Archive for the ‘Application Development’ Category

Why Not?

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Just read on VentureBeat about Micello, a mobile app to guide you through stores and hallways. The founder sees “limitless potential”.

“Micello’s niche is just that: “a Google Maps for the indoors,” as they put it during their launch. Google Maps works best outside, using corners and addresses to get you where you’re going. When you’re not on the street corner, it’s hard to find out what’s nearby and how to get there. That’s what Micello is after. They’re content to let you get to where you’re going using some other service, but they want to show you what’s going on where you are. If I’m in an airport, Micello’s goal is to show me how to get to the parking garage, what restaurants are nearby, and how to navigate my way to the gate.

At the moment, Micello is only available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but the company plans to extend it to other phones, as well as a Facebook application. The focus is on a mobile connection, but maps can be cached and viewed offline.”

This is what makes us tick. Innovation. In our shop I always try to remember to remind everyone to utter a few simple words… why not… what if… when obstacles are encountered.

And if we remember to really consider things in that light, the potential of how we can leverage emerging media, synergize with traditional media, turn up the volume with mobile apps truly is limitless.

Why not?

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Posted in Anoroc, Application Development, Marketing, Social Media Influence, Social Networking | View Comments

Apps That Make Us Wonder

Friday, January 8th, 2010

In iWorld, there are apps, and there are apps. You can find an app for nearly everything for your iPhone. Literally. We have seen apps that are totally functional–from balancing checkbooks, to keeping to-do lists, to diabetes monitoring. As well we have seen apps that serve no purpose whatsoever—from an app that turns your iPhone into a virtual light saber, to virtual beer, to a virtual abacus.

It makes one think that for all the brilliant apps that developers have come up with, some of them may have just a little too much time on their hands. So without further ado……..

APPS THAT MAKE US WONDER……….

SmackTalk alters the users voice in such a way that you can get high-pitched squeaky voices from your baritone-voiced Uncle Vinnie, as well as low-pitched freaky voices from your five year old. I tried it with my five year old, and now he is hooked on what he will sound like when “mede are a big man”. Too cute. SmackTalk works in real-time and in every language.

Here is an interesting one: Mugshots. Impress your friends with an app that creates an instant mugshot, thereby upping your ‘street cred’ in an instant! This app uses an image that you take with your phone, scales it, flips and rotates, if necessary, and then uses ingenious color un-correction, and adds a black eye or busted lip. Voila! You’re a criminal!

DirtyMouth offers a collection of dirty phrases and can even translate from one language to another. But really? How much profanity can you really use in other languages?

Ever heard of cow-tipping? Well, Cow Toss takes it a step further. You guessed it! You get to virtually drag and toss a cow. Now maybe it’s just me, but this is the ultimate in wasted time, unless you actually live somewhere where you spend your time cow-tipping.

Finally, the mother of all time-wasting, brain-melting, you-have-way-too-much-time-on-your-hands apps: Zombie Survival Guide. Apparently, top scientists have predicted a zombie onslaught in the near very near future, and this app will help you ward off these vile creatures. The app offers tips on gathering supplies, preparing travel kits, life-saving combat skill, and a whole plethora of other skills you will need to save your life.

Seriously??

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Twitter Proven Effective – New Technologies To Help Marketers

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

While reviewing new design and technologies today I had an epiphany. I was watching a video here: http://tinyurl.com/yd5ejyt. It’s about a new bicycle wheel that stores energy and gives it back to you when you need it – with no batteries, AND it transmits data via Bluetooth to your smart phone opening an unimaginable array of potential uses.

We all love design here, and get excited about research and ‘real’ thinking. So back to my epiphany. This is exactly like – no different from – our industry. We’re in the midst of a revolution. It’s a “what can you imagine” revolution about how we can use technology to communicate, to support and revitalize old school PR and communications tactics. It’s an unprecedented moment.

For instance, an influencer sharing via email only generates 0.41 additional clicks. Sharing via Twitter generates more than 18 clicks per post, translating into a 1,837 percent click-through rate versus 41 percent for email. How firmly does that establish Twitter as an effective channel for amplifying your messaging across the social web?

We all need to be open to new ideas and ask “why not”. It wasn’t that long ago that I can recall most businesses I encountered would not invest in SEO, and many thought a web presence was optional. And I believe I urged “why not?”. Why not rank at top – (back then it was simple!).

And now with our new shiny toolbox of powerful tools… and an office of creatives that can think out of the box… and people capable of just about any custom app you can think of… 2010 is going to be interesting!

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Posted in Application Development, Brand Value, Decision Cycle, Marketing, Purchase Intent, Social Networking | View Comments

Mobile Application Development

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

When the iPhone first hit the market a few years ago, everybody knew it would be popular.  What we didn’t know is that it would launch a brand new segment of application development.

There are currently over 85,000 applications in the iTunes app store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Of the 50 million iDevices that have been sold, there have been 2 billion apps downloaded since the store launched in the summer of 2008.

Lately, it’s not even just the iPhone.  With the release of Google’s Android mobile operating system and Palm’s WebOS, mobile application development has never been stronger.  The mobile development market is just starting to make an impact on the way people do business. 

If you think your customers may benefit from a mobile app or website, why not have one created for them?

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Digg adds NOFOLLOW to External Links

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

It looks like Digg, a social bookmarking site, is following the same path as Twitter, by adding the rel=’NOFOLLOW’ to external links. This should make Digg less attractive to spammers, because it won’t pass along link juice.  According to a recent blog on Digg this was done "in consultation with leading expers from the SEO/SEM and spam fields".

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Are you using old browser?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

If so, you may be cheating yourself out of a better user experience while surfing the interwebz.

Statistics show that a large percentage of users are using outdated browsers to surf the Internet.  For example, according to this website, more users are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 than the current version 8.0.  IE6 was originally released in March of 2001.

What else happened in 2001?

  • AOL and Time Warner Merged (they have since broken apart again)
  • Geroge W. Bush became the 43rd President of the United States of America
  • The Death of Dale Earnhardt during the Daytona 500
  • Beijing is notified they have won the bid to host the 2008 Olympics
  • 9/11 Terrorist attacks
  • Barry Bonds breaks the single season home run record
  • Enron files for bankruptcy

See how long ago that was?

The problem is that when people keep using outdated browsers, web developers are forced to design and program sites that work in those old browsers.  This hampers all of the cool stuff that can be done in modern browsers.  Web development has evolved to such a point that the applications can rival the look and feel of traditional desktop applications.  The technology grows by leaps and bounds seemingly month after month.

So do yourself (and your favorite web developers) a huge favor and upgrade to the latest version of your preferred browser.  It will undoubtedly be more secure, faster, easier to use and support more advanced web features than ever before.  After all, if your car manufacturer gave you a free upgrade each time they released a newer model of your car, wouldn’t you take it?

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Should I use TinyURL to shorten links?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I have been using Twitter and Facebook for a while now and often use TinyUrl to shorten my links and then it occurred to me, from the SEO perspective, am I hurting myself.  So, I started to do some research.

First, What does TinyUrl do?  TinyUrl provides a way for you to take a long url  like http://www.gazoobot.com/2009/12/02/healthcare-taps-social-media-to-influence-behavior/ and “shortens” it http://tinyurl.com/ncrk5k, for example.  Many people do this when adding links in Twitter because of the 140 character limit.  Others use it to make it easier to prevent the url from wrapping to another line when it is to long.

So, how does it work?  Essentially when you click on the TinyUrl link the server looks up the url and uses a 301 header redirect, which tells your browser the TinyUrl address has permanently moved to the real address.  This sounds great, right.  Well, Google passes the page rank from TinyUrl back to the original url and that is good.

So, what is wrong with TinyUrl?  Actually, there is nothing wrong with using TinyUrl, however you will miss out on some SEO and marketing benefits, such as important keywords, anchors and brand recognition.  And remember what I said about 301 redirect and Google passing page rank, well if you use TinyUrl with Twitter, a “nofollow” tag is added to the link.  This means that Google will not pass the page rank to the original url.

To answer our original question, “Should I use TinyUrl to shorten link?”  If you are going to use microblog or you really need to shorten that huge url, then you will probably want to use TinyUrl, otherwise, stick with the original url.

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Data, Data, and more Data

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Ever have those days where you wake up and just grin because you know you are going to get your hands dirty in the nitty gritty world that is data retrieval?  Well I am actually having one of those months.  I am currently working on a project for a large firm where I actually have to pull legacy data from an old MRP system and convert it to the wonderful world of SQL.  Sounds boring but it’s actually a great exercise.  I play my music and lose myself in the careful process of retrieving, cleaning, fixing and converting the data one table at a time.  I am extremely anal when it comes to data conversions and that always means the rest of the programming department is tapping their foot and not so patiently waiting.  I can’t help it, it’s my nature to look at something from every possible angle (remind me to tell you the story about an iron).  When it comes to data what usually happens is, I will convert a huge block and then discover that one of the data sets contains erroneous information.  This usually happens during the cleaning process.  At this point I can try and fix the data manually or write a routine that fixes it on the client system and re-export it all over again.  I always do the later for the simple fact that if I spot one issue then others like it may crop up causing the process to take even longer.  I’ve actually gotten to a point where if everything goes smoothly I start to worry, lol. Like I said, anal.  The best part about this project is that we have also been hired to write the application that will store and display the data to users around the world. What a fantastic opportunity to be able to migrate a customer’s business system from a legacy computer system and then give them a shiny new web based application that does it even better.

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Alex Freaks Out Client

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

I think I freaked out a client today. I didn’t mean to. You know me though, a little prone to blurting out things that seem to shock the room.

But it was only ten simple words that silenced the room:  “I like your old logo, let’s not change it completely.” It took a few too many too long minutes for anyone to follow my comment. One of our designers looked at me after the meeting and tossed a seemingly random comment my way, “I love awkward moments”. Though not facing me I could see her grinning reflection in her monitor. And that got me thinking.

I guess people like us are supposed to always want to change everything. But sometimes something doesn’t need to be changed. It’s like we’re not doing our job unless we’re the consummate critics. Then I remembered thinking maybe I was having an aneurism when I said “I think I might even make it just a little larger on the ‘home’ page.

Maybe it’s like an architect friend told me while we were walking a house I couldn’t decide if we should demolish or renovate. It just had “good bones” he said.

I don’t think many people consider that their marketing tools can be ‘upgraded’, just like a house can be renovated. If there is a solid brand platform in place (good bones) then updating your collateral instead of complete re-branding may be exactly what is needed to give your company that competitive push. 

A lot of websites I review don’t really need to be completely tossed. Often we discover the best strategy is  ‘tweaking”, re-skinning, or adding social media functions to the site through a custom blog, interactive widgets or privately branded social networking site. I mean, why not max out what you already have?? Especially now when money’s tight and everybody’s watching every penny. Maybe you don’t have to accept being trounced by your competitors just because there are budget concerns. Maybe it’s time to be aggressive instead of sitting on your hands. Consider a spit shine instead of a ground up re-build. A few upgrades and slight a re-invention of your brand can have a significant impact on driving business. It’s all about remaining viable to your consumers, it might not be as hard as you think to be the best looking house in the neighborhood.

Ugh – my head hurts, did I really tell somebody to make their logo bigger?

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