This week saw the triumphant return of Steve from his tour of the Great American West. From the grandeur of the Grand Canyon to the old Hollywood history of Palm Springs to the spectacle of Sight and Sound Theater in Branson, MO — and all the massively boring deserts in-between — he saw it all. And apparently video recorded it, too. Still, it was great to have him back so we could all sit around the lunch table share the information we ran across in the past week.

Mini Messages and Primal Leadership

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

Since I had been out of the office for three weeks, I gave myself permission to cover two topics this week.  I opened with “mini” inspirational story about the Mini-Cooper’s viral success in marketing to their own clients using automated road signs that spontaneously produce messages to Mini owners.  The whole idea is fun, got attention and makes Mini owners feel like a special class of people.  To our team, this served as an inspiration to channel even more creative energy toward helping our clients market to their existing customers.

My second topic was about the emotional and social climate at YDOP, my role in it and what steps we will take to continue to develop a work-place/environment that we love and our customers describe as up-lifting.  Using insights from a book I’m digesting called “Primal Leadership,” I described how emotions are extremely contagious, and that is especially true from the individuals in leadership.  I am seeking to identify my own leadership styles and competencies/weaknesses using feedback from the YDOP team using questionnaires I distributed today.  Could be interesting!

The Growth of Facebook

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

Facebook has significantly gained in popularity over the past few years, and more businesses are attempting to reach out to both current and potential clients / customers through this social media avenue. There are many ways for businesses to approach this new medium but interaction remains key to success. By allowing users to provide feedback and having open communication with users, businesses can greatly benefit through the use of Facebook.

Facebook is being slightly restructured: the status box currently at the top of the News Feed page will be replaced by a navigation bar with links to update status, add photos, add links, and ask a question. The latter is a new feature that will allow users to ask questions globally and receive input from other users as well as businesses. These questions can be comprised of text alone, video, audio, or images. This could lead to some very creative marketing campaigns from businesses looking to increase social interaction.

A recent leak has provided access to torrents containing over 100 million Facebook users’ profile information. While not a direct security threat–the information was the composite of only public information–many large businesses are downloading this information. Time will tell if and how they will leverage this data.

The ROI of Webcomics

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

The webcomic xkcd describes itself as a “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” Not only is this all true, but it’s also very widely read among internet users, as the writer, Randall Munroe, tends to have a pretty good handle on internet-related topics. The comic for July 30 is a prime example of this. It illustrates the disconnect between how some people create and design websites with those the website is meant to service. While some people still may look at it somewhat askance as “just a comic”, it’s real, useful, and actionable information that web developers and internet marketers should really pay attention to.

Social CRM and Google Apps

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

To add on to Mike’s Facebook update, I shared screenshots of what the beta version of the Facebook publisher looks like with Questions built in. There are still a number of bugs for Facebook to work out, and even in a limited beta environment I don’t expect that process to be a quick one–Facebook currently only employs one engineer for every 1.25 million users.

I then provided updates on the social CRM scene, demonstrating one use case where the social CRM BatchBook integrates with Gmail for Google Apps, with additional functionality from Rapportive. Because business professionals already have busy lives with not enough time for social interaction (whether online or off), social CRM tools can make it much easier to stay up to date with your customers’ lives by capturing all your interactions with a single customer in a single place, whether the interaction is over the phone, on Twitter, or through e-mail.

Wanna Be Creative? Go Away (from your desk)!

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Today, I shared some interesting articles with the team. One of them is an article from www.zurb.com, about how beneficial it is to design while standing up. The article says that standing up will increase the blood flow, therefore stimulate the brain even more. Also, by standing up, you invite people to give you feedback and interact with you. So according to the article, “standing up is social.”

On the other hand, an article from the99percent.com is talking about how leaving your desk can help you to be creative. It’s talking about how vacation, for example, can help you solve the design problem from different angle because of the different culture or situation you’re in. It also states that solitude can increase productivity and focus.

I also share some articles about branding exercise. An article from www.millermosaicllc.com tells about how a company can create their “brand statement” from an example exercise. It tells you to think about what one or two sentences you will say about your company to your audience if you have only a couple seconds. This can help a company a lot to focus on what their core statement is.

Bringing the Wii to Work, Logo Designs, Flipboard, and more

We’re slowly getting the band back together, as Jeff rejoined the team, fresh (or not so fresh, as the case may be) from his camping trip. This week, we really delved into the things that make us unique as individuals, and more powerful together than the mere sum of our parts.

Logo Design

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

LogoLounge.com is one of the websites out there where you can see a compilation of logo trends from year to year. In recent years, I’ve noticed more logos are going towards 3D effects and web 2.0 style. While they are appealing to the eyes, they might not be easily applicable to different media. One of the rules for creating a logo is that it should be easily used in web and print, or in full-color and one-color, and there is a good reason why it is a rule. The 2010 logo trend that I see on LogoLounge.com has been influenced a lot by colors and transparency. Then try converting these logos into one color (ie. screen printing, embroidery, logo on merchandise, etc). Most of the logos suddenly lose their identity and personality. Some people say that in this era, technology is more advanced and there is less need to make the logo one-color. While it is true that what used to be done in one-color now can be done in full-color, it is definitely going to cost the company more money.

On the other hand, we are in the process of updating the YDOP logo, and I have been working on the logo development. Our new face is coming soon, so stay tuned!

Long-Tail Blogger Outreach and Facebook Landing Tabs

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

Chris Abraham wrote an article recently for the Agencyside blog outlining his agency’s method for conducting long-tail blogger outreach. I shared with the rest of the team how we can incorporate his tactics into the blogger outreach work we already do, and how we can use our existing tools in the additional ways he suggests. I also pointed out the few tips in a new article on Facebook landing tabs that supplement the information and ideas Astrid has shared in past weeks.

Content Is King

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

For my Resource Friday a few weeks ago, I had talked about one of the new features of the latest build of Safari: Reader. Basically, this feature extracts the content and specifically related images from a webpage, and allows the reader to see it in a clear, uncluttered format, superimposed over the old one. This removes ads, styling, and anything else that can prevent the reader from seeing the article itself. Well, just this week, a company called Flipboard released an app for the iPad that does the same thing as Safari Reader for Twitter and Facebook. This app pulls in feeds from your accounts on those sites, as well as news, photos and information from all sorts of other sites, and puts it into a magazine-themed aggregator with an intuitive interface, but without all the different stylings and ads. I pointed out to the group that as these style-neutral aggregators become more and more commonly used, it’s going to be important to remember that the content on a website is just as key as the way it looks. Potentially, even moreso, as we move forward.

In semi-related news, I pointed out that most email programs, both online and off-, now feature snippets of the text of the email in the email list. Because of this, it’s becoming more and more important to make sure that your email starts out with something that will interest the reader, and not just “Having troubles seeing this message in your email?”

Super Mario Whiteboarding?

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

In addition to its extreme gaming success, the Wii’s accessories are capable of much more than Nintendo’s limits. Brian Peek, a software developer, created a library in C# to interface with the Wiimote. This library takes advantage of the ability to pair across Bluetooth with a computer, and expands the functionality of the Wii Remote significantly. Some of the features available for polling are:

• All input press and release events (aka user presses Up on the directional pad then releases)
• 3 Axis (including positive and negative results on each) values on the accelerometer to see which way the Wiimote is moving
• IR sensor data (capable of tracking up to 4 IR points simultaneously at a resolution of 1024×768)
• Access to controller add-ons such as Nunchuck data

By having access to this, many applications can be implemented through the Wiimote. One common application is a whiteboard, which can be set up using a Wiimote and up to 4 IR emitters (typically added to markers to give a natural feel) and a projector. The Wiimote faces the projector and provides an interface to the computer–very similar to how a mouse would work) by pointing at the Smart Board. It is moderately easy to implement and provides great functionality.

Customizing Facebook pages, hybrid theory, and being positive but not annoying

July is a time for skeleton crews, as vacations take over the calendar. With Steve in California, Jeff off in a tent somewhere, and Jonathan working on-site with a client, it was down to Astrid, Mike, and me. We still had fun learning and sharing. Here’s what we deemed important to teach this week.

Social Networking Behavior and Search Engine Innovations

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

Social Networking

This week I shared some recent articles with the team that serve as good reminders about the fundamentals of social media. With increasing popularity in social networking, questions about what is appropriate and what is not are coming up more often than ever before.  Bragging about yourself, your company, or your friends and family is very common on social platforms, but when does it get to be too much?

Advertising through social media can be an effective way to reach people.  It gives a personal touch to your product or service, and it builds rapport, but if you only praise yourself and your company, many will become disinterested and ignore or “unfollow” you.

The articles’ authors suggested this approach:  Ask yourself, what am I (or what is my company) contributing to this network through my posts?  If the answer is nothing, then you have no value for potential clients to link up with you in this avenue.  A great way to achieve value in your posts is to aim for a 1:1 ratio of praise about your company and achievements to praise and relationship-building comments regarding others.

Part 2: Search Engines

A Google employee recently revealed to the public where he believes search engines are headed.  While some of his suggestions would make search engines more invasive in our lives, there were other areas that would benefit the population.  The two biggest areas of needed improvement:

• Rather than just searching text, search engines are currently making their way toward being able to search other media types, including images and video.  This allows a more complete result set through a search, which can provide excellent information; after all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
• Search engines should provide a more semantic interface (i.e. provide meaning to the search query).  When trying to track down side-skirts for my car, the “smart” advertisements continuously provided clothing banner ads.  Side-skirts are not skirts, but the search engines of today are not intelligent enough to point this out.

Google has also recently filed a patent for pointer tracking, which will determine where on the screen a mouse pointer is located, and for how long it has been there.  It’s anyone’s guess if and how this will be implemented in the future, but this could lead to some interesting changes to how the search engine behaves.  There are a few big drawbacks with this  For one, with touchscreens becoming more popular, pointer movements are not as common as with a mouse.  Many people will follow along with a mouse while they are reading, but with a touch-screen based computer, this may not occur. One thing is for sure, search engines never stay the same.

Facebook Pages: Interaction Leading to Sales

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Today, I continued the topic I had last week. Again, we looked at the Facebook pages from some well-known brands.

First, we looked at the Mark Meyer Photography page. I like how they integrate a slideshow of the photos into the page. I also like the Bodum USA page because viewers can browse, buy and pay for the products they want without leaving Facebook. However, I’m not a big fan of clicking on the logo in a “click to enter” fashion. The team thought it was probably this “entering” that allows them to include a “like” button and count on the next page. Eco-Artware.com also makes their page look like an online store catalog. Unlike Bodum, however, you need to go to their website to buy and pay. This is unfortunate since I really like the idea of doing everything (browse and buy) in one Facebook page.

As I stated last week, I like Facebook pages that make the users interact with them. Living Proof page guides their Facebook users to find a perfect product for them by making them do some kind of quiz. The users have to answer 4 questions regarding their hair, and at the end, Living Proof finds the best-matched product based on the answers. This is very clever since they make the users interact with the product. It also directs the potential customers to easily buy the recommended  product, even though the customers’ initial thought is just to browse.

A Marketing Manifesto from Brian Solis

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

Brian Solis, author of Engage, is one of the bloggers I look to as a thought leader in my field. He spent this week laying out a manifesto about the future of marketing, advertising, and communications in a three-part document he calls The Hybrid Theory Manifesto.

The manifesto, to me, is an articulation of ideas I already embrace and act upon. At the same time, when I read Brian’s words, it strikes me how radical they are in the history of mass communication and marketing. Things are changing, Solis says, and the rise of social media, or the “living web,” is mostly to blame. Because companies and constituents co-create content and ideas, they therefore co-own and co-controls that content and those ideas. That’s new, and it means we can no longer think of the traditional marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion) without also thinking of a fifth element of the mix, people. Creating a product, pricing it, positioning it, and promoting has always involved people. But today, the people who used to be faceless middlemen or voiceless consumers now are sometimes very influential.

Some have looked at this state of affairs and concluded that paid media (advertising) is dying. Not the case, says Solis. Advertising is still relevant, it just needs to be rejoined with the rest of marketing (PR particularly) and address the new marketing mix element, people. Advertising that is more personal, immersive, and empowering can be placed in contexts where it resonates with many people who see it. It’s not just enough to count eyeballs or clicks today; what’s important is to measure the ratio of people who see the advertisement to the number of them who find the advertisement resonates with their interests, needs, and values.

Advertising that moves in this direction will go from being part of a series of ad campaigns to an advertising continuum, as Solis calls it. With an ad campaign ten years ago, doubling your media buy would result in double the results. If you suddenly stopped advertising, you would suddenly lose all that business. That’s a series of ad campaigns. An advertising continuum resonates with people and then empowers them to engage as a co-creator and co-owner of the brand’s meaning. That means that advertisements bring people into the fold, and then active communication keeps them there and engaged. An ad campaign sustains a customer base; an ad continuum grows a customer base. At the end of the day, you lose all the people you haven’t engaged. Traditional advertising doesn’t engage. It only targets.

What Solis calls for then is a “hybrid theory” of marketing, advertising, and communications. Rather than thinking of PR, advertising, product development, social networking, and so on as “separate but equal,” we must think of them as one, as a hybrid. Doing so takes skilled professionals who can connect all those pieces in a comprehensive way. As such, I find the manifesto encouraging: It’s what we as a team do at YDOP.

Frenemies, Drupal, Facebook, and more

The whole team (except for Mike) had Facebook on the brain today, as we all (except for Mike) talked about various aspects of the social networking behemoth. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at all the interesting things (except for Mike) that we had to say!

Hello, Folks. I’m Drupal.

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

If you’re looking for a pre-built, customizable solution to create a website, there are many options available, but there are a few that are extremely well known for their ease of deployment and flexibility. Drupal was the option I presented today.

Drupal, by itself, allows users to create dynamic pages, controlled by a back-end CMS system, in addition to basic forum functionality and user management out of the box. From there, you can add modules to customize your site as needed, such as Google Analytics for ease of tracking without having to mess around with the code on the site, more advanced user control and functionality, calendar and event schedules, and many more.

Because of the ease of deployment, overall functionality, and unintimidating back-end, Drupal is a very popular option for this scenario.

Facebook: The Narrowing Gulf Between Real and Digital Life

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

Today, I talked with the group about a topic near and dear to all our hearts: Facebook privacy. Specifically, how measurably disconnected real life is from some people’s digital persona. The article I shared dealt with litigation involving interpersonal relationships, and how easy it is becoming for attorneys to find evidence online. The upshot is that what people gab about online is often in direct conflict with that they are claiming is true in real life.

Most of us here knew this already, but this article provides some numbers that helped us measure the extent in some circumstances.

Facebook: More Information Than You Require

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

Launching off of Jonathan’s chat, I came across some interesting (at least, to me) Facebook and social networking statistics this week.

First off, the Pew Internet and American Life Project has been putting together some fantastic numbers that look at the internet and daily life in the USA. Part of this study also looks at where the internet is going in the future, and this week’s information specifically looked at the Millennial generation (ages 18-29, aka Generation Y). According to a majority of respondents in this poll, within the next 10 years, Millennials will continue in their current trend of being ‘ambient broadcasters’ on the internet, disclosing “a great deal of personal information in order to stay connected and take advantage of social, economic, and political opportunities”. In other words, the connected will … get connectedier. Or something like that.

I also talked a little about a study done on young (18-34) women and Facebook. There are some really interesting tidbits in here, including the facts that, of respondents:

• 57% say they talk to people online more than face-to-face
• 34% check Facebook immediately upon waking up; even before going to the bathroom
• 79% are fine with kissing in photos
• 58% use Facebook to keep tabs on “frenemies”
• 89% say you should never put anything on Facebook that you don’t want your parents to see
• 42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated

While those last two stats may seem to contradict each other, I think it more likely that 47% of respondents had no idea what they were talking about.

That last stat was made up.

Facebook: The Many Ways of Saying Welcome

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

This week, I have been working on designing Facebook welcome pages. It is usually the landing page that you see when you view a company profile on Facebook (if you are not a “Fan” yet). Smashing Magazine has compiled a list of big brand Facebook pages. So today, I shared my thought to the team about what is working or not working on these pages.

I’ll start with what I like first. One thing that these big brand pages have in common is that they engage the user to interact with the product. For example, Red Bull let the users watch their Web TV live. 1-800-Flowers lets the users take a poll on their page, send virtual gifts, see their Tweets, and more. Porsche’s page won our hearts instantly because we can customize a Porsche on the page, then share it. By engaging your Facebook user, your brand is more likely to be memorable.

However, there also some pages that I am not a big fan of. Coca-Cola, for example, requires you to allow them to pull information from your profile before you can see the page. Well, that makes me leave the page immediately. Digital Turf and Daddy Design have multi-layer navigation menus. I found that those menus are a bit overboard and distracting.

In conclusion, don’t over-design and don’t require people to do an extra step to view your page. However, do make your page interactive.

Social Media Updates and Branding

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

Digg is making a bid to re-spark its relevance in the social sharing space with a complete interface rebuild. I’ve been checking it out as an alpha tester, and I gave the rest of a team a brief tour of the new features.

Facebook is ditching its direct sales of virtual goods as of August 1. The official reason for closing the Facebook Gift Store is so the team can “focus instead on improving other products,” but no one’s buying that as the real reason. Some speculate that Facebook believes it can make more money by directly selling only Facebook Credits, which can then be used as currency to purchase virtual goods from third-party vendors. That would remove Facebook from the day-to-day work of managing a virtual goods store and instead let the corporation sit back and make money from exchanging real-world currency into currency for the digital realm.

The Pew Internet and American Life project released data this week that shows minorities in the U.S. are heavier cell phone users–87% of minorities own a cell phone compared to 80% of whites, and 64% of African Americans use their cell phones to access the Internet compared to 59% of the general population.

Twitter was huge during the World Cup. Whereas there is generally 750 tweets per second, at the end of one game the rate hit an all-time high of 3,283.

In addition to sharing these news items, I also took the opportunity to run some ideas past the team regarding YDOP’s own brand identity.

Surfing Personality, Google Me, Web Telephony, and more

It’s been an interesting week, with part of our team working off-site. But the best thing about working for an internet company is that you can work anywhere you’ve got the internet! Check out what the team shared this week for Resource Friday.

Site of Personality

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

It isn’t rocket science to understand that the best websites are built with a “who’s coming to the site and what’s on their mind” reference. But that goal becomes more and more complicated as you peel back the layers of a hypothetical audience’s characteristics. Early on, we’ve built sites ready for each (imagined) persona: middle-aged businessman, thirty-something housewife, etc. With the help of Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg’s Call to Action, I’m encouraging the team to drill down even deeper by carefully considering personality types of our target(s).

As we considered the Methodical, Spontaneous, Humanistic and Competitive types, we ended up identifying our own styles of searching. Recognizing the diversity in the room made me understand why it is so difficult when we are all in the room giving opinions about one webpage! We all have different things that are important to us. The Methodical wants detail and needs things “business-like.” As representative of the Spontaneous searcher, I tend to emphasize that sites must be (above every other trait) be quickly understood and relevant to what I want (now!). Our resident Humanist seems to think the need to be personal, relationship oriented and somewhat open-ended trumps my need for “easy and fast.” The Competitive surfer wants information served up in a rational manner, and looks for probabilities and guarantees. Building websites that perform is no easy task, but drilling down into the psychological characteristics, motivations and fears of our potential audience allows us to make sites for our clients that out-perform their competitors’.

PC, Phone Home?

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

This week, I brought the team up to speed on OpenVBX, which is a phone system for business. OpenVBX can help developers build rich, high quality Internet phone and SMS applications.

While YDOP may not be in the position to use a full-featured call center operation, it could still be helpful in certain circumstances to help us automate certain common or repetitive calls.

The Keys to Network Security

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

Today, I described how to use public and private key sharing for individual users to access SVN repositories stored on a local machine. This allows for full security implementation (each user has his or her own account), while allowing a hassle-free check-out and check-in process.

The public and private key sets are like a lock and key, with the public key stored on the server and the private key stored on the user’s local machine. When a connection is attempted, the private key is compared against the public to determine whether or not the user has correct permissions to access the server. If the user’s key matches, there is no further interaction involved, and the user can securely connect to a server.

(Social Media) Potpourri for $100, Alex

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

This week the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a study from Bloomfield College concluding that “only 15 percent of prospective students” use Twitter to learn about colleges. My reaction? “What do you mean, only 15 percent? That’s huge!” We’ve long been advising our clients that Twitter is the place for engaging a small but elite group of digital influencers. Whereas many Facebook users do not also have a Twitter account, almost all Twitter users also have a Facebook account. And a blog, and a YouTube account. Twitter users are the kind of people most likely to leave comments on your website. They’re most likely to spread the word about your brand. And, importantly, they’re likely to be heard and respected. So fifteen percent of incoming students is a large pool in which to find significant influencers. It’s a bigger pool than we had expected.

In other news, YouTube announced this week that it is now offering a “YouTube Ready” designation for vendor companies that offer the service of transcribing videos. This designation will make YouTube more powerful than it already is in search, by instilling confidence in content producers toward the companies that offer to transcribe captions for their videos, and also by elevating trustworthy vendors who will transcribe accurately, rather than writing inaccurate captions simply for the sake of SEO.

Google has officially announced that it is developing a social network to rival Facebook, to be called Google Me. When I told the rest of the team that Google says they’ve learned important lessons from the releases of Wave and Buzz, my words were met with laughter. If Google learned its lesson, my colleagues said, they would stick to search and stay out of social networking. So it goes. Facebook continues to threaten Google with their Open Graph, and Google is now threatening Facebook with Google Me. The fight between these giants is worth watching.

In survey results released this week, 59 percent of respondents said they check e-mail first in the morning before doing anything else online. Eleven percent said they check Facebook first.

No Time Like the Present

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

Big news out today in the realm of website statistical analysis. And yes, numbers-focused people like me only enhance our air of geekiness by getting excited about news like this. Google’s blogging platform, Blogger, just gained a new feature: near-realtime statistics.

Big whoop, you say? Yeah, maybe. This sort of thing is probably only useful for the blogs that update multiple times an hour with breaking news and whatnot. However, if Google can bring this information to the Blogger platform, there should be little difficulty in bringing this realtime information to their regular Analytics offering for all websites. That’s where this gets a little more interesting. Up until now, Google’s subtly hinted that they believe that users simply aren’t interested in realtime stats. This seems to fly in the face of that; so is a broader roll-out on the horizon? Time will tell…

Implicit Trust, Wikis, Fireworks, and More

Stromboli was on the table (both traditional and spinach-mushroom), and varied topics were in the air as we brought each other up to speed in our fields of expertise at this week’s Resource Friday. Read on for more!

Is There an App for Trustworthiness?

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

Today, I brought the team up to date on a recent study of mobile apps (mostly for the Android phone). Of the 48,000 apps surveyed, a fifth exposed private data. At the root of the problem was not the available security permissions, but the poor decisions users made when they installed the apps. There seems to be an implicit trust when downloading from an app store, that the app is completely trustworthy and legitimate… as well as many people not taking the time to understand the implications of their choices.

All the links to the articles can be found at this link on Slashdot.

Putting the “Strateg-” Back Into “Strategist”

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

It’s easy to look past the “strategy” part of “social media strategy,” so this week I talked about business strategies in general. Typically a business strategy has a lot to do with position relative to competitors. Michael Porter considered strategy to be the creation of a unique and valuable position. Business strategy is commonly thought of as a triangle between customers, competitors, and company. There are new thinkers emerging, however, who replace “competitors” with “unmet needs.” Thinking about unmet needs is termed “blue ocean strategy.” There is a lot of blue ocen when it comes to how businesses employ social media.

As we map out or diagram strategies for our clients, it’s useful to bear in mind that two major categories of visual diagrams are those that focus on processes (like flow charts) and those that focus on structures (like concept maps). Process diagrams emphasize inputs and outputs, whereas structure diagrams emphasis relationships between things.

I also explained why I think the new iPhone OS4 will encourage people to download and use even more apps than they already do, how HootSuite’s latest version is really cool in its integration of Google Analytics, and what my new favorite backlink tool is, and when we might find occasion to use the new Web-based tool Notable. Last, I shared what I’ve learned about Facebook Apps by playing the silly game My Empire in my free time.

Wrong Again! and 10 Common SEO Mistakes

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

I started today launching off of Daniel’s closing comment about the new iPhone and mentioned how some people are looking at the new Retina Display and saying that it looks fake. This brought us into a brief discussion about how bad TV resolution (even so-called “HD TVs”) is in comparison to handheld devices like cell phones. Soap Operas are shot with cameras that have higher definition and clarity than most prime time TV shows, but the sharper image is often described as cheap or cheesy-looking. Once again, our intuition and perception doesn’t quite jive with reality.

I then talked through a list of 10 common SEO mistakes that I ran across in my internet travels. The one item that garnered the most interest from the group was to watch when your domain name is set to expire. Search engines tend to look more favorably on sites that aren’t set to expire for a long time. The longer the time span, the more it shows commitment on the part of the site owner, and the less likely it is to be a spam source.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Have you ever felt frustrated trying to design a website using Photoshop? Well, maybe it’s time to use a better and proper application for designing a website: Adobe’s Fireworks. Why? Unlike Photoshop, Fireworks is specifically built for design. Remember, Photoshop is primarily for photo editing.

Fireworks has superior features over Photoshop when it comes to designing a website. When I design a website in Photoshop, and I decide to create a nice vector graphic, I have to go to other vector application (I use Illustrator) to do it. In Fireworks, you don’t have to change to other programs. You can do it all in one: Fireworks combines a bitmap tool and a vector tool in one application.

Fireworks can also create multiple pages of your website in one file, so you don’t have to have multiple Photoshop files just for one website. Fireworks also makes it easier to edit multiple pages. Change one thing on the master page; all the other pages will be automatically updated. Style sheet functionality is also available in this program. That means you can change your text format for many pages in seconds.

And one of the most important thing for a website is to be able to load quickly. With Fireworks’ better image compression, your website can load faster! And no worries about universality, Fireworks can export your file as a layered Photoshop file. The newest version, Fireworks CS5, also comes with more nice features. One of the features makes it easier to design for mobile devices.

That being said, Fireworks is still inferior to Photoshop when it comes to advanced photo editing. But by editing your photos in Photoshop and then importing it to Fireworks, the problem can be easily solved.

Wikis in the Office

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

For collaboration and data storage, a wiki makes a great addition to a company’s intranet server.

By offering a wiki, users can contribute and collaborate both text and media for access within the company. Overall setup of a wiki is extremely quick and easy with web server experience; a simple PHP server and MySQL database are all that are required to get started with MediaWiki, for example.

The wiki can organize thoughts, share files and data, such as company policies and procedures that are public within the company, without spending a lot of time either up-front or in long-term maintenance.

Linux, Radioactive Cell Phones, Pink Horses, and More

Despite the lack of pizza and our fearless leader at this week’s Resource Friday, the topics continued to be intriguing, thought-provoking, and engaging. Read on for more!

Ubuntu and Us

Mike Newswanger, Programmer

For resource Friday today, I went into basic network file server security. Using a Linux-based server, users and groups can easily be added or removed to give people access to what they need and keep them out of where they shouldn’t be. The Linux platform offers free licensing solutions, easy scalability, and very little hardware resource requirements. Combined with phenomenal reliability and overall security of the system, Linux makes sense to be the basis of a server.

Many services that are not built in to standard Linux builds can be downloaded and configured in a matter of minutes, including:

• Apache, PHP, MySQL to use to host intranet services for within the company.
• Samba to manage file shares across multiple operating system platforms
• SVN to keep files versioned so that changes can be tracked

Everything You Think Is Wrong

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

I ran across Cory Doctorow’s review of Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irrationality, and shared some of the thoughts with the team. I primarily talked about the human predilection toward adaptation to extreme emotional stimuli, and how we tend to approach things we really like and really hate in precisely the opposite way from how we should.

I also dug more into Ariely’s blog, and found an interesting study about how items on eBay that have a story attached to them — not information about the item, but an emotional (and fictional) story that evokes the item — can increase the selling price of that item. A pink toy horse that was picked up at a garage sale for $1 was coupled with a story of a woman whose daughters (who played with a pink horse) had died long ago resold for $104. This study showed that people are more apt to “buy into” something if there’s an emotional response coupled with it, regardless of the (ir-)rationality behind just such an action.

Getting Burned

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

There were some articles of interest on Slashdot this past week. One reported that mobile devices in California are now required to carry a warning label indicating how much radiation they emit. Another article explained how a certain retailer in Australia has been engaging in some dubious practices surrounding selling iPads.

WordPress 3.0, Evernote, and more

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

WordPress has released its 3.0 version, and I gave the team a tour of the new features. I also shared how instead of immediately beginning work on 3.1, the WordPress team is taking the next three months to focus on everything around WordPress itself, including documentation, support forums, integration with other platforms, and the way it plans future releases. The combination of that outreach with a shiny new 3.0 version should give WordPress a further boost on its path toward becoming one of the most dominant content management systems in use today.

I introduced the team to usertesting.com, which provides Web developers with inexpensive user testing services. For $39, developers can specificy the demographic background they are targeting with the site and have a sample user who fits that mold use the site to perform set tasks. Testers provide the developers with a video of their experience using the website as well as written notes of what they liked and what problems they ran into. This service makes usability testing easier and more affordable than ever.

This week I was searching for a clean and elegant tool to use as a digital notebook (a sort of “junk drawer” for ideas and bits of information). I started out with a version of TiddlyWiki that had been customized to be compatible with the iPhone, but I wound up settling on Evernote, which I now heartily commend to those who need to keep track of (and organize) lots of random ideas and bits of information.

It was a relatively slow news week on the social media front, which is probably the only reason Tweegle garnered as much attention as it did. If Twitter and Google got married and had a ridiculously ugly child, Tweegle would be it. Avoid it.

Inspiring Design and Trends for 2010

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Today, I showed more websites that I find inspiring. Last week, I was talking about how a grid system can make a website simple, clean, and contemporary. So today, I showed more inspiring websites that also have a similar style. Parallax Design Group‘s website breaks up the layout in simple colorful boxes. The logo is overlapping the boxes, making the grid feel softer. Gravitate Design Studio uses boxes in a slightly different way. The boxes are stacked and overlapping each other, giving it a casual look, but the corporate colors keep it professional.

I also shared some of website design trends for 2010. One of trends is the use of little icons to replace text. One of the recent projects that YDOP has is to redesign one of our client’s website. I created some icons to use in some sections of the website. Everyone at YDOP agreed that they make the website look better. Those icons help a lot because the reader identifies images faster than text. They also give a visual interest to a long page of text. These icons can make a website friendlier and easier to navigate.

Want some good tips on how to take your brand into the online world? YDOP’s own Social Media Strategist Daniel Klotz has those and more. He was recently featured in the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s June edition of Connections, where he agreed with former Virgin Airlines executive Alex Hunter that engaging your customer is vital. “Cool sites include engaging people who care about me and treat me like a real person.”

For more of Daniel’s perspective (who, despite what the article suggests, is strictly an employee of YDOP), take a look at the LCCI’s online edition here.

Facebook, Website Design, Texting the Almighty, and more

After this week’s flurry of activity serving our clients, we all relished the chance to sit down together to enjoy some stromboli, and some time to teach each other more about our respective fields of expertise.

Twitter Shortening and Dark-Roasted Google

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

I shared with the YDOP team that Twitter is testing a system that will shrink all URLs in all tweets. Even URLs already shortened with a service like bit.ly (or kudz.us, if you read last week’s post), Twitter will shrink the link to one that uses their new short domain, t.co. Some links, however, will only appear as shortened versions of the URL—Twitter uses the example of amazon.com/Delivering-. While Twitter is thinking of this as a way to protect users from malicious links, on the whole I think this will be bad for our clients who are heavy users of Twitter for sharing links to content on the Web.

This week Google announced that the latest iteration of its search system, Caffeine, is now fully implemented for all users around the world. Caffeine puts a high emphasis on content that is recent and up-to-date. Google also began a pilot test of including twitter updates in AdWords advertisements.

Sysomos announced the results of a study that showed, among other things, that the majority of bloggers are age 21 to 35, about evenly split between men and women. Four percent of all bloggers worldwide are based in Pennsylvania.

Facebook Insights and Safari Reader

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

I decided to take a break this week from the book I’d been reading for my Resource Friday materials, and instead talked a little bit about Facebook’s revamped Insights platform. This was introduced at Facebook’s f8 conference back in April, but finally went live this week. Largely, Facebook is trying to position themselves similarly to Google’s Analytics, and allow website owners to get (anonymized) demographic data about their visitors.

I also talked about the “Reader” feature in the new 5.0 release of Apple’s Safari web-browser. With this feature, depending on what sites they browse, visitors may see a “Reader” icon in the address bar. Upon clicking that, an overlay window appears that shows the plaintext of the article, along with any specifically-related pictures, but removing all the other clutter from the page. It’s a really slick idea and implementation. I referred to it as a sort-of “TIVO” version of websites, in that it doesn’t delete ads and the like, but makes it easier to ignore them.

Facebook APIs

Mike Newswanger, Programmer

This week I taught about some of the capabilities of the Facebook API for marketing strategies and application development. The API can be used for communication with potential clients, expanding your client base through recommendations and suggestions by current clients, and connecting the data on your site with your clients.

The API can be implemented in different ways, and its functionality can be quickly deployed. For example, the like buttons that you see on many sites can be added to your page to allow Facebook users to help spread knowledge about products offered.

A Few of My Favorite Sites

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

I love looking at some great website designs out there for inspiration. So this Friday, I picked and shared some of the websites that I like and talked about what it is that makes them beautiful.

I can’t tell you enough about how I love simple, clean and contemporary design. Clean design is really easy on the eye. It is easy to navigate. Today I shared some of the websites that are using a grid system to convey simple, clean, contemporary design. Some of the examples are Davroc, Jam Restaurant and SD Workz. Simple and clean grid design makes the website clear, organized, and again, easy to navigate. They really prove that the grid is not only important in print design, but also essential in web design. With some added punches of color and subtle texture, those websites proves that a simple grid-based design doesn’t have to be boring.

People who want friendlier design can also get a clean design by adding subtle texture. Freedom Tree Farms website proves how powerful a subtle texture can be. But keep in mind, things are good in moderation, including the use of texture.

Faith Meets Science

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

As YDOP is working on the Knights of the 21st Century website, it seem suitable to share information on some mobile applications that are currently being used for men’s ministry and discipleship.

There are three specific services from Back to the Bible that are available for your mobile phone, and computer.
– 411God is a telephone call. A 1 minute long message, everyday at a pre-scheduled time.
– SMC, See Me Change, is a text message. Just a simple Bible verse. Everyday. And you’re even encouraged to text back to share how you applied this verse in your life.
– Nudge is an E-mail message. Everyday. Short devotionals written by men and women who are in similar life-stages as yourself.

More information about these discipleship tools can be found at

http://www.411god.net/lbc/

Creativity, Purple and/or Sacred Cows, RAID, and more

As the days grow longer and the mercury in increasingly-archaic analog thermometers rises, the thoughts of office workers naturally turn to ones of, “Man, I gotta sit inside all day in weather like this?” Granted, the answer to that question is usually: Duh, yes. And that’s often followed by a gentle admonishment of what it means to be an adult and no longer get recess time.

Today, however, we had recess; of a sort. We took our notebooks and whiteboard, our taco pizza and Turkey Hill Strawberry Kiwi Lemonade, and headed out to the blueberry patch outside our office for Resource Friday (when we teach our fellow team members something we know). This week also saw the first RF contribution from new programmer Mike Newswanger, and a swell time was had by all!

SMS Functionality on Websites

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

Sending short text messages from a website to a mobile device is not difficult. But it does require a few pieces of hardware.

I briefly researched a piece of software from the Ozeki NG company, which offers an easy way to send SMS message through a web interface.

First, you need to have a SIM card (just like your cellular device has) and a GSM modem. The SIM card goes in the GSM modem, which plugs into your computer’s com port. Now your computer can interact with the modem and send messages through a mobile service provider. The software has a control panel to test the capabilities of the modem, and once everything is working, you can automate the process through your own applications (either web or desktop, or anything that can connect to a URL).

Backup Solutions: RAID

Mike Newswanger, Alsø Programmer

Data loss can be a huge problem in businesses, whether big or small. Today I discussed how to protect yourself from data loss issues that can prevent huge losses in both time and money caused by data loss. One of the most prominent methods of data-backup is through RAID. There are many different types of RAID, which use multiple hard drives to create a single (RAID) volume. Some of the most common are listed below. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages:

• RAID 0 (aka Striped): Data is stored evenly between two or more hard drives. The data is “striped” and no data is redundant. The maximum capacity for the volume is equivalent to the number of equal volume drives multiplied by the volume ( n*V ) where “V” is the size of the disks used in the RAID array, with a minimum of two drives. Data access is extremely fast in both read and write, but with no redundancy, if one drive fails, all of the data is lost.
• RAID 1 (aka Mirrored): Identical data is stored on all drives in the array; there is 100% redundancy, which is the big advantage to this RAID type. The array requires a minimum of two drives, but the disadvantages are that writes take longer (since data has to be written to two drives) and storage is limited to V. Therefore, if you would have 4 drives, your total capacity would be 4*V, but in a RAID 1 array, you would only have access to 1/4 that amount.
• RAID 1/0 and RAID 0/1: Require even number sets of disks with a minimum of 4 and are stacked between RAID 0 and RAID 1. For example, the data could be put through RAID 0 (striped) then RAID 1 (mirrored). This array would provide the ability for up to half of the disks to fail (maximum of one per branch) and gives a capacity of ( n * V / 2 ).
• RAID 5: Using three or more hard drives, this array saves data in two places, which allows for one hard drive failure with no data loss. Data read and write speeds are also greatly improved over a single disk’s speeds, but the trade off is you need more disks than some other arrays and more space inside a tower to hold the drives. The total storage space available for use would be ( ( n – 1 ) * V ).

By following these advantages and disadvantages, a small business can create a low cost, low maintenance RAID system to give redundant data to protect against drive failure.

Always Be Testing, Ch. 4

Jeff Burkholder, Professional Gap Filler

I skipped over chapter 3 in my glorified book report of Always Be Testing because it was mostly about how to read the reports from Google Website Optimizer. I didn’t think that would be too terribly interesting to the assembled. Instead, I went on to chapter 4, which delineated a further reason why testing websites are essential: “Inside the Bottle” Syndrome. This is the idea that, as you’re developing a website, you unconsciously proceed on the assumption that everyone who comes to the site will have the same knowledge, understanding and insights into how things work that you do. This is also known as the Curse of Knowledge: Oftentimes, knowledge of something makes it impossible to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge.

So, how to combat it? Some would argue intuition, but while “going with your gut” can work really well in some cases, a fair amount of the time, intuition can be astonishingly wrong. That’s where testing comes in: The only real way to know how your audience will react to something is to actually try it out on your audience; then revise it and test again. The chapter ended with a list of perspectives essential for a successful testing philosophy:
– It’s OKAY not to know.
– It’s NOT okay to assume.
– What works for someone else WON’T necessarily work for you.
– There is ALWAYS room for improvement.
– There are NO sacred cows.

How to be Creative

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Sometimes we might find ourselves stuck on one idea. So today, I talked about some of the techniques for finding inspiration for any creative process. First, I talked about creative mind-mapping. With mind-mapping, we will more likely to explore the ideas that we would not have thought at first. This makes the design/creative result not so obvious, which is more likely to have more impact on the target audience.

Another technique is a visual mood board. This is actually a fun process. It makes the client feel involved, which can avoid a design that is way too far from what the client wants. This technique involves the designer finding random images for clients to pick. The visual process will stimulate the clients better to understand the mood of the business that they’re trying to do. Then we try to find a solution based on the mood that the client describes. Again, with this, we are more likely to come up with a solution that will please the client.

Seth Godin and the Cattle of Psychedelia

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

I’m pretty sure we were the only Internet marketing company in the universe that had a resource meeting in a blueberry patch today, and I found it the perfect environment to wrap up my discussion about the purple cow (and to sample the first ripe berry of the season). I explained Seth Godin’s principle of marketing to early adopters rather than to the masses and incorporating a viral element to your product or service as much as possible. Fortunately, the timer on my iPhone which had rudely interrupted all my predecessors when their ten minutes were up, had “accidentally” popped into silent mode and so I had time to comfortably move on to Seth’s other book, Permission Marketing. And, because I found this subject so interesting, the time just flew by (for me).

I began with the assertion that traditional marketing of average products through frequent exposures in a variety of places rarely finds an ROI on marketing dollars. We discussed the processes that typical conversions are made and we collectively agreed that larger conversions require stages of relationships, and we should design strategies around that expectation. For instance, it isn’t likely that a searcher would find a financial planner on a Google search, call him/her up and invest their lifetime savings all on a Saturday morning. It is more realistic to think that that maybe 3-5% of those individuals would sign up for updates via email or an RSS feed after reading some interesting articles. Later, these “followers” might show up to hear a talk from the author at a Chamber or community event and talk to them afterwards. Of those at such an event, it is likely that they might agree to a personal consultation or meeting. From there, they may have a 75% chance of subscribing to a service. The “conversion” from Google searcher subscriber has stages. As we develop conversion strategies, we need to consider which stages will play out best with which digital platforms: Facebook, e-mail, company website, Twitter. Any good marketing strategy must incorporate this element of relational development to some degree.

Shorter Links, Better Connections, More Video

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

I’ve been exploring bitly.Pro, which enables a short domain name to function as a URL shortener using Bit.ly’s URL-shortening and click-tracking technology. I explained what I learned from testing the service using my kudz.us domain name, and shared what I think the potential value of the service might be. It does improve branding efforts when you tie a custom short domain with a content-rich website—for example, when a reader shares a story from nytimes.com on Twitter, the shortened link uses the domain name nyti.ms. What’s more, the custom URL also improves YDOP’s ability to track brand activity through social media monitoring.

I also shared a new Flowtown feature that can alert our clients when an online influencer makes contact with them or signs up for an e-mail newsletter.

Last, I shared some newly-released statistics about Internet video. The Pew Internet & American Life project reported this week that 69% of adult Internet users have watched or downloaded an online video, while 14% of have uploaded a video. Just three years ago, only 8% had uploaded a video. A full 38% of those who have watched a online videos have watched ones that were educational. Cisco Visual Networking also projected that, from a bandwidth perspective, by the end of this year, 40% of consumer Internet traffic will be video—and that number does not include video shared via peer-to-peer technologies. Cisco also released the fun fact that the size of the Internet as a whole will quadruple in the next four years.