I’m not referring to the can of coke or bottle of beer sitting on the table for all to see, although that can be effective too, I’m talking about movies being produced by businesses with the primary objective of creating a hit movie people want to watch. If their movie hits it will go viral reaching more viewers (i.e. prospects) without any additional cost. Call it the anti-Tivo. People don’t forward through a great video, they forward it to their friends.

The short Featured Video was produced by BMW and is an excellent example of an advertiser becoming a producer with their brand (BMW 740i) not-so-coincidentally being right in the middle of the movie start-to-finish. It bares no resemblance to a commercial and young males, the ultimate BMW prospect, will love the flick.

My point? Times are changing and changing fast. Today’s effective advertising is not advertising at all. What works better is your brand being there when your customer or prospective customer is doing something they enjoy doing. For a BMW a series of short films works superbly. For a small restaurant it might be rolling out and maintaining a blog or holding a contest or throw-down between two chefs. Of course, the video would go on YouTube and the local press would have to be there to cover the story as well.

Just watch my teenagers TYPING on their cell phones while listening to their iPods with no TV in sight and think about how you’re going to get their attention and business 10 years from now. Better start preparing for the future because it’s here now. Enjoy the movie!

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Blogs are also easy on the blogger, with easy to setup blog sites, and easy to update blogging tools. Yes, it’s hard to carve out the time to make a habit of blogging, whether it be for personal reasons or for your business, but it’s worth doing it if you can stick to it. If you need help getting started or want to outsource the startup and upkeep there are companies that do that. (pssst. we can do that.)

Millions of people are blogging and many millions more are online, giving you great opportunities to earn new customers. Eventually someone is going to post things about your business and their experience in dealing with it. May as well get out there in cyber-public and gain a little more control over your destiny.

If you don’t fully get it yet just look at the various online initiatives the strongest brands have underway right now and you’ll see that they’re spending heavily to remain relevant in this rapidly evolving marketplace. All businesses of the future will have an online presence that will need to be tended to just like the office or store or shop.

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Using Google’s powerful mapping engine combined with input from local law enforcement agencies Crime Reports gives residents nearly real-time reports of all crimes reported in any geographic area selected in their neighborhood (or a relatives for that matter). If you’ve ever used Mapquest or Google Maps then you can use this with ease.

Did I mention it’s FREE?

Here’s why the Utah based company put together this great tool for us and law enforcement:

“CrimeReports.com was created to help law enforcement agencies put crime data in the hands of those who care about it most—citizens. While crime statistics in a specific city may be available, they may not be accessible. CrimeReports.com standardizes the way law enforcement agencies communicate crime data to the public, down to the specific neighborhood or block they live on.”

Crime Reports

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I like thumbnails of sites when I’m deciding whether or not the click the link so I think this add-on for Firefox  browser users is great.

It took all of 30 seconds to download and then after restarting the browser it was working. Now when I do Google searches the results have thumbnail images of the Websites.

The best Website to use for download is Mozilla’s (Firefox) and can be found here: Google Preview

If you still use Internet Explorer this is a good time to explore using Firefox. Biggest benefit is that it’s faster.

Firefox download

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The short video below covers some of the buzz that’s making it’s rounds across the net and in Silicon Valley and is worth the few minutes to watch.

Our initial impression is not very favorable as the search results included a lot of “clutter” and instances where the same site consumed high percentages of search results. Having said that, we understand that a lot can change over time and they’ve only been turned on for one day!

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One such solution is CRE Loaded. CRE Loaded offers an open source version tht you can use to build small stores and then when you need a more robust solution they steer you into their “Pro” version. That’s the version I chose to use for my first online store, Big City Pet, an online pet store. I chose this solution after soliciting feedback from some online retail pros and the fact that you pay them one time for the solution and never any monthly fees or transaction fees like some of the other options available out there.

After getting started on building out my first online store it became apparent that I was going to need their Store Manager for CRE Loaded to speed up and simplify the process of starting and later maintaining Big City Pet.

Store Manager for CRELoaded is a Windows application that allows you to manage your CRE Loaded-based online store much more efficiently. You can add, delete and update products, categories and manufacturers, automatically upload your product images while editing products, categories, manufacturers, view reports, orders and keep the track of your online sales. All this from your computer. CRE Loaded Manager was made for ordinary entrepreneurs not geeks, and after only a few settings required for the program to start and it just works.

I’ll report back when my store is live, but so far it seems to be working great! They offer a free 30-day trial period if you want to check it out yourself. Free Store Manager trial

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Now, when you use the Google Keyword Tool to search for your relevant keywords, you’ll be able to see the approximate number of search queries performed on Google and their search network for these keywords. This gives advertisers a better idea of where they’ll get more mileage for their money and will help in budgeting.

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It’s not clear what the ramifications are going to be, but it is clear that they’re trying to keep these news domain names out of the hands of small entrepreneurs and cybersquatters by setting price tags at $50,000 and up.

The new names should begin appearing sometime in 2009.

For more information:

ICANN

VNU Net

ICANN Watch

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The other day an anonymous bidder paid $2.6 million for the domain. For more information: pizza.com

While we’re talking about million dollar domain names I noticed that the owners of moms.com were asking something around $4 million for it. I own momz.com and would accept less…. I also own momz.net, momz.tv, dadz.com, dadz.tv. I sometimes wonder what they’re worth. If moms.com is worth over $4 million then I suppose momz.com is worth at least 1/10th that. ; ) And what about izit.com? What izit worth?

I can’t help but think back to my days online in 1994 when I was surfing the net, trading stocks on eTrade, and sending emails back and forth to people back east from my perch on the side of Haleakala on Maui. Will I kick myself this hard again in 14 years for not doing what I just know I should be doing TODAY?

What do you think the next 14 years will bring us and the internet?

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The internet has evolved by linking together a hodgepodge of cables and routing equipment, much of which was originally designed for telephone calls and therefore lacks the capacity for high-speed data transmission.

The grid, on the other hand has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no old fashioned components to slow the tremendous volume of data. Their are 55,000 servers installed today and that number is expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years.

By routing all data through the new technology it is estimated that the speed would be up to 10,000 faster.

What that would mean is:

• Cloud computing - No more data stored on desktops. All data would be stored at an offsite location and retrieved realtime via instant data transfer
• Full length movies will be downloadable in 5 minutes instead of several hours.
• Holographic video conferencing will become reality.
• Online gaming could include thousands of players.

The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.

For more information:

Cern - The European Organization for Nuclear Research

“David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.”

For the full article visit: Super Fast Internet

For information on: Cloud Computing

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