CityLeaves has brought a concept that opens the internet to businesses and city activities based upon their location, a unique comprehensive travel guide but much much more.
There are a series of CityLeaves being rolled out throughout the country see
http://www.cityleaves.com/manchester for example,
and they offer free support for agents to build their own and share in revenues.
The principle works on the theory of location based marketing and the strengths that are drawn from building business communities and city hubs built around a location. They cover pretty much everything as long as it has a location based emphasis such as food and drink in Aberdeen, shopping, places to stay, travel but also have a strong emphasis on content for the locals such as council and city services.
Public DataWeb are market leaders in touch screen city wide kiosk deployment, retail solutions, large scale web developments and web presence techniques. This blog discusses some modern developments in the technology industry.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The FACEBOOK Bubble Effect
Everything is coming up - SOCIAL NETWORK on the IPO radar due to the FACEBOOK EFFECT.
FACEBOOK is quoted as being valued at $50 Billion! So everyone is scrambling to build copycat services or ad on projects, or linkages into and out from FACEBOOK.
Our own Public DataWeb systems are a Social Network with city centre locations providing Internet access and importantly direct access to our Websites that are CITY FOCUSED giving hot links to local services; our next services will be much more local population focused.
FACEBOOK creates associations of friends whilst ours connects local people with each other and with local services: the NEXT STEP FOR SOCIAL NETWORKING.
Our networking methods existed before FACEBOOK and can integrate with FACEBOOK upon our soon to be upgraded online network.
Our services are real world, and have physical attributes (Street PARASOL'S) + WEB PRESENCE.
So if the Bubble inflates and even bursts our strengths will remain.
Such bubbles are about investment and company value and not allways about the effect of the services.
Internet focused businesses should know about the FACEBOOK EFFECT I would recommend that anyone interested or concerned about the direction of the future movements in Internet ideas and their surrounding business paradigm and associated funding should read this book but first see this HUBPAGE about it: http://hubpages.com/hub/The-FACEBOOK-Effect
Other recent commentators on the FACEBOOK EFFECT:
Warren Buffet FACEBOOK WARNING!
http://socialmediaworld.com/?p=1582
FACEBOOK is quoted as being valued at $50 Billion! So everyone is scrambling to build copycat services or ad on projects, or linkages into and out from FACEBOOK.
Our own Public DataWeb systems are a Social Network with city centre locations providing Internet access and importantly direct access to our Websites that are CITY FOCUSED giving hot links to local services; our next services will be much more local population focused.
FACEBOOK creates associations of friends whilst ours connects local people with each other and with local services: the NEXT STEP FOR SOCIAL NETWORKING.
Our networking methods existed before FACEBOOK and can integrate with FACEBOOK upon our soon to be upgraded online network.
Our services are real world, and have physical attributes (Street PARASOL'S) + WEB PRESENCE.
So if the Bubble inflates and even bursts our strengths will remain.
Such bubbles are about investment and company value and not allways about the effect of the services.
Internet focused businesses should know about the FACEBOOK EFFECT I would recommend that anyone interested or concerned about the direction of the future movements in Internet ideas and their surrounding business paradigm and associated funding should read this book but first see this HUBPAGE about it: http://hubpages.com/hub/The-FACEBOOK-Effect
Other recent commentators on the FACEBOOK EFFECT:
The Reasoned Sceptic
Is The Online Social Network Sector Another Investment Bubble?
http://pra-blog.blogspot.com/2011/01/is-online-social-network-sector-another.htmlWarren Buffet FACEBOOK WARNING!
http://socialmediaworld.com/?p=1582
A Products Place in the Digital Universe
The POINT of marketing is to REACH THE CUSTOMER: to do so seamlessly you must remove the barriers between a potential client and the service or product they need.
Would you charge customers an entry fee to come into your store?
Most marketing has been interruptive - it stops people doing what they were doing; like watching a TV programme, listening to music on the radio, looking through your email inbox - interrupted by the advert... by SPAM.
Billboard advertising is less interruptive but not interactive.
No advertising has been interactive, until the age of the Internet; NOW IT IS.
The age of the Internet has given us the means for a product or service to become an interactive element that the potential purchaser can interact with, to some extent, before making a purchase. This is better for choice and provides an amount of certainty in decision making; especialy if recommended by a freind e.g. from a Social Network.
Digital systems enable this activity, from existing customer recommendations, to product demonstrators on a product website or YouTube etc. and for digital order placing: the circle is complete.
It is now an accepted fact that every business needs a website, as increasingly the way that the public locate and learn about products and services is by investigating such items on the Internet.
THE POINT OF MARKETING IS TO REACH CUSTOMERS
Barriers in the way are make a product become a product lost in GOOGLESPACE
Access systems that stop seamless connectivity: e.g. fee paying and registration operations which put off potential customers, barriers that ask for personal details before getting to the service or product. Barriers that require the public to pay telecom and connection charges to begin with, before the product can be reached are providing intermediaries with revenue and halting the rapid connectivity that the public need, from a service or product perspective that is ready and waiting contact, such procedures are all barriers.
You wouldn't ask customers to pay a fee to enter your store.
You wouldn't charge tourists and visitors a fee to learn about your city services.
Entrance charges and sign ups contribute to erecting marketing barriers, and the battery life in mobiles is not limitless and often just runs out when a Google search turns positive!
On the positive side these digital operations can mean that the customer CHOOSES to come to the product rather than the other way around, which has been the dominant method for a long time, but this has now past. When a customer chooses to reach a product over half the job is done!
For a product to succeed in the digital age it has to be, recommended by others (Social Networking) it has to be valuable, it has to be competitive, these are givens, but most of all it has to have the ability to be found on the Internet.
A huge amount of product sales will be increasingly performed on the Internet.
If a product cannot be located it will fail.
Public DataWeb systems are very advanced public access Social Networks with touch screens and overhead digital displays:
OUTDOOR INTERACTIVE BILLBOARDS with WIFI MESH
A Single Unit can flood the streets with Internet access and provide quick links to services and products.
Each & every product needs its own web-space with the capacity to be found.
However in the vast GoogleSpace a product is a tiny pinprick of light.
It needs to be illuminated and this is achievable by WEB-Presence.
On the Internet this means SEO - Search Engine Optimisation: methods that tilt the Google focus at your pinpoint of light: your product. So gaining INCREASED visitors to a products website.
Public DataWeb methods provide all our content clients with very specialised SEO techniques that enhance the website and individual products + the unique capacity to put products without barriers (free to use) onto the digital landing menus of a FREE Internet service on their mobiles; directly in the streets from our broadcasting Hubs- PARASOL's.
These interactive street billboards have captive products that are rapidly linked too by the public, on touch screens in the billboard or associated screens, and on the public's personal mobiles via a WiFi connection directly to the digital billboard; quite a unique service.
When other public services are included everyone benefits.
A product, a service etc. living within a digital envelop of public services about the location: the city and its events, services, amenities, sponsored by the product advertising and its interactivity provides a valuable public utility; a social network gateway to the digital world, appreciated by the public. So they are well disposed to the onboard services. General public traffic from such social networking public infrastructures will get your product noticed in the location and simultaneously better positioned on the Internet search engines and within systems such as FACEBOOK.
Interactive billboards are predicted to change the way that the public intereact with products; when Outdoors.
They generate advertising but give a genuine value back to the public a FREE Internet access service which simultaneously also provides INSTANT access to products and local services: FREE, no barriers.
Such new technologies provide the means for a products place to be found within the vast web-universe of an increasingly competitive and huge Internet.
You have a website - now you should obtain WEB-PRESENCE. And in your city you need PUBLIC DATAWEB - Presence!
However in the vast GoogleSpace a product is a tiny pinprick of light.
It needs to be illuminated and this is achievable by WEB-Presence.
On the Internet this means SEO - Search Engine Optimisation: methods that tilt the Google focus at your pinpoint of light: your product. So gaining INCREASED visitors to a products website.
Public DataWeb methods provide all our content clients with very specialised SEO techniques that enhance the website and individual products + the unique capacity to put products without barriers (free to use) onto the digital landing menus of a FREE Internet service on their mobiles; directly in the streets from our broadcasting Hubs- PARASOL's.
These interactive street billboards have captive products that are rapidly linked too by the public, on touch screens in the billboard or associated screens, and on the public's personal mobiles via a WiFi connection directly to the digital billboard; quite a unique service.
When other public services are included everyone benefits.
A product, a service etc. living within a digital envelop of public services about the location: the city and its events, services, amenities, sponsored by the product advertising and its interactivity provides a valuable public utility; a social network gateway to the digital world, appreciated by the public. So they are well disposed to the onboard services. General public traffic from such social networking public infrastructures will get your product noticed in the location and simultaneously better positioned on the Internet search engines and within systems such as FACEBOOK.
Interactive billboards are predicted to change the way that the public intereact with products; when Outdoors.
They generate advertising but give a genuine value back to the public a FREE Internet access service which simultaneously also provides INSTANT access to products and local services: FREE, no barriers.
Such new technologies provide the means for a products place to be found within the vast web-universe of an increasingly competitive and huge Internet.
You have a website - now you should obtain WEB-PRESENCE. And in your city you need PUBLIC DATAWEB - Presence!
The PARASOL Generating FREE WiFI PUBLIC SERVICES of the VERY NEAR FUTURE!
PARASOL: Interactive billboards in an airport.
Monday, April 4, 2011
The Next Wave: a revolution or an evolution coming to the Internet?
The Next Wave: a revolution or an evolution coming to the Internet?
There is a revolution developing on the Internet a new wave of possibilities that will transform today’s methods into tomorrow’s new service access. Products like the IPAD2 are leading the way with touch screen navigation and ease of use: usability + access + Social Networks are the drivers bringing about new levels of change.
Within this vast environment – the Internet – being noticed, being located is essential.
Be part of it or be out of it! It’s going to be as important s having a website: having Web-Presence: an interconnected presence that is also instrumental in getting found on the Internet. This is essential for any business.
First business did not see a reason for a website, then when they had one; they were not aware of the requirement to be FOUND on the Internet. This is now being realised; with the huge growth of the SEO businesses on the Web proving this requirement. But things move fast and the next revolution is gathering a pace alongside awareness that they - businesses - everyone - need to get noticed on the Web.
The web will be moving en-mass, soon, towards integrated Social Networking in all things, even the BBC are adopting Social Networking news feeds and changing the old options of barrier pages requesting log –in notification before viewer comments or live video news can be added…. Such content obtainers simply go elsewhere to post their live news feeds and the ‘Beeb’ are getting wise to the fact…
The trends are plain to see and set by observations of the SEO industry that is built around the operations of Google and other search engines; focused on services to get their clients NOTICED and higher ranking on search engine results pages.
They all have a FACEBOOK strategy!
There are big changes ahead. Because the methods that people use to find items on the Internet is moving away from the current common practices of just typing in a descriptive keyword, many users of the Internet are fed up with multiple search engine results that do not reflect their request; whereas current and new and evolving Social Networks can be far more accurate: with recommendations and purchase goods and services that are validated by others. Of course a lot of this is going on now, but its going to increase with the introduction of new integrated Social Networking search systems.
Surprisingly there are huge numbers of websites; public, commercial, government and businesses that have little thought for or ideas about optimising their website so that material can be easily located by potential users. This is very important especially within an evolving and increasingly huge Internet where competitive elements and Spam sites do indeed take advantage of SEO techniques to put their message higher up the ‘pecking’ search order. Many websites advertise on Radio and TV but what is needed is an accurate method within the structure of the Internet itself.
Social Networking + better more accurate search methods + simpler access + easy build web-services and re-organising the Internet into ‘Clumps’ that exhibit new service sets of communities; communities of interest and activities are set to evolve….soon. So it’s set to be more of an evolution as more users get frustrated with Spam and inaccurate results from their searches, they will migrate to alternatives, and such ideas can go viral, rapidly - never underestimate the power of friends recommendations. The more linked in with integrated sites that connect also with Social Networks the more chance that a move from a Google search to a ‘Facebook ’ environment + search etc. will occur. And move beyond what we have today: converging or conflicting or merging into something new? This view is generating an expected new Internet investment bubble of new Social Networking ideas.
Complexity levels are set to diminish. Complexity of any level stops user activity.
A few indicators showing a movement to convergence towards simplicity, better access and further social user empowerment:
BLEKKO - V - GOOGLE
Better more accurate search results with BLEKKO.
The movement has huge momentum and convergence will generate new simple integrated networks that are very simple to use, and importantly to build: utilizing ‘Crowd Build Source’ operations to do it: people building relationships and common indexing to data and search results.
AMAZON – V – Independent Authors
Could independent authors break the monopoly by generating their own individual sales sites and link to emerging Social Network enterprise sites? Authors produce the content but currently get the least return, whilst publishers and sales sites get a huge percentage.
Government Web Silos - V - Citizen webs
People building up their own clusters of relevant data from government content; building better utility sites that obtain government feeds and statistics and feed these into citizen composed site’s that re-organise the data and services into more valuable and usable outputs. E.G. Crime location maps with citizens demanding extra police focus upon such areas.
BBC News –V – independent news feeds
It may not be validated by any authority, it may be less than perfect with camera shake etc, but frontline news from people at the centre of things happening and posting direct to Social Networks, cuts out mainstream news broadcasters, who may have lots of lost arguments about quality, independence and validity: the BBC policy is beginning to change as a result. And the public carry video cameras within their mobile phones, wherever they go; coverage that no news organisation can compete with.
Old democracy –V – New democracy political systems
They work for us, but politicians don't get this and set up their own power systems: citizen pressure groups online can change everything and make policy and issues become driven by the interconnected citizen networks; rather than a single change once every general election: evolution and changes on policy can be directed throughout a parliaments lifetime by constant contact and guidance from the Voice of The Electorate.
Corporate ASP.Net types of web-system build - V - PHP – Drupal: to do it Free and with more Webwise interconnections.
Is there any need for top heavy proprietary software? When very complex systems can be joined up using far simpler tools? Is there any continuing need for a Windows platform full of bugs when they had years to fix them? No the future is Internet server side driven applications, everything to run on and through the Internet, using simplified plug in tools for free and common open source build platforms.
The results of everyone going in the current direction
Just a few pointers for the reasons for change:
What about combination, cross platform search results: type in a search word / description and results come back from Google + Blekko + YouTube + Flicker + Facebook + PLUS OTHERS?
Why must I search each individual location for the same data content? Its time consuming.
Why do websites halt potential contributors in there tracks?
Yes, many websites put barriers up for sign-in, for contributors; the answer is to stop such inappropriate messages attempting to catalogue and verify users. With a more honest open, transparent and genuine I.D. based Internet (Facebook lead with this concept) such a need is diminished.
Websites that ask for sign ups when they could use the Facebook Ap-ID to just let people in, barriers, restrictions and other variations of need for ‘sign in’ input from potential contributors, makes 80% of potential contributors leave the site; and Email is becoming outdated and will increasingly be within Social Networks and that stops Spam-Mail.
Company’s pay Spam e-mailers to load up our inboxes with useless garbage, trying to sell; but annoying us because 99% are not applicable. So more and more people move onto networks that only interlink with known friends and already accepted favourites. E-mailers must evolve their marketing towards becoming much more useful and accurate.
FACEBOOK can identify their users by all sorts of groupings and search parameters: all from the users own self descriptive tags, this is very accurate for advertisers who will go in droves to Social Networks over Google Spammy searches.
FACEBOOK can identify their users by all sorts of groupings and search parameters: all from the users own self descriptive tags, this is very accurate for advertisers who will go in droves to Social Networks over Google Spammy searches.
These converging movements, mentioned and there are many many more reasons, that should indicate to businesses that its no longer good enough to have a website, and now its no longer good enough to simply try to obtain web-presence using SEO. To be able to sell to customers in the near future you will have to be within their locations offering real value as bad value will be quickly notified and such products, services and businesses will be out of business. Businesses have to get clients to come to them through new techniques and offering better services, rather than interuptive marketing methods that are really in the face SPAM.
On the horizon are new methods that interlink all these operations that will be bringing forth a better easier, faster accurate and really valid Internet. Soon!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Eye-tracking technology opens alternatives to computer interaction
New technology developed allows users to navigate a screen with nothing but their eyes. The setup works by two mounted cameras detecting infrared light reflected off a users eyeballs and retinas. These pinpoint where a user is looking on screen.
A brilliant piece of technolgy which no doubt will be a subtle addition to anyones computing set up in the future.
I also remember reading an article on Stephen Hawking's interest in this field going back some time now in hopes of moving from his current method of communication with cheek movements, I'm not sure of his current methods of communication but this would certainly be a move he would head. No doubt there will be substancial publicity around this fact if he does.
iPad 2 launched
It's always exciting for us to see technology progressing in the way of WiFi enabled devices. Companies such as Apple are constantly setting th benchmark and as a result more and more users are making the move to have the internet at their hands.
Such developments is fantastic for us who are striving to get every city offering a FREE WiFi network for it's public. Not only does this allow the public to access high speed FREE INTERNET via our networks but it allows them to access city collected and streamlined content that we build.
The new iPad offers cameras on back and front, is thinner than the previous model and has doubled it's speed since the original model.
Good to see Jobs commited to showcasing the new model considering his recent health issues!
City Wifi Landscaping
This is a very cool project in Oslo, Norway by a group of 3. They set out to evaluate the flow of WiFi within their city by using a 4m LED rod, the stronger the wifi signal the longer the length of the rod lights up. By use of photography they managed to very uniquely show the invisible network within their city.
Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.
Originally seen at trend hunter
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