Sep
23rd

Dean Kamen is Calling All Mobile Innovators

Posted by Chip Rice on September 23, 2008 at 9:58 am

The name Dean Kamen may not ring a bell.

And you may not be familiar with the multitude of innovations that Kamen has been involved with over the years – like the iBOT all-terrain wheelchair, a mobile dialysis machine called the AutoSyringe, the first insulin pump or the brain-controlled prosthetic limb called the Luke Arm.

segway personal transporters by Malachi Lopez Regardless of your level of familiarity, I’m sure everyone at some point has marveled at his most famous invention: the Segway personal transporter.

Driven by the desire for innovations that change people’s lives and recognizing the possibilities of the emerging mobile space, Kamen has partnered with Nokia for Calling All Innovators, a competition that challenges young developers to explore how mobile applications can benefit society.

Calling All Innovators is putting up $150,000 in cash and prizes and distribution assistance for the winning applications in a quest for mobile phone applications “that solve real problems that face real people.” All submissions are required to run successfully on Nokia devices, the S60 and/or Series 40 platforms, and need to be focused in one of three areas:

Eco-Challenge which seeks mobile devices, software and services that reduce our impact on the environment.

Emerging Markets which seeks mobile services that could impact the daily lives of the millions of people in developing nations – including improvements in the delivery of health information, education, literacy, agricultural information as well as other areas.

Technology Showcase – which seeks cutting-edge applications that enhance the mobile experience. Regardless of the purpose or the development platform, if it runs on S60 or Series 40 Nokia, Calling All Innovators wants to see it.

calling all innovators logo In addition to the prize money and distribution help, winners will also be given the opportunity to showcase their applications at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain where they will also be part of a “meet and great” with industry leaders, VCs, Mobile Operators and distributors.

So if you or your company is working to develop the next great mobile application, or believe you have already done so, now is the time to answer the call.

Segway Image: Malachi Lopez

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Sep
22nd

Gain Buy-In for Integrating Online & Offline Campaigns

Posted by Luke on September 22, 2008 at 9:51 am

A recent study conducted by JupiterResearch shows that only 55% of search engine marketers are integrating their search marketing efforts with offline channels.

So why aren’t more marketers integrating their offline and online initiatives? The fact that separate departments manage these marketing initiatives independent of one another is one of the most common factors.

It’s clear that a large percentage of marketers are not coordinating search and offline, but why should they? Yes, we understand that search captures demand generated by other offline channels. Surveys, studies, and figures aside, coordinating these two channels can improve bottom-line. It costs less to process a transaction online than it does in-store, by phone or by mail. Therefore, the more your offline efforts drive consumers to search and convert online, the better your company’s bottom-line.

Now, you’re ready to prove the benefits of integrating your online and offline marketing efforts. But where do you begin?

First of all, keywords, key messages and calls-to-action that have been identified as most profitable within your search marketing campaign(s) need to be leveraged in your offline mediums. The online team, whether done in-house or by an outside agency has the availability of data to show the offline team how they’ve optimized to maximize ROI, CPA, or any other key metric.

These concrete numbers can help gain buy-in for integrating the two departments.

Furthermore, there are ways to track the ROI for your offline channels. The key to tracking offline media performance lies within the URL.

For radio, it’s a little more of a challenge as users typically will not be able to directly access the internet following a 30 second spot, yet alone remember the URL, verbatim. As a result, working basic keywords related to your campaign along with branded keywords is the best route to take. You’ll be able to bid on these keywords within your paid search campaigns and direct traffic to your custom landing page for offline media.

The same principle can apply to television. With print and direct mail, you can purchase additional domains, define a rule set to redirect users to a custom landing page, and append a tracking parameter to identify the original source: print ad, direct mail piece, or any other offline channel.

By integrating your online marketing campaigns with your offline campaigns and leveraging the above tactics, you’ll be in a better position to understand the effectiveness and profitability of your offline media spend.

Image: Wilhei55

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Sep
19th

International Talk Like a Pirate Day: A Viral Sensation

Posted by Maureen on September 19, 2008 at 8:22 am

Avast me hearties! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. As crazy as it sounds, this holiday is truly a viral sensation.

I’m sure you’re wondering: who ever came up with an international day where we all run around talking like pirates, saying things like “shiver me timbers” and “ya’ scurvy dog“? Apparently that honor goes to John Baur and Mark Summers. But the holiday didn’t really take off until a certain Pulitzer Prize winning author decided to write a column encouraging everyone to use pirate lingo on September 19: Dave Barry.

The result was a viral sensation. And the internet community has picked it up and run with it. This year, besides the official Talk Like a Pirate website, devoted landlubbers will post and share pictures on Flickr, buy official books on Amazon, purchase t-shirts from Café Press and blog in pirate lingo all day long.

And that’s not all! Pirate-themed web tv shows will recognize this important holiday, online communities will challenge memberships to spend the day talking like a pirate and HowToDoThings will even have information on how to teach your parrot to talk. Even Apple has gotten in on the fun with Pirate themed iPhone apps, including a pirate name generator.

To help spread the pirate cheer, every employee at Oneupweb has donned a Oneupweb-designed Talk Like a Pirate t-shirt (those who didn’t were forced to walk the plank and visit Davey Jones’ locker).

It’s fifteen men on a deadman’s chest, yo ho ho and a picture of Gates!

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Sep
18th

Microsoft & Powerset Combine Innovations

Posted by admin on September 18, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Last May, I wrote about Powerset, a new, alternative search engine that boasted improvements to the way we find information by unlocking the meaning behind ordinary language. My exact words: “This Powerset version allows users to search against material within Wikipedia using natural language.”

Since the launch, Powerset has gone through some changes and was recently bought by Microsoft. The higher-ups at Microsoft were impressed with Powerset’s capabilities and interface innovations, so they teamed up to create a shared vision:

To take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages.

Today, Powerset continues to forge ahead with that same goal in mind. Over the last few months, teams from Powerset and Microsoft’s Live Search have collaborated on ideas and designs, and have come up with several projects that will be released over the next 30 days.

These projects were designed with the goal of improving Live Search and Powerset simultaneously by integrating technologies from both search engines. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce three new projects from the collaboration efforts of Powerset and Live Search.

Freebase Answers

This Wikipedia-like project is open to anyone who would like to contribute information; it is “an open, shared database of the world’s information.” Microsoft is utilizing Freebase in order to provide expanded and improved answers for Live Search. A lot of search results today don’t show answers for topical queries such as musicians, albums, and films, but by using Freebase, Live Search is able to return a topic summary that includes links, a result very similar to the Freebase Answers in Powerset.

Improved Wikipedia Captions

Another one of Powerset’s nifty features is that it utilizes semantic technology in order to create improved Wikipedia captions for various articles. And, with the help of Powerset, Live Search will now be able to pull these improved captions into its search result pages that include Wikipedia results.

The Factz Engine

“Factz” from Powerset are concise representations of information that are taken from sentences using three parts; the subject, the relation, and the object. From those parts, a list containing related searches for a set of queries is generated. For example, a search for “chicken recipes” will generate the following list of “Related Searches”:

Baked Chicken Recipes
Oven Baked Chicken Recipes
Easy Chicken Recipes
Chicken Soup Recipes
Low Fat Chicken Recipes
Lemon Chicken Recipe
Fried Chicken Recipes
Chicken Pot Pie Recipe

These projects are currently being tested on a small, randomly selected audience, so any search at Live.com could potentially contain one of the above projects as a bonus tidbit of information. Microsoft and Powerset say that they will continue to work together to help improve each other, and I will be here to report the results back to you! So, until then!

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Sep
16th

And Now for Something Completely Different from Oneupweb!

Posted by admin on September 16, 2008 at 8:53 am

chihuahua Hello, my inquisitive blog-peruser! You may have arrived here all a-twitter at the prospect of gaining a new day’s supply of search related info, and now you are looking at a noble, kingly pooch.

“But why?” you ask. “Why the change?”

To be frank, my attractive little people-person, my purpose (like my taste in doggie treats) is simple: I am here to introduce you to Oneupweb’s new look.

I have a pedicure in 10, so I’ll have to make this quick.

My first order of business is to discuss the appearance of the site. Yes, we have some Flash in this design, and yes, it is so pretty that you are compelled to lick the screen. However, DO NOT LICK THE SCREEN – just let your eyes do the salivating.

We wanted the site to be light-hearted and fun, with a bit of goofy wit thrown in. It’s something we fear may have gotten lost in all of our service-related awesomeness. We are a fun group who try not to take ourselves too seriously (talking Chihuahua here!). But we do take our work seriously. Things get DONE around here. It’s impressive.

Secondly, I want to spread the word about our diverse service offerings. We’re so much more than just an SEO company! You want your conversion rate to improve? No problem. Need more unique visitors? They’ll have to set up a velvet rope! Analytics your thing? We do that better than dogs nap in sunlight. And trust me—I can nap in sunlight like you wouldn’t believe.

Another part of our evolving stable of services is a mastery of Web 2.0 innovations. We retain a podcasting studio and a plethora of on-site talent. In addition, we have a service that can actually TRACK your podcast to minute details! I think it’s as interesting as getting my teeth brushed, but you may find it exceedingly cool that PodTractor can gauge who is downloading your podcasts, when they’re downloading and much more. And we have bloggers, graphic designers, programmers—basically everyone needed to execute a fully integrated digital marketing campaign and make it irresistible to your peeps.

To boil it all down to brass tacks (whatever that process actually looks like), we are rebranding our company because we are more than the predetermined set of skills we have displayed for the last several years. We have come so far from the days of yore—1996!—when we were a small, skilled startup that specialized in SEO. We hope you recognize our continued evolution and trust us to integrate your online business.

And just one more thing. This is only Phase One of our rebranding efforts. Phase Two? It’s gonna blow your brains out.

Jeeves! Fetch me my collar! It’s pedicure time!

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