Currently, color publishing is significantly more expensive than black and white. So color print on demand, for example, is still quite expensive relative to “black and white” printing. Four plate CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) type jobs run up time, materials, setup and labor overhead requirements as compared to something like a simple, single “black” on “white” paper run.
Few breakthroughs promise to revolutionize business and the Internet as much as advances in translation services. Vast new networks of people and content sources can be unlocked with such changes. Moreover, trends in technology are expected to continue to improve translation in the years ahead. While human translators will continue to remain important, there is sometimes value in a quick, rough translation that may not not 100% perfect or accurate.
Richard MacManus has a post on 10 future web trends. You can check it out here.
I have been interested in, and following, a number of trends for a while. These include: augmented reality, cyborgs, machine intelligence partnerships on the Internet, rapid advanced translations, globalization, web services/APIs, and a number of other interesting possibilities. Some material is also mentioned in an earlier book.
There has been a lot of speculation that Google could be entering the phone marketplace. One interesting article that tries to envision how such a Google phone might look like is here.
Stephan Spencer offers 12 useful tips to search engine optimize (seo) your blog posts here. You can also watch a video on seo using whitehat techniques.
This article discusses some interesting developments occurring with Google maps. (For example, maps will soon be embeddable like youtube videos.)
Google also appears to be using paid “crowd sourcing” type techniques to build its map related databases. See here.
Previously, EMI had entered the foray with some digital music without drm. ( This post has some thoughts on that topic.) Now, Universal, is floating a 6 month trial of drm-free music. (This other post however suggests that Universal may still watermark its drm-free music.) Interesting developments in the field…
More ad dollars are moving online. While tv, newspapers and radio ads are experiencing some difficulties, online ads are continuing to grow rapidly. See details here.
Other resources:
In related news, this article discusses a four-year study, conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings on how people are spending their time online.
Want your blog posts to rank better in the results returned by the search engines? Matt Cutts talks about whitehat seo techniques for bloggers at WordCamp 2007 in this video. (Matt Cutts works in Google at the quality group, and specializes in search engine optimization issues.)
In the “Ecommerce Well” paperback, it is mentioned that with the introduction of revolutionary new technologies and the Internet, changes to the field of intellectual property may occur. One such innovation is the introduction of the creative commons license. What is the creative commons idea? Since a picture is worth a thousand words ….
While Internet Explorer remains the dominant browser on the market, Firefox is making major inroads around the world, according to a study released by XiTiMonitor.
Previously in this post we discussed about getting $1,000. If the last idea did not fit your needs, one may still be able to get $400!
Facebook is very popular now. This article discusses 5 viral techniques on Facebook. One can check it out here.
Most people have really not been following what has going on between the FCC, the telecoms and Google. So it is easy to ignore the news about Google’s interest in bidding on the FCC spectrum auction.
Google has just rolled out it’s “Print Ads” program from a limited test to the general public (the “alpha” test was in November 2006).
What exactly is the “Print Ads” program? It allows Google advertisers to basically buy ads in newspapers. While some newspapers were initially reluctant to adopt it, decreasing newspaper industry profits, have made many eager not to overlook new sources of revenue. Additionally, it is likely to introduce a new class of customers (those with “micro” ad budgets) that are currently only advertising online.
The paperback book, Ecommerce Well, has a short section on the variety of business models proliferating in ebusinesses and the internet. Why are business models so important? Why was it worth a few pages in the book? An example may be worth a thousand words.
Yesterday, Prince sent shock waves through the music industry when he challenged the prevailing business model in the music industry with a disruptive business model – clearly showcasing the power of this technique.
A previous post talked about virtual goods monetization. Gigaom has an interesting post on Second Life (a popular virtual reality world) called Debunking 5 business myths about Second Life. Techcrunch also covers it in this post.
Google is now introducing mapplets. Allows developers to overlay their own applications called mapplets onto google maps. In the words of the Google map team they had always intended Google Maps to become
a platform for navigating all kinds of location-based information
You can read more about it here.
An earlier post mentioned widget marketing. One of the important things is to be able to track widget effectiveness. This venturebeat link talks about tracking widgets.
On demand and “instant” paperback book printing is continuing to make strides. One could select from a list of available books and have a “library quality” book printed out in a few minutes. Helps less popular books become more accessible to the book buyer needing instant gratification (e.g. those buyers unwilling to wait for a ordered book to ship, etc.) Check out ondemandbooks.com, for example.
What web metrics should be important for ads? Should advertisers care about pageviews, visits, relevancy, time spent on a website? How are different ad/web measurement firms weighing in on this topic? One firm, Nielsen/NetRatings, is now moving away from “pageviews” and toward “time spent” at a website. Other firms are emphasizing other metrics. Readwriteweb discusses it in more detail here if you are interested in this topic.
According to this post, feedburner stats PRO and feedburner mybrand are now free. Note: The second option would require access to cname in DNS.
Which social network is popular in the US? Which one in India? in Australia? Easy visual cues through this color coded global map of social networks. Here is the link.