Is Microsoft’s Tagging technology another step towards Microsoft monopoly?
Microsoft Tagging is a way to tag your product with a unique barcode, and than using your mobile device, you just have to aim the device camera at the Tag and it instantly recognizes the product and you are directed directly to the linked content on the Internet.
What is the technology behind Microsoft Tagging?
As per Microsoft -
The sophisticated technology powering Microsoft Tag, High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs), was invented by Microsoft Research. It was designed from the ground up for maximum performance with the limited cameras on most mobile phones. Advanced image-processing techniques decode even out-of-focus barcode images, which means Microsoft Tag works with the fixed-focus camera lenses common in most mobile devices.
Microsoft Tags don’t actually store the information. All it stores is a unique ID which it then sends to Microsoft’s servers. This way, you can include much more information and more variety of information, then if it was just on the tag itself. A nice side-effect of this is also the ability for publishers to gather reporting data on how many times it was seen.
To read these tags, Microsoft has made available a downloadable application to a handful of mobile platforms including Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones. A camera and internet connection is obviously required. To get the application, point your phone’s browser to http://gettag.mobi.
The advanced computer imaging of HCCBs employs different symbol shapes in geometric patterns and multiple colors to provide more information in less space.
As Microsoft tag is just like an image, bar code can be incorporated within your companies branding. And printing the code in black and white works equally well as color. So no, you don’t have to print Microsoft’s tags in color to have them work.
Here are a few examples -
Here is a comparison between Microsoft tagging and other bar coding technologies like QRCode and Datamatrix Code.
Is this another addition to Microsoft’s monopolistic approach?
Yes we think so. This is not a free technology, it is about a profit stream for Microsoft. You see, all it stores is a unique ID for each barcode, which it then sends to Microsoft’s servers. So, Microsoft gets to track all accesses to all tags and traffic.
The barcode is a ‘protected’ design and the system requires that you use Microsoft’s servers, as a publisher you will have to pay for the usage.
Well, we really hope Microsoft can open up the technology or at least open up the API for small business users so they can manage there own tags and traffic on one of there own servers. Do you think this will happen though? Please leave your comments.
How to use Google’s Wonder Wheel to choose the right keywords for your Website?
On May 2009 Google released this new wonderful feature called Google Wonder Wheel . And rightly named it is truly a wonder.
Wonder Wheel became a favorable feature to many due to the layout and result display which basically get the work done for the user as far as relevant and related search results go.
So what is Wonder Wheel?
Google Wonder Wheel is a tool which shows related search terms to the current searched query. It is like a magic wand for website and blog owners who are looking for the right keywords (related to there niche) to use in there web articles/content.
Wonder wheel enables you to explore relevant search terms in a very intuitive and user friendly way.
How to use Wonder Wheel?
To try Google’s Wonder Wheel you need to go to Google’s search page. Wonder Wheel option is hidden by default. You will see a Show Options link at the upper left hand side (as shown in the image) after you search for the keyword.
To show Wonder Wheel - Click on the Show Options link and you will see Wonder Wheel in the list of options. Click on Wonder wheel and there you go, you have opened the magic door to the keywords land.
To demonstrate the usage lets take an example.
Lets assume you are a blog owner and your niche is web hosting. You are writing an article on - Full Trust Hosting. Now everyone wants to be ranked number ONE on Google for the targeted keywords and or niche, and to do that you must be looking for the right keywords to use in this article.
As the following image shows, I went to Google and searched for Full Trust Hosting. Than I clicked on Wonder Wheel option and I got a screen similar to the image below.
Now you will see all the related keywords for Full Trust Hosting as child nodes of the wheel. These are the related keywords for Full trust Hosting that Google Users are using to reach the web sites related to Full Trust Hosting.
You can further drill down the wheel by clicking on related keywords. I clicked on asp net hosting full trust and the wheel expanded the network to create another connected wheel for asp net hosting full trust. You can drill down as much you want to check all the keywords Google Users are using for related search terms.
This gives you a fool proof way of finding the right keywords and now its really up to you to use those keywords effectively in your web articles. Google’s Wonder Wheel is a perfect tool for exposing your small business website or blog to the right user base.
Video Demonstration of Google’s Wonder Wheel -
Hopefully this article will help you in choosing the right keywords for your blog.
Social Media and Small Business. Myths and Facts.
Social media describes websites that allow users to share content, media, etc. and allow users to interact with the information (either submitted by them or others).
Common examples are the popular social networking sites like Friendster, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Social media also includes YouTube, Photobucket, Flickr, and other sites aimed at photo and video sharing. News aggregation and online reference sources, examples of which are Digg and Wikipedia, are also counted in the social media bucket.
Using social media to market your business is a good idea. But most small business users think of social media as an easy tool to build there reach. Using social media is an effective tool if done right. Social Media is not only about tweeting yourself 100 times a day or creating Facebook pages and updating your comments / articles 10 times a day.
Its a lot more than that and needs proper strategy. Most small business users plan on getting there whiz-kid nephew to do social media for free. And this is clearly not the way to go as we will see that in the following bullet points.
Myths and Facts
Mark Evans had described it really well -
- Social media tools are free
While the tools themselves are free, their use inevitably will cost money. It will require human resources to monitor online discussions about your brand; strategy to respond to consumer cynicism; investment in multimedia to post online; and training to get staff up to speed - It’s easy!
Social media might be easy surfing to the end user, but it’s far from breezy when it comes to engaging those end users. It involves being ever present and ready to respond to both positive and negative comments about your brand, which takes time, money and strategy. - Social media is about the tools
Not necessarily. Though social media tools are important and abundant, they cannot be used effectively without a clear strategy for how they should be used and what you want to accomplish. And remember, just because there are many tools out there, doesn’t mean they are all relevant to you. - ROI is immeasurable
ROI is measurable with social media. There are numerous agencies available to monitor and breakdown your use of social media and to correlate it directly to the impact on your bottom line. Organizations such as Radian6 and Sysomos monitor, evaluate and measure online conversations about brands, gauging impact and allowing companies to determine which conversations are worth engaging in and which are not. - Social media is a standalone strategy
Social media should be incorporated into your strategic outlook and the overall objective you want to achieve. It is one tool of many and should be used as such.
Please leave your comments if you agree or disagree or have anything to add to this article.
Microsoft named Offensive Ad as Marketing Mistake
Engadget reported about Microsoft Poland’s embarrassing Photoshop hack-job on an ad featuring three business people sitting at a conference table. The Photoshop fiasco was immediately met with heated criticism, specifically because the photo manipulators replaced the head of the black man, who appeared whole in the U.S. ad, with the head of a white man.
In the photo on the company’s US Web site, three businesspeople - one black, one white and one Asian are shown as part of a pitch for Microsoft’s business productivity software. In the same photo on the site of Microsoft’s Polish subsidiary, a white head is placed over the black person’s body, with the hand of the black man still showing.
The move sparked controversy after it was noticed, quickly blowing up Twitter and various blog sites.
“We are looking into the details of this situation,” a Microsoft representative told CNET News. Microsoft also apologized on its corporate Twitter feed.
Who said Google Squared will kill Wolfram Alpha?
About 3-4 months ago one of my coworkers emailed me about this amazing computational engine - Wolfram Alpha (still in beta at that time). And this engine really awed me with its computational abilities. Some of the search terms did bring some blank results though but that was expected as a lot of data was being fed to the Wolfram servers at that point.
A few days ago when I heard about the deal between Bing and Wolfram (Bing strikes licensing deal with Wolfram Alpha) it occurred to me to check the site again and to see what other bloggers are writing about Wolfram.
I searched for articles and blog posts on Wolfram and came across this article on TechCrunch - What Is Google Squared? It Is How Google Will Crush Wolfram Alpha.
If you look at the date this article was written, I think you can guess that author was speculating at that point because both these technologies were just about to be launched. But I was wondering and wanted to ask the author - Have you even tried Google Squared?
Now that both these engines have matured I can say this out loud that Google Squared is a complete failure. I had doubts on the success of Google Squared right from the beginning.
If for some reason you are still in the stone age or yawning your way out of hibernation, here is a little info on Google Squared and Wolfram Alpha -
So what is Google Squared?
Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. For more info on Google Squared check out this video - http://www.youtube.com/v/t2onuEXThPs
And what is Wolfram Alpha?
Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.
For more info on Wolfram Alpha check out there site - http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Did Google Squared really killed Wolfram Alpha?
Well I think its really doesnt make any sense to compare the two. Wolfram is a computational engine whereas Google Squared is a spreadsheet with organized information picked from all over the web.
So what is Google Squared good for?
And that is what I am not sure of. We ran a test on both Google Squared and Wolfram Alpha and searched for the term - planets. And follow is the screen shot of the searches on Google Squared and Wolfram Alpha.
Google Squared returns a list of planets but along came some vague information which was related to Astronomy but not really what we were looking for.
Wolfram Alpha really turned out to be a winner here - Not only it returned a list of planets but also complete details for each planet and even there current sky positions from Toronto (from where the search took place)
We leave it on the readers to decide who killed whom, but for now we can say that Wolfram Alpha is a clear winner. What do you think? Please leave your comments and share your views with our readers.
