Archive for June, 2005

RSS is the future for content delivery. Microsoft just announced that IE 7 will contain built in RSS discovery features, which will mean the number of web users with an aggregator will go from 10% to some number very much larger. But keep in mind that you will need to be using XP SP2 or Windows Vista to use IE7.

How much time do you waste on-line looking for something? If you’re like me, a huge amount. RSS and delivered headlines/feeds have really helped, but what would you pay for a “cleaned” version of what’s out there? $0.05/page? $0.10/site?

Well, it’s no accident that Google is building its own wallet system. While clearly there is going to be some kind of integration with Froogle, what nobody is yet thinking about is pay-for-content. In order to efficiently deliver something like this (e.g. “micropayments”) Google needs to have 100% full integration with the engine itself. Even the crawlers are involved in this transition.

The model isn’t new. Many media outlets (e.g. NY Times) already provide teaser intros to premium content. A micropayment, (pay per article) allows you access to that one bit. This model is going to shape the business internet of the future.

Yahoo Subscrition Search is the latest example of this system. Check it out here: http://search.yahoo.com/subscriptions

Google Scholar is also coming up
http://scholar.google.com/

Whoo hoo! I just passed the Google Adwords Professional Exam. That test was kinda nasty. Wow, glad to have that one behind. I admit, however, I do know a LOT more about Adwords best practices than I did. The eye opener is that most folks do it *wrong* and there must be tens of millions of dollars being wasted here. I have work to do!

Flash was originally known as “Future Splash Animator” by FutureWave, Macromedia Flash 1.0 was introduced in 1996 shortly after the purchase of FutureWave.

Not much later came: http://www.skipintro.nl/skipintro/skipintro98.htm (I’m still laughing)

Well, I propose that we make August 1 “National Skip Intro Day” To celebrate, how about picking up one of my shirts:

http://www.zazzle.com/products/product/product.asp?product%5Fid=235812948985762947

RSS is an acronym for “Real Simple Syndication” and is simply a way for you to get highly-compatible blobs of data out to the public in a format that many systems can read, XML.

One of the methods of using “incoming” RSS is to send out news snippits. Those on the receiving end can pick up these blobs and aggregate them into a single screen using a, what else, a RSS aggregator.

Once you get the hang of using RSS, it becomes rather obvious how you can use it for business. Staying well informed no longer requires wading through irrelevant news to find the nuggets you’re after, providing your queries are well written, and that you have the right feeds.

Setting up an RSS aggregator software (even Outlook, My Yahoo, and AOL home pages allow you to link to RSS) you can watch your competition, industry moves, and more. Done right, it filters out the noise and gets you what you need, updating itself as often as you want.

For web design and content management it has some very real implications. Activity in the marketplace may lead you to add to your FAQ list, or even to add a new page and Pay Per Click term. When a buzz happens, you can become a part of it “right now” and reap the benefits of that energy.

Example: Let’s say you are selling ABC jeans. You can set up an RSS feed searching the major news wires and entertainment feeds so that if a celebrity wears ABC jeans and someone tells the public what they’re wearing, you can be ready with keywords, pay visit terms, and a special page for them to find and shop on.

There’s gold in those hills!

In many broad metropolitan areas, when dialing a number, a “1″ is required for some areas, and not for another when making a call. Today, I went to call a client in Paris, KY, and heard that amazingly annoying message “The number you have reached doesn’t require a 1, please check the number and try again.” - which required me to redial the ENTIRE number.

Okay, wait a second - didn’t this call just happen over a high-tech parallel processing fiber optic network? So… WHY NOT JUST REMOVE IT FOR ME and complete the call? You could, if needed, say “The 1 was removed from your number as it was not needed… completing your call” … but that would be way too easy, wouldn’t it.

The same thing happens on web forms. WHY must I enter my credit card expiration date just the way you want it? Why not do a little bit of logic behind the scenes and replace that slash with a dash in the date if that’s what you want?

If I forget to type something, why not put the cursor there and ask me nicely, perhaps telling me why you need it? How about changing the color of what I forgot so I can find it on your ridiculously long web forms?

It’s just another symptom of websites being created from wizards and templates without any regard for the customer. I’m a believer in computers, and use them whenever it’s possible to save humans work. If you can write 10 lines of Javascript code to simplify the process for every single customer, isn’t it worth it? Better said, aren’t THEY work it?