This is something that crops up whenever I’m doing some work for hotels, leisure centres, gyms and so on – anyplace, really, that’s open to the public and has a whirlpool facility.

Whirlpool, do you mean like a jacuzzi? Why yes, indeed I do. Or is it Jacuzzi, which is what the spellcheckers says it is but that doesn’t look quite right, somehow.

See here’s the thing – and I didn’t know this actually – Jacuzzi is actually a brand name which has come to mean more than the brand itself. It is an example of an eponym.

The Wacky World of Brand Names

In Ireland and the UK kids eat jelly and ice cream, but in North America jelly means jam and they call it and jello, which should actually be written Jell-O. Sometimes brands enter the public lexicon as words to describe the product itself. Ireland’s most famous example of this is Tayto crisps. (Best explained here [slyt nsfw] by Irish comedian Dara O’Briain.)

When we went to the shop after school we’d always ask for “a bottle of coke and a packet of Taytos”, even if it was the really fizzy cheap stuff for 30p and the shop had another brand of crisps. I guess we could have been more accurate, but asking for crisps and a fructose-based soft drink would result in getting a lot of funny looks.

The humble office is, in reality, a treacherous minefield of these genericised words; you might find yourself looking for some Sellotape, or some Tippex or a pack of Post-it notes and a Biro to copy someone’s name off the Rolodex.

These, by rights, should all take capital letters, whereas if you wanted to delete some spam emails that’s fine, unless they’re from someone trying to get you to buy canned ham over the internet, in which case it would be a Spam email. (More on why in a moment.)

If you’re in an office State-side you might need to get something Xeroxed, then again you might need to Photoshop something or do some quick even Googling. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the work day’s already nearly over and the cleaners are coming in to do the Hoovering and wipe down the Formica in the canteen.

It’s enough to make your brain implode.
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The Chinese Domain Name Scam.

I first came across these three years ago, so this is hardly new. Plus there’s already plenty of information on the internet about these scams already. Thing is I started getting a few more of these recently so that means they’re obviously doing the rounds again. That’s why I decided to write this post again as a fresh new warning to those who may not be familiar with the type of scams involved.

The format of the Chinese Domain Scam is simple; you receive correspondence from someone claiming to represent some domain registration agency somewhere in Asia, China or Hong Kong usually:

Dear Manager/CEO/Director/Whatever

We are a domain registration company based in China/Hong Kong/Asia…. (more…)

The field of journalism and publishing in general has never really enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Internet. The Web, with its enormous user base, free content and open-ended architecture, where people can comment on content, and in some cases even edit existing content or create their own, is seen as an enormous threat to their business model.

One of the most vocal opponents of this is media baron Rupert Murdoch. Last year Murdoch announced that he would charge people to access online content from his large portfolio of publications, such as the Wall Street Journal Online, and that he firmly believed that people would be happy to pay for quality content.

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Although Google Instant doesn’t have any direct impact on SEO and search results, one thing that did occur to me when I first used it was how much it would exacerbate any bad publicity a person or company might have. Particularly now, when search engines are constantly monitoring content from highly active, up-to-the-minute social sites like Twitter, changes in suggested searches can be quite swift and can seem to come out of nowhere.

How to become Google’s number one “drunken moron”.

One recent and topical example is that of Ireland’s current leader (though indicators suggest not for very long) Brian Cowen. Ireland, whilst having a large diaspora throughout the world, is a small island nation of 4.2 million with limited global influence when compared with Britain or the United States. Those living outside the Emerald Isle probably would never have heard of Brian Cowen until a couple of weeks ago. So, if you don’t know who he is already, all you need know for this example is that he recently became the centre of controversy over whether or not he was drunk whilst appearing, incoherent and slurring his speech, on a nationally broadcast radio interview to discuss the economy. The result was an already abysmal approval rating, 18% in July 2010 [source] dropping further to 11% by the end of September [source] following the scandal.
(To compare, George W Bush’s lowest, the lowest of any US President, was a comparatively-high 19%.)

In other words, this was a political and public relations meltdown and it would be hard to imagine how it could be made any worse. Enter Google Instant.

Let’s imagine, in the above example, that I was searching for “Brian Cowen DCU speech”, but by the time I type in “Brian Cowen” I can already see the autosuggestion field with “Brian Cowen Drunk” and related queries, and when I type in the D that seals the deal and I get dozens of results automatically for “Brian Cowen Drunk” appearing in the main Google search results.

Now, as far as the world’s most popular search engine is concerned, the name Brian Cowen is permanently affixed to the word drunk and worse still, the search term has gone viral. Suddenly a man who, lets be honest, most of the world didn’t even know existed the week previous, became a viral phenomenon appearing on sites like the hugely popular tongue-in-cheek news aggregator Fark (playing the drunken Irish stereotype angle) as well as countless Tweets, blog posts and YouTube videos.

Now I might sound like I’m contradicting some of the points I made in my last post about Instant, having already said that generally people, when they have their minds set on finding a specific piece of information, are unlikely to get distracted when Google suggests something else. Thing is, if ever there was something that just might distract the searcher it’s a funny video or nice juicy scandal. And as for both rolled into one, well…

So, getting back to the DCU speech example, whilst the end result will invariably be that I’ll continue my search and eventually find the speech I was looking for, there’s a also very high chance it will be after I watch the parody YouTube video.

This should serve as a dire warning for anyone who still doubts the power of social media. Firstly, companies should be acutely aware of how much influence social media has on search engines in general and Google results in particular. Secondly, that it is these very trends which now also dictate much of the content in the mainstream media. Television is prime example. When stuck for material or content researchers will often go online to find out what is popular and “trending”. The result? The man hardly anybody outside Ireland ever heard of is now famous throughout America as a “drunken moron” thanks to Jay Leno.

Thus begins a vicious circle as the Jay Leno video appears on YouTube (a Google-owned company) and also goes viral. With millions searching for the video “Brian Cowen Jay Leno” becomes a top Instant search term shortly after, and the wheels of Cowen’s PR nightmare keep on turning.

Brian Cowen’s name currently appears top of all results on Google.ie for the term “drunken moron”. He appears on all but the last result on page one and continues to appear throughout the results, right up to page 63 out of 66 result pages. He also tops results on Google.co.uk and elsewhere. Now, knowing what we now do about Google’s Instant/autocomplete technology, we can predict a strong possibility that Google Instant will autosuggest the term “drunken moron” every time someone searches for the name “Brian Cowen” and display those results in real time.

It’s part of the Irish character to find incidents like this hilarious, even when, in fact especially when, they have potentially-disasterous consequences. Right now it’s not only make-or-break time for Ireland, but for Europe as a whole, and the ECB and the IMF are watching developments closely. Ireland, with a crippled economy and a dysfunctional banking system, has already had several negative bond rating readjustments and is desperately trying to assuage jittery foreign investors. Having a leader who dominates Google search results for the term “Drunken Moron” isn’t going to help matters. In other words, Google, and the web in general, has become instrumental in destruction of Cowen’s political career.

Reputation management for Businesses

For companies, rather than individuals, the issue becomes even more dangerous. It can be bad enough with autocomplete, whereby someone typing in searches for “Joe Bloggs” or “Acme Airlines” might see autosuggested terms like “Joe Bloggs scam” or “Acme Airlines ripoff” but now imagine the person can also see the results of those search terms and read their content in real time – not good.

Very few companies will ever experience the sort of PRmageddon that BP or Toyota did this year, but that doesn’t mean companies should ignore their online reputation. Signing up to Google Alerts is strongly recommend, so as to be notified of new content containing your name or the name of your company so you can be ready to stamp out any dangerous sparks before they become wildfires.

Of course, Instant or not, whatever’s out there, both the positive and the negative, people are going to find it anyway. And to reiterate the point I made last time regarding Instant and SEO, the search engine hasn’t changed and the information on it hasn’t changed, just the interface is changed, making it easier, and faster, for people to find that information.

Therefore the methods used to counter negative press online haven’t changed either; that is to proactively deal with negative press whilst continuing to build your search engine and local search footprint. The game is speeded up now, however, so your company will need to speed up too, or risk being overwhelmed by the web’s ever-changing landscape.

Brionglóid Media can help your company overcome these sorts of issues, as part of an ongoing web maintenance contract. We can help monitor review sites (e.g. Trip Advisor), Local search sites (i.e. Google Places, Bing Local), social networks, blogs, forums and other online communities and, if necessary, engage with customers on your company’s behalf to help mediate disputes or counter libellous claims against your business. We can also help you to diminish the Google search result ranking of articles or pages which may have negative implications for your company and replace them with more desirable articles and press releases, working to positively promote your business online. For more information please contact us today and we can begin an online PR campaign tailored to your specific needs.

Google Instant & Search Results

In the previous post I gave an introduction to Google Instant and talked about the technology and how it works. This time I want to talk more about how Instant predicts people’s search habits and what effect it will have on those habits and on your business’s website traffic. Finally I want to mention a little bit on Google Instant SEO and debunk many of the myths and misrepresentations that surround Google’s novel search engine enhancement.

So I guess the first thing people will want to know is; what about all those bloggers who’ve been saying that Google Instant marks the end of SEO and online marketing? In a word – bull.

So why say it? Well, clearly these bloggers know the value of link-bait. In the same way scandals and controversy helps sell newspapers, saying something alarmist or controversial is always a sure-fire way to get people to read, comment on and link to your blog post.

Big Names – Big Brands
One of their most alarmist comments is that Google are now “suddenly” giving more weight to large corporations in search. This is complete and other BS. The fact of the matter is Google Instant doesn’t mark the end of SEO any more than the introduction of autocomplete did.

A is for:

B is for:

The above tables show examples of Google Instant/autocomplete information (September 2010). There you will see the big brands & big names based on the most popular searches. No real surprises there (well other than the revelation that so many of my fellow countrymen are still interested in Big Brother).

Yes, when you search you do see a predilection towards big brands and big names, primarily large Internet companies or large retailers and chain stores, as well as airlines, banks, telcos and so on, but that predilection originates with all of us. Google are merely reflecting our own search trends back at us. In other words they’re giving the people what they want. And what they want, clearly, is to buy things, bank online, book flights online, play games online, talk to friends online or check the news, sport and weather. Go to any internet café on the planet and this is exactly what you will see people doing.

In fact, back when I used to own an internet cafe I used to check which were the most popular sites with customers as logged by my Smoothwall firewall/proxy server. When I compared them with those of a friend of mine who ran another cafe the results were virtually identical. Google released their autocomplete functions just I was exiting the net cafe business, however I did have the time to check the logs of both cafes against the Google suggestions and, once again, they were virtually identical. Since Instant and autocomplete are one and the same this is basically solid proof, if ever any was needed, that the results that are generated by Instant are based solely on which sites are the most popular with searchers and not, as some have hinted, motivated by any covert agreement between Google and its advertisers to gain a higher ranking.

Still don’t believe me? Ok, try it for yourself, open two tabs and search for the same thing, one tab with Instant enabled and the other disabled. Because Amazon’s dominating the A’s let’s see if they perform any different on Instant than they would normally. “Books” (I used Google.com US for this) bring up as the top two, books.google.com and Amazon. “Bookshop” brings up a company called “Bookshop Santa Cruz.” However as I honed in on the location, “bookshop [name of town/city - wherever you live]” the results began to change and update themselves according to my searches. When I had my my full search term typed in the bar I then compared my search with that of “regular” Google and – hey whadya know! – they were the exact same. The same companies dominated the top results for the same search term in both regular and Instant.

So whilst Instant uses autocomplete information to help facilitate the search and changes the look and feel of the search engine functionality, the final results for any given search term remain unchanged. Therefore if you’ve already conducted a comprehensive online marketing campaign, with the emphasis on SEO and local search/maps, then you have absolutely nothing to fear from Google Instant.

How will Google Instant change how people search?
Another common anti-Instant argument I’ve heard is that, by providing people with ready-made search terms people will be more likely to go with those search terms than use their own. This simple isn’t true. If the suggested search term is identical to what the person was searching for in the first place – which is all a case of predicting probabilities as far as the search engine is concerned – then that person will, of course, go for the suggested search term. But if Instant throws up suggestions that are contrary to what the user is looking for, they will naturally be ignored.

Think about it; if I’m looking for “Paris Hotels”, and I’ve just typed in “Paris H” the odds are very high that I’m going to continue typing my search term and I’m not going to be swayed by recommended links to sites about Paris Hilton. But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I start searching for Paris Hotels and do click on the link to Paris Hilton, one has to wonder how committed I was to booking a hotel in Paris in the first place. It begins to look very much like I’m surfing, rather than searching.

It works the other way too. Say I’m a zoology student researching “Amazonian tapir population decline”. How likely am I, when Google Instant suggests it, to forget about my research paper and buy Dan Browne and Harry Potter books on Amazon instead? Not very.

So, whilst Google Instant does make it easier for people to access the most popular sites and content online it does not mean people are suddenly going to forget what they’re looking for. What it will do, however, is help prevent people from accessing sites they didn’t mean to, therefore improving bounce and conversion rates.

Whilst there have been massive improvements in search over the years, they’re still not all that good at understanding exactly what information we want. Google still doesn’t really know what we want so it guesses based upon what other people have wanted in the past. This helps anyone trying to conduct a search because, whilst they know the answer they want, they may not necessarily know how to best phrase the search query in order to find it. Instant now not only shows suggestions of what people have searched for in the past, it also shows the results in real time. So the user can see whether the search was successful or not. The result is that people find exactly what they want faster and easier and the likelihood of people accidentally accessing sites unrelated to their search term is greatly reduced.

Of course it’s not going to stop false landings completely, as anyone who’s accidentally landed on this page searching for Amazonian tapir population numbers can probably attest. (I aim to please, try here)

How to increase traffic with Google Instant.
Contrary to what the doomsayers say, Instant exposes even greater scope with which to connect directly with search engine users. Most people still don’t understand what a search engine actually does and fewer still understand how search engines actually work. They just know that if they type the name of the company they’re looking for it brings up the company automatically so they don’t have to mess around with all that fiddly www-dot stuff. They also tend to view Google as the oracle of the web, rather than understanding how it crawls sites and indexes content and keywords, they tend to ask it questions; “How do I do this?”, “where can I buy X in region Y?” and so forth. Google has only the most limited understanding of what words and search terms mean, so although it has a better track record than most search engines, it will none the less frequently show results that are irrelevant to what the person was looking for.

There are two reasons why this happens. The first is because the person used a bad or vague search term. This problem will be greatly reduced by Google Instant’s improved autosuggest feature, thus greatly increasing the chances that they will eventually find that which they seek. The second reason the user cannot find a relevant page is because a page relevant to their chosen search term simply doesn’t exist. This problem has also been reduced a lot due to specific question and answer sites like eHow and Yahoo Answers filling in many pre-existing gaps, but it still happens quite often.

Now imagine there’s a Google Instant search term that’s already out there, that’s related to your business or niche, but that there’s no answer or content to satisfy it? There are obviously a lot of people searching for that term, but that demand is going unsatisfied and all the potential is lost. So, rather than trying to go after saturated search terms that your competitors are already ranking high for, why not go all-out to secure this specific search term? Google’s Zeitgiest and Insights pages are a good place to start looking for those terms. Bear in mind, though, there are many words and phrases which Google automatically censor from Instant results.

So, whilst there’s still a long, long way to go before we reach the Star Trek level when we can just say, “computer, how do we do this?” or “show me all the files related to that” and the computer responds appropriately, Instant does serve as a good stop-gap solution by making it easier to match the queries made by users with the content they desire. You won’t have to wait long for other search engines, most noteably Bing, to follow Google’s lead, and for suggestive search to become the new standard.

Google Instant search optimization.
So how do you optimize your business website for Instant-type search? Well, getting back to the “bookshop [town]” example I reccommend, firstly, that your business concentrates heavily on local search, particularly Google Places, Facebook Places, Bing Local and the emerging trends in geo-tagging social networks like Foursquare.

Local search is becoming ever more important these days and geotagging is another rising trend. Search for any busines + location combination on Google, e.g. “Hotel London” or “Restaurant Paris” and the first thing you will notice is that, top of the results are lists of businesses on Google Places complete with maps of their location. Naturally you’ll want to be right at the top and marked on those maps. You’ll also want to ensure that your organisation keeps a very close eye on your listings and deals proactively with any negative comments so as to resolve disputes before they escalate. That way you can rank high on Google and also enjoy high customer feedback.

Other than that the rules of good SEO still apply and have not changed not even slightly. As discussed in the bookshop example the end results of a search for a given term or keyword are identical whether Instant is enabled or not. So you will need to ensure that your site exibits the charactaristics of quality web design, that it is properly designed, coded and easy to navigate. This way not only is it easy for people to find what they’re looking for, it makes it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and index your site also. You should also provide a sitemap for your users and an XML sitemap of your site to help search engines, like Google, index your site’s content more easily. Finally be sure, also, that your site does not have any flash-based navigation or contains frames.

If you are not sure you can always contact us for a consultation. You may also be interested in our link-building services.

I’ve read a lot of articles over the past week or so on the new Google Instant engine, some people liked it, some hated it and some, actually quite a few, quickly panicked, foreseeing the end of SEO and Internet marketing as we know it. I have decided, therefore, to hold off on commenting on it, to digest the various pros and cons, as well as the portentous prognostications of numerous SEO blog Nostradami and deliberate for a while whilst conducting a few tests of my own. In this, the first of a three part series, I’ll be discussing Google Instant and what advantages it has over regular Google.

For those who don’t know, Google Instant is a new service that’s currently being rolled out worldwide. The idea behind it is that it speeds up searches by suggesting search terms to you as you type. Essentially it’s the same principal as the autocomplete function which has been a familiar part of the Google search experience for some time now, but extended throughout the page.

So, for example, when you type in A the familiar dropdown menu appears showing a number of possibilities for A based on popularity. Usually when teaching the alphabet we say “A is for Apple” but in Google.com (USA), no doubt much to Steve Jobbs’ chagrin, the top of the A autocomplete list is Amazon, based on the site’s enormous popularity. All that Google Instant does (though Google make a huge deal of it) is automatically serve results based on the autocomplete data. So, when you type in “A”, it not only shows the main A-results with Amazon at the top, it also shows results for Amazon at the bottom of the page.

Instant really isn’t anything new or revolutionary, it’s basically the same basic Google search engine with a new front-end tweak that helps speed up searching. At the end of the day Google want to retain their number one position. They want to ensure that as many people as possible use Google and that they all find what they want as quickly as possible. As long as they manage to stay ahead of the posse in terms of the quality of search results and ease of use, they’ll retain it. And from that point of view, Instant delivers.

At this point I should mention that, personally speaking, I don’t really like Instant. I’m an incurable geek, of course, a web-veteran who’s been a Google user for over a decade.  I’m used to performing my own searches, using functions where necessary and I’ve picked up a lot of tips and tricks over the years to make information retrieval as swift as possible. So for me Instant serves as an unnecessary and somewhat irritating distraction whereas original Google, with its familiar minimalism, reassures me that I’m the one telling the search engine what to search for, not the other way around.

Website redesigns almost always provoke negative reactions from a significant proportion of users, we don’t like when something we’ve gotten used to using gets changed. That’s why I’m sure the new Twitter is going to provoke a similar reaction and it’s also why I decided to reserve judgement and give myself more time to test Google Instant before weighing in.

Whilst I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had this reaction I am no longer in the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” camp regarding Instant nor do I regard this as Google’s New Coke moment. First of all, if you don’t like using Instant, you have the option to disable it by clicking on a clearly marked link on the right-hand side of the search bar. Secondly, though it may not be for everyone, for most people Google Instant does offer many advantages over regular Google search and the more I used it the more I began to appreciate just how ingenious it really is.

My first business, way back when, was an internet café. I dare say operating such a business has given me an enormous advantage over other web designers and developers. Why? Because it firstly gave me the chance to view (and often times assist) a diverse range of users, of all ages and skillsets, and secondly – and this is the clincher – it allowed me to see how they performed on various websites. When I started thinking in these terms I suddenly I saw how much of a game-changer Google Instant is really going to be.

I’m going to introduce you to a character called Joe, who is the ultimate benchmarker.
Joe is a composite character of various people I came across working whilst running my internet cafe. My café was based in Ireland, but I’d say everyone who has ever worked in an internet café before has had a Joe of their own and when I describe Joe, I’m sure you’ll probably know somebody just like him.

Joe doesn’t believe in calling repairmen and never took his car to a mechanic. The doctor keeps telling him he should slow down a bit but then what does he know? Joe comes from that that hard-working, hard-as-nails generation; fiercly frugal, doggedly determined and self reliant. And he certainly isn’t going to let a thing like mild myopia (it’s not as mild as he’d care to admit) or not having the first clue how to use a computer stand between him and a good bargain. For seven decades of his life computers were non-existent, then he heard about eBay, found some great deals on tools and hardware, and since then got hopelessly hooked.
Getting to the eBay website, however, is a constant battle.

Joe represents all those squinting, one-finger typists out there who can’t see the screen as well as they’d like to and to whom the QWERTY keyboard may as well be the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Now, Joe just clicks on the big blue E which he associates with being “The Internet”. (We’d like Joe to use Chrome or Firefox instead but one step at a time). Internet Explorer opens up with the homepage set to Google. Joe now only has to press one single, solitary key – E – before eBay appears automatically top of the search results. One key press and two mouse clicks is all it takes to bring Joe to his destination.

Both Ebay and Amazon already have an autocomplete function on their site and I’m sure they can see the potential of Instant-like technology and how they might adapt it for their site so people, regardless of their level of computer literacy, can find, and purchase, the items they’re interested in as quickly and easily as possible.

This is the thing that I’ve been telling people since day one and it especially applies to ecommerce sites of all sizes; the easier you make your site to use, the easier it will be for you to sell. If you’re not sure how, Google Instant can help show you the way.

When in doubt, try to think of a Joe-like character you might know and try to envision how that person might perform on your site. How easy, or difficult, would it be for them to locate key information or perform a transaction? Now imagine that, unlike Joe, the person doesn’t have that same determination, and will give up very easily if they can’t find what they’re looking for and go to one of your competitors instead. Now think about Google Instant again, think about how long it took Joe to find what he was looking for. Under one second to find it, under two seconds to get there. There it is, that’s your time to match.

Google already offer a Custom Search Engine service so that you can use Google technology to allow people to search through your site’s content. Although Google haven’t released official Custom/Instant search code yet I did come across this Instant Google Custom Search Engine with information on how it was done here. I’ll be looking into that myself to see how I can adapt it for clients.

So, that’s it for now. In part two I’ll be talking more about Google Instant and what it means for your business. I’ll be going into detail about Instant search results and how to position yourself on them. I’ll also be debunking many of the myths and misrepresentations which have rapidly propigated throughout the blogosphere in the last couple of weeks.

Internet Explorer 6 was the default browser bundled with Windows XP and has been around for nine years now. Since then there have been two new iterations of IE; IE7 in 2006 copying Opera and Firefox with the introduction of tabbed browsing, and IE8, released last year.

As more and more people upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 7 is beginning to loose ground and Internet Explorer 6 has begun its slow slip into obscurity.

I am writing this on behalf of all the designers and developers out there who wish to speed up the process.

Back at the beginning of IE6’s life cycle rival browsers like Firefox and Opera didn’t have a fraction of the amount of users they have today. As IE6’s rate of adoption increased, however, so too did the adoption rate of these new rival browsers, as many people jumped ship and never returned – much to Microsoft’s annoyance.

(In fact the company often went to some rather sneaky lengths to protect its market share.)

In addition to its long history of security flaws which didn’t provide a back door, so much as a wide open front door, to hackers, IE6 was also a web designers nightmare. For one it had issues displaying .png files correctly plus a whole host of CSS styling issues, such as its own unique interpretation of positioning rules.

In short, the browser didn’t always display pages the way it was supposed to. So whenever somebody designed a website and wrote the code to proper international web standards, the result, when viewed in the Microsoft browser, often looked terrible. This meant that web designers (including yours truly) often had little choice but to design separate stylesheets just so the design would look “correct” in the broken browser.

As for web developers… the poor people, they have suffered so much for too long.

The good news for those in the industry, now that Google has officially dropped support for IE6, is that the rest of the world is bound to follow suit. Apple are halfway there already and ongoing issues with Flash also mean that Adobe would undoubtedly be more than happy to dump the browser too. In other words, Internet Explorer 6 has become the new floppy disc drive.
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It has been tried before. And it has failed miserably. Still, with more TV sets out there than computers and smart phones combined, and with lots of new markets emerging in developing or BRIC countries (though in Google’s case not China), the rewards, for whoever can crack it, are enormous.
So no marks for originality this time, Google, but full marks for aggressive assertiveness.

For the last quarter Google have reported revenues of $6.77 billion – hardly a figure to be sneezed at. Despite this the web advertising behemoth is hungry for more and have clearly been watching a lot of TV, just not in the way you might think.

Television has, thus far, been perhaps the only traditional medium not to have been directly impacted by the web. Whilst publishers of books and newspapers, the music industry and Hollywood have all seen their market share, and to some point, their entire business models, decimated by the ascendancy of the Worldwide Web, more eyes are glued on the telly than any other media format, as this article by The Economist explains. So, logically, for a company that makes its money from providing access to content and services provided on the back of selling ad space, such a move was predictable and, one might even say, inevitable.

Google TV promo and announcement

As I said the vision of combining the TV and the Web is hardly new one. There have been plenty of attempts so far, all unsuccessful, with one such product from 1995, called WebTV, listed as a runner up [scroll down to see entry] on PC World’s worst products of all time.

WebTV was later snapped up by Microsoft becoming MSN TV. Though even with the massive resources of Microsoft behind it, and through partnerships with Sony, Phillips, Samsung, RCA and Mitsubishi, the product never really took off. What it did do, however, was lay bare the hunger that the big corporations all have to merge the world’s two most dynamic and influential mediums.

All things considered, WebTV and its progeny were, in essence, an idea whose time had come but the technology had not come along with it. In the mid-nineties websites were often designed quite badly and browsers were fickle, to say the least. CSS support was often poor or non-existent. Cast your mind back to the first websites you saw, with all those awful gaudy, low-resolution graphics and insipid animations – now imagine how those websites would look, not on an old VGA monitor, but on a big screen TV. The result would be blockier than Legoland. As for watching online videos, forget it. Flash had only just arrived on the scene when WebTV did, and the idea of using Flash for YouTube-style streaming video was ten years away. Using the web for streaming video back then was sort of ridiculous anyway, as everyone was still crawling along on dial-up modems. Though it is humorous to imagine an entire family sitting in the living room reading the words “buffering…” off the big screen impatiently awaiting a low-resolution, minute long Real Player video.

Things have moved on since those days, and rapidly too. We now live in an age of high speed broadband and high definition TV, with 3DTV just around the corner, spurred on by the success by films such as Avatar. Google, like Microsoft and WebTV before it, have already wooed the electronics industry. Sony have signed up and are building Google TV-enabled HDTVs and Bluray players, peripheral manufacturer Logitech has also signed up to make special Google TV set top boxes, Intel has also been announced as a partner and invariably more will be announced soon.

The idea is that these devices will come with an integrated browser/system (Android/Chrome-based) which can access online content direct through your TV. Such a system also makes it easier for people, young and old, to access content. For the older generation in particular, the ability to use the familiar remote control, rather than the alien mouse and keyboard, could make the Web more accessible for millions. (That is presuming they are not the sort who believe that flipping channels too quickly will break the TV.)

Laziness, in the end, is the name of the game. This is television, after all, and so the easier the technology makes it to do things the better. Personally I don’t watch much TV but I do love to watch movies. I’m what you’d call a film buff, actually, and what happens me often (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) is I’ll be watching a movie and see an actor and go, “oh, it’s that guy” and will not be able to enjoy the movie as I’ll be sitting there racking my brains trying to figure out what other film I’ve seen him in lately. With Google TV a quick flip of the remote and I could be on IMDB getting the answer in a matter of seconds all without missing a second of my movie – wonderful. So basically what this offers, amongst many other things, is the ability to access information without having to get off one’s ass to turn on the laptop or pick up the phone. In other words, this is the holy grail for couch potatoes everywhere.

It’s a dream come true for the younger, more net-savvy generation, too. For example, you could be lying back in your living room watching TV and, when your favourite show is over, jump direct onto your Facebook or Twitter account to discuss it with friends during the commercial. This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a rapidly growing trend. The hit TV show Lost, for example, boasted a massive fanbase who would jump online straight after each show to discuss the episode they just watched. Along with other shows such as American Idol, it was one of Twitter’s top trending topics of last year.

Clearly Google are clearly taking the “children are our future” maxim to heart. In this case the device-hungry multitasking children who, although they’re constantly flipping between their phone, their laptop and their games console, are, for the most part, whilst not glued, at the very least passively consuming TV more than any other medium.

What Google are trying to do, in essence, is to provide all these distractions on one single device and keep people there and presumably, to wean a whole generation of new customers within the Google umbrella. Considering Google’s broad spectrum of services on offer; Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, Picassa, YouTube, Buzz, Google Talk, to name a few, and most importantly of all, Google Search, one need never turn on their computer again. Making all these available from one’s armchair at the flick of a remote is a brilliant, if somewhat unoriginal, strategy.

Google really aren’t doing anything new here. They’re simply porting their business model from one media platform to another, something which they’ve already done quite successfully by taking their services from the web to the mobile phone. Now they’re going after TV with the same concept; access to content offset by advertising – plain and simple. Who creates the content is irrelevant.

The reaction from TV networks to this announcement is bound to be mixed. Rupert Murdoch, for example, has no love for Google, and has never missed an opportunity to express his ire at a company he considers to be content thieves. Google also faced an enormous backlash from the major networks when it purchased YouTube in 1996, most notably from Viacom. Whilst Google does police the site regularly to remove copyrighted content the sheer scale of videos and users on the site means it’s people can’t be everywhere at once and such content almost always slips through. Add to this the ease of online piracy and you can see why the majors are clearly worried by any or all threats emanating from the Internet. Thus far they have had little to any success in providing alternatives.

Providing customers the ability to view TV shows online has resulted in various different approaches from paid to completely free. One such example is the TV streaming site Hulu, a collaboration of US broadcasters Fox, ABC and NBC. Although Hulu is highly popular it has not exactly proved to be the revenue generating monster they had hoped for. Not least of which because, in an impatient, attention-deficit afflicted medium like the Web, even 30 seconds of advertising is considered way too much. In North America commercial breaks of an average of 2 minutes occur three times during a 30 minute show, first after the main credits, then halfway through the show and then again before the end credits, shaving what was once a half hour show format down to around 20. People have come to accept this with TV but on the Web it’s unacceptable. The reason is simple, because the Web is an active medium whilst the television is, neurologically-speaking and otherwise, the most passive medium we’ve got.

Still, the major dilemma the networks face is that, whilst more and more people are tuning in, advertising revenues are dropping. What Google offers them is an ideal way to tap into countless unseen methods of generating new revenue through new forms of advertising, by becoming resellers of said advertising platforms and also by keeping the spotlight on themselves by offering increased interactivity with their audience. If you ever watch CNN you’ll see they’re always asking you to join in on the discussion on the Twitter or Facebook pages. But who’s really going to do that? You have to get up off your ass, walk over to your computer, switch it on, wait for it to boot up… ahh forget it! Whereas now you can just flip the remote and open the page direct. With this technology the possibilities for connecting with one’s audience are endless. For example the kids they could watch their favourite cartoon and then, when the show’s over, play an interactive video game starring that cartoon character. Or imagine the possibilities of a fully interactive Who Wants To Be A Millionaire type show where you can be a nationally televised contestant but playing from home.

When it comes to mobilising the masses and providing extra revenue through interactivity nothing beats reality TV, the most successful of all being Simon Cowell’s fleet of interactive talent show franchises and its infinite stream of imitators. Love him or hate him one cannot deny that Simon Cowell has stumbled upon one of the smartest business models in the history of television. Not only does he have this enormous TV juggernaut with all its advertising revenue, there’s also the interactive side of it, the weekly SMS text-in, resultant tours and record sales, etc. You can take American Idol or X-Factor as an assembly line where every part of the process generates revenue, in hundreds of countries simultaneously. Factor in Google TV into that and you can take it even further.

Now imagine that you are afforded even more ways with which to involve your audience, such as through social media. Imagine that instead of having regular TV advertising spots between shows for recording artists and tour dates, you can actually flip your remote and download the music (for a fee or for free, the choice is yours) direct to your set top box or pay to watch additional behind-the-scenes footage on Hulu. Later, when videos go viral on YouTube, like Susan Boyle last year, you can generate even more revenue by specially tailoring your YouTube channel for Google TV. Imagine that the TV networks can also get a cut of the enormous pay per click advertising revenue served up directly to customers. No doubt the network heads, even Rupert, are beginning to see the enormous potential for additional (and in many cases much-needed) revenue.

Now the channel, network or provider (cable company/satellite broadcaster) can sell even more advertising and localise it far more than was ever previously possible. Not just by country or region, but by actual address. Such a service would also be a huge boon for small businesses making TV advertising far more affordable and also far more effective by targeting specific regions only.

How this would work is similar to how the web targets advertising today; by detecting your IP address and using it to determine where you are located based on your local exchange/provider. So, let’s say, for example, you own a local auto dealership or restaurant. There’s really no point in having a national or even regional advertising market campaign carpet bombing the airwaves when your target area is much smaller. With this technology, however, you can create TV advertisements for broadcast but pay far less and only serve those ads to people in your particular catchment area during relevant shows. So the auto dealership could advertise during the Top Gear, the restaurant during Jamie Oliver and the local town sports bar can now advertise directly during the World Cup, only just to a very small audience. You could also, in theory, have live links that then allow people to view the company’s website, read company reviews, see its location in Google Maps and even download those maps to their Android phone’s satnav software. Throw a microphone and some VOIP capability in there and you don’t even need a phone, you can just press a button on your remote control and you can make voice calls or send SMS text messages .

In other words, if this technology takes off, it’s going to turn conventional broadcasting and TV advertising on its head and forever blur the edges between electronic media of all forms. And if anyone has the leverage, the know-how and the ambition to do achieve this, Google has.

And even if Google don’t manage it, and I can’t imagine why they couldn’t, Web-enabled TV, like 3DTV, is bound to hit the market sooner or later, it’s simply a question of when. In the meantime it’s a good idea for business owners to start thinking about how best to prepare for it so they can take advantage of it when it finally arrives.

Broadcasters are going to have to think really hard about how they retain their audiences. This is difficult enough right now, with hundreds, if not thousands, of channels to choose from. But soon they’ll not only have to contend with fickle audiences flipping from one channel to the next, in linear form, from channel one through to channel 999 and beyond, but also with hyperlinks which warp them right out of the telly dimension completely and onto the worldwide web. That’s a ratings war you cannot hope to win without being able to provide compelling, interactive diversions with which to keep them in your orbit. Oh yeah, and anyone working in the field of Teletext, it’s time to start looking for a new line of work, so start sending out your CVs – now.

As for the Web itself, that’s arguably going to have even bigger changes ahead. One obvious point, which I touched on earlier, is how to optimise one’s website for television. In essence, you simply need to think of it as a really big monitor (which, is basically, what it is). So in design terms that means accessibility becomes more important than ever. The last thing you want is to have your web content display as a small box in the centre of a huge blank space of a wide screen, or have graphics that aren’t optimised for the format and look gritty. Other considerations include fonts and colour settings. Colour is of particular importance as televisions are more prone to colour saturation. Google also reiterates that you must always keep in mind that you are now designing not for the web as you know it, rather web for the “living room environment”. You can read Google’s hints for designers and developers here.

One thought I also had is that .tv domains might well become more important now, just as .mobi domains have for mobile devices. This could well be important because, since people will now also be using a remote control, rather just than a mouse or touchpad for navigation, menus will have to be greatly simplified, and, depending on your existing website’s design, or content, it might be a good idea for you to have a specially designed TV-friendly site, once again, for the living room.

Having said that, the living room is not the only place in the house you’ll find a TV set. Indeed the TV set has become like the fireplace of old; always on in the background, often in several rooms at once. In Britain the average number of TVs per household is between 2-3 sets, according to the BBC. Many British households also have more than one Sky Box (or similar set-top box). A large amount of people have a second TV room for children, a TV in the kitchen and/or in the bedroom. So whatever about Google’s advice on designing a webpage for the living room environment, you might also want to consider the other rooms the TV is in.

As for marketing for the bedroom environment? Well, to borrow a phrase from Billy Connolly, we’ll draw a discrete veil over that one shall we?

Multi-network Instant Messengers

Not too long ago instant messenging (IM) programs, also known as chat clients, where text is typed and shared in real time (along with emoticons) were ubiquitous and all the big web companies had one.

Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, later renamed Live Messenger, was perhaps the most popular, with Yahoo Messenger (YIM) a close second. These services were linked to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail respectively, however with the advent of Gmail, which offered far more in the way of storage and options, Hotmail and Yahoo both lost a lot of market share. Google later integrated its own Google Talk instant messenger program into the Gmail interface so that one could chat with contacts direct from their browser.

Another one-time big player in the IM market (and indeed the web as a whole) was AOL. AOL’s instant messenger, AIM, whilst also quite popular, suffered from a lot of controversy regarding its installation of a component called Viewpoint Media Player which many considered to be spyware.

Other popular instant messenger programs included ICQ, which was also once the property of AOL, and IRC, one of the oldest and also most popular messenging systems, albeit more so with the “geeky” end of the spectrum than with regular users. It was (and still is) highly popular with members of online communities such as the online gaming community.

Over the last ten years, however, use of instant messengers has diminished with the advent of social networks like Facebook and microblogging sites like Twitter, which allow for real time status updates, as well as other Web 2.0 collaborative platforms such as the excellent Google Wave.

With the advent of VOIP programs like Skype IM programs are nowadays more like hybrids allowing old-style instant messenging in conjunction with free, or low cost, Skype-style calls.

Whilst some companies actively discourage staff from using IM programs, because they don’t want their employees chatting when they should be working, many more are unable to function without them. Obvious examples of such businesses include web design and graphic design firms such as ourselves as well as project managers, writers, transcribers or translation service providers where being able to type to a person or persons in real time without having to pick up the phone provides massive time and money savings. Other applications include inbuilt web applets on company websites which allow customers to chat directly with company representatives, for example, to provide real-time technical support.

So, depending on the company type, instant messenging can provide many advantages to one’s company, and that’s not even including the advantages provided by cheap or free calls with inbuilt VOIP telephony. The only real issue is that with so many different platforms from various different, competing companies, it’s all too possible that the person you want to talk to is using a different program than you are. Installing and running seven different IM platforms is not only impractical it would also slow down your computer, and your productivity, dramatically. Thankfully there are programs out there that allow you to use the one program to access all major chat networks simultaneously and best of all, these programs are also completely free.

(Note: to use these you will still need to set up accounts with the various companies, i.e. you will still need to set up an MSN account, a Yahoo account, a Google account and so forth. You just won’t need to download and install all their IM programs.)

Trillian is a lovely little program for Windows, Mac and mobiles, including the iPhone and Blackberry. It allows you to chat with all major clients, such as MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM, and, depending on your system, is also compatible with Skype as well as Twitter and the instant messenging features of Facebook and Myspace. This is a great all-rounder program, especially because it’s mobile. Plus, what other instant messenger out lets you send an animated octopus as an emoticon?

Pidgin, formerly known as GAIM, is an open source multi-platform instant messenging system available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It is compatible with all major IM platforms including MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, IRC and other programs such as the popular Polish chat client Gadu-Gadu. Because GAIM is open source it means that it’s constantly being developed and so a number of GAIM plugins exist that add compatibility with Skype, Facebook IM, Twitter and pretty much any other platform you can think of.

Free Alternative to Winzip and Winrar

Yes, technically, Winzip and Winrar are not free. They are what is often referred to as nagware. Software that nags you to upgrade to the pro version every time you use it, in the expectation that you will eventually do as you’re told – expect away, because…

7 Zip is an open source archiver program that’s free to download and use, with great superior compression and compatibility with other formats such as .zip and .rar files. Highly recommended.

Download older versions of software

Finally, to wrap this up, I thought I’d mention a favourite website of mine called Old Version.com.
This site, as it name suggests, allows you to download older versions of a large variety of different software programs, such media players, instant messengers, security programs, utilities, etc. This is a good idea for a number of reasons, perhaps because you upgraded to the latest software version before the bugs were sorted out and need to go back. (I find this tends to happen a lot when the makers of one of my favourite programs gets bought out by a larger company.)

Maybe there is some other compatibility issue, for example you are running an older operating system with which the latest version of the software is not compatible. Often, new software also means an increase in its footprint whereas older versions won’t use up so much system resources. Or perhaps, like me, you often don’t like the direction your favourite program has taken over the years and you don’t like all the extra options and superfluous capabilities. Instead you yearn for a simpler time before the bells and whistles and shiny new interface, when the program just done one thing and done it well and just shut up about it and let you get on with it. And I’m sure we’ve all come across a program which made us feel like that.

So, anyway, that’s it for now and that’s the end of this series, though I will, of course, continue to add new free software posts as time continues. If anyone would like to suggest any other free software programs or make suggestions for future post ideas feel free to comment below.

I got this email this morning, it looks almost identical to Twitter emails except for the fact that the account I received it on does not have a Twitter account connected to it. Bit of a dead giveaway that, but still, it’s quite convincing.

The email says:

Hello, Twitter-er!

You have 2 (or more) unread message(s) from Twitter System.

With a URL underneath, which, in the body of a HTML email, appears to be directed to Twitter, but is in fact directing someplace else. This isn’t new, obviously, there have been emails like this around for years, for Facebook, for online banks, for Paypal and eBay – for every service you can imagine, the idea being to either:

A: Get your Username & Password – especially for financial services like Paypal.

B: Get your Credit Card number & related details.

C: Get you to click on a link that will download malware to infect your computer.

D: All of the above.

Whether it’s a phishing attack or a malware attack the results can be equally devastating so always take precautions. In many email clients all it takes is to hover over any hyperlinks to see where they point to. Worst case scenario you can always right click and copy the URL to the clipboard and then paste it into notepad. This way you’ll know for certain whether the hyperlink in the email is really pointing where it says it is.

Even this can be misleading however. Depending on the font used it can be difficult to distinguish from the real URL and a spoofed one, observe:

www.paypal.com – Paypal.com as normal.

Paypa1.com – Paypa1 (number one) in Times New Roman

PaypaI.com – PaypaI (capital i) in Arial

There’s a million other variants one can do with any number of legitimate websites.

So, if you’re still paranoid – congratulations, you should be! – then you can always look at some of these URL malware scanners to see if there are any nasty surprises lurking in the links of your emails.

Having a good virus and firewall protection layer and ensuring that these programs are regularly updated will help protect you from these sorts of attacks. As will ensuring that you also regularly update and patch your email client, browser and operating system.

Vigilance and common sense, however, is the only true protection – so always remember the five golden rules:

1. If you’re not sure where the link goes don’t click on it.
2. If you’re not sure what an attachment is don’t open it.
3. If you receive unsolicited* (spam) email don’t ever reply to it
4. Unless your email client or antivirus program already has an automatic email attachments scanning feature, always download and scan attachments first before opening them

and finally

5. If the email comes from a known contact with links/attachments but with very brief and often baffling and grammatically-questionable text, e.g. “hey u – check this out!” always contact that person and ask whether he/she really sent it or not.

If they reply and say they never sent it then that person’s computer is infected with a virus which has most likely sent itself out to every one of their contacts already. This can be very devastating not just for the security and privacy of a business, but for its reputation too. So if you do suspect you’ve received such a virus be sure to tactfully inform them of that fact, as the sooner they’re made aware of it the better.

Be aware that whilst many spam emails pretend to have an opt-out link at the bottom these are often used to verify that your email address is correct and clicking on them will only result in more spam. It can be hard to tell, sometimes, because you may also be receiving legitimate ezines/newsletters that you subscribed to but have since forgotten about. When in doubt, look the company/organisation up on Google and if you’re still not sure, you can always just flag the emails as spam.

Read more about how to prevent phish emails & spam.