Time to Get Ready For 2010

I see great things happening this year...

Time to start your marketing and advertising for 2010 today. Check out the new trends that are being talked about for this coming year. Thanks to Robert Passikoff for this great post. Predictive loyalty metrics measure the direction and velocity of consumer values 12 to 18 months in advance of the marketplace and consumer articulations of category needs and expectations, they identify future trends with uncanny accuracy.

1) Value is the new closing point 

Consumer spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason-to-buy at all. This spells trouble for brands with no authentic meaning, whether high-end or low.

2) Brands a surrogate for "value"

What makes goods and services valuable will increasingly be what's wrapped up in the brand and what it stands for. So make sure that you aligh yourself with other great brands.

3) Brand differentiation is Brand Value

The unique meaning of a brand will increase in importance as generic features continue to plague the brand landscape. Awareness as a meaningful market force has long been obsolete, and differentiation will be critical for success meaning sales and profitability.

4) "Because I Said So" is so over
Brand values can be established as a brand identity, but they must believably exist in the mind of the consumer. A brand can't just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement.

5) Consumer expectations are growing

Brands are barely keeping up with consumer expectations now. Smarter marketers will identify and capitalize on unmet expectations. Those brands that understand where the strongest expectations exist will be the brands that survive - and prosper.

6) Old tricks don't work work anymore
In case your brand didn't get the memo here it is, consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit. In the wake of the financial debacle of this past year, people are more aware then ever of the hollowness of bank ads that claim "we're all in this together" when those same banks have rescinded their credit and turned their retirement plan into case studies.

7) They won't need to know you to love you
As the buying space becomes even more online-driven and international, front-end awareness will become less important. A brand with the right street cred can go viral in days, with awareness following, not leading, the conversation.

8) It's not just buzz
Conversation and community is all; ebay thrives based on consumer feedback. If consumers trust the community, they will extend trust to the brand. Not just word of mouth, but the right word of mouth within the community. This means the coming of a new era of customer care.

9) They're talking to each other before talking to the brand

Social Networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. Look for more websites using "Facebook Connect" to share information with the friends from those sites. More companies will become members of Linkedin. Twitter users will spend more money on the Internet than those who don't tweet.

10) Engagement is not a fad
Marketers will come to accept that there are four engagement methods including Platform (TV; online), Context (Program; webpage), Message (Ad or Communication), and Experience (Store/Event). But there is only one objective for the future: Brand Engagement. Marketers will continue to realize that attaining real brand engagement is impossible using out-dated attitudinal models.

Santa Gives the Winter Olympics a Pass

Santa was quoted in Miami earlier today, "Ho Ho Ho.. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to go because I am not an official corporate Olympic sponsor, so my lawyers told me to give it a miss... but I will be back next year!"


The official "West Coast Canada Santa Visit" went to Lolloowet area this year. The Mayor of Vancouver was disappointed that Vancouver was not honored with Santa's presence but he says, "The Value of the Olympics far outweighed the downside...."

NORAD and Santa Team Up

Can I Open One Now?

If you're like me waiting for Santa to make his way down your chimney and deliver all those cool new toys you need there is a great new tracking tool from Google Maps.

Santa Snacks
Santa takes breaks during his Christmas Eve trip around the world – especially for snacks left by children. Do you put a snack out for Santa? Kids all over the world do. Some even leave carrots for Santa's reindeer. (Carrots are their favorite food.)

Leaving cookies for Santa is a tradition for many families. Imagine eating that many cookies in one night (burp)!

What the Heck is Google Wave

But can it wash the dishes, answer the phone and get rid of all my spam...
Edited version from Bob Moss blog post.

If you have not checked out Wave (invitation only, since September this year) you are missing out on one of the coolest and probably most innovative collaboration tool available on the market today..

Oh yea... it FREE too!

Wave is a revolutionary new way to keep in contact with people and collaborate on documents and could completely replace email. The theory is that email is beginning to look a little antiquated, especially when we could be using the features of Web 2.0 with 'waves'.


What exactly is 'waves'?
A wave is best compared to a conversation in an instant messenger, but in the case of a wave, you can chat to yourself or to a whole group of people. Each wave contains a subwave called a 'wavelet', which focuses on a particular aspect of the main wave, and can be manipulated in much the same way. This means one wave can branch out into a number of other waves, but keep all the original associations. Each wavelet contains entries, known as 'blips', posted by the various collaborators, extension apps, or even automated robots you converse with. These can contain anything, including text and video, and mean that your wave becomes diverse and dynamic, with content that's constantly updated, either from an external source or your fellow collaborators. A document, in wave terms, contains the content of each blip. You slowly build up and manipulate the various blips to produce in-depth conversations or collaborative papers. You can then embed your wave document into a webpage, so it can act like an interactive and automatically updating wiki. It's also possible to export everything into a final file for printing or sending to your fellow collaborators.


Spell checking that think for you.
You are less likely to suffer from spelling mistakes or grammatical errors than you would with a wiki, thanks to Google's innovative natural language tools. These adapt depending on the context of your writing, and pick the most likely suggestion when it compares against the text that came before. This means you could type "I have bean eating beens" and have this automatically corrected to the sentence you expected as you type, without the need for any further intervention.

Waves have full support for you to drag and drop files, text snippets or any web content. This will automatically be added to your document as a blip. This makes things much more interactive. As expected, you can also embed other Google services such as calendars, YouTube video, Picasa images and so on into your waves. As a document creator, only the people you explicitly specify as collaborators can alter your work. You can remove collaborators at any time and cycle back through the changes they might have made.


Expect lots of great new plug-ins and applets
Google has open-sourced the open-transport layer as well as large swathes of the main code, so developers can build their own extensions using the Wave API. One such extension enables you to embed Twitter feeds into a document, thereby creating a 'twave' and enabling real-time communication over another protocol while still integrating seamlessly into the interface. This can then be extended by programming robots. Developers can program robots that create blips and respond in particular ways to content in other waves and external websites. They can even respond to you sending them messages, which means you can ask your robot for the latest sports scores and be told instantly. To include your robot in any wave, just add it as a collaborator, and off you go.

OK so how do you get a Wave Invitation. Find someone who has a Gmail account and ask them. If they are using their Gmail account properly they already have a Wave account setup and it not then they will thank you when they get all set up in Google Wave.

More great info:
Complete guide Blog on Google wave

Take 2 Asprins and Get Marketing Now

I have a headake just thinking about these numbers.

One of the few industries that have actually increased their marketing budget (2.457 Billion) over the last several years is "Big Pharma". Even though they are making billions in profit they are aware that in the cut-through industry of pharmaceutical wonder drugs R&D does not guarantee success. One company has increased its advertising budget by 160 percent and most are ramping up their budgets as we exit the recession.

If they see that the only way to get a great product (or idea) to market is to spend more of marketing and cut budgets in other places should send a strong signal to all businesses. If your not aggressively marketing your business than you are fighting a loosing battle against the companies that are.

Now is not the time to go crazy and overspend on ineffective marketing ideas. If you have limited funds in marketing then you should be rearranging your cash flow to get more marketing and advertising campaigns moving sooner are rather than later. If nothing we have learnt that the business that comes out of a recession with a strong well executed marketing plan is often the leader in their segment for years and sometimes decades.

Wow... Check the Next Generation Trailer - Avatar

Now this look like a good waist of cash...

Just downloaded a new Adobe program to run this trailer for Avatar. You can click on the images to see larger versions.

Lots of very cool "game like" interface design.
A taste of what the internet information programs will be like in the future.
If you have a high-end computer with lots of bandwidth then I recommend you check it out.

The trailer runs then stops at designated people or creatures and you have a choice of watching an in-depth info video on that subject or continuing with the trailer. Very nice interface idea and I can see this being a great new format for interactive news that will once again blow away the TV experience.

Enjoy

How to Roast Bob Garlick

Just a tad more garlic with my peppered tofu please

How To Roast Garlic on Howcast

Just kidding but if you have every tried "roast garlic" at a restaurant and wanted to try it at home look no further.

Cool New Interactive Screen Technolagy

Look ma no fingers...

For those of you who would like to see the next step in screen interaction, check out this video from the team that is experimenting with this new technology. For a more detailed description and a lot a technical jargon go to this website.


The simplest way to explain how the system works, Lanman says, is to imagine that, instead of an LCD, an array of pinholes is placed in front of the sensors. Light passing through each pinhole will strike a small block of sensors, producing a low-resolution image. Since each pinhole image is taken from a slightly different position, all the images together provide a good deal of depth information about whatever lies before the screen.


An array of liquid crystals could simulate a sheet of pinholes simply by displaying a pattern in which, say, the central pixel in each 19-by-19 block of pixels is white (transparent) while all the others are black.

Great Website's for You and Your Business

Everything is only a click away these days...

I am constantly discovering great new websites and wanted to share with you the ones I find most useful. Here are some I use almost ever day:

www.yousentit.com is a great free FTP service. You can send files up to 100MB to anyone you like and it keeps the file link live for 7 days.

iStock photos is the internet's original member-generated image rental library. Get easy, affordable inspiration with millions of safe, royalty-free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks and Flash files.

Mindmeister.com brings the concept of mind mapping to the web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions. Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other's changes as they happen.

Identafont.com the largest independent directory of typefaces on the Internet, with information about fonts from 587 publishers and 158 vendors.

www.lipsum.com is a great resource for fake filler text. Just copy and paste the text into a design you are working. There are also great options for adding this function to other applications like firefox, dreamweaver and ActionScript3.

Welcome to the world of colors where you're sure to find the perfect color combination for your project. This site was built to help web developers quickly select and test website color combinations.

Need a great web templates for free and right now. Open Web Design is a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information. Helping to make the internet a prettier place!

DownLoadSquad.com has a link to free music websites. So if you need some music to make a radio or internet video sound great, go no further.

Need to fax someone, look no further for a great free faxing service.

Photobucket will keep all your pics and videos in one place - room for up to 5,000 photos and hours of video! Share with everyone you know by email, IM or mobile phone. Make slideshows with music, special effects, captions, and more. Link to your profile, blog or website.

Ignore Everybody

I just want people to love the art...

I've been following this guy for years and love his cartoons and wonderful punch-lines. Check out his blog and buy his book for someone who; is, wants or doesn't understand Creativity....

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, wha­tever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.

1. Ignore everybody.
2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.
3. Put the hours in.
4. If your biz plan depends on you sud­denly being “dis­co­ve­red” by some big shot, your plan will pro­bably fail.
5. You are res­pon­si­ble for your own expe­rience.
6. Ever­yone is born crea­tive; ever­yone is given a box of cra­yons in kin­der­gar­ten.
7. Keep your day job.
8. Com­pa­nies that squelch crea­ti­vity can no lon­ger com­pete with com­pa­nies that cham­pion crea­ti­vity.
9. Every­body has their own pri­vate Mount Eve­rest they were put on this earth to climb.
10. The more talen­ted some­body is, the less they need the props.
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds alto­gether.
12. If you accept the pain, it can­not hurt you.
13. Never com­pare your inside with some­body else’s outside.
14. Dying young is ove­rra­ted.
15. The most impor­tant thing a crea­tive per­son can learn pro­fes­sio­nally is where to draw the red line that sepa­ra­tes what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
16. The world is chan­ging.
17. Merit can be bought. Pas­sion can’t.
18. Avoid the Water­-coo­ler Gang.
19. Sing in your own voice.
20. The choice of media is irre­le­vant.
21. Selling out is har­der than it looks.
22. Nobody cares. Do it for your­self.
23. Worr­ying about “Com­mer­cial vs. Artis­tic” is a com­plete waste of time.
24. Don’t worry about fin­ding ins­pi­ra­tion. It comes even­tually.
25. You have to find your own sch­tick.
26. Write from the heart.
27. The best way to get appro­val is not to need it.
28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
29. Wha­te­ver choice you make, The Devil gets his due even­tually.
30. The har­dest part of being crea­tive is get­ting used to it.
31. Remain fru­gal.
32. Allow your work to age with you.
33. Being Poor Sucks.
34. Beware of tur­ning hob­bies into jobs.
35. Savor obs­cu­rity while it lasts.
36. Start blog­ging.
37. Mea­ning Sca­les, Peo­ple Don’t.

Simple, Powerful and Effective

Sand in my shoes...

A wonderful performance piece by Kseniya Simonova (born 1985) is a sand animator from Ukraine. She started drawing with sand after her business collapsed due to the early 21st century credit crunch and had been drawing for less than a year when she entered Ukraine's Got Talent.

She became the 2009 Winner of Ukraine's Got Talent, constructing an animation that portrayed life during USSR's Great Patriotic War against the Third Reich in World War II. Simonova won USD $125,000 for her first place in the show. This YouTube video of the performance has received more than 9,444,000 million hits.

Take a Great Train Ride to a Happier Mood

For all the people who need to smile today.

Great Content from a Friend in High Places

Nothing like a great read in the afternoon...

I received a wonderful piece of prose from an old friend today and I enjoyed it tremendously. This to me is a fine example of content that works. If you are going to create prose for your website or blog this is a great benchmark to strive for. The piece is informative, provocative and fun to read. When was the last time you got a chance to read something of this caliber on a blog or website?

Remember the golden rule of content:
It has to be well written and it can't be about you... that is, if you want people to come back for some more.


Mediocrity: The Old Enemy
Roger Beaumont
Editor and English Language Consultant, Centre for Bhutanese Studies, Thimphu, Bhutan

JA Smith, professor of moral philosophy at Oxford University, opened a lecture course in 1914, just before the First World War, with:

“Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this – if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rubbish. And that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.”

After the Second World War, Mr Fawcett, my housemaster at Charney Hall prep school in England’s Lake District, might have returned to his fellowship at Oxford, but instead he took the momentous decision to become a school teacher. Having seen so much destruction wreaked upon civilisation, he thought that he could more directly help to rebuild the world by influencing young people in their most formative years.

With his enthusiasm and patience, his care for the individual, his insatiable curiosity, and his breadth of interest and knowledge, he was, like all the best teachers, a walking – often running – advertisement for education. He had the gift of being frequently, in Wordsworth’s phrase, “surprised by joy”. He paid us the intimidating compliment of treating our ideas as equal to his own.

If a pupil turned in a shoddy piece of work, the look of cosmic dismay on Mr Fawcett’s usually benign face made the errant boy feel that his lapse had short-changed not just the tutor or the school, but the whole of civilisation.

Only one thing consoled me about taking exams: they couldn’t possibly ask me everything I didn’t know.

Meanwhile, Hugh Duncan, the headmaster, was a tall, frightening, impressive figure, and not always friendly. He was an old-fashioned disciplinarian and a stickler for courtesy, dress standards and manners. I was often, no, always, shaking with fear before he entered the room, knowing what was to come; my mistakes and his expsoure of them. He taught us maths in a dingy classroom that had the sort of atmosphere that attracts unmanned probes from Nasa. I had enough trouble with figures, so when they started introducing letters with Algebra, I was utterly shipwrecked. I still think Algebra is the most soddingly, useless subject ever devised, and probably invented by a Greek dyslexic bent on revenge.

On the last day of term in our final year, the headmaster amazed us with a lesson we never forgot. It was on “Maths and its Principles”, for which he used a famous anecdote by the writer George Bernard Shaw.

“Would you sleep with me for 20,000 pounds?” Shaw once asked a woman. She thought about it and acknowledged that, theoretically, she would. “Good,” said Shaw, “So, would you sleep with me for sixpence?”

The lady became indignant. “What sort of woman do you think I am?” she exploded. “We’ve established what sort of woman you are,” Shaw pointed out, “we’re merely haggling over the price.”

And we grinned, like the dirty minded little schoolboys we were.

Mr Duncan drove a Rover, in which he proceeded with magisterial slowness. To me, at 12 years old, it symbolised authority, status, dependability, all of which I lacked. The school minibus, an ancient Bedford, struggled with the Lakeland gradients and did not always win. At the wheel would be the serene figure of Mr Fawcett, though it was hard to say if more smoke poured from his pipe or through the Bedford’s floorboards. Going downhill was a different matter. As it picked up speed, we, scrunched up in the back seats, swayed like sea anemones.

Believing that boys should be neither cosseted nor cowed, Duncan ran the school on robust, rural lines. Long walks, cold dormitories and loud hymn-singing were an integral part of our education, along with cricket nets and Latin prose. Despite a brisk code of discipline, he took a laissez-faire approach outside the classroom. Every November 5, (Bonfire Night) the smallest boy in the school was sent to crawl through a tunnel and meet a pile of combustibles to set light the very core of the bonfire. Nobody, so far as anyone can recall, ever failed to crawl out again. Thank fuck my name never came up.

On Sunday mornings the entire school walked to church and back, while in the afternoons the pupils were sent up to the fells (hills) behind the school. Older boys were allowed to roam unsupervised. Few failed to relish the freedom, and many developed a lifelong taste for hill walking. And I have it and love it.

What central heating there was in the school buildings was not always effective, or even switched on. Boys were permitted to capture owls and keep them in the carpenters shop, provided we also caught enough sparrows for them to feed on. Wicked.

A total dweeb (idiot, prat) called Atkinson, cruelly described as “useless as an Abo’s tit”, was given the task of rearing a lamb to which he developed some emotional attachment. The animal – called ''Lottie'' if memory serves – disappeared shortly before the school’s Christmas feast, and Atkinson realised the significance only when he was the first to go up for second helpings.

At that tiny, extraordinay, school it was instilled into us that the more we knew the more we could “bring to the table” and, to never, ever, take power or wealth into consideration when assessing someone’s worth. Some of the most brutal and vicious people this world has ever seen were – and are – powerful and rich. We were advised to stay well clear of anything that diminishes life and robs it of its diversity. Our differences should be “grounds for celebration and new learning, not for mistrust and genocide”.

But the real enemy, we were taught, was mediocrity, because “mediocrity is the hairball coughed up on the carpet of creation” as Tom Robbins so neatly put it. With discipline there was a chance of being creative; without it, there was no chance at all.

It has been written that education is what survives when what was learned has been forgotten. Spot on. These days, people no longer want to learn, they just want to know. But it doesn’t work like that. If people buy into this, they can only immature with age.

We are all formed early, and Atkinson, the prat who fattened the school lamb, is now raising emus outside Darwin and making more money than all of us.

Don't Believe Everything You Google

But it must be true it's on the Internet

If you write marketing or advertising copy, the words that you use are vitally important.

For example:
Would you rather have a car, or a new car?
Would you rather have a solution or a proven solution?

Do you see the difference?
The key is to use selling words in a way that is natural and not contrived. Even if you don’t write marketing or advertising copy, you may be able to use these words to liven up otherwise dull writing.

Here is a list of twenty-five words to help you sell.
New
Proven
Improved
Guaranteed
Free
Tested
Pure
Best
Fresh
Sure
Secure
Natural
Refreshing
Energizing
Safe
Quality
Dependable
Secure
Advanced
Easy
Convenient
Quick
Instant
Save
Personal

So after doing the above blog post I wondered "what are the top words on the Internet these days". I googled this query and got a list (see link fro PDF). After taking a closer look I started to see some weirdness. So before you slap down some fact into your blog or brochure make sure you aren't being duped.

The Importance of Good Social Media

It's all about me it's all about me

Why will your video fail. Because it's all about you and no one cares. If you want to have lots of people check out your video it better be entertaining, weird or both. Also when it comes to how may friends you have on Facebook or how many people follow you on Twitter, the numbers are meaningless unless you are willing to go out-of-your-way to help those people.

Check out what Seth says.

Who Loves Great Ads

Turn the channel please...

Check out this great opportunity to participate in choosing great TV ads.

In December, the editors at AdweekMedia will select the best marketing, media and agency performances of the decade, covering 2000 through 2009, across the 33 categories.

They will choose the best; people, companies, brands, products and creative work that most influenced the industry and came to define the era.

Social Media All The Way To The 2010 Olympics

Sven is going to the Olympics come hell or high snowbanks. Because he is running his campaign an a shoestring budget he needs to use the free social media resources that are available these days. There's no point raising $30,000 if you have to spend $50,000 to $100,000 placing ads on TV and radio or just in local newspapers. Check out Sven Winters new promotional video and website to see what can be done with little of no budget and a lot of heart.





Check out all his other social media tools to get a better idea of how he is branding himself consistently throughout the internet.
Twitter
Facebook
Youtube
Website
LinkedIn

Internet Ads That Actually Utilize the Format

Who took my remote control?

It is very rare to see ads that actually use the internet as part of the ad. These links are great examples of what we should be striving for when coming up with ideas that will entertain and inform.

Check this one out for a great example of changing the way a person experiences a YouTube video sample. This one is good too, because it uses references to the internets past and takes a old concept to the next level.

Interesting food for thought, why isn't the advertising on the internet much more interactive and why does it still mimic TV ads?

Very Cool Interactive Jobless Graph

But I still want a job...

It's not often that you actually get to see great interactive information graphics on the net these days. This one has to be up there as one of my favorites. Entertaining, quick access to information and clean graphics.

Check it out for your self.

Is Social Media a Fad?

I don't want to be a tool of the social revolution....
Hang on I want to post that to my friends

Check out this great viral video for some staggering facts about social media. If you can read everything on this video in one go, your a faster reader than me. Don't forget to repost this video on your Facebook account, Twitter feed and send it to your Linked in contacts...

How Dangeous is Swine Flu?

Cough cough attention please...

Click to make bigger

Ok lots of hype for death and the Swine Flu, but lets get it all into a bit of perspective please.

Click to make bigger

Or if your just curious about how you can be killed try this fun graph. Based on this graph I think I better start taking better care of my heart and not worry too much about the flu.

Google Camera Car in Vancouver

Is that me in Vancouver?

I have been having fun checking out what streets views from the Google Camera Car today. Not all of the streets are mapped out yet and some of the area you would think a "must-have" are missing. Some great time wasting potential is just a click away thanks to our friends at google.

Check out the snooping shots I was able to grab in 15 minutes.

Pigeon Park where all the cool people hang out. An interesting snoop trick is to take a right or left at a corner where there is no action adn see what's happening later in the day or a couple of days later. With Pigeon Park you get the gang hanging out on on e angle and then the gang getting food handouts on the other.

Pigeon park food distribution


Blenz at corner of Cambie and Broadway. If you like loud music and coffee this is the coffee-shop for you.



The Camera reflected on glass



The Steam Clock with no tourists

Take a Break and Cook a Perfect Egg

But I wanted a fried egg...

Just finished reading an exhaustive article on how to cook a perfect boiled egg. So for all the people out there who have wanted to know the secret here you go.

Start with cold tap water and place eggs in saucepan, bring it up to a bare simmer, then immediately shut off the heat, the water temperature will drop to below 170 degrees just as the central yolk temperature reaches 170 degrees, thereby guaranteeing that my egg will be perfectly cooked every single time.

The water volume should be about 1.5 quarts (6 cups). You may have to tweak the volume a bit to figure out your own perfect volume of water. However when you do you should be able to produce a consistent boiled egg every time.

Have a great breakfast.

Marketing Effectively On The Internet Can Be Expensive

Can I borrow 10 million to place an ad campaign on the net?

Click for a very big graphic

There’s no secret that different types of websites attract different levels and types of advertisers – but the variance is rarely elaborated upon.

For instance, Facebook’s top 100 advertisers spend $49,045,000 per month, while the top 100 advertisers of IMDB ($7,217,400), CNET ($3,094,000), and NYTimes ($7,128,500) combined spend about 1/3 ($17,740,000) that of Facebook. This of course addresses the levels of ad revenue by popular sites, and is just one of the findings from the most recent Nielsen AdRelevance report. Of special note are AT&T’s spending trends, and the rate at which this brand has invested online, especially in the four sites included in the study.

Check out Shaukat Shamim's site for more great internet marketing insights.

Get Everyone Communicating

But I thought you had the meeting notes...

There are lots of great free stuff on the net these days and this one has some great tools to help you be a better informed marketer. PC World gave it an editors choice for "Great Fee software" too. Check out this site to see what other things this tool can do for you.


Manage your brand awareness on the Internet
Gather, discuss and share all brand mentions easily with your team, your management and your sales force. Analyze easily how their brand is growing and make changes to campaigns or stop unwarranted brand-based attacks.

Crawl your competitors' heads
Qitera helps marketers to analyze easily competitor's websites, news releases and on-line brand awareness in the media, on consumer-generated blogs and message boards.

Event Management
Share, discuss and update event details with your team members. Gather information on speakers, locations, food and hospitality specialists.

Creative brainstorming with your teams
Group brainstorming can be very effective as it uses the experience and creativity of all members of the group. Gather, share and discuss ideas from all over the web and combine them with your own ideas to prepare future events and marketing plans or campaigns.

What if I could have booked one of the first .coms...

No way I can't believe that they forgot that one...

With all the hype for the DotTel domain option bubbling away in Vancouver I was reminded of the old days when .com domain names where available to anyone who wanted a cool name. Check out this list and see if you would have chosen one of them or picked a different .com for your business.


The 100 Oldest .COM Domains

Create Date		Domain Name
03/15/1985		SYMBOLICS.COM
04/24/1985		BBN.COM
05/24/1985		THINK.COM
07/11/1985		MCC.COM
09/30/1985		DEC.COM
11/07/1985		NORTHROP.COM
01/09/1986		XEROX.COM
01/17/1986		SRI.COM
03/03/1986		HP.COM
03/05/1986		BELLCORE.COM
03/19/1986		IBM.COM
03/19/1986		SUN.COM
03/25/1986		INTEL.COM
03/25/1986		TI.COM
04/25/1986		ATT.COM
05/08/1986		GMR.COM
05/08/1986		TEK.COM
07/10/1986		FMC.COM
07/10/1986		UB.COM
08/05/1986		BELL-ATL.COM
08/05/1986		GE.COM
08/05/1986		GREBYN.COM
08/05/1986		ISC.COM
08/05/1986		NSC.COM
08/05/1986		STARGATE.COM
09/02/1986		BOEING.COM
09/18/1986		ITCORP.COM
09/29/1986		SIEMENS.COM
10/18/1986		PYRAMID.COM
10/27/1986		ALPHACDC.COM
10/27/1986		BDM.COM
10/27/1986		FLUKE.COM
10/27/1986		INMET.COM
10/27/1986		KESMAI.COM
10/27/1986		MENTOR.COM
10/27/1986		NEC.COM
10/27/1986		RAY.COM
10/27/1986		ROSEMOUNT.COM
10/27/1986		VORTEX.COM
11/05/1986		ALCOA.COM
11/05/1986		GTE.COM
11/17/1986		ADOBE.COM
11/17/1986		AMD.COM
11/17/1986		DAS.COM
11/17/1986		DATA-IO.COM
11/17/1986		OCTOPUS.COM
11/17/1986		PORTAL.COM
11/17/1986		TELTONE.COM
12/11/1986		3COM.COM
12/11/1986		AMDAHL.COM
12/11/1986		CCUR.COM
12/11/1986		CI.COM
12/11/1986		CONVERGENT.COM
12/11/1986		DG.COM
12/11/1986		PEREGRINE.COM
12/11/1986		QUAD.COM
12/11/1986		SQ.COM
12/11/1986		TANDY.COM
12/11/1986		TTI.COM
12/11/1986		UNISYS.COM
01/19/1987		CGI.COM
01/19/1987		CTS.COM
01/19/1987		SPDCC.COM
02/19/1987		APPLE.COM
03/04/1987		NMA.COM
03/04/1987		PRIME.COM
04/04/1987		PHILIPS.COM
04/23/1987		DATACUBE.COM
04/23/1987		KAI.COM
04/23/1987		TIC.COM
04/23/1987		VINE.COM
04/30/1987		NCR.COM
05/14/1987		CISCO.COM
05/14/1987		RDL.COM
05/20/1987		SLB.COM
05/27/1987		PARCPLACE.COM
05/27/1987		UTC.COM
06/26/1987		IDE.COM
07/09/1987		TRW.COM
07/13/1987		UNIPRESS.COM
07/27/1987		DUPONT.COM
07/27/1987		LOCKHEED.COM
07/28/1987		ROSETTA.COM
08/18/1987		TOAD.COM
08/31/1987		QUICK.COM
09/03/1987		ALLIED.COM
09/03/1987		DSC.COM
09/03/1987		SCO.COM
09/22/1987		GENE.COM
09/22/1987		KCCS.COM
09/22/1987		SPECTRA.COM
09/22/1987		WLK.COM
09/30/1987		MENTAT.COM
10/14/1987		WYSE.COM
11/02/1987		CFG.COM
11/09/1987		MARBLE.COM
11/16/1987		CAYMAN.COM
11/16/1987		ENTITY.COM
11/24/1987		KSR.COM
11/30/1987		NYNEXST.COM

How the Internet is Changing New Car Sales

Click click vroom vroom...

Anyone who has shopped for a new car online has likely been disappointed with the scope of services actually available. You can access a wealth of car data, but very little is available in the way of vehicle availability or discounted prices. You generally still have to go down to the dealership and haggle for hours to get any kind of a deal.

Well, this is finally changing thanks to an Internet new-car buying service called Best Price Express. The Vancouver company is the first in Canada to enable consumers to negotiate new car prices online. Users of the service receive hefty discounts and save substantial amounts of time and hassle. The company is already an approved provider to Vancouver Coastal Health is growing at an impressive rate. Their success lies in a fixed transaction fee of $95-$195 depending on the model, which they say replaces the multi-thousand dollar target of the typical car lot sales team. This, together with high-volume relationships at top dealers through-out Western Canada, is enabling Best Price Express to re-invent the process of buying a new car, for the better. The company’s website features video testimonials that suggest they may have actually improved a traditionally hated process.

Led by Top Producer Systems founder Randy Purcell, the company is currently expanding nationally and aims to be effectively serving the U.S. by the end of 2010. Check them out at www.bestpriceexpress.ca

What are the advantages of a .tel address

Is that who I think it was...?

Check out this ad from England featuring a well known TV celebrity to get a fun spin on why you should have a .tel account. Or you could use it to pick up new business contacts in a pinch.

All about .tel

Get your .tel to speak to my .tel and to set up lunch...

If you don't have a.tel account then it's time you got one.

If you do have a .tel account this post should fill you in on any question you may have regarding .tel accounts.

Dot Tel Hosting
Q and A

General

Q: Can I run a commercial directory under a .tel domain?
A: You are absolutely allowed under the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to run a commercial directory-style service under your .tel domain; the restrictions are that you are not allowed to sub-delegate the management of that contact information to a third party.


Q: Can registrants use a .TEL for an email addresses?
A: Yes, it is possible to have an email address using your .TEL (i.e. adam@smith.tel)


Q: I cannot log in.
A: Please make sure your username and password are correct. If you cannot remember the correct password, please click "Forgotten your password?" on the login page and type in the email address that you used to register your .tel domain. The system will send you a message with temporary passwords for all .tel domains associated with that email address.


Q: Can I manage all my .TEL domains from the same control panel?
A: Yes, all your .TEL domains can be managed from the .TEL management console. Select the domain that you wish to switch to in the upper right-hand corner of the panel.

Note: If you bought another domain(s) with another company, it would be editable from a different URL.
If you do not see a .TEL domain that you own, it may not be associated with your user account. You must verify if the domain name is registered with Webnames.ca.

Q: It says "To share your private data, please Activate TelFriends".
A: This is not an error. TelFriends is a free service for managing all your Friends in one place. By default, this feature is not active. To share your private data with friends, you will need to activate this feature by signing up to TelFriends. Please note that it could take up to 30 minutes to receive the confirmation email once you have signed up for TelFriends.

Q: A part of the page disappeared.
A: If you do not see a part of the Dashboard page, you might have accidentally clicked the title of one of the panes, such as Text Header or Contact Information. Your .tel control panel allows you to roll up panes that you are not using to optimize space on your Dashboard. To see the hidden pane, click the heading, and it will roll down.

Q: Can I add a logo to my .TEL page?
A: No. Your ".TEL page" is a page generated by the registry to display all .TEL contacts and you cannot personalize it.

Q: I understand TelHosting is available in 10 languages in addition to English. What are they and how do I access them?
A: Effective July 2, 2009, Telhosting is supported in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The language shown will be automatically determined from the language settings within your Internet browser, so your Telhosting view will be in French if your browser preferred language is set to French. To change your default language in your browser, under “Tools” go to “Internet Options” and under the “General” tab, click on the “Language” button. Add the language of your preference and move it up to your preferred language. You will instantly see your Telhosting page updated to the appropriate language.


Text Header

Q: How do I add text?
A: In your .TEL management console, double-click the grey area at the top, type in your text and click save. To edit or delete, double-click again.

Q: There is no delete button. How do I remove text?
A: Simply edit the text header to erase everything and click Save.

Q: Why doesn't my text header show in my .tel?
A: The text header you entered may belong to an inactive profile. Make sure that the text you are editing is in the profile with "(active)" in the name.


Contacts

Q: How many items of contact information can be stored in a .tel domain?
A: Technically, there is no limit to the amount of information that can be stored in a .tel domain. However, depending on the size of the contact info you manage, your service provider may charge more. For further details regarding this, please talk to your service provider.

Q: I cannot add a contact.
A: If you enter your contact details but cannot save it, you may have used the wrong format; a red band should appear at the top of the window with instructions on the correct format for labels and the contact information itself. If you're trying to enter a phone number, use international format, e.g. +442074676400 – no letters, spaces or special symbols. Also, the domain name is case sensitive. Only use lower case letters for the domain name.

Q: How do I add extension numbers?
A: If you need to specify your extension number in addition to the main number, type in the extension in the Label field. Your contact value should follow the international format and contain no letters or spaces. This way, you phone number will always be in the 'click-to-call' format.

Q: How do I preview a contact?
A: Once you save your contact, it gets published to the DNS and is instantly available in your .tel. Type in your .tel name in a new browser window to see how others see your page.

Q: Where is the delete button?
A: To remove a contact item, Select the contact you wish to delete, and choose Delete from the Actions drop-down box at the top of the contacts list. Note: deleting the contact record is permanent; consider disabling the contact instead to make it invisible but retained in case you need to show it again. You can delete any contact item, except for the last item of public contact information in your .tel. You must always have at least one public contact item, such as a website link or phone number.

Q: How do I add a link to another .TEL domain?
Create a new contact, website link and add the .TEL domain name there.

Q: My contact does not show in my .tel.
If you added a contact item on your Dashboard, but it does not show up on your .tel page when viewed in a browser, the contact item may be private (viewed only by friends who have logged in your .tel), disabled (added to the Dashboard but not published) or inactive (added to a profile that is not currently active). Edit the contact in the Dashboard to ensure that it’s public and in the active profile.

Q: How do I move a contact around?
A: You can re-order contact items by clicking the arrows icon in the list of contacts and moving the contact up or down. You may wish to change the order for a more user-friendly experience for your visitors.

Q: Can I do bulk data imports, e.g., many telephone numbers at once?
A: No facility is provided in the standard web interface for bulk uploads at the moment, although it may be at later stages.

Q: I entered my postal address, but it does not show up in my page.
A: If you use Location to add your address, it is stored as a Google maps link so that you can click it and see it on the map. If you want to display the address in your .TEL page, use keywords.

Q: How do I remove links to my subfolders from the list of contacts?
A: Currently, the web interface automatically adds links to all sub-folders in your parent folder. You cannot remove those links but you can re-order them to make them look better.


Keywords

Q: Only a part of my keywords list is added.
A: Your free text and hobbies keyword categories are limited to 255 bytes; any text beyond this limit is not published. Please consider using other categories and reducing the message. Keywords are not intended for storing long paragraphs.

Q: I clicked Save but my keywords were lost.
A: When you click add to include keywords in your domain, you see multiple tabs. Clicking save saves the keywords only in the current tab, not all the keywords you entered. Make sure you click save on each tab not to lose any.

Q: The address fields are in the wrong order.
A: If you wish to change the way your keywords are displayed, simply drag-and-drop the fields as needed by using the buttons on the side.

Q: My text (or keywords) doesn't show correctly.
A: Are you trying to add non-ASCII characters? The .TEL supports UTF-8 encoding so you should be fine. Check your web browser encoding settings.


Profiles

Q: Why are some contacts grey?
A: Contacts are not included into the current profile are greyed out on the Dashboard. To add these contacts to the profile, tick the contact and select Add to profile in the Actions box.

Q: I do not need profiles, I just want to add a few contacts.
A: Profiles are optional and are included into .tel for your convenience. When you start, you have a "default" profile, where all your contacts get added. If you do not wish to set up any other profiles, you do not need to.


Location

Q: My location does not show as my address.
A: The Location record is a combination of longitude and latitude displayed as a map entry. If you want to publish a postal address, use the keywords or the text header.

Q: How do I make my location private?
A: Your Location is always public in .tel. If you wish to add a private location, you can use other services, such as BrightKite, and add links to those as private contacts.

Q: What if I want to add more than one address?
A: Normally, you cannot be in more than one place at a time. If you need to enter multiple locations, such as temporary and permanent, consider adding them to the text header in different profiles, and switching between profiles depending on your current location. If you wish to have several locations displayed simultaneously, enter them as keywords and use the Label field to describe each location. Remember that keywords are always public, so don't put your home address in there if you do not want it to be publicly available.


Folders

Q: How do I add a private contact to a sub-folder?
A: All contacts in sub-folders are public and visible to all. If you wish to add private information, please use your main domain folder.

Q: Can I have direct links to my sub-folders?
A: Yes, folders are sub-domains of your domain, so you can enter their names in a browser - the folder name comes before your domain name. For example, if yourname.tel has a folder social, you can go to that folder directly by entering http://social.yourname.tel in a browser.

Q: How do I delete a folder?
A: Hover your mouse beside the folder name in the Folders pane on the left; when you see the Delete button, click it.

Q: How do I delete a link to a folder?
A: When you create a folder, a link to that folder is automatically added to your .tel. Similarly, when you delete the folder, the link is deleted as well.

Q: How do I rename a folder?
A: You cannot change the sub-folder name; to change the folder name, create a new folder, copy all contacts from the old folder to the new one (in the old folder, do 'Select all' and in the Actions drop-down box, select 'move to...'), and then delete the old folder.

Q: Can I move everything to another folder?
A: You can select multiple or all contacts and keywords in a folder and choose move to… in the Actions box to migrate the contacts to another folder. You cannot move/or copy locations, text headers or whole folders.


Friends

Q: Why do I have to log in again in the control panel?
A: After you activate TelFriends and create an account, you need to log into TelFriends once in your .tel control panel, so that it remembers your login and gets friend messages for you.

Q: I returned from vacation and do not see any new friend messages.
A: Your friend message box may overflow if you do not act on your messages. If this happens, people will not be able to send you friend requests. To make space for new friend requests, accept or reject existing messages, and they will be deleted to allow new message requests to be sent.

Q: How do I invite somebody to be a 'friend' of my domain?
A: Currently, you cannot pro-actively invite people to be friends of your domain. However, anybody can request to be added to your friend list by sending a friend request using a form on your .TEL web page. In addition, a .TEL domain owner can send such a request from their .TEL management console, Friends tab, list of messages, send button.

Q: I received the error "Not associated with a TelFriends account."
A: That's normal. This means that you do not have a TelFriends account associated with this domain. You only need to be registered at TelFriends if you plan publishing private information on your .TEL. If you do, click the Sign Up link in the TelFriends login .


Privacy

Q: I cannot add new Friends.
A: You need to have an active TelFriends account to add friends that can see your private data. By default this feature is inactive, and you only see the default Friend groups and yourself on the Privacy tab. For more details on Friending, see Your Guide to .tel. If you have an active TelFriends account, you can accept friend requests to allow people to access your private data. You cannot proactively invite people to be friends of your .tel, because they need to have a TelFriends account first.

Q: I'm in the Privacy tab and cannot add a new contact to the group.
A: To allow friends in the current group see a contact, click Add inside the table Items in Group and select the contact you wish to add from the list of existing public and private contact items. If you wish to add a completely new contact item to this group, follow the instructions in Your Guide to .tel.

Q: Why does the system only show my contacts in Privacy? What about location, text?
A: Currently, the system only supports encryption of contact information, so your text header and location will always be publicly available. If you do not wish to share your current location, consider not publishing it in your .TEL.

Q: How do I create a private contact in a subfolder?
A: At the moment, only your main domain can store private contacts, so all information in sub-folders is always public. If you wish to hide individual contacts in a sub-folder, consider moving the contact to your main domain or not publishing that information in your .TEL.

Q: How do I make a contact visible to my friends only?
A: Several ways to do it:

(a) In the Dashboard, click edit, go to Advanced tab, and select private specifying the friend group(s) you wish to add the private contact to; you can select multiple items at once.

(b) in the Privacy tab, see the group that you wish to show the contact to, and in Items in Group, select Add. You will see the list of records that are not shown to the current group. Select the one(s) you want, and click save.

Note that the Dashboard shows the record as private after you add it to a Friends group.