From CNET News:
No not like Mr. Ballmer needs any additional encouragement leading Microsoft the world’s largest software company.
He was quite literally egged; as in “eggs thrown at” during a speech at a Hungarian University.
Europeans… first a pie in Bill Gates face and now eggs hurled at Steve Ballmer.
What will they think of next?
Vodpod videos no longer available. from index.hu posted with vodpod
Via the Wall Street Journal:
Cisco Systems reports total annual internet traffic will quadruple by 2011, reaching a size of more than 342 exabytes.
From the Internet Innovation Alliance:
One Exabyte is 1,073,741,824 gigabytes.
A “byte: is a collection of 8 bits. A “bit” is the smallest unit of information that can be stored in a computer, and consists of either 1 or 0 (or on/off state).
Common aggregations for bytes come in multiples of 1,000, such as kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, and so on. The progression is as follows:
Bit (b) 1 or 0
Byte (B) 8 bits
Kilobyte (KB) 1,000 bytes
Megabyte (MB) 1,000 KB
Gigabyte (GB) 1,000 MB
Terabyte (TB) 1,000 GB
Petabyte (PB) 1,000 TB
Exabyte (EB) 1,000 PB
Zettabyte (ZE) 1,000 EB
A way to put internet traffic into perspective:
“The Library of Congress holds more than 29 million books and magazines, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 57 million manuscripts. It took us two centuries to accumulate that collection. Today, we churn out an equivalent amount of digital information every 15 minutes, or about 100 times a day. Just last year, we created and copied three million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written. That’s enough data to fill a stack of books that extending to the sun and back — a distance of 93 million miles – six times!’
If Cisco’s report breaks out traffic by type, I am sure video will be see the greatest percentage gains in internet traffic over all other categories if not all other categories combined.
Proof Google has built a better mouse trap…
From ComScore Media Metrix:
Top 50 Properties
Google Sites captured the top position in the Top Properties ranking for the first time, reaching 141 million Americans in April. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 140.6 million visitors, followed by Microsoft Sites with 121.2 million visitors. Superpages.com Network and CareerBuilder LLC both jumped eight spots in the ranking to positions 18 and 30, respectively.
After nearly ten years of driving the same car, I recently bought a new one.
I decided to sell my old car the new way – online.
Having been on the web now for nearly a decade, I have found a lot of inefficiencies remain when it comes time to bridge the gap between generating a lead online and closing a high ticket sale offline.
When it comes to selling cars online there are several options.
eBay Motors and AutoTrader.com were the two resources that came to mind.
Up until yesterday, I didn’t have an eBay account so eBay Motors wasn’t an option. If I recall though, eBay Motors is the largest single used “car dealer” in the world – last time I looked I think they generated $2 Billion in car sales annually.
I have an older Mercedes and because of its limited appeal, I sought the advice of a local used car dealer on how best to go about selling it.
He recommended trying AutoTrader.com.
I set up an account and got my car advertised online within a day and then in the local Auto Trader print publication within a week.
I started getting calls soon after my ad came out and then slowly came to realize some of the aforementioned online lead to offline sale time related inefficiencies.
The internet is great for connecting sellers with buyers they wouldn’t have otherwise likely ever met, however when it comes time to sell something large and physical it presents a whole new set of problems.
Half of the inquiries I received about the car resulted in the callers desire to see and test drive the car.
Well, I am not a car salesman and I don’t have time to drop everything I am doing to go show a car at unpredictable times of the weekday. Scheduling time to meet potential buyers on the weekend is even more difficult.
The problem: How can I “show” my car to prospective buyers without having to take an hour or two of my time to do it?
My answer: Produce a short video clip of the car that shows its condition to prospective buyers and post it on YouTube. Prospects can then “look” over the car without either of us having to physically meet to do it.
I shot a couple of minutes of video and then posted it in my YouTube account.
I also modified both my online and print AutoTrader ads to include “Search YouTube” to see this car.
The video has been up a week and according to YouTube’s insight feature the video has already been viewed over 100 times primarily from searches within YouTube.
YouTube Video Insight:
I have also posted a Craigslist ad for my car. It too mentions viewing the car online beforehand by searching for it in YouTube.
Now whenever I get a call about the car, I ask them whether they have seen it on YouTube or not and then direct them to its YouTube page to see it first before we arrange a time to test drive it.
Using YouTube to preview used cars for sale reduces the inefficiencies of showing vehicles to non buyers while further qualifiing the prospects most interested in potentially buying my car.
I have set a couple of appointments for prospects to test drive my car this weekend.
Regardless of whether the car gets sold this weekend or not, I haven’t wasted my time showing it to someone who hasn’t already convinced me they are a highly qualified –ie., interested – prospective buyer .
I recently noticed WordPress.com hosted blogs started displaying three to four links to “possibly related posts” WordPress has deemed related to their hosted page’s content.
Usually the first link is pointed to somewhere else within the same blog while the balance of the links are then distributed to other blogs which more often than not appear to be other WordPress blogs.
I have been watching my referrals and haven’t noticed hardly any new traffic coming in from other WordPress blogs but I have noticed my search related referrals have dropped by nearly a factor of 10.
My drop in search traffic appears to coincide with the launch of the WordPress “possibly related posts” automatic link generator.
If I were to to guess why my search traffic dried up I would guess it is because my blog posts that had enjoyed near constant search positions have been devalued vis-a-vis the links WordPress has now inserted in all of my pages.
WordPress blog comments automatically receive the “No follow” link attribute so as to not unnecessarily pass site value to spammers so why does WordPress think they can rob all of their bloggers of the value each one has built in their blog by redistributing their sites search value to other blogs – especially other WordPress blogs?
Regardless of whether my search engine traffic dropped because of the addition of the “Possibly Related Posts” links now being generated by WordPress, WordPress.com should add the “No Follow” attribute to their “Possibly Related Posts” link scheme to preserve the continued good will of the bloggers who’s content produces WordPress traffic.
From MarketingCharts.com:
Nielsen Online, AdAcross
Month of February 2008
* Internet spending estimates are from AdRelevance. All others from Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Different methodologies employed by each company may lead to disproportionate comparisons.
Ad Spending by Medium
Medium Share of Spending
Network Television 25.5%
Cable Television 21.7%
Local Television 16.0%
National Magazines 12.4%
Internet 7.3%
Local Newspapers 4.9%
Syndicated Television 3.0%
Hispanic Television 2.8%
Local Radio 2.4%
Outdoor 1.4%
National Newspapers 1.1%
National Sunday Supplement 0.8%
Network Radio 0.5%
Coupon 0.2%
Local Magazines 0.1%
Local Sunday Supplement 0.0%
I am presenting a Webinar on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Medicare Marketing professionals July 10th, 2008 @ 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM EDT.
I recently presented at the World Research Group Medicare Marketing Strategies conference in Washington DC. I am looking forward to working with World Research Group again.
The Medicare Marketing Strategies Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Webinar Overview:
Harness the Power of the Internet! An increasing number of potential Medicare beneficiaries are turning to the web, and specifically to Google, to find and research area plans. Make sure your name is at the top of their list. This webinar shows how Medicare plans can utilize Google-specific Search Engine Optimization techniques to improve their outreach among prospective enrollees.
Who should attend the Medicare Marketing Strategies Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Webinar:
From Health Plans:
Also Vice Presidents, Directors, and Managers of:
Medicare Marketing Strategies Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Webinar Agenda:
Learn how to:
About Tim Cohn:
For more information about the Search Engine Optimization Webinar or to register, please contact the World Research Group toll free by phone at 1-800-647-7600, via e-mail at info@worldrg.com or sign up for the Medicare Marketing Strategies Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Webinar at World Research Group.com
YouTube India has launched with a local home page (youtube.co.in) which features user-generated videos and content from their existing Bollywood and broadcaster partners Eros Entertainment and New Delhi Television among others.
The site resolves to its India specific YouTube sub domain.
Other partners include the International Indian Film Academy Awards, Krishcricket.com and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
YouTube India YouTube.co.in launched Wednesday May 7th, 2008.
According to today’s online edition of the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft’s Chief Executive Office Steve Ballmer and it board remain undecided about whether or not they will raise their bid to acquire Yahoo and its internet display advertising and search audience business.
As I previously wrote in a post on Greg Sterling’s blog, Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Yahoo is really about Microsoft’s need to retain, preserve and grow their existing audience and keystrokes before Google has completed their quarterback sneak through Microsoft’s desktop.
Without Yahoo and its internet audience, Microsoft will face accelerating short and long term audience losses to Google.
The question Microsoft hasn’t yet been able to answer for itself remains: “How much cash do we have to spend today to save and protect the future of our desktop franchise and its cash flow?
Apparently the price is one Microsoft has yet to come to grips with or let go of.
Today I was having problems with my Internet connection and had to jump through a bunch of hoops to figure out what was causing the problem.
After jacking around with my modem and wireless router for what seemed like an eternity, I determined the problem was the new unfiltered telephone I had installed yesterday.
While on my telephony science fair project, I got reacquainted with the internet speed connection test.
I found the Speak Easy test easy to use.
From their site: “By measuring the download and upload rate from the following locations you are able to accurately measure your current line throughput or internet connection speed.”
My Internet speed connection results were as follows:
Download Speed: 1277 kbps (159.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 313 kbps (38.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
There are a lot of things that factor into your speed test results. Download and upload speeds, backbones, networks, latency, ping times, and DNS servers.
The following are some common internet speed connection terms to help you understand internet speed connection test results.
Download is a measure of how fast your internet connection delivers content to your computer or local area network.
Upload is the measure of how fast content is delivered from your computer or local area network to others on the Internet.
Download and upload speed should match or at least be very close for applications like VoIP, email, on-line gaming and other interactive programs. Upload speed is even more important if you are operating an email, web or file server at your location.
Kbps
Kbps transfer rate = kilobit per second transfer rate. There are 8 bits in a byte, so we would divide kbps by 8 to get KB/sec transfer rate.
Now get back to uploading and downloading…
Search Marketing Communications 
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