August 2007 - Posts
SugarCRM Inc., the world's leading provider of commercial free/libre
and open source (FLOSS) customer relationship management (CRM)
software, today announced the beta availability of Sugar Community
Edition 5.0 for download and testing by the Sugar community. Sugar
Community Edition 5.0 is being released under the GNU General Public
License version 3 (GPLv3), a free software license published by the
Free Software Foundation.
"We are excited to ship Beta 1 of Sugar Community Edition 5.0 under
the GPLv3," said John Roberts, CEO and co-founder of SugarCRM. "We
believe the GPLv3 will become the global standard license for free and
open source software." The adoption of GPLv3 will enable faster development cycles, more code contributions and
additional beta testing feedback, which ultimately increases the
quality of CRM for businesses world-wide.
The Sugar community is comprised of over 10,000 developers located
in five continents who have already contributed more than 400 CRM
extensions based on the core Sugar code. Sugar Community Edition 5.0 is available in beta today at sugarforge.org.
According to a recent Synovate/Marketing Daily survey, 8 out of 10 Americans know what a blog is and almost half have visited blogs. The study, conducted online with 1,000 adults in the US using Synovate eNation from July 30 to August 1, shows that blogging has entered the mainstream.
Loyalty to specific blogs is also fairly strong with 46% of blog readers saying that they visit the same blogs regularly versus 54% who instead usually surf for new and different ones.
Awareness and usage of blogs, along with people penning their own, strongly correlates to age, with younger people being much more active. Nearly 90% of those aged 25 to 34 know what a blog is, compared to just 65% of those aged 65 and over. Similarly, 78% of those aged 18 to 24 who are aware of blogs say they have visited a blog, compared to only 45% of older Americans.
Also, more women than men are bloggers, with 20% of American women who have visited blogs having their own versus 14 % of men.
As blogs have gained in popularity, so has the frequency with which they're read. Though the majority of blog readers (39%) view them less than once a month, another 28% visit them monthly, 15% visit them daily and 5% read them several times a day.
Of course, while blog usage continues to grow, so does their attractiveness as a potential marketing tool. In fact, 43% of blog visitors indicated that they had noticed advertisements on blog websites, rising to 61% among those aged 18 to 24. Almost one-third of consumers have clicked on an ad while reading a blog.
With over 300,000 users (and growing at a rate of 1,500 new users each day),
Redlightcenter.com has become one of Second Life’s biggest competitor.
Redlightcenter.com is expanding with the rollout of their first major virtual
city (Virtual Vancouver), and is introducing several new approaches to operating
online retail and services. Users can participate in virtual commerce with
commercial space, real time sales, and a new virtual currency, called the ray.
Red Light Center creates a virtual environment that facilitates and
encourages human interaction of the Internet in a more natural manner, achieved
by creating unique user identities (avatars), allows natural human interaction
models. Red Light Center runs on the Prototerra engine, on multiple UNIX
machines. Our database is a very beefy dual 2.4mhz processor server with 4 gigs
of ram. Red Light Center was designed to mostly runs on the users' computers,
hence our bandwidth is cut down. We currently cap at about 10 megabits for all
the content we provide to VIP users. We have custom software to create our rooms
call Ted. The textures and avatars are created in various 3d software such as 3d
studio max and then imported into Ted.
For those looking to monetize on the metaverse, store fronts and showrooms
are available for lease at Red Light Center, a 24 hour marketplace which could a
good avenue for business owners to promote products and services that may be of
an adult nature. RLC charges a monthly lease plus a percentage of sales
generated from the virtual world businesses and promoters can create shopping
malls, entire streets, and even their own separate city that can be connected to
the RLC through an airport or a subway.
The social networking phenomenon shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, it continues to expand and is now driving hard into the mobile space.
Bluepulse, a mobile social networking application just secured $6 million in funding from VantagePoint Venture Parnters. Founded in 2002, Bluepulse claims to be nearing 100 million page views per month. The network allows forming groups, chatting with friends, party invites and a variety of mobile widgets including Flickr, Blogger and local TV and movie guides.
The mobile Web has been slow to take off and meet expectations, but mobile social networking seems like a logical fit. Finding friends on the go, meeting up with friends or generally staying in touch while away from the desktop are all good reasons for users to adopt social networking for mobile. What remains to be seen are the business applications for mobile networking.
The open source framework designed to help developers create Ajax applications using Java, also known as Google Web Toolkit (GWT), is officially out of beta.
Google engineers Dan Peterson and and Bruce Johnson: "The magic trick is that GWT cross-compiles Java source code into standalone JavaScript that you can include in any Web page," they said. "Instead of spending time becoming JavaScript gurus and fighting browser quirks, developers using GWT spend time productively coding and debugging in the robust Java programming language, using their existing Java tools and expertise." Johnson estimates that using GWT can result in software with 30% less code and able to run 20%-50% faster.
Perhaps the most annoying thing about delving into website analytics is the
lag time. As a web worker you need to make decisions quickly and often you
simply want to know what's happening (how many people are actually visiting) on
your public Web presence right now, not yesterday.
Whos.amung.us is a very
elegant, very innovative, real-time visitor counter which displays the total
number of visitors on your site at any given moment. The widget is tremendously
easy to install and requires no registration - just copy and paste the code
provided when visiting whos.amung.us, paste
it in and you're done. At the time of this writing, the service cited over 2.1
million widgets serving 52 thousand users. The widgets work on MySpace and
other social networks as well.
If you feel like you still need information on the users that were on your
site, use the companion graphs.amung.us to check how many concurrent people were
on your website or blog in the past, down to the hour. There is also a strong
Firefox extension available for those obsessed with their site statistics.
Web workers have a need for best of breed software such as word processors,
spreadsheets, presentations. The problem is that top of the line software can be
very expensive which makes free online office suite products such as ThinkFree
and Foldera attractive to many smaller enterprises looking to provide themselves
and their employees the same (relatively) functionality as solutions provide by
Microsoft Office. Some of us need even more advanced solutions like database
functionality for our websites however, wiki's and CRM software to to name just
two which can add a few zero's to the investment we make in providing workers
the best software possible. While many opt to utilize completely open-source
solutions they find in the end that commercial solutions are traditionally more
stable and worth the investment of time integrating and learning.
Increasingly however, online office suite products and Web-based applications
for Internet-based workers have been generating attention and for good reason -
they provide a similar (some would argue better) experience at a price point
they can afford. This makes this trend a game changer for many small and medium
businesses. I've been meaning to write about my experience with Zoho, the
increasingly popular web office suite for quite some time, but each and every
time I start, they seem to roll out either another application or feature which
brings me back to phase one. As such, let's look at the office suite products
provided by Zoho right now because more than anyone else they are a real game
changer and if I wait any longer they will roll out another service and I'll
have to start new all over again.
All Zoho applications are web-native, meaning no client-side software is
required (no download). All you need is a browser and an Internet connection
(perfect for those who are always on the road). It's also a real boon to those
needing some level of collaboration on the documents or projects they are
working on. Currently all of the Zoho applications are free to use but some
products such as CRM and Projects have fee based "Pro" levels. The list of Zoho
products is simply staggering:
Word Processor (Zoho Writer),
Online Spreadsheets (Zoho Sheet),
Online Presentations (Zoho Show),
Web Conferencing (Zoho Meeting),
Online Note Taker (Zoho Notebook),
Online Organizer (Zoho Planner),
Project Management Software (Zoho
Projects - one project free), CRM Solution (Zoho
CRM), Database Application Creator (Zoho
Creator), Group Wiki's (Zoho Wiki), and
Group Chat (Zoho Chat).
Some other interesting Zoho features:
- Provides an API for Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet and Zoho Show
- Offers a plugin which integrates Zoho into Microsoft Word and Excel
- Released a mobile version of Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show called iZoho
- One of the few online services currently working with Google Gears
Mobile search company Veveo secured another $14 million in funding this year for their mobile video search tool, Vtap. That brings the total amount raised to $28 million from Norwest Venture Parnters, Matrix and North Bridge Venture Partners.
Vtap is a mobile video search application that attempts to cut down on the amount of time users must spend on a mobile device finding the videos that they want. Using incremental search technology, as the user types in what they are looking for, Vtap continually provides refined results after each character entered. Veveo is talking with several handset manufacturers andmobile service providers, including Verizon. The Vtap service will debut September 10.
MSN Video has partnered with CipBlast, a video search platform that will automatically index MSN Video content. This should make MSN Video much easier to use and clips easier to find. And as more big online properties bolster up their video offerings, so should you.
Video continues to make huge strides and continues to be indexed in new ways. Google's Universal Search, Meta Cafe, YouTube, AOL Video, Digg ... the list goes on. It's more important than ever to get some video on your site and, more importantly, spread it around.
Also recently announced, Blinkx - yet another video search engine - partnered with 28 new properties, reaching deals with "special interest, or ‘Long Tail,’ media companies,” according to their press release. Seeing a trend here?
According to a new study by Deloitte & Touche, all of those who say the print medium is dead need to rethink things a bit. Their study, conducted in March 2007 by the Harrison Group and consisting of 2,200 individuals ages 13-75 shows that nearly three-quarters of respondents prefer a printed version of a magazine even if they could get the same information online.
And the advertising picture is interesting as well: More than three-quarters said that online advertising was more intrusive than printed ads and nearly two-thirds said they pay more attention to print ads than online ads. And surprisingly, the Gen-X sector (ages 25-41) found online ads more intrusive (79%) than baby boomers (72%). Gen-Xers also paid more attention to print ads (67%) than boomers (65%). Maybe this is why Google has made a recent plunge into print advertising.
But that's not the complete picture. When asked what type of advertising caused a reader/user to visit a website most often among Gen-Xers, search engine results topped the list (87%), followed by a recommendation (85%), a TV ad (66%), then a printed ad (66%). The percentages varied a bit, but the succession of categories remained uniform across all the age groups, with the exception of Matures (ages 61-75) preferring a print ad over TV.
From the results of this study, it appears the best strategy is a multi-medium approach to advertising. But, let's not jump to conclusions about the death of printed information. In fact, lets celebrate - you can start by getting your FREE subscription to Website Magazine, available in both print and digital formats.
The following are the top voted Web news stories on Share.WebsiteMagazine.com for August 17th, 2007. Share the news (industry articles, blog posts, tutorials and more) that you find important and noteworthy at
WM Share.
In the Cut and Paste Era, Traffic Happens Elsewhere:
Imagine for a moment that
you can take any piece of online content that you care about - a news feed, an
image, a box score, multimedia, a stream of updates from your friends - and
easily pin it wherever you want.
Retail E-Commerce Sales Strong in Q2:Marketing for online retailers is having positive
effects, judging by e-commerce sales.
Are Search Ads a Waste of Money?: New research by Microsoft suggests a big chunk of
search ad spending is wasted because advertisers pay top dollar for high ad
placements clicked by consumers who are en route to their sites anyway.
ComScore Announces New Search Metrics:
The online metrics company
comScore has released new search measurements. QSearch 2.0, announced Monday,
expands the market view of search behaviors and patterns.
Yelp launches Events, a worthy Upcoming.org competitor:
There's no doubt Yelp was
going to add a local events and calendaring functionality to their popular user
reviews service, and today they've done it with a new feature called Events.
Creating Multilingual Websites Using Google Translate:
In this section let’s
learn to translate the contents our website using Google translate service to
different languages in the world like French, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic,
Spanish etc.
Facebook Gets Personal With Ad Targeting Plan:
Social-networking Web site Facebook Inc. is quietly
working on a new advertising system that would let marketers target users with
ads based on the massive amounts of information people reveal on the site about
themselves.
Identity attack spreads; 1.6M records stolen from Monster.com:
A multistage attack
occurred that has stolen data belonging to several hundred thousand people who
posted resumes on Monster.com, a researcher said this weekend.
Google reveals stake in Chinese social Web Tianya:Google Inc revealed on
Monday that it had acquired a stake in Chinese community Web site Tianya.cn,
indicating a foray by the global search leader into social networking in the
world's second-largest Internet market.
Microsoft Content Ads Beta Expands to All US Advertisers:Microsoft adCenter has
expanded the Content Ads Beta contextual advertising program to all US based
advertisers who wish to place contextually targeted text ads throughout the
Microsoft Network.
Trust Program Suspends ComScore Software: An organization that certifies computer software as
consumer-friendly and noninvasive has suspended comScore Inc. and one of its
programs used to track Internet usage.
Google Receives 64 Percent Of All U.S. Searches In July 2007:
Google accounted for
64.35 percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending July 28, 2007
according to hitwise.
Sun Touts Energy Efficient Data Centers: Sun says the new data centers use energy efficient
designs, technology and power and cooling systems. Sun plans to reduce its
corporate datacenter energy usage by 20% in fiscal year 2008.
Microsoft uses Silverlight for experimental search site:
Microsoft has launched an
experimental Web site that plays with two technologies the company plans to make
a big part of its Web strategy going forward: Internet-based search and
Silverlight.
Finding the Best Videos: A Guide to Video Aggregation Sites:
If you had any doubt that
video is hot right now, chew on this: the top 10 videos on YouTube have been
viewed a collective 307.7 million times.
YouTube adds overlay ads, TubeStop stops them: TubeStop is a Firefox add-on that prevents YouTube
videos from auto-starting. When you see a YouTube video embedded in a web page,
TubeStop lets you start them one at a time without having to click pause on each
video first.
Ad Growth for AOL Called Vital to a Remake: Just over a year ago, AOL unveiled a radical plan to
remake itself into a business built on advertising from one driven by Internet
access subscriptions.
Yahoo Acquired Mobile Marketing Firm, and Other Mobile Buys:Yahoo acquired
Munich-based Mobile Marketing Firm Actionality which offers AdFlex, a platform
with the ability to develop mobile commercials in a standardized format, and
includes rich media capabilities.
Google to launch 'overlay' ads on YouTube:US Internet giant Google is to begin running
advertisements along with video clips on its popular sharing website YouTube,
according to a statement on the YouTube official blog.
Comcast Throttles BitTorrent Traffic, Seeding Impossible:
Over the past weeks more
and more Comcast users started to notice that their BitTorrent transfers were
cut off.
I came across an interesting press release this morning from
SiCap Industries which credits Yahoo Surfers as the biggest spenders - 30% more than other consumers on average.
"We haven't figured out why, but our web stats show consumers referred by Yahoo definitely spend more money on our websites, and according to data collected from our retailers, yahoo surfers also spend more money in the stores that carry our products. This has been a consistent theme for nearly three years," said Wayne Perry, president of SiCap Industries.
"Brand building is a key element to having a successful product, and nowadays you can't do it without the internet. This is an internet world now, and if you want to drive consumers into stores to buy your products you have to build an internet presence. You also have to get bang for your buck, and that means finding the customers who spend more and also the ones that act more. Google is great, but their surfers tend to be teenagers looking for free stuff. As we plan our internet budget for 2008, we're shuffling more of a focus toward yahoo surfers since they spend more money online, and they tend to be more active in the real world such as actually shopping in stores," adds Perry.
Starting on September 10, 2007, Microsoft will update the management of the
adCenter trademark policy and no longer attempt to mediate affiliate compliance by creating lists of trademark-owner approved advertisers who can bid on trademarked keywords.
Microsoft adCenter disallows trademark infringement, forbidding advertisers from bidding on or using trademarked terms in a way that constitutes trademark infringement; bid on a competitor's trademarked term, or use that term in their ad copy.
Affiliates and resellers may bid on trademarked terms relevant to the goods, services, or sites that they promote. That means it's time get creative with that ad copy!
The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook is planning an advertising strategy similar to Google's famed AdWords. Anyone on the rising social network can bid on keywords. Those keywords will be matched up with information on user profiles and preferences (activities, music, hobbies, etc.) and relevant ads will be displayed.
It will be interesting to see how Facebook users react to targeted ads. While Facebook vows to keep personal information private, there could be a backlash if users feel that their pages are being mined for data by advertisers. Many social networkers take pride in their profile pages as a creation - they can be highly customized with images, videos, music ... these profiles become a sort of personal space. Facebook could face much of the same challenges as intrusive mobile advertising or even video. As we saw earlier this week, YouTube video creators had a strong and negative reaction to InVideo ads - seen as another infringement on a creative, personal platform.
However, independently owned Facebook needs the extra revenue to compete with other, corporate owned social networks like MySpace. That said, Facebook is on track for a $30 million profit this year.
The use of API's (Application Programming Interfaces) as a means to access
previously siloed information for use in applications and projects is
increasingly dramatically in popularity. Many companies are releasing their own
API's in the hopes of getting developers to mashup and integrate data into their
own projects. Below are three API's released this week that are certainly worthy
of note:
FormSpring has created an API
to enable programmers to add, edit and retrieve data stored within their
FormSpring account and currently returns data in XML, JSON and serialized PHP.
The full launch of the API is scheduled for mid-September.
iWebTrack Holdings Inc. launched an
API-based private-label/branded reseller program that lets partners resell
iWebTrack’s service to their customers under their own private label.
Those seeking business opportunities can partner with iWebTrack and own their
own turn-key, web analytics business, with complete back end and billing
integration for as little as $400 a month.
SharedBook has launched an Open API Challenge to encourage development of
extensions from third party applications that flow text, photographs or other
content into SharedBook’s Reverse Publishing Platform for on-demand output.
SharedBook’s API allows you to integrate online content into a structured book
product that can be previewed and purchased, or personalized further.
Hostway has announced a 50% off sale on
.info domains and 20% off .mobi domain names for the first year of registration.
That means you will pay just $3.98 for the first year of registration for a
.info domain name and $19 for one year of .mobi registration. Pretty good deal.
This is not a sponsored post, just a good opportunity to start
establishing a domain portfolio as I discussed back in the May issue of Website Magazine.
Hostway also announced the released of DomainGuard today, which helps protect against malicious or accidental changes to your domain
information by requiring that modifications to critical settings are
authenticated with a special DomainGuard password.
