fresh01 blog

February 20, 2011 – 1:28 pm

by Ed Stevenson

The online display landscape is changing, and fast. Facebook and the Google Display Network have been at the forefront of a crucial shift in the market towards what is becoming fast referred to as the performance display market.

However, with the newness of Facebook Advertising and the introduction of social media into this mix, advertisers are only beginning to experiment with Facebook ads. Most are only now figuring out how to effectively run advertising programs on Facebook.

To help you realise the potential of Facebook Advertising in 2011 I wanted to share four tips from how we have seen advertisers using Facebook advertising effectively through our platform. The aim is to help you scale up your campaigns and ultimately drive a greater return.

It’s social media, not search

Whilst there are many similarities between the skills needed to manage Facebook Advertising and search there are also crucial differences. The temptation is to dive right into Facebook Advertising expecting to drive traffic from Facebook to your site and convert users there, just as in paid search. While this can work in some scenarios, refining the experience to account for the surroundings in Facebook typically delivers better results. Custom Pages or Applications on Facebook mean you can capture traffic within the platform, resulting in lower bounce rates.

Custom Pages, mean consumers can “Like” your product or brand and you can then remarket to them over time using status updates about deals or upcoming events. Meanwhile Facebook Apps give even more control as you can gather detailed demographic data from user profiles, for your targeting.

Expansion of targeting parameters

The beauty of Facebook from an advertiser perspective is that users list terms that define their likes and interests which can all be targeted. However, the way users phrase these likes and interests varies, in the same way searchers on a search engine use different search phrases for the same product. As such, in order to target a full audience of potential customers, you may have to do some investigating which goes beyond your general keyword search. For example, using the targeting parameter “travelling,” your ad will not reach users who have listed “travelling around the world” or “gap year travelling” on their profile.

Using a root analysis of your targeting parameter is a useful way to expand your audience and increase performance. Enter your targeting parameter into Facebook’s “Likes & Interests” targeting setting and find related terms. Using the travelling example, entering “travelling w” increases the list to include “travelling with friends” and “we love travelling around globe.” This expansion increases your audience and will help improve ROI
Segmentation is king

It’s no secret that there are 500 million Facebook users, creating a huge audience for your ads. It’s also no secret that all users aren’t the same and won’t react in the same way to your adverts. Breaking down your audience into segments will help you understand how valuable each one is to you, and create a platform from which you can optimise bids.

Age, location, and gender are a good place to start and will help you identify high converting segments. As you measure variance between your segmented advertisements, you can adjust your bids to improve the overall ROI for Facebook ad campaigns.

Don’t let users go blind

Facebook is a social network. Users want to interact with friends, share their photos and play games; they’re not on a search engine looking for products and services. It is an interruptive ad format. Your ads need to grab their attention. Users are overloaded with content and go into scan mode; you need to learn the tricks of the online display advertising trade to overcome this.

Firstly, it is even more important on Facebook than most publishers to modify and rotate creative regularly because ads can be served to the same users multiple times. It doesn’t take long for users to completely tune out to repeat ads. In order to minimise ad blindness and increase click-through rates constantly be rotating images and headline copy.

Secondly, most successful ads include colourful, engaging images — and of course, a compelling and relevant offer. Colourful borders like orange or yellow, will contrast with the blue and white Facebook interface, attracting users eyes and increasing Click Through Rates.
The next step is to test, test and test again. Make sure you start testing creative as early as possible in the campaign. The most-clicked ads are not necessarily the most attractive they are the ones that jump off the page.

Conclusion

I think we’re hitting a tipping point in Facebook Advertising, where if you don’t start now then you’re going to fall behind the competition. We’re seeing a general wave of optimism towards Facebook as an advertising platform as technologies to run campaigns advance and best practice techniques evolve.
It’s easy to sit back and take the “see what happens” approach, but I think now is definitely the time to act on Facebook Advertising and implement some of these best practice techniques.

Ed Stevenson is managing director, EMEA & APAC at Marin Software

Read more: http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/02/23/facebook-advertising-four-tips-to-make-it-work-in-2011/#ixzz1EnBSOD1e

February 17, 2011 – 8:27 am

Yes, it’s that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honouring the least evolved amongst us.
Here is the glorious winner:

1. When his 38 calibre revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach , California, would-be robber Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

And now, the honourable mentions:

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger.. The chef’s claim was approved.

3. A man who shovelled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer… $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly.. He decided that he’d just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, “Yes, officer, that’s her. That’s the lady I stole the purse from.”

9.. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti , Michigan at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street by sucking on a hose, he got much more than he bargained for… Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his siphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had.

In the interest of bettering mankind, please share these with friends and family….unless of course one of these individuals by chance is a distant relative or long lost friend. In that case, be glad they are distant and hope they remain lost.

February 13, 2011 – 2:56 pm

By John Timmer, Ars Technica

How much information can the world transmit, process, and store? Estimating this sort of thing can be a nightmare, but the task can provide valuable information on trends that are changing our computing and broadcast infrastructure. So a pair of researchers have taken the job upon themselves and tracked the changes in 60 different analog and digital technologies, from newsprint to cellular data, for a period of over 20 years.
The trends they spot range from the expected—Internet access has pushed both analog and digital phones into a tiny niche—to the surprising, such as the fact that, in aggregate, gaming hardware has always had more computing power than the world’s supercomputers.

The authors were remarkably thorough. For storage media, they considered things like paper, film, and vinyl records, and such modern innovations as Blu-ray discs and memory cards. To standardize their measurements across media, they used Shannon’s information theory to consider data storage in terms of optimally compressed bits. They also tracked technology, noting that in the year 2000, bits of video were compressed using cinepak, which was far less efficient than the current MPEG-4 format; calculations were adjusted accordingly.
Even so, there are some significant estimations here. “For example,” the authors note, “after normalization on optimally compressed bits we can say things like ‘a 6 square-cm newspaper image is worth a 1,000 words.’”

Similar sorts of estimates are required for things like broadcast capability and two-way communications, both of which are compiled as bits-per-second figures. The researchers estimate typical consumption of broadcast media to figure out how much of the existing capacity is used, and they figure that, since telecom equipment is run to maximize the use of its capacity, it’s usually booked to close to its limit.
Computing capacity is converted into MIPS, and estimates for the total number and class of chips are available. The big question mark here is mostly in embedded controllers; it’s hard to estimate both their computational capacity and how many are out there.
So these are pretty rough estimates, but similar assumptions are made at all four time points examined between 1986 and 2007. That should allow comparisons of trends across the time period, even if the absolute values of the estimates are a bit off.

read rest of story:

http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/world-computer-data/

February 12, 2011 – 2:00 pm

February 8, 2011 – 2:53 pm

Fresh01 are very proud to announce that Travel Angel the elearning course designed and built by Fresh01 has been awarded the coveted CSR award for Innovation and the overall GOLD award at the Business Travel Show.

Fresh designed, produced and directed the e-learning course - helped launch it and market it to be one of the leading products in the security arena. Kurt Ozficici of Fresh01 remarked “We are delighted that all the hard work and effort of our combined teams has been rewarded in such a prestigious way, this is the first of many significant landmarks in our journey through the world of e-learning that we are proud to hold up high and shout about.”

http://fresh01.com/elearning-work

Launched in February 2010, Travel Angel is an online Traveller safety e-Learning course, which has been developed using years of instructor lead training. 

Areas covered included in the modules:

• Personal Security Protocols - How to manage personal security protocols to help reduce risk of exposure to violence based around the simple acronym SAFER: Situational awareness, Avoid routine, Follow security protocols, Ensure reliable communications, Remain anonymous.

• Preparation & Arrival - Aids in planning ahead for travel specifically to manage potential complications including: prior to departure, required documents, luggage, in-flight and arrival at destination.

• Travel Health Risks - Topics covered include: Pre-travel consultation, destination health issue awareness, pre-dental checks, information on mosquitoes, exposure to the sun, HIV Aids, personal medical kits.

• Getting Around Your Destination - Topics covered include: In the hotel, taxis and minicabs, rental cars, driving and the law, parking, on foot, specifically for women.
• Street Crime & Robbery - Addresses general street crime scenarios such as: Areas likely to be targeted by criminals, spatial awareness, “robbery wallets”, hostile negotiations, incident reporting procedure.

• Terrorism & Civil Unrest - Addresses Al Qaida and other related terrorist groups ability and willingness to carry our indiscriminate terrorist attacks. Topics covered include: high risk target recognition, personal response measures, hotel/building procedures. 

Travel Angel is a unique groundbreaking e-learning course designed to reduce corporate and traveller exposure to risk through education and awareness training prior to travel. Applicable to business travellers worldwide, we are now the industry leaders in the provision of this type of online training with over 366,000 corporate

About the awards:

The annual Business Travel & Meetings Show Innovation Awards which recognise those business travel & meetings suppliers who create highly innovative products, services and processes for business travellers and bookers, buyers and arrangers of travel & meetings.

There are seven ‘Category Award Winners’, signifying the travel suppliers who are leading innovators in a specific area of travel management and from these category winners the supplier considered to be the ‘most innovative’ is awarded with the ‘Gold Innovation Award’.

All category winners are presented with a commemorative award during the first day of the Business Travel Show with the ‘Gold Innovation Award’ presented at the BT Club & After Show Party on Tuesday 8th in front of 500+ VIP buyer guests and leading suppliers.

http://fresh01.com/elearning-work

February 4, 2011 – 4:30 pm

The explosion of social networking sites over the past decade has facilitated a transformation in the way we communicate with each other. Here we look at some of these communities with over 1 million users, both active and defunct.

social graphic

via: http://www.focus.com/fyi/other/boom-social-sites/

January 20, 2011 – 12:14 pm

One maybe about to don one’s glasses

By Marc Chacksfield

Sky News has been given the rights to produce the Queen’s Speech, alongside the BBC and ITN.
It will be produced by all three companies in 2011 and 2012, which brings in the distinct possibility that the whole thing will be shot in 3D by Sky.
While this isn’t set in stone, a spokesperson for Sky contacted the Guardian and said the company was “exploring the opportunity” of using 3D technology for the speech.
The Queen isn’t known for doing her annual address to the nation while performing death-defying stunts. So if it is shot in 3D, don’t expect it to be the most riveting piece of 3D programming you have seen - but it would be a turning point for the technology.
For queen and country
Sky’s is ramping up its 3D output in 2011, increasing its sporting and film output and adding significant meat to what is a rather barebones 3D channel.
But for 3D to thrive it needs to be used for all television and not just ‘event TV’, so the Queen’s Speech could be a good starting point for this.
There’s already been speculation that the upcoming wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton will be shot in 3D, as well as the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, so why not make it one massive royal 3D rumble and end the year with the Queen’s Christmas Message in another dimension?

Via the Guardian

January 14, 2011 – 12:16 pm

If it’s on the internet, it must be free. That statement isn’t true, but lots of people believe it. How else can we explain the way entire blog posts are copied and pasted, pros’ photos are reproduced without permission or payment and entire website designs are blatantly nicked? The good news is that in many cases the offenders are clueless, not criminal. The bad news? Enforcing your rights can be a hassle.

Why people steal your stuff

You know about copyright – it’s your business – but most people don’t, and as a result people who take your content don’t necessarily realise that they’re doing anything wrong. It’s a bit like music downloading: many people who happily download entire albums via Bittorrent wouldn’t dream of shoplifting a CD, because the latter is a crime.

November’s outcry over the Cooks’ Source magazine – in short, a US magazine refused to pay a writer whose work it had copied on the grounds that “the web is considered public domain and you should be happy we didn’t just lift your entire article and put someone’s name on it!” – was fairly typical: the copying was done in the mistaken belief that if it’s online, it’s in the public domain.

Not all content thieves are clueless, of course. Blog posts and online articles are routinely lifted and used to populate advertising-stuffed websites who hope to make money from other people’s efforts, and photos and even entire website designs are stolen by people who know it’s wrong but also know they’ll probably get away with it.

That’s not just bad news because your stuff is being stolen. It’s bad because Google doesn’t like duplicates and may penalise your site accordingly, and it’s bad because it’s sometimes perpetrated by rather worrying organisations. Heather Burns of Idea15 Web Design discovered that her site was being plagiarised by “white label fronts for third-world labour.” As she points out, “being mindful of plagiarism protects your own business from unscrupulous competitors.”

So how do you stop it?

What you can do when someone steals your content

Struan Robertson is legal director of Pinsent Masons LLP and editor of Out-Law.com. “It’s not easy to deal with this sort of theft,” he says. “Your reaction will depend on the circumstances. If it’s possible that the copying was an ignorant mistake – perhaps because the person thought it was okay to copy an image from your site – a polite email could be enough to resolve the matter.

At the other end of the scale, if someone has made a duplicate of your site and it looks like a phishing endeavour, that’s a matter you should take straight to the police. They might ask you to contact the host if you can (whoishostingthis.com is handy for tracing a host) or they might wish to do that themselves.”

If you’re convinced that the infringer knows exactly what he or she is doing, it’s time for a tougher approach: demanding that the infringer stops using your content immediately and won’t use it again. ” If you can calculate a loss as a consequence of the theft, claim that too,” Robertson recommends. “That’s sometimes difficult to do, but if the content is your livelihood – e.g. if you’re a photographer – it will be easier to show your market rate for use of your images.”

Still no luck? Then it’s time to talk to the offender’s web host. “In Europe and the US, if you put a business on notice that it is hosting copyright-infringing content, it has a general duty to take that content down or become liable as infringer,” Robertson says.

If the site is in the US, you can issue a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice, which is designed to fight instances of copyright infringement. If they’re in the UK, the DMCA doesn’t apply but many ISPs do offer simple notice and takedown procedures, so for example ClaraNet has a form for reporting copyright infringement here.

If the site owner isn’t responding to emails, you may need to notify his or her ISP.

You can also ask Google to de-list the offender’s website. As a US firm Google operates under the DCMA, so you can file a DCMA request asking it to remove links to your content. You can only do this if you’re the copyright owner. You’ll find full details of Google’s procedure here.

No more Mister Nice Guy

Sometimes your polite emails are ignored and the offender’s host clearly doesn’t care. Time for legal action? Perhaps. “For many businesses, particularly where the infringer is overseas, the cost of legal action will be prohibitive,” Robertson points out. “Even if you can trace the infringer and succeed in court, the cost of enforcing an order overseas can be huge.

It only makes sense to take action if the cost can be justified financially. That depends in part on the depth of your pockets, and in part on the value of the stolen IP to your business. That means in some cases, writing off the loss will be the only pragmatic thing to do.”

If all else fails, there’s social media. Naming and shaming the offender on blogs, on Twitter or on Facebook may well embarrass them, but be aware that you could be playing with fire: the Cooks’ Source plagiarism we mentioned at the beginning of this article generated a social media storm that quickly snowballed, and at the time of writing the offending editor appears to have been driven out of business altogether.

How you can prevent it happening again

There are several things you can do to prevent people from stealing your content. Photographers have long watermarked their images to prevent unauthorised re-use, but with website copy you can do something similar: if you include some distinctive phrases you can easily Google to see if someone’s ripping you off.

A more sophisticated approach is to use a service such as CopySentry, which starts at $4.95 per month. The service scans your site and then searches for copies of your copy, emailing when it thinks it’s found something. “You then click on the link provided and CopySentry highlights the exact text plagiarised from the original,” Burns says. “You then use their contact information to send them a cease and desist… does it work? I have never had a plagiarist keep their text up for more than 18 hours after getting my email.”

Services such as CopyScape’s CopySentry can monitor the web for copies of your website text.

For Burns such plagiarism is an annoyance – “This is just my own business website’s sales text,” she says, “so it only damages my business in an emotional sense” – but if words are your living, it could let you know if others are trying to profit from your hard work. “For a professional writer or blogger these alerts might inform them that their piece has been published in an overseas magazine under another author’s name,” Burns points out. “It does happen.” Just ask Cooks’ Source.

With images, code and media files, blocking the worst offenders can be worthwhile. The Webdistortion blog has ASP and PHP code that blocks the most common site scrapers, software programs designed to download sites’ entire content.

If the content thieves are dumb enough to hotlink – that is, using your images, JavaScript or CSS files by linking directly to the files on your server – then a few quick changes to a folder’s .htaccess file can prevent that. We think that’s a more professional approach than the – admittedly more satisfying – revenge tactic of replacing hotlinked images with something appalling.

ARTICLE FROM DELL CREATIVE STUDIO

http://www.dellcreativestudio.com/2010/12/10/

January 6, 2011 – 8:01 am

cheers to our old friends Todd Robinson and the gang at Luna Music for the lush new shirt, design by artist Nat Russell :see more of his funky stuff on his blog wonder if he could do one for us? :-)

photo-on-2011-01-06-at-0851

Worn with pride…Long live Luna!

December 22, 2010 – 5:00 pm