Pay per Click goes Pay per Lead

This is a identifiable trend in Internet advertisement as companies want to quantify the real impact of their campaigns. Recently Apogee Search, a Search Engine Marketing firm in the Southwest, announced that it has decided to endorse and support the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). SEMPO's mission is foster awareness of SEM and its role in marketing.

Apogee Search's motto "Customers, not clicks" exemplifies this tendency. They provide their clients with data about specific number of completed lead forms, conversion rates and actual cost per lead.

Wii are Waiting

Only 3 day for the US release of Nintendo's new playtoy: the Wii. But this is not "yet another console" release. The Wii offers technological innovation that might change they way we approach gaming.

Nintendo wants to make gaming as accessible to people of all ages and all abilities. The key to this strategy is the controller: the Wii Remote controller. It features motion-sensing technology that turn it into a multifunctional device:In a tennis game, it serves as your racket;in a driving game, it serves as your steering wheel.

The potentiality of this device is overwhelming. It could end with the topic of the obese kid closed in his room. Nintendo want to turn the family's living room into a playground for all, even the most techno-adverse. I think they will succeed.

tags: Nintendo, Wii

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Valid from 14 November 2006

This blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. However, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. We refuse to publish, under our pen name, blattant advertisment or compulsory positive appraisals. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely those of the author. Any product claim about a product or service should be verified with the provider or party in question.

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Youtube in your Ipod

Itube is a free windows app that will put your favorite youtube videos straight into your Ipod. You just need to input the YouTube page URL and iTube will download the file, convert it to MP4 format from the original FlashVideo (.flv), and then import it directly into iTunes.

When you plug in your iPod video it will transfer automatically . If you don't have an iPod video, you can watch the movie in any MP4 player or even in Itunes.

If you want the original .flv video use the the Video Downloader plugin for Firefox. It suports a plethora of video sites like Google Video, Metacafe, Ifilm, Dailymotion and also embedded video.

Itube
tags: itube, youtube, ipod, video downloader

FeedCycle

RSS has always been useful because of its time stamp. Unlike static web content, RSS can be pulled in a time basis easing the task of identifying new content. Now FeedCycle.com takes a natural step forward and allows user to control the timing parameters of their feeds., i.e, it enables the publisher to create, publish and manage cyclic, or serialised web feeds. To give a graphical example, it allows users to replay a given feed (say a podcast) and deliver its content in a day to day basis. Subscriber can get all the content regardless of the exact moment in which they subscribed, that is to say they can be in a different cycle from others subscribers.

It is a great idea that may have applications in educational content like taped classes, manuals...The service is free for 30 feeds, with a maximum of 500 items each and unlimited subscribers which suffices for most content.

Others plans cost 10 GBP or 20 GBP per month and offer additional bandwidth, feeds and items. Users can check existing feeds in a directory structured by a tag cloud. It allows redirection of feeds to Feedburner for extra statistics and control.

They host a curious Christmas competition to familiarize users with the site: they award $500 to the best «Twelve Days of Christmas» carol, a kind of cumulative song, with 12 stanzas ideal for testing timed delivery of feeds.


tags: Feedcycle, RSS, feeds

Sony Reader

I am eagerly awaiting the European release of the Sony Reader. This e-ink device was lunched to mixed reviews in the US some months ago and if successful, Sony might test other markets. Heavy on-screen reading can be devastating for your eyes. This new generation of ebooks, including the ILIAD, solves this problem by providing a paper-like experience.

Sony Reading took some beating in the reviews mainly for the lack of titles in its online store, not for the device itself. This issue can be bypassed as the user can upload their own content in the universal formats TXT or RTF. IREX's ILIAD, on the other hand, is getting attacked for its long page-turning time and the beta nature of their software.

Publisher confidence (yea, that means DRM for them) and early adopting is the key to the success of this devices. For my eyes' sake let this thing come to Europe and I can kiss goodbye to my straining LCD.

tags: Sony Reader, ebooks, e-books, Iliad

Call mining

When I was young, I worked in a call-center for a summer and I did experience in my skin how prickly the clients can get. Our calls got monitored at random by the supervisor, but that didn't prevent some of the operators from being rude with clients that threatened to switch company and did churn or some of the most critical consumer demands to go unnoticed. One of my colleagues even transferred «uneasy» calls to his own mobile and dispatched them in the most uncouth manner in the bathroom.

That wouldn't have happened if our company had conversation analysis technology like CallMiner. This technology analyzes all the content collected from Contact Center calls and applies sophisticated algorithms to extract important information such as trends in consumer satisfaction. Next time you threat to switch company or reclaim better rates, just think that someone might be taking note, even if that someone is not human.


tags: call mining, mining, churn