I want to give a quick thanks to Ben Blanquera and the guys at TechLife Columbus for featuring me in today’s update!
TechLife LinkedIn Profile – Kris Hardy – Software Evangelist
December 14, 2009
September 3, 2009
Macromedia Founder Creating “Digital City” in Ohio
The Digital City Project - Columbus, OH
Marc Canter, a founder of Macromedia and now CEO/Chairman and Founder of Broadband Mechanics, gave a very interesting presentation/pitch yesterday at the TechLife Columbus Meetup at the Chocolate Cafe near OSU.
If you don’t know Marc, he was with the MacroMind/Macromedia back when they had first developed and released Flash (or maybe it was the predecessor to Flash, I’m not 100% sure). Multimedia is a huge interest of Marc’s, and more recently, he’s been teaching a course at Case Western Reserve University on this concept of a “Digital City”.
The presentation was a little scattered, but here’s what his vision as how I understand it:
Using a special interest of “Workforce Development”, his company, Broadband Mechanics, is developing and deploying an open source social network software platform called “People Aggregator”. This software allows blogging, social networking, live video chat, and all the other usual social-media stuff. It is developed to OpenSocial specifications, so that it can be integrated with other open social media platforms (Facebook, Google, etc.). Now, at this point in the presentation, I was starting to think “so what?”
But here’s what is very interesting about this, and what makes this is unique business. Marc realized that there are a few needs that are unfulfilled in the market today:
April 6, 2009
AdWords Confusion Lawsuit: Google’s Dismissal Overturned
2d Circuit: Rescuecom Defeats Google's Motion to Dismiss (4/3/09)
When I first started watching these paid search lawsuits, I personally thought that they were non-issues. In several cases of companies suing the search engines for running competitor’s adds on the search engine results pages for a trademarked term, the search engines had won. A precedent had already been set from these cases, right? At least I thought so.
Now, that leads to this article that was published on Friday: Google Loses Round in AdWords Lawsuit.
To boil down the article to the sticky residue that remains, the 2nd Circuit federal appellate court overturned Google’s motion to dismiss the case for allowing the trademark “rescuecom” to trigger paid ads.
While this doesn’t mean that Google will lose the case, it is an interesting reversal since the case was originally dismissed by the district court on the grounds that allowing the keyword “rescuecom” to trigger paid advertisements did not violate trademark law because it wasn’t a use in commerce.
April 2, 2009
Twitter is for… Plants?
Pothos on Twitter
It seems that nearly every day someone is figuring out a way to plug another object of their into Twitter. It’s pretty interesting to watch, because creativity can run wild when you put your mind to figuring out ways that an object can send a 140-character message to you.
This latest one is very simple, but pretty unique:
Kate Hartman and Rob Faludi of New York University decided to make a system that allows a plant to tell its owner, via Twitter, that it needs water.
The idea is actually a continuation of an older idea from 2007, where Hartman and Faludi made a system that called its owner over the telephone:
March 28, 2009
Paid Search Lawsuit: Did Amazon Infringe on “Video Professor” Trademark?
Amazon.com is in another lawsuit, this time being sued by Video Professor over trademark infringement from Amazon’s ads through Google AdWords.
If you are not familiar with Video Professor, it is an education company that sells instructional videos and information on popular computer software.
The complaint alleges that Amazon violated the trademark right of Video Professor by running ads with Google that appeared when a user searched with the query “video professor”. Video Professor argues that:
March 27, 2009
Google AdSense Now Officially Twittering @adsense
Beginning on March 23rd of this year, the Google AdSense team registered their “Official” Twitter Account @adsense.
Their first post was a bit interesting:
Ads by 47 6F 6F 6F 6F 6F 6F 6F 67 6C 65
(For those of you interested, if you convert the hex codes to ASCII, it reads “Ads by Gooooooogle”. This is the tagline that shows at the bottom of all AdSense ads)
So what does this mean, and why would Google AdSense officially take part in Twitter? Are they going to start tweeting ads?
Thankfully, no. At least, not yet.
March 26, 2009
YouTube to Open Access to Insight Analytics
One weak point with YouTube is that their viewer analytics are very poor. Especially since the videos can be embedded in any other site, having a good grasp of who views your videos will allow you to target your message directly to them. With poor analytics, it requires a lot of guessing and intuition. However, with a good analytics package, you have data that can help guide your decisions.
A good analytics package for video needs to show you:
- Where your viewers are from
- Their demographic information
- What site they were on when they watched your video
- Any interaction they had with your video
- How long they watched the video
- If they watched your video from the “Related Videos” field, you also should know what video they came from and what video they went to.
- What searches the user did to get to your video (whether that search was in YouTube or Google, etc.)
- Integrate with your other analytics packages, such as Google Analytics
YouTube Insight Screenshot
Some of this information is already in YouTube Insight, which is YouTube’s tightly held analytics system. However, some of the most valuable information (such as search results and related videos) are not in place yet.
Also, integration with Google Analytics or other analytics packages is not yet available.
Here’s the good news:
“One of the things we’re looking to do going forward is to provide people Insight information where and how they want it,” said Tracy Chan, a YouTube product manager, in an interview.
“Right now you have to log into YouTube to get the information, but we’re working on servicing that need of getting the information where and when you want it. That’s something we’ve heard loud and clear from our users,” he added.
One of the improvements that YouTube has recently made was adding the Community tab to Insight. This allows you to see, at-a-glance, the number of ratings, comments, and other interaction with your videos.
YouTube is sitting on a gold-mine of analytics data. This data will do nothing but help marketers and video publishers best position their videos, and help them deliver content specific for the people that are watching their videos.
Keep a close eye on what YouTube does with Insight. I know that I will be.
-Kris
March 25, 2009
Google Debuts New Adwords Interface
Google recently launched their new Adwords interface at Search Engine Strategies – New York, and it is looking very interesting.
Here is a screenshot that was taken by AccuraCast during the UK pre-launch testing in February of this year. The campaigns now appear in a left column (similar to Adwords Editor), with the campaign summaries below the chart.
Google's New Adwords Interface
One of the issues that I have always had with the current version of Adwords is that I regularly find myself shuffling back-and-forth, especially when I am writing new ads. Also, when I am managing large accounts that have many different campaigns, the web-based interface is a bear to deal with.