ArticleSnatch Blog

You are browsing the search results.

Most companies use Twitter as a PR machine, covered in a thin veil of down-home personalization. But Zappos’ CEO exposes a deep level of intimacy and behind the scenes information. In today’s link building column, “Zappos + Twitter = Innovative Success!,” Sage Lewis explains that this helps Zappos connect with their audience, and get links as a result.

» Full story

The G1, a new mobile device from HTC available and featuring Google’s brand spankin’ new mobile platform Android, is now officially available at T-mobile.

But should you ditch your Blackberry, Palm, iPhone, etc to get one?

The G1 has a touch screen, similar to the iPhone, but it doesn’t have multitouch. It has a mobile application version of the Amazon mp3 store, which I love and use all the time for DRM-free music.

Unfortunately, you’ll need an adapter for that headphone jack to listen to all that music. Plus, you’ll have to purchase a memory card to store your music, and you can only do so up to 8GB.

The G1 does have a slider keypad, which I would love. I’ve had my iPhone for months, but typing on it is still a pain. Prior to that, I had the Samsung Glyde for a couple of weeks and loved the slider keypad. (It was just everything else that was a pain.)

So, should you or shouldn’t you? Here’s what the reviewers who have are saying:

Gizmodo

The G1 phone and the Android operating system are not finished products. There are only three working Google Apps here—Gmail, Maps and Calendar—while Google Docs, Google News, Google Reader, Google Shopping, Google Images, Google Video, Blogger and Picasa are nowhere to be found. What’s the deal?

We have high hopes for third-party coders to fill in gaps Google intentionally or unintentionally left in this OS. There’s already a video player, and we’re sure VLC will try and port some kind of version over. But your question is not whether the phone will be great down the line, it’s whether or not it’s good enough for you to buy it now.

The answer depends most on who you are. Despite all the UI quirks and bad design decisions, it’s still better than other smartphone OSes out there. It’s not perfect, but for people who like tinkering, its cons are outweighed by its pros such as Gmail and the Marketplace. Hopefully Android updates and more ports of Google apps will augment not just future phones but this one too. This isn’t something you’re going to give your mom for Christmas, but if you’re an adventuresome gadget guy with some money to spend ($179) on a totally new, pretty exciting venture, then why not?

CrunchGear

If you’ve been waiting for Android then I suggest you keep waiting. The overall OS seems to be held together by duct tape and needs a lot of work. Apple focuses on the minute details to enrich the overall experience for iPhone users and Android could learn a lesson or ten from it. The hardware design is dated and while the touch-screen and keyboard are great you can’t just forget about the wretched battery life, horrible GPS and the overall ergonomics of it. I wish the G1 were better in every respect because I don’t think the iPhone is that great, but I find myself wishing it were more like it. It’s the best alternative to the iPhone, but it’s just not there yet.

CNET

While we’re not in love with the design and would have liked some additional features, the real beauty of the T-Mobile G1 is the Google Android platform, as it has the potential to make smartphones more personal and powerful. That said, it’s not quite there yet, so for now, the G1 is best suited for early adopters and gadget hounds, rather than consumers and business users.

Engadget

When you put the G1 up against, say, a Sidekick LX, it seems like a no-brainer for T-Mobile customers looking for a powerful QWERTY device — especially at $20 less. You don’t need to be a cutting-edge mobile geek or a pundit to do that math. When facing off with platforms like the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, it holds its own, but has a lot of ground to cover before it’s really making the competition sweat. Still, if you’re just excited to be a part of a platform that’s likely going to be around for a very, very long time, the G1’s a totally reasonable day-to-day device to make it happen, and we expect some pretty great things from this corner of the market down the road.

Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital

Overall, the G1 is a very good first effort, and a godsend for people who prefer physical keyboards or T-Mobile but want to be part of the new world of powerful pocket computers.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hit the campaign trail this week with presidential candidate Barack Obama. Is there any merit to Google’s statement that Mr. Schmidt’s personal beliefs are his own and Google isn’t backing Obama, just its CEO? In today’s Searching for Meaning column, “Vote Obama/Google in ‘08?,” Kevin Ryan asks if Schmidt crossed the line of appropriate behavior and good sense.

» Full story

A whopping 94% of moms rely on other moms during a purchasing decision. So, it comes as no surprise to learn that mom bloggers can have a powerful impact on your online marketing campaign.

Here’s some data from Mom Central Consulting to help let this idea sink in deep into your marketing grey matter:

• 96% of Moms value recommendations they find on Mom Blogs
• Over 78% of Mom Bloggers now review products and services
• More than 60% of Mom Bloggers consider making money important and want more connectivity with companies
• 37% of Mom Bloggers have been contacted as resources for the press

Woah! Did you see that last number? Kind of small considering how powerful moms are. There’s clearly an opportunity for you to go in there and snag some good mom blog coverage.

Need tips on how to approach bloggers? (Hint: It’s not like pitching a journalist)

• Send them a friendly, personalized email. Do not mass email.
• Ask permission to send them a sample of your product or free trial of your service. Do not send unsolicited!
• Offer them something to give away to their readers
• Be accessible to answer questions
• Be cordial even when you get a bad review. It’s ok to comment and defend your product (politely!). But it’s even better to take their criticism to heart and make your product or service better.

What are your tips for approaching mom bloggers? Any success stories? Share your success in the comments!

Related Reading:
Moms See Search as Task-Oriented; Websites as Entertainment
Women More Likely Than Men to Begin Real Estate Search Online
Yahoo Wants Women Now

Today, there are more updates to Google products than you can shake a stick at. So intead of writing a bunch of short, little posts, I have consolidated them into one for you, faithful SEW reader.

Both my awesome husband and my awesome 11 year old son have pointed out to me the new changes to iGoogle. I personally don’t use my iGoogle page all that much (Keepin’ it real [simple]), but I did browse over to it and found some cosmetic changes (The Foo Fighters theme was already there.)

Notice the tab on the left hand side. It includes links to the widgets on your iGoogle page. When you click on one of the links, it switches to a screen with that widget. Some take up the whole page. Others present a list of similar widgets as suggestions. Still others make use of Google reader to present a feed.

Moving on to other Google properties….

Webmaster Tools now testing a Message Center warning that alerts webmasters to possible vulnerabilities with their Content Management Systems (CMS).

Google TV ads has announced new partnerships with COREMedia Systems and Harris Corporation. The COREMedia partnership allows CoreDirect customers to view their Google TV ads right along with their CoreDirect data. The Harris Corp. one adds more inventory for Google TV advertisers.

AdWords has separated the metrics for Google and search partners such as Ask, AOL, etc. This is probably in preparation for the implementation of the Yahoo search advertising partnership.

Last but most important is the changes to the Google algorithm regarding Adobe Flash. Brian Ussery has a writeup about it on his extremely minimalistic-looking blog. Basically, he finds that indexing of Flash still isn’t ready for prime time. I know there may have been some hope with recent news of Adobe working with Google to provide better indexing, but we’re just not there yet, folks.

And that concludes the flurry of Google updates for Friday, October 17, 2008. Leave your thoughts, impressions, etc in the comments!

MySpace has launched a new self-service ad platform. Dubbed “MySpace MyAds,” the new platform allows anyone to create banner ads and use the social network’s HyperTargeting technology to find target audiences.

MySpace offered up the following steps for advertisers to get started:

• STEP 1: Visit https://advertise.myspace.com or click the “Advertise” link located at the bottom of any MySpace page
• STEP 2: Create a display ad using the MySpace MyAds Builder Tool
• STEP 3: Select a variable ad spend anywhere from $25 to $10,000
• STEP 4: HyperTarget to customers
• STEP 5: Measure ad performance with MySpace MyAds analytics reporting

“With MySpace MyAds, we’re blowing the lid off display advertising solutions for small and medium businesses,” said Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing for MySpace. “MySpace MyAds is a direct marketer’s dream – providing entrepreneurs with the most accessible, personalized, and targeted advertising toolkit in the market. We’re giving businesses better ROI ASAP and in today’s economy, that’s a must-have.”

What do you think about the new platform? Leave a comment and let us know!

Related Reading:
MySpace for Online Learning and Marketing Tools
MySpace Launches Beta Version of New Advertising Platform
Google, Yahoo & MySpace Team Up for OpenSocial

links for 2008-10-09: Becoming a Kick-ass PHP ninja | Md Emran Hasan (phpfour)
(tags: program.. http://tinyurl.com/42efgz #
New Article - Cheap Europe tour: a perfect way to travel Europe with in your budget Po.. http://tinyurl.com/4taapn #
New Article - Search Caller Information Trough Reverse Phone Lookup Posted By : Ashley.. http://tinyurl.com/3fet53 #
New Article - Reverse Phone Lookup to [...]

Digital advertising company MIVA has released an update of their toolbar, enabling customizable features. MIVA is also launching a customizable homepage and a widget site, ALOT Buttons, for their customers.

The ALOT brand launched in the last quarter of 2007 with the theme “Make the Internet Easy.” ALOT products aggregate proprietary content and third party content across vertically themed toolbars and homepages.

“We believe that growth of the ALOT brand to date is due largely to our vertical product strategy and believe that today’s launch is a natural progression that will enable us to further build on this success,” commented Peter Corrao, President and Chief Executive Officer, MIVA. “With our new personalized products, users can continue to install vertical toolbars and homepages optimized for their specific interests, but can now also personalize their products by adding widgets from our expanding widget library.”

Related Reading:
MIVA Unveils Plans for New Online Advertising Platform
MIVA Reports $6.5 Million Second Quarter 2008 Loss
MIVA Rejects blinkx Acquisition Offer
Another Year, Another Reorganization for MIVA
Miva Usurps Google in the Publishing Industry

New Article - You are able to incorporate all these elements on all of your copies! Po.. http://tinyurl.com/4ff6n6 #
New Article - Article Marketing plans - Uncover few Steps to Article marketing achieve.. http://tinyurl.com/3ttf7z #
New Article - How to Build a Huge Opt-In Email List immediately Posted By : Mohit Shar.. http://tinyurl.com/4w8jdp #
Virginia Personal Injury Lawyers [...]

ChunkIt is a new search toolbar that bills itself as an x-ray for search. What it does is search your choice of the “big five” search engines, and then displays results on the right and the textual content of the results on the left.

Once the results are loaded, users can click on a paragraph in the left hand side, and it will highlight the paragraph - and then load the full page in the right side.

Highlighted paragraph

Page loaded in the right hand side

I personally find this to be a great tool for search. But one issue for ChunkIt might be copyright. Google has come under fire from newspapers for the issue of copyright when it comes to indexing their pages. Their argument, which has won over some in Europe, is a poor one since Google primarily provides just links to articles.

So, I contacted Brian Cheek at TigerLogic Corporation, the company behind ChunkIt, and here’s what he had to say:

“ChunkIt! is a user-driven device that resides on the client-computer and is not a web service. All processing is handled by and all logic resides on the user’s local computer. ChunkIt! does not persist, store or cache information and does not use a back-end server to perform any of its functionality.”

Smart companies will see the value in ChunkIt’s search tool and not make a fuss over copyright. But expect a few to ignore a good thing when they see it and challenge ChunkIt, but only if and when the tool gets wildly popular.