Archive for the 'Shiny New' Category
Subscribe to This Category

An article in today’s USA Today featured a story about wi-fi on Cincinnati’s bus system. Given the dramatically lowered cost of mobile web access, this seems like it will catch on with busy pros, bloggers, and those just wanting to start their work day by getting through some email. Wi-Fi on trains is getting more popular but many cities have no trains or subways.

Twenty cities are offering the service now. The question I would have is if bus drivers will get tired of waiting on laptop users to close up their devices before leaving the bus. Sliding a blackberry in your pocket or walking with it is no problem. A laptop is not so easy.

bus photo by Brian Pennington used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

It looks like Google Transit has a new look, and I like the new one better. The US Locations are now in one alphabetic list, with international locations listed on the right. It also adds time of departure or arrival to help with planning in a new simple box.

Old Layout:

I just learned the source: Modern Mechanix

Many times when working on articles, or doing research I’ll come upon posts, pages, or articles that look interesting, but after I click to them, I realize they are from 1999 or 2001. While well written, anything that happened that long ago is usually irrelevant to the search marketing and site design business. The Google Info View lets me limit the dates much like Google Blog Search. Nice.

Here today I checked out Google Alternative Views, which includes the ability to choose between several types of views - and significantly alters the search engine results pages based on your “mode.”

It looks as if there may be the need for a new meta-tag (e.g. like the currently valid ‘address’ tag) which helps pages identify dates, locations, etc, because most of the page results came back “No locations for this page” or “No dates for this page”.

The date sorting feature was slick in concept but I’ve not made it work very well. I wonder if new meta tags or sitemap tags will help to categorize pages into these buckets. The locations page was wonderful when you’re trying to get information relevant to the locale, but you’re not really searching for a local business. I searched for “Search Marketing Seminars” and chose Chicago as the “location” — the results were limited in a very clean way. It works like a filter - but I couldn’t quite pick out what it was trying to do. I had to do a lot of different searches before I found a good results page showing the feature well.

One usability issue… it’s easy to forget you’ve not entered a date yet. I think Google should either allow a default, or show “no” results until you’ve chosen a date, if you’re in that mode. The results that return when you’ve not entered a date are nonsensical. I’d like to see them pop a timeline on the left side like Google Blog search has - with a default.

It’s too early to say how this would affect SEO or how businesses might be able to make sure they rank for each of the data types - but it certainly adds some dimensions to the organic search space to consider down the road.

[carpwp:feed{http://feeds.copyblogger.com/Copyblogger}][/carpwp]

I saw this myspace-promotion for the first time on a site-placement campaign, and if you click, it auto-adds myspace to your sites list for that campaign or you can look at myspace placements. I guess not enough people were advertising on myspace or perhaps it was just getting lost in the mix?

I’m pretty sure a lot of people will just click putting them into the entire myspace adspace. I hope people will at least think about the individual placements.

Clearly part of Google’s late summer deal with Fox Interactive, I’m guessing it will be tricky to convert unless you’re very careful on this unless you have a site marketing to 13-18 year olds and something free to offer them. Definitely need to approach this kind of audience with a new media plan that builds community rather than the traditional sales funnel.

My prediction?  Google will start offering free analysis/consultation on placing on the myspace network.

AT CES, Samsung showed off their new web-connected TV which lets you display subscribed RSS feeds (only USA Today for now) on the screen. Equipped with an Ethernet connection, they can pull RSS feeds, allowing you to customize your news, weather, sports, and more. Other providers are also working on improving this integration, but I like Samsung’s approach.

Information dashboards are all the rage. I’ve seen executives with 5 plasmas on their wall, each displaying a few data points (and helping to heat their office) My parents would never use this, but for upwardly bound news junkies, having feeds show over Bloomberg, CNN or other incoming information sources might be the perfect office jewelry. It reminds me of what was cool about Pointcast, but using the latest tech.

RSS can of course carry rich media (it’s really just a list of pointers in a package) so there is no limit to the types of textual, audio, video, and interactive information that can flow this way.

“USA TODAY is excited about this innovative and groundbreaking partnership with Samsung,” said Jeff Webber, senior vice president of advertising for USA TODAY and publisher of USATODAY.com. “The ability to deliver up-to-date news content to Samsung’s customers is just one more way USA TODAY is working to expand how people get news and information.”

USA TODAY is a multimedia brand with print, digital, video and mobile platforms that reach millions of readers each month. USA TODAY will provide national and world news as well as keep viewers in touch with the latest in money, sports, life, weather and politics news for the InfoLink™ RSS service. The Weather section will allow viewers to personalize current temperatures and seven-day forecasts by zip code and will also feature weather alerts. Markets data will offer market summaries and individual stock quotes.

Consumers need only to press the special RSS button on the Samsung HDTV remote control to bring up a semi-transparent menu overlay featuring selectable newsfeeds covering a variety of customizable topics. Consumers can then either browse through headlines to catch a quick glimpse, or select a specific story to view full story. Content already playing on the HDTV will remain on-screen, ensuring that moments from a favorite show or a fantastic play during the big game will never be missed, all the while having the most up-to-date news, weather and more just a click away.

Video Here

The big question for me is what happens when you click.

What About the Search and Social Media Players?

(more…)