Happy Halloween! Here's some Weekend reading - great links to keep the next couple days full of learning and information.

Great article here with a great list of awesome tools:
http://freelanceswitch.com/general/101-essential-freelancing-resources/

13 No-Cost PR Distribution Sites
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?ident=30902#

Google Publishing Books online
http://www.switched.com/2008/10/29/google-getting-into-online-book-publishing/

Facebook keeps growing while Myspace stays pretty static. Facebook surpasses in overall popularity.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/29/facebook-widens-the-gap-with-myspace-internationally/

Another great star filled video about voting, that is full of celebrities:



A few weeks ago I posted the first 5 friends video, which was great and I think this one is even better.

What do you think? Will this get more people out there voting next week, or will everyone just laugh it off and sit at home?

Have you seen the new Dunkin' Donuts commercial where they blatantly compare themselves to Starbucks? They made a whole website about it:

http://www.dunkinbeatstarbucks.com

In the past I always thought it was a bit taboo to call out your major competitor and say that you're better. There was the famous Pepsi Challenge from way back, that was massively popular, but I can't remember the last time I've seen Coke and Pepsi go head to head on a Commercial.

Dunkin' Donuts isn't the only one either.

• Apple commercials go directly after Microsoft Vista.
• Dominos mentions 'SubMart' going after Subway for their new line of hot sandwiches. (much less aggressive than the others).
• Burger King lightly makes fun of Wendy's Baked Potato option in a new com.
• Miller Lite and Bud Light have always had a rivalry in which they name each other directly.

And there are so many more.

I like the way that DirectTV approaches going after the 'Cable Industry' with their newer campaign. It usually takes place at the "cable company" which remains nameless. They aren't attacking any competitor directly, but they encompass all cable companies. Here's a great DirectTV commercial site.

And this is just a great Comcast commercial http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1490420/powerboost_comcast_cool_commercial/

And then, you have Time Warner calling out Verizon (and leading to lawsuits) with this one:
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/04/10/verizon-sues-time-warner-over-misleading-anti-fios-commercial-see-it-for-yourself/

It's an interesting approach to marketing when you call out your #1 competitor directly. However, it's effective. I think in Internet marketing, there is more of a calling to work together rather than attack people, and there is enough business to go around (if you're a smart marketer).

I'm sure there are 100's of brand battles that I've missed too. If you have any more examples, leave a comment.

Thanks,

Anthony

I think that one of the hardest parts of serious Internet marketing is choosing a niche and figuring out what sort of product to develop.

I think it was Dan Kennedy who said something like, make products that people need, and they will buy them. Well, there is a very interesting site called 43Things.com that lets you post your life goals. These are lists of people's most internal desires or at least 'stuff they want'. The point of 43Things is to post your goals, connect with other people with the same goals and cheer each other on to achieve those goals.

Take a look at the most popular goals that people have listed:


Look at the #1 goal - doesn't that correlate with one of the largest online niches of all time? The weight loss industry is huge and there have been tons of products and millions of dollars generated in this niche.

Now look at the others. These are the top 10 on the whole site. Can you make a product that can help people stop procrastinating, or write a book? There is apparently a large group of people online that want to succeed in these areas.

I'm surprised that 'make more money', 'financial freedom' or 'get out of debt' aren't on the top 10 list. However, you can see in the Tag Cloud that Finance and Wealth is a largely posted topic, as well as spirituality.

The wealth industry or 'make money' industry is also another gigantic money maker between stock tips, Forex and 'make money online', there are thousands of products and at least a launch every week for something new.

Spirituality, happiness, love, marriage, etc... all show up consistently on 43Things, and you can align them with huge industries; self-help, online dating (eHarmony etc..), the 'dating' industry like doubleyourdating.com, and so many more.

Recommendation: Use 43Things as a place to find people that either want to secure the same goals as you (having a support structure is important) OR use it as a marketing research tool to find laser targeted niches.

People are much more likely to spend money on a product that will fulfil a lifelong goal or desire than anything else.

In the end, you're selling the experience and feeling of having the product and that's why this approach is so powerful. You're selling the outcome of having the product.

If it's a 'make money online' product, you're selling the feeling of being wealthy, successful, or financially free.

If it's a 'weight loss' product, you're selling the feeling of being thin, confident, happy and strong.

If it's a 'dating' product, you're selling the feeling of confidence, success, and happiness that goes along with meeting women or men.

Even if it's a 'golf' product, you're selling the feeling of beating your colleagues, or friends on the course OR the feeling of landing a perfect drive on the fairway.

Experience selling is extremely important and I will cover it in much more detail in the future, on the blog. But with this in mind, take a look at 43Things and see if you can come up with any ideas for new products that you can sell based on the experiences that people are looking for.

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

iOrgane Steals iPhone Design!

Check out this link:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/24/keepin-it-real-fake-part-clxiv-apples-and-iorganes

You can't argue that they copied every bit of design directly from the iPhone. It's blatant stealing. Even at the end they say, "Apple, No... This is Orange". They call out Apple in their commercial!

Even the presentation of the commercial is similar to the iPhone ads. Except for the creepy way they use 2 right hands 1/2 the time to interact with their knockoff iPhone. Even their website looks like Apple's design.

Well, obviously the iPhone is one of the biggest technology hits in recent history. The design, functionality, usefulness, and the AppStore all make the iPhone an incredible piece of technology. Apple also pumped millions of dollars into marketing and launching the iPhone, which is probably why they sold a million units in the first 3 days (link - reference) and 6.892 million iPhones in the 4th fiscal quarter of 2008 (link - reference).

Well, like most very successful things, someone has to come along and copy them. I submit that competition is welcome and, many companies are coming out with competitors to the iPhone. Probably most importantly (at least I'm excited to see), RIM is coming out with a new BlackBerry that many say could really hurt the iPhone's momentum. Adam covered this a while ago here: BlackBerry Storm.

The Storm will have a touch screen, an AppStore-ish place to buy useful or fun programs/games for the phone, the accelerometer (only 1GB of memory though, so forget about putting too much music on there), but it's not a direct, 100% knock off of the iPhone like the iOrgane obviously is.

I just hope they don't get away with it.

Facebook's Carbon Footprint is 1/2 of New York City.
You need to read this: http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?p=487.

With 10 billion hosted images and 10,000 servers, along with the traffic they have, it's estimated that Facebook has about 1/2 the carbon footprint of all of New York city.

That's crazy.

Remember, their calculation is not only the power for the servers, but includes the amount of power used by the PCs accessing the site too. The numbers are slightly juked in favor of shock value, but it's still a very important realization.

That article explains it very well, so I won't reiterate. But it makes you think... What about Google, Yahoo, eBay, MySpace and giant hosting companies like Aplus.net, BlueHost, RackSpace and more.

I've read estimates that Google has over a million servers (link - reference)! They get a ton of traffic, and are running thousands of different processes (maps, documents, Gmail, search, ad serving, images, the list goes on and on).

I wonder what their carbon footprint calculation would look like... They must use a ton of power worldwide to keep everything running and along with the PCs using Google (I probably do 50+ searches per day... at least), every day, It's probably extremely high.

That's also only an assumption, and how right is it to add the power usage of the computers accessing the website? My computer uses the same power if I'm searching, writing an e-mail or blog post, and Google or Facebook can't get me a more eco-friendly computer right?

I wonder where the green technology movement will take the computer industry? Lower power consumption, using the heat dissipation in a positive way (somehow)... I'm no computer engineer, so I'll stop speculating.

Hope this gets you thinking. If you come up with any ideas, post them below!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Lately, a bunch of companies are coming out with ways to display search results differently or make it easier to find information, without having to navigate away from what you're doing.

I'm used to screwing around with Google until I find what I'm looking for; usually opening a dozen tabs for more specific searches. Now, for more popular (celebrities, definitions, product model numbers) or pattern based searches (addresses, phone numbers, UPS tracking numbers), it seems the trend is to bring the search results to you in a predictive manner, rather than having to think about it and search for it.

First is Kallout.com, (http://www.kallout.com) which is very interesting. If you see something you want more info about, it just highlight it, and a KallOut box pops up with their 'best guess' about what you want.

Best part is, if it's a pattern based search like an address, it will just show you a Google map. It saves you the time of opening another window or tab, and you have the information right in front of you.

Also, KallOut works outside of the browser. It works in Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Adobe Reader.

Pretty cool right? Now you don't have to even leave the program you're working in to get more information about almost anything you're searching for.

Next there's Snapshots from Snap.com. (http://www.snap.com). This service goes a step further than having to select any text and automatically finds relevant search strings within your content. It adds a little icon and with a mouseover, drills into that search bringing up a "Snapshot". The snapshots can be almost anything, stock quotes, product reviews, maps and more.

This service only works in context on the web, unlike KallOut which works on the list of Microsoft/Adobe programs.

Snapshots is really easy to install too, with one click you can have it on Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad.

The last one is Inquisitor, (http://www.inquisitorx.com). (Advanced Coverage on Mashable: http://mashable.com/2008/10/23/yahoo-inquisitor-firefox-ie). This is a search predictor with enhancements. Out of these three, this is the one that makes you think the most. You actually have to type something in your search bar to get any suggestions (seems like alot of work compared to Snap or KallOut).

Inquisitor suggests search results and search strings based on number of searches, visits etc...

--

It seems that there's a movement to search faster and have the content delivered even before you think about searching for it.

I see two sides to this trend. One is that with these tools, you might limit yourself to seeing search results that the are made to show you which is usually from the most popular sources (NY Times, Twitter, Google Maps etc...). What if the exact answer you're looking for is the 3rd result in Google on a 2 year old forum? Will these tools limit finding information to only a few sources or just make it easier to find information faster?

What is interesting is they can change the connection between certain contexts - if you use these tools and contextually select, hover or start typing, "iPhone", it could bring up apple.com, the App Store, AT&T pricing plans.

What about products? If you were searching for a digital camera, will it always bring you to Amazon, or expand to serve the site with the lowest prices? Maybe they'll charge for your site to be the most contextually relevant to a search in the future.

Interesting tools out there, give them a try and see if they can save you time!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Google analytics is probably the best free analytics tool ever, and they are adding a ton of new features.

Here's a link to the original post:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-enterprise-class-features-added-to.html

Summary:

• Custom Reporting - Drag and drop interface to create a report.
  
• Data Export API - API to extend the uses of report data for use outside of the system.
  
• Motion Charts - Ability to select x-axis, y-axis and bubble size/color to view how metrics perform over time.
  
• AdSense Reporting - track AdSense with GA (link: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/10/make-date-with-data-in-google-analytics.html)
  
• Advanced Segmentation - Analyze subsets of traffic, cr
  
• Updated GUI and Admin interface - Easier management of multiple accounts

The link above has tons of screenshots and videos showing all of the features.

The overall best looking feature is the GUI itself. It look very sharp. Custom reporting will be another excellent feature (hopefully helping ot avoid customizing everything in Excel!).

Also, for many bloggers and Internet marketers, the AdSense tracking will be crucial. You can measure visitor activity, and discover numerous points of useful data.

These features should be available to everyone very soon. Check it out!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Wow, after looking into it more, there are a bunch more interesting Twitter related apps and tools. The craziest part is the Mashable article from last month (on the previous Twitter tools post) mentions dozens of tools but these aren't there.

Here's another list!

TwitterMail
www.twittermail.com

TwitterMail lets you set up an @twittermail.com e-mail address that is linked to your Twitter account. If you send a message to that e-mail address, it will be tweeted on Twitter. Here's a list of all TwitterMail features.

Twistori
www.twistori.com

Twistori shows you a streaming feed of tweets that start with a certain phrase. The feed is really cool, all Ajax and colorful. There's no user data, its just a list of what people are saying and doing that begin with certain words/phrases.


Currently those phrases are:

• I Love
• I Hate
• I Think
• I Believe
• I Feel
• I Wish

Cursebird
www.cursebird.com

CurseBird is a streaming feed that shows tweets in which people are swearing. This one however has user data, and a link to the user's feed included. If you like what people are cursing about, you can easily follow them. Very interesting idea and way to use/display Twitter's data.

Twittercal
www.twittercal.com

Twittercal automaically connects your Google calendar with your Twitter feed. Very cool and extremely useful for people using Google calendar to manage their events, tasks etc... All you need to do is their simple 5 step setup and then direct message @gcal to set up calendar items. I wish we had this sort of functionality for Exchange!

Tweetdeck
www.tweetdeck.com

Tweetdeck is a desktop app that looks at Twitter in a whole different way. It breaks up the feeds into groupings etc... that make it easier to see and interact with. They have a really good explanation on their site. Check it out.

Twitpic
www.twitpic.com

Twitpic lets you share photos on Twitter really easily.


Wow, there sure are alot of these tools coming out for Twitter. By having an API that is easy to interact with, they allowed dozens of developers to create innovative ways to view, sort, search and integrate with their data and functionality.

I wonder if Friendfeed, or any other social networking platform will ever have this much traction (Facebook does have a ton of apps, but its all within Facebook's site) with their API and have so many programmers rapidly developing for them.

Do you think that Twitter would be so popular if they didn't have these apps? They provide tons of features and ease of use that probably contributed to their tipping point of popularity.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

[Related Post: List of Twitter Related Web Apps and Tools]

Note/update: Found another tech blog covering Twitter tools today! http://meghan.nonsociety.com. Since this is a Lifecast blog, I'm not sure how long these will be there but on 10/21/08 between 10:23am and 12:32pm every post was about Twitter related tools, and a bunch I missed too! Check it out.

It seems that everyone is biting off the tipping point popularity of Twitter and making programs using their API. Twitter has become a must-have in the social media world, and has really taken off lately. Just in the past few days it seems the list of tools and applications has grown significantly, and it's not just programs to make tweeting easier. Take a look at some of these cool Twitter integrations.

TwitterGrader
http://twitter.grader.com/

TwitterGrader is pretty new, and really cool. The concept is simple - you drop your twitter username into the box and it gives you a grade. The first thing I thought of is, "How do they come up with the grade?" The website explains that the grade is calculated using the following criteria:Check it out, its fun to see what your grade is (I'm actually new to Twitter at this point so I only got a 51%, but that will improve over time) and what other people's scores are too. It's also a great way to find new, interesting people to follow as well. Check it out!

TwitterVision
http://twittervision.com/

TwitterVision is a real-time view at where tweets are coming from around the globe. It's cool to see the map move around all over the place and is another cool way to find people to follow since you're seeing a random view of public tweets. It's also really easy to just sit there and watch, so try not to waste half your day staring this!

Qwitter
http://useqwitter.com/

Qwitter is another new app that sends you an email when someone un-follows you. It also tells you the most recent tweet you posted before they stopped following. It's neat to track when people stop following you and what might have caused it, but it shouldn't stop you from posting what you like to. If you're using Twitter as a marketing tool to build a network of like-minded people, it can help you properly target the people that you want to market to. It's a really cool idea, and it's easy to turn off if you want. Best part is, it's totally free!

Summize
www.summize.com
http://search.twitter.com

Remember before Summize got bought by Twitter? This was one of the original Twitter tools, and now is the twitter search tool at search.twitter.com.

If you're interested, here's a couple links about their buyout.

Twitter Buys Summize. Confirmed. (Summize Blog)
http://blog.summize.com/2008/07/twitter-buys-su.html

Twitter Buys Summize For About $15M: Gets Search - And Maybe A Business Model (AlleyInsider)
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/twitter-buys-summize-for-about-15m-stock-and-cash

$15 Million! This must be the precedence for the motivation for everyone to make these tools. I wonder if Twitter is in the market to buy new technologies that use their system?

Twitterholic
http://twitterholic.com/

Twitterholic is a site that ranks users a few times per day on a long list (top 100) based on their followers, friends and updates. This one's been around for a while, an d doesn't do much but is a great way to find the most popular (and often most interesting) users to follow.

Quotably
http://quotably.com/

Quotably gives you a different view of twitter feeds based on conversations. It's a cool aggregate view, for example, here's a conversation view from leolaporte:

Rather than having to read the whole feed to see all of the responses to Leo having the whole day off, it aggregates them into organized boxes, collecting all of the @ replies for a particular tweet. Very cool!

That's my list.

There are a ton more, especially for mobile use, desktop tweeting and browser ad-ons that help quickly tweet as well. There's a great list put together by Mashable here: Twitter Toolbox.

Whats your favorite? Post a comment!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

[Related Post: Even More Twitter Apps, Tools and Views!]

Quick update today. Cool links to keep you up to date.
Social Media Strategies Conference
The Social Media Strategies Conference, in San Fransisco is coming up soon. That's their funky graphic to the left there displaying some of the top Social Media sites.

It's not super cheap, $1250 for a non-member. But, when you look at the list of speakers, it's probably worth it if you're really serious about social media.

Link to Conference Details: Social Media Strategies


Speaking of Conferences and Expos... Mashable has a great new list of all upcoming internet related gatherings from around the world.
http://mashable.com/2008/10/20/mashable-conferences-oct20/ Very useful resource.

Today on Twitter it seems Ed Dale is incredibly excited about new features at FriendFeed. Here's a link about FriendFeed from the Thirty Day Challenge site about how to get set up.
http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/members/training08/preseason/preseason-friendfeed.php

Ed Dale is the kind of dude you just follow into battle. He knows what he's doing. Without too much investigation - just sign up for FriendFeed and use it. Ed Dale was right on the money when he said (a LONG time ago) that Twitter would be huge and it sure is now.

The basics of FriendFeed is that it imports and aggregates your friends submissions to other Social sites. It's pretty much integrated with everything. Check out this page for more info:
http://friendfeed.com/about. Just look at all the little icons!


Ok, so that's really tiny but you get the point. Check it out.

Qik for iPhone
Here's a video of a Jailbroken iPhone with Qik installed.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pv_sqTnQ1Dk

Qik allows you to do mobile streaming video and chat from your iPhone. How cool is that? Here's a new demo of Qik using Qik (ironic?). http://qik.com/video/420375

Very Cool. The frame rate looks good, but it seems that the compression makes the video a bit blurry when the phone moves. Either way, having completely portable, wireless, streaming capability is really exciting.

That's it for today.

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Here's a few resources and new info from around the web to keep you entertained and learning through the weekend.

Found Jim's Marketing Blog through Twitter and it's a good read. Definitely worth checking out. His new post is about - "How to make sales the easy way". Here's a link:

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2008/10/14/how-to-make-sales-the-easy-way/


Problogger had a great post called, "Why I've Been Offered Close to a Million Dollars for My Blog...". Really interesting stuff here:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/18/why-ive-been-offered-close-to-a-million-dollars-for-my-blog-and-why-i-said-no/

This next link is for any 4 Hour Work Week/mini-retirement seekers. Here's a site that has a ton of huge, luxurious homes in Hawaii for super cheap

http://www.mauileasings.com

I found this one through Jason Moffatt's Twitter feed. http://www.mauileasings.com/LT200/226/226.htm#226. A place like that around here (north Jersey) would be triple the cost and and hour to the Jersey shore... not 3 blocks from the beautiful Pacific. Pretty incredible when you think about it.

I also have to mention how much free stuff John Carlton is giving out for his Simple Writing System launch. Reports, videos, interviews... pure gold here:

http://www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog/

He sure knows how to move the free line, that's for sure.

Well, have a great weekend!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Action. In business and in life, I think that action is one of the most important if not the most important overall activity you do every day. Now, this initially sounds weird right? Of course action is important, without it you would sit idle and not get anything done. I'm talking about action and decision. In business there are always tons of decisions to make all the time. From the very beginning of your ideas to the smallest details.

What should I name my company?
What logo should I use?
What should I sell?
What should my URL be?

All the way to...

Should I invest more into my PPC?
Should I change my ad headlines? To what?

Maybe I should buy a banner on that blog...? hmm $5 CPM... ?
What color should it be?
What should my landing page look like?

What should my blog post be about today? ;)

And so on...

You can get completely caught up in making these decisions and it leads to inaction.

I've learned from tons of sources (Dan Kennedy, Eben Pagen, our business coach Marcie etc...) that this can spiral into repressing the most important decisions you have to make. It's always easier to do something you know really well and are comfortable with than it is to make a risky decision about something you might not be an expert in.

The key is action.

It's always better to do something even if it turns out to be flat out wrong. The key is to make correct decisions often and fix wrong ones fast - but always take action. If you have an idea, test it and pursue it.

Decision repression also leads to making excuses. For example, you can blame not deciding something on not being able to have a meeting with your business partner. This decision then collects dust for weeks and it can lead to a missed opportunity. It doesn't only apply to business either, of course. You can make excuses for inaction with almost anything that's difficult. "I didn't work out today because my room is messy and my shoes are uncomfortable."

Most people become comfortable with their excuses and start to rationalize them.

"It's fine to eat McDonalds three times per week because it's cheaper, easier and faster than cooking a healthy dinner." Do you see why this excuse is flat out wrong? Think about how many people rely on these sorts of excuses to live unhealthy lives...

Heck, I do these things all the time. I thought I could never have a consistently updated blog because I simply didn't have the time. There was no way I could do it. Hey, look around folks... I realized that was a bum excuse and found the time to have dailymarketingblog.com.

Really... at the end of the day it's really about getting things done. Everyone has the ability to do take action, so do it!

Here's an exercise that really helped me.

First, close your eyes and think of a situation that you made an excuse in order to avoid something difficult or lead to inaction and indecision.

Next, think through the excuse and if it's something you can fix (like buying new sneakers, or cleaning your room), just do it! Don't let controlable situations cause excuses.

Be uncomfortable with your excuse. If it's hindering you from getting what you want, get rid of the excuse and take action.

Right now, decide that if you have a constraint or excuse that is causing inaction - fix it.

Test some new ad copy, make a new social networking profile, A/B test a new landing page idea, go for a jog or join a gym... Just don't let an excuse get in the way.

Anyway, this was all a huge realization for me recently (especially after a few product launches about similar topics; Rich Schefren's GPS, Eben Pagen's Wake Up Productive, Mind Movies etc...) and I wanted to share some of the most impactual things I've learned.

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Just when I think I'm on top of things, I remember a website I forgot to check out for a while. A few weeks ago I posted a video of Tony Robbins from http://www.ted.com. Recently I checked the site out again, and it's got a ton of new content and amazing, interesting videos.

For example here's a great one about Positive Psychology:




Where else can you get information like this for free? It's really addictive actually because you keep hearing to level experts talk about interesting subjects. And learning if cool right? Well, of course it is and I think TED is a great way to learn about random new subjects you might have little experience with. Poverty, Green Technology, History, Food & Nutrition, Biology - it's all there.

The best part is, it's not a lecture, it's entertaining and often funny. When you are captivated during a learning experience, it really helps make it easier right?

Well, I'm all about continuing to learn new things all the time; even if they are completely unrelated to what I do all day.

Here's one I watched called, "What's Wrong With What We Eat" by Mark Bittman:





In just around 20 minutes, he goes through tons of info that I've never heard of about livestock's impact on the environment as well as the history of American diet for the past 100 years or so.

Very interesting right? And it's all free. Check out www.TED.com.

Any other sites like this that you can think of? Post a comment!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

After my morning ritual of reading way-to-many news sources and blogs I felt that the world is fully saturated with news and here are some of the more interesting things I stumbled upon.

Very Important SEO Info from Matt Cutts
404 Errors, Links and Google Webmaster Tools - Read this immediately.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/free-direct-text-links/

Mint.com is Finally out of BETA and Comes out with new features
I love Mint.com. I've used it for a while now, and they finally are fully live. Check it out:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/14/mint-leaves-beta-brings-a-bunch-of-new-features-with-it/

On the same topic of online personal finance tools, there's been a few newcomers. Wesabe has been around for a while, and now there's Rudder and Thrive. I wonder who's going to take the personal finance gold?

Apple new MacBook
There's been a buzz about this new "affordable" Macbook. Here's a great look at it:
http://mashable.com/2008/10/14/macbook-pro/

ThisIsSand.com
Ok, this is just cool. Don't click if you want to be productive for the next 30 min or so.
http://thisissand.com/

Enjoy!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Stumbled upon a bunch of videos from the Future of Web Apps Expo in London. There's a ton of interesting stuff here: FOWA London Videos.


Noticed that there's a conference coming to New York in a few weeks, the Future of Web Design Conference - http://www.futureofwebdesign.com/2008/newyork/. This is probably going to be incredible. With all of the new styles of websites, and focus on user behavior, conversion optimization, eye tracking, uses of psychology (with colors, fonts, layouts) etc... I bet this show will be a blast.

Here are a few of my favorite websites based on revolutionary design:

1. http://jen.lu
This website totally blew my mind. It looks like an anime cartoon meets a operating system. Even with so much going on, the Flash is obviously optimized enough to load super fast. The creativity here is through the roof - check it out.

2. http://www.mint.com
You can't really talk about modern design and web applications without mentioning mint.com. Every color, border, gradient and image is spot on. On top of looking beautiful, their application is extremely useful. They added in Student and Car Loan integrations, so now it can track ALL of my liabilities.

Well, there's my top 2 I can think of - for more amazing designs check out: http://bestwebgallery.com and click around. There's some great stuff out there you might have missed. Or, check out http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/2008-design-trends/ for some more interesting design trends and ideas.

Thanks!

Anthony Latona

Yahoo has a new Web Analytics product, (cleverly called, Yahoo! Web Analytics). Yahoo acquired IndexTools earlier in 2008, and created their YWA offering. From their website, it look really good. Very clean design, real-time data, and tons of advanced features.

Here's a link to check out a list of the features: http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/features.php.

Looks like they have a pretty nice feature set:

• Executive Dashboards (customizable) - for checking goals, spend, trends etc...
• Custom Reporting
• Real-Time Segmentation to see how different on site tests change conversion and visitor interaction with your site
• Real-Time Cost analysis for up to the minute ROI reports
• E-commerce reporting down to the product level
• and way more...
  

I tried signing up but it won't let me in yet. We will have to keep an eye on it for now until they accept open signups.

You can read more on VisualRevenue here: http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2008/10/indextools-is-now-yahoo-web-analytics.html

There's tons of screenshots and info on there too.

Check it out!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Take a look at some of these super-interesting videos from the New Media Expo.

http://videos.newmediaexpo.com



New Google Blog Search. Very cool way to index and look at popular blog post topics in various categories. Not a big surprise that politics is at the top...
http://blogsearch.google.com/


Totally FREE PDF Version of Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. I haven't read this yet, but thanks to Jeff Walker for posting this on Twitter. I didn't know it was free, but it's all over Google!

Download Scientific Advertising

That should keep you busy for a while :)

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

MSN Live Search (www.live.com) has two promotions going on now that pay or reward you for using their search engine.

One is their CashBack program. Certain searches (especially eBay related) have an icon for a percentage back on your purchase. Only certain searches bring up the cashback icon. Just a few days ago, searching for "Xbox 360" had a 30% cashback coupon. That term doesn't work anymore though. I tried a few others, but the only one I got was searching for 'bay' brought up a 20% cashback icon.
Still a good deal. However, when you think about it, Live search is PAYING you to use their search! How can anyone compete with that. There are a few stipulations though. You have to wait 60 days before you get your cash back, and there is a max of 3 items you can buy using the cash back.

The best marketing tool they use with this true scarcity. You can never tell when Live will have the option for the CashBack, and as soon as it appears, it can be gone in hours or days. I can't even find a 30% cash back option anymore. It does get them some traffic though because we are constantly checking for when it it might come back. Especially when you want to buy a Nintendo Wii or a new set of home theater speakers, you can save a ton with a 30% coupon.


Live also came out with SearchPerks (http://www.getsearchperks.com). Another service that gives you something for using their search. It's interesting that it doesn't work in FireFox, which renders it unusable for most people. Anyway, this one gives you 'tickets' for the searches that you do, which are redeemable for prizes. There's a catch though. You can only get up to 25 tickets per day. So, with that in mind, if you use Live all the time, and max out every day, it's only a matter of time until you get your rewards. Basically it takes 44 days to get a T-Shirt or 72 days to get 1000 flyer miles.

I think Ski-Ball down the Jersey Shore would be a faster way to get a T-Shirt (and far better than searching Live.com all day). That's just my opinion.

Anyone think that if Live keeps paying people for searching that they could give Google a run for their money? With all of Microsoft's income streams, they could pay people a fortune to use Live Search and take a significant amount of Google's dominance. Since Google still makes about 95% of their revenue from AdWords, it could be a serious power play for Live.com.

What do you think? Leave a comment!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Here's a great video I saw posted by Ed Dale's blog,Tubby Nerd, of Warren Buffet talking about the economy and his views. Buffet is a really smart guy and you should take a look at what he has to say.



Here's my take. Obviously, the economy is all over the place. The volatility is incredible and it makes me happy that I don't have money in the stock market. It's also very easy to get consumed by the hype and ultimately depressed since everyone is constantly saying "recession" and "depression" and "economic disaster!". In reality though, things like depressions don't happen over night. There isn't going to be a movie-like montage that's going to take you from today and skip months of time and put you in an economic depression. I think people have to stop picturing themselves living in Hoovervilles, and get back to work (or maybe focus a bit more on this election coming up maybe?).

I won't claim that everything is peachy. It's not. There are problems. But don't let the Dow Jones get in your head. If you're a marketer, keep marketing. If you're a blogger, keep blogging. If you're a consultant, keep consulting, make sure your clients are happy, and keep providing value. The stock market volatility and $700 billion bail outs have little to do with you right now.

I'm ranting like this since I found myself overwhelmed with information, watching CNBC in the morning, checking Google Finance on the hour, or even every 30 min, and discussing Wall St. politics as if I am actually involved. After realizing that I got consumed by the media hype and constant coverage, I just got back to work ...and it feels good. There's no reason to be ignorant or unaware of what's going on, but don't get too worked up.

Keep in mind that the economy is elastic, and it always has ups and downs. This is definitely a down; but it's not the end of the world, folks.

Also remember that the media covers the most exciting and captivating things it can find, and since these stories effect 401k packages, various investments, mortgages, bank accounts, etc... and it scares a ton of people. So, the media in turn will cover it so they can get more people to watch their shows and their commercials.

Here's what Frank Kern posted on his Blog the other day. The "Emergency Video". Realize he put that out there to sell his Mass Control System, but he does makes some extremely valuable points.

Overall, I would recommend not sitting on Google Finance, hitting F5 every 5 minutes. Think about how all of this affects your business and try not to get sucked into the hype like I did. This isn't financial or economic advice - I just feel like there are too many people thinking that the economic news like a hurricane that's just off shore. There's no need to start boarding up your windows and pulling all of your money out of the markets or banks. It's not a state of emergency.

There are problems, and it's complicated and messy; but it's fixable over time. It's also interesting and hard to avoid. My advice: don't get overwhelmed, and keep on marketing!

Heck, maybe I'm too optimistic. Even as I'm writing this, the Dow is dropping again.


Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

How do you make a video that is destined to become "Viral"? I was thinking about this during a new episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (link). The gang holds a contest at the bar and winner gets to be on the Paddy's Billboard. The side-story has Sweet Dee and Charlie trying to make a YouTube video. They want this video to become "viral" and make them famous.



Well the show is hilarious, needless to say. However, it does make you think about what makes a good video instantly 'viral'? There are certain elements that seem to hold true. It has to be funny and unique. Think about "My New Haircut". This video was viral instantly. People everywhere were quoting it for months and still do today. It was an instant hit:


But why? What made it good enough to send it to your friends and make them watch it?

A few days ago I posted the "5 Friends" video that was funny and unique and of course 2 days after it was out, everyone knew about it.

I would submit that the 3rd ingredient on top of funny and unique is "mass connectible" (not sure if that's a word), which basically means that virtually everyone can get a laugh out of it. If you had an extremely funny and unique video that was about dog grooming or dry cleaning, maybe in those niches you would get some traffic, but the most viral videos have an element to them where everyone can connect to the video. That's probably the most important 'viral' component so you can secure that the video can be sent to many people since it's "mass connectible".

Leave a comment with your thoughts or favorite viral video!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

I recently read the book, The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. It's a few years old and I'm sure most of you have heard of it before. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. The 4HWW goes through some of the most interesting topics about running a business and how Tim Ferriss used his methodologies to free up enough time in his life to remain a millionaire business owner while being able to travel the world.

It's actually quite inspiring to read about his ups and downs in business and marketing and how he overcame tons of seemingly insurmountable issues to only working about 2 -4 hours per week.

Here's my take on the whole idea of living a 4 Hour work week. First, you need to know what you really want to do with the rest of your time. You need goals, dreams and desires that are outside of business success. Ferriss actually has a few good examples like buying a Ferrari, or learning another language, or spending 80% of your time with your kids rather than at work, or volunteering and being philanthropic, or moving to another country for months at a time. Without this inherent desire to do something, you might find that the 4 hour work week is a pathway to laziness or you might just not do anything to get there.

The best mindset to have when looking at the 4HWW is to dream BIG. He has a term/process called "Ideal Lifestyle Costing" which shows you that the most grandiose ideas don't cost as much as you think they would. It's a great exercise, try it out.

Now, of course you need a business to do this, and with the Outsourcing methods that Ferriss explains, it's possible to set up a business on "autopilot" in which everything is run by other people. It takes time and dedication to set up these types of businesses but it is the first step in setting up your 4HWW.

It's also a fast read. I got through it in 2 nights. The least you will get out of the book is a good look at how the New Rich (as Ferriss call them), runs their businesses and see if you can make lifestyle changes that can allow you to free up more time for your true desires and aspirations. The book challenges you to think about and reflect on your life to analyze and find those desires, which is one of the best take-aways.

For only $12, it's totally worth picking it up. Here's a link for Amazon: The 4 Hour Work Week.

If you've already read it, let me know your comments below!

Thanks,

Anthony Latona

Here's a recipe to get your video to go viral INSTANTLY. Put a ton of the world's most recognizable movie stars into one video, make it funny and put it on YouTube. Oh yeah, and have the stars ask you to send it to other people. It's genius, and it works! It only came out yesterday and it's everywhere.



The link they mention in the video is here: http://www.maps.google.com/vote

Thanks,

Anthony

Short post today.

Check out the TouchGraph Google Browser. It takes a search term and shows you how google results are interlinked. Here's a screenshot:


Now you can visually see how links to and from various web pages are related, and drill in to each to find their links and so on. It's great for competitive analysis, so see where your competition is getting links from and how topic relevancy works for your particular keyword.

Check it out, let me know if you like it.

Thanks!

Anthony

Here's a tool we use all the time, and I think everyone in the Social Media world should try out. It's called Social Marker.

http://www.socialmarker.com/

Social Marker is a great tool to quickly post and submit content to dozens of Social media sites with ease. If you are promoting a product launch or your blog and want to submit to Digg, Twitter, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Stumble and Fark and 20 more, it can be a very long process (probably longer than even writing the post!).

Give it a try! Social Marker plus a password storage program (something like RoboForm, or just your browser) makes posting on numerous sites a breeze.

Thanks,

Anthony