Strange Maps

Two of my favourite things are niche blogs and maps. Combine the two and you have Strange Maps.

If this kind of cartographical madness floats your boat, have a look…

Literary map of San Francisco

Allegorical map to “success” (I remember this from a print on someone’s wall from my childhood – thanks for the bizarre blast from the past, Strange Maps!)

…and this relic from the White Australia era which depicts a racist view of Asian immigrants. Strange map!

Enjoy: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com

@iclazie

HT @dankrause

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Twinfluencers Experiment: Watching Australian and US Journalists, CEOs and Twitterati using Twitter

An experimental site, www.twinfluencers.com created by Amnesia Razorfish launched ‘softly’ today. It takes a live look into “influencers” and what they are saying on Twitter as it happens.

www.twinfluencers.com monitors US and Australian Journalists, Twitterati and CEO’s

What does Twinfluencers do?
Twinfluencers is a dashboard showing live tweets from Twitter users considered to be influencers within specific groups (Journalists, CEOs and Twitterati). Currently we are breaking these out into Australia and US regions.

FAQs:
So what’s the point?

Whilst there are many tools which track trends, hashtags from the masses this tool takes another angle and provides a peek at live information being generated from these influencer groups. You can jump in at any time without needing to be a Twitter user. It also saves you having to follow and segment the 900(ish) people that Twinfluencers is watching!

Why did we build Twinfluencers?
Firstly, we love doing experiments – the point is we’re not 100% certain of ‘what comes next’. Secondly, we’re of the school of thought that if we’re going to become better at working in social media then “doing stuff” is the way to go. Building the tool may prove useful or useless, but the mere act of building it allowed us to learn some new things. We might yield some insight and analytics that become usable -that would be a bonus. Finally– we couldn’t find a tool that produced what we wanted to see so decided to do it ourselves (although half way through build we found a similar tool muckrack.com for US journos which is actually very good).

What might the site do in the future?
The lists will be keep being compiled and updated. We may add other countries if the demand is there. It would be nice to see some historical data, trends etc from these groups. There are a few minor UI tweaks to be made. We’ve already been asked to do a celebs version, although we specifically avoided celebrities in this round. Alternatively – if we learn nothing or find something better to do then maybe it will just fade away 😉

How many people are in the lists?
At time of writing, but being updated regularly at present;
Australian: Journalists (500) Twitterati (101) CEOs (30)
USA: Journalists (105) Twitterati (101) CEOs (30)

Where do the lists come from?
This was possibly one of the harder parts of the experiment and something we consider to be work in progress:

• Journalists: We received lots of help from Dave Earley (@earleyedition) in sourcing a very consolidated list of Australian Journalists. US Journalists came from a variety of public sources and some Razorfish US assistance – we also decided to limit the number down to about 100, compared with a much more expanded number of Australian Journalists.
• Twitterati: This was a slightly tougher list to quantify. In the end we based the list mainly by combining and filtering results from Grader, Retweetability index, Twinfluence, Twittercounter. We removed known ‘spammers’ or those using ‘follow agents’ to grow their count and occasionally factored in the start date of the account (earlier being better).
• CEOS: Various sources (some tips) including Laurel Papworth.

How can I get my hands on the full list of these groups?
Whilst we’re still in beta testing we’re not openly distributing. The plan is that if the site generates any ongoing interest we will open the lists up – initially to individuals who are willing to contribute to the ongoing maintenance of the lists, and then open to public. Please remember, keeping these lists up to date is quite a lot of hard work.

”How can I get on the list? ARrgh – I deserve to be there!”
Firstly – tweet something and wait a couple of minutes (there can be a delay before you see your tweet appear). Not there? Yes… We know how this works and of course there are people who should be on there who aren’t and vice versa. We’ll keep adding but we’re trying to make this less about the egos, more about a tool that offers some value that we can learn a little from. For those who believe they have been wronged (and we do not mean to wrong anyone) there are some instructions on the site at the bottom of the page to suggest follows, “but” we will apply the same filtering and vague scrutiny to try to keep a balance. 🙂

Razorfish Emerging Experiences blog and labs

If you’re into the next generation of devices, technology, multi-touch – check out the new Razorfish blog ‘Emerging Experiences’ – http://emergingexperiences.com – there’s some really fascinating content to explore. As we move from the GUI (Graphic User Interface) to the NUI (Natural User Interface) this is great first look into what’s coming.

Idea Theft

Tired of spending countless hours trying to conjure fresh ideas? Are there more important things you’d rather be doing with your life?  Like going bare-back horse riding? Twittering? Twittering about bare-back horse riding?

Well, now you can!

Steal Our Ideas is a blog by creatives Jon Kubik and Adam Noel, which provides daily, tongue-in-cheek ideas for the struggling creative.

Here are some:

Sure, there’s an underlying philosophical question as to whether it’s actual stealing if someone encourages you to take their property (intellectual, in this case). But quite frankly, it doesn’t really matter. The blog is a great concept and the ideas stand for themselves.

WPtouch: WordPress on iPhone, iPod & Android

More than just a plugin, WPtouch is an entire theme package for your WordPress website. Modeled after Apple’s app store design specs, WPtouch makes your WordPress website load lightning fast on touch mobile devices, show your content beautifully, all while not interfering with your regular theme.

Find out more…

Razorfish : “Send us your Business Problem”

During his 2009 Client Summit presentation, “Innovation Hell,” Joe Crump did something quite extraordinary: he challenged event attendees to send Razorfish their business problems, a global problem, or just something that plain bugs them. 

He promised Razorfish would spend the next year to create an innovative solution to the problem. (You can view Joe’s presentation on SlideShare or Vimeo).

To submit an idea, clients need only jot an email to [ innovate at razorfish.com ]

For instance on Twitter @scottlum of Microsoft asked, “Can we educate, inform & synthesize change for Swine Flu using social media w/out spreading disinformation, confusion and panic?”

You get the idea… now you have the chance to have those thought leaders at Razorfish look at your problem.

Also: Make sure you read the David Deal (VP Marketing for Razorfish) post on the subject of innovation Hell” here.

~eunmac

Mumbrella outshines AdNews and B&T in digital

A quick look at traffic trends from publicly available data* suggests that Tim Burrowes (ex-Editor of B&T Magazine) and founder of Mumbrella.com.au has a digital strategy that is working. After only a few short months Mumbrella has passed the established ‘ad industry news publications’ in terms of overall digital traffic to its site according to Alexa. In addition Mumbrella’s 1600 followers on Twitter (here) appear to place it in a very interesting position for both sourcing and breaking news to an influential Twitter user base. Noticeably, the blog format which Mumbrella is using is paying off particularly in SEO with Mumbrella yielding solid results in Google from its stories and 83% of all traffic coming from Australia.

Above: Mumbrella matches B&T’s highs, but significantly beats B&Ts lows indicating a more healthy ‘always on’ digital presence. Source – Alexa.com.

The AdNews website currently requires a subscription to read full stories and B&T publishes a daily pdf based newsletter – a format some struggle with compared to the global trend to more open story/blog formats which allow interesting debate and comment within articles.

All three break their news in a daily email digest (numbers of subscribers currently unknown for each).

AdNews is preparing to release a new site shortly and with the largest print circulation it has a solid platform to mount an attack on its competitors. We hear it will also integrate Twitter as part of the strategy. At this point we are unaware what B&T has planned for its digital presence ongoing.

* Source Alexa.com:

Who is Fake Stephen Conroy? Full list of Suspects.

This week the “REAL” Politician, Senator Stephen Conroy acknowledged the “FAKE” Stephen Conroy (http://twitter.com/stephenconroy) via (article on SMH) as “healthy satire” so we thought we would start the cheeky hunt for the person behind the mask. We don’t really want the person ‘outed’ per se as it’s much more fun not knowing, but below is the list of 25 suspects to date:

Name: Fake Stephen Conroy Location: Canberra Bio: I’m a 45 year old politician who’ll do anything to please you, baby. Don’t worry girl, I gots “protection”, and it’ll degrade my performance all night

Firstly, let us pay homage to the Fake Stephen (FSC). He’s actually pretty funny, satirical and most agree that the character is very well written. So… who’s doing the writing? We suspect it’s someone who’s already active on Twitter already – ie; they have two accounts running. At time of posting FSC is only following 69 people so we suspect that the guilty person may be linked to many of these in some way. We trawled various stats, engines and monitored conversations as well as looking through the #nocleanfeed list to come up with the following suspects… 

Update : Although we did discover the real identity of Fake Stephen Conroy during the compilation of the list, we did not include him in there. Unfortunatley the attention appears to have forced his hand  and in fact FSC outed himself a few days ago as Leslie Nasser from Telstra (http://www.linkedin.com/in/leslienassar)

The Suspects behind FST (Fake Stephen Conroy):

	Suspect	Modus Operandi	Suspect Rating
1		DuncanRiley Tipsters think that Duncan is a hot candidate for FSC. That cheeky smile which looks almost identical to FSC’s may hold the key.	9/10
2		Warlach A serious suspect, Warlach has been around long enough to know the tricks. Known to have created fake twitter accts in the past. Is FSC his creation?	9/10
3		FullTimeCasual A new entry on the list but a red hot suspect. His suspicious lack of a photo in his twitter avatar may mean he can slip into the darkness easily if found guilty.	9/10
4		DHughesy We have been informed that this infamous Aussie comedian may be practicing using FSC for some cool new comedy about Twitter. We suspect FSC’s words are too big for Hughsey, but he still makes the list.	8/10
5		BarrySaunders Normally gets highly involved in twitter conversations but not with FSC. Makes him look like a real suspect in this case.	8/10
6		Servantofchaos Respected blogger and Tweeter, possesses a similar sense of humour to FSC. A prime suspect.	8/10
7		TrevorYoung FSC insiders say suspect is based in Melbourne. Trevor Young’s writing skills certainly fit the bill as a PR WARRIOR…	8/10
8		Mspecht Definite candidate for the job and big nocleanfeed enthusiast. No twitter history with FSC makes him a suspect.	7/10
9		Turnbullmalcolm What better way to oust the current government than being the mastermind of the FSC twitter account? Must be a suspect.	8/10
10		Wolfcat Should have been in the list earlier – has been active on Twitter for a while and knows the tricks.	8/10
–		cameronreilly Top 5 Tweeters according to Grader.com, long history in the interwebs and definitely would have no fear of being FSC.	8/10
–		JonoH First person who FSC followed. Must be a prime suspect.	8/10
–		Jimboot One of the more active people in ‘nocleanfeed’ a hot tip to be FSC.	7/10
		renailemay The only published interview with FSC was conducted by the Editor of ZDNet.com.au. This makes him an instant suspect. Is this man the Peter Parker of Twitter? Hmm…	7/10
–		Silkcharm She has her mitts in everything else social so makes the list by default. Very few msgs to FSC makes her a prime suspect.	7/10
–		Jimboot One of the more active people in ‘nocleanfeed’ a hot tip to be FSC.	7/10
–		Trib With a mass of followers and outspoken character, he’s conveniently located in Canberra. Is he the real FSC?	7/10
–		Mspecht Definite candidate for the job and big nocleanfeed enthusiast. No twitter history with FSC makes him a suspect.	7/10
–		JJprojects With 3000+ followers, a twitter junkie, nocleanfilter advocate put JJ high on the suspect list.	6/10
–		Nickhodge Microsoft’s local pin up Twitter Star has a dry earthy wit similar to FSC. Talks to FSC a lot, but could this be a cover?	6/10
–		andrew303 Known to have more than one twitter account, is Australia’s most followed person on Twitter the guilty party?	6/10
–		Stephen Conroy (the real one) The perfect double bluff? You see… he’s not on Twitter, …or is he?	6/10
–		Bronwen Describes herself as combatant, maybe FSC is Bronwen’s side project. No contact with FSC to date – is this an alibi or evidence?	6/10
–		Aramadge News.com.au reporter that may see FSC as an interesting side project for a forthcoming story.	5/10
–		Granleese First person to respond to my request for information and leads about FSC. Makes him an instant suspect.	4/10
–		Mpesce One of the last remaining people with a cross on their avatar’s mouth, is this inventor the real inventor FSC?	4/10
–		Mumbrella Journo Tim Burrowes loves controversy so why not create it himself? Perfect motive with timing similar to launch of his mumbrella blog. Did FSC attract a few extra visitors?	4/10
–		Acatinatree Filmmaker. Active, lots of followers. Has a sense of humour. FSC might just be a side project for her…?	4/10
–		markpollard Strategist, highly active in Twitter, His no fear cheeky sense of humour puts him on the list.	3/10
–		KevinRuddPM He doesn’t use his own Twitter account too much – possibly because he’s so busy running the FSC twitter account.	3/10
–		eunmac As the author of this post, this could just be a diversionary tactic. Maybe I am FSC, or maybe not? Hmmm.	3/10
–		OzDJ Came up as the first suspect when I used a Twitter tool to find similar people to FSC.	3/10
–		Eskimo Sparky Husband, Father, Political impersonator? Is an instigator of prior twitter crimes such as Velociroflcoptersaurus.	3/10
–		Stilgherrian Political, outspoken, but would he send so many tweets to FSC?	3/10
–		Likeomg Social Media Advisor at Amnesia and copywriter. Would certainly possess the skills but may be too occupied by other things.	2/10
		JoelyRighteous Has not been posting much recently. Possibly to distracted by his FSC account?	2/10
		Davidlmorris Very quick to dismiss some of the suspects on the list. Is this the real FSC revealing himself inadvertently?	2/10
		LesleyWhite Conveniently “wishing” she was on the list may make her an outside possibility.	2/10
–		Julian Cole He manages to get his name on every other list so may as well stick him in this one just in case he is FSC…	2/10
–		DanWarne Another journalist for the SMH active on Twitter. Pops up on FSC’s follower list too. Is he just interested , or IS IT HIM?	2/10
–		SpellrUs Claims he should be a suspect. Always struck me as being too much of a nice guy, but you then again, those are the ones you have to watch…	2/10
–		ProBlogger Too busy tweeting tips to be a real suspect, but may be a dark horse in the matter.	1/10
		InJoke There is no chance that InJoke is the real FSC, but they felt that it would help them with the ladies if they made the list. OK good luck with that…	0/10

Breaking Update:
Suspects were seen changing their avatars to that of Stephen Conroy’s – presumably to protect their real identity.

 
Above: View in Tweetdeck as some of the accused changed their avatars.

If you are on the list but you strongly wish to deny that you are not fake @stephenconroy post a comment with your full denial and alibi.

If you really are fake @stephenconroy (and not on the list and would like to be, follow @eunmac on Twitter and DM a message. We will keep it a secret.)

New Pepsi Can and logo

Pepsi have launched themselves into the social media arena in the US, choosing to announce and show the new can/brand ID online. “You heard it here first” on http://friendfeed.com/rooms/pepsicooler being the quote from Peter Shankman (here) in the feed.

Steve Rubel who had helped Pepsi launch this outlines (http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/10/join-us-in-the.html) the effort was done to promote ‘two-way dialogue and collaboration’ and was timed to coincide with the launch of the new Pepsi brand identity (http://adage.com/article?article_id=132016).

 
image: Peter Shankman’s assistant holds the new can aloft…

This is pretty big news as far as we’re concerned as the marketing beast Pepsi show their faith in digital as the medium of choice for the launch of their new brand, and social media as the channel. This is the first change to their identity since 1987.

Do you like the new logo?

Lessons in Twitter Ghostwriting from Britney Spears and Malcolm Turnbull

Updated 23/10:
I’m glad to see @therealbritney has seend the light. Twitter posts now contain the posters name (see below) and it appears thay Britney is new posting. Be interesting to see if she replies to fans directly…

end update/

The day started well for Britney Spears on Twitter…
http://twitter.com/therealbritney

Ahhh, but there’s the problem – it’s not really Britney, it’s just her marketing / PR team copying and pasting. No, “NOT the real Britney” and it didn’t take long for people to wise up:

“I’m following the BS PR team. I’m just a pop culture twit, what can I tell you?”

Oh dear. Britney (or her agency) has misunderstood what Twitter is all about – real people, real conversations, monologues, not dialogues.

Malcolm Turnbull (http://twitter.com/turnbullmalcolm) on the other hand – Australia’s opposition leader/politician is having a better time so far:

 

Yes, Malcolm appears to be entering the conversation as himself and interestingly he has managed to attract a lot of the major digital influencers with Problogger and NickHodge firing a few questions at him. Hey I even threw one at him myself today to see if he’s reply. This could prove to be a lot of work for Malcolm but at least he’s giving it a go – and yes we all know he’s busy (urm, his Dog Blog is clearly consuming a lot of his internet time).

Summary:
Be real on Twitter, the agency cant’ do it for you, no matter how much they charge you.

Want to get started on Twitter – here’s some light reading
Read the Rules: http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/
Then Break em: Scobleizers 10 rules of Twitter

Scrapblog – Great web 2.0 Flash Application

www.scrapblog.com : I’ve seen a lot of browser based flash ‘applications’ over the years – you know trying to emulate the desktop experience inside a web page… but few have cut the mustard. They tend to be slow, clunky, buggy and miss out on the detail such as keyboard shortcuts. Scrapblog (which you use to put photo albums together) is an exception to the norm and is really quite outstanding. Even CTRL-Z (undo) worked. Go play. Then you can order a 20 page hardback version for about US$35. Pretty good deal we thought.

Scrapblog has a very well executed Flash interface. 

Blog Action Day 2008: Amnesia, Google, Yahoo & World Vision Team Up Against Global Poverty

Blog Action Day 2008, Oct.15, is a chance for the digital community to unite against global poverty by creating loud messages of hope, outrage and solutions to this difficult global problem.

To inspire bloggers across the nation to participate, World Vision Australia is running a contest (here) to see who can write, draw, record and share the most compelling message about global poverty.

With the help of Amnesia, Yahoo!7 and Google, the grand prize winners of the WVA contest will be flown to Sydney for an exclusive digital training day with each of the above. It even includes an hour of time getting hands on with one of the only Microsoft Surface tables in Australia here at Amnesia.

So don’t be a passive observer. 
1. GET INVOLVED  with Blog Action Day and REGISTER (HERE)
2. Submit your link in the comments of the page above (HERE)

http://learnaboutpoverty.org/2008/10/09/blog-action-day-competition/

Early Warning Monitoring in Twitter – Earthquake

Many of us here use TweetDeck (install it here) as our desktop Twitter client. One of the interesting features is the live cloudview of twitter tags (you can also see this (here) at TwitScoop.com). Just a few minutes ago there was a small 3.0 earthquake in the centre of Los Angeles and it immediately lit up inside tweetdeck.

This is live news much faster than it will ever appear on syndicated publications. Another great reason to dive into twitter!

Birds Eye View in Live Maps

The fairly new Birds Eye feature in Live maps went by a rather unnoticed so whilst I’m trying out the new beta version of Live Writer, (Microsoft’s desktop blogging application) at the moment and thought I’d use it to add a map. You can see how I added these maps below.

Click image to view in Live maps.
If Birds Eye view is available, you can ROTATE the view from N,S,E,W
(Amnesia’s office is in the middle)

How to insert a map using LiveWriter (download livewriter here)

Use the Plug-in’s planel on the right.


Zoom in – you will see BIRDS EYE button if available.
 

Another view of Amnesia as seen from the South.

Massaud Airship Hotel Fake : Manned Cloud likely full of hot air.

Fancy flying around he world in 10 days onboard a luxury flying hotel? Well you may have to wait longer than expected. This story has been floating around the web for about 10 months and has made many mags and press, but time seems to be telling that it looks more like a little publicity stunt for architect Massaud (here).

Web Chinese Whispers? Proving again that some web consumers are willing to adopt, believe and blog things that have very little grounding in fact – and then copy and paste madly, there really is very little to suggest this was any more than a ‘concept’ but the web and press have made it look like this project is really happening. I’m happy to be proved wrong, but I’m betting this is a tall story from Massuad that went a little too far…

Early Daily Mail Story here that fueled many blogs (did they really believe this?):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-511843/The-flying-hotel-Thunderbird-2-The-700ft-super-airship-gently-float-world.html

Sony and Nintendo’s unexpected challenger; Super Monkey Ball Sells 300,000 copies on iPhone

In the eleven hundredth iPhone post of the day… Fair enough, we’re all pretty sick of hearing about what this miracle device can do. Short of curing cancer there’s not much the little bugger can’t cope with; heck, maybe it can cure cancer if someone builds a Folding@home application (FoldingOnPhone?) for distribution via the AppStore… (The uninitiated can read about Folding@home here.)

As cool as all the technology is, what’s ultimately more important for us digital marketing folk is the viability of the platform when it comes to content distribution (both in pay-for and free categories). Sega’s Super Monkey Ball has just hit the 300,000 mark which, at AUD $12.99 a pop, is a considerable lump of change. It’s enough to make Sony and Nintendo sit up and take notice, particularly as their respective platforms (PSP and Nintendo DS) rely predominantly on physical media for content distribution. Sega US’s President Simon Jeffery agrees. “That’s a substantial business. It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform.”

The phone may not have the controls required for traditional gaming but the quality and responsiveness of the touch screen and accelerometer could do for the mobile games space what the Wii has done for console gaming around the world.

So how do we take advantage of this? As iPhone and iPod touch sales continue to rise, distribution of free, engaging, branded content is an obvious winning formula. Carling’s iPint application is catching on like wildfire and given the size and scale of the application the development overheads would have been low. Investing in development for a platform owned and operated by one company might be a little uncomfortable but these days, shifting focus away from Apple in the digital landscape isn’t a wise move: Apple has proved that, technology aside, the iPhone is a viable distribution platform.

Watch this space.

iPhone firmware 2.01 released

Apple have just released firmware 2.01 for the iPhone – big news for early adopters of the 3G iPhone and those who updated from the pre-3G firmware. Widespread reports of lag and programs quitting unexpectedly following an upgrade to 2.0 have surfaced over the last two to three weeks (I’ve personally encountered a fair number of these issues), but that’s okay, because 2.01 is available via iTunes now and here to save the day!

Or, as it happens, not.

I’ve not noticed any improvements in performance running 2.01 over the course of the day. In fact, worryingly, I’ve noticed increased lag when accessing contacts (admittedly I have a huge directory), scrolling through SMS lists and even (for the first time) trying to make phone calls. The phone application closed unexpectedly (read: crashed) during a phone call.

To add to the frustration, following an apparently successful installation of 2.01 (complete with a functioning handset and an updated firmware version number in the ‘About’ settings) Apple notified me that a carrier settings update is available. Sure, why not?

Here’s the problem…

iTunes could not update the carrier settings on your iPhone. An unknown error occurred (0xE 8000001).

And surprisingly, this isn’t an isolated issue. Hundreds of forum threads have popped up from New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia, Japan and the US complaining of exactly the same error. I love my iPhone 3G but when the old Nokia from 1999 is more responsive something’s awry…

Over to you, Apple?

An Audi R8 image PR nightmare in Google

This is a classic example of things going wrong for a brand. I just watched a Top Gear clip of the Audi R8 which inspired me to do a quick search in Google for “r8″…

Oh dear… it’s an SEO (Search engine optimisation) branding nightmare – the first image that jumps up is a burnt out Audi R8. Given that around 97% of car purchases now involve some online research, this is not what you want people to see straight up.

The unfortunate Audi R8 image that would send shivers down the Audi marketing team’s spines…
 
So what do you do when Image Search Results go bad?
Here’s some small tips for a healthy life in the chaotic land of Search / SEO:
1. Listen | Observe – this means keeping an eye on what’s coming up in your search results. If you don’t know about it, you can’t fix it.
2. Play a role in the community especially the blogosphere – make sure high ranking sites carry correctly named/tagged images that will index in search. Know the bloggers that influence your results.
3. Optimise your own site as much as possible for images, meta data and other techniques. There are many companies (including ours, plug plug) that can help with this.
4. SEM – Make sure your search engine marketing is in place (in the instance above I did not receive any SEM ads whatsoever.
5. Run a Digital PR campaign. There are various creative techniques which could encourage a large amount of people to get involved with images that are positive for your brand.
6. Provide assets to the masses. Allow users to take your images (the ones you want seen) and distribute freely.
7. Use the social networks. Nothing stopping brands playing a role in the community in an open transparent manner.
8. Create an official Blog. A properly maintained, healthy blog by a brand can do wonders in search. Bear in  mind a blog needs to work (have great content, audience participation and avoid the corporate BS).
9. Talk to Google. Whilst they’re not going to change their indexing algorithms they are a helpful and good natured company and may be able to offer advice.
10. Talk to the site which houses the bad image/content. They may be quite happy to run another more positive story to help, without compromising or asking them to delete their original content. (Avoid censorship – that would be a big no-no).

Unfortunately bad news is big news. If a big ranking site pushes something you don’t like in Search, the only surefire method is to outgun that site in the digital space …and this is a time consuming game.

The lowdown for brands to prevent a search disaster:
Make sure you have a digital strategy, an SEO / SEM strategy, the assets to make it work, a team that is watching …and get it in place as early as possible.

Top 12 Digital Design posts of 2008

From one of our great ‘sister’ blogs in Avenue A Razorfish. A highly useful digest of all the blogged opinions within digital in 2008.

http://www.digitaldesignblog.com/2008/06/30/top-12-digital-design-posts-of-2008-so-far/

How to turn off WordPress related links

An unwelcome new feature “related posts” appeared in WordPress hosted blogs on April 25th 2008  (announcement possibly here). The result is that inside your blog post a list of links (some internal, some external) appear inside your post at the bottom of the page. You have no real control of what is displayed. Some users also noticed links inappropriate material appearing in these related posts (here).

We weren’t too happy about this new feature being delivered out of the blue, but luckily we found a forum (here) full of other WordPress users desperate to turn it off too.

This is how to turn off WordPress related posts:
Go to Dashboard.
Click “Design”
Click “Extras”
Put a Checkmark on “Hide Related Links”
Click Update box below

We think the feature would be great if the option was to provide links ONLY from YOUR current blog. That way there should be no issues of unwelcome content being linked in.