The Monster Mash
Today we launched a new yacht tracking service for the Le Tournoi Sailing Challenge . This series of sailing races is a fantastic team building event that also raises considerable funds for local charities.
Webreality has provided the software free of charge, and really as an opportunity to showcase our latest technology. This kind of application is called a mashup, not because its a bodge, but because it’s a web 2.0 application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new service.
In this case, our client, Mourant, is hosting the application using Webreality’s reWrite content management system. We have then integrated reWrite with the Google Map API. A GPS tracking solution per boat would have been very costly (money that should go to charities). Instead, yacht crews will radio their positions to the committee boat, who will email (using laptop/GPRS) the boat positions to Mourant HQ. Mourant HQ will funnel the data into the web application, and bingo, you have near live race tracking. The first, we think, for the Channel Islands.
Mashups will usher in a new era of rapid web application development, and you’ll see more and more examples of new and exciting technology emerging as websites cross-fertilise ideas. We have plenty of mashups in the pipeline, including an exciting project for Google Adwords bidding management, but more on that soon. For now, enjoy the race at www.mourant.com/letournoi
[Special thanks to Tom Witherington and Liam Hennelly for very long hours worked to get this live!]
Perfect phone?
People will know me, know that I get through smartphones with alarming regularity. I need a lot from a phone; it needs to email, web browse, and do lots and lots of phone calls.
I’ve used every iMate made, and they’re quite good on the PDA front. They do good email, they do good web browsing, but phone calls are a bit random. The last one I had was the £500 JasJar, which was like holding a brick to your head. Voice quality was so bad, it was like doing a bad Dom Jolly parody. Also, I need a phone that can cope with cycling, running, and 40 knots+ on the sea. Needless to say, none of lasted long.
My last phone was a Nokia E70. This was a really good phone. It made brilliant phone calls. By installing Nokia’s Mail for Exchange, I had a phone that was completely synced with the office (email, calendar, contacts, to-dos). The fold-out keyboard was ok, but a bit fiddly for longer emails. But for keeping on top of things out and about, it was without a doubt, the best I’ve had so far.
On Saturday, my 9 year old son, took an unscheduled dunk in the sea. He was fine, but as I went in after him, it turned out the E70 doesn’t like salt water.
So that brings me onto my next phone, the Nokia 5500 sport. So, think E70, but it looks cool, is splash, dust and shock resistant, and it does all the things the E70 does, plus it has a built in pedometer, radio and MP3 player. Officially, Nokia don’t market this with email integration, but if you install the Mail for Exchange applet from their site, it’s all wired up to sync with Microsoft Exchange.
If none of this makes sense, but you want a robust phone that can do the odd email, call my friend Tony Moffa at iConsult (44 1534 844004) and he’ll sort you out.
Should you have hyphens in your domain name?
Hyphenated domain names (eg. www.your-company-name.com) have been a source of contention amongst search marketeers for many years. The logic is that expertsechange.com doesn’t mean much to a search engine (experts-exchange or expert-sex-change)?
Some marketeers reckon that Google ignores domain name content, but MSN (now Live.com) does. I don’t agree, Google certainly gives more weight to content than to the domain name, but keywords in a domain name are still valuable.
Therefore, for search engine marketing, I would recommend using a keyword hyphenated domain name, if necessary. For other channels, hyphenation can be a pain (try giving an email address over the phone, “that’s phil at my hyphen company, no hyphen as in dash, no not an underscore a dash …”). Ideally you should register non-hyphenated addresses as well, to avoid confusion.
Meta tags - what’s it all about?
Meta tags are hidden in every web page. If you’re using Internet explorer, go to View > Source, and you should see some meta tags somewhere near the top of the page. Incidentally, when you’re trying to work out why a competitior is beating you, it’s always worth doing a View Source to see if you can get any tips from the code.
They’re called meta tags, because they’re meant to describe what the site’s about. In the old days, before Google came along, search engines weren’t clever enough to decode the content of pages, so they relied on meta tags to work out what the page was about. There are two meta tags for this purpose: meta keywords and meta description .
With me so far? The problem was that in the bad old days, black hat search engine marketeers, would lace their boring sites with lots of high volume meta keywords. Pamela Anderson has been used to unwittingly advertise just about everything.
Once Google had cracked content analysis, meta tags diminished in importance. To the extent now that most Webreality sites have no meta keywords, and yet still achieve high Google visibility. If you must use meta keywords, ensure that the keywords are found on that page, or the engines will assume you’re pulling a Pamela Anderson trick.
Meta description is useful, but not to increase visibility. Meta description is still used by most engines for the description in the search engine listing:
Welcome to Webreality- welcome to webreality
Webreality is the Channel island’s leading provider of web services. We specialise in providing winning web solutions, whether you need offshore hosting, …www.webreality.co.uk/ - 5k - Cached - Similar pages
In Webreality’s listing above, the description comes from the Meta description. Webreality customers will be pleased to note that they will be able to change meta keywords and descriptions on a per page basis in reWrite 2.0.
Warner joins up with YouTube
Warner music has signed a deal with YouTube (video sharing site). This is a significant move, as it legitimises YouTube, MySpace et al, and also signifies that the old guard has given up fighting.
Only last week Vivendi slammed YouTube and MySpace as “copyright infringers”.
Ultimately it’s difficult to see how the conventional music industry will survive, unless it adopts a radically different business model. Last week iTunes insisted on keeping its 99cent billing structure against pressure from the music industry to introduce a more flexible model; needless to say Apple won.
Jack Welch’s dictum, “Change before you have to. “, sums up the best plan of attack.
Lost in hyperspace - 22 July 2006 - New Scientist Space
Lost in hyperspace - 22 July 2006 - New Scientist Space
Bit technical this, but here’s the gist: hypertext was envisioned as a deep dynamic method for reading texts and media. At the moment, we’re stuck with a rather imperfect model, which is one-way.
Ted Nelson sounds angry, and angry people tend to make changes happen. But if you think the rate of change in the last ten years has been intense, I think the next decade will be even faster. A richer hypertext will emerge which will change the way we read/write/live. It’s already happening (see MySpace, et al).
What’s the practical application for businesses? Relationships. The new hypertext will make it even easier to broker and maintain relationships electronically. Businesses that will benefit most from this will be agile, and keen to engage with their customers and prospects. So many businesses seem to be reluctant to talk to us. Luckily they don’t tend to last long.
How can I stop Google and others indexing me?
I was asked this question today. Usually it’s the other way, how can I get to the top. But in some cases, clients need to stop the Googlebot crawling certain files and directories.
The easiest way to do this is to get your web designer to create a robots.txt file. The full specification for robots.txt is here. So, to stop Googlebot and the other search engines entering a directory called ‘/private’ you’d add the following line:
Disallow: /private/
Google Adwords Pro
I’m a Google Adwords Professional now! Big deal? Well not really, I had to manage a few 
medium-scale client campaigns, and complete a 1.5 hr exam. Google’s strategy is good though; it recognises that although Adwords are very accessible, so many customers burn cash on Adwords, that using a professional is often a cheaper and faster route to success.
The exam also focussed on delivering success for customers, particularly in optimising the landing page for action. For example, many Adwords are generalised and vague (so a high clickthrough rate, and high conversion rate are unlikely). They then click through to a generalised homepage, which typically lacks a direct call to action.
Ideally, your Adword should be very specific (discourage browsers, encourage customers!). And your landing page should not (necessarily) be your home page. If you’re selling Miele bags, your landing page should allow you to add to basket straightaway.
Google gave me some Adword credits for passing. So if you’d like me to do a trial campaign for you for free, drop me a line! Typically, we’re charging 7.5% of the campaign costs for managing client campaigns, and all campaigns booked through Webreality are VAT free.
Are domain names important?
One of my clients offered me webreality.eu yesterday. He’d kindly registered it on my behalf, and was offering it for a price! Joking apart, he raised the valid question: “should I buy up every domain variation I can?”.
This argument is about like whether you have two engines or one on your boat. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have two engines, but it’s pretty expensive, and you may not need the extra engine. That’s how it is with domain registrations. If you’re build some global mega-brand, and you’re terrified about your rights being poached, then go ahead, but the rest of us, I’m not sure it’s strictly necessary.
To the brand nazis, this will be anathema, but the reason I say this is that I don’t think the domain name is anywhere near as important as it used to be. Many browsers even type URLs into the Google search bar. Most sessions are browsed through favourites or the Google search box.
What’s more important is your Google visibility. Relevant domain names are more important then international domain registrations. So if you’re targeting certain keywords, you should build sites with the keyword in the domain, in addition to your main corporate site.
Internal blogging at Webreality
Blogging has taken off in a big way at Webreality. As I mentioned in a previous post on project management, we’re using Basecamp’s excellent software. Basecamp is essentially a blogging version on project management. We love it, and so do customers, as we’re communicating in real-time with them as their projects develop.
Tom Witherington has also created a blog for internal use only. In this blog, standard internal processes are posted, e.g. Obtaining and registering an SSL certificate. Comments are also added where team members have ideas for improving the process.
None of this is rocket science, we’ve been adding articles to Microsoft CRM’s knowledgebase for ages. But the fundamental difference is that when we used CRM it was slow, cumbersome, and nobody bothered to read it. With the blog, it’s so fast, and accessible, it’s become ubiquitous from day one.