11.29.05
Posted in General at 6:00 pm by Christine
The Google Calendar domain is live, but currently still redirects to Google home page. There was much speculation about this back in February when all SEMs were discussing Google OS. Whether it’s an application, targeted search or both is still not sure. There was some talk of it again in September / October, but nothing has yet come to light.
Google Base in a nutshell allows people to list anything they want. Recipes, diets, events, book reviews? You name it; you can pretty much post it. I have not really spent enough time with it to review it properly, so why not you have a go and let me know how you find it ?
As Danny Sullivan says “Google Base is a way for Google to let anyone upload information to Google about anything. That’s the master plan. Exactly how that master plan will unfold isn’t clear. Maybe there won’t be any particular date types that are uploaded. Maybe it really will turn into a great place for those with classified listings that will lead to a dedicated spin-off service. The overall goal seems to be put this tool out there and see what people make of it.”
Click-to-Call Adwords. Yip, you read correctly. You may have spotted a phone icon on Google search results. What is it? Well, they’re testing a new product that gives you a free and fast way to speak directly to the advertiser you found on a Google search results page – over the phone. Well we all knew it was coming. I remember forum postings speculating on this very topic back in 2003!
Just like Yahoo, Google is apparently beginning to run ads at the top and bottom of search results pages. I have not yet seen this, but some posting today (and I can’t remember which one) said that they have started seeing this more often.
Google Space. Google last week began providing free airport web access in London. Net-connected laptops for travellers’ use were provided at London’s Heathrow Airport. As we all are aware, they currently have bids pending to provide free Wi-Fi access to San Francisco and Mountain View, Calif. At Heathrow, the Internet-ready lounge is dubbed Google Space. Perhaps a glimpse at another aim? lol Google Space will be active in Heathrow until December 17.
On a Personal Note:
It’s getting closer and closer to the festive season and I can’t wait to put up the Christmas tree 
We are still undecided on our holiday plans, well its one of two places…and I cant wait!
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11.21.05
Posted in General at 4:19 pm by Christine
This is a quick – personal post – or to be more precise, an outrage at one of our local banks here: Absa.
I have never in my life experienced such poor business etiquette as this last month through this “so called” upstanding South African bank.
I was quite impressed with them when they called me up about three weeks ago offering me a free evaluation to create a more competitive bond to my existing home loan with a competitor. All they had to do was a site inspection or property appraisal which was to be scheduled at my convenience. Of course I accepted this.
A couple of days passed and I received a call from one of their estimators who was the rudest person that I have ever spoken to in my life.
If ever someone had to go for “telephone etiquette training” or “how to communicate with clients” he should be forced to go.
He immediately launched at me with intrusive questions such as “confirm that this is you”, and “confirm that this is your property”, and “is there someone there” without informing me who he was, or where he was phoning from. Now anyone with the slightest training in customer service knows the basics in phone communication is to introduce yourself and the company that you are from to the customer first. Basic.
It took me 5 minutes to just get those details out of him. To make matters worse was that he demanded access to my property for the evaluation – giving me an hour notice – which I denied due to inconvenience.
Now the property is 30 minutes outside of where I work anyway, and I needed to confirm whether my tenants were at the property to let him in irrespective. I explained this to him in (very) plain English (which he must not have understood) as he never returned my call to confirm whether he could get access to the property.
I immediately telephoned the Absa consultant (who convinced me of this service) and informed her of the terrible experience and cancelled the property assessment entirely. It was the usual yada yada that she would look into it and get back to me with results and get a new property assessor to contact me for a well timed, scheduled appointment. I did not expect to hear anything back.
Two weeks pass until today, when Mr Rude’s superior calls me to assess what exactly he did that was so “rude”. I ran through the whole story to which he answered laughingly “that is just the way he is” referring to Mr Rude. No apologies!! Which I made clear was totally unacceptable.
He then paused to ask me whether I knew the evaluation had been done…I almost fell of my chair. I had made (or thought that I had made) it crystal clear to Mr Rude as well as the Absa consultant that he would have NO access to my house – that is why I cancelled the assessment directly with head office in the first place.
Eventually Mr Rude himself calls me up – seemingly to apologise, but through his incessant yelling about how he is not in the wrong for entering my property without consent (since he called me the morning) whether I agreed or not he firmly believed that he was correct in his actions. Now I know I live in South Africa and that our crime rate is considered relatively high, but in my books that goes to “illegal entering” since he did not clarify that with the owner of the property, besides the fact that I had cancelled the assessment entirely.
After not being able to get a word through the yelling, I thanked him for his rudeness – and ever so politely told him that I would have no further dealings with his company or Absa for that matter.
I don’t think anything will come of this, as I very much doubt that he understood that either…
But what I learnt from my experience is that I will not consider Absa should I decide to take a second bond in future. If that is how they treat their potential clients, it is indicative of extremely poor business etiquette.
Does anyone know if Absa has a grievance site yet? (like hellkom.co.za ?)
Anyway – will get SEM info out there as soon as my ears stop ringing. Lol.
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11.14.05
Posted in General at 4:14 pm by Christine
I know, I “say” what next quite a bit….but check this out…is this not classic? Almost as funny as the official Ninja website. But I really did not expect an entry such as this from Wikipedia!
One of the (many) emails I read last week (?) posted stats on emailers.
Here are some highlights that Marketing Sherpa’s Stefan Tournquist’s recently pointed out:
- 5 percent of the population reads their e-mail from a cellular device–and this trend is predicted to grow over the next few years. (Joey definitely falls into this category – sometimes much to my dislike
- 49 percent of people think that hitting the “spam button” in their e-mail browser is the same as unsubscribing from the list.
- 12 percent of the population is using RSS feeds, but only 7 percent are actually aware that they are doing this.
- 78 percent of the e-mail population subscribes to at least one e-mail newsletter. (it better be mine! lol)
- The average e-mail list grows by 5.2 percent a month and shrinks by 2 percent, leaving a net gain of 3.2 percent.
- There is a drop in response rates, but conversion from e-mail remains consistent.
- Click to purchase is up 28 percent. Orders per e-mail delivered are up 18 percent.
- Last year 62 percent of the population said they were less trusting of e-mail because of spam. Only 53 percent feel that way now.
- 52 percent check their spam filter to see if it has caught any legitimate e-mail. But only 4 percent see this as a major problem.
- 78 percent of e-mail marketers don’t think to suggest white-listing to their audience.
Using eye-tracking technology, Stefan was able to show that, without a graphic, people rarely read the message below the fold. With an appropriate, relevant graphic, people followed the message through to the call to action.
Matt Cutts sparked up quite a chat log on his Blog by listing his favourite FF extensions, there are some good ones mentioned in there, go check them out.
Hack your FireFox: Check this out, its very interesting if you’re a techy geek – lol. Open a new FireFox window / tab and type ‘about:config’ in your address bar this will open your FF configuration directory. By double clicking on any of the items you can change how they behave. [thanks AndrewB!]
Google Sandbox: I have been running into this question again recently. I think it must have something to do with the end of year “Frantically needing to get my website ranked well” panic emails. Check out my newsletter this week, I will be answering that one…
On a personal note:
Well it’s getting close to the end of the year, which means loads end of year functions!
The Cape Town World Cinema festival is around the corner. I won some tickets to go see “Crazy Monkey” at the Labia, and directly thereafter I have a client office warming. I think it should be a good day!
The BOT Book Club is anything but going at the moment, I think Vinny is the only one that has so far actually read the books! We are soo slack, but in my defence, I have started reading the book. The Search by John Batelle is a really easy read, finding the time to squeeze it into my already hectic schedule is a completely different story! (and i have actually posted..i guess its still undergoing moderation?)
Joey and I still have not managed to see Night Watch and will probably have to wait to catch it on DVD now…it was not that popular on the SA circuits unfortunately!
Life has a funny way of balancing things. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and that is why I *try* to “do unto others….” you know the rest of it… Karma is a funny thing, and I have seen it proved many times. Ok, that concludes my preaching for this day, lol….Since this post has been sitting unpublished for quite some time…I can’t actually remember why I wrote that, but strangely enough, we did receive some great news this weekend! Our house sale fell through and has been taken off the market, so no *forced* house shopping for Joey and I! yeehaa – we’re busy enough as it is lol.
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