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Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

Google ad infinitum 2007-07-20 03:16:59 Something somebody said yesterday took the words right out of my mouth; “Do you find what you’re looking for on Google, or do you get nothing but thousands of adverts about what you searched for?” As much as I love Google, yesterday I was trying to find some information on Cape Town beaches, but all I could find was travel pages aimed at foreigners with blurbs about the beaches. Even 28 pages deep, I didn’t see any privately owned sites with anyone just, you know, mentioning a Cape Town beach in passing. Sponsored ads, or Google ads, are obviously acceptable, fair play. I know that I, along with the other Quirk SEOkes, am partly to blame for this. Granted, I was doing beach research for some SEO copy, but it’s much bigger than you and I. Lets face it, Google is pretty damn big. Google is Don Vito Corleone, and we’re just the guys that make the Marinara Sauce he loves so much. As time passes, search engines in general become more accurate and spe ... Google

Google Earth Lights 2007-07-19 05:35:07 I was pretty excited when Google Earth was originally launched, I was however, rather disappointed by the time delay and various other glitches. When Sarah M asked me to take a look today, I will admit that I was seriously impressed by how far Google Earth has come. Now just in case I didn’t have enough YouTube videos to distract me, I now have to contend with Google 3D images, searching for my house (good to see my gardener is working hard), “fly in searches” and various other applications. However the latest addition is what has my attention today… Google Earth at Night  The new layers update shows various images, including how much light various cities put out at night (and yes Zimbabwe is pretty dark). Further features include; placemarks to astronaut photography taken of the Earth from space, such as the snow in Lesotho, and interesting satellite photography NASA has collected of the Earth. It would appear that this is only the beginning and a ... Google

The Net and a Rat Changing Hollywood 2007-07-18 07:29:58 Time's recent article, The Smartest Movie Marketing Ploys, shows that movies are having more and more trouble capturing top of mind awareness. Even a megabucks blockbuster like Transformers finds itself with only a one week window to grab audience attention, being squeezed in as it is on either side by the new Die Hard and Harry Potter sequels. So, if a movie with a budget nearing $150 million is having its fair share of challenges in shouting loudly enough to be heard over the mass hysteria produced by Hollywood staples what hope do the smaller, less financially muscled productions have in developing their own demand? The Time article highlights the success of Waitress, a film that had to go head-to-head on its opening weekend with the extremely publicised Spiderman 3. With its distribution rights having been acquired for $4 million Waitress went on to gross $17 million at the box-office. Not a bad return for a film that's not necessarily commercially driven. Then there's Ratat ... Hollywood

The Casio EXILIM: Making it easier to embarrass yourself 2007-07-18 07:04:53 Just when you thought YouTube had enough embarrassing videos of you doing the Macarena at your office Christmas party they go and strike a deal with Casio to develop the first camera with YouTube capabilities. Yes, now we can embarrass ourselves quicker and at a higher resolution. The new Casio EXILIM range of cameras has been created in conjunction with YouTube to provide settings specifically for recording, storing and uploading videos onto YouTube. This new invention has a specific “YouTube mode” which provides sharp resolution (640 x 480) and a frame rate of up to 30 frames per second. With multiple video uploading capabilities it is specifically designed to simplify the process of loading clips on to YouTube. Casio has taken things to a new level by creating a camera with these new features, but has taken aesthetics into account as well and kept this camera lightweight at about the size of an oversized credit card. With over 1.73 billion video views, YouTube has ta ...

The Casio EXLIM: Making it easier to embarrass yourself 2007-07-18 05:49:53 Just when you thought YouTube had enough embarrassing videos of you doing the Macarena at your office Christmas party they go and strike a deal with Casio to develop the first camera with YouTube capabilities. Yes, now we can embarrass ourselves quicker and at a higher resolution. The new Casio EXLIM range of cameras has been created in conjunction with YouTube to provide settings specifically for recording, storing and uploading videos onto YouTube. This new invention has a specific “YouTube mode” which provides sharp resolution (640 x 480) and a frame rate of up to 30 frames per second. With multiple video uploading capabilities it is specifically designed to simplify the process of loading clips on to YouTube. Casio has taken things to a new level by creating a camera with these new features, but has taken aesthetics into account as well and kept this camera lightweight at about the size of an oversized credit card. With over 1.73 billion video views, YouTube has tak ...

A Retrospectacle Case Study: Atari to Playstation 2007-07-17 08:53:14 I love nothing more than technology with a bit of mould on it. Call me tech-nostalgic, but one has to appreciate the roots of today’s systems and platforms. That’s why I’ve decided to provide you with a cock-eyed comparison of two game console adverts, highlighting the contrast in advertising angles and technological leaps. The Atari Advert An advert from the UK, from around 1982 (open for comment), for one of the earliest generation Atari consoles available. Not quite the angle “allowed” these days is it? Parents in the 21st century would rather not have their children be encouraged to play games around the clock. Furthermore; “educational”? The PlayStation Advert A British PlayStation III advert from earlier this year. Explosions, action, sex, Clifton Collins Jr, fire, suggested violence, maniacal behaviour and weaponry. Much better. Comment on "A Retrospectacle Case Study: Atari to Playstation" ... Playstation

Green is the new black 2007-07-16 06:53:45 Earlier this year a tree-hugging blogger called Mark Ontkush posted the following comment on his site, ecoIron: “an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts.” Ontkush immediately thought of search giant Google. With over 200 million page views a day, Google is one of the most visited (and whitest) sites on the Internet. Google’s clean landing page has often been suggested as one of the reasons it became such a popular search engine in the late 90’s. While competitors like Yahoo! were trying to cram as much as possible onto their landing page, Google’s minimalist search page was refreshingly simple and uncluttered. After a few calculations Ontkush worked out that if Google changed their white display to black, the world would save about 3000 Megawatt-hours and $75,000 in electricity a year! Not bad for a simple change of colour. Google, despite their “Do No Evil” philosophy, never responded ...

MySpace still going strong 2007-07-16 04:06:31 Last week, Sarah touched on the fact that MySpace is still leading the social networking race in her post, Raining on Facebook’s parade. MySpace still get over three times the number of daily visits as Facebook. On a recent trip to the UK, I didn’t manage eavesdrop on any Facebook-related conversations, I only heard about MySpace. This  lead me to suspect that the mass exodus is not international – and that the Facebook phenomenon may just be a passing phase in South Africa. I felt a great sense of relief. My international MySpace friends are generally still ardent MySpace users. I’d quite like to see the stats according to country because I’m sure that they vary quite significantly. What is particularly interesting is the fact that everyone in South Africa is turning away from MySpace and towards Facebook. All of my South African friends on MySpace also have a Facebook account and are starting to use MySpace less and less. The South African friend ...

Any closer and it would be illegal 2007-07-15 02:37:28 I'm trying to form words, but I have none. Somehow Sarah thinks this is hysterical... I'm going to vomit. Comment on "Any closer and it would be illegal" ...

Too comfortable? 2007-07-15 02:36:30 The world can be pretty easily divided into cat people and dog people, and I've always proudly fallen into the latter. Now there have always been arguments back and forth praising or deriding each pet but I reckon that this clip shows that dogs will in fact always kick more booty than cats. Comment on "Too comfortable?" ...

In your dreams boys 2007-07-14 02:18:47 I think this is what it must be like when men dream… Ford Falcon XR8 Ute – the power it gives blokes is unbelievable. Comment on "In your dreams boys" ...

Holding Thumbs for Cha Cha 2007-07-13 07:26:22 Do you ever sit staring at the blinking cursor of a search engine, not quite knowing what you’re looking for, let alone how to approach it? A week or two ago I was looking for the name of an invention, but had no idea how to start searching for it. After asking a few people in the office, Carlos mentioned a new search engine he’d been toying around with. Cha Cha is one of the so called “new breed” of search engines. Although the concept is not new, Cha Cha is the first big social search engine, and uses a combination of Boolean and human logic. One half of the site is your everyday search engine providing all you’d expect from an engine. The other half of the engine is manned by a collection of “Guides”, with whom you can chat live and logically explain your query. As much as I like the idea, I’ve used the service three times now, and have yet to receive a conclusion on either of my searches. In all three cases I offered as much extra ...

Raining on Facebook's parade 2007-07-13 03:09:00 For the past few weeks, months (who can keep track) we’ve all been ranting on ad nauseum about Facebook and its powers to heal the world (ok, so maybe that was just me). A couple of weeks ago at family dinner we were all chatting about Facebook and how fab it is. My dad is the only one in almost my entire family to not have a Facebook account, even my little brother has one, though he doesn’t use it because he reckons MySpace is far cooler. After this statement we launched into a discussion on how much better Facebook is and why it’s so great in comparison to MySpace (yep, this was mostly spearheaded by me). Now I have to do something I detest doing, admit I was wrong… Yesterday Michael Arrington published a post on TechCrunch entitled MySpace - Still The King, and it looks like he’s right. With 41 billion more page views per month than Facebook, nearly 25 million people visit MySpace daily (triple Facebook’s numbers). For the full skinny on the ...

Google - How do they maintain control? 2007-07-11 07:54:54 Let’s face it, Google is massive – it’s the wonderful omnipresent leader in search. Due to its accelerated business growth Google has gone from a 2 man show to an estimated 10 000 strong staff complement in 9 years. This leaves me asking the question, how is it that a company that has grown (and is growing) so fast managing it HR aspects? With Google receiving in excess of 1000 resumes a day it seems like it must be the perfect place to work. Oprah recently ran a short piece on the top companies to work for and Google ranked top. Not surprising considering what they offer: More to the point, how do you manage a company which is growing at such a frantic rate (this year alone approx 30% increase in staff)? Any HR manager will tell you; that’s really drastic! A friend from school recently did an internship at Google and now that his product has been released he has started blogging a lot about the company. Recently I saw a post on Google’s top 10 Proce ... Google

Facebook - Friendship's 'Lost & Found' 2007-07-10 01:30:35 Ryan says, "Hi Alice! Damn, it's been a while hey?! How have you been? It's cool to see so many familiar OW faces out there! Hope that you're doing well! Take care! Ryan." The above message came attached to a Friend Request on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook, you probably know the drill; blast from the past. It was a major reason that I was particularly hesitant about joining Facebook in the first place – people who tend to take the ‘finding old friends’ act a bit too far. Who was this ‘Ryan’ character anyway? It took me quite a while to get the old memory mill up and running. The reference to my old high school was a good start. I have vague recollections of someone I think I used to refer to as the Oros Man due to a particularly orange complexion. In all honesty, I don’t think that I even knew his name in high school (not because I was ‘too cool’ - on the contrary, I was a social hermit). The strange thing about th ...