Articles in ‘misc’

Windows 8 – should it be more revolutionary?
by Webfusion in Development, misc on September 16th, 2011 Post a comment

Windows 7, we were told, was designed from the ideas of Windows users. Feedback. Great, but surely really innovative stuff, goes beyond just feedback and comes from innovative companies investing heavily in R&D and the top techie geeks breaking down barriers and finding and designing truly new ideas?

Microsoft may feel they have got that with Windows 8, but have they really? Windows 8 Developer Preview is now in the public domain and while it’s presentation is different – offering twin split of views that mimic traditional mouse and keyboard on one hand and the “Metro” tablet look and feel on the other – is what it can do and how it stretches our PC use really radical enough?

The Metro look and its success will be heaviliy dependant on the succes of the windows Apps market. The current number of 30,000 apps may sound a convincing number – and it is sure to be much higher come the full launch of Windows 8 late next year – but that figure is nothing compared to the availability of Android (200,000 + apps) and Apple iOS (425,000 apps) so will it all come too late at a time when Tablets may have already taken over the way we work, rest and play?

This article from the Huffington Post crew covers what they see are biggest and best innovations in Windows 8 but are email notifications, fast boot-up and touch-screen really enough, or are they just features we have all grown to expect?

What are your thoughts?
In the internet age even soaps don’t die
by Webfusion in Business trends, misc on July 10th, 2011 Post a comment

Amid discussions of Google Plus encouraging people to put dead loved ones plucked from address books, into circles of trust, comes a story about how in the age of the internet, death is not barrier, just a different avenue.

Two long-running ABC soap operas — One Life to Live and All My Children — faced soap death after they appeared to have run their course and been culled from the schedules. However, a joint press statement from ABC and producers Prospect Park this week announced a life beyond TV. An internet life, where the soaps would remain, the same but different.

The press release explains that the shows will be distributed beyond their planned finale dates “via online formats and additional emerging platforms including Internet enabled television sets.” and not in a watered-down format but “with the same quality,” and the same length.

Back in April ABC had announced the axe for the soaps after declining ratings with All My Children set to run until September and One Life to Live until January. Now it appears they will survive but in a virtual world, ironic given the very basis of soap operas are the creation of virtual worlds.

The move is not the first either Glenn Beck, the former Fox News presenter is to re-launch his canceled show online in September for fee-paying fans.

Are you watching more of your TV online?
Google Voice Search in action
by Webfusion in misc, Search Engines on June 23rd, 2011 Post a comment

After success in the mobile market, Google has announced announced the launch of Voice Search for desktops and with that comes a realm of possibilities.

Many of which have been dreamed about and tested by Brooklyn-based gadgetminds Breakfast who have created The Verbalizer, an open source board that utilizes Google’s voice search for desktop to ” inspire people to build their own useful and wacky contraptions to take Voice Search to another level”.

The results can be seen in their video here. Well worth a look.
Google presents shiny new Chrome
by Webfusion in misc, Tech News on June 10th, 2011 Post a comment

As perhaps an indicator of Google’s longer term desire to control the browser market and perhaps further integrate our search lives, Google this week has launched Version 12 of it’s Chrome browser, making more established browsers like Internet Explorer (9) and Firefox (5) sound antiquated to the untrained ear.

Announced via Google’s official Chrome blog, Chrome 12 is certainly the best version yet, with improved security, privacy and better graphics support. There are more comprehensive malware and phishing protections and warnings before you download certain types of malicious files. There is also more control over the sort of data stored on your pc too so you can minimise the information third parties may be able to get about you.

Google have always been keen to highlight Chrome’s multi-media capability and with Chrome 12 hardware-accelerated 3D CSS is now supported meaning fancier, better-looking web pages and web apps will load more slickly in the browser. The Chrome Experiments website has some impressive examples of the capabilites of the browser.

We would expect if past patterns are to be followed, Chrome 13 (or even 14) could be with us before the turn of the year. To download Chrome 12 have a look here.
Why a picture can tell a thousand words
by Webfusion in marketing, misc, Social Media on June 2nd, 2011 Post a comment

The rise of the QR code has not been as swift as many had predicted. They have been successfully used in Japan (their country of birth) for many years, but it is only now with the uptake of smartphones that people are beginning to see their worth.

Even last year’s Calvin Klein ad, was seen as something of a novelty rather than a ground-shift, but all the indicators now suggest the QR is about to go big.

QR codes (short for Quick Response) first appeared in Japan. Created within the Toyota group back in the mid 1990′s originally as a way of scanning and identifying contents and parts at high speed, the spread of smartphones in the populated country has seen them used in just about every possible advertising market. Yet, only in the past 12 months have marketeers elsewhere really jumped onboard their usefulness.

A matrix barcode, the uptake of smartphones mean more and more people have the ability to read them at home, in the office or on the move. A unique identifier, they can be used to embed text or almost any data but their main take-up in recent months has been to pictorialize a URL.

Read the rest of this entry
Financial searching with a trusted name
by Webfusion in misc, Search Engines on May 25th, 2011 Post a comment

Price comparison sites are nothing but what if that price comparison was driven by a name as respected as Google?

The Google labs team have been helping us compare mortgage loans, checking accounts and the like for a while with various tools but now at last they are all available in one place.

Google Advisor is designed specifically for the US market with the aim of combining speed, trust and control to offer those searching for the best deal the best chance of making difficult financial decisions.

You can search without the need for entering any personal information so there shouldn’t be too many security scares either.

Would you be more likely to use a comparison site from an established brand?
Micro-blogging on Macro rise
by Webfusion in misc, Social Media on May 19th, 2011 Post a comment

Tumblr has been around since 2007 but in the last year or so has made a massive in-roads into the social-networking sphere as particularly the younger generation flock to take advantage of its micro blogging functions.

If you’ve not seen Tumblr before it’s kind of Twitter meets a blog. A short blog that can often consist of re-blogging what you find elsewhere. It’s the kind of stuff that many now use Facebook for, posting their favourite YouTube videos and the like, but Tumblr is more out there in the open internet, broadcasting to the world and creating a few personalities of its own.

Others have described it as text meets email which is another fair comment, but however you see it or others see it, nobody can deny that Tumblr is on the move up. Back in July 2009 it recorded monthly page views of 250 million. Earlier this month it recorded 250 million page views in one single day!

The success of the platform is its ease and personal nature. Few see it as a business tool, it is probably too informal for that, but we recall people saying the same about Facebook just a year or so ago. The popularity of Tumblr is rooted amongst creative types. It allows you to show flair and an insight into your personality that other networks perhaps have more constraints over.

Yet, the success of Tumblr means companies are at least taking an interest. At the moment this appears to be mainly publications and news sites like The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Rolling Stone magazine, where their profile sits more comfortably with the existing Tumblr user base, but expect more and more corporates to give it a try as they push for the social media lead.
Making your customers part of your sales force
by Webfusion in Business trends, misc, Online Business on May 13th, 2011 Post a comment

With economic pressures biting more and more resources are under pressure especially marketing budgets. So how do you make the world know about your products / services without investing in advertising? Simple, you use the best assets you have: Your good reputation and the customers that helped you gain that reputation.

Word of mouth has for a long time been the most trusted method of advertising – certainly from a customer’s point of view. Now in the age of social media, its strengths are being further brought to the fore, albeit with a buzz-word title.

Advocacy marketing is all about transforming customers and clients into an extension of your sales force. Where once you may have hoped for a written testimonial to feature on a brochure, now you can expect a happy customer to tell their friends via Facebook, Twitter, blogs and many more, extending a reach far beyond your wildest dreams. Many won’t need any encouragement either. For a growing breed, telling all their followers the highs and lows of their day is second nature. Yet for others a little nudge won’t do any harm.

Therefore, it is important that you include a Facebook like button and re-tweet facility directly from your website and any electronic material. Encouraging people to pass on the message will reap rewards, although you may have to take our word on that as measuring its true impact still remains very difficult. However, some basic social media monitoring – even using Twitters in-built search tool, can show how and where your product or brand name is being used in the social media sphere.

Yet just as good reputations can be further improved via social media, so bad reputations can be worsened. That’s not to say you should shy away from social media though. if anything, a social media strategy that takes your support immediately to the people can do wonders to repair a broken or slightly chipped reputation.

As we constantly repeat, social media is actually nothing new – it is simply a new, digital way of using traditional business and marketing skills. Successfully used and your business will thrive, but ignore them at your peril.

Have you implemented Advocate Marketing?
Video searching in a Blinkx of an eye
by Webfusion in Business trends, misc, Social Media, Tech News on April 20th, 2011 Post a comment

While Google’s investment in YouTube may bring new content and glory to the video site’s profile as a leading search engine in its own right, a rival video search really is setting the specifications.

The story behind Blinkx is an intriguing one. Set up as a ‘lab’ type project within powerhouse Autonomy, Sri Lankan-born Brit, Suranga Chandratillake whose brainchild it was, has since led the split from Autonomy to create Blinkx as a stand-alone company reporting revenues of $27.4 million in September 2010.

The technology skills developed at Autonomy however make it a much more in-depth video search crawler. Whereas You-Tube et al, take their indexing from video title and the odd keyword and description, Blinkx goes beyond that and looks at the content of the video as well. Using speech recognition, scene change detection and even facial recognition and text recognition from within the film, Blinkx claims to be the most advanced video search engine in the world. Literally indexing the very substance of each of the videos it includes.

That is a growing index too. More than 35 million hours are already within its database including tv and viral content and that is growing by the day.

If you’ve not yet got it bookmarked it is well worth a look.
Online TV set to change the way we watch
by Webfusion in misc on April 7th, 2011 Post a comment

Already with 24/7 TV channels, plus live pause, record and scan decoder boxes, the way we watch TV has changed beyond recognition from even just 10 years ago, but the biggest change is yet to come, and in fact is very nearly upon us.

The Wall Street Journal this week reported that YouTube is to develop its own original content. With Google set to invest $100 million as part of a site redesign around channels based on categories. Rumours suggest that 20 premium channels will eventually feature 5 to 10 hours of professionally-produced original programming a week, with other existing content being used to create other channels.

By the end of the year expect to see the first signs of this coming to fruition with Hollywood film companies being touted as some of the suppliers in a move that mirrors reports that Netflix plans a similar move towards original content for its online video site.

Online TV has been touted for years but until now the technology has not necessarily been affordable to support it. Now with superfast broadband becoming more common and more TV sets being shipped with built-in internet or WiFi connection, the concept is pretty much accessible to all.

Can online TV take over from traditional suppliers?