Well, other than the appearance of a multitude of Santa’s at various shopping malls, and the exorbitant price hikes on everything in the stores, there is something else happening that is well worth taking note of…. In fact, it takes place before Christmas… any ideas? Hmmm… lemme give you all a BIG hint… It has something to do with the Pixel8 Studios Blog, and involves a wealth of content…

Did you get it??? …. Yup, you guessed right it is the Festive Season edition of our news snippets!!

And before you jump ahead to get all the latest news, I would like to take a moment to wish everyone a Blessed Festive Season, filled with love and happiness, and hopefully some R & R too!

Will see you all in the New Year… and lots of exciting things to look forward to as well!

General News

• The Gauteng Economic Development Agency (GEDA) embraces Social Media… yup, who said government agencies aren’t cool… check out their Facebook page and YouTube Channel!
• How Google Plans to Take over TV.
• The SEO market set to change… not sure if the advent of personal search will effect SEO tactics as much as reported, but hey, read this article for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
• Ask.com gets better and smarter
• So now what? … Google Chrome out of BETA
• How the once mighty, have fallen…
• Commandments for Social Media apps (nice one Alan)
• What Will Google SERP Changes Mean for Reputation Management? … just to make my job a little more difficult
• SEO, the best value for your buck… Yes, always good getting justification for what we do

Different News

• Is Google Sexist?
• Budgeting for your Search Marketing in a tough economy.
• Online versus offline… the battle continues….
• The future of mobile… through the eyes of Google
• Wikipedia Launches Official Mobile Site

Cool Design

• The World’s First Music video in an Excel Spreadsheet… this is just too cool!
• Of course, its Bond season…
• Create your very own ringtone.. courtesy of Coke Zero
• The HEMA website (Thanks for this one Megan!)
• Volkswagens Clever Innovations
• This is amazing!! Check out the Lego Fashion Show

General News

• Flash and Google – Improved Flash Indexing. Looks like Google is getting there…
• Chrome – Is it another Google flop?
• Sobering news from Sequoia Capital
• Google Experiments with Banner Ads on Results Pages
• Gambling ads back in business on Google
• Microsoft’s new search engine – U Rank
• The Google books copyright gets settled… finally…
• South Africa’s answer to PayPal – PayFast
• Live Search rebranded as “Windows Live Search”?
• YouTube Search Ads
• Google using shady advertising tactics?
• The effects of Social Media on business… (yes, business does interfere with my Facebook time )
• Twitter Dangers… Terrorist Tweets (Thanks to Inno for this one)

Different Stuff

• The History of Search Engines
• Most incredible Photoshop tutorials
• Gmail Emoticons – a picture is worth a thousand words… really…
• Sergey Brin has his own personal blog, very interesting reading…
• Should you stop blogging?
• The Widget Channel – now if only this gets to SA.
• Google Street View – Always wondered how they did this…
• How a Viral Marketing Campaign should work… this clip is hilarious!

Cool Design

• The White Rabbit Restaurant – very cool storybook website.
• Wario Land  – Good enough to shake your Wii at…
• Power to the Poster (Thanks Jaco)
• VW wants you to have a virtual baby… a bit creepy, but pretty cool!
• Create your online portfolio with Flickrfolio

And as mentioned last time, seeing as we cannot possibly cover all the cool news, all the time (although we are trying) please feel free to post your comments containing any cool news and info you may find as well.

General Stuff

• If Online is your thing… then FREE does not come any better than this 20 Social Marketing Books – FREE!!
• A-Space – “Facebook for Spies” – Now if only I could get onto this site…
• LinkedIn reaches out to Hollywood – Man, did not realise that one of the most powerful and influential networks was in trouble… will be keeping my eye on this one!
• Great TED talks – The next 5000 days of the web
• Words to live by – The commandments of Social Media

Cool Design Stuff

• Been around for a while, but just had to do it Agent Provocateur’s Latest offering…
• Gotta love a Ferrari
• Virgin Mobile – What Happens Next?

Different Stuff

• Photos that Changed the World
• Had no idea that is was actually still a secret…
• Man, advertising has come a loooong way…
• So, if you are a smoker and worried that you will never give up, then you gotta check this out… this is actually unbelievable.

Oh yes, and seeing as we cannot possibly cover all the cool news, all the time (although we are trying) please feel free to post your comments containing any cool news and info you may find as well.

ORM is quite simply, the practice of tracking a group or set of pre-defined keywords about your company, your competitors or just about anything you want, across the entire internet from websites, to newsgroups and across the entire blogosphere… But good ORM is not just tracking everything, a good ORM strategy also needs some type of analysis and yes, some kind of strategy when dealing with unruly statements that you may happen to find.

Not too long ago, the world of ORM was started by the advent of Google Alerts, relevant phrases would be setup and carefully monitored… which I suppose is fine, but then it does not really help if you do nothing about a bad piece of press and if no-one actually monitors this online PR channel then its just another glorified web-type report that ends up in the “file” pile…

Thankfully, due to the natural evolution of the online marketing environment though, a number of well-established marketing companies have thrown a bit more “know-how” behind the aggregation of collecting alerts, and created some great tools for tracking and managing your reputation online. There are a number of tools available, notably Andy Beal’s Trackur and local offerings, Brandseye from Quirk and SaidWot from LongTail. They all have a similar offering and allow the added advantage of giving you more than just tracking, which is the strategy and action of dealing with unruly PR on various channels. This all comes with a small price (obviously) and is really well worth the cost too, especially when it comes to the interpretation and strategy behind the Reputation Management tool. As an online marketer myself, I would defintely advocate the usage of one of these professional offerings – you just can’t take a chance when it comes to your online reputation.

However, if budget is an issue, or if you would prefer to test the world of Online Reputation Management without spending any money, then there are other ways to manage your own reputation online.

As mentioned there are Google Alerts, which send daily, weekly, or “as it happens” news through – related to keywords and is farily comprehensive, covering everything from mainstream news sites, to entries across the blogosphere. These alerts arrive in your mailbox in the form of an email so the information is readily available.

Now, if Google Alerts are not enough, then you can also setup a simple Online Reputation Monitoring tool by using your WordPress blog. It’s actually a WordPress Widget plug-in and gives you an opportunity to monitor pretty much any source of content that is provided in RSS feeds called WP-O-Matic. This plug-in automatically creates posts from RSS/Atom feeds that you provide it and organises them into campaigns for you to use and easily interpret too. The plugin has an easy to manage user interface, which features imaging caching, word rewriting to name a few. It also allows you to import your own OPML files, so essentially you can create a tracking campaign across thousands of feeds quite instantly. When it comes to adding the actual feed content, WP-O-matic has both Unix cron and WordPress cron jobs to make the fetching process simple, or alternatively you can just hit the “fetch” button and manually import the latest posts from the feeds you have specified and collected. It is a very well thought out and well researched plugin, and one you really need to see in action to believe.

So there you have it, ORM in a nutshell, as well as some handy free tools and some very professional options to choose from too.

So here goes, the first edition of the Pixel8 Studios Online News Snippets… Enjoy!

Cool Design:

• Converse launches its new website, cool concept! – http://thisistheindexpage.com/
• Chupa Chups turns 50 – http://www.chupachups.com/en/ – Had no idea suckers could be so cool…
• Nokia Music Almighty

Different Stuff:

• Well, this saved my butt a few weeks ago: http://www.stuffchickswant.com/
• 10 Things you should know about the Internet
• Google allows itself a special ad
• How to cope with that Inbox (Thanks Jaco)

General Stuff:

• Now that’s a lot of web – Yikes!
• Google lines up Wikipedia, with Knol
• July 2008 – Search Engine Share
• Google and Yahoo let you opt-out of ads.

Actually, military recruitment has now become serious business online, with more and more countries competing for the attention of their respective recruits via media channels that appeal to them.

And using and marketing the military online is not such a new tactic either. The US Army already caused quite a stir over a year ago when they elected to sponsor a channel at the Global Gaming League website. Gamers could play for free as long as they agreed to accept “additional contract information” from the Army. The Army invested two million dollars into this form of recruitment, in an effort at finding potential soldiers among regular gamers in the sought-after recruiting age range of 17 to 24.

How successful the campaign was is a bit hard to tell, as the army does not release their CPA rates for recruitment But looking at the fact that numerous other countries have launched their own websites supported by active online campaigns, it is safe to say that online recruitment is something that is getting taken very seriously! And has become a serious market for web development and online marketing companies to start playing in.

One of the latest Army sites to appear on the web is from The Netherlands, where the Luchtmacht has launched a brilliantly done web presence to showcase its military world to the young Dutch. Check out the Luchtmacht site and you will see that no cost has been spared in creating this military masterpiece…

Not that I totally agree with the practice of recruiting young adults online and glamourising war, but I must admit that it is interesting to see the military use a medium that has spent a long time building credibility over other media channels… Defintely something to sit up and take notice of, and defintely keep our eyes on too…

Seriously though, the impact of Social Networking has extended way beyond the actual “social” realm and has become a very serious online marketing tool… And is vitality important to any marketing strategy. Why?

Quite simply, there are over 700 social networking sites online and EVERYONE from students to corporate execs are hanging out, and interacting with other like-minded individuals, on at least one of them.

A great example of the power of a social network can be seen on LinkedIn – the largest online business network in the world – most users interact and recommend one another via this portal and stats show that a large number of businesses refer one another through this channel. The classic age-old method of using a client or contact that gets recommended by someone else, or also known as good-old fashioned “word of mouth” marketing. In this world of capitalism and numerous competitive offerings the benefit of having someone you trust recommend a product or service, takes a big chunk out of the guess-work. Tada… and that is the crux of social networking

Ok, there are numerous other benefits to effective social networking and these include:

• Creation of brand awareness – the more sites you network on, the more brand awareness you create.
• Helps you manage your online reputation
• Increased traffic
• More traffic from the community means decreased dependence on search engines for all traffic
• Web content will get indexed faster
• Community links to you – Higher quality and assist in SEO
• Informed about competitor movements and feedback from your target markets

I mentioned that there are over 700 social bookmarking sites online, and figured I would touch 3 sites that are seeming to gain a bit of play in the online environment over the last few months…

1. Video Publishing and Entertainment – Web TV gets a new Social Network. Enter Hobnox, the latest social network that connect people via video. Users can also create and edit their own videos online using the free Hobnox software… pretty cool! (Thanks to Bryce for this one)

2. Social Networking for Mom’s – Big business enters the social networking arena. Sprint and Unilever have funded the venture with the aim of attracting millions of Mom’s to the site. What makes it so effective in its attractiveness is that it combines big-budget Hollywood style production techniques to get Mom’s to the site. Some Big names in Hollywood have signed-up to star in the consumer generated stories that are published on the website – Some really good and funny video content. Check out http://www.inthemotherhood.com/

3. Green Social Networks – To ease the daily pains (and to help your social conscience) visit and sign-up to Greenopolis. People band together online, to date, discuss politics or lose weight . this all happens in a community whose members help each other live in a more earth-friendly manner. Pretty cool!

See, don’t you feel better already

Whether the spin-offs of Facebook and MySpace are here for the long-haul remains to be seen, but for now everyone is capilitilising on the Social Networking rush… so be sure you don’t get left behind!

The online research and marketing company, Hitwise, has confirmed that after Cuil’s initial launch which caused the sites ranking and traffic to spike dramatically to around 106 (in most trafficked sites), over the past week or two the traffic has dropped off quite dramatically… down to 1034th in traffic and to number 34 in terms of Search Engines… So yes, I suppose one could say Cuil has almost come and gone…

Cuil’s impact was noted however, buoyed by a lot of media spend on traditional as well as online channels, as well as a HUGE amount of online buzz marketing, Cuil has shown the world that it is possible to take a “pot” at the mighty Google. Granted it’s going to take a large amount of money, technology and some serious “balls”, but even having all these factors in place, it is still a HUGE ask, so maybe we are just going to have to leave it to the seriously BIG players to slug it out (read: Microsoft)…

Must say, it is kind of sad that the hype has died and Cuil is just back to being one of those “other search engines”, the world of search was just starting to get interesting again…

Well… none until now… ok, ok, hold your laughter and hear me out.

Cuil.com is a new search engine that has its sights on challenging Google, and many industry insiders believe they may well have a slim chance of doing so too…

Reasons for this stem from the following facts:

They claim to have the biggest search index on the planet. With more than 3 times the web index of Google and more than 10times that of Microsoft, nothing to scoff at and definitely something that made me sit-up.

Along with this massive index, they have a unique way of displaying results (in a news like format with 3 columns and images),  and also have a slightly different outlook on indexing and displaying results (more on this in a future post).

Along with these unique way of displaying and indexing, they have another huge advantage over any other contenders to the search crown… quite simply they have a management and development team that have worked at Google and every other major search company, and know what it takes to be the best…

I did quite a few test searches with Cuil and I must admit that it returned really good results. Whether they were better or worse than results from Google, I am not sure, I suppose it depends on the query and the needs of the person doing the search.

Cuil does seem to understand the different meaning of words, the fact that one word could mean the same for different things and people. As an example, if you search for “proteas” then Cuil will return results for the flower, the nickname of the South African cricket team , gardening tips and then companies with that word in the name on the their results pages. Pretty cool

This knowledge and skill, partnered with a huge amount of financial backing, makes for a potent search force and only time will tell if it really will give Google a run for its money.

However, there is clearly a lot more to search than having a the largest index and great search results… If that was the only measurment criteria then surely Yahoo would have a much bigger share of the search market?

But then, every now and then, an article gets posted that makes all bloggers sit up and take notice… and no, this is not an article about Google putting a man on the moon, or Microsoft funding the first manned flight to Jupiter… but rather something a lot more alarming that affects the very thing that many of us would-be “writers” (read bloggers) do on a daily basis… and that is being liable and accountable for what we write, and possibly even being thrown in jail for it! Yup, writing on a blog could land you in prison…

This article on the ABC News website, really made me sit up and start thinking a little more about what I write and especially who I write about.

The bottom line is that in the last 4 years, over 159 civil court actions have been taken against bloggers… with verdicts against bloggers ending up in cumulative penalties totalling $18.5 million!!! Yikes! Talk about clamping down on free speech… believe me, if I knew I was going to have to fork out a few million because of something I said, I would definitely start shutting up. And surely this reaction is the exact opposite reaction of what free speech, and hell, what the blogosphere is all about?!?!

Or maybe I am just overreacting… ? Well, read the article and let me know what you think.