MobiBlog.biz

For many of us, just getting through the day's load of e-mail is our highest and best use of the Internet. But interesting social changes may be on the horizon thanks to a consortium led by Nick Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab. The $100 laptop is not yet in production, but it is designed to be rugged because it uses Flash memory like an IPOD Nano, not a conventional hard drive. It also has a screen bright enough to view in the searing daylight in Africa or India, and can be hand-cranked for power. It is designed to be used as a portable book, even a primer to learn how to read, using software that displays the book in the local language.

Google is part of the consortium to build and distribute these laptops. The thin client refers to the system design that allows the heavy processing to be done by the network, not on the laptop. The laptop is a thin client of the network, and the programs that do the processing reside on the network. The laptop is a terminal that can display a book, send e-mail and do homework, but it doesn't have to own a copy of the Photoshop program in order to be able to access its functionality. The laptop remotely accesses the program and does the work online, with the processing done on a server on the network, not on the laptop. The laptop just gets the results.

This hasn't happened yet, it is on the horizon. The photo-retouching program used is more likely to be Google's free Picasa product than the tightly-licensed Photoshop. But you get the idea.

If this sounds like Google's plan for getting in on the ground floor for being the source of processing for places like China, it could sound like a threat to Microsoft. At a recent press conference, in a reference to how Microsoft ruined Netscape by offering a free browser when Netscape was trying to sell Navigator for $50, Bill Gates was asked if Microsoft planned to do the same thing to Google as it did to Netscape. Gates smirked, looked away, then replied, "No, we'll do something different."

Posted by Anet Dunne at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We all know what "interruption marketing" is; those commercials that break in when we are listening to the radio or that interrupt our TV programs, those direct marketing phone calls. Seth Grodin observes that the number of interruptions is climbing dramatically every day, and we are becoming better at dodging them, using TIVO, the mute button or even finding commercial-free music sources like the Internet.

Permission marketing, on the other hand, gives potential customers, "an opportunity to volunteer to be marketed to... to participate in a long-term, interactive marketing campaign in which they are rewarded in some way for paying attention to increasingly relevant messages," Grodin says.

The best way to reach potential customers is to build websites that are optimized for search engines (SEO) so that it is easy for them to find you using organic (free) search. But it takes time to work toward the top of the search engine results. You can leapfrog to the top using paid search like Google AdWords or Yahoo advertising, which will put your ad near the top of the results in the "sponsored links" column. Paying for clicks to your website is not as good as getting it for free, but you have to start somewhere!

Succeeding at search marketing takes some expertise. It starts with a website that is attractive to search engines; that is, a site that is built to standards using valid code. Second, the advertising campaign must be designed to get the most for your money. Third, the ads must be well written so that the right buyers click on them. Fourth, selecting the keywords and managing the bids takes the skills of a day trader or an experienced media buyer (luckily, Anet is an experienced media buyer) to make sure that your competition does not gain an edge on you.

Call Anet today to find out how search engine advertising can build your revenue!

Posted by Anet Dunne at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)