General

Came across a great article on Bloomberg BusinessWeek last week; “Google’s YouTube Boosts Display Advertisers 10-Fold”. Very interesting that the King of Search has discovered display advertising. Now let’s be honest, YouTube has massive reach but so does Google so is search declining?

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According to Brian Womack who wrote the piece for Bloomberg, “As growth slows at its main business of selling ads next to search results, Google needs more revenue in other areas”. My guess is that as the economy is rebounding, we will start to see more brand advertising and a continued increase in “traditional” digital advertising campaigns. According to eMarketer, “spending on the major categories of display, which includes banner ads and video, may rise 9 percent to $7.92 billion this year”. Clearly Google saw this trend coming  as they expanded their own display offerings when they purchased DoubleClick in 2008 and Teracent last year.

So what do you think, search or display? Are they independent of each other or are they both part of the same strategy?

You can read the full article from Bloomberg BusinessWeek  at http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-03/google-s-youtube-boosts-display-advertisers-10-fold-update1-.html

If your still not sure about Social Media as a sales tool, think about this!

“customer reviews had a strong influence on the purchases of 71% of respondents—while only 25% said the same about Facebook fan pages”—an interesting statistic considering the pace at which companies are setting up Facebook pages. Seems to me there is a disconnect here since comments posted on a Facebook page are customer reviews, aren’t they?

 “Customers are constantly accessing information via multiple touchpoints — including mobile devices, social networks, and company websites — throughout the research process. Companies have come to recognize the importance of providing excellent cross-channel services to improve the customer experience. In fact, 80 percent of customer experience decision makers said that improving cross-channel interactions was one of their key priorities in 2010. However, consumers consistently rate satisfaction levels for cross-channel experiences as poor, so it is apparent that businesses often struggle to deliver on this goal.”

Think about how you are using, or not using Social Media to meet consumer needs!

Sitepal has introduced a rather impressive new set of speaking avatars. While the technology behind this type of avatar may be complex, the simplicity of its use may make it worth its weight. Thanks to 3-D Photoface, who has some of the most life-like avatar creations on the web, these avatars are of a quality perhaps never seen before in this type of public use format.

Although Sitepal already boasts over 250 customizable avatars, they now offer those who cannot find the perfect match among that batch, the opportunity to build their own virtual web speaking avatar by doing no more than uploading their own photo of choice, and selecting a few options in the avatar creation wizard.  

Sitepal can now laud their avatars as having intensely human characteristics, all the way down to customized voice personalities and detailed facial movement and expressions. The ability to fine-tune an avatar so specifically for your site now, may have some users considering the usage of this kind of website capability for themselves.

Sitepal does offer a free trial so that users can test out their limits with their product. However, if you find yourself newly addicted to the features it provides, even a basic account will cost you at least $9.95 per month. That includes only the most basic of features.

Integrating audio through microphones, telephone or from a custom recording.

Available editor that includes over sixty characters and hundreds of background videos and images. You can also use your own scene if you choose.

The ability to publish to emails, PowerPoint, or HTML web pages.

Basic users get up to 1,500 streams per month as well as email support. This is not a terrible deal if your site can utilize this type of speech technology.

Many of the other features that a lot of users find helpful such as Sitepal’s text-to-speech scripting will require a higher paid membership. High end Sitepal features can cost up to $250 USD per month. Higher paid accounts of course receive a higher stream allotment as well as other key selling points such as eBay store integration.

The social internet website MySpace announced with great pride to the people in attendance at the Games Developers Conference that they have a better gaming system for those social gamers. The functions and tools are superior and they have improved the user friendliness.

The MySpace users that own the iphone now have the ability to play all of the MySpace games on their phones. The names of some of the iphone games include Hoop Fever Live, Zombie Revenge and Wild Ones just to name a few. The players no longer have to sit in from of their computer towers or laptops to play the games they love. They have the choice and freedom of playing their games when and where they want to.

MySpace says that nearly one third of their current members are playing their games on a daily basis. They are hoping that all of the members who want to play will discover the newest changes and want to jump on the daily “game wagon”. MySpace hopes that the players, new and old, will share the games with other members.

They have greatly improved the usability of the Game Gallery. Gamers will find that they can now find new games that they haven’t played before, and play those games recommended by other friends. Players also have the ability to rate the games that they play. If the rating on each game is high, this will inspire others to play. They have greatly improved the gaming search tool so the user can easily find the games they are looking for.

The social platform that MySpace is using is enticing to game developers and gamers alike. Those developers receive support for the games from some of the major development houses. This improves the games for the developers and the players.

MySpace is hosting “Game Development on Social Platforms”. Those involved will learn how to build games for that platform among other topics. The MySpace technical team members will be available to help the developers and gamers perfect their specific games, or build games.

On specs alone, HTC HD2 looks to be the best mobile 6.5 device ever created for Windows. It contains a 4.3 inch screen with 800 x 480 resolution. It also includes a speedy 1-GHZ process by Snapdragon. After the recent launch for the HD2, it was easy to get my hands on this device to see if it could live up to its own hype.

It quickly became obvious that this was indeed likely the best 6.5 device around. The touch screen is increasingly fun to play with, it also does a great job of putting the iPhone screen to shame, however, it is comparable to the Droid or Nexus One quality of touch screen and resolution.

The interface seems highly responsive, assuming due to the Snapdragon processor. Apps seem to open without the smallest delay.

Web Browsing

Browsing the web with the HD2 is also rather enjoyable. HD2 uses Opera Mobile so that on most pages you should see most, and commonly most often, all of the page itself. The web speed is also impressive on its 3G network.

However, there are some bug issues with the HD2 and web browsing. so in this aspect, the iPhone’s smooth Safari can blow the HD2’s web browser hitches out of the water. There seems to be a rather large bug that is involved with zooming in on a page. Many users have in fact reported the same exact issue, so this is obviously a manufacturing bug early on. Sure to be a quick fix around the corner.

This nifty device comes bundled with exclusive apps from places like Barnes & Noble as well as Blockbuster and MobiTv. Users can rent or buy movies from Blockbuster via the app available. The Barnes & Noble app gives users a world of literature at the tip of their fingers.

All in all, with a few flaws and a few shining perks, this mobile device is certain to be a hit, at least, that is, until the next one trumps it.

While Google now allows twitter results into the first page search results other search engines like Sency.com use twitter as their primary source for search results.

The benefits to real time content is that it provides the opportunity to find the most up to date information about what is happening on the web. Twitter updates give individuals the opportunity to live in real time information, taking the web to a live broadcast of now.

This open source of information means anyone may see you tweet, so be ready! With Twitter offering its API of Tweets for free to small web publishers and entrepreneurs – we can expect to continue to see Twitter results syndicated across the web.

Google Does Not Plan to Be Left Behind – Buzz

Although they have had no choice lately, Google has announced its plans to take ‘what it does best’, which is organizing web content by relevancy, and apply this same method to social media formats. Social media is notoriously perhaps one of the most disorganized aspects of the internet.

They plan to begin tying the Gmail Web Interface in with social media status updates and other forms of sharing technology. This may just be one more attempt at Google’s ever present need to convince any internet users that for any aspect of the net available, Google has one better, but only time will tell.

According to Google engineers, someone at least has to try. Considering that a lot of the world’s vital internet information is shared among Google’s top players alone, it may be more than a bit behind the times to begin delving into the social media world that even they could have been taking advantage of for this long.

Google has now integrated Google mail, known as Gmail, with Buzz which allows users to share their links on Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and more. This allows you to see business and personal activity of those who are active in your Gmail buzz list.

Developers at Google believe that they can build their own advantage in social medias by continuing to focus and concentrate on relevant and high ranking material, even within social networks. Not only can you see the activities of those on your follow list, but you can also see the activities of those on their lists if they like or share information.

Google Buzz users will also be able to begin to train their own algorithms by selecting if something is recommendable, or whether you just are ‘not interested’ in the information presented.  This may provide a new aspect for social media lovers in the fact that they can eliminate posts such as those about someone’s private life or dinner recipes and only follow the information in a certain niche that will only get more perfected with more use.

One month after users went ballistic over the Facebook privacy update changes may have been a bit too early for Zuckerberg to declare that if given the chance to start over, he would have made these recent decisions right from the start. Claiming that it is the social norm, he shares that the new changes are still optional, but urges users to take advantage of the suggested options Facebook now provides.

Most users enjoy sharing their Facebook pages, status updates and personal information with those they dub important friends, acquaintances and even co-workers. And there are yet others who prefer to share their information with as many people as they can add to their follower list, without a care for who may be able to access their personal information such as location, age and cell phone numbers.

There are of course supporters who remind everyone that no one is forced to enter this information, and doing so may in fact be a risk even if your only followers are close friends and family.

Most will agree though that it should remain the users choice as to whom and what areas they are willing to share their private information with. While it seems that Facebook has decided that they will begin to make some decisions of various sorts on behalf of their billions of users.

FaceBook is Trapped

In essence, Facebook is actually trapped by its own conventions as well. Since it is a social networking tool, just like any other goldmine of private information, it is begging to be utilized to shove user specific information in front of those specific users. They want country music concert tickets advertisements to show up for those Facebook fans who regularly favorite, like or otherwise promote country music.

Although it is a bit of privacy invasion, just as with the private personal information you enter into Facebook’s profile system, no one says you have to buy the tickets either, as appealing as they may be to you specifically.

It looks like the new propeller chip will be an incredible addition to our current application technology. This chip contains eight processors or cogs, that can operate simultaneously, cooperatively, or even independently. This allows them to share common resources from a central hub.

This new chip allows developers to retain full control over when and how each seperte cog is utilized. Its shared system timer keeps each cog on the same time reference which ultimately allows for true deterministic synchronization. It will also come with two different programming languages. Propeller Assembly, and Spin. Propeller Assembly can execute up to 160 MIPs per cog.

Who Will Use Propeller?

Propeller is a highly diverse chip that will be used by many different industries such as process control engineering and even robotics manufacturers. Due to its on-board video capability as well as easy connectivity to common PC peripherals, it is fair to say that many industries from the largest to the home based creators will take advantage of Propeller.

Many other areas where Propeller will be of benefit can include:

• Art
• Hobbies
• Home Applications
• Medical
• Science
• Industrial

What Do You Need to Get Started?

You will of course need the Propeller Chip as well as a USB Serial connection to the chip. Some boards and modules may actually require a prop plug for integration while others have the capability built-in. For hobbyist or students, it is recommended to try out the Propeller Starter Kit or the Propstick USB version.

Propeller will also come with a few very handy development tools enabling users from beginners to power-users to take advantage of the possibilities this chip will provide. You do not have to know programming language to use Propeller.

Many companies are already on-board with Propeller and utilizing it daily in their own industrial, creative and even medical settings.