Many firms are taking advantage of the online platform and using web videos to boost consumer interactivity and sales. Online video used for marketing can positively affect a business and research has proven that more consumers are watching video. Findings by Comscore revealed that four out of five people online in the UK watch video over the internet every month and according to Forrester Research, video is 53 times more likely to appear on the 1st page of results on search engine giants like Google.

Online video can be used by an organisation to reach out to customers and you control the tone of the message be it authoritative or humorous. By communicating more visually, a consumer is more likely to engage than read the same amount of information presented as static text so the efficiency is increased. And most people respond better to visual video so the effectiveness of it higher too.

It is reported that users are four times more likely to look at a video on a site than anything else, and are four times more likely to convert to a sale if the video has a call to action.

Another benefit is affordability. Believe it or not it is fairly affordable to create unique online video! So now you know the advantages, build your brand, boost the sales and utilise the cost-effective marketing channel of your own corporation. Use the online video to promote your business and let audiences clearly know your services without a big cost. Many web video production firms like Vidify can help.

Anyone who has ever been to Heathrow or any main sporting event at a stadium around Europe has actually experienced the benefits of digital signage without even realising it. All those lovely digital signs which show where travellers should embark and the closest coffee shop at airports are the result of technology at its very best. It is sometimes quite difficult to find a human to point you in the right direction, but digital signage has an instant answer to almost any query you may have.

What Types of Businesses Can Utilise Digital Signage?

Actually, digital signage can benefit a business of any size and in any sector. For example, a warehouse can have a digital sign displaying up-to-date inventory, the location of merchandise and any orders which have just been placed and/or filled. Large buildings and malls can also take advantage of touchscreen digital signage to direct ‘traffic’ so that visitors can easily find their way from the lobby or main entrance to the shop or business they are trying to locate. From employment agencies to trucking companies, today’s touchscreen digital signage can play a huge role in keeping costs low.

Why Is Digital Signage Considered to Be Cost Effective?

Although there is initial cost involved in having bespoke digital signage manufactured and installed in your place of business, the software that controls the display can be operated by just one or two people. Rather than employing several people to direct traffic, provide information or take orders at suppliers/retailers, digital signage can take on a great number of tasks automatically without the intervention of a paid worker. This is especially critical to SMEs as they try to reduce operating costs because it can enable them to keep payroll to a minimum.

Even though digital signage is cost effective for the business, they are a real gift to the hurried consumer who doesn’t have time to locate a live body to point them in the right direction or answer questions about products, services or even arrival times. Live game scores can be scrolled across the digital display, the winning pony/horse announced each race and today’s high tech consumer expects instant answers to their questions. What this does for repeat business is beyond belief and something which bears watching.

Bio: Protouch offers a wide range of kiosks and touchscreen technology in the UK as well as throughout Europe. From touchscreen ticket kiosks to touchscreen monitors, Protouch is Europe’s leading provider.

The internet always has been the wild west of free expression, the place where anyone with a keyboard and an opinion may become a published author, and the place where music and video go from obscure and arcane to headline news in nano-seconds. On the web, opinion masquerades as fact, and facts get measured on carefully calibrated truth-scales. Internet users have grown so accustomed to plagiarism and piracy they do not even blink when three popular sites headline exactly the same content; it never occurs to them that only one of those sites legitimately owns the words and images they see…and forward. Internet piracy has ravaged the recording industry, and it has made copyrights and trademarks more precious than ever. Congress and web developers recently have attempted to catch and punish the bad guys, but the posse has trouble rounding-up the back hats without running rough-shod over privacy rights and civil liberties.

Legal and technical experts agree four issues complicate the discussion:

Piracy and plagiarism proliferate

Although musicians, artists, and authors have developed means and methods for protecting the majority of their intellectual property from illegal streaming and downloading, nevertheless the internet remains a dangerous place for unsuspecting homesteaders. Pillagers, pilferers and plagiarists lurk everywhere. Artists and authorities still have too few tools and techniques for trapping and prosecuting content-thieves. Musicians have been most vocal in their calls for enforcement of copyright laws; but, in the academic world where plagiarism always has been a problem, the internet has raised the problem to epidemic proportions. Online universities are especially vulnerable to plagiarism, because billions of words fly across their discussion boards and assignment submission portals every week; some surveys indicate up to 70 percent of online college students admit to copyright infringement in preparation of their coursework.

Software giants mostly silent on CISPA

Contrary to widespread belief, The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) does nothing to slow or stop internet piracy; instead, it provides for liberal exchange of user information between the federal government and major online networks. Designed to provide national security authorities with wide-ranging investigative powers, which intelligence officials claim will protect major networks and corporations from hacking, CISPA does not include privacy protections for individual citizens. Microsoft and Facebook have endorsed the measure; Mozilla has taken an extremely strong stand against it. Most major service providers and software manufacturers have not weighed-in on the latest among controversial proposals for internet regulation.

Privacy issues persist

Early in 2012, the three largest internet-user advocates mobilized powerful protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), both of which the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Avaaz.org. said lacked serious protections against censorship and invasion of privacy. Whereas the Recording Industry of America has sustained its hue and cry for strong legislation to protect intellectual and artistic property, civil liberties groups maintain strong resistance to almost all forms of internet regulation, because none of the proposed legislation adequately has protected internet users against violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. Although the issues appear to turn on fundamental opposition between civil liberties and private property, they may, in fact, turn on software problems. The same IP tracking software that would prevent unauthorized streaming and downloads also gives trackers the capacity to monitor all of a user’s activity without requiring a search warrant or notice of any kind.

“Conflation Confusion”

One copyright attorney points out, “Legislators and the media routinely have confused internet piracy with internet privacy. Discussions suffer ‘conflation confusion,’ because owners of online content have no privacy issues, and internet users have no intellectual property issues. Yet they all cry and complain at the same time.” The attorney emphasizes the importance of balancing First and Fourth Amendment guarantees with legitimate concerns about protecting intellectual and artistic property. He argues creative clients and webmasters require “purloin-proof” mounting and hosting software that guarantees interaction while denying access to copy or download.

Technophiles generally agree the resolution lies in the hands of software developers who have knowledge, codes and semi-conductors simultaneously to safeguard artists’ masterpieces and audiences’ privacy. The creative community fervently hopes the techies are right.

Have you ever considered how technology is affecting human life on planet earth? There’s no doubting that your phone and laptop help you on a day to day basis but what about mankind as a race? Is technology really helping us to achieve a sustainable lifestyle? This infographic from The PR Blog (A Euro RSCG website) takes a look at just that.

Click to enlarge:

Einkaufswagen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the busy 21st century, a large proportion of people no longer have the time or the inclination to physically go to the shops to buy goods. Luckily, many can now do this instead via their phone, laptop or tablet. Made ever easier via applications for portable devices, it’s little wonder that online shopping is increasing so incredibly quickly.

Suffice to say, a business website is not just vital – it’s mandatory. Not offering users the convenience to buy a product online is sheer madness. However, not all websites are created equal. Research into internet behaviour reveals how and why some sites are vastly more successful than others.

Ultimately, it comes down to customer experience as determined by website speed. Getting that right means a business could be rewarded with a high number of visits, numerous conversions, a boost in brand awareness and a healthy bottom line. Getting it wrong could have severe ramifications in terms of exit rates and negative word of mouth publicity.

With that in mind, below are a few considerations that should be taken into account when trying to improve customers’ experience of a website:

The most annoying factor
Among the myriad surveys that have been carried out to determine users’ opinions about the internet, the biggest irritant typically cited is slow websites. Pages that don’t load quickly and requests that receive poor responses due to slow-running websites are two reasons why users will exit a site without progressing through to the checkout. Website speed is an extremely important customer experience factor; just consider your own good and bad online shopping encounters to empathise.

Increasing impatience
Website owners might be amazed at the impatience exhibited by users, which research shows has increased substantially over the years. In 2000, users were happy to wait eight seconds for a page to load. By 2005 this had dropped to five seconds and by 2009, users would wait only three seconds before navigating away, according to research by Akamai.

Even now, one in ten people will exit a site if they have to wait just one second for it to respond. It’s clear, therefore, that increasing a website’s speed will not only retain customers and improve their experience of the site. It will also offer serious benefits to the business regarding engagement and conversion.

The need for speed
Further research has shown that almost half of users will exit a site altogether if there are any IT issues, defecting usually to a competitor. Why let competitors gain that business? Improving the speed of a website and in turn regaining a customer base, could be as simple as switching servers. Better still, by using coloaction services to host their server at a dedicated hosting data centre, businesses may be able to access greater bandwidth – as well as reduced latency.

Quick navigation
Having speedy page loading times will also allow website users to navigate the website more easily. Even if the website isn’t perhaps laid out as best it could be, the frustrating aspect of this could be mitigated by at least allowing each page to load very quickly. For example, making their way to the checkout might not involve the easiest route, but if this is combined with slow loading times, the experience will be even worse. Remove at least one of these factors and you’re more likely to land a sale!

Statistics show that two-thirds of users who endure a bad customer experience online, for whatever reason, will shop elsewhere next time. It’s said that each one of them, on average, will tell ten people about their ordeal.

Shopping online, it must not be forgotten, is supposed to offer convenience. By providing a more responsive, clearly displayed website, a business can almost guarantee customer satisfaction and expect repeat visits for years to come.

We are living in a technological age. Everything from shopping to doing laundry is automated. This has made a lot of things easier, but, as everything else, it comes with a price. Talks of letting technology into the classroom are getting more and more frequent, but a lot of people are still uncertain if the benefits will be greater than the drawbacks. This article will try to present both and perhaps help you make up your mind on the topic.

Advantages

There are a number of advantages to using iPad or other similar devices in teaching. Students would be given a chance to formulate their answers or to be presented with their lessons in a number of different ways – video podcasts, images, or audio recordings. This kind of variety in input that they would have to produce would without a doubt stimulate mental activity in students, but the concern is that it might also draw some of the attention from the subject matter that they are dealing with.

This approach would also help the students develop the skills that are becoming necessary in the electronic age. We are not far from the time in which all jobs with decent pay will require their employees to be proficient with the use of these types of technology. Interacting with such devices from an early age could give children the edge that they will need.

This could also help in bringing the world to the students, they could have conference calls with authorities in the field that they are studying or communicate with them in some other manner, social networks being one good example. But easy access to social networking and other apps that are not related to education could be too much of a temptation in the classroom and could lead to students spending the largest part of their classes on engaging in activities that have nothing to do with their subject matter.

Cases have been made that having all the necessary texts in one portable device would be much more convenient than lugging around a number of books covering but a fraction of what you could easily store in your new iPad3. There is also the fact that you would have the vast resources of the internet at your disposal, the only drawback here being that not all of the information that you can find on the net has the reliability of the ones that you find in approved study books. But differentiating between reliable facts and semi informed guesses is a skill that students should learn to develop anyway.

Drawbacks

Of course there are a lot of other problems with this type of teaching. For one it would be more expensive than traditional methods. And even thought the typing is faster than writing everything by hand, the time that would be saved might be lost on system crashes or other technology related problems. And finally, it might have extremely negative impact on grammar and spelling skills as the machine would be taking care of that part of writing for the students.

Despite all of the drawbacks, it is hard to imagine a future in which new mobile phones, tablet computers or some other types of devices are not in general use in classrooms. They might require some modifications first, and people will definitely need some time to get used to this way of studying but it does seem inevitable.

I just spent the last week in Orlando to attend BlackBerry World and BlackBerry 10 Jam, the biggest BlackBerry event of the year, thanks to RIM who “sent” me there in the role of BlackBerry ambassador. This year, it was even more important than ever. It was the biggest BlackBerry event ever organized and definitely an important and historical milestone for RIM. New CEO, new strategy and a new, impressive team of RIM people completely dedicated to developers.

Why so important? With the soon to be released BlackBerry 10 operating system, with the new wonderful BB10 devices (one of them in my hands thanks to the BB10 Jam event, compared to an iPhone in the photo below) and with a newly laser-focused strategy, RIM is definitely rebuilding itself and telling the world they are alive and kicking and ready to compete in a market where Apple and Android are undoubtely two great competitors they have to deal with. T. Heins, the new CEO, during his opening keynote clearly described what the “BlackBerry user” looks like and how the new BB10 and the overall RIM’s strategy is going to satisfy their needs more than ever. Unlike other vendors (aka Nokia) they are still committed to R&D and innovation, betting on a brand new operating system.

The thing that impressed me the most was how much they are paying attention to developers (and investing… 100M $ invested so far in various forms!). They built an incredible team around the world to take care of developers and, more importantly, to tell them why they should bet on RIM and BlackBerry. The numbers they presented were impressive: App World, RIM’s app store, is growing at an incredible rate and more and more “big” software firms are porting their apps to the BB Playbook. One for all? Rovio with Angry Birds, for example. Moreover, they are pushing HTML5 development from any standpoint, being the Playbook the best tablet in terms of HTML5 performances and given all the tools and libraries they made available to transform an HTML5 app into an almost-native app. Using their own words, no “NIBS” (Native Is Better Syndrome).

Last but not least, kudos to my old friend Alec Saunders. We have been in touch for over 7 years now, met in various conferences and in different tech environments, helped each other with our own services and companies through blogging and word of mouth. Now, in his new role of VP Developers Relations at RIM, he is definitely doing an amazing job engaging and helping developers to create incredible apps for the BlackBerry smartphones, Playbook and now the new BB10 devices. He and his team definitely deserve a “big round of applause” for the incredible results of this BB10 Jam. Keep up with the great work, Alec! You and your colleagues made this event better than… a MacWorld

If you are a developer and want to know more about developing for the Playbook and BB10, just drop me a line, happy to put you in touch with the right people.

Smartphones click because they are what they are – smart. These phones are smart enough to replace many electronic devices such as alarm clocks, calculators, and of course personal digital assistants for emailing and document processing. With the innovations in smartphone technology however, we just don’t get phone basics like calls, texts, chats and emails, we also get a brilliant screen, clear audio, helpful apps, and yes, an outstanding camera that can definitely replace your regular standalone cameras.

It seems like smartphone makers are serious about replacing cameras and win the attention of avid photographers. In fact, numerous smartphones can now be used to take artistic close-ups and distant shots with full-camera features like zoom, macro lenses and even fisheye technology. This guarantees that users can take professional-looking pictures as if they are taken from a high-priced single-lens camera. Some smartphones even feature three-lens kits for an even more serious photography. These lenses are also detachable for convenience, just like a real camera does.

Below is a list of smartphones that are very effective as cameras as well, not to mention the fact that all of them are packed with features that definitely make them smart:

• Samsung Galaxy S II – this is the first on the list because I’m always biased to anything Samsung. But aside from personal preference, this smartphone is definitely a top of the line smartphone. It actually comes it 3 different names from three different mobile carriers. AT&T calls it Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Sprint calls it Galaxy S II Epic 4G while T-Mobile just calls it simply Galaxy S II. But no matter how carriers call it, it’s still the same 8-megapixel LED flash camera phone that can capture great photos as well as record 1080p videos. Naturally, this phone comes with many other smartphone features as well but you might want to hold out till the Galaxy S III is released, I heard it’s just around the corner and obviously it will be better than Galaxy S II.

• iPhone 4S – This is definitely one pricey smartphone but the price tag comes with great features including a highly efficient and a much improved camera. Aside from the high-quality pictures that the camera phone can take, iPhone also comes with available apps that work together with the hardware to enhance (edit and format) photos. The photos taken originally don’t only look good on screen but also on print and on the web when shared with family and friends.

• Nokia Lumia 900 – is Nokia’s entry to the world of smartphones. With its eye-catching design and efficient system, along with its 8-megapixel camera, taking great pictures is as easy as 1-2-3. The phone’s camera also comes with a dual LED flash and autofocus lens to capture those moments in colorful and meaningful pictures.

• HTC One X – this phone is just one of the three new Android phones from HTC which features a sleek and shiny façade, smartphone capabilities and yes, an extremely good camera for taking high-quality pictures and videos. The phone’s camera is also 8-megapixel that comes with a 28-millimeter lens that is comparable even to highly dedicated stand-alone cameras. The phone’s camera features allow for a well-balanced speed, light and focus that guarantees great pictures.

Obviously, there are still a lot more smartphones out there that can easily replace cameras these days. This goes to prove that with the innovations we have today, phones are becoming more and more compact each day as it can replace many electronic devices, sometimes even PCs. Maybe we’ll find ourselves using our smartphones to many PC activities that we may need an optimization tool like PC Speed Up to improve its speed and performance. But well, that’ll come in the future, for now, with smartphones capable of taking high-quality pictures, who needs to carry a separate camera?

If you want to find the smartphone that’s right for you, then visit Phones 4U, where you can find all the information that you need to find the right deal for you.

So, you’ve picked up your new mobile phone.  It’s the latest, shiniest phone on the street right now and you’ve been waiting for it for weeks.  You unpack it, put everything together, and start to transfer your music, photos and everything else onto it and what happens?  You run out of space before you’ve finished.  You need an upgrade already, but what should you go for?

Right now, there is a sweet spot in terms of memory cards, with products like the SanDisk 32GB Micro SD card selling like hot cakes for mobile phone use.  They hit the market in 2011 and were a little way ahead of their time (not to mention very expensive) but as phones got smarter and we started to carry around more data they found their calling.  Sales went up, prices went down, and now you’ll find that 32GB memory cards are about the standard you need.  To put 32GB into perspective, it is equivalent to about 8000 MP3’s if you have got them at the standard 128Kbps rate.  That should be plenty for all your music, plus photographs and any video you take using the phone.

Taking the SanDisk 32Gb Micro SD card as an example, that capacity is available in several flavours, all of which are designed for different applications.  They range from the ‘Standard’ model to the ‘Ultra’, ‘Extreme’ and finally ‘Pro’ versions, all of which build on the previous ones in terms of performance and which get correspondingly more expensive.  For use in a mobile phone, at this point in time you don’t really need to be looking beyond the ‘Standard’ range.  No mobile phone currently on the market has the ability to get the most out of the higher specification memory cards – there’s no need to read or write data extremely quickly, for example, as even shooting video on a mobile phone doesn’t require anything like the power needed for doing it on a camcorder as you just aren’t recording the same level of detail.

One thing that you’ve probably noticed is that there is a fairly wide range of prices when it comes to memory cards.  As with many technology related items this tends to reflect the quality and the features that the product offers, with the most well known and high-end memory cards commanding the highest prices.     That doesn’t always mean that you should pay the highest prices though, as you may be paying for features you don’t need or just aren’t appropriate for the way you are going to use the card.  Paying the extra for a top-speed card, for example, isn’t worth it as you don’t need to read or write data that quickly.  On the other hand, if your data is important to you or you don’t want letting down just when you need it most, then a card that provides a decent guarantee might be worth paying a little more for – if nothing else, it’s a good indicator that the card is likely to be reliable, and if the worst does happen you’ll get a replacement free of charge.

What is Google Penguin Update?

If you are regular follower of the Google trends then you must be aware of the next update after panda 3.3 made by Google to further stricken its policies to get rid of spammy website. Yes, I am talking about Google Penguin update. This time also Google is secretive about all the details related to this webspam killer update. But one that that Google is stated clearly with Penguin update that it’s strongly targeting the websites and blogs which are not following the web guidelines laid by Google.

To know the exact here is the Google official the announcement.

With the update also many sites and blogs have been fallen down in rankings and traffic. So I share with you some Penguin Update Recovery Methods directed By Google itself:

Penguin update in most of the manner is similar to earlier Panda update which targeted sites with copied and low quality content. It not only penalized small site but few bog names also got struck with the arrow.

1. Complete NO to Black Hat SEO Tactics:

Many site owners and bloggers inspite of Google guidelines, take the blackhat SEO way of having hidden text and links on their site, which is not for the visitors but only to make fool of search engines to reach high rankings on search engine.

Cloaking is also one of the oldest backhat SEO tick which many uses. In this websites show some other page to the search engines and another version of the same page to the normal visitors. Some make use of shaddy re-directs to mislead the search engine crawlers.

Do NOT use Doorway Pages on your site. Google Penguin can easily identify that a webpage has been added for search engines only not for normal users.

If you are doing any of these on your site then stop that right know. Otherwise Google Penguin will get you!

2. Re-Consider Your OBL (Out Bound Links)

Check your website’s out bound links. Having too many will not do any good for you in getting high search engine ranking instead this can make Google penguin susceptible about you. Apply NO-Follow tag to the OBLs which of no value.

Place your out bound links are they look natural; they should appear as if they are paid links.

3. Optimum Amount Of Keywords Should Be Added

Keyword stuffing is one thing which Google does not like. Keywords are important but that does not means that you over stuff your site with them. If you do so it comes as a black hat technique for getting SEO results. Google can easily identify such bad tactics and will penalize your websites ranking.

Keep check of keyword density in your content and your blog post in case of blogs. Try to keep it around 3 to 4%.

4. Don’t Miss Use Google By sending Automated Queries

Refrain your site from sending automated queries to goggle data center. Do not add any such script which does so.

5. Do Not Use Copied Content

Using copied content could be the main reason for search engines to penalize your site. Don’t fool search engines by making multiple domains with same content.

If genuinely needed you can use 301 redirect which lets Google know your intentions to get which page indexed and avoid others. Do not forget to set your canonicals right.

6. Avoid Pages with Suspicious Behavior

Google Penguin will not spare you if you harm the visitor of your site. So remove the pages which can cause virus attacks, or spread malware, Trojans, etc.

7. Don’t Be Part Of Any Affiliate SPAM

Affiliate program can be use both for a good and to spread spam also. So if your site is a part of any such affiliate program that it gives value to the ones who are visiting the affiliate site.

8. Concentrate on Quality of Links Not Quantity

It’s not important to make many links it’s important to have quality links. Stay away from link exchanges which only target increase in search engine rankings and your site page rank. Google Penguin will see what kind of neighborhood your site has. If it finds them to be spammy and non relevant then it will affect your site’s ranking adversely.

So follow one rule to survive Penguin update or any other search engine update i.e. follows ethical SEO methods and practices only. But if you are already hit by the penguin update then follow these tips to reduce your casualty to some extent.