Ampers & Dot

I’ve seen the future - and it’s beautiful. More specifically: it’s in high definition and has interactive capabilities.

This past week was my single favorite of all 52 a year: Masters week. A time during which the world’s top golfers flock to Augusta, Georgia to battle each other in the most pristine setting on earth. There is no other competition like it and it truly is “A tradition unlike any other”. I could happily go on for a few thousand words just expressing my love for the Masters but I’ll save the non-golf-fanatics the trouble and instead, talk tech today.

What completely blew me away during this year’s event (aside from Anthony Kim’s 11 birdies, Campbell’s opening round, or Sergio’s lack of sportsmanship) was the quality of coverage. Like all PGA events, the Masters is a four day tournament running from Thursday to Sunday - with network TV covering only the weekend afternoon slots. Unlike other PGA events, the Masters has a live, online component for the entire event.

Beginning Thursday morning, Masters.com provided viewers with live streaming video. Ok, so that sounds cool, right? But it gets better. Much better.

Instead of just streaming one feed, viewers had the option of four different feeds depending on your preferences. Also, as shown in the image below, the feeds have picture-in-picture, a live interactive leaderboard, a chat window to interact with other fans, player alerts, feed info, and a live ticker across the bottom. Incredible. (To see a better rundown - that inspired this post - check out Drew’s coverage at The Daily Muddle.)

It takes a lot to impress me with technology these days, but I can truly say that I was jaw-droppingly amazed by the Masters coverage. This is, hopefully not long from now, the future of TV. But not surprising: it’s all online.

Either through internet enabled TV, or TV enabled internet (more likely that the two will eventually become one in the same) streaming video online gives viewers a significantly richer experience, that we will soon grow to expect in our programming.

In the future when we watch a baseball game, we’ll be able to pick the camera to watch from - pitcher’s view, or batter’s. We’ll be able to pick the commentary - home or away. After a play we’ll be able to choose our instant replay angle and speed. We’ll be able to chat about different players, or plays - which will likely be annoying and overrun by spammers… When we watch American Idol we won’t have to text in votes, we’ll just click the on-screen button for our favorite contestant. And when we watch commercials (yes, we will watch commercials in the future) we’ll be able to click on the product to order it (and I don’t actually see that as a bad thing!).

To be perfectly honest: I’m not a big TV person. I have my favorite shows that I really enjoy, but beyond that I just don’t watch much. Instead, I’m an internet person. I could browse the web all day. But as TV and the internet converge, I could easily see myself enjoying watching TV again. Mainly because, I won’t just watch - I’ll interact.

Earlier this week I had lunch with a good friend (who writes an awesome architectural design blog) during which he told me about a great news piece he found online. After a few minutes I said that I’d love to read it and asked him to send me the link, he informed me it was a Podcast, and I informed him that I probably wasn’t going to listen to it. Let’s back up a minute…

I consume a LOT of internet. A lot. To quantify this statement: bazillions of pages.

I’m an RSS junkie with moderate speed reading abilities. Plus, I like to batch-process my data intake to increase the amount I can consume (for example: I sort my feeds as finitely as possible, so that my brain can access the topic schema more easily - so that if I have multiple stories on the same topic I’ll recognize it quicker, discard the piece, and move on).

My day job is to research the internet and then write and advise on what I learn, so in all fairness, I’d better be pretty good at getting through the vast amount of “news” out there. But that’s the problem - there is SO much news out there relating to the internet and a lot of it is actually very good.

Unfortunately, what all this is leading up to is my distaste for (and inability to utilize) Podcasts.

You cannot speed read or batch process Podcasts. I have trouble listening to something while working (especially talking…), so this deters me from listening to Podcasts during the day. Which only leaves me with commuting time - during which I like music too much to give up. I just don’t listen to Podcasts.

The problem is that there are some truly awesome people talking about truly awesome topics in Podcasts, and there’s a pretty good chance I’m missing out on a lot of great material.

To take yet another step back: the title of this post stems from a discussion about Social Technologies - and how Podcasts aren’t actually social at all. It’s a one way speech, not a conversation. Sure it’s a rich-media, but that doesn’t make it a social media.

But back to the point: Podcasts have value. There are a lot of people who love Podcasts and I think end user adoption is likely only growing - which means people will continue to produce great content in audio form… and I’ll continue to miss out.

So to sign this post off- here’s a short list of the Podcasts that people recommend to me the most… that I haven’t ever really heard.

Topics on Fire (Leslie Poston’s social media chat)
This American Life (NPR)
Bill Simmons (Sports Guy - link on the right)
The Moth (Short humorous stories)
Major Nelson (Microsoft / Xbox guy)
GDGT (The ultimately gadget podcast)

According to a pretty awesome study performed by Scarborough Research for its “Understanding the Digital Savvy Consumer” paper (Extreme PDF Warning!) six percent of the US defined as “Digital Savvy”. And yes, I did just describe a quantitative study as “awesome”. That’s so unlike me, normally I only attribute such traits to qualitative research.

And now that the stupid joke is out of the way, let’s talk about the research. Fundamentally the researchers questioned thousands of people to determine their tech use and depending on how geeky the answers turned out, each person was assigned a level of “Digital Savvy”.

First, let’s run through the items that determine geekiness.

Do you own

• PDA
• Digital Video Recorder
• Satellite Radio Subscription
• VoIP
• Mp3 Player
• HDTV

How do you use the internet?

• Online banking
• Reading/contributing to blogs
• Games
• Podcasts
• Music
• Video
• IM

How do you use your cell phone?

• Download ringtones/games
• Email
• Text
• Video
• Other internet

Anyway, the research gets really interesting by comparing other traits between the “Digital Savvy” and general US. To simplify things from now on we’ll deem these terms “techno-awesome” and “weirdo-neo-luddites”. Ok, this might be too tricky… let’s just go with “Digital Savvy” and “General Consumer”.

It turns out that the digital savvy consumer is, unsurprisingly, more likely to be: a wealthy, upperclass, white collar, college graduate. I probably could have told you this.

But what I did find surprising was a few strange traits attributed to the digital savvy consumer.

For example: the digital savvy consumer is about twice as likely to have a broadband internet connection than the general consumer. This makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that 3% of digital savvy consumers have NO internet connection.

Another one that confused me: the digital savvy consumer is about 18% more likely to be an NFL fan and nearly 50% more likely to be an NHL fan. This has to be wrong. (Although I think it’s great that the digital savvy is about twice as likely to be a soccer fan!)

Here’s another confusing one: 6% of digital savvy respondents spent less than $100 online last year. Have they never even heard of the SomethingStore?

Finally, according to page 42 the digital savvy consumer is almost twice as likely to visit ESPN than Google. Bull. Shit. Now I love The Sports Guy as much as anyone, but to get the link I just included- I found it through Google, not my bookmark.

And now to explain my confusion over all of these findings: I’m extremely biased.

Personally, I score a whopping 94% (I don’t understand the value of satellite radio, but aced the rest of this puppy) on the test above, would likely put me more on the “overwhelmingly geeky” end of the “digital savvy” scale (which according to slide 66 is only .1% of the US). I’m so far removed from the general consumer that I’ve lost touch with reality, apparently.

But still, how can you be digitally savvy and not have internet connection? And no matter what, I can’t believe that a vast majority of the digitally savvy are such huge sports fans. And there is no way in hell that one in six of all digital savvy Americans live in Texas! I call this research debunked. DEBUNKED!

My good friend Dave recently launched a blog for his job at CD Chivas USA, the Carson, CA based soccer team in the MLS (that stands for “Major League Soccer”, for those of you too patriotic to accept soccer into America.  Yeah, that’s right, America has professional soccer.  And you know what?  It’s pretty good.).  His blog is the Official Bilingual Blog of Chivas USA soccer: an inside look into a professional soccer team, with updates on team news, scores, player profiles, and more.

A little back story on CD Chivas USA: (”CD” = Club Deportivo) the team is considered the “Sister Team” of CD Chivas Guadalajara, a team based out of, you guessed it, Guadalajara, Mexico (ok, I just like writing “Guadalajara” because of the absurd use of  the letter “a”).  The idea of CD Chivas USA is that it appeals to more to the large Spanish speaking population in southern California.  Unlike the local rival LA Galaxy, which appeals to faux-hawk enthusiasts.

Well, seeing as how my daily job often consists of helping companies launch and popularize blogs, it seemed only fair that I offer up a little advice to help the Chivas Blog.  After going through some very broad basics, Dave and I started to discuss Search Engine Optimization. 

Some of you may have seen this coming from this post’s title, but there is an inherent problem in this project.  The problem is that the idea of an Official Bilingual Blog of Chivas USA soccer, is that it would in fact be bilingual.  My original idea was to write it all in English and install one of those language converters to the site- but Dave, being fluent in Spanish and knowing how horribly those tools actually translate, is aiming to make this a true home for Chivas fans of any background and not alienate the Spanish speaking supporters.  Instead he is writing in both Spanish and English, depending on the topic.

So I’ve been reading up on as many sources as possible about bilingual SEO, but the main thing I’ve learned from it all is that there isn’t that much written on bilingual SEO…

The incredibly broad idea behind a standard SEO strategy is to improve search engine rankings, so that when someone searches for something online (which everyone does…) they’ll find your site first.  BUT- what if your readers aren’t always searching in English?  And what if you are writing half of the posts in Spanish? 

At this point, I should probably warn you that if you came to this page looking for authoritative answers, you might want to leave now… sorry about that.  But the following are a few things I’ve picked up, just by watching the site and some of its click stats.

• In a site with bilingual text, make sure any relevant SEO terms exist in both languages.  If this means repeating information, that’s fine. 
• As with any SEOd page, you don’t want to over do links to piss off the search bots.  You work way too hard to be seen as a Splog, so if you are repeating information and writing things twice, be cautious of how often links appear.
• Bilingually tag images.  By shortening the descriptions but having key words in both languages, both audiences will find what they are looking for.
• If you aren’t writing everything twice then make sure to write enough in each language to appeal to both audiences AND the search engines.  There’s a fine balance of alienating either language’s readers, but keeping relevant stories in each language published often enough will keep all readers happy.

There is still so much to learn about all this and if anyone has any advice on reading material (in English please) comment below.  The one problem I keep going back and forth on is the Page Title and Meta Content.  My instinct is telling me to stick with English because more people are searching for English text, but that just leaves the question: Is it better to get a huge percentage of those searching for Spanish text, or a small percentage of those searching for English text?  The answer is likely “which ever one is bigger”…

Anyway- If you want to check out the Official Bilingual Blog of Chivas USA soccer, then you can click that link or check it out on Google, which after just a month is up to #6 for “Chivas & Blog” and #31 for “Chivas USA”.

During an awesome social media discussion yesterday, I found the meeting sidetracked by a humorously disgruntled conversation about the public perception of Google.  You’ve probably never heard of Google, so let me explain this thing to you.  The best way to put it it’s this super futuristic “website” where you words into a box and it does this little magic trick where it finds ways to sell you products around the words you entered. 

Anyway… the discussion of Google started around the fact that Gmail still has its cute little “BETA” tag on the logo.  What the hell’s that about?  Honestly, it’s about the public perception.  It’s GOOG’s way to trick you into thinking they are this cute little startup, open source company that is trying out a new free product for you to enjoy. 

Fact: Google isn’t a startup.  They were founded in mid ‘98, went public in ‘04 and currently have over 19,000 employees.

Our debate went on to discuss how Google has access to all practically all the data in the world and how it’s nearly impossible not to be evil with that much power.  Then we got to Google’s services and things got a little trickier.

We both admitted to using Gmail, Google reader, and obviously- the search engine.  And we both admitted that we were happy with the services.  The problem in all this being: Google is really, really good at what they do.  Similar to Microsoft’s Outlook- we use it because it’s perfectly functional.  If there were other options as appealing then we’d switch… well you know what?  There aren’t.

And there’s the problem: the discussion kept coming back to the line of “but until someone makes a better alternative, it seems like we’re stuck with Google”.  We both agreed that there is no point in penalizing ourselves just to fight the system.  This is like the year I ran Linux (Kubuntu, to be precise) on my laptop because I wanted to prove that there were better, cheaper, sleeker alternatives to Apple and Microsoft out there.  Well you know what?  There aren’t.

But here’s where things get even more interesting.  Think about a decade ago when AOL was one of the top email services.  Where are they now?  And what about Apple even?  A bit over a decade ago they had almost no market share, but just this week we learn that Apple holds down 32% of operating systems.  That’s just crazy!  And what it shows is that no size of grasp on an industry is safe. 

Google’s 70% share of online searches might be dominate today, but there is just no saying how we where we’ll go to search in the future.  Big Google might own the web now, but it’s fairly safe to say that the next players in the industry are likely infants in the space that can eventually grow into giant killers.  Because keep in mind that in 2007 Google had $16.6 billion in revenue, but just ten years ago today it didn’t even exist.

Or, Google keeps building, keeps buying, and keeps evolving until we live in the Googopoly where we browse on gPCs with gOSs and all Google Apps, while watch GoogleTV (with Google ads, of course), and using gCrowaves eating Google Toast.

And in all fairness: if these services are as good as the ones being cranked out now, it’ll actually be a pretty cool and highly functional world.

If you’ve ever read this blog before then you’re probably overly aware that I enjoy numbers, online video,charts and graphs, and search engine topics. If you already knew I like these things then meet me at section “2″ while we bring the stragglers up to date on things. If you haven’t read this blog before, then go read a few other posts and you’ll immediately learn how geeky I am about these things. Then you can pick up meet me at the next paragraph, labeled “1″… we’ll wait…

1. Oh, hi- you’re back! Thanks for reading a some other posts- I appreciate your time. Wasn’t that great though!? I know, thanks. Ok, well now that you’re up to speed you can resume with the rest of the group at #2

2. Good, now that we’re all together there is just one last bit of required reading: Compete’s chart of top YouTube search terms

Basically, the chart shows you what people were searching for on YouTube in the month of March. I have to say that this is both fascinating and hilarious.

First and foremost, let’s just get this one out of the way. Who goes to YouTube for porn? The site is pretty well known (at least I thought) to have a strict “R” rating… to me this is like buying candy at a health food store. I mean, if you’re going to do it wrong… do it right!

But interestingly, what the chart shows us is that actually a LOT of people go to YouTube for “sex” and “porn”. With over 60 million viewers last month and .21% of all YouTube searches for one of those terms… we can only assume that there are at least two million idiots out there (or one extremely horny dude searching over and over again…).

Anyway- let’s look at another weird part of the chart - the number 10 search term: “Funny”. Do we, as a society, really have that much time on our hands that searching for something “funny” is a good use of time? Don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite sections of YouTube are the hilarious clips (and it’s a pretty well known fact that I’ve seen almost every America’s Funniest Home Videos ever), but I’m more interested that people are searching “funny”.

No real direction, no focus on anything, but something “funny”. If you look at the rest of the top ten you’ll see there are only a three general terms (Sex, Porn, Funny) and the rest are for specific content.

I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. The beauty of YouTube is that it’s all there. All of it. There are videos for anything you can imagine, so of course people are just browsing. On one hand this is a great thing for YouTube because it provides a home for people to find “whatever”. But on the other, this is a huge opportunity for other online video providers.

This is a chance for other video sites to make a name as the authority of content. No, you won’t have “everything” - that’s what YouTube does. So what do you have? This is the reason I love WineLibrary, Funnyordie, or Hulu (no Hulu doesn’t pay me, I just talk about them all the time because it’s awesome). WL is the home of videos on wine- FunnyorDie has much of the comedy I would want online, and Hulu has all the network shows I’d want. I don’t need to go searching because I know the source already.

YouTube channels are only the tip of the iceberg and in the coming months I expect to see many more specialty video sites pop up and declare themselves as an authority on the subject.

If I were creating an online video channel the first thing I would do is look at the Compete chart and see what people specifically want (hint: rhymes with Busic Fideos). The audience is there- they just need a place to find the right content. As YouTube continues to expand it will only become more of a hub for generic searches and less of a place to find what you’re actually looking for.

UPDATE: It turns out that NewTeeVee (great online video site) wrote about a Music Video startup site today.
UPDATE 2: I’m really, really smart.

“Things I like” wasn’t meant to become a weekly segment… but as seeing I’m especially short on time this week (working with a client five hours ahead on UK time), let’s just pretend this was planned.

Without further ado, let’s jump into another thing I like.

Things I like #2: Google Trends

This is an incredibly simply and basic tool that I find myself using daily.  And although I’m sure that everyone in the business is likely well versed with this page and might find today’s post worthless, this segment is about things I like… And I like this.  So I’m writing about it.

The more and more I learn about Search Engine Optimization, the more I’ve become fascinated with what people actually search.  I’ve become naturally intrigued by how people use search engines- from the keywords and strings they are using- to the topics themselves. 

Enter: Google Trends.  Appropriately titled, Google Trends is a repository of information on the most common search strings entered by a given date.  Basically it collects all the common searches from a day and ranks them by volume.  There are a few fun ways to use this:

• The daily top list which shows, believe it or not, the top searches for the day
• Daily top list by date.  What were people looking for on specific days?  How about your birthday?  My birthday last year was the day after a great episode of the office, hence all the DunderMifflinInfinity searches…
• Trends over time.  Enter in a search string of your own to see the volume of searches since the data started being collected (unfortunately, not that long ago).  Here’s a good example: Candy.  Searches for candy spike at the end of October, end of December, and in the middle of February.  Wonder what that’s about?
• Trends by region.  Google, with its omniscient prowess, also breaks down search results by geographic location, which provides for more fun.  Example: Squash.  Big in Connecticut and Massachusetts… surprise surprise.
• Comparing competitors.  Enter in multiple names separated by commas and enjoy some simple market analysis.
• And lastly: News.  Using the daily list, I find use the trends to find out what’s going on out there.  Here’s an interesting thing I’ve picked up over last last six months: 3-4 of the top ten daily searches usually come from Today show topics. Thanks Matt Lauer.  Also, almost daily one of the top search strings is about a sex scandal.  Oh America, we’re so mature…

Anyway- with my obvious affinity for graphs you can see why I like this Google trends.  Give it a go and let me know what you think- and let me know if you find anything funny.  Like the way yesterday morning - five of the top twelve common search strings had to do with income tax forms or extensions…

Those who know me IRL know that along with being a pretty big geek, am also a huge golf nut.  Also, those who know me “in real life” probably have no idea what “IRL” stands for… But being a gigantic golf fan, there is simply no bigger or better week of the year, than the week that is currently upon us.

MASTERS WEEK!

Seriously, I can’t build my love for the Masters up enough.  Without exaggeration, I’ve been nearly too giddy to contain myself for the last month just leading up to this. To me it’s better than Christmahannabirthdayikah of Julysgiving.  It is an uber-holiday.  Four days of true bliss and excitement.  Two of which, are sadly weekdays.  I had contemplated taking the two days off to slob around my apartment and see if I could go eight hours straight without leaving the couch… but after “The Hell Flu of 2008″ I pretty much need to be in the office more…

So what does an insane golf enthusiast do?  Simple answer: Masters.org 

I’ve been a longtime fan of online TV - and I have to say that the Masters site does it better than just about anyone.  There’s nothing worse than slow loading, choppy video.  Or super low-res webcam type shots that make you feel like some kid in a dorm room is about to start lip-syncing to the Backstreet Boys. 

Now unfortunately, the Masters site only has rights to Amen Corner, but it makes up for this in the following ways:

• High quality video source.  I’ll just say this now: the consumer market is done with low-res.  Sure, we’re not ready to stream HD yet, but at least give me standard def. 
• Real commentators.  This can make or break a golf tourney- and Augusta National really pulls through- even online.  Having real commentators makes it just as rich to watch as it would be on TV
• Interactive features.  Want to pull up the scoreboard?  Just click that button- and it won’t navigate away from the video, or even slow it down.
• Good buffer.  This will be tested today… but in the past the video stream has been relatively steady and not choppy.  I’ve developed a zero-tolerance policy for skipping online video.  Here’s a note to online video sites: if your video pauses to buffer- I go do something else.  And I’m likely not coming back.

Right now we’re on the verge of online video really taking off.  Sites like Hulu, that I’ve discussed before, are making it simple and desirable to watch TV online.  As more and more video companies are popping up every day- I think that the key to making yourself standout is to follow what the Masters site is doing.

High quality, quick streaming, real TV production value, and some solid interactivity.  You do that and you’ll net yourself a huge chunk of viewers.

Alright, that’s it for me- I better head into work early if I’m going to get anything done today… especially if something might be distracting me… can’t think of what that might be…

For a while now I’ve had the idea to have a weekly column to promote something tech-related that I actually use. As a Social Media Consultant I’m basically online all day long and come across many links, sites, social networks, toys, software, hardware, and so on, that help me be more productive and happier in my daily work. I’ve got the kind of job that has an infinite to-do list, so anything I can pick up to make me work more efficiently, I’ll do it. With hopes that I can help others be more productive on the web, I’ll pass along my knowledge and someday you can buy me a beer to call it even and we can then become less productive together. And thus the Things I Like series was created.

Things I Like #1: TASKBAR SHUFFLE

Let me start off by saying that I’m a bit of an organizational freak. For me to work productively everything has to be in place and ready to go. With my desk, this is pretty easy, as moving papers into folders is a task I mastered years ago. Unfortunately, digital items are trickier and not always movable.

Here was my problem: every day I come into work, start up Outlook, then my to-do list/time tracker, then my RSS feed, then work for clients in order of priority (remember, I didn’t say “organized”, I said “organizational freak”). By doing this, I accomplish a perfect order to everything in my taskbar (the bottom row of open applications in Windows) and I can quickly navigate to any one I needed. From left to right I always have Outlook, Task Tracker, RSS. The three biggies. But what if one of them accidentally closed?

Everything would be screwed up. I’d actually have to quit applications to get things back in order. Enter: Taskbar Shuffle. As the name suggests, Taskbar Shuffle allows you to drag and drop items on your taskbar to put them in any order you want.

This little application has saved me countless minutes a day- being able to open applications in any order- and drag them into the order I like them. Is it silly? Yes. Do I care? No.

Go get it free at the nerdcave

Today I want to talk about the first two Ws in www and how the web is surprisingly not all that world wide.

First off, no I’m not talking about broadband penetration. Obviously there are many places in the world that there will be no internet connection (like Vermont, not that long ago…), but I’m talking about the filtered web.

See, here in America, the land of the free and the home of more porn sites than any other country, we have basically unlimited access to all things online. As is becoming internationally apparent with recent news, this online freedom is not even close to universal.

Take Facebook for example; the entire site has been banned in most of the Middle East, I guess you won’t be poking any of your Syrian friends anytime soon…

YouTube is blocked in these countries and Pakistan, a fact that became overwhelmingly apparent this past weekend, when an attempt to block YouTube in P-Stan took out the global site.

And look, I’m aware that this is a much larger issue than what I’m getting at. In the US we see the internet as this open realm of endless possibilities and inhibiting our right to be able to browse video montages from AFV is simply unconstitutional! But of course, other countries don’t have our constitution…

So I’m not going to get into the philosophical or political differences between us and our international friends, this post actually has a much more directly self-serving focus: how to get around international blocks while traveling abroad.

I’ll be heading off to Japan for the next week (yes, I’ll take pictures of fun electronics and cooky vending machines, don’t worry) and I’ve just learned that Hulu won’t work there. What’s an online video junkie to do?!

Enter: the HotSpot Shield.

In theory, the Hotspot Shield creates a private network on a public wifi connection, but what it also does- is hide your computer’s location- thus providing access to non-international sites, internationally (such as Hulu!).

I’ve installed it on my lappy and will give it a go this weekend (after the 32 hours of travel). If I can get it working- I’ll post something for you. If not- I’ll pretend this never happened..

Ok, enjoy- see you in a few weeks! Hopefully, with fun pictures and crazy stories about weird sushi.