April 24th, 2007

To monetize the Long Tail, you need good filters.
Metadata Synthesis extracts useful “signal” from noisy data sets by revealing hidden taxonomies, organizational schemes and descriptions. Metadata Synthesis can dramatically increase the value of your data assets by rendering them searchable/navigable to your users and richer in the eyes of the search engines.
Metadata Synthesis services are available from Proton Cannon.
Posted in technololgy | No Comments »
April 17th, 2007

There is a new browser plugin that merits special attention. MyKaroo has been ported to both Internet Explorer and Mozilla, and boasts compatibility with 98% of all possible browser/OS combinations. The MyKaroo plugin is currently in beta, but is available now for download at the MyKaroo download page.
What it does: MyKaroo is described as “essentially a blog”. But you cannot visit MyKaroo like a regular blog. Instead, MyKaroo hovers in its own window over your browser window as you navigate from site to site. While you browse, contextually sensitive comments are displayed in response to the sites you visit. They have been posted by other people using MyKaroo just like you.
MyKaroo is recommended. You will quickly discover, as I did, that the impulse to comment as you browse is simply overwhelming.
Posted in technololgy, the media, blogging, firefox | 2 Comments »
April 15th, 2007

I’ve been working on a marketing article for several months, but haven’t really had as full a perspective as I’d like to have on the “picture”. It’s grand theme is measurement. I want to describe how a division has taken place in the universe of marketing, into the category of tactics that give effects we can measure and those that yield results we cannot. Online is in the former category. Most traditional marketing is in the latter. I would also describe how it has been (for most of the history of the marketing praxis) a big part of what marketing “does” to try to establish correlations between specific marketing actions and specific sales reactions. I would then go on to describe how the ability to precisely determine ROI (a given with online advertising) has commenced a massive flux in the way marketing budgets are being divided, in favor of measurable online. At the same time, marketing departments and ad agencies are coming under the leadership of “online marketers”… by that I mean executives who came up through the ranks buying and selling clicks. It is likely a grave disrespect to many talented and well-rounded marketing professionals to say that people who understand “traditional” marketing (PR, print, and all that’s not online) are in decline. But I think it’s generally true. Then again, perhaps all I am doing is observing an evolution, and there’s no reason to lament the disappearance of methods that don’t work anymore… or at least that do not work well enough to warrant investing in people who have those skills…
Posted in selling, technololgy, linegrazing, the media, affiliate marketing, blogging, PR and the blog, legal, hypothetical business models | No Comments »