“Geo” became not only a big buzzword, but also gathered some real momentum towards making that “what if” a reality with the launch of popular mobile applications like Foursquare — a location based social network that incorporates gaming elements and Sherpa — an app that constantly learns your favorite locations and starts to aggregate them.

You’ve probably heard that 2010 will be the year of mobile, and might be vaguely wondering what this geolocation fanfare is all about, and more specifically, why it might become important to pay attention to from an organizational point of view.

Well, let’s start with the fact that there is a lot of money being pumped into it. The geolocation trend is hot and investors are happily investing big bucks into location-based services like Foursquare and SCVNGR. Gowalla, Outside.in and Hot Potato. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So it looks like 2010 is going to be the year when location-based functionality will become not just real, but commonplace — from mobile apps to consumer devices, even to web services are all going to be geo-enabled.

As of today, Twitter now lets people see  maps of where geotagged tweets were sent from on its website. They briefly turned this feature yesterday, but then shut it off again. It’s now turned on permanently.

In November 2009, Twitter enthusiastically launched a location API that let users opt-in to having their messages annotated with their exact locations. And startups like Tweetdeck and Seemic were quick to build features around the new data. But it’s taken months for Twitter to finally show geotagged tweets on its own web site.

And Facebook will add friend location information starting next month, according to a report in The New York Times. To be introduced at the F8 developer conference in April, Facebook status geolocation will enable you to share with your friends the location from where you submitted your update.

Just in time for the SXSWi hype later this week.

Woah.

The implications of this move are extremely interesting. Think about the possibilities, and what this does for Google, online content, search, and extending your online global audience.

Google will launch a service that automatically adds English subtitles to a video, if English is the language spoken in the sound track. That alone is impressive. Speech to text recognition software has been around for a long time, but for Google to have something in their pocket that they feel is good enough to add to public user videos means that they have something highly versatile. Of course, they say it will need input and scrutiny from the video owner, but that’s just a little way of asking for help in making sure they index your content correctly.

Online content wins, because previously, there was no easy and automated way for spoken words to be found in online search unless there was a video transcription. Now Google is going to attempt to do it automatically. Even if they only get it 50% correct, there’s a tremendous opportunity for them to have a handle on a significant amount of content that their competitors do not. This increases the public’s ability to find relevant information, and it also increases Google’s ability to sell contextual advertising.

Finally, when you pair what Google is already doing with offering live website text translation into different languages with auto-captioning, you have the opportunity to instantly expand one little English language video into a globally understandable piece of video content. Without doing anything more, people across the globe can find your video content via search.

Again. Woah.

Keep watching this topic. If it works, this could stir up the competitive search landscape if Bing isn’t close to doing the same thing. Another notch in organizing the world’s information indeed, Google.

As a viewer looks at the system screen, the built-in camera technology analyzes data such as gender and age, audience composition, time-of-day and other criteria, which enable the system to display tailored content and graphics based on estimated demographics. The system anonymously sends audience information to advertisers who can use that information to understand the type of content and messages that are most popular with viewers. This, in turn, helps advertisers target their advertising to maximize the impact on the audience.

Innovations like Intel’s prototype (pictured above) and NEC’s plans as reported in WSJ today, will change the way people interact with digital signage technology in environments such as stores, airports, banks and hotels.

In the Intel demonstration, multiple consumers can use this side-by-side window display simultaneously to explore augmented reality-enabled maps of each floor of the store, on which retailers can superimpose images such as coupons and sales promotions next to the product visualizations on the glass, improving the customer’s shopping experience. They can send coupons to their phones and more.

These innovations in digital signage concept bring a new opportunity for advertisers to smart target messages through the use of anonymous video analytics. Consumers, especially those with growing privacy concerns relative to data collection and behavioral targeting, may object to getting their faces scanned without their knowledge. However, both Intel and NEC stress the concept of anonymous data points and modeling.

“The program tracks a person’s age and gender and throws out the footage, keeping only the macro data, he said, adding that no individuals are singled out.” Mr. Yamamoto in WSJ story.

Great infographic in Mashable thanks to social media analytics firm Viralheat.

The first thing I did when I heard about the Haiti disaster was search for a quick way to help. I found the American Red Cross mobile information on my first search and within seconds I made a donation via my cell phone.

You can donate $10 to Haiti relief by texting “Haiti” to 90999

Online and mobile giving is quickly becoming the growth engine for non-profits.  And for good reason. Using the latest technology, non-profits are able to reach out quickly to wider audiences and solicit smaller donation. Technology advancements now enable non-profits to efficiently and effectively reach donors they’ve not been able to connect with before. Online giving continues to grow and now accounts for 5% of total giving, 16% of new donors and 27% of new revenue.

In mid 2008, the Mobile Giving Foundation was formed to open the mobile donation process to a wide range of qualified 501c3 non-profits. Through deals with the major cell phone carriers, a $5 or $10 donation is added to a phone bill when someone pledges by using a special short via an SMS (text) message. The money is collected by the carriers then passed on to the non-profit.

It’s simple. And mobile phones are ubiquitous. Text-based fundraising is all about immediacy. You don’t need to wait until you get home and turn on the computer. It’s all so quick and convenient, you can give in the moment. There’s no chance of you forgetting to do it later. So mobile giving has rapidly taken off. It’s growing faster than online giving and more and more non-profits are adding a mobile giving option.

Reports I found estimated that over $2 million was raised via mobile in 2009. In the first 14 days of 2010 we’ve already surpassed that level. And that’s just from the money raised by the American Red Cross.  There are several other companies that have mobilized giving as a result of the earthquake in Haiti. And the mobile giving information has gone viral as people tweet and post on Facebook and encourage their friends to help those affected by the earthquake.

Read more about the The Changing and Challenging Nature of Fundraising in the story I wrote for our November 2009  Thinking newsletter.

In addition to mobile giving, people who want to help those affected by the Haitian earthquake can also make a donation to the American Red Cross International Response Fund at Redcross.org or by calling 1-800-RED-CROSS. Plus you can donate up to $200 to the Red Cross via iTunes: http://bit.ly/84kljT Check out 20 ways to help Haiti.

1/18/2010 UPDATE:  Americans have pledged more than $21 million to the American Red Cross for Haitian relief efforts via text messages on their cell phones as of Monday according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy — an unprecedented amount for mobile donations.  In contrast, it raised $200,000 from texts during the 2008 hurricane season.

Six days after the massive earthquake struck, donors have contributed more than $210-million total to major U.S. relief groups, a Chronicle tally finds.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as mobile phone technology have made it easier for charities like the American Red Cross  to raise these needed funds.

I read a great article on the Harvard Business Journal Blog this morning. It consists of their top six predictions for changes in social media in 2010. As you might expect, they see three major trends: rapid expansion, standardized adoption by companies and more niche focus.

So here are their predictions (I am especially interested in #3 and the recent Facebook changes will affect corporate giveaways on that network).

1. Social media begins to look less social
With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more “exclusive.” Not everyone can fit on someone’s newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, it’s likely that user behavior such as “hiding” the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed may become more common. Perhaps it’s not actually less social, but it might seem that way as we all come to terms with getting value out of our networks — while filtering out the clutter.

2. Corporations look to scale
There are relatively few big companies that have scaled social initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives. Best Buy’s Twelpforce leverages hundreds of employees who provide customer support on Twitter. The employees are managed through a custom built system that keeps track of who participates. This is a sign of things to come over the next year as more companies look to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively through leveraging social technology.

3. Social business becomes serious play
Relatively new networks such as Foursquare are touted for the focus on making networked activity local and mobile. However, it also has a game-like quality to it which brings out the competitor in the user. Participants are incentivized and rewarded through higher participation levels. And push technology is there to remind you that your friends are one step away from stealing your coveted “mayorship.” As businesses look to incentivize activity within their internal or external networks, they may include carrots that encourage a bit of friendly competition.

4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year. From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what’s considered competition, it’s likely that you’ll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.

5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it’s likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices. What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into “social media breaks” as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn’t looking. As a result, we may see more and/or better mobile versions of our favorite social drug of choice.

6. Sharing no longer means e-mail
The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Many websites already support this functionality, but it’s likely that we will see an increase in user behavior as it becomes more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists. And content providers will be all too happy to help them distribute any way they choose.

So what’s your take? I am interested in increasingly niche communities. That will mean more access to real shareholders (and less spam Twitter messages).

Best,

Will

These new text based ads will appear in Google search results next to standard business listings, and will be displayed based on the location of your business, the categories your business is defined for and the location of the searcher.

Unlike the current AdWords model, all ads are based on a flat monthly rate. This rate will vary however based on your business type and location. Official pricing for this product has not yet been announced by Google.

The analytics provided with this service are quite nice. You will get full reports on:

• Ad Impressions
• Click-Thru Numbers
• Calls (Based on an 800 number automatically provided by Google that redirects the call to your business number)
• Search terms used when you ad was displayed

Along with these statistics you have two options on where to send people from you ad. You can send them to your current website, if your company has one, or you can create a special business listing within Google Maps.

It will be very interesting to see the initial feedback on this new product. If all goes well, I’m certain this Google Local Advertising will roll out nationally relatively quickly.

But try they might.

According to a new survey conducted for the American Press Institute, more than half of newspaper publishers believe readers will pay to access online newspaper content.  The results from the first survey are being presented at API’s Newsmedia Economic Action Plan Conference this week.

Newspaper companies including News Corp. and MediaNews Group are among those that have already said they will begin charging for online content. News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch says the company will charge for all of its news sites, including FoxNews, by the middle of 2010.

One approach favored by many is to erect a pay wall around virtually all stories. Print subscribers are often—but not always—allowed to read articles free of charge. Everybody else must pay, either on a story-by-story basis or on a subscription plan. The Newport Daily News, a small Rhode Island newspaper, recently began charging $345 per year for online access to stories (that’s more than the print version).  (Interestingly enough Google is now developing a micropayment platform and pitching newspapers… which seems at odds with what Google CEO, Eric Schmidt told publishers at NAA in April that “consumers won’t pay for most online news”.  But based on how I read the proposal from Google, it sounds like they might also get a share of sales, which could explain the approach.)

Another option is to charge for just some content and make other content available free. The best example of this approach, with more than a million online subscribers, is the Wall Street Journal. Roughly half of its articles—generally financial news and business reports—sit behind a pay wall, although they are free if accessed via Google News.

This approach is much harder to emulate than it may appear. Between 2005 and 2007 the New York Times charged a subscription fee to read the paper’s most popular columnists online. It ended the experiment exactly two years ago because it seemed to be cutting traffic to the site and harming advertising revenue. The Los Angeles Times dropped an attempt to charge for arts coverage for the same reason.  A newspaper that wants to follow the Journal’s approach must produce copy that is both narrow in its appeal, highly valued and useful.

Paralleling these approaches are two other news content initiatives that could further impact the industry:

First is a content-management approach by Associated Press which includes plans for a system to detect unlicensed use of its content and potentially create new ways for the news cooperative to make more money online.  AP will bundle its stories in an “informational wrapper” that will include a built-in beacon to monitor where stories go.   This news registry will debut in November and will later expanding to videos and photos. Starting in 2010, newspapers that own the cooperative will be able to put their material into the registry as well.

The second approach, by start up Attributor, called the Fair Syndication Consortium includes Reuters and more than 1,000 publishers.  This one looks to be more of direct revenue-generating tactic, but still faces technical and legal hurdles.  Rather than trying to merely corral copyright-protected stories, the consortium hopes to take a slice of the ad revenue collected by an unauthorized Web site. However, to do that, it needs the cooperation of the big networks like Google and Yahoo, who so far have reacted coolly to the proposal. If a split can’t be agreed upon, the consortium will demand that the advertising running alongside the copyright-protected material be removed.

The issues are complex. I get that.  Newspapers pay their reporters to write stories and then many sites republish those stories and make money via advertising using content someone else paid for.  I get the angst.  But personally I don’t think the pay for content model is going to restore the news (and particularly the newspaper) industry to its level of previous profitability or even save it.  I think it’s short sighted and even misguided thinking.  Given the nature of the net, “news” won’t stop because news organizations wall off their content.  While I have all the respect in the world for a good, thorough reporter, they no longer have a dominance on reporting and analyzing the events in our world. My concern is that this move will only further marginalize the profession of news reporting with large segments of the population.

The hand wringing is about the art of journalism, but isn’t all of this really about advertising revenue? If you think about it, I mean really think about it, our subscriptions to the paper never really paid for the creation of news.  You can’t tell me monthly subscription revenue even came close to paying for the costs associated with producing a paper.  As a percentage of revenue, I wonder if subscription costs even cover the cost of paper and the home delivery.  In reality, advertising dollars underwrote the cost of journalism and those shrinking dollars are the cause of all the hand-wringing and why newspapers are in a world of hurt.

Not too long ago, we had the publisher of our local paper publicly say in a speech at a function that the paper wasn’t in the journalism business, it was in the ad business.  Many were shocked, but I gave him a lot of credit for having the balls to come out and say it.  To me it’s innovation newspapers missed and innovation they need.  Rather than trying to return to what they were, they need to face what is and get on with it.  And there are some very progressive thinkers in the industry with some great ideas for how newspapers can build community on and offline and regain a more progressive, leadership role.  But the train on pay for content has left the station and seems unstoppable at this point.  I just hope no one in the industry thinks it is a magic bullet.

By no means are the issues or ideas being discussed in the industry simple or unanimous. Opinions are as heated as they are varied.  Yet the simple question remains:  Will consumers pay for news online?  Will you?

I doubt I will.  At least for general news. I have too many other choices.

Some very insightful and thought provoking commentary has been written on this subject. If you haven’t followed the subject, here are some posts worth a read:

• Veteran alt-journalist Bill Wyman, in a piece in the web magazine Splice Today (headed by New York Press founder Russ Smith) summarizes the challenges of the newspapers in five easy pieces. His two-part essay, Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing (one here and two here) takes aim at claims of civic virtue.
• Chris O’Brien, a business reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, contributing to the MediaShift blog, wrote one of the best explanations I have ever read about the inherent fallacy of the paid-content issue.
• In response to O’Brien’s post, and in further exploring the concept of the so called “original sin” committed by newspapers, Steve Buttry C3 Coach at Gazette Communications in Cedar Rapids, Iowa wrote a thought provoking post that basically summed up why the original sin in the newspaper model was more about failing to innovate rather than about failing to charge for content.  I agree with him wholeheartedly.
• In another post from Chris O’Brien, he advocates more of a anecdotal and observational approach to problem solving and innovation rather than a pure numbers approach which can often obscure the important lessons of the way people behave.  This struck a chord with me.  While I certainly value data and models as part of the analysis and planning process, I have found that anecdotes often provide me better insights into how to creatively solve a problem than numbers do.  In his post,  he states: ” I don’t believe there’s a magic data set waiting to be assembled that will lead us to the big “Ah-ha!” I don’t think we’re one reader survey away from figuring it all out. We live in an era where people turn to data as a crutch, leaning on it to give themselves a false sense of certainty. The facts don’t lie, right? Except we know that they do. A lot of such data is formed by the biases and frames through which the questions are formulated, asked, and then interpreted. The newspaper business has failed to recognize its own flawed frames. To this day, no matter what you hear from a newspaper executive, they still believe their primary purpose is to get people to read them in print. It’s why newspapers still spend so much money propping up circulation by subsidizing a large number of people through persistent telemarketing.”

This issue has me commenting due to some things I’m going through with a couple clients right now. Domain names were registered with now-defunct AOL addresses, old work email addresses, old ISP email addresses, or old addresses in general. I also have friends and family members who claim I haven’t sent them something or that I never responded to their emails. When I explain that I have, I’m told – oh – I never use that address. I wonder why I got the message from that address in the first place.

Have you experienced this? Do you do it yourself? How do we put our email world in order?

I have dozens of email addresses. I always have. Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Work, those of my personal domains and websites. Yuck. I only use three though when it gets down to it. The rest don’t matter and I never check them or they forward to my primaries. I’ll explain my philosophy and let you consider if it would make sense for you.

There are three parts to this email address philosophy.

• One Work Email Address
• One Personal Email Address
• One Public Email Address

Here’s how they break down:

Work Email Address

This is the email address for where you are employed. You might not be employed there tomorrow. Don’t tie personal information or services to this email address. Are your bank statements and official personal information coming to your work email address? Stop it. NOW. If you no longer have access to that email account then updating information, verifying changes, or getting anything done with it is going to be hard or impossible. You’ll also spend less time doing non-work things at work.

Personal Email Address

Quite simply, this is where all your friends and family email you and where you handle all non-work things. Again, you should consider longevity. Are you using your ISP (Cox/Qwest/Comcast/AOL) for your email address? What if you discontinue service with them or switch? How do you clean that up? Do you really want to tell everyone you know they need to update their address book in order to reach you?

Use a free online email service like GMail, Hotmail or Yahoo. It’s free. You can access it anywhere. They do a great job filtering spam. Tons of storage. And they will be around for a long time regardless of who you get your Internet service from. You’ll have it for as long as you want to have it, or until they all combine into one giant entity of a company.

You can also register your own domain name (like MyDomainName.com) and then run email accounts off of that if you are more technically inclined. Then you are in charge of the email accounts for as long as you own that domain name. The control is in your hands, not someone else’s. No more, “my email address has changed…” messages to people.

Public Email Address

This is the one component of simplification that might not sit well with some of you but hear me out. Do you trust every site you register with to keep your email address safe? Do you trust them to not send you junk you don’t want? I sure don’t. So I have one email address that I use for EVERY online order, signup, registration, or form I fill out through a third party.  This way, I know exactly where that confirmation email is coming to, where to find that lost password request, what email address is used to log into any particular site, and where all the related junk mail is going. Not to my work address, and not to my personal address. Use another GMail/HotMail/Yahoo account for this one.

This public address might be optional for you. I prefer it this way. I sign up for and register with so many sites that I’d never see my personal email if all that junk was filling my inbox. This way, I can log in, sort by sender, delete the old stuff, empty spam, and be done with it. Need that Borders coupon? There it is. Print. Delete. Done.

The Verdict?

There we have it. A pretty simple approach to handling your email life and being in control of it. If you change jobs or ISPs there’s no reason for you to have to make everyone remember a new email address. Just upate your LinkedIn profile and everyone has your new work email address and information. Change ISPs and nobody will care – your address is the same.

Let me know what strategies you use for email mangement and what you think of this approach. For more reading about simplification of your email life and habits, Zen Habits is always a great read.

Dear anyone else that cares,

What decision?  On Thursday, Sony Electronics announced that by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard created by a group including publishers like Random House and HarperCollins.

This means Sony has come down firmly on the side of the open standard.  What that single common set of technology standards means is much more flexibility for consumers of ebooks.  It means we can use any device that supports the standard, from low cost basic models to those high end whiz bang devices with tons of features.  And don’t have to worry or think about what ebook can be read on what device. I have no problems with the realities of digital rights and restrictions on how the content can be used/distributed, but I don’t like being told how and on what device I can read that content.    So I applaud this move because it simplifies use and encourages even more rapid adoption of ebooks (which means more great content for me to devour).

E-book sales in the United States hit a record $14 million in June, a 136.2 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the Association of American Publishers.  And Amazon is the 800lb gorilla in this sector with the largest share, but thus far has advocated the closed platform approach and is opting to go it alone and not adopt the common standards.  It will be interesting to see which side Apple comes down on when they launch their tablet.  If (and it’s probably a big if given’s Apple’s propensity for closed systems) they come down on the side of the open standard, it could very well change the dynamic of the powerful share held firmly right now by Amazon.

It’s like no one has taken the time to realize that the menopausal woman is a person.  She doesn’t see herself as “menopausal” or “aging” and she’s not trying to write a thesis on the effects of menopause.  So don’t throw a bunch of charts and graphs at her.  Don’t find a special “old lady” font so that you can talk to her in a way that she can relate – because she can’t.

Instead, talk to her like you would a person.  Because that’s what she is.  Tell her what she might find inconvenient about menopause, and make her laugh with anecdotes of how other women have coped.  Assure her that just admitting she’s in menopause won’t make everyone who meets her look for white hair in a bun, granny glasses and a frumpy old house dress with sensible shoes.  Don’t make her feel old and ostracized like some kind of freak. Especially if you want to engage her.

On May 22nd we launched a blog on menopause, www.menologues.com.  It came about because so many friends and acquaintances have asked for some kind of painless guidance through the trials and tribulations of the dreaded and feared menopause.  Some of the most intelligent women that I know are embarrassed to admit they don’t know the basics – but they admit that they should.  So I started jotting down my thoughts and my experiences with the hope of making menopause less menacing.  I shared my initial post with my partner – who is just beginning her quest for information on the subject – and she was adamant that there is a huge need not currently being met.  That was the birth of Menologues.  And judging from the overwhelming response from menopausal, peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women I feel confident that we have uncovered a way to talk and connect with a sizeable segment of the menopausal set.

And the moral of the story is – first and foremost treat everyone like a person.  And the odds of connecting with them will increase dramatically.

So when Google (of which I am admittedly a decent fan of) launched their web browser nearly a year ago, I happily installed it and got to know it. I’ve been using it as my primary browser since. Not because it’s all that super-amazing and better than all the others, but because it’s SIMPLE. There’s no overload of features and functionality. No toolbars and all the other add-on crap that makes me hate using a browser. It starts up. I open tabs. I get things done. Sure, knowing that each tab uses its own system process makes the geek in me happy, but that’s just bonus.

But my thoughts here are not about Google Chrome. It’s more big picture and where my usage of chrome is leading me. The other day, a post in a Chromium developer group mentioned some of the plans Google has for getting Chrome to be able to sync info like bookmarks across different computers via your Google Account. At least, it’s starting with bookmarks. Read this article by Ryan Paul for more insights and analysis.

Why is any of this of note? Just more to watch from Google. Look at how they are “independently” assembling all the various aspects of what you need to run your business or your life from “the cloud.” Email, web browsing, document creation and management, calendars, instant messaging, advertising, discussion forums, blogging, image storage and manipulation, shopping, news, maps, videos, voice and even more. Plus the ability to search it all. They have some of everything, but each little piece can also live on its own.

Now, take the ability to tie it all together via the “cloud” of the Internet and you’ve really got something. The reason I think this is particularly significant is because instead of talking about it and hyping it and making a huge deal out of it through some marketing push, Google is simply doing it. They are telling us what they have done. Not necessarily what they are going to do someday. And all of these things together are quite an impressive suite of FREE services.

Keep paying attention to this. Consumers are going to naturally gravitate toward the easiest, most intuitive and economical solutions out there. Without really thinking about it I changed my browser from FireFox to Chrome simply because Chrome got out of the way more. And now I’m VERY excited that I will be able to sync something like bookmarks and preferences across multiple computers easily and automatically without having to use del.icio.us or anything external. What can you do in your own business to get your customers the things they need and want without getting in their way?

Google’s growing as a platform for technology, business and simply interacting online. They are trying on a lot of different “shoes” in the form of projects, technologies, strategies and everything else they can think of. One of them might be a big kicker, but I think it’s the comprehensive suite of interrelated and compatible services that’s going to help keep them running far ahead of the pack for years to come.

What I’m enjoying right now is the proliferation of the satirical online personality and the conversations these folks are starting. It’s really interesting that we have a public forum (the Internet) and multiple means of communication with an audience (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs to name a few) where one person can create content and deliver a message and in turn, build an audience. People are now not only commenting on current topics and events, but getting involved on a more personal level by creating a whole persona through which to potentially get a point across. Or at least be funny.

One of the most widely publicized examples of this is Barack Obama’s Teleprompter’s Blog. “Totus” the teleprompter offers up blog posts from the perspective of Obama’s teleprompter. Classic. (Well, maybe not yet – it’s only been a few months that this blog’s been up.)

Obama’s taken a lot of heat over his extensive use of the teleprompter. OK – so what. Whether you’re a fan of a president or not, pay attention to what is said and not how it’s said. That’s not my point. The interesting thing about this story is that someone out there decided to become Obama’s online personality of the teleprompter. Now that’s funny. And they’ve built an audience and received extensive coverage for doing so.

A Google search for “Barack Obama’s Teleprompter’s Blog” – the official name of the blog – done today returned about 36,800 results. That’s not too bad for a blog that’s been online since mid-March and isn’t making a blatant case for self-promotion or monetization. In addition, a Google link search reports that 3,060 pages link directly to the official teleprompter blog. Nice work, Totus. You’ve created original content on a regular basis, stayed true to your form, and generated a good following. That’s how to blog.

A little bit closer to home, and the impetus for making this blog post of my own, is a new satirical personality that is taking advantage of the local newspaper’s website redesign.

The Omaha World-Herald just launched their new website at Omaha.com this week. They’ve taken countless hits over the past several years due to issues with their previous site. It’s no surprise that their new site is getting blasted as well. I doubt they could have released anything short of a direct emulation of CNN.com or NYTimes.com without taking some flak.

Sure, there are some things I’d recommend doing differently. Again, however, that’s not the point of this post. I’m more interested in the conversation that’s now taking place over the new site launch. There aren’t many relevant search results available for “omaha.com redesign” yet – several point to articles that contain those terms or were part of the old Omaha.com website. (Unfortunately, none of the old Omaha.com URLs redirect to the new paths.)

The current chatter is more along the lines of people not liking the design, not liking the layout, and being generally displeased with the new site. OK. Everyone gets their opinion.

But the most interesting development for me is the Twitter account for @NewOmahaDotCom. Here we have another satirical personality that is acting as the “official” Twitter stream for the new Omaha.com. There’s currently a lot of chatter going on, with direct replies going out to all the commentors. The latest, “I’m tired… Spent the whole night resaving my JPGs. thought it might help with the so called ‘errors’” points to the user comments about images, browser crashes, and general problems with the site.

This is another good example of someone with an obvious concern or interest generating content – even if it’s just for laughs – that’s getting picked up within the local community and generating buzz.

Like we’ve said many times before – people are out there talking about you, your brand, and what you’re doing. You can participate in the conversation or not. But if you listen, you’ll have a lot of the answers that your customers are already telling you.

I wonder if NewOmahaDotCom and Totus are related…

Potentially this puts Facebook side by side with Twitter in all of the desktop and mobile client applications where a lot of the real-time conversation is happening and lets it compete head-to-head with Twitter.

Yet few are talking about the real difference between Facebook and Twitter — like the fact that the services are fundamentally different in how connections are formed.   Facebook requires friending: Twitter doesn’t.  It only requires following. This is a big distinction and a difference in how much can be shared.  Getting Facebook users to share their data with a third party could be a major challenge based on the reaction to the TOS issue a few months back.

Twitter had 9 million users last month, while Facebook has 200 million members.  Yes…Twitter is the media darling of late. It has grown in popularity largely because of the all online services that have sprung up around it to help organize messages, such as TweetDeck, create mini communities around a single theme, such as StockTwits; and track trends about what people have posted.  But is Facebook really reacting to or worried about the popularity of Twitter or are they focused on something else…like what TIME is calling the AfterWeb?  AfterWeb (or after the browser) is about unbundling web-site-based business and allowing developers to turn them into a bunch of discrete services that can be delivered over a variety of devices (from PCs to Smartphones) far more easily than via the website.

I sure hope Facebook is being strategic and looking forward, because they are running some pretty big risks in this latest move because if people get too accustomed to accessing “the stream” off of their web site, the company will lose out on the advertising revenue.  And currently Facebook at least has a revenue model (albeit advertising), Twitter does not.

For Safari, Apple is touting Safari 4 Beta as the world’s fastest browser. They’ve also introduced some cool visual features like their Cover Flow and Top Sites layouts. These are cool. They’re mirroring the visual style that people have become accustomed to with the Mac. Some of the layout changes actually follow what Chrome has been doing, like putting the tabs on top of the browser window. Lots of other improvements tout things seen in varying degrees across other browsers, and a focus on Developer Tools could help keep the devoted fans supplied with cool features and tools – not to mention continued deep integration with the iPhone and iPod.

Microsoft has Internet Explorer 8, which officially launched today. They are also touting speed, but tests are already showing that Safari 4, Chrome and FireFox are faster in key things like AJAX-heavy sites. IE has been seeing steady, although slow, declines in users over the years, but it’s still the overall leader with Web users in general. It’s going to stay that way for the foreseeable future, but the competition is heating up again for people looking for an alternative. At least IE8’s implementation of web standards has improved from IE7. They’ve also stolen an idea from Chrome and now each tab in IE launches in a separate system process. Nice.

Google’s Chrome browser is the newest player in the browser bunch. I’ve been using it a lot simply to get to know it and be familiar with the nuances it has. Overall, I’m really happy with it. The minimalist interface is what I’ve been enjoying the most. I get the most browsing space out of any other browser. I think it also helps that there aren’t a million auto-installed toolbars trying to add themselves to the application. I want to surf sites. Let me do it. There’s been a good amount of wrestling with Flash plugin versions and Silverlight not knowing that Chrome actually is able to work with it, but it is getting better. And Chrome is really great with AJAX and Javascript in general. The fact that they’re now highlighting some of the greater capabilities with Chrome’s rendering engine (the WebKit engine, which Safari is also based on) in the Chrome Experiments site may mean that Google has more in store for us soon. Stay tuned.

What’s this all mean to you? Probably not much. Pick the browser that you like the most or just use the one your operating system has selected by default. That’s how most people are doing it these days. But for those of us who are designing and developing websites, it’s a different story. Each new version of IE presents real challenges. IE8’s adherence to web standards is great. But that means that all the tricks and special things we’ve had to do to make sites render properly across IE6, IE7, FireFox, Safari, Chrome, and others now have another wrench in the mix. IE8 has some IE7 compatibility modes built in – if you tag your site properly for it. More work.

We keep up with the latest happenings in the browser wars so we can stay on top of best practices for design and development. We also love seeing the advancement of new technologies and integration of those features that users come to enjoy and expect. Just like Netscape inspired with their own tags back in the early days, now we’ve got multiple browsers with tabs, isolated processes, and a lot more due to user demand and good old fashioned competition. That is something everyone benefits from.

Anyone who has been online for a while is surely familiar with at least one of the above internet memes. There was even a South Park episode that made fun of the phenomenon.

What is it that makes any one of these breakout sensations so overwhelmingly popular? How does a Rick Astley video turn into something you can’t afford NOT to see? It’s really hard to say, but people are chasing that very goal every day. Companies and individuals are out there trying very hard to forcefully become the Next Big Thing online. Who wouldn’t drool at the opportunity to have hundreds of thousands of people forwarding your link to their friends?

The trick, however, is that these things can’t be forced. It’s like making friends. Walk around on the street and tell every person you see that they should be your friend. And that they should tell their friends to be your friend, too. Not going to happen.

You’ve got to be original. Unique. Provide something people want. Whether it’s information, entertainment, efficiency or something else – these internet sensations did something that made them stand out from the other millions of things like them online. Some of them were the first of their kind. Some of them took a new approach to the same old thing. Some were simply better than the others.

Look at your business and brand. Where do you fit in? How are you trying to stand out in the crowd? Now more than ever, it’s essential that you evaluate your approach and make sure you’re not out there asking everyone to be your friend. Be the company that everyone wants to do business with. Be sincere, interesting and valuable. Tell the truth. If you just happen to be the next big breakout sensation, then you’re all the more prepared to take it on because you’ve built a good foundation in the first place.

OK – so much for the rant. Here’s some more fun:

GREG RUTTER’S DEFINITIVE LIST OF THE 99 THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY EXPERIENCED ON THE INTERNET UNLESS YOU’RE A LOSER OR OLD OR SOMETHING

About this blog post’s title, which holds a special place in my heart because of actually having played that game. And the full video »

Just for emphasis.

Forrester’s report states that it makes sense for some marketers to pay bloggers to write about their experience with the brand. It lumps sponsored conversations as a subset of general marketing practices like advertising and PR activities. The author of the report, Sean Corcoran, said in his blog post explaining the report, “For these low buzz brands sponsored conversation is another way to increase discussion about your products.”

Corcoran said as a matter of market forces, there was no turning back with paid posts: there’s a demand and there’s a supply. Bloggers want to be paid and marketers want to pay them. Indeed, the paid blogging market is real and vibrant. Many major brands already engage in the practice. And given that the number of people reading blogs has grown 50% in the past year and continues to grow – one in three Americans online read a blog at least once a month, more marketers are considering the tactic.

Whether you agree or disagree with the concept (I admit I’m waffling on the issue because I know how hard it is for some “non sexy” type of companies to get anyone to even give them the time of day, but also worry about credibility), the release of the report sparked a quick reaction from Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team. Cutts reminds everyone that paid posts with sponsors behind them not only need to be disclosed as such but also must also bear “no follow” tags so as to not fool the Google spider that crawls the Web for ranking purposes. Google is pretty religious about its guidelines and has and will penalize violators because, as Cutts puts it, they “pollute the ecology of the web.”

The premise behind “no follow” tags is to tell the spider that a post shouldn’t count toward a site’s search ranking on Google, because that would constitute buying links as a way to try to increase ranking — something not tolerated by Google.

According to a story on AdAge.com, “Forrester’s Sean Corcoran, who authored the report that set off Mr. Cutts’ finger-wagging, said he would follow up with a blog post that deals with Google’s demands, including spelling out the need to include no-follow tags in paid blog entries.”

Here’s some advice for marketers who may be considering this approach as part of their blogger outreach programs:

• Follow the “no follow” guidelines to the letter and understand the paid post won’t help your search rankings
• Be completely transparent and disclose all financial relationships and understand that any blogger worth his/her salt will follow guidelines to the letter
• Just because you pay doesn’t mean you control. It’s not like advertising. Bloggers need to speak in their own genuine voice, not yours. They are not your mouthpiece and they are free to say something unflattering about you if that’s what they think or feel
• Learn about the blogger first and make sure his voice and audience is relevant to your company/product. Just because a blogger has a big audience doesn’t make him/her a good fit for your company. It needs to be a good fit for both parties.
• Listen before you act

Photo: voxeros on Flickr.

Now I am by NO MEANS implying that any designer simply makes pretty pictures! I’m simply talking about what goes into good web design in addition to a great concept and aesthetics. That’s why it feels great to get recognized for doing some good design from time to time.

The January/February issue of Layers Magazine features a website redesign concept by our own Ryan Sorensen. Ryan’s concept, along with two others, were selected to appear in the magazine’s Design Makeover column.

The “client” is Mikee, a specialty-sauce maker that has a line of award-winning kosher specialty sauces. We were excited to be able to participate in the project, and even more excited to see our concept be selected and featured first in the design makeover lineup.

Since this was just a concept that would appear in a magazine, we took a few liberties with the design that we may have skipped if we were going to implement it for an actual online store. The basic principles are the same, though – give the visitor an easy-to-navigate site that showcases the product and gets them to buy.

Website redesigns are also an interesting thing. You’re presented with reinventing something while maintaining some sort of coherent consistency with a brand at the same time. There’s other considerations as well, like the status of the current site’s placement in the search engines. Nobody wants to lose any good ranking. It’s like conducting an orchestra when executing a successful website redesign. Get a good conductor and some great musicians and you’ll hear beautiful music. Just don’t let that piccolo on the third row screw it up for everybody.

It would have been great to be able to see the project all the way through. The business owner actually contacted me to see if we would be able to work something out for a full site redesign, but their current budget restrictions have changed their ability to move forward right now.

There’s confusion, trepidation, and a general feeling of being overwhelmed.  Add to that the pressure to get more bang for your marketing buck in today’s economic climate and the anxiety increases.

More and more companies need or want to expand their visibility online.   To be found where people look.  That often means tapping the potential of social media, but they don’t know how to enter the conversation or are paralyzed because of a stumble.  We’ve heard tales of being banned from Digg, kicked off Facebook, deleted from Wikipedia, stumped by Twitter, slammed by bloggers or caught off guard by employee comments in cyberspace.  We hear the the same question over and over, “What do I do?” And the dozens of books, hundreds of articles and thousands of web pages dedicated to the subject only seem to make it feel more overwhelming.

So we’ve developed this series of seminars, starting with social media marketing, to go beyond theory and platitudes to practical applications to answer your questions and give you tips you can put to work immediately.  We also have sessions scheduled that will focus on increasing your visibility on search engines and on smart marketing tips to turn data into intelligence and insights. You’ll take away not only a better understanding, but also a little peace of mind  and some tools to get you started.

Why the Sausage Factory name?  Because it fits (and it sounded better than Bozell Seminars).  People once referred to marketing like a recipe for soup — a little of this, a little of that, add a little seasoning, simmer it for a while and you’ve got a meal.  Now it’s not nearly so neat or orderly and time to simmer…fat chance.  It’s all about now.  And piecemeal doesn’t cut it anymore.  It has to all be ground together to create something cohesive and tightly integrated.  It really is like making sausage. It’s messy.  But at the end of the day, it’s much tastier and more popular at parties because it’s centered on the consumer.  Could the name Sausage Factory raise a few eyebrows?  You bet.  But that itself is part of what the marketing game is about today.  To have a voice, a point of view, something that might be worth talking about.  Check it out:  www.sausagefactoryseminars.com or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SausageFactory.

Personally I’m a little torn on this because I think it absolves people of taking responsibility, but YouTube today announced a feature that gives you the ability to delete comments you’ve made on videos — at any time. So if you made a dumb, typo-ridden, or grammatically horrific comment 2 years ago on some stupid video from your work-related email, you have a chance to clean it up.  You can now delete any and all of your idiotic YouTube comments.  Simply find your comment and click “remove” to pretend your lapse in judgment or grammar never happened.

Maybe next they can work on a way to help people be more lucid as they leave comments.

I remember seeing a promo/demo from Microsoft a couple/few years ago that made me think, “Wow – if they get that working it will be something special.” Well – despite my foggy recollection of that moment and what it was I saw, CNN is now showcasing the very technology Microsoft was touting in that obscure memory.

It’s called “Photoynth” and I have it say – it’s extremely impressive. Here’s how it works: People take photos. People upload photos. Photosynth stiches them together after analyzing the content and determining how/where the images are visually related to each other. Now, that’s a great simplification, but the concept is that simple. It’s like when you take 8 photos of a wide landscape and then overlay the prints on your table to create one larger image. Except this works in three dimensions.

Is this a radical leap forward or just a cool way to view images? Hard to say. I just know I haven’t seen anything else like it executed this well. The amount of visual information that’s being recorded and uploaded across the planet is astounding. We’ve got Flickr and Picasa and countless photo services where we can store and geo-tag our images. Now there’s a way to stitch those disparate images back together into something resembling reality, and they’re all taken one photo at a time.

Think of what we’ll be able to look back at 20 years from now. Pretty much anything that anyone took a photo of today.

This made me think a bit. Was that truck filled with sensitive information? Did it contain top-secret files destined for the archives? Were there countless legal briefs and contractual agreements stored in stacks of boxes inside the back of the truck? Since nobody crashed into the vehicle – fortunately – nobody got to find out.

That brings us to the topic at hand. Secure file transfer. A big deal is made about this simple procedure online. If I want to transfer sensitive information to another, remote computer, it’s a pretty secure process while in transit as long as the respective parties have done their jobs correctly. Somebody sets up a website with a secure certificate and a file-upload mechanism and away you go. The data is encrypted as it moves securely from point A to point B. Or secure FTP is used to the same end result. Granted, each end computer and environment has to deal with security, but you’re pretty well assured that once your files have been transferred, they got there safely and really, without risk.

How are your files getting transferred – in the real world or virtual world? Do you know whether the parties responsible for doing so are speeding through red lights or taking an armored tank to reach the destination? Be sure you know – and trust – who you have on that security detail. You don’t want any crashes along the way.

Google has done it again – they just announced that they are now returning search results that include magazine content within Google Book Search.

They have indexed millions of magazines from various publishers and are going to continue to add more. Hopefully we’ll see the library grow as Google gets permission for more and more titles. Similar to what you can see in their Book Search, you can view magazine covers and full pages, including advertising. I find that aspect particularly interesting given my chosen profession. 1984 personal computer articles are not only fascinating to read given where we’ve come, but they bring back some definitive memories for lifelong geeks like me.

Another point to mention: the post on Google’s blog says that they will eventually blend the magazine search results into the general Google search results – not just within the Book Search section. This exposes a huge amount of additional content to being found via organic search, and makes content published offline today a possible candidate for being found in online search tomorrow. Or whenever Google gets around to indexing your favorite magazine.

Finally, note that they aren’t simply providing the content for fun. As you work your way through magazine content the contextual ads on the right side of the layout change based on the magazine’s page content. This is huge. Think of all the relevant AdWords ads that can be served up along side relevant info. They’re also tracking which pages are being accessed in the magazine just like they can monitor which pages get clicked through to via other search results.

Organizing the world’s information, indeed.

The message has a link in it to some GeoCities page. Now, I thought GeoCities was done and gone like AOL Member pages, but hey – maybe Greg really did post images of me doing something stupid last weekend. That’s been known to happen, and sometimes too often. Everyone’s a web publisher now, right?

When I get to the website linked in the message, I’m immediately greeted with a prompt that my Flash Player is out of date and needs to be updated. Really? I’m doing Flash stuff all the time. Pretty sure I’m in good shape, but what’s this file I’m being asked to download? “install_flash_player.exe” Well, that’s the name Adobe uses for the Flash installer. Maybe Google Chrome still thinks it needs to be updated.

I click on the link and get the Run/Save/Cancel prompt that Windows throws up. It’s then that my root suspicions are confirmed. The “Author” attribute of the file is “unknown” instead of “Adobe Systems, Inc.” as I had expected. CANCEL!

Here’s the problem. Even though I suspected this was a bad link, I got all the way to the download state. I was waiting to see who the software publisher was, but I knew to look. How many people out there are going to get taken by this virus because the link came from a friend?

Be careful out there, everyone – the same rules apply to any message sent with a link. If there’s not text/commentary along with links/files/information and it’s definitively from a trusted source, make sure you’re not clicking on everything or that you have a thorough backup and antivirus software installed. It’s ugly out there.

By their very nature the content within RSS feeds is very portable.  Users and feed aggregators can republish the content. The more times content is republished on websites outside of originating website the more external links there will be linking back. This in turn will help the site’s search engine optimization and organic search rankings. Roughly 50% of modern search engine algorythms use sites of like content linking back to determine the validity of the content and giving the publisher credibility.

If you do not currently have an RSS feed I highly recommend adding one. If you content is already stored in a stand alone database or content management system the investment would be minimal while the profit by way of exposure could be quite large.

• GOLD: Krista’s Creations website – http://www.letter-photo.com/
• BRONZE: Creighton University Fine Arts Faculty – A Portfolio of Creative Works
• BRONZE: Bozell New Employee Handbook
• BRONZE: Bozell Holiday Office Charms campaign

http://nebraska.aiga.org/

Check out the new Change.gov website:

I find this pretty remarkable in several ways. First of all, just days – or even hours – after the election we have an official government site that is continuing the theme of one of the best marketed Presidential candidates ever. It’s also encouraging participation and involvement from the electorate via the internet. Do you want to know where a lot of the new voters who helped Obama get elected came from: the online community.

Did I mention that this is a government site as well? Sure, you can tell by the “.gov” domain name extension, but realize that there’s only one way to get a .gov extension: be part of the United States government. So somebody had to have this site planned in advance and get it coordinated enough to have online just days after the election. That’s some good foresight and planning.

I can only hope we continue to see proactive communication and participation from our leaders – just as we need the exact same thing from our populace. And seeing the web as a medium for this to all take place is very exciting – and new. Keep an eye on this one!