Tag Archives: Google
Does your business need a mobile app? Upcoming talk
I’m speaking at this event on 20 April 2015. Its a breakfast seminar event called “Mobile Opportunities“. I’ll be speaking on “Should Your Organisation Have A Mobile App?”. You can RSVP here.
Its a question that I’m asked a lot by new clients. In fact, many businesses approach me and usually start by asking the “How” and the “What”. But rarely do they ask “Why” as in “Why should we have an app?”. This is the most important question and the first one you should be asking! So I’m usually the one bringing this up 🙂
There’s other talks on mobile as well on mobile opportunities, google’s mobile web friendly update and mobile opportunities. Here’s the list of speakers & topics in the image below. You can see more details about the event here.
I’m really keen to hear the talk from Sophie Hirst (Google) on the mobile web update. This is because of the update on google mobile search results page for mobile friendly websites. Read this awesome in depth article from Moz.
The cost of the event is $15. All proceeds go to the 2037 Glebe Youth Service. RSVP here. Thanks to Melon Media for organising the event.
If you are interested in attending other events I’m speaking at or attending, please go to my event schedule.
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Next Digital Breakfast with Google
Top 150 Media & Marketing Blogs
Just came across this useful list from Adage. Check it out here. Good to know who the online influencers are. Not surprised that Seth Godin’s blog is #1, he’s considered king amongst online marketers.
Also, high up there are Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch, which I occassionally read as well to stay on top of the search game. Problogger is up there too, one of the top authorities on blogging and its Australian too!
Speaking of search, I’m going to be doing a few things to get up to speed on the search industry:
– I’m doing the google adwords webinars. They have these web seminars about various topics. It’s like 1 or two a week. There’s one on tomorrow at 11am for Quality Scores. This is free.
– I’m also attending the Yahoo search Masterclass at ad:tech. It’s on the 11 – 12 March at 12pm. Next Digital is actually speaking straight after at 1pm on Digital Marketing Strategy.Free.
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Google Maps + Fire Info = Google Fire
Australia is under a heatwave right now. The temperatures are soaring and bush fires are ravaging through people’s homes in Victoria. As of writing 35 people have died from these fires, which allegedy have been lit by arsonists.
Google has put together a mashup from google maps and the RSS feed from Country Fires Authority as to location, danger, and size of the fires. If yesterday was Google Ocean, then this must be Google fire!
Check out the map here.
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Google Ocean? Check out Google Earth’s new features
Google never fails to impress me. I’ve been catching up on my reader feeds, and was reading the Youtube blog and came across the new Google Earth 5.0 features. It’s off the hook!
Now you can look at the ocean, go underneath the ocean, and also check out thing people have landmarked. Like videos of fish they have discovered at a certain point, websites about a certain location. It looks like a mashup feature with geo tagging (tagging the actual location on google earth). I won’t talk any more, and I’ll let the video do it justice.
I’m out like Google Ocean,
Matt
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What’s your favicon (Favourite Icon)?
Did you notice something different when you visited a Google website a few weeks ago? I noticed it straightaway, the favicon had changed. I wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but the logo had changed next to where the URL address is contained.
The new symbol looks like this:
New Google Favicon
A favicon simply means “favourite icon”. They started using them a long time ago, to give important branding and visibility to websites. To many users, it is a symbol that they can recognise and trust.
For example, a colleague and I were setting up a webex (web seminar) using our preferred provider, Webex. We couldn’t exactly remember the website, so we typed in a few addresses. The URL’s were all pretty similar, but we immediately recognised the right address because the favicon for Webex showed up. We didn’t even look at the address, we knew it was the right one because we saw the favicon. That’s how powerful that little symbol is. That is the reason that a favicon is so important for distinguishing one website from another.
This was the original new Google submission by Andre:
Original submission
Then they added some brighter colours and it became the one we know today:
Google Favicon
Check out the Official Google blog for some more info.
A lot of websites don’t have them, but they are actually quite easy to design and install. For me personally, if I use a website quite frequently, I will start recognising that symbol (like the webex example above). There’s heaps of favicons out there, some are just miniaturized versions of brand’s logo:
Favicon gallery
My top icon would have to be the RSS symbol. I’m not sure you could call it a favicon since so many websites carry it (it’s really unique to a website) but it is just so recognisable now. Whenever I see it, I know immediately if that website has a feed and I can add it to my reader account.
RSS Icon
Coincidentally, the same day the Google favicon changed, Woolworths released a new logo. Did anyone else notice that? Honestly, I think the new logo sucks. All the so called branding experts were lauding it saying how good it was. Apparently, Woolies wanted to further distinguish itself from its main competitor Coles, since they are the “fresh food people”. So they went with an unpeeled apple look to denote this “freshness”.
Accordingly they stated:
“The new identity introduces a new icon incorporating a stylised ‘W’ with the addition of an abstract leaf symbol representing fresh food. It is also reminiscent of one of the most famous of all Woolworths logos used in the 1970s and it represents a person – as in “The Fresh Food People” and the Woolworths focus on its customers.”
It’s actually been 21 years since they updated the original logo. I’m sure they spent a mint upgrading it, with hundreds of design concepts, creative, branding experts, consultants for a logo which is really just a green apple that looks like a W. Might as well have taken the Apple logo and turned it green.
I’m out like outdated logos,
Matthew Ho.
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Experiment faster, fail faster, quicker to market – Gmail Labs
A lot of people use the popular gmail client. It’s only been around for 4 years, and it is rapidly catching up to hotmail, Yahoo mail and AOL Mail. The techcrunch blog reports:
“According to Google launched Gmail only four years ago, and it is now the fourth most popular e-mail service on the Web after Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and Windows Live Hotmail. In 2008, it saw some serious growth in the U.S. Google doesn’t break out the number of Gmail users, but comScore estimates unique monthly visitors. According to the latest stats, the number of people visiting Gmail grew 43 percent last year to 29.6 million.”
That’s some serious growth. I’ve got 3 gmail accounts along with 2 other ones for my domain www.inspiredworlds.com. I switched to gmail because it was new at the time and the incredible storage space. But I’m not going to harp about Gmail’s growth.
Google Labs & Gmail Labs
I wanted to highlight this feature which I have known about for a while, but never used. It’s called Gmail Labs. Google has an experimental arm called “Google Labs” which has products that are available but they are not quite ready yet. As part of this, there is gmail labs which contains a host of innovative and experimental features. It’s not ready for public roll out, but you can try it out and leave feedback for them.
The premise is that a google engineer can come up with an idea during lunch time, and have it implemented within a couple of hours. That’s incredible. It doesn’t go through a lengthy process of review, analysis, testing – it just rolled out for experiementation for users. I believe that’s the best way to find out if something will be popular.
It allows google to get new products out there for testing by the public and to get a superior advantage in the market place by being the first to go to market. How many companies would do this?
You can try out gmail labs by clicking on “settings” in the right hand corner of your gmail account. Then you click on labs and you can try out a bunch of nifty features.
Features I’m experimenting with
I’ve currently trialing the following Gmail Lab features:
1. Switched the chat coumn to the right hand side.
2. When I right click on my mouse I get a quarter circle which allows me to navigate to the previous email or the next one.
3. Send & archive button: How often do you send an email and then go to the sent box and archive it. This is awesome. They should have this as a default in Microsoft Outlook. I would use this everytime to archive work emails to clients.
4. Default “reply all”: Normally all email clients are just “reply”, so it assumes you want to reply to everyone as a default.
The catch with Gmail lab features is that they are experimental and can be taken down. There is also a fail safe button to restore back to your normal settings. This is what I like about Google, the ability to come up with innovative products and also to push the boundaries of normal accepted practices.
I’m out like hotmail,
Matthew Ho.
www.inspiredworlds.com
