A deep dive into digital marketing

Let’s get social

Posted by Chris under Advertising, Chicago, Community, Conference, Google, Social Networking, Twitter

Last week Google, at their Chicago office, hosted an afternoon event on social marketing along with a rawkstar party later that evening.

The event featured two keynote speakers: Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst Forrester and Paula Drum, VP, marketing, H&R Block. It was great to meet both of them as I’d spoken with them via phone, email and twitter but not met face to face. Both of their presentations were great, as expected.

Prior to Jeremiah’s presentation he sent a tweet that I’d be tweeting the presentation and thanks to Mrs. Naslund’s Freshman typing my typing speed allowed me to keep followers up to date. Interestingly his one tweet added about 30 followers, again showing the power of social networking.

Dick Costello, that’s right of Feedburner hosted a panel discussion, which unfortunately I couldn’t stay for however you can catch the photos of the even here (thanks Kate for posting on Picasso). And in addition to the photo’s Google has also posted PDF’s of the presentation which are here as well.

If you want to see the archive of tweets from the presentations they are here, but you’ll have to go back a few pages as well.

His Master’s Voice

Posted by Chris under CNMS08, Google, Mobile, Technology, trends

Remember the days of calling 411 and hearing, “hello Operator” and before calling 411 cost from $1.25 and upwards? What about what I used to do in the early 90’s, calling the Chicago Public Library’s reference desk to answer questions that are now a click away on Google? Sure, I could have gone over there and done the research, but the librarians on the other end of the line were too happy to do it for me.

Well, there are a couple of newish tools and websites that  allow you to have much of the same functionality all at your voice or if needed, fingertips, all of which are free. Why are these important to look at? Well, just as I described a few weeks back how the iPhone is more computer then phone, services like these make any phone more computer-like.

There are three services that I’ve been using for a while, all of which allow you to use your voice for tasks. First is 1-800-GOOG-411, Google’s answer to 411. A simple call and I get not only the number I’m looking for, but I also get connected or can get a text message with the number and address. GOOG-411 has been a around for a bit, so chances are you have used it already; if not, however, give it a go.

I find that while I’m driving is when ideas, to-do’s or follow-up’s come to mind, but I can’t very well stop or keep driving safely and write them down. So that’s where Jott comes in. Just out of beta, Jott is still free for the ad-supported version and low cost for the pro version. What is Jott? Well, think voice-to-text but with actions associated with it.

After an initial set-up through the Jott website, and a confirmation text with your phone, you’re ready to go. A simple call to (866) JOTT-123 / (866) 568-8123 and you can record to-do lists, send emails or texts, add an appointment in outlook, post to twitter or your blog, and even get Amazon prices/results back. This list keeps growing each day.

And while Jott works with any phone, there are applications for the iPhone and Blackberry. With Jott’s iphone application, a tap to the screen and you can record a message and use a second tap to stop. These Jotts are transcribed to text notes and become available on-line or on the phone itself as part of the notes.

Next up is ChaCha, which for the back-to-school crowd is like a cheat sheet on your phone. By either texting CHACHA (242242), calling 1.800.2CHA.CHA or twitter @chacha any question you have, you’ll get an answer back from one of their guides. Yes, a human at the other end. Now some questions like weather or stock are automated when you text message, but I find that I use ChaCha when I’m in a hands-free situation for anything I might have looked up on Google.

And ChaCha is also the ultimate bar/party bet decider, as we found out one night at a ping pong night over at CrowdSPRING. Questions like “how long is the conveyor belt at at Wal-Mart distribution center” or “what’s the largest public building” were handled with ease by the ChaCha guides. -note I mention CrowdSPRING because as a reader of this blog and TalentZoo, they are worth checking out, and most recently presented at DEMO and CNMS08, but I’ll cover them in a future post.

From my usage, these three apps are harbingers of another form of change in how we access and use data. For example, with GOOG-411, why would I pay for a call to 411 or if GOOG-411 isn’t finding my info, why not try ChaCha? And if I can’t or shouldn’t (walking, driving) use my phone’s keyboard, why not let my voice do the work with Jott or ChaCha?

I think these three tools are just the start; there are others as well but it’s the tip of the iceberg in how we now and will access data and information. Call it part convergence or part device specialty–either way, jump in and try them out, because there will be more to come.

As shiny as Chrome

Posted by Chris under Browsers, Chrome, Google, Search Engines

Looks like today at noon central we’ll be seeing Google’s first forey into the browser world with Chrome. Adam Kmiec said it pretty well in a tweet this morning. I like his three reasons. Some first looks are of course over at Wikipedia,  cnet and information week.

Of course if you want Google’s take on it check out their chrome comic.

Me I’ll be downloading it today and will let you know my hands on thoughts.

More screen shots from Techcrunch.

Get out and walk with Google

Posted by Chris under Chicago, Google, Search Engines

Google Maps now offers walking directions, in addition to driving and public transportation. Just get directions as you normally would. If you’re going 10 km or less (some call this 6.2 miles), we’ll show you a link that you can click to get “Walking” directions:

If public transit directions are available for Google Maps in your area, you’ll seen an improvement to them as well. And if the route is shorten then 10km you can choose from Driving, walking or public transportation.

That’s it, now get out and walk!

Ohh and the Google LatLong Blog is a great one for all things Google Maps!

Google Trends being pimped or is it for real?

Posted by Chris under Google, Search Engines

Yesterday TechCrunch reported how Google Trends was being being “attacked” by apparent spammers. This in a bid to temporarily raise a search term to the forefront of being a hot trend.

Interestingly the comments following the article called attendtion to the search terms actually being legitimate. So while shit pond and missing money may seem like useless terms that a spammer is having fun with, turns out they are legit.

I guess there’s no telling good taste or more importantly Google Trends really does show you what people are searching for!

Flash Files can now be indexed

Posted by Chris under Adobe, Browsers, Firefox, Flash, Google, Search Engines, Yahoo

Thanks Russ and Adam for notes (via email and twitter) on adobe’s recent announcement regarding technology for search engines to index flash. Interestingly it’s an application for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application/website and actually goes through the runtime of each flash application.

Hmmm, no comment from me yet on what impact lots of spiders hitting flash sites may have, that and I’m wondering how it will show up in search logs. As in “wow our site traffic is way up,” “no that’s just the adobe virtual flash user indexing our site.”

However this is an exciting announcement given how much of Element79’s client work (and own site) is flash, that and helping promote an even better reason to build in Flex/Flash.

I’m speaking at Google’s Chicago office today so I’ll have to ask Jim Lecinski what he thinks about this as well as Aaron Goldman (resolution media) who will be there as well.

Bring on SEO for flash!

Google, where is your certificate?

Posted by Chris under Google, Security

Writing my post the other day I did a search (on google) for google accounts. First result was

Google Accounts

Look out hitwise

Posted by Chris under Google, Research, Search Engines, trends

Google Trends does a flip. Sure you’ve been able to use Google Trends to see what the world is searching for but not you can also see/get insights on the traffic and geographic visitation patterns of other websites.

Simply enter the address of a website into the search box and Google Trends for Websites will show you a graph reflecting the number of daily unique visitors to that website. For even more data, sign into your Google Account to see a list of regions where visitors originated from, other websites that they have also visited, and terms they have also searched for.

Of interest are searches for Google.com and Yahoo.com in which you note that NO results show for Google. You’ll also note that when I’m logged in I see the #’s in the graph for Yahoo.

Yahoo.com, not logged in and logged in

A search for Google.com ? Come on and share.

It’s just a start but interesting none-the-less. We saw what Google’s done with Google Analytics, so watch this space

For more details please refer to their official Blog post