Joseph’s book is a fistful of well aimed thoughts about how brands and marketing can profit from the power of conversation. If you look at the line-up of the chapters, you’ll get the drift.

1. Talking “at” versus talking “with”
2. The many-to-many model
3. Can marketing be a conversation?
4. The birth of Generation I
5. The rise of the prosumer
6. The new consumerism
7. The six Cs: Three phases of conversation
8. The consent-conversation relationship
9. What conversations are in your future?
10. Why are you so afraid of conversation?
11. The 10 tenets of good conversation
12. The 5 ways you can join the conversation
13. When conversation isn’t a conversation at all
14. Where does conversation fit in?
15. Conversation through community
16. Conversation through dialog
17. Conversation through partnership
18. Getting started: The manifesto for experimentation
19. Does conversation work?
20. Do you speak conversation? Take the test

Again, just as I wrote a few hours ago: I look forward to reading this and write down my thoughts. Check back soon for a decent review.

Sometimes shopping takes minutes, but is still too long; sometimes shopping takes months, and the shopper is sad to see it end. In Stopwatch Marketing, you will learn that time isn’t money; it’s much more important than that. Understanding how much time and energy consumers are willing to spend shopping for a particular purchase – their shopping strategies – is the single most important (and overlooked) thing you need to know in order to succeed in selling your product or service to them.

In Stopwatch Marketing, we identify four basic shopping strategies – impatient, reluctant, painstaking, and recreational – and show how to analyze, evaluate, and exploit the time that represents every shopper’s most important resource; how to understand and measure the length of time your customer will spend searching for your product or service; and how to make absolutely certain that your product or service is close to the front of your customer’s queue.

Many of America’s best-known and most successful companies are using the principles of Stopwatch Marketing™ every day to achieve spectacular growth in both margin and market share. The book includes fresh company examples such as Tempur-pedic, Microsoft, Goodyear and MasterLock as well as completely original interpretations of popular case studies like Lexus, Charles Schwab, Apple, Commerce Bank and Whole Foods. Our book not only shares their stories, but offers step-by-step guidelines for building an entire marketing strategy around stopwatch principles. Our success in applying these principles to our clients’ businesses gives us confidence that we are on to something quite new and interesting in the marketing world: the criticality of the customer’s time demands in reaching a purchase decision.

This certainly seems to be an interesting read, and to be honest, seeing Microsoft in their list of examples made me quite curious to know which of the techniques or tactics are being applied. (I work for Microsoft, in case you missed my switch). Other than that, I really look forward to dig deeper in the strategies to get consumers to spend as much as they can in the shortest amount of time possible, without blasting them over with an overload of teasers or bombing them with spam. To be continued…

The full .pdf of Philipp’s book, 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google, is now available on 55fun.com. As the book is Creative Commons licensed, you are encouraged to copy, read, share, remix, convert, quote, browse, and print the .pdf to your liking. If you do create conversions, e.g. an HTML version, please send the URL so Philipp can link to it from 55fun.com.

If you’re a true booklover or papersniffer, you can also buy the book, which contains over 220 pages and is available at Lulu.com for $16.50 or at Amazon for $19.66.

Download the .pdf (7.88 Mb)
There’s also a .zip file with the Word document (7.5 MB)

Read the review I did after proof-reading the book.

Excerpt from “Chapter 30: Ten signs You Are Addicted To Google”:

• When people talk to you, you try to optimize their keywords.
• Your reply to “how are you?” is “I’m feeling lucky”, combined with a clicking gesture.
• You are convinced that “What’s your PageRank?” is a good pick-up line.

I especially liked chapter 42, the science-fiction interlude. Truly, inside Philipp hides a great novelist. Of course it’s not the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and no, it’s nothing like 1984 either… but it comes close. I was really excited while I read it and the tales intrigued me. I couldn’t let go of the book once I started a chapter. I even read while I was walking home from the train station because it was so captive that I couldn’t just close the book in the middle of a story.

What are Google Robots?

Google Robots are our human-like machines that walk the earth to record information. They do no harm, and they do not invade your privacy.

The book is a must-have. If you like, love or hate Google, this is what you need to read. You’ll never regret having ordered your copy, but you’ve got to wait a little more because it isn’t for sale yet. If you follow Philipp’s Google Blogoscoped or 55fun.com you’ll definitely see the date of launch being posted when it’s ready.

I asked Philipp what his main reason was to start writing the book and what he learned:

I don’t know exactly what triggered my decision to start writing this book. I guess it was inevitable because my head is overflowing with Google trivia, which I collected in 3 years of writing a Google blog. I also wanted to give people something to take with them on the beach, onto the airplane, or whenever else you’re not in front of a PC. It was a lot of fun writing the book.

As for what I learned… – I learned a lot about Open Office Writer, but finally had to buy Microsoft Word and convert the document. The sad truth is that when you’re using an “exotic” tool, even though it’s free, you’re likely to run into problems with online tools and help sites… most help pages online will be about the most popular tool, Word, and most online converters (like Lulu.com’s self-publishing book converter) will also only support the most popular tool.

The book is rated ‘G’ for Googlish.

The book reads like a train which came in handy because I read it on the train whilst commuting from and to the brandbreeding agency where I temporarily work. I’ve been totally brainwashed and I liked every second of it. Every time the train stopped at my destination, I felt bad because I’d have to wait until the evening to be able to read more. I’ve never actually seen a collection of examples that’s so big and so clearly explained. Really, if you’ve got the time you just got to read this. I learned a lot.

Max points in all directions, stating do’s and don’ts, placing campaigns in and pulling them out of context in a meaningful way. A lot of things became clear to me, stuff that I’ve heard of but never actually knew (until now), campaigns that have been launched recently that are being analyzed to the bone… I liked it a lot. I enjoyed every letter.

“On the surface, buzz and roach marketing have indispensable experiental elements. Word-of-mouth is certainly a one-on-one interaction. Many consumers find it a benefit to know of new product and sites first, and often the imparted information is beneficial also. Buzz marketing is also heavily dependent on new technologies, or a new application for existing ones. The use of blogs for marketing effectiveness, for instance, is a perfect example. And clearly, word-of-mouth is principled on grass-roots activation. These are all hallmarks of successful experiental marketing. Yet without authenticity, the experience is muddied by ethical constraints, and the consumer’s adverse reaction to a blurred and ethical boundary is palpable.”

Order it on Amazon or eBay. You won’t regret it. You’ll feel complete when this book is in your marketing library.

Read Max Lenderman’s blog.

"YouTube, founded by Internet commerce pioneers from PayPal, has developed a new service that allows people to easily upload, tag, and share personal video clips through www.YouTube.com and across the Internet on other sites, blogs and through e-mail. The service also allows users to create their own personal video network." All you need is a Flash Player, which almost all of the surfers nowadays have installed already.

I remember Nathan asking me a little while ago why I didn’t upload all these clips from my archive to the GoogleVideo site, and I said it was far too complicated to then access them afterwards. With YouTube, I can browse on the tags I gave the clips, I can embed the clips into my blog, I can subscribe to RSS feeds from users, or have RSS feeds being generated on a specific tag or a combination of tags. It’s not just the amount of videos online, it’s the way I can use them. You can also add or invite friends to your personal friends list, making it even more easy to track recently uploaded clips by people you want to stay in touch with or of whom you like the things they’ve uploaded so far. Another thing that comes along with adding friends is that you can also access their favorites, so you even have a lot more clips to look at. Also very popular is the starred rating option which allows you to express your fondness of clips other people have uploaded.

I made my own archive on YouTube, uploading every funny/shocking/deranged/sexy clip I’ve received this last year. I’m up to 488 clips, and it’s still growing. I did this because I got tired of the forwarding, with my ‘out’ box always filled with ‘pending sending’ mails. Also, due to spam regulations, a lot of companies are blocking video clips or file extensions for their employees, making a lot of emails to former colleagues bounce or just redirect to the junk folder. Forwarding a short (especially compared to GoogleVideo !) URL to someone is a very good way to bypass this corporate rule and doesn’t cause my email load to exceed human limits.

You can also use YouTube to share private videos with friends or family, making it very easy to upload clips from family reunions, dinner parties or birthdays and share them with other loved ones online. Yeah, YouTube really gets to it. It’s a perfect community. No doubt. If Google should decide they want some web 2.0 action, like Yahoo has it’s Flickr… they should buy YouTube and forget about their GoogleVideo stuff. To be honest, I haven’t really used GoogleVideo since I came across YouTube in July because the time between uploading a clip, and actually being able to use it somewhere online is just way too long. With YouTube, depending on the filesize (max 100 mb), it only takes a few minutes before it’s available. And instantness is a very high-valued quality of any web service.

Adult footage isn’t allowed, and the self-regulation between users is pretty high. You can flag a clip for unreasonable content, and be sure it’ll disappear very very soon. Not at once, but the review monkeys over at YouTube are very alert and step in very often to remove copyrighted or obscene material. And another wonderful thing about YouTube is: there are no porn ads, no adult friend finder ads or whatsoever, making it a very clean site for all ages.

I can recommend YouTube to all of you, so y’all can broadcast yourselves.

Links :

* Signing up at YouTube (for free, of course)
* Coolz0r Videos

So now what? Well, YouTube is a perfect online sharing tool. But there’s offline fun too. And in comes Veoh, an initiative very much like YouTube, but with some extras. I’ll take you through the extras and explain a little how it works.

Veoh is an Internet Television Network that is able to reach anyone with a broadband Internet connection and a PC or a Mac.  All you need to do is download and install the Veoh software, and you’re off. (Took me about a minute to set it up, downloaded .exe file size: 2.38 mb)

Veoh allows anyone to create and broadcast their own TV show or a Channel full of shows. Not small streaming videos, but FULL-Screen, TV-Quality video. Veoh does not transcode the content, whereas YouTube renders it all and makes a Flash clip of it. Veoh offers it in it’s native encoding, and does not limit the file sizes/length of video. YouTube has a 100 mb limit. Veoh’s goal is to become the platform for producers of all sizes (from individuals to studios and everyone in between) to have a democratized TV broadcasting system. Democratized means unfiltered, thus including adult material.

Veoh has over 10,000 shows available for immediate consumption.  If you’re worried about being exposed to Adult content, Veoh has a built-in family filter that is on by default.  You can choose what rating not to go above. Filters are: TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14, TV-MA, Adults Only and ’shocking & offensive’. Altering those filters requires the password to be re-entered.

Veoh has a stand-alone function built in, so what you’ve downloaded is also viewable when you’re not connected to the internet or on the move with your laptop. Prior to watching, the show must be downloaded to your computer. Veoh makes this process as easy as clicking a download button. Most shows will download within minutes or even seconds, others may take longer. Once a download is complete, you can watch the show. If you like the show, you can “subscribe” to it, and automatically get every new episode that the broadcaster publishes. It is FREE to subscribe to all shows . Think of this as a TiVo for Internet TV.

One of the coolest features is that you can manage your Veoh video queue remotely. So if you have Veoh installed on your PC/Mac at home, you can log into our system from work, and add stuff for your Veoh to download, so that you have it when you get home.

Veoh also has an integration for iPods, with over 3000 videos ready to download and play.

Veoh is based in San Diego, CA, is venture capital backed, and built by some pretty cool guys :-). CEO- Dmitry Shapiro built Akonix Systems, (an IM/P2P security company with over 1 million deployed enterprise seats), Chief Scientist – Dr. Ted Dunning built MusicMatch’s recommendation engine (sold to Yahoo). Full bios can be found here.

Getting Started :

* Download the tool for Mac OS X (10.3.9 and +) or PC (WinXP)
* Take a Tour, hosted by Veoh’s CEO, Dmitry Shapiro
* Learn how to make Veoh use iTunes to download videos

What other Video Archives are there left?

Not really plenty. I haven’t found or heard of any others that are building upon social networking, but there are some cool places where you can access pretty funny viral material.

* Viral X
* iFilm
* EatMail.tv (register)
* ViralMeister
* Lycos Viral

The set-up as I’ve done it to try this out :

1. Download the tool trial for PC or Mac
2. Install the zipped file & run it
3. Click on the ’select image’ button, then browse for an image
4. Click on the ’save as’ button and name the output file (will be html)
5. Select a font type from the drop-down menu
6. Set a font size (you might want to keep the ‘-1′)
7. Set the alignment
8. Set a format
9. Set the page background color
10. Set the text mode to ‘Custom Text’
11. Leave the ‘html header’ for what it is. (you can change it later)
12. Enter the text in the big textfield below
13. Click the ‘Convert’ button

Notes : You’ll have to clear the text box first. There are four options right above it to modify some more, but I’ve only disabled the third one (‘auto save name’), the rest is ‘checked’.

Use the ‘image preview’ to modify the selected image, though it didn’t show everything when I did that. The trial version has alerts that pop-up when you want to export. That’s because they think you should consider buying the tool if you like it. It didn’t disturb me, but I just wanted to add it so you know they’re present, and it’s normal.

What it looks like in an image :

See the html with a black background or with a white background

Links : [Artext] – [Reviews] – via [ThrashTalk]

The Big Moo is an unprecedented collaboration of 33 of the world’s smartest business thinkers, blending their best ideas on how you can remarkablize your organization. Being remarkable means: stop being ordinary, stop trying to be perfect. Desire change. Act now !

Two excerpts from the book :

“There isn’t a logical, proven, step-by-step formula you can follow. Instead, there’s a chaotic path through the woods, a path that includes side routes encompassing customer service, unconventional dedication, unparallelled leadership, and daring to dream. Is this a path worth staying on? Only if you want to grow. Only if you’re tired of being a cog in a dehumanizing machine. Only if you are willing to embrace the quest for the big moo.”

Golden rules to become a failure :

1. Keep secrets.
2. Be certain you’re right and ignore those that disagree with you.
3. Set agressive deadlines fot others to get by in – then change them when they aren’t met.
4. Resist testing you theories.
5. Focus more on what other people think and less on whether your idea is as good as it could be.
6. Assume that a critical mass must embrace your idea for it to work.
7. Choose an idea where number 6 is a requirement.
8. Realize that people who don’t instantly get your idea are bullheaded, shortsighted or even stupid.
9. Don’t bother to dramatically increase the quality of your presentation style.
10. Insist that you’ve got to go straight to the top of the organization to get something done.
11. Always go for the big win.

Thank you : [Marco] from [MarketingFacts] to connect me to [Roy Van Veen] who sent me a copy of this brilliant book. I’ll pass it on.

[Seth Godin] – [Pre-Order a Copy] – join [Remarkabalize] and learn.

[Remarkabalize* is a new kind of network that helps organizations develop their stories and deliver on creating the next generation of business growth.]

Yesterday (the 7th) he still didn’t receive the laptop, so he checked the status of the goods with the live tracking system UPS has on their site. There it stated the laptop had been dropped off in Brussels (airport) and got signed for on delivery – being september 6th, 2.05 PM CET in Lier, our very quiet home town. Very strange. Since he wasn’t home at that time, he couldn’t possibly have signed for the package, so he called UPS. Overthere they said ‘Mister x (real name on argumented request), you have signed for the laptop and we have delivered it so to us there is no problem. X started arguing and explaining he received nada, and he’d love this to be cleared out immediately. UPS then said they’d check it out and promised they’d get back to him.

Then he went one floor down, to check with the other guy living in the block (there’s three appartments) but he denied having heard or seen anything. Same story on the ground floor. X went back to his appartment, feeling ripped off – as you could imagine. Ten minutes later, he heard his neighbour leave his flat, only to have him show up at his door another ten minutes later, carrying a broken-sealed box from Dell, stating he had found it in the basement. All hell broke loose. Some shouting commenced… you know how that goes.

X went to the cops, but they said he didn’t have the evidence to cuff the bast*rd living on floor 1, and that there was no case. As x left the police department he saw his neighbour standing at the corner of the street. Maybe to verify X would really go to the cops to file a complaint? Definitely not a coincidence, that’s for sure. Since the box stated you shouldn’t sign for the package when the seal is broken, he called Dell and explained the situation.

Here’s where Dell kicks in : Over at Dell’s they immediately jumped on the case, and an inspector would come and visit X to check the situation and take the laptop with him. Without even waiting for the result of this case, Dell promised him to ship another laptop right away and that a personal follow-up by an account manager would swiftly follow to clear out this matter. Dell stated this kind of things are very important to them, and that they would solve this. The laptop is supposed to be on his way at this time.

X called me up to explain the situation and I suggested I’d come over to check the laptop for any evidence at all, since the guy living under him had it already for a day. When I arrived, X’s father was there (I think the laptop was for him, I don’t know that) and as we were discussing the matter on the curb (we coincidentally met, arriving at the same time) I saw the whining liar from floor one peeking through a gap of an opened window. So he was listening in. Tssss. He has no life. We started laughing real loud, looking up and letting him know he was a very bad spy. He stepped back and closed the window a bit more. What a fag.

People who do this incredibly stupid stuff usually are so stupid they’d never wipe out their traces, let alone know how to do that. I plugged in the laptop and went looking for documents or files. As expected no files where ‘physically’ present so there was no real evidence the cops could use. Then I thought about the temp folder. Windows keeps ‘a copy’ of everything you open, so there should’ve been some traces of activity there… and bingo !!! He’d been browsing through pictures on the DVD-writer (comes along with the Dell) and yesyesyes there were pictures of him and his ugly girlfriend. Now THAT is stupid.

Nailed ! – X will go to the cops later on today to show them what we’ve discovered. UPS is currently running an investigation within the company, interviewing the delivery boy (girl?) that dropped off the laptop and getting a description on the person that signed for the goods.
Dell is on the case too, with this personal inspector/account manager who will take care of this matter. I think the tenant of floor 1 is busted big time ! Don’t you?

So. What are we going to sue him for?

• Fraude with official documents and signatures
• Impersonating X
• Deceiving UPS, Dell and X
• Theft from X, UPS and Dell
• Being a jerk

Why this post? Dell has received a lot of negative publicity lately. Initiated by Jeff Jarvis the stream of comments kept on coming, silencing the words of positive writers, pushing those positive things way back in the result pages of any search engine. Well it had its consequences and Dell reacted and – by the look and feel of it – also changed a lot in the way they deal with customers. Even if it’s in a tiny dot called Belgium. I just wanted to mention it, because I was quite surprised to hear they’ve assigned a personal inspector/case handler for X and directly offered him to send a new laptop saying ‘it speaks for itself we’ll take back the laptop and send you a new one. You’re entitled to a product that comes straight from our company, only this way we can provide you with a decent service. A new one will be sent to you right away and we’ll investigate this matter personally.‘ I’m not going to say this is all because of Jarvis, but I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with it. I’ve been in touch with Dell a few times myself for people I know that ran into a little this or that, mostly helpdesk stuff. A few times I felt being played with and sensed some disrespect. I think those days are over.

Of course X can’t file a complaint for UPS or Dell, but I’m pretty sure they’ll go for the jackass too. I never had a Dell myself. I used to refer people to Jeff’s story when they thought of becoming a Dell-patient (as I called them) – but I think I’m going to rethink this. This service is improved, better and damn good.

1. URL Search – Please wait while timing out.

Searching for my blog’s url, it takes ages for a returnpage to appear. Very often the search doesn’t even load and the ‘loading’ bar in the explorer just disappears without a new page opening up. Maybe it’s a signal to tell me not to perform ego-searches, but I think : if I don’t get results, neither do other users. I’ve tested with a few friends which lead to the same results. Timing out with a cute technorati anigif has become familiar.

So maybe too many users are using Technorati, and my query doesn’t come trough? Ok. But time after time? I’ve tried it at almost every hour of the day, because I often post at night I could also test it then. No results. Sometimes, yes. I must admit it, so do the other two guys I’ve asked to perform some test searches. I does load sometimes, say 1 out of 15.

2. Ping accepted. Ignoring Ping.

My blog’s handcoded, so I use the java embed code Technorati provided me. The fact that I have to go ping manually is bearable. I have no objection to that. Besides, now that I’ve found pingoat, I can ping Technorati as well, so I can bypass the manual ping from within my account. Nevertheless, I still ping about five times just to be sure. Man, I even log out and in again to check if my session didn’t expire or something (I know it can’t expire, … but I still tested it, just to make sure it wasn’t that). The manual ping from within my Technorati account always returns the ‘thank you for letting us know url has been updated’. I take that as a confirmation, because must of the time when people thank you, it’s because you’ve given something. In this case, the url. Why doesn’t it appear in the search then?

3. Blog last updated 15 days ago.

Then some time ago Technorati stopped including me. I don’t know why. My posts never got listed and more than 15 recent ones are missing. My ‘archive’ isn’t complete, and by the looks of it, it never will be completed. The entire point of claiming this blog (for me) is that others, including myself, can see the history of what I’ve posted in back-order of appearance. The point is that they can see who links me up, where I’ve posted and so that readers know what my blog is about. Since the tool on itself isn’t accurate for me (anymore) , I’m backing out.

If I run back through my archive, and synchronize with Technorati, I get this :

Technorati : Last post indexed is on 15th of August. Meaning my last six posts aren’t there.

Then, August 12th got skipped, and ‘The Mobile Market’ and ‘Flag My Map’ got listed. Posted on the 11th and 10th, so normally indexed.

Then ‘Pic2Vid’ got skipped but ‘Nathan’s Screwed’ was not. Both were from August 9th.
Why index just one then? It’s so unlogical. I can’t make sense of it.

Then 10 posts were skipped, leading us to ‘MSN PPC becomes MSN Keywords’ on Aug. 4th.

There’s more, but that wouldn’t add to the point I’m trying to make.

4. Ranking : minus 50.000 spots, minus 20 links, minus 15 sites.

I’m not an A-blogger. I haven’t got a large audience. I have no ‘weight’ in this game (yet). My old blog is totally gone (because it was also in html but even crappier than this version), so I restarted this version in april, after six months of silence. I’ve only been blogging for a little more than a year, so I don’t expect hundreds of links to my blog. But I know for sure 24 linking sites is way to little, and 26 links that’s just ridiculous. Since these numbers have no relevancy whatsoever, I think for me, in my situation, Technorati is useless.

So here’s my theory :

Technorati has grown way to fast, and now has problems keeping up. I can understand, but the time it takes to ‘get back on track’ is too long for me. You can’t expect me to put up links to a profile that says the site they just came from hasn’t been updated for 15 days. My pages get indexed faster by Google, and for all I know, they’re not specialized in blogs yet.

This isn’t a kick in the dark towards Technorati. I’ve filled in their form thrice nicely (the two first attempts resulted in an error, so to be sure I tried until I thought it went well). So either they got it three times, or just one time. I’ve sent them a message six days ago stating about the same things I have said here above. I haven’t gotten any answer yet, but I’m not going to send the request and ‘whining’ note again. I love the service, I’ve advised it to tons of people who most of the time enjoy it a lot. (Sometime’s it’s just ‘rush hour’ anybody understands that).

But I can’t explain them why this great service I want them to use so badly to keep ‘in touch with the blogospere’ and to ‘know what’s being said right now’ doesn’t list my own blogposts or links like it should. That’s why I’m silently dropping out. Since these posts don’t appear at Technorati… I’d doubt it anyone would ever know unless they read it here.

For the record :
I’m totally NOT pissed off. This is not a post to bring Technorati down in any way. I’m just explaining why I removed my links, and why I feel this service isn’t working out for me. I know tons of people who are very satisfied with the results they get, and they’re absolutely thrilled about the service. I’m just saying I’m not that thrilled, because I don’t get the same service. I’m looking at it from the practical side. Technorati isn’t driving that much traffic to my site anyway (not over 30 hits a month) so I see no more reasons to put any more time in pinging the service manually or having a link to an outdated profile. No hard feelings.

Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer browser engine, which means that what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser but with many additional efficient features.

Latest upgrades : v1.3.3 + ‘more rss’ button on rss sidebar. + Search drop down. + Podcasting support. + Online update will remember item’s check state. * memory usage adjustment. + feed.maxthon.com , Maxthon feed directory.

Listed features : [Maxthon - Feature Tour ] – I’ll discuss the ones I come across.

Downloading : No problemo ! Superfast.

Installing : Some remarks

After chosing your language, you’re offered the following interface :

Do not install this ! Why not to check the box ? Let’s go down the list:

Auto-saving passwords is not-done. Never-ever use that option not even in IE.

Login & submit buttons that are clicked automatically… what if you don’t want to?

I’ll fill in the registration forms myself, so I know what I’m supplying. So should you.

I’ll think of my own passwords. Everyone can find a password. Think hard enough.

Encrypting data? For who? What happens to it? How do I recover it? Is recovering free? You can’t tell, I’m not going to check on Master Password’s functions either, so better not allow this to happen.

Gator… DING-DING-DING. Isn’t that umm… Claria, WhenU… AdWare? Yup! Better skip this too !

Next step : Customizing your view.

I unchecked the search bar, and also hid the favorites which were nicely taken over from IE. We’re off ! Let’s explore this thing for real.

First buttons I noticed are these :

So let’s check’m out one by one.
The first one is ‘view source’. An option I use quite frequently, so it comes in handy that I have it there.
The second one is the icon of Macromedia’s Flash. It’s Flash Save 1.21 and it allows you to isolate and save Flash movies on any page that’s open in a tab. No more need to dig through your temp folders to find that cool animation or game, just save it. Much better.
If you click the third icon, the quote, an alert pops up that says : ‘ this button enables you to send SMS from your PC to any mobile in the world. To enable this function you must register as a user with our partner ZYB. Registering is free, and you get 5 free SMS upon registration’. Now that’s a cool feature. Little research tells us you’ll pay 8ct/sms from the sixth message you send. Also : “When you install the ZYB desktop client you can right click any text on the web and get it to your cell. It takes just two clicks.” Works on any webpage.
More info on these SMS services at [ZYB]
The fourth button says ‘EnableRightClick’. Umm. I don’t really get that. But you can click it on and off if you want to look busy. ;)

I was surprised to find an autodetect for RSS feeds on a page, but after some testing, I conclude there’s still a lot to be done here. For instance, my own feed isn’t recognized, but I could locate the bug: Although the link on the page is correct, the dectection and auto-add function insert an extra ‘/’ in the url, so indeed it’s an error, but it ain’t mine. Here’s an example of the alert that pops up :

Also, when you’re on a page with multiple feeds [This one, for example] it only detects one, feed, namely mine and thus generated another error. If the feed’s url doesn’t end on .xml, it doesn’t seem to be recognized, because no other notification was given although at least five good RSS feeds are listed here. Bit of a downer.

So then I checked out the sidebar. It has a link to ‘weather’. — That’s weight you can drop, unless you like researching the weather, with all respect for that. There’s a link to M2-Bookmark, something that requires a username and password, which I don’t have. Next button (I’m running bottom up in the sidebar here) is for RSS. The listed feeds are Reuters and Yahoo and some other general feeds, and the feeds from Maxthon. So I thought lets add a feed. Mine for instance. So I click the ‘Add’ button. Alert pops up, saying I need to install Chinese. I refuse. Error 404, in senseless characters. Seems I won’t be adding my feed here today.

Adding Nathan’s feed while surfing his site works just great and it looks like this :

The built-in RSS reader is really ok, very clean and styled lay-out. Titles, excerpts and timestamps are very clear, and the top right section of the screen displays all the current titles in the feed, in case you hate scrolling. Reader approved.

Back to the buttons : ‘Resources, – we’re half-way up -, opens up a general list of ‘general knowledge links’ of world facts . Good thing to have if you can’t use Google.

Things in the list : Telephone Directory (infobel), Flightbooker, WorldWeather (again), Online Calculator, Online Virus Scanner, Internet Connection Test (wtf?), Currency Rates, Stock Screener, … one more useful than the other. Ther service is there, it’s the gesture that counts.

Next up is ‘folder’ which lets you browse ‘MyComputer’ etc.
Next up is ‘history’, and clearly it lets you browse what’s in the cache.
Then the ‘favorites’, no further explaining needed and then… a feature that I find impressive.

Impressive is a serious understatement here. The search is VERY extended, I’ll list it up :

The ‘General’ tab lets you search in Google, All The Web, Alta Vista, Steady Search, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, Excite, Galaxy, MetaCrawler, AskJeeves & Killerinfo. That’s 12 engines. So then you need to be careful (which I wasn’t). I checked all 12 boxes and entered ‘Coolz0r’ in the search box and hit the ‘enter’. Twelve tabs appeared at once, all with search results. Better do it one by one. Practice makes perfect. Heheh. Galaxy doesn’t do it though, it just opens up the page without auto-inputting the search string. You’ll have to re-enter it there. On the right : DO NOT DO IT LIKE THIS ! it will open 53 tabs with the query.

Then all other options have specific search engines for the topic they’re specialized in.

The list :

Software searches in : FileForum, FreewareFiles, Download.com, SnapFiles, SnapFiles Freeware & Tucows.

FileMirrors has following uptions : ‘Name Begins With’, ‘Name Contains’, ‘Name Equals’ & ‘Name Ends With’

Pictures performs a Google Image Search or a search in Clipart.com or PicSearch.

MP3’s takes a peep in : MP3.com – Album, MP3.com – Artist, MP3Board.com, Astraweb,
Lycos Music & All The Web MP3

Coding tracks for : ASP/VbScript, C/C++, Delphi, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP & VB

Words searches the main web dictionaries for answers and matches. Examples used are :
Merriam-Webster online & thesaurus, SpellCheck.net & Dictionary.com

News is very mainstream and looks in GoogleNews, YahooNews, BBC -, CNN -, ABC News, All The Web News & AltaVista News.

Last but not least, Products aims your search to Amazon.com, Yahoo Shopping, eBay or Walmart.

A lot of search, I tell yah !

Owkay. Last thing I’m going to point out is the ‘grouping’ option, I’ll do it by means of an example. To moderate my blog, I need to open a tab for technorati.com (to ping it), a tab for pingoat.com (to ping a lot of things), a tab for haloscan.com (for comments) and maybe some other sites I regularly post on. I can use the ‘Save Windows As Group’ link in the menu to create a group that I’ll call ‘blog’. Later on, I can add any page to this group, or delete one, if needed. I then can have maxthon start up the browser with opening the group of sites I need.
I believe you could call this : controlled tabbed window management.

Nice ending for this tale : if you shut down the browser …

/browser approved, stays installed to check it out some more. If anything shocking happens, good or bad, I’ll blog it.

Try for yourself : [Download]

Hat Tip : [CasualJim]

Other remarks about the beta : okay, since it’s Google’s IM client, logical thinking implicates you need an @gmail.com address. If you haven’t got one yet you can contact me – I’ve got 50 invites left -, and Google just launched a service (overseas in the US and maybe Canada) that allows you to apply for an invite per text message.
But I think it’ll be sweet if other addresses could be used to join GoogleTalk. I know hotmail allows it, but it’s not a must.

The log-my-conversations can be opted-out on. I like that a lot.

Problem I’ve just encountered: current apps running allowing ‘Talk’ in general :
* Trillian (MSN, AIM, Yahoo, ICQ,IRC) , Skype and now GoogleTalk.

There should be a system of recognition between these apps so that my status on Skype
changes to ‘busy talking’ (when I’m talking on Google) and vice versa. If it wasn’t for Trillian, I’d be running another 4 or 5 apps extra to be able to talk to some friends on the different clients.

Situation now : I can talk to multiple people at once, on multiple applications. Google needs to mute or send a ‘busy’ signal to Skype when I’m talking, so that the calls can be diverted to the Skype voicemail. (Or so that the caller from Skype is informed I’m busy calling on another application) And also vice versa.

The quality of the signal is just great. I’ve been calling three times to test it. From Belgium to Ivan in New Zealand goes just great, no interruptions whatsoever, great quality of the sound. Same goes for the call to Nathan in NY. I don’t know if Nathan’s on a W-LAN, but I know Ivan is. I’m on cable. The connection went really well, so we tested that. The other problem there was, was with the call to Hans from the Netherlands. Geographically, it’s very close, but the connection really stuttered a lot. Perhaps it was because Hans is on W-LAN too, and his daughter was ‘upstairs’ downloading stuff and chatting . Otherwise, no complaints about the quality of the service.

Very good feature is the ’select from my contacts’ option when you click the ‘add friends’ link in the bottom right corner of the main interface.

I still need to find out how to change my nickname, I doesn’t seem very obvious to me… I can’t locate it. Perhaps it’s based on the GMail settings, but I don’t want the appearance of my e-mails to change, so I think there must be a way to fix it, without messing up the GMail settings.

GoogleTalk for Mac ? No sign yet. :(

Read [All About GoogleTalk] and [download] it

So now I’m going to have to base my friendship on the apps my friends-to-be are running. I can’t connect to all of them at once. I want just one program that covers it all. One great tool that allows me to talk to anyone, no matter what service they are on. If they use AIM and I’m on GoogleTalk, I think we should be able to talk. How come everybody has to open up an account somewhere at the service to be able to talk the users of that service?

I mean if I’m on a cell phone network called ‘one’ I can still call to a friend who’s using network ‘two’ for his mobile. I mean, suppose cingular would say it no longer will connect you to numbers that are not on their network – it would be a scandal. Yet still, with all these chat clients around, this is the active policy today.

Something else I’m missing, and of which I think Google has the capacity to do it, is to be able to send a message to someone who’s not online at that time. ICQ has this great feature that when I send a message to an offline user, the message gets delivered as soon as that user connects again. That’s a really good thing I’d like to have on GoogleTalk.

Direct Response Television is a form of mass-advertisement that targets the collecting of consumer data by triggering a response from the viewer.
DRTV can be used in many ways, e.g. to launch a new product, to begin with – or to extend an existing – database or to distribute aimed or targeted information to a large number of consumers.

What makes a good DRTV structure ?

1. Picturing a practical situation in which the product is used.
2. Showing what you have to offer.
3. The call-to-action
4. Possible ways for consumers to contact you.

* Accurate information about the product, control of the message.
* A strong offer without competitors
* Directly to the viewer, the consumer at home.

3 Most commonly used forms of DRTV :

- The DRTV-spot

This clip takes 30 to 60 seconds and is part of a greater promotional campaign. It offers service, a sample or plain info and often lacks creativity. It’s permissive marketing, that’s a pro. But it’s expensive.

- TV-Shopping

These shows take 30 minutes or longer in which multiple clips are shown about the same product. Each clip takes about 5 minutes, and in between there’s a host (or an audience) that evaluates what’s been shown.
The pro here : you have the ability to set up a product demonstration. The big con is the pricetag.

- Infomercials

With an average length of 30 mins it sounds like a shopping show, but infact it’s a film or a story ( a ‘documentary’ ). After this there’s a demonstration and an evaluation. Infomercials are used to market products from a higher price class, or to sell unique and limited items. Of course, this also is rather expensive.

The short form : broadcasted commercials during regular air time.
The long form : complete and dedicated programs.

DRTV is trying to trigger a response from the viewer, in order to sell something AND to complete a database. By phoning in, clients already give their name, location, phone number and address ( to ship the goods). They pay with a certain type of credit card and order a specific product. That is a lot of information to start something with.

But if you focus on the cost of producing and airing, you might say it could be useful to do something more than ‘just’ selling products and composing a database. Here’s where BRTV steps in.

What is BRTV ?

While DRTV was only focusing on a response from the consumers, BRTV is trying to influence their opinion about the brand and the company as well and at the same time. This generated Brand Response will not only cause the consumer to change the idea he/she intentionally had, it’ll make it more natural for the consumer to accept your product as being ‘needed’.

Brand Building Advertisement, of which BRTV is a part, invites the consumer to participate and to pay attention by means of a trigger-story, an anecdote or a spectacular show. The product is being introduced and is clearly distinguished from other products alike. The USP (unique selling proposition) is being repeated over and over, but each time with different words. The entire purpose is to pesuade the consumer with a softer and more gentle touch than plain DRTV does.

With BRTV, selling is definitely a goal. But it’s more hidden and unspoken compared to DRTV. BRTV slowly pushes the consumer in the right direction, while DRTV is selling things more aggressively. The sale is the primary target here, not the brand recognition or the company’s image.

The greater benefit of extending your air-time to BRTV lies in the fact passive viewers become active viewers during the process. This raises their interest in the product, and makes them aware of the product, the brand and the values behind it. Not only will he seek interaction with the company by responding to the call-to-action, because of the positive image in his mind, the consumer will pass on the message. It’s the viral factor of brand response television.

Newspapers are one of the traditional mediums used by businesses, both big and small alike, to advertise their businesses.

Advantages

• Allows you to reach a huge number of people in a given geographic area 
• You have the flexibility in deciding the ad size and placement within the newspaper 
• Your ad can be as large as necessary to communicate as much of a story as you care to tell 
• Exposure to your ad is not limited; readers can go back to your message again and again if so desired. 
• Free help in creating and producing ad copy is usually available 
• Quick turn-around helps your ad reflect the changing market conditions. The ad you decide to run today can be in your customers’ hands in one to two days.

Disadvantages

• Ad space can be expensive 
• Your ad has to compete against the clutter of other advertisers, including the giants ads run by supermarkets and department stores as well as the ads of your competitors 
• Poor photo reproduction limits creativity 
• Newspapers are a price-oriented medium; most ads are for sales 
• Expect your ad to have a short shelf life, as newspapers are usually read once and then discarded. 
• You may be paying to send your message to a lot of people who will probably never be in the market to buy from you. 
• Newspapers are a highly visible medium, so your competitors can quickly react to your prices 
• With the increasing popularity of the Internet, newspapers face declining readership and market penetration. A growing number of readers now skip the print version of the newspaper (and hence the print ads) and instead read the online version of the publication.

Magazines are a more focused, albeit more expensive, alternative to newspaper advertising. This medium allows you to reach highly targeted audiences.

Advantages

• Allows for better targeting of audience, as you can choose magazine publications that cater to your specific audience or whose editorial content specializes in topics of interest to your audience. 
• High reader involvement means that more attention will be paid to your advertisement 
• Better quality paper permits better color reproduction and full-color ads 
• The smaller page (generally 8 ½ by 11 inches) permits even small ads to stand out

Disadvantages

• Long lead times mean that you have to make plans weeks or months in advance 
• The slower lead time heightens the risk of your ad getting overtaken by events 
• There is limited flexibility in terms of ad placement and format 
• Space and ad layout costs are higher

Yellow Pages.There are several forms of Yellow Pages that you can use to promote and advertise your business. Aside from the traditional Yellow Pages supplied by phone companies, you can also check out specialized directories targeted to specific markets (e.g. Hispanic Yellow Pages, Blacks, etc.); interactive or consumer search databases; Audiotex or talking yellow pages; Internet directories containing national, local and regional listings; and other services classified as Yellow Pages.

Advantages

• Wide availability, as mostly everyone uses the Yellow Pages 
• Non-intrusive 
• Action-oriented, as the audience is actually looking for the ads
• Ads are reasonably inexpensive 
• Responses are easily tracked and measured 
• Frequency

Disadvantages

• Pages can look cluttered, and your ad can easily get lost in the clutter 
• Your ad is placed together with all your competitors 
• Limited creativity in the ads, given the need to follow a pre-determined format 
• Ads slow to reflect market changes

RadioAdvantages

• Radio is a universal medium enjoyed by people at one time or another during the day, at home, at work, and even in the car. 
• The vast array of radio program formats offers to efficiently target your advertising dollars to narrowly defined segments of consumers most likely to respond to your offer. 
• Gives your business personality through the creation of campaigns using sounds and voices 
• Free creative help is often available 
• Rates can generally be negotiated 
• During the past ten years, radio rates have seen less inflation than those for other media

Disadvantages

• Because radio listeners are spread over many stations, you may have to advertise simultaneously on several stations to reach your target audience 
• Listeners cannot go back to your ads to go over important points 
• Ads are an interruption in the entertainment. Because of this, a radio ad may require multiple exposure to break through the listener’s “tune-out” factor and ensure message retention 
• Radio is a background medium. Most listeners are doing something else while listening, which means that your ad has to work hard to get their attention

TVAdvantages

• Television permits you to reach large numbers of people on a national or regional level in a short period of time 
• Independent stations and cable offer new opportunities to pinpoint local audiences 
• Television being an image-building and visual medium, it offers the ability to convey your message with sight, sound and motion

Disadvantages

• Message is temporary, and may require multiple exposure for the ad to rise above the clutter 
• Ads on network affiliates are concentrated in local news broadcasts and station breaks 
• Preferred ad times are often sold out far in advance 
• Limited length of exposure, as most ads are only thirty seconds long or less, which limits the amount of information you can communicate 
• Relatively expensive in terms of creative, production and airtime costs

Direct Mail. Direct mail, often called direct marketing or direct response marketing, is a marketing technique in which the seller sends marketing messages directly to the buyer. Direct mail include catalogs or other product literature with ordering opportunities; sales letters; and sales letters with brochures.

Advantages

• Your advertising message is targeted to those most likely to buy your product or service. 
• Marketing message can be personalized, thus helping increase positive response. 
• Your message can be as long as is necessary to fully tell your story. 
• Effectiveness of response to the campaign can be easily measured. 
• You have total control over the presentation of your advertising message. 
• Your ad campaign is hidden from your competitors until it’s too late for them to react 
• Active involvement – the act of opening the mail and reading it — can be elicited from the target market.

Disadvantages

• Some people do not like receiving offers in their mail, and throw them immediately without even opening the mail. 
• Resources need to be allocated in the maintenance of lists, as the success of this kind of promotional campaign depends on the quality of your mailing list. 
• Long lead times are required for creative printing and mailing 
• Producing direct mail materials entail the expense of using various professionals – copywriter, artists, photographers, printers, etc. 
• Can be expensive, depending on your target market, quality of your list and size of the campaign.

Telemarketing. Telephone sales, or telemarketing, is an effective system for introducing a company to a prospect and setting up appointments.

Advantages

• Provides a venue where you can easily interact with the prospect, answering any questions or concerns they may have about your product or service. 
• It’s easy to prospect and find the right person to talk to. 
• It’s cost-effective compared to direct sales. 
• Results are highly measurable. 
• You can get a lot of information across if your script is properly structured. 
• If outsourcing, set-up cost is minimal 
• Increased efficiency since you can reach many more prospects by phone than you can with in-person sales calls. 
• Great tool to improve relationship and maintain contact with existing customers, as well as to introduce new products to them 
• Makes it easy to expand sales territory as the phone allows you to call local, national and even global prospects.

Disadvantages

• An increasing number of people have become averse to telemarketing. 
• More people are using technology to screen out unwanted callers, particularly telemarketers 
• Government is implementing tougher measures to curb unscrupulous telemarketers 
• Lots of businesses use telemarketing. 
• If hiring an outside firm to do telemarketing, there is lesser control in the process given that the people doing the calls are not your employees 
• May need to hire a professional to prepare a well-crafted and effective script 
• It can be extremely expensive, particularly if the telemarketing is outsourced to an outside firm 
• It is most appropriate for high-ticket retail items or professional services.

Specialty Advertising. This kind of advertising entails the use of imprinted, useful, or decorative products called advertising specialties, such as key chains, computer mouse, mugs, etc. These articles are distributed for free; recipients need not purchase or make a contribution to receive these items.

Advantages

• Flexibility of use 
• High selectivity factor as these items can be distributed only to the target market. 
• If done well, target audience may decide to keep the items, hence promoting long retention and constant exposure 
• Availability of wide range of inexpensive items that can be purchased at a low price. 
• They can create instant awareness. 
• They can generate goodwill in receiver 
• The items can be used to supplement other promotional efforts and media (e.g. distributed during trade shows).

Disadvantages

• Targeting your market is difficult. 
• This can be an inappropriate medium for some businesses. 
• It is difficult to find items that are appropriate for certain businesses 
• Longer lead time in developing the message and promotional product
• Possibility of saturation in some items and audiences 
• Wrong choice of product or poor creative may cheapen the image of advertiser

Taken from the PowerHomeBiz website.

Maybe this is what troubles me a bit. I’m just not used to AOL releasing decent products. I even chat AIM through Trillian. Still. I’m impressed. Really. The look and feel is a lot like Firefox’s, that probably comes from the tabbed browsing and the way the top toolbars are arranged. Except there’s just ‘more’ things you can do. On the left side of the window, there’s a search tab (in case Google crashes again).

*** This post has been interrupted by a computer crash ***

Here I was writing good stuff about this browser, heheh. I took a screenshot and wanted to open Photoshop, but it didn’t open anymore. The search panel in the browser locked up everything. Luckily I had already saved this post once. I’ll try to open the browser again, to take a screenshot about some good things.

I like it very much that there are small screenshots of your favorites. Once you have visited the page once in a session, hoovering a shortcut or tab shows an image of the webpage itself, plus the url. That’s cool. If you clean your footprints though, all images are gone again.

I’m very fond of the navigation buttons. Here’s a nice piece of modern integration, really. Especially the soft shadow work is attractive to the eye. The animated loader has moved from the bottom of the window to the top and is nicely blended with the address bar.

Looks smooth, easy to use as in IE, but with a more customized browsing feeling.

Also handy if you need it : the autosuggest while typing an url in the address bar:

It loads all the pages fast enough, but there’s something funny about it.
In the bottom left corner of the window it says : TopSpeed Off. Apparently you can ‘accelerate’ your internet by logging in to your account.

Hmm. Something’s wrong here, quite as hard as with the Google Accelerator. If I were to log in on AOL, they would have my personal data, because I’m a registered member. Now they would be able to link this data to my surfing behaviour. I’m not into this. Really.
 

It’s not the same with explorer, because I don’t have to activate an accelerator yet and I’ve always thought my surfing power was high. Same goes for Firefox. I see no difference with the AOL browser in speed, yet still, all of the sudden my TopSpeed is Off. Hmm.

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Other thing about this browser : The search panel incorporates a DesktopSearch. I’m also against desktopsearching. My windows search thingie has always worked splendid. I’ve never lost files that I didn’t delete myself. DesktopSearch makes you lazy. I know exactly where every download goes, where my temps are and where I keep what sort of files. That is called ‘order’. I’ve noticed with customers who’ve had for instance Google’s DesktopSearch installed that they lack the attention to follow what is happening. They don’t care what goes where, they’ll just type the filename and double click the result. That’s dangerous. God knows what horse comes crawling into your PC without you noticing. Except when you do a search for the virus’s filename of course ;)

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What I don’t like either is the memory capacity this whole browser operation is demanding. If I make the sum of all AOL apps that start running when I simply open my browser, I come to 59.920 Kb of memory use. That’s more than Macromedia’s Dreamweaver uses. It’s a bit too much, I think. Especially for a simple explorer.

I’m really not sure what to think. Seems my AIM client in Trillian isn’t functioning anymore. Trillian blocks *** rebooting Trillian ***
When I close my AOL explorer and reboot Trillian, it’s ok again.

So. In conclusion. I’m a little confused. Photoshop and Trillian have never crashed before since the reformat of my C: four months ago. Is it a coincidence it happens just now? Maybe.

Fact is : I’m going to throw it off again. It’s a really cool design, I like it a lot, but too much stuff isn’t right yet. Perhaps I’ll give it a try again when it comes out of the beta.

Find the beta @ http://beta.aol.com and pick the explorer to download

[via Nathan Weinberg]