Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
Americans Text Message With Phones More Than They ...
A new study claims that most of you are using your phones more for texting than for talking. Texting is quite popular with the teenage crowd, but this data suggests that popularity crosses generational boundaries.
And I don’t completely understand it. It takes far longer for me to type/text something than it would take me to say it.
However, the person you’re trying to communicate isn’t always able to talk on the phone. Nor are you. If you’re at your child’s school play, for instance, it’s far more discrete to text your buddy that “man this is boring” than it would be to actually speak those words–especially if you’re sitting near the lead actor’s parents!
Anyway, from the article:
For the second quarter of 2008, U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month, according to Nielsen. The new statistic is a clear indication that Americans have jumped onto the SMS text bandwagon.
This is just part of the reason you should be paying attention to mobile phones. People love the instantaneous nature of using their phone, and more and more businesses are beginning to make mobile versions of their websites so the on-the-go consumer can connect with them more easily. The iPhone has made mobile browsing mainstream, and the recent announcement of the so-called Google Phone is simply more evidence of the merging of mobile devices and the PC.
Text-speak may be difficult to understand sometimes, but it’s a language that isn’t going away anytime soon… not by a long shot.
Read More
Posted by Jeremy Scott | 1 Comment
Google Maps Add Helpful Voting Information
Google continues to provide useful and clever new services. The latest is the voting information they’re slowly rolling into their Google Maps product.
Users who visit http://maps.google.com/vote will be prompted to enter their address. Google then tells you where to register, how long you have left to register, and where the local polling places are. They’ll even direct you to the appropriate government website for more information.
This is really handy. It’s still being populated with data, so not all cities have all their information yet, but they should soon.
While there are plenty of non-voters who choose not to vote for various personal reasons, there have to be many who simply didn’t know where to vote or even how to register. Granted, government agencies have been making this information available for a long, long time… but having it accessible through Google just makes it that much easier (and less embarrassing) to find out what you need to know.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 1 Comment
Killer New Audio Indexing Technology From Google
Google, the current king of the Internet and all-around innovator, has announced a new technology called Audio Indexing–actually it’s called GAudi, which sounds more like a car than a web service.
Either way, it’s one of the slickest things I’ve heard of in months.
GAudi will catalog every word uttered in a YouTube video and add it to a searchable archive. Translation: you will soon be able to search videos by keywords used within the video.
For now, the product is still in Beta (limited testing mode), and will only be indexing YouTube videos related to the current political races. So you can search for a soundbite you read about in a news article–maybe something Obama or McCain said–and then use GAudi to search for video of the speech on YouTube.
That’s pretty mind-blowing to me. Sure, there have been speech-transcription services for years that allow you to dictate text to your computer… but they are far from perfect, and had never been applied to video like this. As video’s importance on the web increases, technology like GAudi makes finding the right video a heck of a lot easier–and if you’ve ever tried to search for a particular video on YouTube without knowing its title… you know how frustratingly hard it can be.
Imagine a future where your company creates and uploads videos to YouTube–maybe instructional, maybe humorous, maybe just advertisements–and you’ve used some good keyword selection in writing the spoken script for that video. People who just surf around YouTube for videos related to their favorite topic will then have a much easier time finding your content than they currently do.
So now everyone in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry will be adding video content writing to their roster of services, as companies begin to learn how the spoken audio of their movies can help them reach new customers.
Very exciting stuff. Stay tuned for more developments. And you can check out GAudi and search for things the candidates have said here.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
You Can Now Watch Free TV & Movies at IMDB.co...
IMDB.com–the Internet movie database–is the number one online source for movie information. Everything from casting information to quotes and trivia can be found on the site.
Owned by Amazon.com, IMDB has just this week begun streaming free movie and television content for users. It’s yet another in a long line of recent sites offering free streaming content such as Hulu (the best, in my opinion).
There are over 6,000 titles, so the odds are good that you’ll be able to find something you like. And in a neat little coup, the site will be airing several season premieres of various tv shows before they air on television… pretty neat.
There is a noticeable boom in tv and film content being made available online for free. And it’s a trend that shows no sign of stopping. As we have discussed before… advertisers just want the eyeballs… they don’t really care if they’re coming from TV or the Internet.
The real winner here is the consumer, who now has tons of options on when and where to watch their favorite shows and movies. Check out the IMDB free content here.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
News From The Obvious Department: Kids Love Video...
Kids love video games.
That may be a shock to some of you, but it shouldn’t be. Ever since I was a teenager–when the first Nintendo came out–the younger generations have embraced video gaming more and more.
And even though it’s fairly common knowledge that such games are popular with kids… you might be surprised at the findings of a new study.
Specifically, it seems that 97% of kids play video games. That’s, well, a huge number. I don’t think I would have guessed it was that large.
The gender breakdown is as follows: 99% of boys play video games, and 94% of girls (again, a shockingly high number).
Some more interesting facts from the article:
- They play often. When surveyed, half of the respondents said they had played a video game the previous day.
- Their games of choice are as diverse as their tastes in music or TV. Eighty percent of respondents play five or more different game genres, with racing, puzzles, sports and action the most common. Favorites were “Guitar Hero,” “Halo 3,” “Madden NFL,” solitaire and “Dance Dance Revolution.”
- Young people are routinely able to get their hands on games that are rated “M” (for mature) or “AO” (adults only). Three-quarters of parents who were surveyed said they “always” or “sometimes” check the ratings on their kids’ games. And yet, half of boys who were questioned listed a game with an “M” or “AO” rating as one of their favorites, compared with 14 percent of girls.
There’s also some pretty fascinating insight into video game violence, with the survey’s author noting that some of the more violent games (such as Halo) are also some of the most cooperative and strategy-based. He suggests parents pay just as much attention to how their kids play a particular game as they do to what the specific game is being played.
Read More