BlackOut client Hydro4GE was recently featured in the April issue of the Great Valley Technology Alliance’s newsletter “eNexus.”
The article highlights the groundbreaking work being done by Hydro4GE in the software development arena, as well as the collaborative efforts between Hydro4GE developers and local institutions of higher education like the University of Scranton and Misericordia University.
You can read the April issue of “eNexus” here.
Here’s an interesting article regarding the quite natural reluctance of some to fully buy into the idea of Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 tools and services have yet to prove their resilience in the ever-changing tech marketplace and the full scope of their utility has yet to be explored.
At BlackOut, we utilize Web 2.0 technologies as one more component in our portfolio of services. Like any other technology we constantly evaluate its practicality, and when it suits our client’s business goals, we’ll use Web 2.0 to create a more effective campaign.
Pew Internet has reported that
48% of internet users have been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and the daily traffic to such sites on a typical day has doubled in the past year. The basic findings in a national phone survey that ended in December show:
thereby further demonstrating the viral potential for online video, whether it be a advertisement, or educational in nature. In any case videos are reaching people, and those companies who choose to enter, and use wisely, this form of communication will maintain a competitive advantage over those that do not.
So I am going to be interested to see what type of traction Facebook picks up in the next quarter after their belly-flop onto prime time television via their sponsorship of the presidential debates. The various juries are still debating the degree of success, if any, that the interaction between Facebook users and the CNN news crew had in the past week. As an innocent bystander watching the evening I could only imagine how many times the question “What is Facebook?” echoed through middle America. I will give them one thing, they got their brand out there for sure, now the question becomes “How exactly can they capitalize on a bunch of confused middle-aged news watchers?” Time will tell, until then I am going to shine up my new Pownce profile because I am super cool (I actually think they sent a rater large number of invites out).
So what is Data Portability? Well here is the mission statement:
To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.
Who is the involved? Only a few little web initiatives known as Google, Facebook, and Plaxo.
What does Data Portability meant to the market? That’s easy. Cross platform data exchange, competitive intelligence and marketing across platforms.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an annual meeting where our leaders and brightest minds come together to discss major social and economic problems that we currently face across the planet. Since 1971 little has changed with this forum until this year, for on January 23, 2008 the forum will be showing requested Youtube videos. What is that you say, the World Economic Forum is going to make use of Youtube. Can this be true? Well the answer is yes, and in fact our world leaders have asked the public to “What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?” Furthermore the public is then to vote on the best user videos. See below for an example.
Well at this point you may be saying thats great. Maybe the “people” will be heard, and possibly some change could come from that. Well whether or not change occurs as a result of these videos, the point is that the World Economic Forum - the world leaders and brightest minds - have recognizedly the power, ubiquity, and pervasiveness of Youtube, and it is exactaly these traits that make Youtube a marketing machine to reach your consumers. Whether it be an advertisement or simply educational, you can no longer forget this touch point when doing business.
OpenSocial is Google’s new API which was created to allow cross-platform application for social networking sites thereby once again flattening the marketspace, and creating an opportunity to market across many mediums with ease.
I came across an article title that jumped out at me “Internet Marketing Tips from Al Qaeda” beyond the obvious shock factor there are some really interesting observations from a professor in Israel.
Gabriel Weimann is a professor of communications at the University of Haifa in Israel. He’s been monitoring 5,800 militant Islamist web sites there, and has noticed a disturbing trend: the terrorists are becoming quite the savvy niche marketers.
“One of the most alarming trends we found on the Internet recently is what we call ‘narrowcasting’,” said Weimann. “Terrorists are using the Internet to focus on children, very young children to attract young people to the ideology, and then later to the way of terrorism.”
The article goes on to describe how Al Qaeda is adopting many of the industry practices enjoyed by corporate America to get out there and be visible on the web. It struck me as a concern due to the fact that we really don’t have any checks and balances in technology to ensure children on the web aren’t preyed upon, the flip side of the observation is that technology really is the great equalizer when it comes to getting your message out.
After extensive debate (not really) we have decided to put this little area out on our site to tackle a few of the questions we routinely get from our clients as well as keep you guys aware of what we are paying attention to. If there is an emerging technology out there that might have some benefit to our clients we will do our best to talk about it here and keep you up to date with what is working.
Be sure to check back soon.
