Author Archives: juzarraga

Google Sidewiki: If You Have a Web Site Read This

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A new tool from Google just made controlling your brand online a little bit more challenging. Released on September 23,1 this toolbar-based plug-in allows you to add your own notes to any Web page – yours – mine – and anyone elses. In other words, “every page on your site now comes with a publicly accessible discussion board that cannot be moderated.”

I just tried it out for the first time and it’s simple to use. Basically, once you’ve added the plug-in, you go to a webpage and click on the Sidewiki icon; a sidebar will pop up alongside the webpage and you’ll see all the comments people have made. This means, every webpage is now social. So, even if you’ve been resisting the social marketing revolution, you’re in it now anyway. The question is – is that good or bad? Well, you’ll have to decide for yourself… Continue reading →

Color 101: What does Your Online Color Scheme Say to Customers?

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What’s Next?
This topic “Color 101” comes from Philip A. Provins.

Color 101: What does Your Online Color Scheme Say to Customers?

Not sure? You’ve been designing web pages with blue because it’s your favorite color? Hmm, you might want to rethink your tactics. Why? “The Internet is the ultimate visual and psychological medium.”1 The content you write is, of course, a major component, as is the design itself. What about color? It’s often what people notice first. Color conveys meaning and mood. It’s important to know your market well enough to ensure that “the psychological message you are trying to get across with the rest of your site design” is Fcomplemented and enhanced by the appropriate color scheme.”1 If you’re still tempted to keep using blue because it’s your favorite color check out this statistic – according to psychologists “color impression can account for up to 60% of the acceptance or rejection of a product or service.”2 Wow. Continue reading →

7 Tips to Maintain Your Website Reputation

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In order to succeed and combat the competitive online world, you need to maintain a good reputation online. A good reputation does not only require a good website design but a lot more to build confidence, to grow sales and ultimately leads to better revenues and higher profitability.

In today’s Internet buzz nasty rumors, wrong opinions and incorrect news spread rapidly and if not taken timely action to handle the news properly, you may face a serious threat to your online business and credibility.

Here are some simple measures you can take to maintain your website’s reputation:

1. Respond to customers

Being open and responsive to customers is an important part of creating a positive impression and managing your website’s reputation. If someone asks you a question, answer it there or through e-mail. Be quick in addressing your customer issues before the word spreads.

2. Answer the negative comments humbly

Be real, not everyone is satisfied with your work and services. If these people are among the ones spreading negative comments about you for whatever reason like delayed service or unfriendly attitude, answer them instantly to terminate the issue right there!

Be very polite when putting your point of view in front of such people and you’ll sure succeed in saving your reputation. Answering negative remarks modestly can be a great way of turning a bad situation into positive one. Continue reading →

AltaVista Irrelevant? Not to Other Search Engines

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(PC WORLD) A long time ago, in the mid-to-late 1990s, AltaVista was a major search engine, but with the rise of Google its popularity slid, eventually becoming irrelevant to most users.

Back then, I never missed “Seinfeld” or “Friends” and was a faithful AltaVista user, but had long ago forgotten about it, assuming at some point it had completely faded into the background and disappeared. Then, the other day, curious about how major search engines resolve queries related to Internet search, I was surprised to see AltaVista showing up prominently in results.

Sure enough, AltaVista lives on at its old http://www.altavista.com URL. It turns out that Yahoo owns it. I don’t know why anyone would use it. The user interface is horrid. The features are limited. It looks like a forgotten, abandoned site.

Wondering what type of traffic it draws, I checked with Hitwise, which tracks search engine usage, and was told that AltaVista commands a minuscule 0.09 percent of U.S. searches, according to the latest Hitwise’s latest figures for the week ending Dec. 12. Continue reading →

Yelp walks from $550 million Google deal

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(Examiner) Late last week news leaked that Google was in the advanced stage of negotiating a deal with local business review site Yelp for a sum rumored to be in the $550 million range. Today TechCrunch reported Yelp has walked away from the negotiations. While there is widespread speculation as to why Yelp decided to stay independent (including rumors of competing deals from Apple or Microsoft/Yahoo!) one thing is clear – it’s not the end of the story. There was a lot more to this deal than just acquiring Yelp’s traffic (9 million monthly unique visitors according to Comscore) and passionate community.

Yelp has been successful at doing what Internet Yellow Pages(IYP’s), and the major search engines are still trying to achieve – combining an engaged community with selling local business advertising to make a profitable online business model. TechCrunch on Thursday reported “Yelp has whispered that 2009 revenues will be around $30 million and are expecting $50 million or so in 2010.”

The keys to Yelp’s success have been their ability to build a vibrant, engaged community that posts reviews of local businesses, creating content that generates traffic to their site and loyalty amongst users. Yelp combined that rich content and traffic with an advertising sales force (both telephone and feet-on-the-street) to take advantage of a market with no strong leader. While IYP’s were focusing on driving revenue through their local sales forces, Google and Yahoo! were building online advertising platforms and huge databases of content. As a little start-up, Yelp was nimble enough to do both and embrace the social media trend of creating online communities. Yelp also capitalized on the growth of smartphones and mobile search to increase traffic and the number of reviews. Continue reading →

Microsoft Sued by Bing! (And We Don’t Mean Its Search Engine)

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(ChannelWeb) Just as Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) worked out a compromise to its long-running conflict with the European Union, it now faces the prospect of legal action from a pair of small companies the software giant has allegedly wronged.

Last week Microsoft admitted that a Chinese contract developer, hired by MSN China to develop its Juku microblogging site, copied code from Plurk, a competing site. Although Microsoft has apologized for the fiasco, Plurk has hinted that it might take legal action.

Now comes word that a small design firm in St. Louis has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming it owns trademark rights to the “Bing!” name Microsoft chose earlier this year for its overhauled search engine.

Last week Bing! Information Designs LLC filed the lawsuit against Microsoft in the 22nd Judicial Circuit of the Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis charging Microsoft with trademark infringement and unfair competition.

Bing! (the St. Louis one) maintains that it has been using the name since 2000. A story in The Seattle Times on Friday quoted the company’s attorney, Tony Simon, as saying that since Microsoft rebranded its search engine with the Bing! name earlier this year, clients of the St. Louis Bing! are confused and think the design firm is somehow affiliated with Microsoft.

The company is seeking “actual and punitive damages,” including having Microsoft pay for advertising to reverse the confusion the software vendor has created, according to a Dow Jones Newswire story. The suit does not specify a dollar amount for the alleged damages.

Microsoft spokespersons have said they don’t believe the suit has any merit. Continue reading →

Facebook policy upsets millions

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NEW DELHI (InfoTech): Millions of Netizens suddenly face the prospect of having key personal information and posts made accessible to everyone, un

less they consciously monitor their privacy settings.

Facebook, the world’s largest onlinesocial networking site, recently announced that in order to encourage members to share more information on the internet, it has upgraded its privacy settings, making several categories of information of its users visible by default to everyone.

Why this assumes significance is because Facebook allows its users to chose their level of privacy, by letting them restrict access to either friends, friends of friends or everyone. It’s a feature that has helped the site gain many users and is in line with its mantra of “control what you want to share.” Continue reading →

American Apparel Grabs YouTube’s Long Tail

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Retailer uses niche clips — including one that shows a skateboarding dog — for ad targeting

(ADWEEK) One of YouTube’s greatest challenges with advertisers has been the notion that it’s a repository for clips of dogs riding skateboards. But one marketer, at least, sees this as a plus.

American Apparel has been targeting ads to over 100 videos of pets, including a clip of a skateboarding canine, to promote its line of dog clothing. The Los Angeles-based brand chose the videos based on suggestions from employees.

“It would be hard to do an advertisement on the back page of LA Weekly or a fashion magazine for the dog T-shirt,” noted Ryan Holiday, a Web marketing executive at American Apparel.

YouTube hopes more advertisers will follow American Apparel’s lead.

The venue has little problem drumming up interest in its front-page and marquee placements, but it needs to entice advertisers deeper into the site to pair their brands with long-tail content. Knowing some companies are still uncomfortable with category-wide targeting — YouTube has a pets and animals channel, for example — the Google-owned property began offering specific video targeting earlier this month. The initiative lets advertisers build custom video lists from among the clips entered in YouTube’s partner program. Continue reading →

NHL’s Web Video Gets More Social

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(ADWEEK) The National Hockey League has pulled back the curtains on a new video player, replete with more original content and more sharing features designed to further infiltrate the Web’s top social networks.

The new NHL VideoCenter product, developed by the IPTV tech provider NeuLion, essentially replaces NHL Network Online, NHL.com’s original video platform.

Besides game highlights and interviews, VideoCenter offers fans three new channels: NHL Shootout Channel, which deliver full-length coverage of games that end with shootouts; NHL Press Room, for live press conferences; and NHL Library, an archive of clips.

VideoCenter also promises a larger video screen, faster loading times and more useful search, according to league officials.

Besides serving as a destination, the NHL sees VideoCenter as a way to enhance its presence on social media, clearly a league priority. The new player allows fans to share video clips with friends on Facebook, Twitter and Digg. The NHL already maintains channels on the top video sites YouTube and Hulu, and continues to create original video series for advertisers like Timberland and EA.

“NHL.com is the first place fans look to see the best game highlights; live and feature videos; and original programming focused on the NHL,” said NHL svp of creative Andre Mika. “NHL VideoCenter expands the volume of video content offered on NHL.com and greatly enhances and streamlines the user interface, creating the Web’s best destination for NHL video.”

Cutting Tiger Woods Generates Positive Buzz for Brands

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Before controversy engulfed Tiger Woods, big brands built buzz by putting the iconic golfer in their ads. Today, some marketers are getting positive responses from consumers by cutting their ties to the troubled sports legend as the media firestorm over his personal conduct continues to rage.

So says the Brandweek Buzz Report by market research firm YouGov. The weekly consumer survey analyzes the most talked about brands based on buzz: If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, was it positive or negative?; and reputation: Would you be proud or embarrassed to work for this brand?

YouGov interviews 5,000 people each weekday from a representative U.S. population sample. Respondents are drawn from an online panel of 1.5 million individuals. A score can range from 100 to -100 and is compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback. Continue reading →

Video: Canon EOS 7D gatling gun shooting 8 FPS of awesome

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We’ll be back later with more impressions, but we figured you’d like to see Canon’s new EOS 7D in a video quickie, live at IFA. It’s short, just a minute, but enough time to show off the 7D’s built-in digital level, 19-point autofocus, and a naked shutter blasting though 8 frames per second. Now man…

Video: Canon EOS 7D gatling gun shooting 8 FPS of awesome.

Introducing a Twitter for Credit Card Purchases

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(NYT) Philip Kaplan earned notoriety and profit a decade ago with a site that chronicled the implosion of the Internet bubble. Now he is back with a project that seems sure to get attention again: Blippy a soon-to-start online social network that lets you share details of your credit card purchases with friends or strangers.

Mr. Kaplan’s earlier venture, an obscenely named Web site that parodied FastCompany magazine, chronicled the dot-com carnage in 2000 and 2001. Though that site trashed failing start-ups, Mr. Kaplan was an entrepreneur himself: he made money by devising a self-service tool that allowed advertisers to place ads on the site. The tool worked so well that in 2002, he spun it off to create AdBrite, which places ads on more than 100,000 affiliated sites and had 2008 revenue of $31.6 million. Continue reading →

Canon vs. Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

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Canon vs. Nikon – which one? It’s a common question that comes up when consumers are comparing digital SLR cameras.

These two companies were the first to make the leap from film to digital, and their initial presence in the market make them the dominant players.

Today Canon and Nikon constantly battle for the top spot in the SLR market, while Olympus, Pentax, Sony, Panasonic and Sigma duke it out for a position in third.

If you pay attention to the digital SLR press releases, you’ll notice a pattern: when either Canon or Nikon announce a new camera designed to capture some niche aspect of the market, the other company is soon to release a camera to compete.

This page is designed to help you get a handle on the current state of Canon vs. Nikon digital SLR cameras, with a focus on consumer SLRs, not those made for professionals.

Read more >>

Canon XSi Or Nikon D3000

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Canon’s Rebel XSi (450D) is already on the market and awaiting the arrival of its new Nikon nemesis. Which one will dominate?

The Nikon/Canon debate will not abate with the coming of the new D3000. Nikon proponents will line up on the Nikon side while Canon enthusiasts will take their stance on the other side of the line. It’s kind of like the Republicans vs Democrats or the Auburn War Eagles vs the Alabama Crimson Tide. You pick your favorite rivalry. Your side will be better no matter what.

My money is on both to be winners. If you buy a Canon Rebel XSi or a Nikon D3000 you will be getting an awesome piece of photographic equipment. The technology keeps improving and the price continues to either stay the same or come down a bit with each new entry level DSLR. Continue reading →