07.21.08

FaceBook revamp brings about change for Advertisers too

Posted in Social Media at 11:03 am by Christine

I’m not entirely convinced that I like the new Facebook Layout…but I do like the usability.

I’ve always been one for slimline and centered designs, but I guess design is very much subjective…They have opted for the broad, full screen design. Perhaps it is meant to ‘feel’ as though you are not ‘confined’ within borders, but regardless, the new look brings about change for Advertisers too.

You won’t necessarily be automatically logged into the new platform as they are rolling it out slowly. But you can access it direct by going to http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php

“We’ve made the changes rolling out today in order to highlight the most recent and relevant information that users value, give users even more control and ownership over their profiles and simplify the user experience,” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Facebook’s new design makes it a lot easier for users to share information, and we encourage them to check it out.”

At least you have the option to ‘roll-back’ or switch between the new and the old design as you wish. The one big noticeable thing is that when you look at your profile page, there is quite a bit of emphasis on the Applications.  You can now give preference to your favourite applications by giving them their own ‘top-level’ tab at the top of your page. Prime property.

The adverts (Flyers) are now also positioned on the right hand side. Much cleaner. They have rid the design of the very ‘heavy blue’ bordered feel. The most noticeable aspect of the adverts are that there are also two displayed on your profile, not just one. It is also more prominent on the top right. Current ads will just morph into the new design without advertisers needing to make any changes.

Very much in beta still, I had a few inevitible errors when playing with the new functionality, and also the footer  renders wrong - halfway up the page and not plush against your status bar…

I do like the way the Info page is displayed. Instead of having to scrolls past infinite apps, gadgets ‘plug-ons’, vidoes and wall comments, all the person’s info is displayed on one page.

‘Boxes‘ now have their own tab too…you know those little boxed areas on peoples profiles that just took up endless space? These are add-on apps such as DogBook, CatBook, Twitter, Skype, and pretty much all your other applications. It does not look like you can drag and drop them on that page, so it makes for an incredibly long page, which is more than likely the reason for creating the facility to add your own tab for applications you use often.

Certainly makes for a much cleaner browsing experience.

Take a look at the press release regarding more details to the facelift for Facebook.

Google To Start Indexing Audio Files as Text?

Posted in Info, Online Marketing at 10:25 am by Christine

This was topic briefly touched on at Thursday’s Future of Search Internetix workshop by Jeff Fletcher & Greg De Chasteauneuf.

It was recently a discussion over on Webmasterworld too…

..videos from YouTube…automatically transcribed from speech to text and indexed..

They will take videos with the help of existing (and obviously lab worked) OCR technology, then index that content in a searchable format alongside all other ‘normal’ search results.

As always it’s great to see that Google is continuously testing and moving towards complete indexing capabilities. Obviously there will be quite some fine-tuning involved, based on some of the comments from the current Google speech-to-text technology test run, it looks like many of the ‘hiccups’ are quite similar to what was, (and still is) experienced by Google Translate. It goes in smooth and contextual, but does not necessarily come out like that on the other side…It is still early days, but at least they’re testing ;)

As mentioned on the Internetix 2008 round-up, this is not a new experiment for Google, they have gone this route before, but there is still a lot of fine tuning required to perfect anything…

Then again, when is anything truly perfect?

Everything in life must be worked at, we are fine-tuning, (or evolving if you wish) on a daily basis not just online, but in our personal capacities as human beings too…

Online, one example that I’ve used before: look at the Google Algorithm… the moment SEOs figure it out it changes…catch-22 and a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. Think about it for a minute: Google tweak for relevance; thus are the results really the most relevant if we as SEOs know how to manipulate it? ;)

07.18.08

Spit or Swallow?

Posted in Personal at 4:46 am by Christine

I thought you might like that title :p

SpitOrSwallow is in fact a website about wine created by one of my friends.

The About bio on the site reads as follows:

Spit or Swallow is a website for wine enthusiasts who visit a lot of wine farms. You can log your experience here and also read what others had to say about specific farms. We do not edit comments, so straight-shooters are welcome. Do you spit or swallow?

It’s still very new, and the idea is that they visit the wine estates in person to judge the wines, ambiance and scenery, restaurant  and sometimes even the driving distance.

There are not that many estates listed yet, but perhaps you have been to the ones already listed and want to voice your opinion?

I personally am just looking forward to some great road trips to all these stunning wine estates!

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