online.
I reached 10,000 visitors in one (1) month.
flash design new york
Another Social Media Blog Post
Social marketing is a good way to get free publicity for your company or brand. It's where the consumers and the brands meet and can have a dialogue instead of just a static message.
Marketing organizations need to ensure they are not reactive to change but driving and leading change in a proactive way. Social Media allows your company to react more quickly to what people are saying or how they are using social bookmarking.
You can test an idea online in the morning and by evening test results. It drives changes in how you listen to your customer. Blogs for instance allow you to listen into water cooler discussions you never had access to before. Social Media drives change in how you communicate to the customer as a dialogue versus a broadcast message.
Marketing is all about relationships and all relationships have a set of common factors. First, all relationships require listening. Listening has become core to everything. Second, in the best relationships, there is a lot of active communication and dialogue. This dialogue is essential to growth in the relationship. Third, a great relationship is one that is built on honesty."
What does Social media promote?
- Better understanding your customers
- Much better allowance of immersing yourself into their conversation.
- Understanding the numbers and demonstrating faster value
5 simple starter tips for SEO
These days there are so many articles on how to improve your web site traffic with Search Engine Optimization techniques. I found this one very simple as well as useful for starters:
http://www.webdesign.org/article.php?id=16693
Online Video in 2008
here's a great list from Webpronews.com about online video in the past year.
view the web page now
Web 3.0
Source : Marta Strickland (paraphrased)
I have Bold-ed the semantic information in this post
What the Semantic Web -- or Web 3.0 -- Can Do for Marketers
Whatever You Call It, Get Ready for Greater Relevance
It's been nearly 10 years since Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the worldwide web, expressed his vision of a "semantic web," in which all web data -- and the meaning of that data -- could be read by machines. Since then, much of the slow-moving progress toward this smarter and more powerful web has been courtesy of academics and data librarians.
Semantic web is just one of a few things often referred to as Web 3.0 -- others include topics like data portability or mobile web. But I think entrepreneur Nova Spivack offered the most useful definition by simply calling it the third decade of the web (2010 to 2020) and referring to the technology trends that will hit maturity during that time. Most importantly, the next generation of the web will bring us out of information overload and be more relevant and meaningful.
Semantics refers to the meaning behind data. Right now, computers are good at sending data back and forth but not great at discerning the meaning of that data. Semantic web aims to change that. Perhaps it's best explained in describing what marketers can hope to gain from it.
Improving Ads
Has your contextual advertising turned into a contextual nightmare? Current contextual advertising depends heavily on keywords. Sure, it seems safe to buy a word like "feet" -- until your ad comes up right next to a story about severed feet. What if there were a technology that could analyze what is really being said on the page?
By using natural language processing and artificial intelligence, semantic advertising solutions, like Peer39, can look at the structure of a sentence and interpret word meaning and sentiment. Semantic text analysis relies on synonyms and relationships between concepts, rather than rudimentary keyword scanning. Identifying sentiment is becoming invaluable for advertising on user-generated sites such as blogs, where you wouldn't want to place ads on a negative post.
Online advertising has another obstacle to overcome: information overload. We live in a world where information evolves at an alarming rate and, let's face it, consumers trust each other far more than they trust advertising messaging. So how do we dynamically pull smarter and more relevant content into ads?
That's where the efforts like Dapper MashupAds come into play. In addition to pulling from a brand site database, the dynamically generated ads can scan social content sites like Yelp and Flickr for the newest (positive) reviews and photos of your restaurant. It's the power of your brand message only promoted by your consumers.
Improving Measurement
One of the toughest marketing challenges of recent times has been in measuring the success of social media. How do you measure the success of a human conversation? We can measure reach (visits, views, clicks, downloads). We can also measure exposure or buzz (what people are saying about our brand). But it's inside those walled gardens that everything interesting is happening: How strong is the community? Are members active? Are we changing their minds? Changing their actions?
It's the tough nut of the new marketing conversation, but Web 3.0 might be the key to cracking it.
Semantic technology is able to pull together connections between words and phrases. How often is concept "X" said in the same breath as concept "Y"? Measurement tools will be moving away from the tag cloud, and we'll be able to immerse ourselves in the trends of the real conversation, not just the keyword of the day.
Next, there is the dilemma of message velocity; i.e., how far is my message traveling and how fast? Sure, that's an easy thing to do when you are measuring a viral video or widget but what about a conversation? Semantic technology builds on meaning, not keywords. And so it doesn't matter if your followers say, "The new Batman movie is going to be awesome" or "You have to see the 'Dark Knight' trailer"; semantic buzz tools will tie the conversation together.
Sentiment analysis is an increasingly popular tool in the marketer toolbox. And its next generation will look at the entirety of a comment or an article, from whom it came and to whom it was directed. It will use natural language processing and analysis of meaningful relationships to distinguish the "good" comments from "bad."
And what about building a community of loyal enthusiasts? What about creating a relationship with your customers? Companies like Chat Mine measure the connections between members of the community and between people and concepts. By looking at both friending and popular dialogue, it can tell you if your brand brought a community together in passionate conversation.
When O'Reilly coined the term Web 2.0, the marketing world divided into skeptics and enthusiasts. And a wave of start-ups began rolling out under the 2.0 moniker. It's only wise to fear the same for semantic web or Web 3.0. As nightmares of books and white papers race through your mind, it's important to separate the reality from the hype.
The successful technologist won't approach the marketer with buzzwords. He won't throw out phrases like "dynamic ontologies" or "semantic triples." Because good semantic technology is like movie editing -- you aren't supposed to notice it's there but it fundamentally changes the experience. So when someone approaches you about a "smarter" semantic solution, make sure they can answer this:
How will this make my ads more relevant and my metrics more meaningful?
Keep up the Compelling Content
Yes, there are some challenges that we face when entering web 2.0 space.
For instance over saturation; it seems that once a platform like 'My Space' or 'Face Book' becomes a popular space to offer content, it then becomes flooded with useless content, eventually being abandoned by marketers and on to the next digital arena.
The battle on the internet is not to provide the most novel campaign solution and medium, but to provide the most compelling content.
Who cares how many iPhone apps exist today? It really doesn't matter as long as your clients' have the best functionality with the best mix of packaging (interface robustness, pretty graphics) and features. The nature of social media is such that your application will be discovered, rated, and passed along without much work on your end.
Instead of searching for the next "virgin" territory in the social media space, create the best content for your clients, distribute over as many mediums as possible, and encourage feedback from the communities.
We must remember the simple rule: add value.
Each and every marketing execution must add value to the user's experience. Users flee platforms when they feel put-upon and taken advantage of. In order to avoid this fate, marketers need to improve user experience, not impede it.
Marketers can do this by underwriting great new content, making cool new features and functionality possible, creating transparent environments in which users engage with issues, each other, and yes, the brand.
The great thing is platforms are always evolving, and marketing tactics with them. So create that differentiating content that people will want, people will use, and they will pass-it-on accelerating your brand.
gim-crack the widget
Branded widgets are the refrigerator magnets of the Brave New World. These compact, portable little software apps -- from video players to countdown clocks to makeup simulators -- are inexpensive to distribute, free to the user and (often enough) distinctly useful. At a minimum, they carry an ad message wherever they go.
That's at a minimum. At a maximum, the widget is something like the magical connection between marketers and consumers, not only replacing the one-way messaging long dominated by media advertising but vastly outperforming it. Because online the link is literal and direct, and along its path, data of behavior, preference and intention are left at every step. Oh, and your target consumers actually go out searching for your branded gimcrack.....read more on AdAge
source AdAge
Adobe Flash Catalyst
Adobe now makes it easier for designers with no programming experience to design interactive prototypes, and communicate their interactive ideas to the developers.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/
Google Analytics Tracks Flash Content
Flash content has long posed a lot of problems for the search and webmaster communities. Now Google – and more specifically, the newly introduced Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash – intends to solve at least a few of them.
“In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized,” notes Nick Mihailovski in a post on the Google Analytics Blog. “Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working.”
This new feature should help site owners figure out whether or not their Flash content is engaging visitors. A company called Sprout has tested it, and their Vice President of Engineering came away impressed.
Would-be users with fewer technical skills should be all set, too. Mihailovski writes, “We know there are many levels of experience in the Flash/Flex community so we tried to make it easy for both non-technical designers as well as seasoned ActionScript programmers to take full advantage of this Google Analytics Tracking For Flash. We’ve provided tracking libraries for both Flash and Flex . . .”
And Mihailovski’s “we,” in case you’re wondering where to send thank-you notes, includes Adobe. Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash was apparently a joint project between Google, Adobe, and “a few ace third party developers.”
Adobe flash video and dynamic streaming
Coming from Adobe in Spring 2009:
Adobe Systems is adding dynamic streaming, which adjusts to the bandwidth rate on the desktop, and DVR capability to its Flash Media Server for streaming of Flash content.
Dynamic streaming allows for adjustments to the delivery bit rates for video. It will adjust upward for higher quality bandwidth and downward for lower bandwidth.
This capability maintains the stream of video. "Without this, you have disruptions in the video flow," with video freezing or popping, Towes said.
When accommodating lower quality bit rates, video would degrade but not be disrupted. Audio would be maintained.
Adobe differentiates itself with higher quality of service and DVR capabilities, he said. Flash Media Server 3.5 is offered in two variants: Flash Media Interactive Server, featuring DVR capabilities, customized streaming and enterprise-level scalablity, and Flash Media Streaming Server, for lower volume streaming. Perpetual licenses are priced at $4,500 per server for Interactive Server and $995 for Streaming Sever. Upgrades cost $349 for Interactive Server and $249 for Streaming Server.
Using Social Media To Drive Traffic
Question: What is viral adevrtising?
Answer: When consumers like what they see, they pass it on ...like a virus.
SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of website that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.
SMO As Guerrilla Marketing
The nature of Social Media Optimization is such that it could be considered form of guerrilla marketing. Website owners and blog owners have the choice of either investing money or their own skills and time in order to generate traffic from social sites. As long as your efforts are directed appropriately, the more work you put in the more reward you will reap.
SMO As A Link Building Technique
Social optimization also has a happy side effect - it helps to build your link profile so you will usually gain search engine traffic in the long term. Becoming a part of an online community is essential to your social optimization and this, in turn, will naturally provide links to your website. The links will usually be from relevant pages based on a similar topic to that of your own page. The more popular social sites are also given a lot of weight by certain search engines.
Optimize Your Existing Site
Create genuinely interesting, intriguing, or informative pages. Includes images, links, video, and collaborative tools so that visitors really get involved when they do visit your site. SMO is basically digital word-of-mouth and if your website doesn't offer some kind of appealing experience to your visitors, then it simply won't attract the positive word-of-mouth that you want.
Add new pages, if necessary, so that you can include more information. However, don't just add pages for the sake of it - ensure that each page really does have something unique to offer. A website still needs to be well structured.
Get A Blog
Add a blog. Every website has potential blog posts in it so find yours and start blogging regularly. Blog posts tend to attract links from other blog posts and those in turn will spread the word of your website. The more popular your blog becomes, the more value it is perceived to offer and the more visitors you will continue to get.
Be active in those blogs that are within your industry and use your link where permitted and relevant. Don't spam because that will lose you more friends than it will make but if you offer relevant information and a forum or blog allows you to link to it, then offer an insightful comment and provide a link.
Be Active
Being active is a vital part to your whole SMO campaign. Simply registering with social bookmarking sites and content sharing sites is not enough. You need to be involved, post regularly, and generally become a part of the community. If you don't have the time or the inclination to do this then find somebody else to do it instead.
Some Social Sites To Join
You really do reap what you sow in terms of SMO. Determine the sites that are most suitable to your website, join them, and become an active member. Choose some broad topic sites as well as some that are specific to those interested in the industry in which you operate or topic that you cover. Look at social news submission sites, content sharing sites, bookmarking, and networking sites and try to get a broad coverage of all of them. Here are just a few of the sites you should seriously consider using:
Social News/Media Sharing Websites
* Reddit - Reddit is a very popular social news website that boasts a lot of subscribers and covers a wide range of topics.
* Digg - Initially, Digg was reserved to technology and related topics but is now a broad topic news site that again has a lot of subscribers and regular readers.
* Newsvine - Not as popular as the two above but offering a slightly more formal tone to its content. Again, a good range of topics are covered.
Social Networking Sites
* MySpace - It may be largely riddled with spam but there are still too many genuine users for you to ignore MySpace. You don't have to be an unsigned band to take advantage either.
* Facebook - Has caused quite a stir and offers users the chance to create and distribute their own applications as well as content. Another very popular site.
* LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and businesses. It can really help to build a huge network of partners, customers, and other useful contacts in a business network.
Social Bookmarking Websites
* del.icio.us - Register, store bookmarks that you find useful, and include a bookmark to your own website and use a public profile.
* Stumble Upon - Same again. Alternatively you can add a Stumble icon to each of your pages, blog posts, and other media and let your readers do the walking for you.
Buttons For Your Pages
Many social websites offer a button that your readers or visitors can use to automatically add a page. Bookmarking and content sharing sites, in particular, have these buttons and if you've ever read a website or an article site then you will have seen the Digg This and Stumble buttons at the bottom of each entry. Users registered with these sites can click the button and quickly add your page. The most popular websites are usually displayed on the high traffic home pages delivering yet more visitors to your site.
Offering Quality
The Social Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for promoting your business, but it needs to be done properly and carefully. Simply tagging, bookmarking, and sharing every page you have regardless of its quality will not bring you the desired results. You may find that it does you more harm than good in the long run.
Google Android Phone is here with T-Mobile
This week, Google unveiled the fruits of its partnership with T-Mobile and its fledgling operating system Android with the G1, a new handset from manufacturer HTC.
The 3G smartphone with sliding keyboard and a limited touch interface integrates multiple Google products like Maps and Mail in ways no phone has before, incorporating things like Street View in Maps and a linked phone-web calendar to allow simple synching of on-the-go tasks with master planners. For the hardcore Google fiend in your life, it seems like the perfect fit, but will it take on the iPhone? The answer may be in the development of Android, a fairly open platform based on Linux. Richard Ting, VP & ECD, mobile and emerging platforms at R/GA, thinks the Android system could be "very disruptive," especially contrasted with the control exerted by Apple on iPhone applications. "Developers like to create for open platforms," Ting says. "The openness of Android may force Apple to loosen its policies around its somewhat random application approval process for its App Store." Pre-ordered G1s shipped October 22nd, and cost $179 with a two-year T-Mobile contract.
Android's evolution may also send waves up the tree to the carrier network-level, Ting says, laying out a scenario where a massive amount of Android applications flood the market and saturate carrier networks, corrupting connections to others on the network. "Carriers are also worried about their networks being used mainly as a pipe to get content back and forth between corporate content creators and their consumers," Ting says. "I believe that the carriers want to support the evolution of better content for mobile, but they are going to want their piece of the pie as well."
Ting cites the five-row QWERTY keyboard and mapping (the G1 has a compass that shifts based on where you're facing in Google Maps) as well as a higher-resolution camera G1's advantages over the iPhone, and says he can't wait to test out the newcomer's DRM-free Amazon music store integration. "I'm also looking forward to the new deal that Android signed with Visa, especially the application that will allow Visa consumers to make mobile payments in retail stores from their Android device," Ting says the G1, which will also be able to read barcodes, may spur retailers into investing in solutions to make mobile payments a reality in the U.S
GOOGLE Analytics adds enterprise version
Google on Wednesday unveiled several new business-oriented capabilities for its Web analytics service, Google Analytics.
The new features include Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports, a data export application programming interface (private beta), integrated reporting for AdSense publishers (private beta), multidimensional data visualizations called "Motion Charts," and interface improvements.
Google has posted several videos on YouTube that explain the function of these new features.
Advanced Segmentation provides a way to analyze subsets of online traffic data. These subsets can be predefined, like "Paid Traffic," or defined by custom criteria.
Custom Reporting allows Google Analytics users to build reports using only the data they want, in a format determined by the user.
Jeff Campbell, co-founder and VP of product development for search marketing agency Resolution Media, said in a statement that Google Analytics manages to meet enterprise requirements while still being easy to use.
Motion Charts provide a way to visualize Web traffic data over time using motion, colors, and positional representation.
A limited number of Google Analytics users are testing the Google Analytics application programming interface. The API allows companies to have programmatic access to Google Analytics data, so that Web traffic data can be used in conjunction with other applications or data sources.
Google also is integrating Google Analytics with AdSense, its advertising network for Web publishers. "By integrating your AdSense account with a new or existing Analytics account, you'll have access to in-depth reports about user activity on your site," explains Vineesha Malkani, part of Google's AdSense publisher support group, in a blog post. "In addition to the wealth of metrics already available in Analytics such as unique visitors and visitor language, you'll now have access to granular reports that break down AdSense performance both by page and by referring site."
Google is rolling out this feature gradually. The invitation, when it is enabled, will appear to AdSense publishers at the top of their "Overview" and "Advanced Reports" pages.
Flash CS4 from FLASH DEN
In their first full-cycle release since acquiring Macromedia you don’t have to be a detective on CSI Miami to see Adobe’s fingerprints all over Flash CS4. In a live product demonstration broadcast on Adobe TV this morning we got to see a preview of the direction Adobe will be going with Flash and it’s all about seamless integration.
check out the new features from ADOBE here
One of the first things I noticed is how similar the new features compare to AfterEffects. The Motion Editor in AfterEffects is excellent and you’ll see it’s basically identical. Object based animation is also very similar to that in AfterEffects in essence giving each symbol it’s own timeline. Another useful feature straight from AfterEffects will show you a series of dots, each representing frames of your path giving you precise control of your animations.
They lifted a couple pieces from Illustrator as well. Most notably what is known as an object sprayer, a tool used to paint symbols to the stage with varying dimensions and the Deco feature with the ability to quicly create kaleidoscope-like effects and fills. The Spray Brush and Deco should open up new possibilities and produce some cool effects.
Can you believe I’ve waited four paragraphs to mention the Bone Tool? The Bone Tool applies inverse kinematics to any 2D image or shape. This could extremely cool if it means Flash will auto-cut an image where you place the skeleton but I can’t find any information on it so we’ll have to wait and see. Either way, seeing the Bone Tool in action is an absolute treat. Who wants to develop flash communities with life-like movable avatars? Everyone!
Pixel Bender is an amazing way to create custom filters and effects and deserves it’s own article. We’ll spend more time examining uses for it later on.
Motion presets give you the ability to apply a set motion to any object. There are some canned effects such as ‘fly in left’ that you can choose from or you can create your own.
And finally! You can search the Library!!! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked for a search field in the library only to inflame my sad realization that there was no such field. Thank you Adobe! Thank you!!
ADOBE ships Flash Player 10
Adobe Systems Inc. began shipping its Adobe Flash Player 10 browser plug-in Wednesday with new features aimed at helping designers and developers build interactive content and online videos.
This version of Flash, which Adobe launched in a beta version in May, includes support for custom filters and special effects, native 3-D transformation and animation, advanced audio processing and GPU hardware acceleration, Adobe said. It also includes a new text engine aimed at providing designers and developers with more text layout options.
"A lot of the features in [Flash Player] 10 are all about providing interactive designers and developers unprecedented creative control," said Tom Barclay, senior product marketing manager in Adobe's platform business unit. "Designers and developers ... can transform and animate 2-D content into the 3-D space. That functionality is now exposed in the form of tooling in Flash Creative Suite 4 (CS4) to allow designers to do 3-D transformation animation without having to write code."
That support for 3-D transformation is one way Flash Player 10 extends the capabilities of the Adobe CS4 (also shipping today) with new levels of Flash integration, he added.
For example, with the new Adobe Pixel Bender, users can create custom filters to animate effects or change the effects on rich media context at runtime, Adobe noted. Pixel Bender is the same technology used in Adobe's After Effects CS4, which creates motion graphics and visual effects for film and broadcast.
The new player also has new application-level audio processing using a calibration engine and advanced sound APIs that allow developers to dynamically generate audio and create new audio applications like music sequences, Barclay added. For example, users can extract data from an MP3 file and use that data to create an audio visualizer to show audio waves.
Barclay noted that a third-party software vendor called NoteFlight has created a software application that will use this feature to allow people to create their own musical scores by dragging and dropping musical notes onto a staff; the application can then play back the notes.
Adobe is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, with support for Solaris expected later this year. All of the new features and performance improvements introduced in Adobe Flash Player 10 will be available in Adobe Air later this year for designers and developers to build applications that run outside a browser.
Google Blogger's New Features
Google's Blogger is unleashing some new features to make blogs using the platform more social. They will be rolling out these features over the next several weeks.
They want bloggers to be able to view the people that read their blogs, and will provide a gadget allowing users to display those people on the actual blogs. The way they are accomplishing this is through a "Follow this Blog" link that will appear on all Blogger blogs. Who is following whom will then be shown on the Blogger dashboard and in Google Reader, for those who use it.
Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web chalks up what Blogger is doing as Google's attempt to push RSS into the mainstream:
For all its supposed simplicity, Really Simple Syndication or RSS has continued to confuse and intimidate millions of people online years after its introduction...
"Follow this blog" is a clear call to action and those words will soon grace the header of every blog on Blogger.com around the web. When users click that link they'll be taken to either a tab on their Blogger dashboard, presumably if they have an account and are logged in, or be introduced to Google Reader, the company's RSS reader. It's a simple, brilliant plan and we wonder what took so long.
Kirkpatrick is probably right in that the mainstream public is still confused about RSS. The reason I agree with this is because out of all of the people I know that don't work on the Internet, none of them use it. Many of them do have gmail accounts, however, and could get sucked into the world of RSS without even realizing it with what Google is doing.
"Follow this blog" has a kind of Twitter sound to it, which could appeal to the social mindset. Blogger will also be integrating Google Friend Connect into the mix as to further increase the social aspects of blogs. Movable Type also announced new social features recently.
4 types of links
Links are an important component in an online marketing campaign. Websites usually need a significant number of quality links to perform well in organic search rankings. Once upon a time, high-quality links were plentiful. But with the growth of the web, and an ever-increasing number of competing websites, garnering link love and attention is a time-consuming and tedious process.
There are 4 different types of links that webmasters can work to obtain...
1. One-Way Links
A one-way link is a hyperlink from one website to another. For example, Website A links to Website B.
Undeniably, these are the best kind of links for a website to have, albeit the most difficult type of link to obtain. A website will usually need to contain unique and compelling content in order for another website to link to it without any payment or reciprocal returning link.
2. Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are when two websites exchange links. For example, Website A links to Website B; and Website B links to Website A.
The value of reciprocal links is questionable, as you are essentially 'trading' links. Some search engines track the link patterns, and consider reciprocal links as "exchanges". Many webmasters believe that search engines place a lower value on reciprocal links than for one-way links, which is why their value is questionable.
3. Paid Links
Paid links are just that: links that are purchased. For example, Website A gives $ to Website B; then Website B links to Website A.
Compensatory links range from purchased text links to pay-per-click links, where a webmaster pays for clicks that are generated from the link. The upside to paid links is that they are not difficult to obtain if you are willing to pay. You can also control the rate in which the links increase, and how long the paid links last. The downside is that major search engines discourage webmasters from purchasing text links outright (most search engines accept pay-per-click links). In fact, if a search engine suspects that a website is trying to "buy" their way to the top of their organic rankings by manipulating the number of websites linking to a webpage, they may ban the website from the search engine.
4. Network Links (3-Way)
Network links are links that are triangulated. For example, Website A links to Website B; Website B links to Website C; and Website C links to Website A.
Network links are an expansion of link exchanges, and generally make it more difficult for a search engine to discern the link patterns. As a result, search engines may assess the value of network links as one-way links rather than the reciprocal links that they really are. Excessive use of network links can be more easily identified by search engines.
Most webmasters incorporate all the link types into their linking strategy.
Google May Let Users Rearrange Search Results
Google Inc. is considering allowing users of its search engine to tinker with query results by re-ranking them and commenting on them.
The company has already run public tests on its search-results pages that contain up and down arrows next to listed links, as well as buttons that allow users to append comments to results.
"At this point, I can't say what we expect from this feature; we're just curious to see how it will be used," wrote Ben Gomes, a Google Distinguished Engineer, in the company's official blog on Tuesday.
A screenshot of one of these test pages also shows "x" buttons next to results to apparently remove them from view, although this isn't addressed by Gomes.
Should Google decide to incorporate these as default features, the change would be a significant step by the company in giving people power to interact with its search-results pages.
There are a number of customization and personalization options that Google grants to users who open a Google account, such as keeping a log of their search and browsing activity via a service called Web History, as well as bookmarking and annotating site links with a service called Notebook.
However, in this test, the new functionalities apparently would be available to any user, not just those who are signed in to their Google accounts. The screenshot resembles a test described in a Google Labs Experimental Search page, although the experiment requires users to sign in to their Google accounts. It is not currently listed on the main Experimental Search page and is described as probably available for only a few weeks, so it is not clear whether it's still available for testing.
Google has often been criticized for having a search engine that depends too much on mathematical algorithms while giving little room for users to offer feedback and contribute to the process of rating, ranking and evaluating results. These knocks have become more and more common as the popularity of Web 2.0 services has grown, since they all champion the building of user communities.
As a reaction to the Google approach, a variety of search engine projects have emerged over the years that attempt to give people more participation, such as Jason Calacanis' Mahalo, Yahoo Inc.'s Delicious social bookmarking service and Jimmy Wales' Wikia Search.
At Wikia Search, for example, anyone, whether registered with the site or not, can add, delete and rate search results, as well as edit the content of a search result URL by modifying its headline and description. In true wiki fashion, changes are reflected immediately and don't go through an approval process, counting on the community to police itself and establish, at least in theory, its collective wisdom.
Google declined to comment further about Gomes' posting. "Unfortunately, because the examples he provides are still only experiments, we cannot talk in length about how they work," a Google spokeswoman said via e-mail. "If we end up rolling out this experiment for all users, we would definitely be able to talk in more detail. Right now we are experimenting with a number of factors so we can't really explain how the final product would work."
Thus, it isn't known whether Google would factor the rearranging of results by users into the overall computation for ranking results for those specific queries. It's also not clear whether search result comments would be made available to anyone to read.
In the posting, titled "Search experiments, large and small," Gomes presents several other examples of public tests that Google has run on its results page.
Unlike the test to re-rank and comment on results, which is visually prominent, others are subtle and hard to notice, such as slightly varying the amount of white space between one result and another, or making a symbol look more or less thick.
The bottom line, wrote Gomes, is that "we test almost everything, even things that you would think are so small that we could not possibly care — nor could they possibly matter. In fact, small changes do matter, and we do care."
Source: www.computerworld.com
Adobe Flash and Search Engines Unite
Adobe Systems is helping Google and Yahoo to uncover Web content that was previously "invisible" to Web searches.
Both companies have been given optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to help them better index dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications that include the Flash file format, or Shockwave Flash, Adobe said in a statement. Search engines already index static text and links within Shockwave Flash files, but rich Internet applications and dynamic Web content are elusive to search engines because of their changing states, Adobe noted.
Adobe's technology means that millions of pre-existing RIAs that use Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without alteration by companies or developers, Adobe said. Google has already added the optimized Flash Player to its search engine, while Yahoo plans to add the technology to a future update of Yahoo Search.
"Designers and Web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn't better access the information within their content created with Flash technology. It's great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation," Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of SearchEngineLand.com, said in a statement. "The changes should help unlock information that's previously been 'invisible' and will likely result in a better experience for searchers."
Google Page Rank : Explained.
Everybody is using it, but (almost) nobody really knows how it works. Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web. With billions of existing pages and millions of pages generated every day, the search issue in the Web is more complex than you probably think it is. PageRank, only one of hundreds of factors used by Google to determine best search results, helps to keep our search clean and efficient. But how is it actually done? How does Google PageRank work, which factors do have an impact on it and which don’t? And what do we really know about PageRank?
Read the full article from SMASHING MAGAZINE
Photographic images vs. graphic images on the web
Do photographic images get old on the web ?
What I mean is, photographic images placed in a prominent area of a web site like the header, seen by repeat visitors, time and time again. Does the recognition of this one (1) photo get old quickly for our site visitors ? Would it be more effective to use graphic images ? What is the psychology behind this ?
The psychology behind image recognition is simply this:
A photographic image is immediately recognizable to the web site visitor. The visitor sees the image for what it is, literally, because we have spelled it out for them (whell, not nearly as much as using words). The mind works subconsciously recognizing the image and not needing to work very hard to fill in any missing information...in other words...we get it ! Conversely with a graphic image, the site visitor fills in some of the information due to the image's nature...beacause it is a bit more abstract. When the visitor "fills in the blanks" their mind is stimulated, they "make it their own" personalizing the content on even greater levels. One byproduct of this relates to repeat visitors...they end up not seeing the same old site.
So, to sum it all up, when the site visitor's imagination kicks in, it allows them to see slightly different things (using graphic images vs. photographic images)in the same image each time they visit. It also allows a visitor to make the content more..."their content". If your going to design using photographic images in the most prominent place on a website (like a header), one solution for "freshness" would be to cycle a few images using a random rotation. Similar to reading the book vs. watching the movie (a movie spells it out for you)...the book is always better , or at least that's what they say.
Apple Unveils iPhone 2, the Phone and The Business
The second chapter of Apple's iPhone era is almost ready to begin, and it's already clear that things will be a little different this time around.
Few people who pay even scant attention to the technology industry could claim to be shocked by the introduction of a faster iPhone earlier on Monday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Apple has sold 6 million iPhones since June 2007, Jobs said, and will likely sell a few more once the new model arrives on July 11 with a faster networking chip, GPS capabilities, and a software upgrade that's an IT manager's dream for a mobile device.
From a features point of view, the new model delivers on what iPhone customers want and need. Yes, you still can't do mobile messaging, and I still don't think you can do cut-and-paste, which is just bizarre. But Apple has added just about everything else people have asked for or complained about in iPhone 1.0: faster networks, secure access to corporate e-mail, precise location-based services, and third-party applications.
What's perhaps more interesting is what Apple has learned about the mobile phone business. It's not all that surprising that Apple, which has a proud legacy of product design and software development, would have created an excellent product that has the rest of the industry scrambling to overtake.
But several developments later on Monday indicate that Apple has had to learn just as many lessons about playing in the mobile phone market over the past year as it has taught the mobile phone industry about product development.
So the big question: will the iPhone 3G--and new business model--enable Apple to meet its sales target for 2008 of 10 million units? If Apple has sold 6 million units to date, as Jobs said in his keynote, that means the company has a long way to go, having sold just 2.3 million iPhones so far in 2008.
The fact that the new iPhone won't be available until July 11 was one of the most surprising things to emerge from this morning's keynote. Apple, of course, never put a finer grain on when it expected to ship iPhone 3G beyond "next year," which Jobs quoted a few times in response to questions about the issue in 2007. But few expected the company to miss the one-year anniversary of the iPhone's debut with the new model, and at the very least, Apple itself had promised the iPhone 2.0 software by the end of June.
Apple's Greg Joswiak, vice president of worldwide iPod and iPhone marketing, reiterated Apple's 10 million shipment goal in an interview after Jobs' keynote, so it's not like Apple is backing down. There are two main reasons why the company can still be confident: the combination of 3G and the cheaper price will spur potential customers who have been sitting on the sidelines in countries where the iPhone already exists, and a total of 70 countries will get official access to the iPhone, including major new destinations like Canada and Australia. In addition, Jobs hinted to CNBC later in the day that the big prize--China--could be coming sooner rather than later.
It's always interesting to watch a company try to make its way into an entirely new business; those who fail far outnumber those who succeed. The most common reason why many fail is because they forget to learn from their initial experiences, or assume they know better based on their past successes.
Apple may not proclaim it from on high in the Stevenote, but today the company showed that it's willing to learn from its mistakes, and to adjust its business model when prudent. So far in its iPhone era, Apple has wisely tackled the hard problem first--making a great product, and continuing to improve it--and is now making the kinds of changes to its business model to make sure the iPhone really does turn into the third leg of the company's business some day.
Attention Time gets even smaller on the web
The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.
Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.
Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.
Search rules
Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed.
Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%.
There were two reasons for this, he said.
"The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC News.
Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.
This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.
"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen.
"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.
"I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."
Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.
Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load.
There has also been a big change in the way that people get to the places where they can complete pressing tasks.
In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.
Basically search engines rule the web
FLASH Player 10 !!
Adobe on Thursday is expected to launch a beta test program for the latest version of its Flash Player software.
Flash Player 10, developed under the code name Astro, includes better support for 3D animation and video hardware acceleration, among other improvements.
Adobe said that Flash Player 10 will now support custom visual effects, created with Adobe's free Pixel Bender tools. Developers can write code to create effects that can be rendered by Flash Player at runtime.
Developers can also now target code to render through graphics processors, speeding up performance and freeing CPU bandwidth, Adobe says.
The beta version of Flash Player 10 will be available from Adobe's Labs site.
Flash Player 10 will run on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Linux.
Adobe said that some of the new features in Flash Player 10 will ultimately be incorporated into a future release of Adobe AIR and the Open Screen Project, Adobe's movement to create industry consensus around Flash-based technologies for mobile devices.
Banner Ads : Best Practices
Some best practices and tactics for getting the most out of your banners and creative optimization:
* Create a benefit matrix around products. People typically think, "How will you help me?" and "What do you have for me right now?" List those genuine benefit statements and catalog the offers you can make right now.
* Choose the measure first, then the message. Decide how you'll measure the banner's success, then focus the banner's message, offer, and call to action on achieving that metric. (That may seem obvious, but we see disconnects between those two factors all the time.) If you can't map your message to your metric, chances are it won't work.
* Looking for leads? Sell the lead conversion event in the banner and landing page. Tell them why they want to download the whitepaper and give you their info, not why they should buy your expensive technology product or service. Let your marketing escalation and salespeople do that.
* Keep it short. Don't make people cycle through 20 seconds of slides to get the point of your offer. Make it three frames, max, two to three seconds each frame. If it takes more than three seconds to communicate your message, you're too verbose. Get right to the payoff by using reverse-pyramid style copywriting. Start with the payoff and follow with the lead in or supporting facts.
* Use the power of suggestion. Tell people what you want them to do. Do want them to click now, download now, access now, get now, or sign up now? Tell them.
* Use a static call to action. Your call to action should appear on all slides, not just the last slide of a looping animation. On horizontal banners, place the offer or call to action on the right side. People read left to right, so their eyes will end on the offer or call to action. On skyscraper banners, place your static offer or call to action on the top and bottom of the banner. And be sure to use large fonts and contrasting colors.
* Treat your banner like a billboard. Your banner must stand out and communicate your message as if people were passing it in a fast-moving car.
* Use variety. Use a wide variety of graphical treatments so all your banner concepts look very different from one another. Even with different offers, if all your banners look similar at first glance, chances are they'll perform at the same level. If one tanks, they'll all tank.
* Keep offers simple. One benefit, one offer. Don't put multiple offers in one banner.
* Deliver on your offer right away. Land people on instant conversion pages that deliver on the offer.
Web 2.0 Spending Set To Take Off
Enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, blogs, wikis, widgets and mashups will increase over the next five years, growing 43 percent each year to $4.6 billion worldwide by 2013, according to a new report by Forrester Research.
Forrester says that Web 2.0 technologies represent a new way to connect with customers and employees. Large companies such as General Motors, McDonald's and Wells Fargo have all used these tools and 56 percent of North American and European companies consider Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008.
"Software firms can make money selling enterprise Web 2.0 software, but it will not be an easy road to hundred-million-dollar run rates," said Forrester Research Analyst G. Oliver Young.
"The market for enterprise Web 2.0 tools will be defined by commoditization, eroding prices, and incorporation into enterprise collaboration software over the next five years."
Currently, large businesses are spending more on employee collaboration tools than customer Web 2.0 technologies but Forrester predicts that trend will reverse by next year.
"Social Computing and Web 2.0 marketing are still in their infancy; and in general, the market is still in an experimentation phase," said Young. "In the long run, the affect of Web 2.0 will be enormous. But what may prove to be of more value to vendors will be the skills of running a successful software-as-a-service (SaaS) business."
Source: www.webpronews.com
Content is coming from elsewhere...
Creating content now is most likely done like this:
Hire a few editors to handpick stuff already kicking around the internet.
Shift in purpose from producing original content to curating it is at an end of times for media as we've known it. We are now repackaging what's already out there.
Welcome to the era of the aggregator.
Time and attention have limits, but the universe of content, it seems, does not. So finding a way to quickly and cleanly deliver relevant news is important. The portals and blogs, in very different ways, introduced the role of sifting and collating. Then mainstream media started to figure it out as a way to add more eyeballs and improve their performance on search engines. And as aggregation and curation took a front seat, deep investments in news-gathering became few and far between.
Eleven of 24 major news sites linked to off-site stories, up from three the year before. Yet the focus of reporting narrowed because of the attrition of news-gathering resources. The other side of that coin is that more organizations are getting hip to the reality that they can't depend on being destinations, so they're adding to their websites features that facilitate sharing and aggregation in ways that often take the content and the reader off-site. In short, they're finding ways to make their product an easily transportable commodity.
The wealth of content on the web from both professionals and the legions of bloggers and other formerly-known-as-amateurs effectively is creating a golden age for content.
So how do you grab enough consumers' eyeballs to get advertisers interested? That's no mean feat when you consider the fragmentation on the web in general and, in specific, among the growing number of sites purporting to be the last word in telling you what you need to read. It's a universe of boundless competition.
Successful aggregators have largely come from
(1) enterprising individuals
(2) pioneering new concept
(3) [those who are] motivated by ownership of their project
We are bringing Flash to the iPhone
From the Adobe CEO
"...So we are also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone and we will work with Apple. We’ve evaluated the SDK, we can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves and we think it benefits our joint customers. So we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device...."
read the full article
Title tags are the single most important SEO variable
Note: SEO Title Tag 2.1.0 adds compatibility with WordPress 2.3!
Title tags are arguably the most important of the on-page factors for search engine optimization (”SEO”). It blows my mind how post titles are also used as title tags by WordPress, considering that post titles should be catchy, pithy, and short-and-sweet; whereas title tags should incorporate synonyms and alternate phrases to capture additional search visibility.
Now, thankfully, there is a solution, allowing you to decouple post titles from title tags. Introducing… the SEO Title Tag 2.1 WordPress plugin.
Read the article on netconcepts
Flash Drawing API
The drawing API is used to draw using only lines of code.
In the drawing API we have the following functions:
lineStyle(thickness,rgb, alpha)
The first thing you need to do before drawing is choosing your pencil.
You can choose the thickness, rgb(color) and alpha(transparency).
moveTo(x, y)
In the real life you have to move the pencil to the place where you are going to draw, this function is for that, we move the "pencil" to a desired x and y position.
lineTo(x, y)
After choosing a starting place we tell the "pencil" to draw a line to an x and y position.
curveTo(controlX, controlY, anchorX, anchorY)
This function is to draw a curve, anchorX and anchorY are the position of the end of the curve. And controlX and controlY tell to which direction the curve is going to be draw.
beginFill(rgb, alpha) || endFill()
When we are drawing an object that we want to fill with a color we call the function beginFill() before moving the "pencil" and after the last lineTo() we call endFill().
You are going to understand this when we go on examples.
clear()
This function is our virtual eraser, if we want to erase what we did and call clear().
Let's draw a square:
_root.createEmptyMovieClip("dBoard",1);
First we create a Movie Clip to draw on, we will call it "dBoard" and it will have 1 as its depth.
dBoard.lineStyle(1,0,100);
Define which "pencil" we are using. In this case the thickness is 1, the color is 0(black) and it has no transparency (100).
dBoard.moveTo(30, 30)
Here we move the "pencil" to the place we want as the start.
dBoard.lineTo(60,30);
image 1
dBoard.lineTo(60,60);
image 2
dBoard.lineTo(30,60);
image 3
dBoard.lineTo(30,30);
image 4
If you want to erase the square call clear().
To draw a square filled with black:
_root.createEmptyMovieClip("dBoard",1);
dBoard.beginFill(0, 100);
dBoard.moveTo(80, 80)
dBoard.lineTo(110,80);
dBoard.lineTo(110,110);
dBoard.lineTo(80,110);
dBoard.lineTo(80,80);
dBoard.endFill();
image 5
Draw a curve:
_root.createEmptyMovieClip("dBoard",1);
dBoard.lineStyle(1,0,100);
dBoard.moveTo(130,130)
dBoard.curveTo(180,180,130,230);
image 6
This is every thing you need to know about the drawing in actionscript, with these functions you can draw almost everything.
7 must-read Webmaster Central blog posts
Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst
check out the Google central blog NOW
Pause an animation on page blur, resume on focus (From Flash Kit)
CODE FOR FIRST FRAME IN FLASH MOVIE
import flash.external.*; // this is for calling JS function on the Html from Flash without getURL.
content_status = "off";
// this is the function that toggles the widget on and off
function toggle_widget(content_status) {
if(content_status == "on"){
ESPWidget.instance.resume();
}else if(content_status == "off"){
ESPWidget.instance.pause();
}else{
// no other values accepted
}
}
// Register our toggle function for Browser to use
var ei1 = flash.external.ExternalInterface.addCallback("widget_focus", null, toggle_widget);
// this function will cal a JS function on Html page with 'str' argument
function sendText(str) {
var greeting:String;
greeting = String(ExternalInterface.call("getFromFlash", str));
}
CODE FOR THE HEAD OF THE HTML PAGE
[CODE]
get the code from flash kit
[/CODE]
Flash Player 9 is King !
Flash Player 9 is at 95% penetration already !
The most recent statistics from Adobe shows that 99% of all users are now able to see Flash content and 95% can see the latest version.
According to the latest survey by Millward Brown, 99% of US and Canadian customers can now view Flash Player 6 based content and for Japan the figure is even 99.5%. The stats have never been this strong and even accounting for statistical errors, this is nothing less than amazing.
Keep in mind that the percentage will vary from site to site depending on the target audience, but that these numbers are often a good indication.
Read more at Emmy Huang's blog
the stats
CS4 is on the horizon
"If you are a designer, Flash CS4 will blow your mind."
theflashblog
"The term devigner has emerged to describe people who are skilled at both design and development and this is exactly the type of person that best flourishes inside of the Flash authoring tool."
Transition from AS2 to AS3
Are you looking for a guide to help you move From Actionscript 2.0 to Actionscript 3.0? Below are two (2) good sources for making the basic AS3 transition
transition link 1
transition link 2
Re-think Video for the web
Online video needs to be thought and re-crafted for the web, if transferring it from other mediums like TV. The web experience is very different. Video for the web needs to be edited in a way that feels natural and not interruptive, this will help boost the experience.Video editing should be done in such a way that consumers can create their levels of experience. I can have a brand experience that is very high level or I can dive in deeper and have an immersive experience. In a way, the consumers are in control and the content is there as much as they want it.
Web Monitor Resolution Debate
Although a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 is predominant in the US, Europe, and Japan, in some areas, such as South East Asia, smaller screen sizes such as 800 x 600 may still be common. Flexible design approaches help significantly in addressing such differences these days. On the other hand, there are also a lot of other devices (PDAs, cellphones,...) with much more restrictive screens. Although not all Web pages may need to work on cellphones, try to design with as few limitations as possible.
Straight From From World Wide Web Consortium
As brand awareness shifts, we must shift
Let's compare :
Brand awareness in 2005 online ads drove a 3 percent lift in brand awareness. That boost fell to 2.2 percent over the course of the following two years.
One factor in the sagging brand impact of digital ads might simply be competition among large brands for share of mind. A few years ago there were less big brands online than there are now. Now everybody's online. Every brand you can think of has a a reasonable amount of spend online
Marketers : What do you about the declines.
1. place more emphasis on non-traditional ad formats and venues, such as viral marketing and social marketing campaigns. Viral media and social marketing campaigns can really accelerate a brand, but of course,consumers need to choose to engage with them.
From the point of view of marketing research companies:
Measuring brand lift for original branded content and social marketing campaigns has it's challenges. Working with all the new things coming out can help, this includes establishing relationships with the new widget ad networks and tracking original branded content.
HD DVD VS. Blu-Ray DIsc
HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, the latter of which is backed primarily by Sony (NYSE: SNE) , are competing to be the high-definition format that replaces today's current DVDs. Both are designed to offer better quality than traditional DVDs, and each has won support from different camps in recent months.
Among the major movie studios, Blu-ray has a tremendous lead, as it is supported by Columbia, Disney (NYSE: DIS), Fox, Lions Gate, Miramax, New Line and, most recently, Warner, which had previously supported both standards. Paramount (along with sister studio DreamWorks) and Universal are now the only remaining major-studio supporters of HD DVD.
Recent reports, however, suggests that Paramount is considering switching to Blu-ray, taking yet more wind out of HD DVD's sails. "Paramount's decision last summer to support HD DVD gave the format some momentum, but what I'm hearing is that there's a loophole in Paramount's 18-month contract with the HD DVD format so that it can get out of it," Chris Roden, research analyst with Parks Associates , told TechNewsWorld.
Learn More at TECHNEWSWORLD
APPLE 2008 MacWorld Highlights
All Hot News From APPLE
Apple introduces MacBook Air—the world’s thinnest notebook
Introducing Time Capsule—wireless backup for all your Macs
New software update enhances revolutionary iPhone
Major software upgrade available for iPod touch
Introducing iTunes Movie Rentals
Apple announces new software for Apple TV; lowers price to $229
Introducing iTunes Digital Copy
Apple Introduces the new Mac Pro
Introducing the new Xserve—the most powerful Apple server ever
District doubles its computing power with iMac
Mechanics of Modular Experience
Modular architecture offers two advantages. Firstly, expansion, modules need to be easily expanded in case the site gets modified or extended over time. Secondly, it's straight forward to build and integrate specific modules in case the website should have specific update-able functionality.
Mechanics of modules should all utilize the same logic, the look and feel for all modules should be similar as well, which is a huge benefit regarding usability. Once you've understood one module, you've understood them all.
The Approach remains simple: to make complex actions possible via a simple interface. This allows consumers to focus on the content, and the experience without questioning the technology behind it. Engaging viewers to not just visit the website once but to keep coming back to explore, and inviting friende or colleagues to experience the site as well!
Setting the DIGIAL bar
Digital creative is still new for most people in Marketing and Advertising.
Here are some ideas which may help better prepare for the present future.
1. The Creative Idea in Interactive Form
Digital creative ideas aren't as easy to express in a simple single-minded proposition. Online campaigns and programs can follow similar constructs as offline campaign ideas and hold true to the same " big idea " . Technology isn't an idea unto itself. Websites should be informed by an insight that drives their purpose and role in the mix. Of course, the expression of the idea does not have to be derivative of an advertising tagline, but it must map to the brand or business platform.
2. See the Idea in it's true form
Digital is detailed and experiential and a lot of the magic is still expressed in its execution. The good news is you're talking to the director and the concept creator at once. So it often helps to have something more than a storyboard or key style frames, called an interactive prototype. With Print design and concepts, WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET, WITH DIGITAL YOU GET SO MUCH MORE. It may take us an extra day or so to put it together, or a few extra dollars to build you a quick prototype to illustrate some nuance, but MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, that is what you need to absorb it and decide whether it works clients.
3. Be clear about your priorities.
Most digital work, especially online advertising, is inherently direct response but if attention-grabbing awareness is a huge priority, this needs to be expressed because the work may come out quite differently.
5. Believe in brand expression.
Brands now are more than identity assets created 10 years ago. If you're seeking integration across channels and across multiple agencies, brand expression -- how a brand behaves -- is a crucial ingredient to add to the mix. Most brand guidelines need an update; in addition to classic topics such as logo, color, grid, type and imagery, brand guidelines now need tone, motion, principles and media usage. Plus, even classic identity elements need to be expanded; we need an extended color palette on the web, and we need more flexible guidelines that still differentiate a brand but are updated to the modern media environment.
6. Don't assume advertising equals brand.There's big competition right now for who stewards the brand. In many cases, and rightly so, it's the advertising agency whose legacy includes brand planning and whose retainers and rigor puts them in the driver's seat. But it's also true that digital agencies -- whose work crosses lines, who understand collaboration and who are closer to the consumer and all the marketing touch points -- can help steer a brand. Because things change fast we just may find ourselves changing our minds fairly quickly about who's leading.
New Google Tracking Code Helps FLASH-Based Web Sites
With the upgrade to ga.js you will have access to several new features including Event Tracking, and Outbound Link Tracking.
Source: Read More
Event Tracking will be especially useful for those who have Flash based sites, or for those who use multimedia on their site. An "event" is an action that a user takes on a web page that doesn't necessarily involve a new pageview. Examples include clicks on buttons or images, navigation in embedded Flash, or Ajax events, like moving a map in Google Maps, or applying a label in Gmail.
In mid-October Google announced the beta release of the new tracking code: ga.js. Then, in December, they released the new code to all Google Analytics users. So you might have noticed, within Google Analytics, that there is now a tab labeled 'New Tracking Code' within the Profile Settings > Tracking Code section.
You may be thinking, "Why should I care?" Well, here are a few reasons why the migration to ga.js is practically inevitable for those of you who want to remain on the cutting edge of the latest and greatest technology. And why, for those of you who don't want to rock the boat, it may not be necessary to switch over... yet.
Google's Technology That Recognises Text in Images
Google may have plans to expand its search engine beyond static text.
The search giant in June filed a patent application for technology that can recognise text in images. It could be used to retrieve text from video or from photographs that may show up as part of a street scene. The application was published on last week.
The company is seeking the patent for methods, systems and computer programs that can extract image text. For example, the application noted, the technology could search a collection of keywords extracted from text and retrieve an image associated with the extracted text.
The digital images that the technology aims to scout for text include illustrations of landscapes, people, urban scenes and other objects, according to the application.
"Image text typically includes text of varying size orientation and typeface," the application noted. "Text in a digital image derived, for example, from an urban scene (a city street scene) often proves information about the displayed scene or location. A typical street scene includes, for example, text as part of street signs, building names, address numbers and window signs."
Duncan Riley, a blogger at TechCrunch, noted that if Google really has found a way to index text in static images and video, "this is a great leap forward in the progression of search technology. This will make every book in the Google Books database really searchable, with the next step being YouTube, Flickr and more."
Adam Ostrow, a blogger at social networking site Mashable, said that potential applications of text recognition technology go beyond Google's existing products.
"Google could start photographing the aisles of stores to create product indexes with vast amounts of data," he wrote in a blog post. "For example, if Google were to photograph a box of Lucky Charms, it might be able to tell you not only its price, but nutritional information and ingredients."
However, Ostrow noted that the amount of manpower needed to capture this type of data would be hefty.
"Google Street View provides a fair amount of photos for major metropolitan areas, but it would seem that creating meaningful search products that utilise text recognition technology would require far deeper and more precise imagery," he said. "It sounds challenging, but perhaps not impossible with 15,000-plus employees at the company's disposal."
Source: www.computerworld.co.nz
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