http://www.cohaa.org/content/?q=node/32

If you want to find more events like this, make sure you join the Enterprise Application Integration Alliance at Meetup.com!  Membership is free!

At one time or another, tired from a long day of work, we have all attended an Agile presentation that we were really excited about — only to have our excitement quickly fade when the presenter opened by explaining what an iteration was, leaving us to wonder if it would be rude to walk out.

I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again, but I can guarantee it won’t happen this Thursday (3/25/10). For the first time COHAA is putting together a presentation geared towards the Intermediate to Advanced Agilist. If you are interested in having Agile events beyond Agile 101 here in Columbus, please do your part by joining us this Thursday, and forwarding this to any of your fellow Agilists. As usual, the event is free, and dinner will be provided.

*Bonus: Rubber Chickens will be provide for anyone who asks questions such as, “What is a backlog?”

RSVP at:
http://www.cohaa.org/content/?q=node/32

Please join the Central Ohio Agile Association as Kim Berry, PMP, a Senior Project Manager at Fiserv, presents a case study in the successful use of Agile in a large integration program that had geographically dispersed teams.

Who Should Come: This presentation is targeted at an Intermediate to Advanced Agile enthusiast.

Date and Time:
Thursday, March 25, 2010 (free)
6:00 – 6:30 PM Food/ Networking; 6:30 – 8:00 PM Speaker

CareWorks Technology
5555 Glendon Ct.
Dublin, OH 43016

Re-certification PDU’s: PMP 1; CBAP 1;

Special Thanks to our food sponsor Pillar Technology. Please RSVP at www.cohaa.org.

SPEAKER: Kim Berry, PMP, is a Senior Project Manager with Fiserv, managing one of the largest cross-business unit endeavors to deploy a mobile banking solution. While at Fiserv, she became an early adopter of RUP (Rational Unified Process) for her business unit. Over the last 2 years, she has worked to integrate agile techniques within a RUP framework. She started her Project Management journey in 2001 and has remained in IT for 20 years, with a majority of it in the Business Intelligence field. Kim attained her PMI certification in 2008 and remains an active member of PMI. She is also a Six Sigma Yellow Belt, and has received accolades for organizing the resource and portfolio needs for the Enterprise Data Warehouse team. In her spare time, she is an Assistant Scoutmaster for the local Boy Scout Troup and recently received a district-level leadership award.

RSVP at:
http://www.cohaa.org/content/?q=node/32

Technorati Tags: agile develompent, cohaa, data warehouse, eai, eai alliance, enterprise application integration

TechLife LinkedIn Profile – Kris Hardy – Software Evangelist

Technorati Tags: linkedin, techcolumbus, techlife

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:

There are many people who need computer skills in order to land new jobs, but they don’t have them.  And we’re talking about basic stuff here…  How to use a web browser, how to log into a web site, how to check their e-mail, how to use a form on a web page, etc.  Why not create a platform to help them learn?  But how can you get them involved and step them through the learning process without them even realizing it?  How about using a social networking platform as the learning tool?

1. Social networking needs to be relevant.  And, for techno-challenged people, it has to be relevant for them in order for them to use it.  If you make it hyper-relevant to a local community, with all that community’s info and residents at that person’s fingertips, it’s more likely that they will use the system.  Now, if you also facilitate off-line activities and volunteerism, so that the online system becomes a resource rather than just an internet destination, you can make it even more relevant to that person’s life.
2. If you have 1-on-1 interactions throughout the entire process, you can remove the barriers that are keeping techno-challenged from using the computer, and you can remove them one-at-a-time in manageable chunks.
3. Once people get familiar with the computer, they can then learn other skills.  This business will have a mix of paid staff and volunteers with a wide range of experience, and they will offer their time as mentors to the newbies.  (Marc calls this “The Haves helping the Have-Nots.”)

It’s actually a great idea, but about halfway through I felt that Marc lost the path and started talking about all the wild multimedia education concepts and what is wrong with Wikipedia.  But we did get back to the point and talked about more right-here-right-now barriers to this business model.  My number 1 question to Marc was about the initial push to get people on the system, and the resources involved in supporting those people.  Here’s why this is such an important issue:

Workforce Development is not a sexy topic for most people.  And the individuals that you are developing this entire system for are the ones who are the most resistant to learning and the most easily discouraged.  Personally, I don’t think that these people are going to come to People Aggregator for the sake of being early adopters.  These people are the late-if-ever adopters.  Marketing a tech service to them is going to be VERY difficult.  However, if you get endorsement by the local government, educational institutions, libraries, etc., and you have a physical location that is recommended as the #1 place to go for new computer users for easy, fun, free or very-low-cost training, you might be able to get some people started.  Now, to keep those people entertained and educate them, you will have to have a sufficient staff of people with good soft skills and lots of patience.  To grow the community, you then need to scale your staff to teach more people how to turn on their computers, log in, and get started.  You also need to handle the support requests from new users.

Here was Marc’s answer (it’s not verbatim, but distilled from his answer and the presentation):

His company will set up “Digital Bureaus” in each area, which will provide staff for the in-person support and video help.  Also, the users can help each other out, and once a user has become comfortable enough with the system and gained a good reputation with the managers, he can then give back to the community and volunteer his or her time on video help.

I’m not exactly sure what to think.  On one hand, there does appear to be a largely untapped market in Workforce Development, and there are lots of people that need computer training.  Also, the 55+ age group is the fastest-growing population of facebook users (and presumably social networks in general).  On the other hand, I would image that these people are the hardest to convert, and they’re not going to learn to use a computer unless they either are forced to (such as mandatory training due to unemployment), or they decide to on their own.  The entire business model is focused on being there at the right time, with the right community and staff.

But, above all, any service must be relevant and meaningful to it’s users, and I’m not so sure that this community will define itself quickly enough to be viable.  You need that initial seed, either through early adopters or an active group of experienced volunteers and staff.

Admittedly, I was very skeptical last night while Marc was talking, but the more I think about it, the more I think that it just might work.  It’s not KISS (keep it stupid-simple), because there are just too many pieces to this jigsaw puzzle, but with proper funding, good planning and government endorsement (or at least well-refined marketing), Marc might be able to pull it off.  If Video Professor can do so well for itself teaching basic computer skills, there should be plenty of room to do the same thing using person-to-person interaction.

With a little planning and structure, and a flexible, scalable business model, People Aggregator just might pull it off.  Kudos to Marc Canter for thinking big, yet again!

Technorati Tags: broadband mechanics, columbus, macromedia, marc canter, people aggregator, social networking, techlife

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.

The term “Use In Commerce” is very important here, and is the primary indicator of whether or not your trademark is being violated.  A good example of “use in commerce” is if you owned a company that sold a product to computer geeks under the name “Microsoft”, disregarding the fact that there is another company that uses the name “Microsoft” and sells products within the same market.

The other key determinate is whether confusion is likely to exist.  In my example above, for a person shopping for computer equipment, there absolutely will be confusion over the products (the real Microsoft vs. the other Microsoft).

In the case of search keywords, it is a bit more touchy.  It is common to position yourself against your competitors by using their company name or product, and then writing an ad that says, essentially, “Their product sucks.  Our product is awesome.  Buy our stuff instead.”  (Whether that is really a viable method that works well, I don’t have the data to back it up.  That’s an entire other topic that I might get to some other time.)

Now, it gets sticky if the advertiser is either trying to game the system, or doesn’t think out his tactic.  Here are examples:

1. Gaming the system: Bidding on search ads for competitors trademarks, using the trademark in the title and making the ad appear to be the authentic company.
2. Not thinking out their tactics: Putting a trademark in their list of keywords for the ad, and putting a dynamic title in the ad that causes the trademark to automatically be inserted into the advertisement.  Especially, if you don’t differentiate your company from their in the ad copy, you may be opening your door to a lawsuit.

For the advertiser, Google has already put some safeguards in place.  For example, if your ad copy uses a term that is in their list of trademarked terms, your ad will be disapproved.  If this happens to you, don’t take it personally.  Take it from those of us that have managed lots of campaigns in some really crowded markets: it’s likely to happen to you at some point.

The way around this is to either:

1. Be permitted by the manfuacturer or distributor of your product to use the trademark, and forward that information to Google, or
2. Use a different term in the ad copy to differentiate your product or service from the trademarked product or service.

I will be keeping an eye closely on this lawsuit, as it has the possibility of changing the landscape of paid search.  If Google looses, it also may pave the way for more restricitve rules on paid search ads.

What are your thoughts or questions?  Post a comment!

-Kris

Technorati Tags: google, lawsuit, paid search, rescuecom, use in commerce

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:

Meet Pothos.

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:

Each plant had a ‘voice’ to match the plant type, such as the Scottish moss, which had a Scottish accent.

However, the equipment to give a plant a telephone was expensive, which made it prohibitive to market.  Thankfully, their telephone-enabled plant was the only one in existence, because the long-distance charges from their Bonsai “phoning home” could have easily added up.  (Hey, *I* thought it was funny…)

When the Twitter craze begun, Hartman and Faludi realized that they just found the perfect way to make their “communicating plant” work.  The equipment is inexpensive, and the Twitter interface allows programmers to easily send messages to others.  The Twitter Botanicall kit was born.

Currently, there are 3,169 people following Pothos, so the concept has definitely interested a lot of people.  Hartman and Faludi have also sold around 100 kits, each of which come as a box of electronic components that you assemble and solder yourself.  It reminds me of the Radio Shack electronics kits I used to play with when I was a kid.  (Ok, ok…  I STILL play with them, but this time I’ve upgraded to using programmable microcontrollers.)

I think there is a great market out there for these odd Twitter-enabled devices, and we are going to see a lot more of them in the future.  My only concern is this: will Twitter be able to afford the cost of being used as an alert service for everyone’s personal device?

So, here’s today’s question:

What item of yours would you like to see joining you on Twitter?  (Mine is an oil change alert sent by my car).

-Kris

Technorati Tags: botanicalls, device messaging, twitter, twitter api, twitter device

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:

“It is highly likely that a user that Google’s the words ‘Video Professor’ searching for products sold by VPI (Video Professor, Inc.) might click on the Amazon.com link,” the complaint alleges. “It is equally likely that once directed to the Amazon webpage having the name Video Professor at the top of the page, the user would purchase the CD-ROMs offered under the name ‘Professor Teaches,’ believing VPI to be the source of the products.”

What probably sent Video Professor over the edge is when they found that the first six or seven products listed on the landing page at Amazon that the user was taken to were actually for Professor Teaches products, and not Video Professor.

Similar complaints have gone through court, and I believe that Amazon will win the suit, especially since they did not include the trademark “video professor” in their ad copy.  What is different in this case between Amazon and Video Professor  is that one retailer is suing another, rather than a retailer suing the publishing company (Yahoo).   (I tried to find a lawsuit between the retailers in the case I mentioned, but I couldn’t find one).

However, a few companies obviously aren’t aware of the pending lawsuit by Video Professor (or they really like tickling the dragon’s tail)…

"Video Professor" query on Google

Video Professor has made legal waves in the past when they sued infomercialscams.com for the personal information of the users that left anonymous, poor feedback, which they believed was created by their competitors.  Considering that their business model operates under a continuity sales model, where tutorials are sent out and billed for automatically until the member cancels their subscription, it is VERY possible that those reviews were just annoyed customers who were surprised when they got billed automatically.

No, I’m not going to dive into the argument of whether or not Video Professor’s business model is sound.

I will, however, go into the customer service issue.

Writing poor reviews of other companies are time consuming and expensive, and it is usually very easy to see it when one company is slandering another

“The Origami Company sucks.  Paper Folders of America rocks.  Buy Paper Folders of America’s stuff and stay away from The Origami Company,  even if your favorite Grandmother’s bridge-partner’s cute daughter works for The Origami Company, because, well, they suck.

Ouch… just spilled orange juice on my paper cut again…”

Sure, it happens.  But it gives you the upper hand and the ability to rise above the criticism.  However, when there are poor reviews that all target similar issues (such as your billing practices), take it as a sign that something may need to change with your business or your sales message.

I can’t speak to whether or not Video Professor’s actions follow in their CEO’s words, but hopefully they do truly care about their customers.

Now, you’re not going to make everybody happy all the time.

But if you are not clear to your customers on

1. What they should expect in their relationship with you
   
2. What they are agreeing to
3. The benefit of what you are providing them

then you have a problem.

It is your job, as a business owner, to care about your customers and your reputation.  And no, suing the people who don’t like how you do things is probably not the way to build goodwill.

-Kris

Technorati Tags: amazon, lawsuit, paid search, pay per click, video professor

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.

The @adsense Twitter account is primarily to check the pulse on their customer service.  If someone is having problems with AdSense, they may Twitter about it.  Google, being quick to pick up on trends, noticed that Twitter was one of the first places that they were hearing about problems.  This new account gives Google an official position in the Twitter community, backed with their outstanding support.

Here’s the information directly from Google:

We’re thrilled to launch @adsense to communicate with AdSense publishers who use Twitter. Our tweets will be a mix of fresh product news, optimization tips, interesting links, upcoming events, and possibly even pictures of our dogs. Our entire AdSense team contributes, so if you have any suggestions for what you want to see, feel free to send an @reply to us!

This is a brilliant move on Google’s part for a few reasons.

1. Twitter will give them immediate access to quick customer feedback
2. Twitter Search can tell the Google staff when anyone even mentions AdSense in a tweet, and they can see if it’s something that they need to reply to or look into.
3. It gives Google an EKG-like pulse reading on all AdSense talk in the community, so they can quickly figure out what they are doing well, and what needs work.

Now, here’s the real beauty… Google is using Twitter for the exact reason why many experts and businesses are on Twitter: for the real-time feedback.  You can see what people think of your product or service without even asking them directly.

The amount of market research and brand reputation data that you can mine out of Twitter is amazing.  I’m going to show you some quick tricks in my next post.

Stay tuned!

-Kris

(Via Search Engine Roundtable)

Technorati Tags: brand reputation, google adsense, market research, twitter

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:

It looks like YouTube is beginning to take their analytics tool seriously and has started to improve it:

“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

Technorati Tags: video analytics, youtube, youtube insight

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.

Another thing that I do wish that Google’s Adwords system provided was in-line conversion rates and Cost-Per-Conversion calculations, down to the specific keyword and/or ad.  You can calculate the information easily enough by using Google Analytics, but the figures aren’t visible in the Adwords account.  (This is one of the moments where Yahoo beats out Google).

I work around the interface issues by using Google’s downloadable Adwords Editor.  It takes a little while to get used to, but I personally like it better than their current web-based interface.  Plus, being able to copy-and-paste ads & keywords from one ad group to another makes things really easy when I’m working through my keyword incubation.

This announcement about Google’s new web interface has me very curious.  I love data and I love metrics, so any tool which give me an edge to improve my ad efficiency, and ultimately profit, gets me very excited.

So, let’s get into some of the details…

According to the presentation at SES-NY by Angela Lai, there were several key design and performance principles that they used for the interface:

1. Speed matters
2. Give Guidance at the right time
3. Consistency

Google uses the AJAX-rich Google Web Toolkit to drive the client-side interface, providing a significant speed boost for the user.

They are also promising to deliver more data per screen to decrease the number of clicks you need to do something.

Also, they have added in-line editing of ads, which will make things much quicker when you need to tweak an ad to increase your click-through or conversion rates.  (I think this could be a GREAT improvement)

I have a beta account request in, so I’m looking forward to getting in and playing with the interface.  When I do, I will put up a video review with my comments and advice.

You can submit your information to Google to request access to the beta test.

At the moment, I think they will probably have to do some serious interface kung-fu and deliver some improved analytics tools for it to be better than the Adwords Editor.  However, I’m holding out judgement until I get my turn at the driver’s wheel.

-Kris

Thanks to SearchCowboys.com

Technorati Tags: adwords, google, search engine strategies, sem, sem software, ses