Archive for March, 2007

Changes in Googles Adwords algorithm have had a major impact in the ability to use this tool for affordable testing of highly focused landing pages. There is a correlation in my experience between volume of content and cost of bids. So “pure” landing page design “labs” have really become a challenge of late. What was once the perfect method for refining messages is now subject to the penalization of Google’s Quality Score and rapidly increasing minimum bids. It used to be that Yahoo! was available for such testing, but not anymore. The old fall-back behaves similarly on “pure” landing pages.

So is there a way to accomplish tight testing with Adwords without distracting customers from the “eyepath” and call-to-action? The risk is that we’ll lose leads as customers move away from our page into other content. What was initially a plea for information (and thus a lead) has become a skimming reader and no lead. We were able to provide information as a reward using a CRM tool and being a sales process rather than just posting it all on the landing page.

But now, these pages are going to have to become micro-sites, contining sufficient content to bring down the bids while retaining enough interest to acquire the all-important customer information. Micro-niche marketing is not getting easier, nor is testing via PPC engines.

This is just another good reason to design the sites properly from the beginning rather than trying to produce too many corrective actions via sub-designs.

UK has been working on getting SAP installed for a while now, but these things take time to do right. I’ve not seen the new myuk.uky.edu system (sneak peek soon!?) but apparantly they’ve targeted the most inefficient systems in the legacy setup, especially schedule building, registration, grading, and student accounting.Â

But some students are apparently having a little trouble - mostly with passwords. But this is a big system and one should expect this kind of issue in the zone where wo/man meets machine.

PS: While the SAP folks are in town, perhaps they could swing by the LFUCG for a few minutes and take a look at a little problem they’re having.

UPS now allows you to re-route packages en-route via their website myups.com. How cool is that? In theory you could re-route a package forever, and blame a slipped deadline on shipping delays.Â

How about UPS Pong? You could play a game where packages are bounced around the country - timing is everything here - and whoever received the package loses. A cool interface could show the package on Google maps. If you bypass the other persons re-routing instructions and get your package through… SCORE!!!

Oh wait… $10 per re-routing instruction. Crap.

Google is now offering $400 off your first radio ad placed on Google Audio Ads.  Since ad creation averages around $400 (according to Google) this means it gets merchants in the door gratis.

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old vs. new

As one who is currently car shopping (mine’s 12 years old) I’ve been checking out the Ebay Motors new design tonight, which is being shown to a few Ebay Users. Ebay has spent a lot of time making the new Ebay Motors site airy and much less cluttered. When I look at the old interface now, it appears positively drab. The new color scheme is cheerful and less like a machine shop, something I doubt resonated well with many of eBay’s female shoppers.

When searching for the car, a much improved search and drill down interface has been developed, based on tabular pages. Tabs appear for the search page and the automotive details page. Purists may hate having to click from tab to tab, but the groupings seem well thought out, and the clutter is removed. The new filtering tool lets you add or remove criteria with a mouse click and is very intuitive. You can view “recent” sales with one click, rather than trying to set up a “completed” items search and fumbling around on your own. Price research is compiled for you as well, showing the past few sales and what comparable cars have sold for.

When you‘re looking at an individual car, you get another tabbed interface. The old screen was long (left) and wasted a great deal of screen real estate, but the new one (right) uses pixels much more efficiently. Ebay has left room for more tabs, and I’m sure they’ll find a way to entice sellers to add more car details, such as video, in short order.

So I expect that Ebay users will like the new layout, and we may well see the remainder of Ebay get a revamp in the near future. It certainly is easier to use now - I just wish paying for a new car was as easy.

If being in the field and recording interviews, thoughts, music, or other digital content for podcasting is your life, then this little beauty is going to get you excited.  While the Edirol R-09 has been around for a while, it’s getting new attention as podcasting begins to really grow and people are looking for convenient mechanisms to allow spontanious capture of life events. Trade shows, lectures, and other gathering spots are often great places to find and talk with people - making great content for your podcast and, transcribed, your blog.   Churches, class lectures, and recorded histories are more amazing applications for this little machine.

 This gets curiously close to my tounge-in-cheek Podcast Buddy concept from a couple of years ago… and I’m glad to see it develop into a real product.Â

What I would adore for this product would be a dock that has a XLR port, USB connection to the computer and built-in charger. From this we could not only do our editing right from the device, but we could use it for telephone call recording in combination with the JK Audio broadcast host.

Notes to self:

• Raid 0 is not worth it for desktop apps compared to the safety of Raid 1. Even log analysis tasks that hit the drive a lot.
• If you leave your USB drives plugged in during RAID 1 array config your main, Windows logical drive will end up on drive “G” or something.
• It’s hard to change logical drives once you’re all set up.
• MOZY rocks. This let me grab a few key files. It “could” have saved me totally if needed.
• Secondcopy rocks. This cut hours and hours off of this task since I use it to dupe many files to external drives nightly.
• Dell Precision 670 machines are noisy, no matter what fans you install, especially with dual processors.
• Maxtor drives have failed me twice. These failed after 5 months. I’m trying Western Digital this time.

Questions:

• Why isn’t drive formatting built into RAID array configuration? It’s silly to have to sit there and hit “ok” every few hours. Why not have a “two new drives” setting that handles it and lets you just go to bed.

personalpost

Gumby’s 50 today.  But Google Forgot.

LOL

The Public Radio Talent Quest, a search for the Next Great Host. It’s open to all comers; it has cash awards, more than $70,000 courtesy of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and offers the chance, if you have what it takes, to be a public radio star.  Also, learn about it on Youtube.“To enter the first round of the Talent Quest, which starts on Monday April 16th, 2007, upload two minutes or less of audio that reflects your personality and uses your voice. That’s it. We want to hear who you are. Show the judges and the public the elements of your personality that make people look forward to spending time with you. It’s what we’re calling “hostiness,” and it includes people who are:Engaging, smart, curious, surprising, honest, intriguing, have sense of humor, clever, authentic, human, real, trustworthy, knowledgeable, maybe even someone you’d have dinner with.

In short – it’s a lot like dating. You gotta make a great first impression to get past Round 1.

We don’t want to say much more than that because we want to hear where you’re going to take this. We will suggest that you focus on you and your own voice when you enter. We’re looking for great hosts more than someone with classy audio editing chops.”

I’d do it if I weren’t so busy lame as a radio star.

Good luck!

“There was a great disturbance in the force” ….

A lot of new artists and indie music got silenced today by the new royalties.

Hat tip to Michael J, who showed me that Los Angeles-based 89.9 KCRW’s free streaming has gone silent and General Manager Ruth Seymour has just posted the station will now have to pay fees for every listener and have stopped their free streaming, causing bar charts to go erily flat.Â

And this is not just ANY web radio station - this is KCRW, which streams 1.6 million streaming hours per month via Real Networks, AOL Radio, Shoutcast, Windows Media and iTunes. In January, 2007, nearly 1M KCRW podcasts were downloaded and 470k connections were made to its streaming audio service.Â

For more information, please visit:

- SaveTheStreams.org (created by Radio and Internet Newsletter)

- Anxious Times for Net Radio, The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2007

- Webcasters Find Congressional Allies Over CRB Ruling at Hearing, Radio and Internet Newsletter, March 8, 2007

- Ruling Could Hit Internet Radio’s Stop Button (audio), Marketplace, March 7, 2007

- Fee Ruling May Imperil Internet Radio, The Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2007

- Webcast Royalty Rate Decision Announced, Radio and Internet Newsletter, March 2, 2007