Recently I’ve noticed a huge flaw in Facebook photos. Collaboration. For a social network you’d think that after 500 million + users and a blockbuster film, they’d have figured out that groups of friends attend the same event, but there’s no way to have everyone’s photos of the same event in 1 album. So I’ve been on the hunt for a site/app that let’s multiple users contribute to the same photo album. I was surprised to find there aren’t many, and those that do exist don’t fulfil the true need for this. The site that comes closest is Zangzing.

Zangzing is the best looking, most functional and easiest to use collaborative photo sharing site that exists (in my opinion). Start an album, upload some photos then either opt to let anyone add photos to your album, or only those that you invite. They don’t even have to be members of Zangzing. You can even upload full-res photos and enable the group to download them. This I find particularly useful as when my friend, who has a really nice SLR, uploads his photos to Facebook, downloading them to have as a desktop background or photo print is pointless because the quality is so crap.

I love the idea of letting anyone add photos to an album. It is risky, but I made great use of it recently when Bournemouth flooded and during the Bournemouth Airshow, uploading my own photos as it happened and enabling others to do the same so there were many accounts from different places of different things but at the same event. This would be a great free tool for brands to use as a social UCG (user generated content) type exercise.

I’ve also made good use of private group albums with my girlfriend. We recently got 2 kittens and like to take photos of them as a memory of when they were little. Using Zangzing, we can both upload our photos of the cats to the same album.

It is frustrating that there is no mobile app yet, but while they are working on one you are able to upload photos via email, which does the job. What I really feel is missing is the ability to do more than photos. Maybe Zangzing isn’t the right format but I don’t know of anything that let’s you upload photos, videos and comments into an album-like format, that is collaborative. Life is shared with other people and I don’t care who took the photo or video, I just want have them all in one place, for everyone to comment on, enjoy and keep as their own. It’s times like these I wish I could build web-apps.

Groupon has already had a number of highs and lows in its short life so far.  The recipe was brilliantly simple.  Massive savings on local products and services for the customer, dramatic increase in sales for the businesses, healthy cut of the revenue for Groupon. Everybody’s happy! But things haven’t been super smooth for Groupon and I’m beginning to wonder if they’ll fall like many of the original dot com boom organisations did at the turn of the millenium.  Here’s why… (oh and please add your vote to the poll).

1. Many customers are not happy

I’ve heard of many cases where a groupon deal has been bought, only to find out that the business can’t fulfill the order, or at least not in a reasonable time frame, because they couldn’t cope with demand. You could argue this isn’t the responsibility of Groupon but many of these local businesses simply don’t have the knowledge and experience to see it coming.  For example, a classic deal on Groupon is for a massage or spa break. A friend of mine bought one of these for his wife. When she called to book, they told her due to demand they couldn’t book her in till the new year. What? Because she’s already paid Groupon for the offer, she has no choice but to go ahead with it.

I have bought a photo print from an online shop through Groupon. For the month after I bought the deal on Groupon, the website couldn’t handle the traffic and number of orders so you had to be put in a queue. Finally a month later I was able to order my print and then I’m told it could take up to 2 months for it to be produced!

2. The local businesses aren’t happy

I assume that the issues in point 1 are happening because Groupon aren’t supporting and guiding the businesses enough, which is leading to them thinking that a Groupon deal is an easy win for more business, brand awareness and hopefully repeat business. But because of the issues in point 1, many customers are disgruntled with the business, giving them a bad name and probably no repeat business.

Another reason the businesses offering the deals aren’t happy is because Groupon has them bent over. When you buy a Groupon deal, you pay Groupon. If you don’t redeem the vouchers in the allocated time, Groupon will not pay the local business. It may be that the business has decided to take a hit on profits with the savings offered in the deal in order to bring more customers to the brand. But then if a user for whatever reason doesn’t redeem their voucher, the business will not see the money and their margins will look even worse.

3. Groupon are yet to make a profit

Although the idea is simple and it works using email, probably the cheapest method of direct marketing, Groupon are yet to make a profit. Despite making $878 million, they still lost $103 million. A lot of this is to do with high initial marketing costs in order to get as many people as possible signed up for the deals as quick as possible. Groupon think that once a customer is signed up, it is unlikely that they will unsubscribe from the daily deal email (thus effectively not being a customer). I wonder what their plan is once all the deals of all the local businesses are interested have been done and it just becomes recycled. I for one am already bored of seeing “fish manicures” and “canvas photo prints”.

Another reason for this lack of profit is also because Groupon is a ‘glocal’ (globally-localised) company, thus meaning they need many 1,000s of employees to ensure the company can manage all the local business offers that occur every day all over the world.

4. IPOuch!

Groupon were slammed for their valuation of $20 billion before floating on the stock market. By valuing themselves too high, investors don’t want to take them seriously anymore and are running away faster than Usain Bolt.

5. Even their employees are turning on them

Recently, an employee of Groupon has filed a law suit claiming that Groupon are not paying their employees for the time they’ve done.

Voice your opinion and vote!

So what do you think? Would you invest in Groupon? What do you think of daily deal services like Groupon and Living Social? Do you agree with me that the don’t have the business model to last? Please voice your opinions in the comments section and the poll below.

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To-dos and Reminders

I check my email before I go to work and when I get home from work, as well as checking my work email constantly while at work.  Because I check fairly regularly I can send myself reminders or actions at any point from work, home or out and about.  For example, I’m out shopping and remember that I need to pay the TV license when I get home so I send my self an email from my phone and when I get home, I pick it up on my computer.

Read it Later

If I’m on a train with nothing to do, or chilling on the sofa at home with my iPad, I might read my RSS feeds.  I constantly find interesting articles or links that I know I’ll want to check out later on my computer at home, or if work related, on my computer at work. So all I do is mail a link to the article to myself (either my personal account or work account) and pick it up later.

Labels and Filters

Use labels and filters to get the most out of these techniques.  I include “rlh” which stands for “Read it Later at Home” in the subject line of an email that includes a link to an article that I’ll want to read later when I’m sitting at my home computer.  Using a filter, I can tell Gmail to label any email where the subject line includes “rlh” with Read Later at Home.  So when I’m at home, I only have to search for items with that label to show me all the things I’ve sent to myself.  Once read, I can delete it.  I do the same with work related articles by including “rlw” in the subject line.  If it’s a reminder or to-do, I can set more filters to recognise which emails are which.

I know there are apps out there that do this such as Read it Later, Evernote and Delicious etc. But the beauty of using Gmail is that all these items are in one place, but on every device so I can recall this information at any time, even with a weak network signal.  Also, “Mail Link” is the most common way to share something.  Every app I use that includes sharing features will include a “Mail Link” button, whether it’s Reeder for RSS, Twitter for err… Twitter, Summify, Facebook etc etc. Because email has been around so long, it’s the only fully standardised method of sharing information with yourself.

And the obvious productivity tools in Gmail

Email

Gmail is obviously very good at dealing with email communications. It’s definitely the best web based email client out there, and arguably better than Apple’s Mail and Window’s Outlook, especially now they’ve introduced the preview pane in Labs.

Contacts

Synonymous with email is contacts. Gmail stores all my contacts and makes it incredibly easy for me to retrieve them anywhere on any device.

Tasks

Google Tasks is an extension of Gmail’s browser based app so I’m including it in my list.  You can also use it as a stand alone to-do app on mobile devices.  It’s really simple and great for ticking tasks off.

Calendar

There is a labs extension to view your calendar in the browser based Gmail app.  Again, Google Calendar is effortless and being able to see it from within Gmail is a huge bonus.

How do you show different content depending on what page you’re on?

Using some really basic php that you can get from the WordPress site and then amending it slightly for your needs.  This is the code I used on the site

<?php if (is_category('the LAB')) { ?>
<a href="/the-lab"><img src="/wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/the-lab.png" height="210" width="210" alt="the LAB logo"></a>
<?php } elseif (is_page('the MAN')) { ?>
<a href="/the-man"><img src="/wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/the-man.png" height="210" width="210" alt="the MAN logo"></a>
<?php } else { ?>
<a href="/the-blog"><img src="/wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/the-blog.png" height="210" width="210" alt="the BLOG logo"></a>
<?php } ?>

What this is saying is, “if this page is in the LAB category, show the LAB image link. If not, check if this page is the MAN page and if it is, show the MAN image link. If it’s not either of these, show the BLOG image link”.

I do a similar thing now with the top navigation by highlighting the section you’re reading in pink.

Simples!

However, it also puts you at risk by having all these apps and sites being able to access your personal information and by having to make connections to your social network. Ok, you can probably trust Facebook/Twitter/Google with your sensitive data, but as soon as you use these big guns to talk to a third party, who knows what could happen

I’ve had my Google account hacked before, all my emails were deleted and my contacts were sent a spam virus by me via GMail, Facebook and Twitter.  So I changed my password on all 3 to something pretty strong including capitals, letters and numbers.

I’ve now had my Facebook account cloned! CLONED!!! This new Facebook account has my name, my profile pic and my information, and is starting to add all my friends, probably so it can send them spammy messages.  I’ve informed Facebook so I’ll have to wait and see what they do, and I’ve changed my password (not sure that was the issue though).

All of this makes me think about how someone could have got my password or hacked in to my accounts and I’m sure it’s something to do with third parties having direct access into my social accounts. But how do you find out? I’ve signed up to loads of websites and apps using Facebook Connect and Twitter OAuth.  Google Plus has asked me to connect my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts now too! Where’s the leak?

My recommendations

Check which sites you’ve authorised to connect to your social accounts

You can do this on Google by clicking your name (right hand side) in the toolbar across the top of the Google homepage, and clicking Account Settings from the drop-down. Then select Edit next to ‘Authorizing applications & sites’. If there are any you don’t use anymore, or any you don’t recognise, revoke the access.

In your Twitter settings, click on the Applications tab. If anyone knows how to do this with Facebook, let me know please!

Don’t use Google or Facebook for social sign-ins

It’s most likely that you have more sensitive information on Facebook and Google. Twitter does not need to know your life story for you to get the most of it so where possible use Twitter Connect (OAuth) if necessary.

Of course to be even more precautious, take the time to sign-up to the website/app properly.

If you’re bidding on your brand terms (and in most cases, why wouldn’t you?) then you’re probably getting a very healthy ROI (this is all assuming that you have an e-commerce website with a healthy overall conversion rate).

Let’s say that to be profitable you need to maintain an ROI of 3x.  Each month you spend £1,000 in Adwords purely on brand related keywords because they give you the best return.  The revenue from this traffic is £20,000, giving you 20x ROI. To get the same £20,000 revenue and stay profitable (3x ROI), you could spend your original £1,000 on brand keywords and use the revenue from this stream of traffic to fund £5,667 of traffic to your site from more competitive terms with higher CPCs, giving your brand visibility for keywords that get more impressions.

Ok, your ROI on these terms is probably going to be poor, possibly negative ROI. But as long as your brand adgroups are giving you exceptional ROI, you can afford to expand your PPC campaign, generating more brand awareness and more loyal custom.

Text shadow

Adding text shadow using CSS couldn’t be easier. It doesn’t require webkit or moz versions and it’s compatible with pretty much every browser (even IE!) I use it a lot because it gives depth to your design by making the text on the page look embossed on the background.

How to add text shadow with CSS

In your CSS file, add the following to the element you wish to target:

text-shadow: -1px 1px #FEE3A9

The first value moves your text shadow horizontally on the x axis. Negative figures move it to the left of the text, positive figures to the right. The second value moves your text shadow vertically on the y axis. Negative figures move it above the original text and positive figures move the shadow below.  The 6 digit code (hex value) sets the colour. The above example applies to almost every text shadow on the WEBBAGE website. See!? Easy!!

Box shadow

Box shadow is the ability to add a shadow to any block element like a div. Like text shadow css, it gives real depth to a page with just a couple of lines of code. Box shadow is part of CSS3 so it’s not 100% compatible in all browsers and you do need moz and webkit etc. versions of the code.

How to add box shadow with CSS

In your CSS file, and the following to the element you wish to target:

-moz-box-shadow: -1px 1px 0 #ecd199;

-webkit-box-shadow: -1px 1px 0 #ecd199;

box-shadow: -1px 1px 0 #ecd199;

The first value moves your box shadow horizontally on the x axis. Negative figures move it to the left of the text, positive figures to the right. The second value moves your box shadow vertically on the y axis. Negative figures move it above and positive figures move the shadow below.  The 6 digit code (hex value) sets the colour. The above example applies to some of the purely html elements on the WEBBAGE site such as the top nav circles (which are created using border-radius).

What’s the benefit of this?

Improved page load speed

Theoretically anyway. Normally if your brand had a particular brand font or you just wanted to make a well designed banner that broke away from the bland, you’d have to use an image as text. Images are bulky files and the less of them the better. However, by using a non-standard web font you have to ask the user’s browser to download that font before they can see the text on your page. If your server is a bit slow or your font type isn’t well optimised, it could have a negative impact. That’s why Google Fonts and Typekit are great services because they host the font for you so the user benefits from the super-speed of their servers.

Ease of updates

By removing the need to use an image for the text, when you need to update a banner you don’t have to go through the laborious process of updating the image in Photoshop. Now you can simply update the text like you would any other text on your website. Great for client’s with a CMS as it means less agency resource required (if any at all).

It also means less code work. Normally you’d have to insert your image along with alt text and title text as well as the actual text which you’d hide and replace with the image of the text for SEO and accessibility purposes. Nightmare! You don’t need to do that if you can just use text.

Enhanced visual appeal

Using font-face, Google Fonts or Typekit allows for a much better visual experience of the web. Instead of the usual/dull standard web fonts, designers can use a wider range of web fonts to improve the content design of the website.

The problems

I’ve found differences in the way that different browsers, platforms and screen resolutions render the text. Using an image in the old fashioned way meant what you saw was pretty much what you got. Using web fonts involves more testing and less browser consistency, especially when rendering at larger sizes. I also found that Typekit (I trialled the free version) was bulky and slowed my page load speed right down. This is why I’ve since chosen to use Google Fonts only.

How it’s done

Webbage did use non-standard web fonts for all text across the site, even the logo. It would have stayed like this if it wasn’t for cross browser/screen resolution issues.  All the fonts were controlled via Google Fonts and css.  These are the steps I took to get non-standard web fonts on this site:

1. Choose your preferred font from Google’s font repository
2. Copy the link code and place it in your page header (in the case of WordPress, your header template).  Here’s the link code for my logo and nav font -
   <link  href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Coda:800&v1" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" >
3. For the page elements you want to use that font for, simply add the following line to your css stylesheet -
   font-family: 'Coda', impact, sans-serif;
4. Sit back and enjoy the font-goodness!