Weird World - Internet and Technology Blog

The world of search engines is one of the most closely watched areas in the recent technological changes. The ubiquity of search as evidenced by verbilisation of ‘To Google’ is unparalleled  on the internet and home computer and now it wants to be everywhere.

The practice of searching has changed relatively little in the decade of astounding change in search engines which encompassed the stellar rise of Google. Typically, one sits at a personal computer types a word into a box on a simple home screen and then is presented by 10 results with a short summary and a blue link to the site. If you need more results you can click onto the next page for another 10.

However, with the advent of new technologies and, in Bing, a serious competitor to Google there are some changes that take enchance the basic searching and also take it beyond the desktop.

Instant Search.

Recently introduced by Google this new way of serarching is now the default setting for searching on Google via a PC or MAC and suggests results even as the user types. This means that after the first few letters search results are already being displayed. Whether this is actually of any use in searching (very few partial search terms will return results relevant to the user’s actual intention) is up for debate, however it gives an illusion of speed of results and looks pretty good too.

Real-time Search

Gone are the days when websites were updated on search engines every few weeks. Many key news sites are crawled on a minutes basis and as such, results are now presented within the main search results in near real-time.

Social Search

Tied to the idea of real-time search, Google has now reached beyond the standard website crawl to start presenting results from blogs and social network sites. Tap in a popular topic of conversation and you can see the results update as new tweets come in.

Mobile Search

With the rapid growth of the smart-phone market, led by the iPhone and Android phones, search is rapidly one of the ‘killer apps’ for mobile phones. What used to be a tortuous affair trying to get the pub quiz answers, is now as user-friendly as using a home computer and items such as search history can be shared between the two allowing you to rapidly find previously searched information.

New ways of searching

When is a search not a search? Consider the methods below where innovative uses of technology such as GPS (Global Positioning), Mobile Internet and Mobile Cameras are used to find information in non-traditional ways.

- Camera search – Now released for the iPhone and previously on Android , Google Goggles allows the user to take a picture and Google will attempt to match it to something it recognises. It’s still early days for this technology, for instance, items such as Big Ben would be readily identified but a celebrity face might not.

- Location searches. Using the GPS of a phone, applications can identify where you are and present localised searches. In standard search engine apps, this could mean that searching for a garage would present those garages in your locality, often with a map.

-Augmented reality. This service combines both GPS and your camera to present ‘results’ on your screen overlaced over the video image. With a typical search you could point your camera at a high street and it would display all of the  local shops and amenities with the distance and direction to them.

- Voice search – Another application which is available through Google is the ability to speak into your phone and have results presented, certainly handy if you can’t stop to type.

As you can see, futurist predictions of embedded computers carried by everyone allowing access to a gigantic data store aren’t that far off, albeit currently channelled through a mobile phone. It doesn’t take a massive leap to visualise smaller devices which actively monitor what you see, what you hear and where you are to present relevant information throughout your day – if that sounds like a vision of an always-connected shared consciousness then you’ve probably just glimpsed the roadmap for Google and other companies in this sector.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a buzz phrase that has been around since the start of the web but has now gained parity, if not primacy with the design of a website. It is , however only the start of a successful web marketing campaign.

It’s obvious to say that if you have a website that is not being seen by people it is by-and-large pretty useless. Of the many methods to promote a website, the most popular is SEO and a whole business sector has grown up around it. Although there are differing levels of experience; many have used it for years, some are just getting it – it’s fair to say that it is a concept generally understood by website owners.

This presents a few problems. Firstly, because everyone’s doing it, it has got increasingly competitive. There are, after all, only ten spots on the front page of a search engine and not everyone can be number one.  Secondly it runs the danger of focusing on this aspect to the exclusion of other methods. So in order to rise above the competition and also extend the mix of marketing techniques it’s worth considering other approaches.

Converting Consumers

Although getting visitors to a website is a large effort, there is still more work to be done to get this user actually using your website. Again, strategies and current success rates will vary. A sale-focused website will geared to converting a customer, but different types of sites will have differing end-goals. A journal may want customers to subscribe or read large amounts of articles in order to generate ad impressions. Ultimately every website will have a goal, or it wouldn’t have been published in the first place, so using something like Google Analytics will help measure that goal and allow you to refine your content to increase the conversion.

A goal can be defined in analytics as a page onto which you can assign an arbitrary value. So you might consider a thanks page, which a user can only reach by filling in a contact form as a goal. You might also consider a checkout page where the user has bought a product a goal, and allocate the value of that product as an indicator. With these metrics set up, you can track where high value consumers come from, which pages they view and adjust your site to match the desired profiles.

Social Marketing

So, if everyone is doing SEO, how can you get an edge? Well, one of the terms that has entered the marketing consciousness in the past year has been ‘social marketing’ which is the use of the ascendent social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook to market your site. At the simplest level this involves setting up an account on each site and posted regular updates to gather ‘followers’ or ‘friends’ . These social networked consumers will theoretically  exhibit greater loyalty to your site having discovered it through their cosy social environment.

Apps and Beyond

If you’ve tried everything which passes as conventional marketing then why not look at some rising ideas. Currently Mobile usage on smartphones is burgeoning particularly thanks to iPhones and Android phones. One of the main attractions of these smartphones are the thousands of ‘apps’ available that offer various functions from games to calculators to tools. Big brands have already moved into this space such as the Barclaycard tubing game, online loyalty tracking from Tesco and Sainsbury, and the AA travel guides to name a few. Although these are big names, more modest apps can be created on a budget and are especially effective in niche markets.

In summary, the message is that ‘yes’ it’s great to get more visitors, but once you’ve done this hard work don’t sit back until you have converted them to site users. In an increasingly competitive marketplace a multi-approach to marketing your site will reap dividends.

One of the new / old buzzwords doing the rounds currently is 3D and yesterday’s announcemnt by Nintendo of a 3D DSi console means that the 3D bug has now grasped most areas of consumer electronics looking for a new novelty to sell to a jaded public.

The recent buzz around 3D stemmed not from a new technological break through but a slight expansion of an existing idea that hit a moribund market. The general sequence follows below:

3D good, 2D bad

So, audiences love novelty, and in the sharp end of the media market i.e. Cinema this has always been the case. However following closely behind it is the home entertainment market and no sooner has the Cinema industry come up with a new idea then it is replicated by the home market.

In response to VHS / DVD home-viewing, cinema re-invented itself as an ‘experience’ with high-definition pictures and surround sound to entice more people in to buy their popcorn. However now that High-definition, widescreen televisions and Home Entertainment systems are widespread, they need a new novelty. 3D films such as Avatar have pioneered this new move and in their wake other industries are taking notice.

3D 4 All

In typical sequence, next came the home entertainment market, so it’s now possible to buy 3D televisions and BskyB have starting broadcasting trial 3D football matches. Next comes 3D gaming and 3D websites suggesting a future where we’ll never be more than a few centimetres away from our 3D glasses.

Will the novelty wear off? Probably. Unlike high definition and surround sound it’s not a ‘natural’ experience. Then what’s next? Well there are already prototypes of scent-producing machines which could be an acquired taste. These leaves just taste and touch to work with so don’t be surprised if, in the future, you’re given a pair of virtual reality gloves and a willy-wonka style flavour changing gobstopper as you’re ushered to your seat.

We’re now just a month away from the expected launch date of the iPad in the UK, and for a product which generated so much feverish speculation it’s anti-climax time. That’s not to say the fortunate owners of the iPad won’t be more than happy with their little devices, but for a tech universe which was turned upside-down by the launch of the iPhone and iPod it’s a little bit of a disappointment. There’s certainly been more than enough written about why the iPad won’t change the world in the same way and in essence charges of being little more than an over-sized iPod touch aren’t wide of the mark.

For those who are content generators, and in this I include anyone who generates web-enabled content, the lack of revolutionary features isn’t a terrible thing. The good news is that all of your standard-compliant web content or specialised iPhone apps will work pretty much in the same way as they do on the iPhone. The iPad does have a larger resoution, so for designers stuck on designing to 1024 it’s a welcome return to 1 to 1 pixel mapping.

Killer App?

So if Apple has created a new market segment what’s the application that’s going break the market open? It’s hard to see a totally new application so I’ve profiled some likely contenders below:

Reading: Didn’t they invent books for this? Well yes, but it is here the iPad will be taking on the eReader and Kindle. On the iPhone reading is a bit tricky. It’s fine for a quick browse of a website but for hardcore book / newspaper reading the iPad’s increased size offers a more pleasing space to read downloaded books or papers and magazines paid for by subscription or micropayment.

Games: The iPhone / iPod combination has already taken market share from the handheld consoles with Apple’s downloadable content sending Nintendo and Sony scrambling to launch their own download stores. With the addition of the iPad the screen size beats the newly launched DSi and will further challenge these areas while the increased resolution will also challenge the Playstation, Wii and 360 market.

Netbook: This sector of the market can best be described as being for people who want a net-enabled device for limited purposes that is bigger than their phone but don’t want to have to go through the pain of booting up their desktop or laptop. For Social Networking, typing the occasional e-mail or viewing photos on Flickr it is a serviceable gadget and with Apple’s ease of use and whizzy interface. Whether it can capture this market, and whether this market is of a larger enough size remains to be seen. For the less technically-minded user or a one-computer household looking for other options it could work and the pricing at around £400 could entice these people.

The iPad launches at the end of April in the UK.

25 years after the first .com was registered the ubiquity of the ‘web’ means that it touches every facet of society. It seems such an obvious fact that it’s almost unnecessary to state this, but in the unlikely that some brave soul should raise their hand and say ‘what has the web ever done for me?’ we need only consider the world of the web outside the most common conception of a ‘website’.

The predominant consumption of the ‘web’ in the last 10 years has been via a ‘website’ with early incarnations such as Bulletin Boards and Newsgroups gradually falling by the wayside. In recent years this single point of consumption, that of a user sat in front of a wired personal computer, has been challenged and may soon be superceded by the rise of device consumption, led by, but not exclusive to mobile phones. While the format is therefore changing the basic elements remain the same.

Democratisation and Dispersal of Authority

As the ‘web’ has expanded the concept of a ‘website’ has moved on to web-enabled information formats such as RSS which can exist outside of a website and can appear anywhere from your phone, television, fridge or any number of connected devices. At the same time, the method of production has moved from a sphere dominated by ‘geeks’ to a truly democratic medium where information can be created on phones, cameras, games consoles and an array of new devices.

However against this background of increasing information there has been a gradual erosion of authority as the internet now abounds with rumours, gossip and errors. The citing of Wikipedia, the user-edited encyclopedia as an authority is just one manifestation of the loss of trust that a multitude of voices engenders. The continued representation of the BBC and traditional media outlets within the top-viewed websites demonstrates not only the continued reach of their reporting network, but also a reliance on trustworthy and accountable information.

Web or Die

Overwhelmingly the rise of the web has been a positive, inevitable movement that has affected all aspects of society . The question of a few years ago over whether to embrace this technology has now changed to an absolute necessity for all businesses, individuals and organisations, so much so that it is now considered a basic human right.

In this blog I’ll be presenting commentary on the web-related stories of the day from a technical literate viewpoint but for general reading , admittedly adding to the general noise but with a bit of community input hopefully moving toward the trusted end of the spectrum.