We think every woman out there will agree that today should be the day most celebrated every year.  National Chocolate Chip Day is probably the second busiest day at the gym or the busiest day in your local grocers baking aisle. 

To take our minds off from work for just a few minutes we thought we’d share a recipe that our very own baking extraordinaire, Stephanie Raumschuh uses as her fall back all-time favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from Jacques Torres

Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling

• 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
• 1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
• 2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)
• Sea salt.

Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Note: Disks are sold at Jacques Torres Chocolate; Valrhona fèves, oval-shaped chocolate pieces, are at Whole Foods.

Source:  The New York Times

Image Source: RecipeGirl.com

For whatever reason, it is far more difficult to distill a concept or idea into something clear and concise than it is to fill it full of business speak and big words. Counter-intuitive, but true.

Yet another example of this came yesterday in an article from Tom Searcy on Time.com. What a 9-Year-Old Can Teach You About Selling starts with a reference to a recent study confirming what those of us who work on the web have long known: people don’t remember most of what is presented to them. This mega-short attention span and low retention rate is perhaps even more true on the web.

The obvious solution to this problem for marketers and business owners  is to create a short, simple “elevator pitch” that can convey exactly who you are, what you do and why people should want your product or service in a sentence or two. Searcy’s advice on how to actually do this successfully is to think about how you would communicate this to someone with zero context, someone like a 9-year-old.

His example:

Daddy, What Do You Do?

• Right answer: ”I help companies to grow really fast by teaching them how to sell bigger companies much larger orders.”
• Wrong answer: ”Our company helps develop inside of our clients a replicable and scalable process for them to land large accounts.”

Why Do People Decide to Hire You?

• Right answer: “We have helped lots of companies do this before, so we are really good at it as long as they are the right type of companies.”
• Wrong answer: ”We have a proven process for implementation that allows organizations to tailor the model to their market, business offering and company’s growth goals.”

Why Don’t They Do It Themselves?

• Right answer: “Just like when you learned to play the piano: Mommy and I could teach a little, but we don’t know as much as your teacher, and teaching you ourselves would take a long time and be very frustrating. Daddy is a really good teacher of how to make bigger sales, and people want to learn how to do this as fast as they can.”
• Wrong answer: “We are the foremost expert in this field with over $5 billion in business that our clients have closed using this system. Usually our clients have tried a number of things on their own before we work together and have wanted outside help to get better results.”

As his example shows, both answers are accurate, but one is clearly wrong and one is clearly right.

Now, of course, there’s a big difference between simple and condescending and it’s important to consider your audience (and their true level of sophistication) to strike the right balance here, but, in general, Searcy’s direction is right on.

Given all that, does your messaging pass the “9-year-old” test? (Hint: if you aren’t sure, ask a 9-year-old).

Breaking into social media can be an overwhelming task if you don’t understand why your company needs it.  Social media allows us to connect quickly with people and brands.  Customers are forming relationships faster than ever and in many cases social media interactions have a direct impact on consumer buying choices, which has vastly changed the way the businesses are marketing.  So you need to ask yourself; Can your business afford NOT to be using social media?

The way we see it, participation in social media has a number of excellent business benefits.  It can help you gain leads, offer customer support, promote your services and demonstrate leadership among your competitors.  But most importantly, social media is an exceptionally valuable tool for increasing word-of-mouth for your business.

My recommendation to businesses is to do the following:

• Build a social media marketing plan and determine what you hope to achieve from your efforts
• Look at each social media outlet and determine which will be the most beneficial to your business and only take on one at a time (trying to take on too much too soon can be overwhelming)
• Remember that content is king!  Post things that are interesting to your customer base and don’t be afraid to have fun with it.  I live by the 80/20 Rule:  80% of your updates should provide value for your followers and 20% can be self-promotional.  If you need some examples take a look at some of the client pages we’ve listed below
• Once you have established your account and posted some content, share your page with your employees and current customers to build your fan base
• Remember to interact with your fans.  Typically you should respond to any questions or comments within 24 hours

Still don’t seem to understand social media or simply don’t think it’s important?  Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Want to see what we do for client’s social media accounts?  Click on these links below:

• Black Magic Car Care Facebook
• Black Magic Car Care Twitter
• Gumout Facebook
• Gumout Blog
• Thoughtprocess Interactive Facebook
• Thoughtprocess Interactive Twitter
• Thoughtprocess Interactive Pinterest

To learn more about what we do visit our website or contact us today… (We’re pretty good at it, if I don’t say so myself!)

www.thinktpi.com

info@thinktpi.com

Here’s a quick list of the changes you can expect to see in how businesses will communicate and market to their Facebook fans through Timeline (as seen in the Tiffany & Co example below).

1. The overall design, look and feel of Pages has dramatically changed.

2. Photos, Likes, and Apps are now at the top of the page.

• You have the ability to change the order of tab locations although the “Photos” tab must remain in the first position

3. Default welcome tabs will be eliminated.

4. Custom tab locations are changing and will have larger icons.

• Custom tab icons are now 111px by 74px
• Tabs are now wider – 810px

5. The cover photo can be 850px by 315px but can NOT include the following:

• Calls to action
• Contact information, such as web address, email or other information intended for your “About” section
• Price or purchase information
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or other Facebook site features

6. Admin Panel is new and more user friendly.

• In March new admin capabilities will be activated.  For example you can now add admins who can only post, have complete control over the page, or add an ad partner who cannot make any changes to the page without your approval…pretty cool, huh?
• Fans can now message the page directly and you can reply as the page, instead of using your personal profile!

7. Timeline can feature your brand’s history. 

• We love how Tiffany & Co. has highlighted their company’s rich history with “highlighted” stories

8. Access to a limited view of OTHER brand page’s insights. 

• You can view this only if the brand has the new Timeline.  Click on their “likes” box and voila…there are their insights for all to see!
• This is sort of a double edged sword.  For those who are new to business pages on Facebook…or just not so hot at fan engagement and outreach on this medium, this could be a way to learn from businesses and brands that are doing it well.  Consequently, if you’re doing a really good job with fan engagement, this could be a way for competitors to take a peek at your game plan.

Tiffany & Co. has done a great job taking advantage of the new apps boxes, filling their timeline with rich content and attracting fans with their cover photo. Head over to their page to check out how they have filled their Timeline!

Below is just one example of a highlighted story they’re featuring:

We have a feeling we will be updating this list with more changes we notice as we get more familiar with Timeline.  What do you think of the changes?  Tell us in the comments below!

Last year’s video (displayed below) followed the same family, brought in millions of hits on YouTube and left many in awe of Corning’s interpretation of what’s possible with photovoltaic glass, LCD TV glass, architectural display and surface glass.

Do you think this is possible in the future? Connect with us on Facebook and tell us what you think.

I have a slightly Type A personality and, to me, organization is a beautiful thing (Although I have to admit that all the recent ‘Best ____ of 2011’ lists that every publication on earth seemed to be putting out around New Year’s were getting a little out of hand, amiright?). That being said, I’m intending to keep this list fairly short and just give a little shout out to a few of my current favorite bookmarks that I hope might be useful and interesting.

I do most of the front-end programming (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.) here at TPI World Headquarters, so anything that I come across to help me streamline that process is aces is my book. I’m also fortunate enough to have a few friends in the industry who help keep me in the know and introduce me to the latest and greatest technology for creating beautiful and functional websites:

1. Visual jQuery – (http://visualjquery.com/)Ok, ok, this Javascript library (jquery) isn’t news to anyone in the industry. It’s been around for a while now, but I gotta admit that I am still enamored with the way jquery simplifies javascript and makes things like animations and manipulations so easy and, dare I say, fun. This site is one of the most easy and useful documentation sources I’ve ever seen. It’s clean and easy to navigate and I can find what I’m looking for, usually, in a matter of seconds. Bonus: Each entry has syntax, examples and options all lined up and organized (Type A, remember? *sigh*).
2. Chosen – (http://harvesthq.github.com/chosen/)Speaking of jQuery, this little gem is a great plugin if you’re digging on some creative ways to utilize select lists.  Whoa. Did I just get a little excited about using select lists? I did. What can I say? A few lines of code and your oft-unwieldy multiple selects become an enchanting experience for the user. Ok, I have to stop now before this gets embarrassing.
3. CSS3 PIE – (http://css3pie.com/)Mmmmm, pie. If you’ve been reluctant to embrace the new-fangled awesomeness that comes with CSS3 because you’ve been worried about IE compatibility, fret no more! My friend, early-adopter, and programming wunderkind, Skye, introduced this to me on a recent project we worked on together. What a difference! While I haven’t had much opportunity to utilize it on other applications just yet, I’m definitely going to be putting it through its paces on some upcoming victims, er… projects we have in the works.

A short list, but a good one.

There’s new plugins, languages and tricks coming out all the time, it seems, to make our lives as developers ever more exciting. Have you come across something lately that’s changed your coding life forever? Let us know! We love expanding our knowledge and keeping our clients happy with interesting and engaging websites and applications.

It turns out there’s an advantage to old-school search directly from Google.com. Not just content to sit around fine-tuning their algorithm and counting their money, the web wizards of Mountain View, CA have also taken to working some clever tricks and treats into their programming to the delight of users that happen to stumble across or successfully uncover them. These fun little surprises have come to be affectionately known as “Easter eggs,” hence the shade of  hide-and-go-seek involved.

Here’s a few of our faves for your viewing pleasure (Fair Warning: this list is a time drain!):

• Find Chuck Norris…if you can.  Type “Find Chuck Norris” into Google, hit I’m Feeling Lucky, and Google will tell you what’s up with Chuck
• We can only assume that this one is meant as an ode to lost productivity: www.Google.com/Pacman
• Type “Do a Barrel Roll” into the search bar.  We dare you not to turn your head
• Type in “Askew” or “Tilt.” Same dare
• A holiday classic:  type in “let it snow” and watch the magic happen.  You can even defrost your screen and write in the snow with your mouse!
• See if you can find the subtle humor in this one: type in “Recursion.” Get it?
• Type “gravity,” click I’m Feeling Lucky and watch the Google logo defy Isaac Newton
• Ask Google Maps for directions from Japan to China.  You might want to pay close attention to step 42…
• BONUS: Google has a bit of Pirate in ‘em with this next Easter Egg.  Simply click here and have a good time, matey (or whatever pirates call friends)

UPDATE: April 6, 2012

In celebration of the upcoming Easter holiday, we’ve added one more to our “Easter Egg” to the list, and this time it isn’t from Google.

Yay ‘ol Facebook

• Is your Facebook profile looking a little bland?  Well spice it up with a little pirate action!  Simply go to your Facebook profile page, click on the small, downward pointing arrow on the upper right on the blue bar.  A small menu will pop up.  From there, click “Account Settings” and then the “Language” tab at the bottom.  Now look closely and you will see multiple English settings named English (Upside Down) and English (Pirate).  We recommend choosing the “Pirate” language (this is BY FAR the most fun).  Save your settings (of course you can change them back at any time) and have a look around at all the changes to your text!  We guarantee you will impress all your friends with this little gem!

For the rest of my very cold walk through the park I took my gloves off so I could text, take a picture of my dog and answer my phone…I might have been able to do all this with my nose but I choose not to look like an idiot and just let my hand freeze.

Fast forward to last night when I’m Christmas shopping at Target and I happen to come across the perfect present for everyone who has a smartphone:  TOUCH SCREEN GLOVES!  How did I not know about these before?  I ended up buying a pair for all my friends and family with smartphones – which is everyone.  So after my semi-expensive trip to Target, I Googled these gloves and it turns out they are everywhere!

While I realize you (or my boss, hi James!) are probably thinking this has absolutely nothing to do with what we do here at Thoughtprocess Interactive, consider this:  Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015.  That means if you want to get on the internet anytime during the winter in the future (without your hands freezing off) you may want to invest in these touchscreen-friendly gloves.

Or you can just use your nose.

From the headline alone, I knew immediately what the author was referencing as far as Starbuck’s goes. I saw an ad on Facebook this morning that featured their new holiday tagline, “Let’s Merry,” and though I’m not quite as worked up about it as this guy is, I definitely winced when I saw it.

“Merry” is an adjective. “Let’s,” as in “let us,” as in “permit us to,” demands a verb. Presumably, this slogan represents some effort to make a pun. The effort fails. Would Starbucks write, “Let’s funny” or “Let’s delicious”? Apparently, Starbucks would. Customers ought to be concerned: Word play at the expense of grammar is not play at all. It’s antisocial.

I’m with ya, buddy (although you’d probably smack me for my use of “ya”).

I also second his call out of the Starbuck’s sizing terminology:

(The shop’s drink-size appellations shift, inexplicably, from general descriptions to specific numerals—and, what’s more, from English to Italian.)

I love you Starbuck’s, but seriously, what is that?

Here are some of the clear winners:

• Family
• Friends
• Kids
• Spouses
• Health
• Employment

And here are a few of the more random replies:

• Soy peppermint mocha latte’s from Starbuck’s
• Alexander Skarsgard
• Habanero peppers
• DVRs
• Alcohol
• Opposable thumbs

And of course, we’re thankful all year round for great clients that trust us to do good work!

Got anything else you’d add to the mix?

We know, we know, Facebook has had so many changes lately it’s hard to keep up with them all. If you are a casual user, there are plenty of new features to explore. You may see some changes in accessing some of your games, or notice different content on some business pages, but generally you’re good to go.

However, it gets trickier if you’re a business owner who has developed Facebook apps. Starting October 1st, apps that run on Facebook must be hosted from a secure server. Facebook is requiring this to help protect the privacy of its users. What does it mean to you? If you don’t have a SSL certificate for your app’s site domain, your app will not show up on Facebook anymore – meaning your fans won’t see it!

Don’t worry, we’re here to help. If you host your application with us, we can get a SSL certificate set up for your domain. If you use a different host, they’ll be able to help you. Either way, you’ll just need to provide some specific information that verifies you are the owner of the site, and you’ll likely have to pay a small amount to buy the certification from the company that provides it. The most commonly known certificate provider is VeriSign, but there are plenty to choose from, with a variety of features and prices.

If we can help you, let us know. In the meantime, enjoy the latest features on Facebook… we will be back soon to guide you through more of the interesting changes that are happening there — stay tuned!

Ticker & Chat: The new ticker on the top right of your homepage shows real-time posts making them easier to go through.  Just hover over any story to see entire update.  Additionally by clicking your chat sidebar the ticker attaches to the top.  You can chat while navigating to any page you like while watching your friend’s status updates change.

Photo Layout: You probably noticed the creative way our pictures are now laid out in our News Feed.  This is purely for our viewing experience and gives business pages a more unique way to attract “likes”.

Top Stories:  Facebook’s new concept shows posts that you will most likely find interesting and puts them at the top of your feed when you first log in.  The top stories are marked by a blue tag on the top left corner of the post.  To remove them from your top stories just click on the blue tag and they will be removed.  To add a top story that you are interested in just hover over an update where the blue tab would be and click-it’s that easy!

Friend Lists:  Facebook’s new “Smart Lists” are just that-Smart.  Smart lists automatically create lists for your city, work, family, and school.  You can add friends or brands you follow to the lists Facebook automatically created for you, or you can create a new list to organize your friends even better.  To create a new list or edit an existing list click on “Lists” on the left of your News Feed.

Here you can see a list I created based on my favorite movies and television shows making it easy for me to skip all the news feed and go straight to my shows.

Friend List Dropdown:  You can also organize your friend into lists right from their profile page.

Subscribe:  The subscribe button allows you to hear from people that you are interested in, even if you’re not friends.  You are automatically subscribed to all your current friends updates and with the subscribe button you can choose which of their updates you see.  For example, if you have a friend who is always playing Facebook games (we all have those friends), you can hide all those game posts in a simple step.

Not all profiles have a Subscribe button.  Only people who allow subscribers will have the Subscribe button on their profile.  If you choose to allow Subscribers they will only see the things you share publicly.

What do you think of all these new features?  Love it or hate it?

Once there you select your avatar and create your own playlist, which can be anything you want in Turntable’s huge library of tracks or you can upload your own.  You can also bookmark songs on other sites and if you like a song that is playing you can buy it right there from iTunes or add it to your own playlist.

The beauty of this social music site is that you can choose if you like the song that is being played or not…it’s either “Lame” or “Awesome”.  The more “Awesome” points you get the closer you become to changing your avatar to something bigger and better, if the song gets “Lamed” too many times then that song is skipped and the next person DJing” gets to play their song.

Simple enough right?  Well there is one downfall…for the moment you need an “invite” from a Facebook friend in order to play music or join a room, but once you’re in, you’re in!  You can start inviting friends each time you start to play music!  Enjoy!

UPDATE: Now you can take turntable.fm to go with it’s new iPhone app.  It offers all the same features as the online version but fits right in your palm.  It’s easy, just log in with Facebook and up pops all the rooms you are used to seeing!  I’ll be in the Top 40 room!

iPhone Screenshot of turntable.fm

http://buddypress.org/

http://2011.uxlondon.com/
http://www.saltercane.com/

Any person or company with a consumer-facing web site, if they are paying any attention at all, will want their site to be mobile phone accessible soon if not sooner. Assuming 1024 pixel wide screens isn’t going to cut it, these two sites show how it can be done really well in just one smart design, rather than the usual way (sniffing out the client browser and redirecting mobile phones to a different version).

Resize your browser and watch what happens as it get narrower. (Use Firefox or a webkit browser like Safari — IE need not apply.) The first site re-flows in each section and the bio pictures shrink down as the page gets narrower. The second site dynamically re-flows from three columns to two columns to one.  If you have a browser on your mobile phone, look at the sites there too. Very cool!

You can read about the technique from the guy who designed those sites here:

http://adactio.com/journal/

Something to think about.

Unfortunately, now having seen the trailer, I still can’t tell you much about it. Why is that? Because I was so busy marveling at the choice of music that accompanies the entire preview to notice any of the actors or plot points. The whole thing plays against a gussied up version of Radiohead’s classic anthem, “Creep,” sung by a youth choir accompanied by piano.

As I listened to it alongside a montage of Facebook status updates, changes in relationship status, profile pictures and the like, I was totally blown away by what an absolute perfect commentary it is on Facebook and the population(s) it serves. Totally one of those connections you can’t believe you haven’t already made yourself.

To whomever is responsible for this stroke of genius: Bravo.

This morning James called my attention to a really great column from Al Ries that was published at adage.com a few days ago, “Long Slogans are Absolutely, Positively More Effective Than Short Ones.” Now, we work on the web where it’s a commonly agreed upon fact that your homepage  has about three seconds to grab the attention of a viewer before they move on to something else that will, so right away I start running through all the reasons I disagree with Mr. Ries:

• Long isn’t catchy
• Long is too hard to remember
• People lose interest before you’ve made your point
• Long is too complicated

You can preface all of these arguments with “usually” because, of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but generally that’s where I stand on slogans. Short, simple and straightforward win the day.

Then, about a quarter of the way through the article, Mr. Ries gives a list of short slogans that he deems ineffective, followed by this statement:

Short slogans like these, in my opinion, are not very effective. And it’s not because they’re short; it’s because they’re not very memorable.

Hmmm. He might be on to something there.

So what does make a slogan memorable? According to Mr. Ries: Emotion.

Sure, slogans should be as short as possible, but there’s a trade-off. Slogans should be long enough to contain some words that knock on the right side of the consumer’s brain. The emotional side of the brain as opposed to the left side, the logical, analytical side.

Sold.

Check out the original post to see some  examples of both “good” and “bad” slogans, but here’s one of our own:

Our “official” slogan is “Strategy. Creativity. Technology.” That is absolutely the most succinct and simple way to describe us, but if I asked you what is was tomorrow, would you remember?

Now consider our homepage. We have a short little Flash animation that automatically runs  if you’ve never been to the site before. It mimics someone typing in a word processor (which sounds boring, but actually isn’t – I swear ). At the climax, if you will, the screen reads “Thoughtprocess Interactive: a blend of strategy and creativity with a dash of techie geek.” “Geek” is then replaced with “chic .”

This is clearly a play on our tagline and essentially boils down to the exact same thing. But, I have never heard anyone refer to or even comment on our tagline. This 48 second Flash animation on the other hand gets rave reviews. It’s truly rare for a new client not to mention it in our first conversation.

If Mr. Ries is to be believed, that’s because the second example adds in just a handful of additional descriptive words that inject a little warmth and playfulness: otherwise known as emotion.

The idea is for users to be able to quickly and easily wade through the multitude of useless information on any particular subject to see Tweets that have been deemed useful and/or originated from a knowledgeable/credible source. This also works in the opposite direction by giving users who are trying to build a following or establish themselves as subject-matter experts, a (quicker?) way to break out of the crowd. The question is: are people willing to pay for this and will the mass of users on Twitter take kindly to paid placements?

Here at TPI, we’re pretty big fans of Twitter both for ourselves and for our clients. Generally, we see it as a quick and easy(er) way to engage a target audience and establish credibility as an expert. Of the major limitations of Twitter ( 1) sometimes 140 characters really isn’t enough, 2) it’s a long, slow climb to the top and 3) the difficulty of locating useful Tweets) TweetUp has the potential to knock out two of them. Two out of three ain’t bad.

So what do you think? Would you pay to get your Tweets to the head of the line? As a user, would it bother you to know that some Tweets have been bumped up by $$?

This plugin seemed to have all we needed except one thing. There was a choice in navigation between arrows left and right (previous and next) OR numeric/individual item navigation below. (For this case, we’ll use actual ‘Sliders’ as our representation of the easySlider. Hungry yet?)

For the design we’re envisioning, both systems needed to be utilized. It seemed like a simple fix and I set about combining both  navigation types to show up at the same time. Problem. For some reason, the next/previous buttons weren’t behaving properly when you used the numeric navigation below to choose an item! If you clicked on an item in the numeric nav, the next button would inexplicably send the gallery zooming off into space and then slowly return to the first item in the list.

How do we fix this!? Good ol’ scheming and know-how to the rescue! I’ll give you the quick-and-dirty since I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re interested in, anyway.

First, to show both navigations, go into easySlider1.7.js and find this part:

if(options.controlsShow){
var html = options.controlsBefore;
if(options.numeric){
html += '<ol id="'+ options.numericId +'"></ol>';
} else {
if(options.firstShow) html += '<span id="'+ options.firstId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.firstText +'</a></span>';
html += ' <span id="'+ options.prevId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.prevText +'</a></span>';
html += ' <span id="'+ options.nextId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.nextText +'</a></span>';
if(options.lastShow) html += ' <span id="'+ options.lastId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.lastText +'</a></span>';
};

html += options.controlsAfter;
$(obj).after(html);
};

And change it to this:

if(options.controlsShow){
var html = options.controlsBefore;
if(options.numeric){
html += '<ol id="'+ options.numericId +'"></ol>';
if(options.firstShow) html += '<span id="'+ options.firstId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.firstText +'</a></span>';
html += ' <div id="arrows"><span id="'+ options.prevId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.prevText +'</a></span>';
html += ' <span id="'+ options.nextId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.nextText +'</a></span></div>';
if(options.lastShow) html += ' <span id="'+ options.lastId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.lastText +'</a></span>';
} else {
if(options.firstShow) html += '<span id="'+ options.firstId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.firstText +'</a></span>';
html += ' <span id="'+ options.prevId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.prevText +'</a></span>';
html += ' <span id="'+ options.nextId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.nextText +'</a></span>';
if(options.lastShow) html += ' <span id="'+ options.lastId +'"><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ options.lastText +'</a></span>';
};

html += options.controlsAfter;
$(obj).after(html);
};

Then find this part:

if(options.numeric){
for(var i=0;i<s;i++){
$(document.createElement("li"))
.attr('id',options.numericId + (i+1))
.html('<a rel='+ i +' href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ (i+1) +'</a>')
.appendTo($("#"+ options.numericId))
.click(function(){
animate($("a",$(this)).attr('rel'),true);
});
};
} else {
$("a","#"+options.nextId).click(function(){
animate("next",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.prevId).click(function(){
animate("prev",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.firstId).click(function(){
animate("first",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.lastId).click(function(){
animate("last",true);
});
};

And change it to this:

if(options.numeric){
for(var i=0;i<s;i++){
$(document.createElement("li"))
.attr('id',options.numericId + (i+1))
.html('<a rel='+ i +' href=\"javascript:void(0);\">'+ (i+1) +'</a>')
.appendTo($("#"+ options.numericId))
.click(function(){
animate($("a",$(this)).attr('rel'),true);
});
};
$("a","#"+options.nextId).click(function(){
animate("next",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.prevId).click(function(){
animate("prev",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.firstId).click(function(){
animate("first",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.lastId).click(function(){
animate("last",true);
});
} else {
$("a","#"+options.nextId).click(function(){
animate("next",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.prevId).click(function(){
animate("prev",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.firstId).click(function(){
animate("first",true);
});
$("a","#"+options.lastId).click(function(){
animate("last",true);
});
};

NOW, to make it work properly (and here’s the kicker), parseInt!!!!!

Find the ‘animate’ function (~line 140):

function animate(dir,clicked){
if (clickable){
clickable = false;
var ot = t;
switch(dir){
case "next":
t = (ot>=ts) ? (options.continuous ? t+1 : ts) : t+1;
break;
case "prev":
t = (t<=0) ? (options.continuous ? t-1 : 0) : t-1;
break;
case "first":
t = 0;
break;
case "last":
t = ts;
break;
default:
t = dir;
break;
};

And insert this itttty bitty little parseInt:

function animate(dir,clicked){
if (clickable){
clickable = false;
var ot = t;
t = parseInt(t);
switch(dir){
case "next":
t = (ot>=ts) ? (options.continuous ? t+1 : ts) : t+1;
break;
case "prev":
t = (t<=0) ? (options.continuous ? t-1 : 0) : t-1;
break;
case "first":
t = 0;
break;
case "last":
t = ts;
break;
default:
t = dir;
break;
};

Thats it! Wow, that seemed a lot harder than it was. We figured out that the two navigations were treating the current item differently (one as an integer, one as a string – who knew!) so basically we’re just telling them all to be integers so both methods will work the same.

For reference, here’s another little proof of concept we drew up. Sliders. Get it? We’re hilarious, i know. (click the pickles OR the ketchup. CRAZY!) easySlider plugin ‘Sliders’ demo

At the risk of looking cheap, lazy and/or impersonal, e-cards are best left to businesses who fit one or more of the following criteria:

• Tech/Web Companies
• Environmentally-Related Companies
• Environmentally-Conscious Companies*

*Good rule of thumb here is whether your business walks the walk on evironmental responsibility the other 365 days a year in ways that are recognizable enough for your clients to be aware of them.

Done well, an e-card from a business like those described above can be an even better approach  to spreading good cheer in a personal and fun way than traditional holiday cards. Speaking of…take a gander at what we drummed up for our ’09 holiday card! (Tooting our own horn? No, not us!)

Sure, this isn’t the complete picture. Why isn’t early MPEG on here? What about player technologies, like Flash Player? Where’s YouTube? Honestly, I left those things off because they dilute the minuscule amount of humor I’m working with here… but, I’ll justify it this way: the story of video quality on the web is mostly about the advancement (and adoption) of compression algorithms — the underlying mathemagic that squeezes video down to something less than than mammoth-magnitude. (I’m not kidding about the magic: one second of uncompressed standard-definition video is about 30MB. Compressed with h.264, it’s about 63KB. That’s a reduction of about 500:1!)

The point is, walk before you run. Know that h.264 and MPEG4 are the compressors that pass for ‘good’ on the web right now, and you won’t be left behind with Australopithecus and the other IE6 users. Then note this: that last guy in the diagram still has a way to go…

To that end, I’ve taken the liberty of compiling a short list (in no particular order) of some great marketing and business books to light your fire and help jumpstart your business in 2010 with new fervor, focus and inspiration. A lot of ideas in these books aren’t earth-shattering, new and different ideas, but common sense practices that sometimes fall by the wayside in business and want for a good reminder. The key is using the good advice you find. Good advice only works if you put it into practice.

Admittedly, I haven’t ready all of these books. For what its worth, its a list I’ve compiled from other business leaders I follow and have been written by or invaluably helpful to them. That’s good enough for me and I will undoubtedly be picking up a few of these to read on a few cold nights this winter.

Have you already read any of these? What are your thoughts? We’d love to add to our library as well so definitely leave us a comment with your own recommendations!

Happy Reading!

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie: An oldie but a goodie. A nice reminder on how the key to being successful is all in how you treat the people around you.

2. Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message – Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba: If you’re curious about social media and how it might relate to your business, this one is a good resource.

3. Love Is the Killer App – Tim Sanders: I haven’t read this one but its definitely on my list. Its also about dealing with people but with an emphasis on networking and sharing information.

4. Good to Great – Jim Collins: Need I say more? Which one will YOUR business be?

5. Just Ask a Woman: Cracking the Code of What Women Want and How They Buy – Mary Lou Quinlan: This was recommended to me and I’m actually looking forward to reading it. Discover the power of the female buyer!

6. Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne: All about the ‘blue ocean’ of uncrowded and untapped market space.

7. The Long Tail – Chris Anderson: From the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine. If anyone will know about the future of business, this is the guy.

8. How To Be That Guy – Scott Ginsberg: This guy started wearing a nametag everywhere as an experiment and learned a lot about how people responded to it. Now he shares how to be unforgettable.

9. Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing – Harry Beckwith: Selling the way you do business and treat customers, rather than a product. Because everyone wants good customer service!

10. Purple Cow – Seth Godin: And just for good measure, Mr. Godin is considered one of the most brilliant minds in marketing. Read this one.

<script type="text/javascript>
     Shadowbox.init({
          players: ["img", "qt"]
     });
</script>

And then use an anchor to make the image or text clickable like this:

<a rel="shadowbox" href="my_video.mp4" title="My Video Title">
     Watch The Video
</a>

This works, but it relies on the fact that the clients browser has the quicktime plugin installed. Some of you already know that the Flash player can play .mp4 video files. The Flash plugin is installed on almost all browsers, so it would be ideal if the .mp4 videos would play in the Shadowbox JW Player instead.

Lucky for us, Shadowbox has an option that lets you decide what extensions work with which players. In this case, we want .mp4 videos to use the “flv” player rather than the “qt” player. Here’s how you do it:

<script type="text/javascript">
     var customExt = {
          img:["png","jpg","jpeg","gif","bmp"],
          swf:["swf"],
          flv:["flv", "mp4"],
          qt:["dv","mov","moov","movie"],
          wmp:["asf","wm","wmv"],
          qtwmp:["avi","mpg","mpeg"],
          iframe:["asp","aspx","cgi","cfm","htm","html",
                  "jsp","pl","php","php3","php4","php5",
                  "phtml","rb","rhtml","shtml","txt","vbs"]
     };
     Shadowbox.init({
          players: ["img", "flv"],
          ext: customExt
     });
</script>

Normally, the “qt” player plays all “.mp4″ files. Simply move the “mp4″ extension to the “flv” property. Using this method, you can decide which extensions use which players in Shadowbox.

Now, when a user clicks the Shadowbox link, the .mp4 video uses the “flv” player and plays in the JW Player:

<a rel="shadowbox" href="my_video.mp4" title="My Video Title">
     Watch the .mp4 video in the JW Player.
</a>

As HTML5 and faster Javascript engines become common place, it’s becoming increasingly tempting for developers to want to abandon Internet Explorer users and simply provide them with an upgrade path away from Microsoft.  However, there might just be a compromise that lets developers use the newest technologies, while still keeping Internet Explorer users within their comfort zone.  This compromise is Google Chrome Frame.  This new Google project aims to take the Google Chrome browser, and place it inside the Internet Explorer shell as a plugin.  Much like how Flash works within Internet Explorer, so does Chrome Frame.  If a user installs Chrome Frame (which is very simple and didn’t require a restart for IE8), they can view the web as if nothing was different.  However, if they visit a page that requires newer technologies, a developer can put a <meta /> tag in the page that triggers Chrome Frame.  The user will not notice any difference in the way the browser works (other than new features and faster rendering/processing).

This could just be the best solution for newer sites that wish to take advantage of new technologies Internet Explorer will be slow to adopt (if they even adopt the new technologies at all).  New features such as the <audio /> and <canvas /> tags will make the web much more friendly and consistent to develop for.  A faster, more modern Javascript engine means new APIs such as Geocoding and better user interface features such as animations and drag and drop support.  With these new features already starting to show up in Google Chrome, why wait for Internet Explorer to catch up, when they’re just a plugin away.

The world’s most lovable half-giant delivered a very important life message to Harry Potter in the statement above. Fortunately for Harry, he learned this lesson from a friend, rather than learning things the hard way. If only everyone could be so lucky…

To work their magic, SEO strategists make use of a variety of complex and ever-evolving tactics that can be difficult to explain, and even harder for those who are less than web-savvy to understand. To further complicate matters, not all SEO methods and professionals are created equal, and this uneven relationship can make it all too easy for web novices to end up getting scammed.

So put on your Sorting Hats. Here are a few simple rules to help you ensure that you are not one of the unfortunate many to get scammed by dark wizards.

Run away (Disapparate if you can) from:

• Companies that claim that they will optimize your site through “meta tag optimization and submission to the search engines.” It is well known that this tactic will no longer accomplish anything in terms of increasing search engine rankings
• Anyone who guarantees you a certain position in the search engines. Since the search engines run on their own proprietary algorithms, no one can guarantee a particular ranking
• Read fine print. Many companies use questionable tactics to meet their “guarantees”
• Be wary of anyone who won’t tell you what they are doing to your site, or says that they can do all of their work behind the scenes without changing the appearance of your site. The odds are that person is either doing nothing at all or engaging in some risky SEO strategies that can ultimately lead to a penalty for your website

Keep in mind:

• A high ranking is not everything when it comes to measuring SEO success. If you get a top ranking for a keyword phrase that doesn’t deliver relevant traffic to your website, then it has no value to your business. Having a lower ranking for a high converting keyword is far more valuable than being number one for some obscure phrase that no one searches. You and your SEO consultant should work together to find the appropriate keyword phrases for your business
• The SEO consultant you are working with should be concerned about your overall marketing objectives. SEO is just one component of an integrated marketing strategy, so understanding a client’s business is a vital part of any successful SEO strategy
• Be an active participant in the planning phases for your SEO project. Be sure to give frequent feedback on keyword suggestions, copywriting and site architecture recommendations
• Before any work begins, outline a detailed plan for measuring success with your SEO consultant. Specify what metrics will be tracked, what kind of reports will be generated and how often you will hold a review to discuss key accomplishments and next steps

However, there is a growing movement on the web to kill the dinosaur once and for all. This site provides a snippet of code that will encourage users to upgrade their browsers for betting online experience. That’s all well and good to persuade average Joe internet user, but what about the many companies out there who use corporate applications written specifically for IE6? Do they represent the “death” of the death of IE6?

Au contraire, my friend. Email marketing is alive and well, and still gaining ground as an effective marketing tool. Let’s look at some supporting evidence:

• 73% of email marketers say they are planning to increase email’s priority in their future marketing plans. eROI (2009)
• 50% said they’re more likely to buy products from companies who send them email, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business. – Epsilon “Branding Survey” (Feb 2009)
• 80% of Marketers Report Email Is Strongest Performing Media Buy Ahead of Search and Display. – Datran Media, “Marketing & Media Survey” (2008)
• 44% of email users said email inspired at least one online purchase, and 41% said it prompted at least one offline purchase. – JupiterResearch’s The Social and Portable Inbox (2008)

Pretty impressive stats. I also explained to the client that I had just received an email coupon from a favorite retailer that very morning and was planning to make a purchase on my lunch, as I often do. Seriously, my inbox is liquid gold for retailers.

So knowing that email marketing is alive and well, let’s look at some statistics related to email marketing best practices:

• Get to the Point With Your Subject Line. Emails with shorter subject lines significantly outperform emails with longer subject lines. 38 to 47 characters is the average number of characters that show up in the subject line of 57% of all U.S. email recipients’ email programs. – Epsilon (2009)
• Just Say No to Hump Day. Open rates are highest on Mondays, Tuesdays, and the weekends. – MailerMailer (2008)
• People like email with coffee and sandwiches. A recent eROI study found that 49.4% of marketers testing email find sending mid-day (10am-2pm) to be best, while 31.5% find start of the business day (6AM – 10AM) best.
• Beware of Frequency Freakout. A Jupiter Research Study showed that 40% of respondents stated the #1 reason they stopped subscribing to opt-in emails was because they were getting too many offers. While there is no magic number for how frequently you should send an email, the largest percentage of marketers choose to send weekly.

Obviously, both of these networks hold value (and/or create value) for their users. Both are very popular and both are adding members like mad. Both are also likely to take a hit in membership over the next several years as users grow bored with them and move on to the next big thing (which will probably be something from Google – like everything else). That said, if you had to hedge a bet on the success of one or the other, you might be inclined to go with Facebook since 250 million users is a lot more than somewhere around 5 million (though no “official” membership data has been released by Twitter). But it’s another shared characteristic of both networks that gives me pause: each has yet to turn a profit.

Popularity aside, we all know that nothing is free – and if these networks can’t figure out how to turn their fame into fortune, they’re sunk. Both have legions of super-smart people working tirelessly to try and figure out how to be profitable.

So why do I think Twitter has a better shot? Two reasons:

1. This article from today’s NYTimes.
2. And this article from Newsweek.com.

I found the most important information in the Twitter article to be this:

Twitter, which does not yet make money, is now concentrating on teaching businesses how they can join and use it, Mr. Banerji said, and the company plans to publish case studies. He is also developing products that Twitter can sell to businesses of all sizes this year, including features to verify businesses’ accounts and analyze traffic to their Twitter profiles.

For the Facebook article, it’s this:

The paradox of the social network is that trust—the very lifeblood of the site’s growth—may be the same thing hindering its financial success. Recently, the company faced a series of heavily-publicized battles when users were turned off by Beacon, an initiative by the site that targeted advertisements at individual users without their consent. After many Facebookers protested, discussions arose over what information Facebook owns about each of their users, and a new privacy code was established on the site.

Facebook members have grown too comfortable with the idea of the site being used for any purpose beyond the one it currently serves in their lives. They don’t want to get messages from advertisers in their inbox (even if they really might want what’s being peddled), they want messages from friends. Period.

Twitter on the other hand is new enough not to have fully cemented this kind of relationship with their users, and already seems to have an audience that is more open and accepting of commercial overtures. What’s more, some of the possibilities for revenue opportunities they’ve floated seem like winners. If I was a business owner or celebrity, I’d be more than happy to pay for the ability to weed out imposter accounts or access analytics of my profile page (at least one of which should be possible and free to begin with, but that’s a topic for another post).

Anyone disagree?

As part of their sponsorship efforts, Black Magic entered a customized, Ford F-150 SVT Raptor driven by the guys at Garage 419 into the rally to get in on the action and get extra mileage (pun intended) out of their participation.

To put rally fans in the passenger seat with the Black Magic team, we built a custom microsite with flash features for daily updates, race tracking and even a custom YouTube Channel. Through daily blog posts, an up-to-the-minute Twitter feed, maps, photos and videos, Black Magic fans were able to live the experience of an exclusive and world-renowned automotive event and interact directly with the brand in an engaging and authentic way. Check out our portfolio for more information or visit the site to see things for yourself!

A not-so-surprising report from J.P. Morgan tells us that the search engine is having trouble swaying people away from their usual search habits. No shocker there, it’s only a month old, and old habits/homepages/installed search toolbars are hard to break. But here are a few interesting highlights from the study:

• 59% of respondents had heard of Bing. Of that group, only 42% had tried it.
• Of the group that had tried Bing, 61% used it five times or less in June, which seems to suggest that people were interested in test driving it, but not making a permanent change.
• Interestingly, the people who gave Bing a try were primarily users of Ask and AOL, not Yahoo or Google. Only 10.6 % of surveyed Google users gave Bing a shot, whereas 25.8% of AOL users were willing to consider jumping ship. And really, if you wake up and find yourself using AOL, you should jump ship. Jump into any waters. Anywhere. Save yourself now…
• Despite the fact that the buzz around Bing (how many onomatopoeias can you use in one sentence?) was focused on design and reorganization of content, the interface was not what turned people on the most. 38.3% of surveyed Bing testers said that the relevance of the results was the greatest strength of Bing. Which validates what Google and search engine users have been saying all along…It’s relevancy that matters.

These are some important facts to think about, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel on Bing yet. I for one love to see competition in the search market because it drives innovation and in general, just makes things more fun and interesting. One important challenge that this study points out is that most people are unwilling to switch search engines simply because they are happy. 63% said they saw no weakness in their current search experience. It’s going to take some serious innovation powerful marketing to cause a breakup in search relationships for people who are already satisfied with their search experience.

The move to the web follows FedEx’s surprise decision to forgo ad space in the last Super Bowl after 20 years as a notable advertiser. At the time, the company felt like the expense ($3 million for a 30-second spot this year) was unjustifiable in light of the economic downturn. As FedEx’s director of advertising makes clear to the NY Times, the reach and relative affordability of the web has become impossible to ignore:

Steve Pacheco, director of advertising at FedEx, said the new infomercial campaign reflected FedEx’s acknowledgment of the growing sentiment that “lunchtime is the new prime time,” meaning that the multitudes who watch videos online while chomping sandwiches in cubicles rival those wielding remote controls at night.

“We’re still very involved in television, especially with all our sports and sponsorship support,” Mr. Pacheco said. “But digital advertising and communication is taking a bigger role in the overall plan, because we try to scale our media plan to be where our customers are.”

Web giants YouTube and Digg are the most recent sites to cut IE6 support, according to a recent Tech Crunch article.

If your message is accepted you will receive a picture of the printed message as well as the location so you can figure out when the riders will be passing it. You can submit your message online or via text message to get in on the action!

http://theguysmanual.msn.com/

It’s actually pretty cool, and they’ve done a pretty good job making some web videos that are fun, and make you want to eat Grape Nuts (the make me want to them at least).  Will this angle work?  I haven’t had Grape Nuts in forever, but I’m definitely jonesin’ for a bowl now.

Next up in the contenders’ corner – Microsoft’s Bing. Check out a few reviews of Bing and a short video that illustrates how it feels it may knock off the Champ.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bigMoney/idUS183638463920090529

http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html

Niche social networking sites are absolutely something people want to do. People clearly want to do this. . .[and] as people get more comfortable with social networking via Facebook, Twitter, they will look around and say, ‘I want a social network for this particular group.’

Read the whole interview…

“The show would feature players using Twitter to follow their favorite celebrities while competing in an interactive challenge. Producer Noah Oppenheim said the show would be the first to bring immediacy of the site to TV.”

I would say more, but I just vomited on my keyboard.

Behold: The Wordsmith

For privacy, Google claims that your answers to these questions are not tied to your Google account, even if you are logged in. However their servers will automatically record information including a cookie, ip address, browser type and language, and the date and time of your answer.

So it makes me wonder, why experiment only with health-related searches? In the future will they consider adding additional questions for other types of searches too, if they feel this will help improve their search results (and ad serving technology)?

1. People who are extremely lazy. And by extremely lazy, I’m talking too lazy to move one hand from the keyboard to the mouse. Or maybe you have a bad case of laptop touchpad hatred like me. For these folks, Keyboardr lets you search the web in a “mouseless” fashion, allowing you to use the arrow keys and enter button to scroll through search results and select the page you wish to explore. 
2. Competitive research. I love how the results update instantly, as you are typing in a keyword phrase. This allows you to quickly get a glimpse of all of the sites that rank for any given phrase in Google, Wikipedia and Youtube.

Two main reasons that I use this: it is faster than typing out a long phrase AND it keeps my last copied text. This is especially useful if you’ve got something to copy and paste over and over but you don’t want to lose it with each search. For example, if I’m browsing Thoughtprocess Interactive and I want to know more about search engine optimization:

Most of us have Googled ourselves at one point or another. Why not? It’s out there for everyone else to see and we should know what they’re looking at! Well, Google has a (not so) recent release that gives you the power over what they see.

Google Profiles lets you define yourself in the way YOU want to be defined. It may not get rid of the spring break pictures from freshman year of college but at least it’s a start.

Now, thanks to Charmin, users can download free mobile applications for iPhones and BlackBerrys that use GPS to show you the way to the nearest public pit stop. Not only will you get location, Sit or Squat also lets users rate each restroom based on ick-factor (an average rating above 2.5 is “sit,” below “squat”) so you can avoid less than stellar accommodations (if you have the luxury of being picky).

Being a toilet paper company, this is obviously a great fit for Charmin, and it’s getting them a lot of buzz on blogs and other traditional media outlets-which is the point, of course. What’s so interesting about it though, is that Sit or Squat was a pre-existing site – the lesson being that you don’t necessarily need to be a corporate giant for a good, common-sense interactive site or application to pay off. Certainly, Charmin’s saving some cash by avoiding the cost of custom application development and Sit or Squat now has a corporate sponsor to finance their brainchild and tell the world about it. It’s a win-win.

But the good news is that we will still be using Trillian in the future. Here’s your proof:

Many are singing (or tweeting) praises for the simplicity and ease of using twitter to connect with friends, and the proof of the pudding is in the traffic. Twitter has grown to 8 million users in the U.S., doubling in size in the past 4 months!

Facebook evens seems to have taken a page from twitters book with a recent redesign to highlight what were formerly known as status updates. However, 94% of facebook users dislike the new design. Oops.

I’m not completely sold on Twitter just yet. Maybe I’m a cynic, but it seems like an old product in a shiny new wrapper. I could have updated my status on instant messenger, facebook, linkedin, or blogger and it would essentially accomplish the same thing. I could communicate with friends and generate followers just the same on any of these other time-tested services. As Twitter climbs the Top 100 sites I have to ask one question:

Does Twitter revolutionize social networking or it is just 15 minutes of fame in 140 character increments?

… Well, sorta, anyway.

My second take is that I can’t decide whether this is a positive commentary on iPhone users (i.e. they know useless crap once they’ve seen it and never look back), or a somewhat less flattering one (they have an endless and apparently purposeless appetite for the latest gimicky digital froth).

I dunno. You guys tell me what you think.

Full disclosure: The device in my pocket was purchased when you still called them “cell phones” and they all had hinges in the middle, so this post might just be my pent-up gadget-envy lashing out at my luddite wallet.

When you come to Google wanting to search something (which is 20+ times a day for some of us) think about variations of the words that you’re using. For example, you may want to search for the size of a hay bale. You can arrange the words to search “hay bale size”, “size of a hay bale” or a different combination. In terms of what will give you the best results, usually the less amount of filler words the better.

The way that I propose using Google Suggest is to start a common sentence or phrase and see what suggestions pop-up. Since the suggestions are aggregated from common and popular-queries you are getting an insight into public opinion. So, if ethics are generally based on public opinion, perhaps you are getting a look at what is ethical as well.

Here are some examples that I particularly like:

According to suggest “you should never…”

• you should never ask for help on the internet
• argue with a crazy
• underestimate the predictability of stupidity
• smoke in pajamas….good to know in case I ever pick up smoking and get a late night craving

Also suggest says “my job is…”

• boring
• killing me
• making me sick
• stressful

I disagree, my job is sweet, I get to blog. But you can see what I mean about public opinion coming out in the suggestions. Having this information can be useful for market research, politicians, or tracking societal norms.

Maybe you’ll pause for a brief second, maybe that’s how you found this blog post, or maybe you’ll just continue ignoring it altogether

Note: if you find this page in error and are instead looking for hay bale size, there’s your link

However, a “new” idea has been thrown on the table recently - Instead of making users pay for content, what if you asked them for donations if they like the content? Okay, so the idea isn’t new, National Public Radio has been doing it successfully for decades, but it’s something the newspapers have not tried online yet. Or at least not to my knowledge, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Start up venture Kachingle (in private beta) has a solution that some feel could help bring this model to fruition.  From a high level, the Kachingle model works like this: 

• A user creates a Kachingle account, and you determine a monthly fee of what you are willing to donate to support good content. This could be $1, it could be $50, whatever you feel good content is worth.
• You sign in once per device – PC, laptop, phone, etc and Kachingle remembers you from that point on.
• Publishers who are part of the Kachingle network place a little Kachingle medallion on thier site
• When you are visiting a blog, online newspaper, etc that you like, you click on their Kachingle medallion which notifies Kachingle that you’d like some of your monthly fee to go to that site.
• Kachingle measures your usage across sites you’ve tagged to receive money, and allocates your donations accordingly. So for example, if you are willing to donate $5 a month to good news content on the web, and 50% of your usage goes to WSJ.com, then Kachingle would give $2.50 to WSJ.com that month. The remaining $2.50 would be split up amongst the other sites you “kachingled” (not sure if that is a real term yet) based on your usage of their sites.

So the real question becomes, is the problem with the paid news model the lack of choice? Will people not pay for online content when they are required to pay for it, but change their mind if they are given the choice to contribute based on their own assesement of the content’s value?

Yesterday Google introduced their Latitude service, a new feature that allows smartphone and laptop users to share their location with “friends” through  Google Maps. It has been compared to the “Marauder’s Map” from Harry Potter, and since someone made a Harry Potter reference, I had to investigate…

Like all Google services, Latitude is in many ways useful, and in many ways creepy. 

On the useful side of things, this new service has some cool benefits:

• Share your location with friends – Could be useful if you are traveling and want to see if any of your friends are nearby so you can meet up. 
• Location based marketing – Could be very useful for businesses to serve ads based on a users location and time of day. For example you could be served ads for nearby restaurants at lunchtime, or bars with happy hour specials later in the day.
• Tracking your equipment – This information could be very useful in the event that your phone or laptop is stolen, assuming it is signed into the service.

On the flip side, this service has loads of creepy potential. You might want to ask :

• Do I really need my friends to know where I am at any given time? 
• In the event that a third party (including the government) demanded access to this data, how much of a fight would Google put up to protect it? What if there wasn’t a Google anymore, then who gets it?
• How many ways could this data be used for evil? Oh let me count the ways – stalkers, jealous boyfriends, crazies in general…
• Will companies begin requiring use of this service so they can track (spy on) their employees and equipment?
• Hacking. Yesterday someone hacked the highway signs in the Metro East, altering their message to warn motorists of zombies and raptors up the road. What if someone was sending you creepy messages based on your location?

But this one was different… I actually learned something new.  Something that I would never have learned if not for the power of e-mail.

Read on:

Whoever looks at the end of your aluminum foil box?  
You know when you try to pull some foil out and  the roll comes out of the box. 
Then you have to  put the roll back in the box and start over. 
The darn roll always comes out at the wrong  time.
Well, I would like to share this with you. 
Yesterday I went to throw out an empty Reynolds foil box and for some reason I turned it,  and looked at the end of the box. And written on the end it said, Press here to lock end. 
Right  there on the end of the box is a tab to lock the roll in place. 
How long has this little locking  tab been there? 
I then looked at a generic brand of aluminum foil and it had one, too. 
I then  looked at a box of Saran wrap and it had one too! 
I can’t count the number of times the Saran wrap roll has jumped out, 
when I was trying  to cover something up.
I’m sharing this with my friends. 
I hope I’m not the only person that didn’t know about this.   

The ads can be viewed on their website at

http://www.adweek.com/aw/custom-reports/superbowl/video.html

Also, check out the classics tabs for some oldies but goodies. After all aren’t the commercials the best part most of the time?

After doing a couple of google searches, it turns out you have to delete your cache by going to Tools > Delete Browsing History > Delete All. You must then refresh your page in order to view the source. I really didn’t spend much time researching how or why this happens, but hopefully this will save someone a few minutes and a headache.

Yet another reason to stay as far away from this browser as possible…

Spencer Spinnell, Director of Google Print Ads comments in the blog post announcement, “While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted.”

The program was designed to allow the hundreds of thousands of Google Adwords advertisers to conveniently buy excess ad inventory from daily newspapers, in theory giving the newspapers a big revenue boost. Ironically, the newspapers are desperately in need of a revenue boost because most of their advertisers have moved thier ad dollars online, realizing that their newspaper ads were less effective than their online ads. So really, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this program failed.

Will they bailout the newspapers and just buy them? According to a Fortune magazine interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, no:

“The good news is we could purchase them. We have the cash. But I don’t think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems. It would help solidify the ownership structure, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem in the business.”

Well folks, at least we know they could do it, if they wanted to.  And as usual, there is a funnier version of this story at Valleywag.

Since I started writing AS3 code, I’ve generally viewed the mouseChildren and mouseEnabled properties of the InteractiveObject class (and by extension the Sprite class) as relatively superfluous. They existed as little more than a recourse for when something accidentally got ‘in between’ the mouse and a button that needed to be pressed. And in a sense that is true. But I realized today that those crafty AS3 creators had bestowed upon me a much more substantial tool than I’d first realized.

Fundamentally, these two properties are straightforward. Setting a Sprite’s mouseEnabled property to false tells that Sprite to not bother interacting with the mouse. In other words, to stop dispatching MouseEvents such as MouseEvent.CLICK. Likewise, setting a Sprite’s mouseChildren property to false tells the children of that Sprite to stop dispatching MouseEvents. By default, both properties are set to true.

The magic comes by virtue of the fact that these two properties work independently of each other. If a Sprite has children, setting that Sprite’s mouseEnabled to false does not prevent the Sprite’s children from dispatching MouseEvents. Similarly, setting the Sprite’s mouseChildren to false doesn’t prevent the sprite itself from dispatching MouseEvents. Why is this cool? Let me count the reasons:

• Sprite ‘flattening’. It used to drive me nuts that that a button made of multiple sub-elements (label, hilight, border, icon, etc) would have an indeterminate MouseEvent ‘originator’. That is, the target property of the MouseEvent would be ‘label’ or ‘highlight’ or whatever depending on the exact pixel over which the mouse rested, rather than simply ‘myButton’. I found myself putting invisible ‘mousetrap’ layers in my buttons to sit on top of everything to fix this. It turns out I don’t need to. By setting myButton.mouseChildren = false all the button parts become a single unit, collectively dispatching MouseEvents with a target of ‘myButton’.
• Group disabling. Need to disable a whole group of buttons? Make them siblings and set the parent Sprite’s mouseChildren to false.
• Event-bubbling simplification. By setting a container Sprite’s mouseEnabled = false but leaving mouseChildren = true, you prevent the ‘middleman’ from sending unnecessary MouseEvents to high-level MouseEvent handlers. Imagine a calculator, with multiple keys, a display screen, a surrounding ‘case’, a nice little Texas Instruments logo, whatever. If I add a MouseEvent.CLICK listener to the high-level calculator object, I will receive all of the various key clicks, but I will also receive events from the other child elements… the display, the case, the logo. Even if I set those elements to mouseEnabled = false, the calculator Sprite itself will still trigger its own MouseEvents when I roll over them. By following up with calculator.mouseEnabled = false, the high-level listener will now only receive events from the children that matter, and will not be encumbered with ‘false positives’.

Given this greater understanding, I almost wonder why the AS3 creators chose to set the default of mouseEnabled to true. After all… aren’t there generally far more ‘passive’ display objects on the stage than interactive ones? I’m sure they had a reason, and it’s probably one that I could find by Googling around a bit… but enough is enough. Hardcore geek session over.

Google has recently made some big claims about how Google Checkout impacts clickthrough rates on Adwords ads and overall conversion rates.  Google claims that conversion rates can increase by 40% (!) and click through rates on Adwords ads can increase by 10% for merchants who offers Google Checkout. For those who haven’t noticed, merchants who offer Google checkout get enhanced Google Checkout ads when they advertise with Google.

Of course, there is a catch to those claims. Those amazing CTR and conversion numbers are for “Google Checkout users” not for every person who sees your ad. Still, those numbera are impressive, and merchants who are looking for new ways to increase conversion rates may want to give Google Checkout some consideration.

1) Use the subject line in your e-mail for initial clarity and add as much information as you can without making it too long.

2) Consistently use the “To” line for all those who you require a response from, and put those who need the information but don’t need to respond, in the “CC” line.

3) State the main point in the first sentence of the e-mail so folks don’t have to guess what you’re trying to say.

I had to chuckle while reading the post because I think most of us are all too familiar with poor email communication. The Jedi Mind trick email surfaces quite a bit, or my personal favorite, the “pass the buck” email, in which one person forwards an email to 20 other unwilling CC recipients with a simple vague message such as “please advise.”

I did an experiment over at WhatWouldDadSay.com, where I asked readers to create a SIX-WORD résumé for themselves. Given the widespread fascination with Twitter and its 140-character limitation, I thought it would showcase good writing discipline. Not that you have to make your own six-word résumé, but notice how effective some of the (personal or otherwise) entries were:

• “As I live, so does Apple.”—Steve Jobs
• “Solving complex problems efficiently and elegantly.”—A personal entry
• Another personal entry: “I stand alone, next to me.”
• “Fire it up. Ready to go.”—Barack Obama
• From a real estate staging person: “Staging it better. Selling it faster.”
• Here is one of my favorites that combines two movie characters: “Now reverse in aging am I.”—Yoda Button

This may seem to be a worthless exercise—and it is certainly silly—but it’s not worthless if it only makes you realize that a lot can be said in a few well-chosen words.

That last paragraph there really hits it on the head. In my opinion, in the majority of instances- and almost always when you’re talking about web or ad copy- quality trumps quantity.

That said, anybody want to take a crack at their own six word resume?

You can see an example if you search for “book of revelations” in google. Once you see the search results, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “timeline results.”

After that you’re taken to a page with the complete timeline results:

Beyond keeping a watchful eye on risky interests and pictures, parents should also use social networking sites such as MySpace — which had about 120 million users as of this summer — as an opportunity to learn about their childrens’ favorite movies and hobbies, as well as their top friends, she said.

“You so often hear parents say ‘I don’t even know my kid anymore.’ Here’s a very easy tool to get to know your kid again,” she said.

Here’s the whole article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/05/myspace.teens/index.html

The major problem that I have (and many others have) is believing everything I read. I could see something on TV and believe 50% of it, hear the same thing from a friend and believe 75% of it, or see the words in print and believe it wholeheartedly. Perhaps it stems from learning from text books in school, or writing research papers with strictly text sources. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that reputation means a lot but even the most reputable authors and journalists aren’t exempt from bias.

The article that sparked these thoughts is about net neutrality. The article addresses the changing stances of major players in the net neutrality debate. The article is entitled “Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web“.

The article singles out Google and Stanford law professor, Lawrence Lessig:

• “Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content”
• “If companies like Google succeed in negotiating preferential treatment, the Internet could become a place where wealthy companies get faster and easier access to the Web than less affluent ones, according to advocates of network neutrality. That could choke off competition, they say.”
• “Google’s proposed arrangement with network providers, internally called OpenEdge, would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers”

• “Lawrence Lessig, an Internet law professor at Stanford University and an influential proponent of network neutrality, recently shifted gears by saying at a conference that content providers should be able to pay for faster service.”
• “Stanford’s Mr. Lessig, for one, has softened his opposition to variable service tiers. At a conference, he argued that carriers won’t become kingmakers so long as the faster service at a higher price is available to anyone willing to pay it.”

Google’s response:

• “Google has offered to “colocate” caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities; this reduces the provider’s bandwidth costs since the same video wouldn’t have to be transmitted multiple times. We’ve always said that broadband providers can engage in activities like colocation and caching, so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.”
• “All of Google’s colocation agreements with ISPs — which we’ve done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache — are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers’ connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.”
  

Mr. Lessig’s response:

• “Missing from the article, however, is the evidence that my view is a “shift” or “soften[ing]” of earlier views. That’s because there isn’t any such evidence. My view is the view I have always had — whether or not it is the view of others in this debate.”
• “As I testified in 2006, in my view that minimal strategy right now marries the basic principles of “Internet Freedom” first outlined by Chairman Michael Powell, and modified more recently by the FCC, to one additional requirement — a ban on discriminatory access tiering. While broadband providers should be free, in my view, to price consumer access to the Internet differently — setting a higher price, for example, for faster or greater access — they should not be free to apply discriminatory surcharges to those who make content or applications available on the Internet. As I testified, in my view, such “access tiering” risks creating a strong incentive among Internet providers to favor some companies over others; that incentive in turn tends to support business models that exploit scarcity rather than abundance.”
• “Now no doubt my position might be wrong. Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it is wrong — that it doesn’t go far enough. But the suggestion that the position is “recent” is baseless. If I’m wrong, I’ve always been wrong.”

http://www.thoughtprocessinteractive.com/holidaycard

It was a collaborative effort for sure, but expert snow-manimator, Abram, really made the magic happen.  I hope you all enjoy it.  Happy Holidays!

Burger King has captured the flame broiled essence of a Whopper and put it into a cologne for men. And of course they have a hilarious website to go with it. Genius. I can’t wait to see how Hardee’s answers. And PETA for that matter.

 More at their “Fire Meets Desire” website and a Yahoo Shopping article here. Too bad they are already sold out for the holidays, that would have been a great “white elephant” gift.

• Nearly nine in 10 (89 percent) feared keywords may become too expensive.
• Eighty-one percent questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.
• One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.
• Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming.
• Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

From an advertiser and a user perspective, I’m not happy with this change. Usually Google strives to make changes that benefit users and contribute to thier financial success. However, this just looks like pure greed to me. It’s way too easy for a user to accidentally click on an ad that hovers right below the search box, creating not only user frustration, but a potential wasted click for the advertiser.

As we can see below, this feature is also integrated with Google Maps:

It’s important to note that you have to login to http://draft.blogger.com to use this feature. You can read more on this feature here at the Blogger in Draft blog.

According to Google, Chrome is ready to come out of beta (already). In just 3 months time Chrome has won over 10 million users. Such impressive numbers demonstrate that there is still plenty of opportunity in the browser market. Apparently plenty of people are willing to jump ship, or at least consider jumping ship, on their current browser of choice. And so the browser wars continue…

“This fall, we changed our policy around beer, for the first time allowing advertisements of its sale in the U.S. via AdWords. And starting today, in response to advertiser feedback we’ve received over the years, we’ll permit the advertisement of hard alcohol and liqueurs that target the U.S.”

Or maybe it has something to do with the economy…

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see what our local (now quasi-local) brewery Anheuser Busch was doing with PPC. I ran a couple searches on “beer” and “mmm beer.” I was disappointed to see that no one is bidding on “mmm beer” because that would be my search of choice.

Then I began to wonder if Bud Light has clickability, not just drinkability. I searched “light beer” and this is what I saw: 

My analysis is that this particular ad doesn’t have much clickability. Thoughts?

“Blackbird is a web browser for the African American community. Blackbird was developed by a team of African Americans to allow you to connect to what’s going on in the African American community….Because we know that 85% of African Americans prefer online news information from the Black perspective.”

Um….Nevermind, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself on this one.

Something that never occurred to me when I purchased the iPhone in the summer (clever release date)…You can’t use it with gloves on. It only responds to your bare skin. This poses a major problem and serious annoyance, especially when you’re driving or walking around outside in the cold. It’s really not cool to have to either:

1) Scramble to take my gloves off and get to the phone in time to answer while simultaneously operating a vehicle or walking two large dogs, or…
2) Use my nose to unlock the screen and type in my password.

That little oversight has become a real annoyance.

http://bewareofthedoghouse.com/

And can I put a plug in for their spend $25 get $10 off coupon they’ve been sending out lately. Another great way to pick up some much needed foot traffic.

Some of the arguments: “Online marketing increasingly aims for awareness, consideration, preference and loyalty all at once…Marketing managers can therefore defend their online budgets as being both above and below the line.” And in relation to traditional forms of advertising: “All this makes spending on [online] advertising much less speculative, so that it starts to be treated instead as a cost of sales.”

San Diego Calc teacher sells ads on his tests to recoup money lost in budget cuts. Brilliant. I’m just glad I’m finished with school because my mother would have bought a large banner at the top of the test threatening me to fail another Calc test…

As we learned from Pulp Fiction, bacon is good. And apparently it’s good for more than eating. Just thought I’d notify you Cyber Monday shoppers of some interesting bacon gifts I discovered thanks to a friend who identifies himself as a bacon (um, we’ll just use the world “fan” instead of what he actually said).  Perpetual Kid has bacon wallets, bacon floss, and my favorite: bacon and egg breakfast bandages.

The site is designed for hardcore fans to get tickets to see their team in the big game. However, just like the NYSE there is also a trading aspect to the ticket market. Pretty impressive, right?

Gamblers and underdog (Cubs) fans beware:  If your team does not make it, you lose your investment.

A great flash site and a very cool concept, IMHO:

https://www.yoonew.com

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4259135.html

And apparently Microsoft is working on just this thing, with collaborative searching:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4292830.html?page=2 (see #7, collaborative search)

My mind’s too simple to make sense of it all, but it looks like there are some big things coming.

So I want to whine and kick and scream because this hasn’t rolled out to my Google account yet, but Google launched SearchWiki today. Instead of testing it, I have to sit back and envy others who are using it and tweeting about it.

Here’s an article on Mashable about how it works: http://mashable.com/2008/11/20/google-searchwiki/

According to Mashable (and jerks who already have the feature), SearchWiki allows you to re-order search results, remove or add links to the search results page, and leave notes with any listing which others will be able to view.

Wow, major changes.

I found a lot of different opinions and reasons for liking one or disliking another.  For me, it came down to performance (after all, it has to keep up with my tab count). Here is the study I found:

Beta Browser Speed Tests:  Which Is Fastest?

Apparently they are both threatened with extinction. Well, according to this article by the Wall Street Journal. Ouch.

This is a web ad that was launched as part of a print and online advertising campaign for Motrin on Sept. 30th, and it’s a great example of two things:

1) Copywriting matters.

2) Word of mouth combined with web 2.0 is powerful thing.

So, what happened here is Motrin designed a campaign that is obviously targeted to a very valuable demographic: women with children. Their primary message can be found in the Clintonesque tagline they’ve used at the end of this ad: “Motrin. We feel your pain.” Nice, right? Simple enough. Makes sense. And then it all goes downhill.

Someone at Motrin decided that the best way to make this connection would be to focus on the aches and pains associated with wearable baby carriers – which have become popular with parents over the past several years because of the unique bonding experience they provide. This too, is all well and good, until you read/hear the first line of the ad:

“Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.”

Hmmm. Right off the bat, you’ve got problems. First, this statement could (and coincidentally, did) imply that wearing your baby in a carrier has more to do with appearing fashionable or hip than bonding with your child (think Paris Hilton clutching a miniature dog on a red carpet). Generally, anything that may compare someone’s child to a celebutant’s chihuahua is unwise. But, there’s still an opportunity to clarify with the follow-up statement, which includes the phrase:

“Supposedly it’s a real bonding experience.”

So close! Replace “Supposedly” with “There’s no denying that” and you’re home free! Until this next doozy:

“I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain. It’s for my kid.” (getting warmer…) “Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom.” (Cold)

Clearly, nobody ran this copy past anyone from the target audience-or a good editor (which, for the record, is almost always a wise move). As you might expect, mothers of America were none too pleased, and they voiced their dismay in a big way. The ad was pulled after two days of a massive mommy 2.0 backlash on Twitter and blogs across the internet.

Motrin’s new PR problem is a perfect example of how little appealing graphics and a good idea (or intentions) mean if the copy isn’t right.

“Agency officials say the water from the system will be cleaner than U.S. tap water.”

Maybe Bear Grylls is actually on to something…

PC World – Top 11 Lamest Blogs

I actually know of a few blogs that are lamer than these. Why is it Top 11 anyway?

http://www.rhesus.at/

Just wanted to let you all know that the Extreme Home Makeover St. Louis edition will be airing this Sunday at 7pm on abc. Thanks for everyones help in getting their site up and going!

I think I’m gonna use it anyway…

Do a Google search for “Find Chuck Norris”, and click “I’m Feeling Lucky”.  It’s worth it.

 http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=12007147

“We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of [removed] publishers. During these difficult times, we’re continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.”

The letter then went on to say that the company realizes the partners are one of the company’s greatest assests and the company does not take for granted the fact that their success is tied to their partners’ committment.

“We’ll keep driving technological progress, but our best asset will always be our publisher partners. The strength of [removed] lies in the value of the content you bring to users and the quality of the sites you bring to advertisers. Our success is tied to yours. We look forward to partnering with you for the long term, and remain dedicated to helping you succeed.”

So it’s probably obvious to you now who this letter came from even though I removed their product name twice. It came from Google. The phrase that was removed twice was “Adsense.” Google is reaching out to Adsense publishers with a heartfelt email. 

One would think that an email that went out in mass to an entire nation of Adsense publishers wouldn’t have much of an impact on an individual level. But it did have an impact on me actually. It made me think for a couple of reasons:

1.  It caught me off guard initially because Google isn’t exactly known for customer service with Adsense Publishers. Granted their CS has been improving quite a bit over the last couple years, but still, it was unexpected.
2. After the initial “huh” moment, it made me think of something more important. I thought about how critical customer service can be when times are tough economically. When your clients are feeling the pinch of a recession, a little extra customer service goes a long way. Letting your clients know that you value their business and that you’re committed to helping them succeed can make all the difference in the world. It could be the difference between developing a long-lasting and respected relationship with them or being the first to find out they’ve recently had budget cuts.

One device that seems to always keep me locked out with proprietary software and drivers is my cell phone, but not anymore.  The new Android-enabled phones have an open source framework that will give any developer the ability to take mobile apps to the next level.  Read more about Android on Google’s website:

http://code.google.com/android/

Check it out: http://www.thoughtprocessinteractive.com/roi/

Obama Tax Calculator

Taxes are complicated. Taxes are boring. Taxes are different for everyone, so they’re hard to effectively explain. What the Obama team’s done here is an excellent example of how an interactive application can cut right through all of that. Simply and easily, it takes a complicated proposal and breaks it down in a way that speaks to people on a personal and direct level while demonstrating the stark difference between the candidate and his competition on this issue. Doesn’t get better than that!

Here’s a summary of the new ad formats in the works, but you can read Danny’s article on Advertising Age here.

1. “Show Products” Ads — Very cool for ecommerce sites. This ad format provides a little plus symbol under the ad copy that says “Show Products From [Merchant Name]“. Users can click on the plus symbol and product listings with images will appear beneath the ad, pushing competitors ads down the page (extra cool). Will we see this in time for Christmas?

2. Google is testing ads on Google Image Search – Banner ads (yep) have started appearing on Google Image search, near the bottom of the page. People have also seen adwords listings with images next to the ad copy.

3. Google is testing “Promoted Videos” on YouTube – Just like Adwords for video. These ads run alongside the normal YouTube search results, and allow advertisers to promote their video content on YouTube on a CPC basis.

4. YouTube “Click to Buy” links – Now you can see these links below some videos. It allows viewers to purchase products related to the videos they are viewing. It generates some revenue for Google, helps calm some compyright infringement issues, and it helps publishers convert viewers to a sale. Very clever. It makes me wonder how many times I would have bought something directly from my TV, after viewing a commercial, if I had that option. Probably too many times, especially during those super motivating infommercials…

5. More ads at Google Maps – We’re starting to see text ads show up beneath the map area on some maps.

1. Gas drops to $2.79/gallon
2. Milk drops to $3.50/gallon
3. US jobs exceed 138 million
4. The Twin Cities median home price returns to $233,000
5. Osama Bin Laden is captured

http://www.hyundaigenesis.com

I’m pretty impressed.  Makes good use of video, some cool pseudo 3D stuff, and… I got there by clicking on a banner ad, so their ads are good too.  Pretty nice campaign altogether.