Problems with the iPhone?

According to numerous accounts, Apple's new iPhone is rather problematic to activate and has many shortcomings despite the hype. Survey results on Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection blog report that only about 50% of iPhone users were able to activate their new iPhone with little or no problems. In his post, Thomas Hawk recounts his own horrible experience in trying to activate his own phone.

Apparently you buy the phone at your local AT&T store, take it home and with your iTunes account (with the appropriate updates) you go through an activation process. This is where the good times end and the buyer's remorse begins. Granted this information is about a month old but a quick search shows that people are still having activation issues. But someone has to love it, right?

An article published today in Information Week says that NASA has nixed the new iPhone in favor of the BlackBerry 8800. Reasons including "...lack of support from major device management and mobile security software suites, lack of removable batteries, and Apple's exclusive contract with network provider AT&T." The space agency deemed the iPhone as "not to be enterprise ready." OK, So NASA doesn't like it either.

Being an EXTREMELY satisfied owner of the Motorola Q, I am a little biased. The iPhone costs more, has little more to offer and AT&T has inferior coverage compared to Verizon's Network. Granted the Motorola Q doesn't have the fancy GUI that the iPhone does, but it definitely gets the job done. It is my understanding that a Q with a memory card, can do anything that the iPhone will do...for less money. Some of you are going to say, "what about WIFI?" OK fine! So the iPhone has WIFI, Verizon has the EVDO in most major cities and it works fast.

So what's the point? There are just as many articles about iPhone Problems as there are about Satisfied iPhone owners. Just do your research before you dive into iPhone mania like a friend of mine did.

Your thoughts?


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Outdoor Advertising...Yay or Nay?

Outdoor advertising can take on many forms. Examples might be billboards, park benches, vehicle wraps, city bus signs and the like. This type of advertising does have its place but must be done correctly. Traditional knowledge agrees that outdoor advertising is not a stand alone media. Rather, it is a support media that adds legitimacy to the balance of your campaign. However, billboards do have a couple of primary uses. One being price point advertising and the other being directional instructions.

A perfect example of price pointing comes from one of the top 3 burger makers in the US, Burger King. When Burger King puts their famous low calorie Whopper on sale for .99 cents, up goes a billboard with their logo, the price, a lovely image of the most succulent morsel to ever hit the sky and the simple copy of "Wow" or "It's Back".

Not very long ago I saw a great example of a directional billboard on University Ave. in Waterloo, Iowa. Located just below the billboard was a pasta establishment. The billboard read; "Giant Meatballs Inside" and had a great big red arrow pointing down at the building.

Granted Burger King has a ton a brand equity, and not everyone can have their restaurant located directly below a 14 x 48 foot billboard, but these are examples of how billboards are done right.

The bottom line to remember. You have 5 seconds or less to grab some one's attention and convey your message with a billboard. On a billboards or other outdoor advertising, less is definitely more. I have seen way to many bus benches crammed with so much information that you would have a hard time reading even if you were stopped at the light for the full duration.

If you decide to place some outdoor advertising, you need to know that there is a lot that goes into the selection process. Location, size, showing, illumination, vinyl vs. paper, cost per impression, total impressions among other things, are all items that need consideration. It has to be done well and done effectively to maximize your ROI. If you have questions or concerns about outdoor advertising, talk to a professional marketing company for direction and effective creative.

 

The "Sometimes on Saturday" Post

Last week I referenced a really good article on bottled water. I just read that Aquafina, a bottled water brand owned by Pepsico, is being forced to change their label to better reflect the true nature of the contents.

The new label will now be required to have "P.W.S." defined somewhere in the print. This stands for "Public Water Supply" or "Public Water Source"

WHAT?!?! It's tap water? You have got to be kidding me.

A group called Corporate Accountability International has been pressuring bottled water sellers to curb what it calls misleading marketing practices. Next on the hit-list is Dasani, owned by competitor, Coca-Cola. At least on the Dasani bottled water website, if you dig deep enough, it says that they "...start with the local water supply, which is filtered for purity..."

According to The Journal News, "Bottled water is teaching an entire generation that water comes from vending machines," said Gigi Kellett, director of Corporate Accountability's campaign against bottled water.

Opponents of bottle water claim that the energy to produce the product and the waste generated by bottled water is damaging our environment. They say that we should really understand that we can get the same water from the tap in most places, eliminating the need for all the plastic bottles.

When I buy bottled water, I guess I never thought to look at the label. Then again, I don't know if it will matter when I find myself thirsty after having just pumped $60 worth of fossil fuel into my truck.

 

Yahoo Releases YSlow

Yahoo has just released their new web performance tool called YSlow.

YSlow measures individual web page performance based on the best practices outline.

"YSlow has three main views: Performance, Stats, and Components. Performance view scores the page against each performance rule, generates an overall YSlow grade for the page, and lists specific recommendations for making the page faster. Stats view summarizes the total page weight, cookie size, and HTTP request count. Components view lists each component (image, stylesheet, script, Flash object, etc.) in the page along with HTTP information relevant to page load times. It also contains several tools including JSLint."

I installed this yesterday and it provides great information about your sites. Specifically I was interested in the rating that it gave me for ETags, CDN and expiring headers. All the other things listed in the report are excellent little tools that can help you increase the speed at which your sites load.

Give it a try and let me know your comments.

 

Bear with me while I enter John Chow's contest.

You too can enter to win a signed copy of the "4 Hour Workweeek"

Click here for John Chow's Contest

 

MySpace Cleans Up Sex Offenders

In July, MySpace decided to to a little house cleaning. MySpace deleted the accounts that had been created by registered sex offenders. Apparently there were over 29,000 registered sex offenders that had created profiles. A figure 4 times more than the original estimate offered by MySpace. This number reflects the sex offenders that signed up using their real names. The number is expected to be higher as individuals may have used fake names or other identies.

A July 24th release from North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper proposes 6 changes in social networking sites to better protect our children from sexual predators. As always, parents are strongly encouraged to police their children's Internet activities but the rules proposed in this new release would require parents to authorize an account before a child would be able to post. It would also allow parents to see what their children are posting.

MySpace does not want to see its younger user base threatened, but also resists such verification measures likely because they could push current and potential users away from MySpace to competing websites. I wonder how they will feel when legal action is brought against them like what happened to the tobacco companies?

For more information on how to keep your kids safe on the Internet, visit some of these sites:

Internetchildsafety.net
ProtectKids.org
SafeKids.com
The FBI's Safe Kids Guidelines
LoveOurChildrenusa.org
CyberPatrol.com
NetNanny.com
CyberAngels.org
Microsoft's Family Internet Safety Guidelines
WiredSafety.org

There are many more available by looking through the Child Safety and Internet Safety for Kids Google Directories.

 

The Debates on YouTube

Article contributed by
guest blogger Jen Williams; media
consultant and marketing professional.

If there’s ever been a time to stop using the term “new media,” it’s today. When YouTube becomes a format for presidential debates, one can hardly continue to distinguish the Internet from mainstream media.

Long a tool for spreading political propaganda, garnishing financial support for candidates and “getting out the vote,” the Internet has now been elevated to the status of representing democratic government in its truest form. By giving not only a voice, but also a face, to the voting public, it’s allowed them direct access to candidates in an unprecedented way.

I’ll agree with all the news pundits in their assessment that the format of Tuesday’s debate on CNN was really all that was new about it. The candidates themselves didn’t say much that was unexpected or different from anything they’ve been saying recently. Whether they’re simply attempting to establish consistency or they intentionally avoided anything earth-shattering, it was probably a wise move. The format itself is what made Tuesday’s debate historical, and anything that was said will be overshadowed by that fact alone.

The Republicans might benefit, therefore, for getting their shot at the same format second, because the novelty will have worn off a bit and people might actually pay more attention to what they say, as opposed to how the questions are delivered. It will be interesting to see if they, like their Democratic counterparts, receive questions from rock-singing constituents and snowmen.

Regardless, while those of us who work in media might have known that the terms “mainstream” and “new” media became archaic long ago, the rest of the world can no longer deny it.

 

Digital DNA on Your Photos?

Did you know that a photo you take with your digital camera can be traced back to you? Apparently the person that leaked the new Harry Potter Manuscript didn't know. A few days before the release of the New Harry Potter book, you could get a bit torrent of the book on the Internet. This clearly violated several copyright laws and the person, who laboriously photographed each page, is now being sought.

The Times Online says that, "Every image that is taken on a digital camera contains Exif data, which holds information about the picture such as zoom, contrast, focus and 'distance to subject' measurements. It is typically used for 'trouble-shooting', so an owner can ascertain why a picture may not have worked, but it also enables a court, for instance, to establish whether a picture has been digitally altered."

"The Exif data is like the picture's DNA; you can't switch it off. Every image has it. Some software can be used to strip or edit the information, but you can't edit every field..."

This information brings a new dimension to social media. If you email or post an incriminating photo of someone or something on your MySpace, FaceBook or other social media site, beware, you run risk or getting caught.

Interesting information for sure. Just in case you didn't already know; "Big Brother" is always watching.

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Cumulus Media to be Bought Out!

Just announced - Cumulus Media, the 2nd largest radio group on the U.S. will be bought out for $1.3 BILLION (including debt) by an investor group led by Chief Executive Lewis Dickey and an affiliate of Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity.

Cumulus owns and/or operates 344 stations in the U.S. The buyout comes at a time when the future of traditional media is uncertain as radio stations are starting to compete with digital media outlets.

The transaction is scheduled to be complete by early 2008 and will include a 40% share price premium over what the stock was trading at on Friday. The board has approved the transaction and has encouraged shareholders to do the same. The nation's largest radio company, Clear Channel Communications, agreed earlier this year to be taken private in a $19.6 billion buyout.

 

John Chow and the Great Google Debacle

I have been reading John Chow's blog for several weeks now as a matter of interest in the posts. I love his blog and read it every day. After a while, I realize that John is a pretty big noise in the world of blogging. Admittedly, when I first started reading the blog, I had no idea who he was. After a couple of weeks of reading deeper into his blog and looking elsewhere online, I realized that he is kind of a rogue in the blog community and some of his actions may have gotten him in trouble with someone you don't want to be in trouble with; Google.

John is making thousands and thousands of dollars per month by monetizing his blog with the support of "advertisers" and other revenue generating avenues like Google Ads and selling links. Matt Cutts, Google's Search Engineer, had warned people about subscribing to paid link advertising in his 2005 blog post. Apparently this is where pro blogger got into a bit of trouble when he began to push the threshold of what Google saw as acceptable conduct.

For a period of time, John Chow's blog was ranked #1 for the search terms "make money online." Right now if you Google John Chow, his actual site shows up at #54 in the results where it used to be at #1. Even though he has broken into the top 50 on Technorati, he is still being punished by the biggest boy on the block. John explains how his fallout with Google all went down in this June 2007 post. The best quote is from the last line of the post, "Let’s see, I’ve been banned from Digg, banned from Technorati and now bitch slapped by Google. I’m doing pretty good!"

Understand that this #54 ranking is an improvement over where he ranked a couple of months ago but he still has quite a ways to go before he will gain back what he lost this year. Granted, if you search John Chow, you can get to his site from the vast amount of posts on other blogs, but it is always nice to be #1.

Now this is pretty old news to most of you and I am coming on the tail end of it all. I just thought that is was a pretty interesting story about the power of Google and how they can shut you off if they are so inclined. As I was putting this post together, I started wondering what happens when a search engine gains too much power. Is there a potential for information to be controlled? Can a corrupt individual eliminate someone from the rankings with enough money? I don't know, I just thought that I would throw that out there.


So what's the moral of the story? Build your site on organic search results with quality links from relevant sites. Don't get banned by Google by buying links, simply buy AdWords. Don't sell links, display AdSense on your site. Don't try and take short cuts, write quality content, provide substance to your site's visitors, and understand that it takes time to build a successful site that's valuable to your visitors.

 

The Internet Has Crashed

Well it must be working now. I just can't believe that the government didn't have a backup of the darn thing.

 

20 Million Visitors

Digg and Facebook hit an incredible 20 million visitors this last month. Some industry insiders believe that this will open them up for a buyout. Just days after Jay Meattle wrote on his blog about YouTube crossing the 20 million mark, Google came in and bought it for $1.65B in Google stock.

Just for comparison sake, according to Jay's blog MySpace has over 75 billion page views per month and over 67 million in monthly unique visitors. I guess that gives us all something to shoot for.

These sites and many other social media type sites continue to give us trend indications and how to market proactively in the new mass media. I am going to make a prediction right now. I think in the next 10 years there will be a significant number of homes that no longer have cable or satellite. There will be large amounts of programs available on the Internet and consumers will be subscribing to some kind of syndication service for their in-home entertainment. After all, who would have thought that NetFlix would have taken the country by storm and contributed to the decline of so many traditional movie rental companies.


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How Good is Your Bottled Water?

"Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on ipods or movie tickets: $15 Billion" This quote is right out of the most comprehensive article I have ever read on bottled water. I'm not even going to review the article. I wouldn't have anything better to say or have any counter points to bring up, so here is the link and you can read it yourself. Let me know your comments.

BP

 

Google's Adsense Crawler Gets Permission

The Google AdSense blog just announced that there is a new function that will provide you with the option to allow the AdSense Crawler to access your username/password protected directories.

The new AdSense feature called Site Authentication will provide better quality and more targeted ad in your login protected directories. Basically all you would have to do is set up a special U/P for the Googlebot. Now, this is assuming that you want ads in your secure areas.

The upside of this new add-on is that you will have a very specific and captive audience that are seeing the ads. "For example, let's say your news site has a premium content area, with articles that only paying members can access. To get ads on those pages, you can use Site Authentication to provide (the) crawler with a test username and password."

The down side is that you will need to do some house cleaning. If you have any sensitive or proprietary information behind door #1, you'll want to make sure you don't have the AdSense ads on those pages.

Google just keeps throwing useful little things into the mix. I just read that Google is now a certified domain name registrar and they may be releasing a new Google Phone called the Switch. The new phone is a collaberation between Google and Samsung. Some are eveb labeling it the "iPhone Killer"

You know; sometimes I sit back and reflect on simpler times. Times when there was no Google. Then I realize it wasn't as simple as I though back then.

 

Old School Wins The Mail Battle...For Now

For all of you still wondering if snail mail or e-mail is more effective, there is a new study published by ICR.

Granted, it was conducted by the red inkers at Pitney Bowes and I am assuming that there may be a little bit of a skew in the numbers, but the numbers clearly indicate that consumers prefer TRADITIONAL direct mail over direct email.

The study found that an overwhelming 73% still preferred receiving unsolicited information about products and company services in "snail-mail" format. The number jumps to 86% when asked if about confidential information like banking statements and financial reports.

Here is one statistic reported that makes me think that the numbers are a bit skewed. When asked about disposal of unsolicited mail, 31% of the respondants said that they were less likely to dispose of normal mail. This sort of forces me assume that over 60% (a number conveniently left out) are likely to dispose of the hard mail. However 53% said they were likely to delete an unopened email.

In the end, it appears that U.S. consumers still prefer the "tried and true" traditional mail format. I am sure this may change in the future but when you are contemplating your next mail campaign you might want to stick with what people prefer.

Need help on your next direct mail campaign? Give IMT a call at 319-232-4332

 

That Flash is Pretty Flashy

So I get an email from a guy wanting an evaluation on his flash site before it goes live. The site is a well put together design and very visually appealing. The one problem is that there is no content, visual, HTML or otherwise. It is basically one big flash movie broken up into little flash movies accessible by the "mystery meat" navigation.

He told me that he wanted to make sure that his site was "found" on the Internet and that was the primary goal. I referenced countless articles that spoke about SEM and how flash was best used as elements within the site, including a post on Google's Webmaster Central Blog that said "Try to use Flash only where it is needed..." Linking strategies aside, I told him that "content was king" and how compelling and properly written content with appropriate key word density would yield better results than a flashy looking website.

The next day I got an email from his web designer that said I was "horribly wrong" and if "the design sucks then content will not mean anything." He went on to say that flash has been the SEO standard since October of 2004. To which I retorted, "ohh yeah, I forgot about that" and left it at that.

According Johnathan Hochman there are ways to make flash sites "spiderable" but not may designers will do it. Johnatan Hochman also concedes that, "A site built entirely with Flash suffers a great disadvantage because it lacks page structure to organize the content, internal linking, and unique page titles. One remedy is to create distinct HTML pages to represent each Flash "page,"... Most SEO expert agree that flash should be used as elements in HTML pages where spiders can glean the information and return home with real content.

Your comments are welcome!

 

The Commodore 64

Do you have some vague recollection of this tan little gem? When I was a kid, I had one with a 300 baud modem and dual 5.25" floppy drives hooked to a TV in my room. With that modem, you could visit bulletin boards, the predecessor to websites, and chat or download some files. This thing was truly a high tech home computer in 1983.

According to the 2001 edition of Guinness book of Records, there were 30 million units sold between 1982 and 1993 making it the best selling computer of all time. The company reigned as the king computer maker for most of the 80's and eventually filed bankruptcy in 1994.

The biggest contributor to the success of the C64 was the price point that allowed millions of people from a broad demographic to 0wn one. Extremely reliable and completely expandable, you could own a C64 for around $200.00. Games and software were readily available are are still available today, all you need is a C64 emulator. The legacy of the C64 still lives on in a tiny display dedicated to it at the Smithsonian.

Just a little bit of computing nostalgia to brighten your day.

 

Conversions Are Taking Longer

What is a conversion anyway? It is the action of converting the user from a "clicker" to a customer.

According to MarketingSherpa a new study claims that customers are delaying their purchases 34+ hours from the time they initially come to a site. This is a huge increase over the 2005 findings that reported a 19 hour conversion time.

It seems that the consumers "are comparison shopping more, rather than buying at the first place they click to."

So how do site owners and marketers improve conversions?

• Increase your product reviews - Consumers love this information


• Offer more exclusive bonuses if they buy now


• Give your visitors more content than the competition


• Have a properly formatted and optimized landing page


• Display plenty of certifications and authoritative logos


• AND obviously, make sure everything in your site is working. Broken links and non functioning elements dramatically diminishes your conversion potential.

 

Nielsen Nixes Page View Measurement

Everyone has heard of the Nielson Ratings regarding TV viewership. However, not a lot of people know that they are also measuring website traffic. In a recent press release it was decided by the ratings company that they were no longer going to be using page views as a measure of a sites popularity. They will still be providing the numbers but won't be formally ranking them. Instead, they are placing the emphasis on the total minutes viewed.

IMHO, I would tend to agree. This gives a more accurate picture of what people are actually looking at and a better determination of viewing quality. However, some industry experts are claiming that time spent on AOL's instant messenger and other similar aps are now going to be counted and can skew the results. With that being said, the new form of measurement is going to have the opposite effect on sites like blogs where users spend much more time actually reading the content.

This decision was made and influenced by new technology like AJAX which allows users to spend more time interacting with a page and not having to re-load the page content from the server.

I just have one question. Since online advertising is gauged by impressions, won't the impressions go down under this this new rating system? Will this de-value the ads or will ad providers have to adjust their measuring to accommodate this new metric?

 

Google Helps With Safe Cracking

A great article was published in the Colorado Springs Gazette. 2 burglars were fumbling around at Bigg City, trying open a safe. It turns out that they had door keys, pass codes and even the safe combinations, they just didn't know how to open a safe. The incompetent robbers repeatedly sprayed the security camera with WD-40 in an attempt to disable it. Not only did the spray lubricant fail at bringing down the camera, it actually cleaned the lens for a cleaner picture of the heist.

After an hour and 15 minutes of trying to get the safes open, the bumbling bandits resorted to searching Google on "how to open a safe" and "how to crack a safe."

The Google query apparently worked. The burglars got away with $12,000.00 in cash, a laptop computer, a PlayStation and have yet to be caught.

"Google - The Safe Cracker's Pal"

 

The Greatest Baseball Play of All Time

Rick Monday Tribute 1976 - The most popular videos are a click away

Way to go Rick Monday!

 

A Big Happy Birthday to The Smiley

This year we are celebrating 25 years of the smiley. Initiated by Scott Fahlman of Carnegie-Mellon, the first recognized use of the smiley dates back to September 16th, 1982.

So without further adieu, we salute the original smiley...

:-)

 

How To Get Out Of Your Cell Phone Contract

According to the The Washington Post all you have to do when you in a contract with Sprint Nextel, is call customer service and complain until they don't like you anymore.

The communications company sent out about 1000 disconnect notices to "subscribers who call customer service excessively. The terminated subscribers called customer service an average of 25 times a month over the past 6 to 12 months, mostly complaining about billing or technical problems that Sprint was unable to resolve. Some called as many as 300 times a month... Customers did not have to pay a termination fee, and they were given until the end of July to find a new carrier."

Does this send a message to consumers that they only want you if you are willing to put up with poor service? Granted, this is only a small percentage of the 53 million subscribers that they have but I find these circumstances very interesting.

Well now you know how to get out of your cell phone contract if you are unhappy with the "Walkie-Talkie" people. "Did I hear a niner in there."

 

Google Vs. Ebay

Just in case you haven't been following the Google/eBay tussle, here is a little background. eBay pulled all of their ads off Google when they tried to hold a private party competing with eBay's annual celebration. Dirty pool for sure and when the cry of foul was heard they cancelled the party. Most think it was due to the ad pulling frenzy that preceded. Most of the bad blood started when eBay disallowed the use of Google Checkout in favor of PayPal; which by the way eBay owns.

eBay execs are now insisting that the their pulling of the ads was a planned event to experiment and evaluate traffic without the help of Google. YEAH RIGHT. They kept their ads on Ask, MSN and Yahoo. This was an obvious retaliatory action in an attempt to give the sultan of search a bloody nose (something few companies are capable of).

Based on their "experiment", eBay says that a disproportionate amount of traffic in relation to spending was discovered and they plan on a "significant" scale back of spending in the US.

 

Fun Video of the Day

I don't know if this is real or not but it is still pretty funny.