omega blog

Six years later (that's now), Google plans to have about 10 million volumes of digital copies of various publications by 2015. It's obvious that many authors and publishers will raise an eyebrow (or maybe both) at this. So how does Google plan to keep them all quiet? With money of-course!

The court settlement requires Google to set up a $125 million Books Rights Registry. Authors have an option of opting in to be a part of the registry, giving the publication rights to Google. The authors would get a 'one-off' chunk from the $125 million but no proceeds from the sales of their publication thereafter. The authors who don't like the whole idea MUST opt out before January 2010 to ensure Google doesn't scan any of their publications.

If you're an author, the choice seems fairly simple - opt out and keep the right to yourself. However, knowing how Google web-services become popular, the authors stand a fair chance of losing out on sales anyway. Although Google is kind of breaching copyright laws by making money from someone else's work, they are making the world's information "universally accessible and useful" - one of their original mottos (ironically, the other one was "Don't be evil").

So if you're Dan Brown and you know people will pay for every book you write (even if they're just about destroying historical monuments to solve a puzzle), you'd opt out and keep your work away from the Stanford graduates. However, if you're an average literature graduate trying to make a name for yourself, you'd opt in to the Books Rights Registry to make a few quick bucks, get some free PR and help keep the world's information universally accessible and useful.

Domai.nr
So you've come up with a funky domain name for your next website. You pitch the idea to your Marketing team - they give you a thumbs up. You get the green signal from the Finance guys and then finally, you brief your "web people". They give you a quote and you do a good job convincing the Finance department and justifying that extra zero in the cost to your Board of Directors.

The next day the "web people" tell you the domain name is not available. You heart sinks like a well-known ship hit by an iceberg. You're broken, tormented and distressed.

There are heaps of tools that tell you if a domain is available or not, almost every domain registrar provides a basic online tool for this. But none of these "basic tools" compare to Domai.nr, which not only shows you availability but also suggests how you could stretch that creativity a little bit more to end up with the perfect name for your website. You can choose between the usuals (.com, .net, .org and so on) or get adventurous with Top Level Domain (TLD) to end up with something like "mo.jo"

It's fun, it's cool and yes - it's FREE.

Widgetbox
Widgetbox makes the complexities of sharing your ideas and experiences on the web simple. They make it fun and easy for anyone to turn their content into dynamic web apps that can be shared on just about any website, including: Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and iGoogle.

Tumblr
"Follow me", "Latest Tweets", "Follow us on Twitter"...let's face it, the little blue-bird has done well in four years. Almost everyone is on Twitter and the rest are following suit.

If you want to be more than just a follower (no pun intended), you'd flip the bird and get something else, like Tumblr. Go on, give it a try. However, it does come with a price - it's addictive. Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme's HTML.

AboutUs
Wikipedia meets YellowPages. An interesting concept, their mission statement says it all - "To build the world's most comprehensive, collaborative guide to the best places on the world wide web. We invite everyone to engage with our wiki: whether you're an organization, business, non-profit or individual. Come see why the knowledge of many makes us one of the fastest-growing and most powerful websites on the internet today. It's easy to participate because you can edit our pages!"

So basically, a free web-directory plus wiki. A source of free PR which is easy to edit.

ChromaticSites
A comprehensive checklist for websites.

HTML to PDF
Simply put, this is an online tool that converts any HTML webpage to a PDF document for FREE.

Fonolo
Calling up customer care is something I dread. They ask you to key in a series of secret numeric combinations and make you talk to the voice-recognition lady, who makes you repeat yourself three times before admitting that she can't understand what you just said. In short, nobody enjoys walking you through the convoluted maze of customer service.

Enter Fonolo, the good guys who'll make the call for you, wait till they get a 'real person' on the other end and then put them through to you. A simple and convenient tool for any business that requires a customer support system.

DropBox
Undoubtedly the most useful online tool for the 'well-organised'. Dropbox is a virtual online 'box' where you can 'drop' your stuff. You can use it to backup your data, access it from anywhere on any computer, sync it with a folder on your hard-drive and enable version control.

The FREE package gives you 2GB, which is a good start. A very useful tool for people who take work home (and bring home to work)

Appointy
Appointy is an advanced web-based scheduling software tool which allows you to manage your clients and market your services by speeding up your word-of-mouth publicity.
You can be growing your business and gaining new clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year; even while you sleep or go to the gym. Organize your appointment book, staff, services, etc., from anywhere in the world.

Appointy will keep you up to date with real-time updates while you are out and about or just away from your desk. A very useful tool for people who provide services which require prior appointments.

Really addictive game
Now that you've got some great tools that will get you organised and save you heaps of time and effort, you can afford to let loose with this really addictive game. Go on, give it a try...I've done it for over two minutes :)

When you pay $3 million for 30 seconds of fame, you have to do it well and you have to do it fast. You may say they're two completely different things which cannot happen at the same time but Google seems to have thought otherwise. Instead of going berserk on the budget (which Google could have easily done), they went minimal and highlighted almost every feature in their flagship search engine - organic keyword search, spell check, corrections, Google translate, definitions, Google suggest, I'm feeling Lucky, Google maps and even flight schedules. Fifteen lucky companies including CEA (a global education firm with a study-abroad program), Cabaret cafe near the Louvre and the Cacao de Chocolat in Paris got a free hitchhike thanks to Google.



These companies would've never thought of shelling out the media cost involved in a Super Bowl airing but the freebie was most welcome, especially for CEA. The Monday after Super Bowl, CEA recorded a five fold increase in traffic and got more visits than they ever got in a single day. Interestingly, most searches were for the Paris program, which was featured in the ad itself.

So what should you take from all this? Call up your Marketing manager and ad agency to order a $3 million Super Bowl ad? Well, yes if you really want. The point here is that Google may have taken some beating in terms of privacy infringements and trying to take over the world last year, but at the end of the day, they're the best out there and people trust them. Most of your existing and prospective customers ask Google for suggestions, directions and help. So if Google doesn't know you, chances are your customers won't find you.

So instead of calling your Marketing team, get hold of your IT department and ask them what they know about bounce rate. If they say "it's how many times a ball returns to your hand when you drop it on a hard surface" try getting hold of someone better or Google the definition or better yet - call us!

Bicycles Inc.

Pro-motion Bikes

TWITTER 101
Twitter is a 'micro-blogging' platform where you can publish what you are doing or thinking in 140 characters or less. Anyone who is following you will see your tweet in their twitter stream or on their phone and you get to see the tweets by anyone who you're following. So Twitter lets you 'follow' others and be 'followed', sending out quick 'what's happening' updates to their friends and the friends of their friends.

Interestingly, companies have tapped into this channel as a platform for mass communication and even started making money out of it.

TWEETS TO DOLLARS
The best example of turning tweets into dollars is the Dell Outlet, which made a whopping $6.5 million in just two years. Dell uses Twitter to send out coupons, including some that are exclusive to its Twitter followers. Dell also announces company and product news and talks directly with customers, responding to complaints or asking for feedback. There are about 200 Dell employees who talk to customers on Dell's Twitter accounts, from a gaming expert to a server expert to members of the chief technology officer's staff. With around 1,582,839 followers, Dell uses Twitter as a channel for communicating with their customers. It's like free publicity.
 
"It's a great way to fix customer problems and hear what customers have to say, it's a great feedback forum and it leads to sales - how can you miss?" said Richard Binhammer, who works in Dell's corporate affairs office and is active on its Twitter accounts.

Small businesses and start-ups declare it the #1 most useful promotional tool in their arsenal. Clearly, Twitter isn't just the new shiny tool on the block anymore. For any organisation it is vital to know what people are saying about your brand, product, service or idea.

READY, STEADY, TWEET
A basic Twitter marketing plan involves three simple steps.

    1.    Setting up an account using your company name.
    2.    Responding directly to questions, complaints and issues raised in tweets, make announcements about new services or products, link to your blog posts and share information.
    3.    Publishing your Twitter feed on your website and encourage people to follow you.

Twitter can be a great opportunity to make connections with real people who are engaged with your business, to learn about what your customers think and to give a more personal face to your organisation.
 
   1.    Listen to conversations real time. This is the easiest thing to do. Just go to http://search.twitter.com and type in your brand or company name, a subject area, or even your own name. Within seconds you'll start to get an idea of people's perceptions, trending discussions and who some influencers are.

    2.    Track emotion moments. At any given time, you may need to email someone to ask for something or tell them about something. Sometimes, it's a journalist or blogger you want to talk about you. Other times it's a colleague. Looking at their latest status on Twitter can give you a wealth of insight about timing your message. If they're on holiday in Jamaica, you might want to wait till next week. If they just talked about how much they hate sales emails - maybe you should think about calling. If they happen to be travelling to your city, invite them to coffee. The uses are almost endless.
 
   3.    Get link love. There are times when you may want to get the word out about a piece of content or something that you are doing online. To get bloggers to do a post about it is a time commitment that many times may not be possible. Getting a mention on someone's Twitter stream, however, can reach an equal number of people and can be easier to get, as long as what you're asking for is still relevant.

    4.    Reach unreachable people. Sure, you could use Twitter to send a message to Robert Scoble and he would likely see it, but in recent news, now even Shaq has his own Twitter account, as does Lance Armstrong. Do you think either of those guys picks up their own phone or reads their own emails? Probably not, but as more high influence unreachable people start to use Twitter, this alone might create it's ultimate usefulness.
 
   5.    See what's popular/important. If you wanted to, you could probably use Twitter as your single source of news information. Trending topics often mirror the big news stories of the day and Twitter could offer a more direct lens into real recaps and news on location than any traditional media site.

   6.    Get quick answers. People on Twitter love to share answers to questions and things they have learned. When I wanted to know how to get a new logo designed for my blog, I got an answer on Twitter. The community there has also helped me find apps for my Blackberry, solve issues with Typepad, find examples of companies with personality, decide whether joining a particular social network or organization is worth it, and translate pieces of content in languages I don't speak. All usually within minutes of posting a request.
 
   7.    Optimize your event attendance. Of course, it depends on the type of event you're going to, but just about every business related conference or gathering these days (no matter how traditional) will likely have some attendees twittering about it. And paying attention to those conversations can give you vital inside information about an event, such as what sessions to attend, where the parties will be, what the key trends or topics of discussion happen to be, and who the influencers at that particular event are.

    8.    Read instant feedback. If you launch a new service or product, or speak at a conference, or do a new blog post ... you can get instant feedback on the effort through Twitter. Often it will be thoughts that people don't visit your site or email you directly to share, but do post publicly to their networks.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE
The following web-services/addons are worth having a looking at

http://ping.fm/
Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081
This Firefox web browser plugin allows you to view Tweets within your web browser (in a popup menu). This is very handy and eliminates the need to constantly go to Twitter.com.

http://www.send2twitter.com/
With send2twitter, you can create a free, unique eMail and use this eMail to send current status updates to your Twitter account.

http://cotweet.com/
CoTweet is a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter. You can manage up to six Twitter accounts through a single CoTweet login and assign tweets to your colleagues for follow up.