Read this article:

http://www.dougma.com/archives/81

Doug does a terrific technical analysis.

Google recently launched their Google App Engine, a Python-based web application development framework you can use to easily create your own web application and, most importantly, deploy to Google's own scalable infrastructure. For free, you get 500MB of persistent storage space and enough bandwidth and CPU power to support about 5 million page views per month. This is a terrific initiative from Google which could easily extend their advertisement space, but could also enable developers to potentially earn revenue as well from simple web applications they develop and deploy by leveraging on the readily available infrastructure.

What's also interesting is that the environment has native support to interact with Google accounts, meaning that developers can leverage from the Google account infrastructure to manage the users registration, login, logout, security, etc., but also to profit from the huge, established user base. On the other hand, Google gets new users as applications become popular and new users which did not have a Google account before register for using the application. This is clearly a very smart move from Google and, depending on implementation details, could work as a great viral marketing strategy, besides the data collection / analysis and advertising potential behind the applications and users.

There is also a web app gallery. This new platform, combined with other google services such as gmail and the Open Social initiative seem to align into a plan where Google gets to play more strongly on the social networking space, probably competing more closely with Facebook. We have seen this game before: provide the infrastructure, the environment, the buzz, the documentation, the goodies, the networking, then enable third-parties to develop things on top, then benefit from the power of the whole network. See, for example, the Java Card Technology.

Maybe this is pushing it a bit too much, but I also think it is interesting to think about all this having in mind that also more and more PC desktop applications are moving to the web (see, for example, Adobe's photoshop express). Thinking of it that way, Google seems to be positioning itself as the Microsoft of the future online "OS", which turns out to be a web app framework with social networking capabilities and a terrific scalable platform behind it...

Just sharing one of the slides from a Web 2.0 Technology & Marketing course I (created for and) used to teach at the University of Texas (UT) Informal Classes program. This particular slide shows a simple model for understanding some of the basics of social networking sites. Comments?

Clients and friends have asked me, on different occasions: Can I / How do I perform a reverse look-up from an IP address. In other words, Can I know who's behind an IP address? Sometimes this comes from curiosity (e.g.: analysing a web server log file), or sometimes from attempting to control abuse / spam on other systems. Since this seems to be a common question, here go my two googable cents...

The short answer is, yes, you can. One of the simplest ways to do a reverse look-up on an IP address is by using the whois service from ARIN (American Registry for Internet Addresses). Go to:

http://ws.arin.net/whois/

Enter the IP address and hit the Submit Query button. Depending on the IP address you have entered, you will get a more precise or less precise answer. Sometimes you might get, for example, a company name (meaning that IP address belongs to the company network), or an university name (meaning the IP address belongs to the university network), or an internet provider which provides access to several consumers (less detail). In any case, this is the starting point to figure out a first contact, then if you need so, you could try figuring out some more information by contacting the listed entity.

I know, I know... It's been quite a while since my last post. I've been really busy with my custom web application development and technology consulting business, Neomelon. While most of my efforts with Neomelon are spent working for clients, I have finally managed to come up with the time and resources needed to span-off another business which I've been working on for quite a while: BestAustinJobs.com.


Best Austin Jobs is a completely new site for the Austin, TX job market where job seekers, recruiters and employers can connect and interact using state-of-the-art tools and yet through a very simple web interface that doesn't get on their way. In case you are curious, yes, I think it is much simpler, to-the-point and less scary than the huge monster, yet much better than the boring list.


If you are a job seeker, you may want to search for jobs and create your free profile.


Employers and recruiters: profit from the beta period special! Create your account today and start posting your job openings for free, plus enjoy all the other features for free as well!

I usually don't read SPAM, but this one was truly funny so I thought I should share it. I wonder if unsolicited e-mailing is among one of their so-called "valuable closely held trade secrets"! Funniest thing is that they even have the courage to try positioning themselves as an elite service by talking about how other firms may use "link farms" and other "black hat" methods, when they are spamming to start with!

Oh ... and .. yes, I was almost forgetting, they offer SEO services but they don't have a website? And they are using gmail for that?? Ha ha ha!

BTW, feel free to contact me if you would like to talk about my non-BS SEO services --I wont claim to have "valuable closely held trade secrets"!.

++ quote (like the ol' fax days ha!):

Dear Website Owner,

 

If I could get you five times the RELEVANT traffic at a
substantially reduced cost would you be interested? National Positions
can place your website on top of the Natural Listings on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Our Search Engine Optimization team delivers more top rankings than anyone else
and we can prove it. We do not use "link farms" or "black hat" methods that
Google and the other search engines frown upon and can use to de-list or ban
your site.  The techniques are proprietary, involving some valuable closely
held trade secrets. Our prices are less than half of what other companies
charge.

 

I would be happy to send you a proposal using the top search phrases
for your area of expertise. Please contact me at your convenience so I can start
saving you some money. Please do not hesitate to email or call me if you would
like further information.

 

Sincerely,
Patrick Negron
Director Sales

 

National Positions
26500 W. Agoura Road
Suite
102-547
Calabasas, California 91302

 

Phone – 866-669-8789 x108

Toll Free - 866.446.2885
patricknegron1@gmail.com
Profitable
Internet Marketing

As described by the Urban Dictionary:

"Wilfing" - or surfing the web without any real purpose

"The tendency to wilf is more prevalent among men than women, the poll found. Gazing at a succession of pointless web pages also appeared to be the preserve of the young, with people aged 55 or over being three times less likely to browse absent-mindedly than those under 25.

"The time-consuming practice appears to have destructive effects too: a third of males admitted that wilfing has a damaging effect on their relationship with a partner." Guardian.co.uk

I still remember those old days when, after downloading for a while, the (now) ugly looking old site would come up with a silly tiling background an a flashing red and green button.

The web has evolved quite a bit since then. The browser, then the search engines, then the small dynamic pages, online newspapers and CMSs, forums, ads, wikis, blogs, google maps, digg, youtube, myspace, ... and the list goes on and on.

It seems like the web has matured and the collaboration tools and techniques available nowadays are enabling the developers to go faster and faster. It is not any more just a few guys here an there interchanging a few e-mails, it is armies of the most clever developers around the world developing together massive quantities of quality code and open source projects by leveraging on incredibly powerful and readily available, advanced tools (and processes). Ideas are also being shared and discussed by big and disperse groups faster and easier than ever before.

This would explain a better-than-linear evolution. In other words, is technology itself starting to enable quicker technology development and therefore accelerating its own advancement speed? Or... wait a second... that has always happened... I just think this time, on this narrow subject, it is a big acceleration rate that we are seing.

So... I've came up with yet another idea: web experiment one.

I remember from my engineering days talking about the scientific method in several occasions, with teachers, with fellow students, friends, etc. Not so exciting for everybody... I know, I know. I want to apply it to the web, on a series of experiments. This is the first one. Each experiment shall have a little twist.

Experiment one - a simple game

A web site is built specifically for the experiment (part of it being reusable for the other experiments to come). The site allows players to sign-up (very simplified, minimal information is captured). Players get to answer two questions, and then ask one question of their own, to be answered by other players.

Visitors can rate answers to questions and, by doing so, they are indirectly rating the user answering the question as well. The questions might be grouped by categories / topics. Users with the best 100 ratings are listed in a "game high-score fashion" (calculated based on their answers' average rating compared to others, but also taking into account the number of questions answered -including an statistical "difficulty" estimated for each of those questions they answered ?--, etc).

Questions / answers and players (top 10, most active, etc) are displayed on the main page of the site. There might be a search box too over there.

Things like simple profiles / blogs, messages, friends list, etc. could also be added.

The site also measures the web traffic, behaviour and statistics. This and other statistical data is also made public. This is (partially) the result of the experiment, which could in turn be used to develop theories and models to describe and further understand social computing and social networking. As an example, this could later be applied to develop new online marketing concepts.

As a side benefit, if the quality of the questions and answers is good (which is encouraged by the rating / populatiry concept), this information can also be valuable all by itself.

The twist:

The site also invites visitors to make a donation to a charitable foundation, as an "incentive" to keep the experiments going, and also as another factor to include as part of the experiment itself. This makes the experiment also be a philantropism effort, and also helps better understanding philantropism by itself. Questions and answers could potentially be related to the charitable foundation cause.

Last thoughts: the same platform can then be used as a "research" platform where users collaborate (with proper incentives) with each other. Another one: an online, collaborative "innovation engine", which could be used privately or publicaly, etc. One last one: an online collaborative way to solve problems (e.g.: to solve a crime). The results from the experiment can also be used to improve the platform over time by performing other similar experiments (trying to improve a small number of variables) and compating results. Over time, the platform could be optimized this way.

Any comments? Any takers?

It seems to me I've found a small pattern that most of the successful business people I've met follow, give or take 20 cents. They tend to have always a free pizza, some kind of extra value, to bring to the table. They collect various (somehow intangible) assets along the way.

Some of them collect valuable stories. The kind of stories that will give you a good lesson based on facts. Very valuable information.

Some of them collect strategies, facts, results. They remember numbers, selling and marketing strategies that worked out those numbers, etc. Pretty much like collecting results and stats for your favorite sport star.

Some of them ...

The pattern seems to be, they narrow their focus on which kind of assets they enjoy collecting, and then collect, collect and collect them along their way. In a little word, this is sometimes called experience. Collecting experience. How to concentrate on collecting the maximum and most useful experience out of each experience.

What do you think? Did I miss thie subject in my books and magazines, or is my shelf missing some good literature?

Facebook just reached this past May '07 more than 26.6M unique visits and 15.8B content pages impressions, each visitor spending an average of 3 hours on the site. Amazing. The 26.6M visitors number is comparable with Malaysia's, Uzbekistan, Peru and Venezuela's population.

This (and more data) was made public by comScore as the result of one of their studies done through their Media Matrix product. Read the press release at Yahoo Finance.

comScore is a very interesting company all by itself. Their recent IPO went pretty well too. I own some shares of the now publicly traded company, as I believe they have a good business model, a great potential growth opportunity, good products and, in general, a bright future if they run their business well. What do you think?

Read about it here. Or, even better, here.

A few months ago, I subscribed to the HitTail.com service. I then integrated it to this site with the purpose of testing it and learning more about it, as well as optimizing my site.

I must admit, their system is pretty interesting. Described in few words, it is a very clever arbitrage for the PPC and SEO market. The idea is based on The Long Tail book by Chris Anderson.

Once integrated to your site, the system analyzes the web searches brining traffic and calculates the frequencies of the different keywords and their combinations. It then presents you with your tail shape, showing you the most popular (top ten) keywords and also the long tail (keywords coming after your top ten), which are not so popular, but that (they claim) are responsible for a much bigger ammount of your traffic resulting from web searches.

For example, for this site, some the most popular keywords / combinations are: e1705, linux, warren buffet, dell inspiron e1705, ubuntu, kubuntu, etc. My top-ten keywords are responsible for brining 20% of my total search-result-induced traffic, while my long-tail keywords are responsible for the other 80%. This probes their point, suggesting that working on the long tail keywords to induce natural searches can dramatically improve your overall SEO strategy. Also, working on your long-tail keywords can help you reduce your advertising expenses, since by getting more natural search results induced traffic, you wont necessarily need to force PPC-generated traffic as much (altough, of course, you still want to analyze your overall stratege, maximizing your margin and leveraging from your liquid assets as much as you can).

After presenting you with this summary (and also with a live-view of the keywords referring traffic to your site), the system can give you suggestions. Again, as an example, for this site, that's something like: family guy stories, schlumberger work blog, guy sebastians address, emoticons da family guy, software engineer gemalto austin, dell inspiron e1705, sebastian com, las ruinas circulares de borges, etc). As you can see, the suggestions are related to my previous articles. [note: using their suggestions turned out to be pretty easy, right? ... actually, you should use them in your titles, in bold and big fonts, etc].

Some of the suggestions (as you can notice above) are not really interesting (remember this is computer-generated), so you also have a way to move the interesting ones to your to-do list and check them once you have used them on your site.

If you would like to use this system for your site but don't really know how to set it up, I would be more than glad to do that work for you for a reasonable fee. Please contact me.

Also, there is a youtube video that explains the idea in a better media:

A few months ago, I did a small experiment: I wanted to see how easy it would be to design and program a few algorithms to generate pretty web 2.0 style tag clouds to summarize web sites content, and so I built a mock up. In a nutshell, the artifact goes and reads a web site's content, unscrambles the HTML, analyzes the frequency of the different words (SEO related), reports a histogram and finally generates a semi-random tag cloud image (with some configurable parameters). This is part of a bigger idea, but I just wanted to post a few cloud tags for now and see what you think:





I might post more about the big idea behind this later on... meanwhile I would love to read your comments! Was the tag helpful to learn what the site is talking about? Did it tempt you to click on it? Do they look cool? Do you want yours here? Post a comment with your URL and I'll give it a try!

P.S.: in case you were wondering, the artifact uses mostly PHP and Processing to do its magic.

P.S. #2: Here goes the cloud for Travis from:



Thanks for the positive comment and nice blog BTW!

Marketing gurus have been talking about why and how you should tell a story (wow! look at all those trackbacks) to your customers. Having a single, simple and solid small message that you repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat is so ‘90s (I wonder... Did you remember more the word "repeat" or the word "message"? please comment!)

Instead, if you have the big bucks to spend on a massive advertisement campaign or, even better, if you are clever enough to figure out how to do it on a shoestring (hint: web, e-mails, blogs, rss, …), you should definitively be telling a much more complex story.

Your story should have different chapters and also a common kernel to them. That surely will be the bold message and style, but it can also be something as simple as sharing the same actors (think Geico advertisements --that is, including the caveman).

It is not enough anymore to just get your customers to just remember your message. You surely want them to remember it, but you also want them to talk about it with their friends, to e-mail the link to your ad video on your web to the friends, to upload your ad to youtube, to subscribe to an rss-feed for your ads and new products, to post comments, to interact with you, to chat with your specialist, to design your next ad… and all this simply because it is funny, because they can, because you have shown them respect, because its worth talking about it and because they use and love your products.



What…? Family-Guy-Marketing?

Ever watched Family Guy? I love it. I know maybe some people find it offensive, and I am not recommending that you use that same exact style to market your business. However, I think you should understand and use their techniques and methodology.

Each episode (your chapters) gets a different blend of their favorite techniques, but also shares a common skeleton (intro, develop several stories, link them, wrap them up, be funny and leave you wanting some more) and a sense of belonging to the same core story.

They play with time, develop multiple stories, play with reality and dreams, with nature, with roles and with so many other techniques and ideas that you can reuse. Think pricesless.com. Now Think BMW. Shaken, not stirred... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken,_not_stirred.

They have figured out a format that is both funny and efficient in keeping their fans coming back. And so have many other series, cartoons, movies, books and succesful ad agencies.

I say you can leverage on all that knowledge and experience they have. For example, maybe hire a creative writer from a tv series, instead of one from the old-style advertising agency.