Beiträge

Explaining Search Engine Optimization

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Here is a nice video that was shown during a recent internal academy session at MRM Worldwide. It offers a pretty good summary of the most basic SEO principles.

GoMo with the GoMoMeter!

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Going Mobile is one of the strongest trends of our times and mobile usage is constantly growing. Using the internet on the go not just for text messages but for the entire spectrum the internet offers is becoming more and more attractive. Reason enough to make sure your website is being properly displayed also on a mobile device with a significantly smaller resolution and perhaps even technical restrictions compared to your home PC.

Mobile sites are designed for the small screen, with the needs of mobile users in mind. A mobile-friendly site can help your business connect with customers and drive conversions because users can access it right when they need it – wherever they happen to be!

GoMo is a Google initiative and allows you on their site to not only test your website, but also gives you essential tips on how to design your website to make it fit for mobile devices. It even offers contacts to help you build your mobile site.

Check it out here: http://www.howtogomo.com/en/

Google+ Invite

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Für alle, die noch nicht dabei sind und befürchten etwas zu verpassen, hier der Invite bzw. die Einladung zu Google+:

https://plus.google.com/_/notifications/ngemlink?path=%2F%3Fgpinv%3D3Z732vKRgEY%3Am7My1SYIwFk

Ob Google+ eine Chance hat gegen den mehr als 750 Mio. User starken beinahe Monopolisten Facebook? Wir werden es sehen…

SOM

The concept of free in the mobile phone market

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© Sergey Eshmetov - Fotolia.com

© Sergey Eshmetov - Fotolia.com


Nokia’s announcement to give away its navigation software and maps for free came as a total surprise to all of us. Just two years ago, Nokia had paid the enormous sum of € 5.7 bn for Navteq and now it’s free? Why would Nokia do that? Pure desperation?

Indeed, many experts see this as the last big move of mobile phone giant Nokia to catch up with its competitors. Rivals such as master of innovation Apple, aggressive telecommunications giant Samsung or Research in Motion whose Blackberries have become the synonyms of business phones have been gaining market share in the last years.

But what is truly remarkable about Nokia is its talent for comebacks. Several times the giant has been labeled “out of the game”. First, when Nokia totally underestimated the strong trend towards flip-phones (all for the benefit of Samsung) and just recently the high acceptance and then consumer desire for touch screen phones such as Apple’s iPhone. Many also argue that Nokia’s OS Symbian cannot keep up with the rest. Every time industry experts pointed to missed chances of the immobile giant, Nokia found a way back to gain market share and increase sales. And every time, Nokia somehow managed to come back. One of their strengths is pure size. Nokia is the world’s largest manufacturer of cell phones. No other company has such a huge variety of phones on sale. What they lacked in innovative technology and design, they always compensated with size.

But what made Nokia so huge is not only quantity. From early on Nokia has been focusing on usability and intuitive usage when they designed their phones. I remember my first 5110 and later the more business-style 6210. Other than the Sagem, Motorola or Siemens, you at once understood how they work. And they were simply solid. Nokia’s OS Symbian even profited from the weaknesses of Windows Mobile. It has always been faster and more stable. Yet what the custom Windows OS could not offer, users found in specials hacks, updates, etc. What started small became an argument to buy such a phone: you could easily mod it!
While Windows tried to fight this, and Nokia was busy improving its Symbian, Apple understood what this trend meant for the business and turned the “issue” into a business model and presented an innovative phone which could be customized with numerous apps. As all the others, Nokia followed. But has been trailing far behind. But this time, Nokia turned the game upside down and instead of responding to industry actions, it made facts.

The tactical move of giving away navigation for free shook the world of the Garmins and Navigons and certinaly iPhone mother company Apple. While the entire industry was still running on Google Maps and expensive navigation software solutions, Nokia has been creating exceptional expertise in the field of navigation. Of the approximate 163 mio gps-equipped smart phones 51% are Nokia. Ovi maps are available for more than 180 countries, auto and pedestrian navigation are offered in 74 countries and in 46 languages. There is 6000 3D building views for more than 200 cities.
As convincing as this offers is to consumers, it is also a disaster for competitors. Within a day Nokia managed to depreciate entire business models. Still trailing with their own app store Ovi, giving away a valuable service such as navigation and the necessary maps for free is quite an argument for consumers. Nokia maps rock: And it opens Nokia the doors to what may become the most valuable information in the mobile phone business: the current whereabouts of each user. And thus the ability to offer products, services and much more always exactly in perfect match to the current location. The nearest pizza restaurant, car rental station, CVS, Radio BestBuy,..

Maybe in the future the concept of free will permeate the mobile phone market. You give away the phones for free knowing that people make heavy use of the applications offered and thus in the end earning more than with the sale of the phone itself. Telephone calls not included yet. The future will be data not minutes. And in order to make the most profit you have to be the one who can provide the most adequate information at the right time. This is what Nokia aims to achieve. And it values this new market at such a high price that it is willing to give away its navigation software plus the excellent map material which in 2008 has been worth more than €5billion. This reminded me of Chris Anderson’s “Free – the future of a radical price.” In his best-selling book, he named numerous companies who chose this dramatic turn and became highly successful. Let’s see if in a 2015 edition, Nokia will serve as a another perfect example of how successful the concept of “free” can be.

Sources:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Nokia-bietet-kostenloses-Kartenmaterial-und-Navi-Dienste-fuers-Handy-909803.html
Handelsblatt
Wirtschaftswoche

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Update on the current market situation, powered by Gartner Research:

Gartner 2010

Gartner 2010

Google's Christmas Present

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…is a CSR one.

Thousands of Google clients have been wondering what the present will be when they received their Christmas Email from Google announcing a special present. Same here. I also wondered if it was another Google Adwords coupon. That would not have been very creative but still nice to have. No, the present was something else, something a giant like Google can easily afford and somehow has to do. The more you earn thanks to our highly developed infrastructure (yes, I mean the internet) the bigger your social debt towards society. And who else could profit more than those who have completely different and more fundamental problems than bad Wi-Fi network, a buggy website or thoso „oh so dangerous“ cookies. Those for whom every day is a fight for survival, for education and other things we take for granted.

Google, spending $20m was a nice move!

google christmas present

google christmas present

Source: Google

Google Poised to Become Your Phone Company

found at wired.com

Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process.

Google has reportedly spent $30 million to buy Gizmo5, an online phone company. The service is akin to Skype — but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users.

Gizmo5’s founder Michael Robertson, a brash serial entrepreneur, would only say that he could not comment on rumors when asked by Wired.com about a story TechCrunch ran Monday reporting the acquisition.

Google ignored a request for comment from Wired.com about the reported acquisition.

It’s a potent recipe — take Gizmo5’s open standards-based online calling system. Add to it the new ability to route calls on Google’s massive network of cheap fiber. Toss in Google Voice’s free phone number, which will ring your mobile phone, your home phone and your Gizmo5 client on your laptop.


Meanwhile you can use Gizmo5 to make ultracheap outgoing calls to domestic and international phone numbers, and free calls to Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM users. You could make and receive calls that bypass the per-minute billing on your smartphone.

Then layer on deluxe phone services like free SMS, voicemail transcription, customized call routing, free conference calls and voicemails sent as recordings to your e-mail account, and you have a phone service that competes with Skype, landlines and the internet telephone offerings from Vonage and cable companies.

That’s not just pie in-the-sky dreaming.

Ask longtime VOIP watcher and consultant Andy Abramson, who introduced the idea of integrating Gizmo5 and Grand Central (now Google Voice), long before Google bought either.

“Google is now the the uncommon carrier,” Abramson said, punning on the iconic 7-UP commercials and the phrase “common carrier.” That refers to phone companies that operate on the traditional publicly switched network — a status that gives them benefits and obligations.

“If AT&T is Coca-Cola, Google is now 7-UP,” Abramson added.

“All of a sudden you have something that offers more than Skype,” Abramson said, saying the combo could now put Google in competition with phone and cable companies, IP telephony companies and Vonage. “But now you can do everything with Google and pay nothing and have a platform where engineers can build new things.”

In fact, Gizmo5 offered a rogue version of that service for $6 a month until last week.

On November 2, Gizmo5 abruptly canceled the two-month old “residential service,” (.pdf) which paired the free phone number available through Google Voice with Gizmo’s internet calling service to provide the equivalent of a home-phone replacement like Vonage.

Now, that service has been wiped off the internet and, more intriguingly, Google’s cache of the page disappeared the day after the acquisition was reported. (Note, this could through actions of either or both Google and Gizmo5.)

For $6 a month, Gizmo5 residential users got 300 minutes a month of outbound calling anywhere in the United States, unlimited incoming calls on their home computers or even home phones (using a broadband-to-phone network conversion box) and E911 service (which means 911 calls work like landlines calls do once you register your home address).

It’s not too surprising that offer got taken down.

For one Google is already trying to steer clear of U.S. regulators by making it clear that Google Voice isn’t a replacement for a home phone since you have to have phone service from some other company to use it. You can forward calls from a Google Voice number to your Gizmo5 number, but you must have a mobile or landline number as well.

Google doesn’t say it but clearly it hopes that restriction will keep the service from incurring the common carrier obligations attached to the regular phone system (PSTN), and the 911 and wiretapping requirements that apply to internet telephony and to traditional copper wire phones.

AT&T has already tried to sic federal regulators on Google Voice because Google is blocking outgoing calls to a handful of shady calling services — mostly free conference-calling services that exploit federal rules that let rural phone companies charge high fees to connect calls to rural areas.

AT&T itself has sued similar services that play this arbitrage game, and complaining to the feds may have only brought more attention to an issue the FCC has procrastinating fixing for too long.

Gizmo5 will also help save Google money on phone-call termination fees as users start to use computer-based clients to connect to Google Voice. That would allow Google to recoup the purchase price of $30 million in little time, if only it saves even a few dollars per user per year.

Google also gets Michael Robertson, a troublemaker with technical chops. Robertson made millions from MP3.com in the dot-com boom, despite drawing lawsuits from major record labels for creating innovative services. He was later sued by Microsoft for his startup Lindows, which made Linux installations for cheap PCs. And his current music venture, MP3tunes.com, is being sued by EMI.

Though still in invite-only mode, Google Voice has about 580,000 active users and nearly 1.5 million registered users, according to a Google filing with the FCC.

If you are interested in the combination, you might want to sign up for Gizmo5 before the acquisition is formally announced, since Google often freezes new registrations at companies it acquires until it figures out how to integrate the technology.

Source:http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/google-gizmo5-phone-company/

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