October 18, 2006

  • Floyd Landis Gets Serious About Context

    I’m a firm believer in contextual advertising — making ads have some very direct correlation to the content that brought the user to the page in the first place. Of course, Google AdSense has made this concept pretty common (see the ads around this post for example) but controversial Tour de France winner Floyd Landis” offers a great example of this strategy on his blog. Here’s his site (as of, uh, now):

    <image lost due to link decay>

    On the lower right you’ll notice an ad that says “Learn more about the hip Floyd chose”. Clicking through we learn that inside Floyd there is a Birmingham Hip I really wish that clicking through had taken me to a testimonial and more information about Landis’ hip and such. But still, not bad for a (basically) non-commercial site.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 18, 2006.

October 16, 2006

  • Frank & Gordon Are Dead. Long Live Gordon & Frank

    We here at One Degree have built a little cottage industry out of following the online adventures of Gordon & Frank.

    As you may recall, the Bell Beavers first started appearing around Superbowl 2006. At the time I noticed that while Bell had built a custom site for their mascots and frankandgordon.ca they had forgotten to register the transposed names — gordonandfrank.ca. I pointed that domain to my One Degree post on the topic and within a few days we had a major story on our hands.

    Rumour has it that word of this oversight and our coverage of it went all the way to Michael Sabia’s office.

    Now we move to the next chapter.

    It appears that a few weeks ago Bell decided that, since the awareness campaign for Frank and Gordon was over, the micro-site for their spokes-beavers was no longer required.

    So they just took it down.

    No redirects, no “sorry but we’re not here anymore”, no pointing it to the bell.ca home page. Nothing. So it looks like it’s “Frank & Gordon Are Dead. Long Live Gordon & Frank”. gordonandfrank.ca now points to a new Frank and Gordon Category.

    We promise we won’t overload you with Bell Beaver minutia but we will give you occasional updates on how the beavers are being used — particularly in an online context.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 16, 2006.

October 13, 2006

  • Bell Beavers Making Guest Appearances Online

    A few weeks ago I got my monthly “Aeroplan”: newsletter and I was surprised to see some familiar but unexpected faces in there — Gordon and Frank — the Bell Beavers:

    I can’t seem to think of any other examples of mascots from one brand being leveraged by another. Did the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee ever do a Nike commercial? I vaguely recall the Pets.com Sock Puppet in someone else’s ad after the dot-bomb, but still, this is pretty unique.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 13, 2006.

October 4, 2006

  • Catmas.com — Can Viral Marketing Be Perennial?

    Generally, Viral Marketing is a one-hit wonder kind of business.

    Take for example “Snakes On A Plane”:

    <image lost to link decay>

    Or maybe “ShaveEverywhere”:

    <image lost to link decay>

    Virals are the “I Melt With You” or “Puttin’ On The Ritz” of the Internet marketing business. (SEO is “Dark Side of the Moon”, SEM is “Nevermind”.) At the risk of overextending the metaphor, my team at Tucows is looking for catmas.com to be our White Christmas — a perennial, seasonal hit.

    Here’s how Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla (Tucows’ Technical Evangelist) got newbies up-to-speed on the festivities:

    Back around the fall of 2003, Ross [Rader] and I wanted to come up with a little event to commemorate the launch of Blogware, the software with which our blogs (and this blog) are built. It didn’t take long for us to settle on “Post a Picture of a Cat to Your Blog Day”, an unwieldy title that refers to the cliche that bloggers always post pictures of their cat on their blogs. The day took place on Friday, October 3rd, 2003 and enough blogs participated for us to call it a success. From that day forth, we declared that the first Friday in October would be the official day on which you should partake in that most bloggy of blog activities: posting a picture of a cat on your blog.

    The following year, we gave the day a pithier name: BlogACatMas, and more people contributed. By 2005, BlogACatMas had caught the attention of the Canadian national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, which made mention of our holiday in an article titled The Truth About Cats and Blogs. This year marks the fourth instance of our special holiday, whose name we’ve shortened to Catmas (although “BlogACatMas” is still an acceptable usage) and registered as its own domain,Catmas, the home of this blog, whose purpose is to keep the Catmas spirit alive all year ‘round.

    Catmas 2006 will take place this Friday, October 6th. We encourage you to post pictures of cats — they don’t have to be your cats, any ol’ cat will do — to your blog and tell us about it in the comments of this blog! Just remember the funnier or cuter the picture of the cat, the better. p. We’ll do a bit of a deconstruction on the results of BlogACatMas 2006 once all the fur settles. (And if you have a blog, we’d love it if you’d post your kitty pics and let us know at “catmas.com”.)


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 4, 2006.

  • Exclusive — Wendy Muller Leaving Google Canada

    Anonymous sources earlier this week told One Degree that Wendy Muller — Head of Canadian Advertising Sales and Operations at Google Canada is leaving the company after almost exactly four years at the search/advertising firm. When asked for comment, a Google representative replied:

    We can confirm that Wendy Muller will be departing Google. She has been a key asset to Google in the development of the sales organization in Canada, and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

    No further details are known at this time. Muller joined Google on October 2nd, 2002 and at the time the company stated:

    As head of Canadian advertising sales and operations, Muller is responsible for growing and maintaining Google’s client base, generating Canadian ad sales revenue, and growing the team to support expansion. She brings more than 20 years of Canadian advertising and publishing experience to Google. Most recently, Muller was the chairman of DoubleClick Canada, where she led the overall growth and operations for the region. Prior to DoubleClick, Muller held numerous high-level positions in the advertising and publishing community.

    Hopefully we’ll hear Wendy’s plans soon.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 4, 2006.

October 3, 2006

  • Nakama Is Interesting

    Earlier today Ambient Vector launched their new mobile service, Nakama. We think they’re interesting. Judge for yourself.

    One Degree: Who needs you? Nakama lets anyone with a mobile phone capture, publish, share and view pictures and videos. We want to get everyone with a cameraphone using Nakama, and sharing their pictures and videos.

    One Degree: Why do they need you? Nakama is (to us) the easiest way to share pictures and videos: something almost everyone with a cameraphone wants to do. We’re also really focused on entertaining people… phones today have great displays and fast networks, so they’re an obvious choice to kill some time, browse a few pictures, watch a few videos, and be entertained, and this is something Nakama is especially good at.

    One Degree: Why are you interesting? We’re not sure that we are :-), but we’re flattered you asked. We’re a small team, with great backers, and great people. We’re also solving a whole lot of hard technology problems that are hidden by our focus on making the user experience as clean and simple as possible.

    One Degree: How do you make money? Nakama makes money three ways:

    1. Premium services (more hosting, special content, etc.) — There are a ton of parallels in the web and mobile world here.
    2. Advertising — Mobile banner ads are cute (and lucrative), but we’re also looking at interesting opportunities like using Flash and video ads on mobile. # We’re not telling — Nakama’s got what we think is a huge opportunity to build an ecosystem. Sound vague? Yeah… but you’ll see soon enough. We promise.

    One Degree: What is your mission? Oh, the meaning in a word… Nakama loosely translates to “Circle of Friends” in Japanese (it also translates to “useless” in Urdu, but you can’t win ’em all). We want people to use Nakama every day to publish special moments in their lives, connect with their friends, and entertain themselves on the metro.

    One Degree: Who are you? Ambient (the makers of Nakama) is a small software startup, made up of a small management team, with amazing engineers, and fortunate enough to have a stellar advisory board, and tier-1 venture capital backers behind us.

    One Degree: Where are you? We’re based in downtown Toronto, a block or so from King and Spadina. Send us a note if you’re in the neighborhood.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 3, 2006.

  • Exclusive — Scotiabank Podcasts!

    Exclusive A little bird let me know that Scotiabank has just launched a podcast for the bank called The Money Clip. (As an aside, I’m wondering if, given Apple’s aggressive trademark saber rattling we should call it an “audiocast” from here on out. Wait I know, how about “Zunecast”? 🙂

    Scotiabank’s Michael Seaton tells me that they’ve submitted the feed iTunes but will likely not appear there for another day or two as it apparently takes them a while to approve things. Right now it is streaming and downloadable from the page. The first series from The Money Clip is on Mutual Fund Investing, split into three segments for beginners, intermediates and advanced investors. Part one is available now. Part two goes up next week and the series continues. Michael believes this to be a first for a North American financial institution.

    Here’s Michael’s overview of the service:

    • This podcast represents a first in Canadian financial servicescertainly it is among only a select few worldwide

    • The goal is to extend the same neutral and helpful advice for Canadians as demonstrated in our newsletter, The Vault. (The Vault is an online guide to getting ahead financially, helping Canadians with insights and advice on money matters for six years via email — over 1,000,000 subscribers currently receive The Vault newsletter via email.)

    • Podcasting is a big part of Scotiabank’s digital communications and marketing strategy as it will allow us to go deeper into financial matters, speaking with experts inside and outside Scotiabank

    • We hope the self-select/on-demand nature will deliver our brand in a relevant and meaningful way for customers and non-customers interested in demystifying and growing their personal financial knowledge.

    • Access is provided in three ways — iTunes, downloadable audio file or, via streaming audio on the site.

    • A side goal of The Money Clip is to help overcome perceived technical barriers with the term “podcast”. We hope to demonstrate the power of informative audio in a highly accessible and exciting way. (Yes, we will try and make finance exciting!)

    The site is still a little rough around the edges (no iTunes listing, feed called “XML” and not properly formatted, adding a www. in front of the URL breaks it, etc.) but overall kudos to Michael his team and Twist Image who help them out with it.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on October 3, 2006.

September 28, 2006

  • DigitalEve Toronto Calls It Quits

    I’m sorry to see that “Digital Eve Toronto” has decided that it can’t continue.

    The organization has done good work from its roots in Webgrrrls to Digital Eve. There are hints they may still reformulate in some new fashion. We’ll keep an eye out. Here’s the announcement from the Board:

    To all DigitalEve Toronto Members:

    It is with deep regret and sadness that we make this announcement. Due to the our training facility being now too expensive to maintain a proper training schedule, and interest in training too low to fill the classrooms, the training has had to be put on hold indefinitely. The last several events have not been met with the interest needed, and therefore the revenue stream from them has dwindled to a crawl. Since Training and Events were the organizations only source of income, we do not have the required income to run this organization. It has been decided by a unanimous vote by the board members to officially close the Toronto Chapter due to lack of interest and income. We would like to redirect our members to one of several Women in Technology groups around the city that we hope will fulfill the need that we don’t feel we are capable of anymore.

    NOTE: The list managers are working on moving the lists to a new domain, and are investigating the option of evolving DigitalEve into a new format. We have survived through Webgrrls, into DigitalEve, maybe we can do it again. There will be more information coming regarding this as it is available. We would like to take this last opportunity to thank everyone for their support over the last few years. It has been a good run, we have made many friends. It is time to say goodbye.

    In the meantime, maybe Wired Woman can take up the slack.

    (Thanks to Bill for pointing this out.)


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 28, 2006.

September 27, 2006

  • MobileMonday Toronto Builds Momentum

    Normally we don’t quote press releases at length but I thought this one for “MobileMonday Toronto” did a pretty good job of summing up what’s happening with this newly minted organization here in Toronto:

    With its inaugural launch in June this past summer, the newly formed MobileMonday Toronto chapter is starting to attract a loyal following. Set up as a networking group for mobile industry professionals, the goal of the group is to ultimately spread knowledge and opportunities in the mobile space. “We felt that Toronto would be a great location for a chapter of MobileMonday based on the proximity of venture capital, communication companies, programming talent, and universities,” said co-founder Alexander S. Bosika. Mr. Bosika along with MobileMonday Toronto’s other co-founder Jim Brown are both veteran hi-tech professionals that felt the timing was perfect for monthly meetings of this nature. Since the launch, Jack Zidaric, and Jolon Craw, two other industry professionals have joined to help manage the monthly networking events. The events have drawn people from all parts the mobile industry to network, share ideas and interact with discussion panels.

    Speakers for the events have included Canadian executives from Research in Motion, Palm, the dot Mobi initiative, including US-based executives from Singlepoint and July Systems. The upcoming October 2nd session will probably be its most widely attended event with speakers from Google and Yahoo! participating in a moderated discussion panel around mobile search. Roger Skubowius (Google Canada) and Kristy Cook (Yahoo! Canada) each plan to answer some of the pressing questions surrounding mobile search for MoMo Toronto attendees.

    You can find out more the organization and the event at “their website.”


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 27, 2006.

  • Why I Include My Feed in My Sig File

    One Degree:Jordan, can you tell us about your .sig file and what the pros and cons of your approach are?” I use the animated headline feature from “Feedburner” in my .sig file, to publicize my blog. It is a very cool feature that I think everyone should try (provided they have a Feedburner feed associated with their site). The response to it has been overwhelmingly positive, and I have to agree that it does give my messages an extra bit of credibility than a static text “siggy” or even a company logo would. Here’s a peek at what we’re talking about here:

    Jordan Behan

    www.telltenfriends.com

    778.840.TELL (8355)

    Jordan Behan: I opted to list just my url, and not a full company name and title, in exchange for less content to have to look at. I’m still pretty convinced this was a good decision, as it shouldn’t be too busy, in my opinion. When people first see it, it’s not out of the ordinary for them to say “Wow, I want one of those!” But here is where I start to list the cons of this method. I do web marketing and PR consulting, specializing in small business. Many of my clients and prospects discover what an RSS feed is when I explain it to them, and not before. If you’re not already familiar with the use of feeds, then you might not understand the content that you see when you click the link in the animated .gif. I have yet to have anyone ask about the “site” they get linked through to when they click, but I have to guess that for some it is a bit confusing. They might have expected to be linked to my site, not the Feedburner feed.

    That’s why I’m beginning to think (this exercise of explaining was certainly a catalyst) that I actually do need to add one last bit of info at the bottom of the .sig, for RSS newbies. Maybe something to the effect of: What’s an RSS feed? (With a link to a blog post explaining how to subscribe, etc.) Or, alternatively, just an extra link below that reads: Or click here to visit the homepage. Still, overall I would have to say that the tool is very useful. It reminds people that I do have fresh content all the time, and even if it is a bit ugly, that content is available when you click through to the Feedburner feed, where you are just one more click away from the homepage, any given individual post or of course from subscribing. As the average end-user gets even savvier, this little tool will really begin to realize its potential.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 27, 2006.

September 20, 2006

  • ThinData Announces ZenData

    ThinData CEO (and past Five Questions interviewee) Chris Carder, just sent word about an interesting extension of ThinData’s business:

    Last Thursday, we announced a joint venture in equal partnership with Montreal-based e-relationship marketing expert, René Godbout to form ZenData Marketing. René, previously Director of Marketing with Montreal-based Aeroplan, brings his 30 years’ experience in marketing and CRM to the venture including consumer marketing experience with Bell Canada and Radio-Canada television network. ZenData will provide e-relationship marketing services to Quebec brands. The relationship between companies extends ThinData’s commitment to providing permission-based email marketing nationally. The presence of ZenData does not change our existing client relationships in any way. It does, however, increase our ability to service Quebec based accounts.

    The full press release announcing ZenData is on the ThinData web site and the bilingual Zendata.ca site is now live.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 20, 2006.

September 15, 2006

  • First Thoughts On Toronto’s WiFi Network

    One Degree:Patrick, how do you think Toronto Hydro has done with the launch of the first phase of the Toronto WiFi blanket, and “have your initial thoughts”?

    Patrick Dinnen: I would give Toronto Hydro Telecom a qualified thumbs up for their launch. It remains to be seen, but I suspect that THT may find that they need to work on managing customer expectations.

    The “THT website” uses phrases like ‘blanket of WiFi coverage in the downtown Toronto core’ and ‘ubiquitous WiFi coverage zone’, but the experience on the ground may be somewhat different.

    Technically what THT are trying to do is very ambitious and really stretches the technology a long way, so the fact that there are some dead spots in the coverage is no surprise, but you need to make sure your customers understand the limitations. This becomes particularly true once the initial six-month free trial period is over. I may not mind moving to another table in the cafe to get a signal while I’m not paying for the service but at $29/month my perception changes.

    I don’t think my thoughts on what needs to happen to make this project a complete success have changed since launch.

    To recap, THT should be:

    • consulting with the public
    • working to address the needs of underserved communities and small businesses
    • considering providing free Internet access in public spaces on an ongoing basis.

    There are some signs that thought is being given to these issues by various people. For example, “Wireless Toronto”:http://wirelesstoronto.ca and THT have had some initial conversations about the possibilities for community-related and there was “a piece in the Star” last week, which asked whether the network would provide more value to Toronto if it remained a free service.

    So, I’m still hopeful about the potential of the THT network but don’t think it’s being met quite yet.

     


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 15, 2006.

September 11, 2006

  • Kraft.ca — The 20 Character Home Page

    Poor Kraft. I’m sure they had the best of intentions when they decided on kraftcanada.com as their official Canadian online home. And I’m sure they felt great getting kraft.ca registered so they could collect up any consumers that didn’t get the memo that Kraft prefers 20 character urls to 8 character ones. Then that party-pooper search marketing superstar Andrew Goodman has to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like:

    Ken Schafer over at One Degree could spend half his life chronicling maddening Canadian corporate website gaffes. Luckily though, I’m pitching in, so he’ll have time for his day job. Check out www.kraft.ca. It’s not that they don’t know and can’t redirect you to the actual site, www.kraftcanada.com, it’s just that they haven’t bothered. Hey, you can cut and paste that URL, right? Unless you are like 33.8% of visitors to that page, who will simply leave thinking the site is broken. No, it never redirects in any of the major browsers. 🙂 Incidentally, this nearly-blank domain/page/site has a PageRank of 5! Sweet!

    It’s true, here is the entire site you get when you go to www.kraft.ca:

    I thank Andrew for saving me the work but I can’t help but point out that kraft.ca (i.e. without the dub-dub-dub) doesn’t resolve at all, making them 3 and 0 from my point of view:

    1. Picked longer domain name than they had to
    2. Didn’t properly redirect typos and domain variants to the official site
    3. Don’t allow people to skip typing www

    Kraft, you have replaced old standby td.com as my example of embarrassing corporate web gaffes! Feel free to email me when you’ve fixed them and we’ll find a new example. 🙂


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 11, 2006.

September 6, 2006

  • Tucows Buys Kiko

    We’re making some big news today at my “day job”.

    Over the last few weeks, the web has been abuzz with discussion about the eBay auction of the online calendar “Kiko.com”. Well, it turns out that while we had gone fishin’, Tucows won the auction and is now the proud owner of one of the hottest little Web 2.0 apps out there!

    I’m planning on writing about how we used our new blog to announce this to the world but for right now I just wanted to make sure that the “entire world didn’t scoop me on this”.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 6, 2006.

August 25, 2006

  • BarCamp Earth Is This Weekend

    The ultimate geek “unconference” BarCamp is self-organizing itself into a global gathering this weekend called “BarCampEarth”.

    The date marks (roughly) the one year anniversary of the “first BarCamp”. The “TorCamp” contingent have (of course) organized a great version of the event for “Toronto”. But not to be outdone, “Vancouver”, “Sudbury”, and “Waterloo” (albeit a month late) are joining in.

    Follow the links for details on how the event is shaping up in each location.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 25, 2006.

  • What Is OneWebDay.ca?

    Adrian Capobianco, VP of Interactive for FUSE Marketing Group, offered to give us some insights into a recent campaign, so we asked him 1.5 questions about onewebday.ca…

    One Degree: Adrian, what was the challenge CIRA presented to FUSE and how does “onewebday.ca” address that challenge?

    Adrian Capobianco: The opportunity was one that many One Degree readers will I’m sure be interested in. CIRA wanted to acknowledge September 22nd each year as a day to celebrate the positive impacts that the Internet has made on individuals and business.

    The 2 key challenges were:

    1. We needed a way to make it relevant to the average Canadian.
    2. The program needed to be launched nation-wide in both official languages which meant a huge awareness building effort.

    To address the first challenge we decided to send an Ambassador from coast to coast to coast to meet, interview and video a wide range of Canadians and present these interviews on the “OneWebDay.ca” site in an engaging national forum.

    To address the second issue and help raise awareness we tapped into “partners” who have helped us facilitate the tour as well as raise awareness of the program.

    You can be the judge to see if we’ve made it compelling. Visit the site, see the tour, check out the education section, enter the contest for a chance to win free music downloads for a year and share your views by taking the polls while watching the tour videos. I’d be interested in your feedback.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 25, 2006.

August 24, 2006

  • How Do You “Try” Blogging?

    I was talking to a colleague at “Tucows” and we hit on something I’d experienced before but hadn’t quite formalized into a structured idea.

    The issue at hand was “what is the proper way to ‘test’ a new blogging platform — or blogging in general for that matter?” To me, the biggest benefit of having a blog is not “publishing a personal diary” but “sharing thoughts with the world”. The impact of blogging on your ability to share with others only happens if others can in fact share — otherwise you are just talking to yourself. And therein lies the problem. If you are “just testing” blogging, or a new platform like “vox”, you don’t really want to tell people it’s only a test and that you might not keep it going. In a nutshell, without committing to blogging it is very hard to get the benefits of blogging.

    My guess is the blogosphere is strewn with “hello world” blog posts that are the first and last post because it is impossible to see the benefit of post number two.

    This is a bigger problem than it might seem. Many new businesses depend on social networking models and those almost by definition mean they only work once you are in fact social. If we can’t push visitors past the “just looking around” stage how will we get them to see the value? Think about all the people you’ve told about “LinkedIn” who only added one contact and stopped not realizing that the darn thing only makes sense after you have a few people with good networks in your network. How many “Flickr accounts” are abandoned after people realize they have no one to share their snapshots with?

    How’s your Web 2.0 social dream site going to get over the “just looking/I don’t get it” hurdle?


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 24, 2006.

August 17, 2006

  • Building A New Marketing Dream Team

    One of the big reasons I joined Tucows earlier this year was the company’s strong desire to build a “new marketing” team within Tucows. The company gave very few resources to the small overworked marketing team they had in place for the last few years and, frankly, it’s amazing they got as much done as they did. Kudos to Jacqui, Adam, Scott and those that were gone before I got here. But now the cracks are showing and the company knows it’s time to rethink the “if you make it, they will come” approach to marketing (unfortunately common to many tech-heavy companies). And so I was brought in to rethink what marketing means for “Tucows”. That was music to my ears and I’ve taken the tune to heart. I’m rethinking not only marketing at Tucows, but how marketing in the 21st century would be done if we were given the chance to hit “reset” and start all over again.

    Job One was putting together a “New Marketing” dream team. Here’s what I came up with in purple prose:

    Fearless Leader — Someone to bring the big ideas, push the grand vision, clear the way, deal with the crap and generally make it possible for the others to get the hard work done. Mentor, agitator, shit disturber, action taker. What-have-you. That’s “me”. Formal title: Vice President of Marketing.

    Go-to-market Guru — Takes the bright ideas generated in Product Management and created by Development and translates them into a compelling, coherent, customer-centric message. Acts as midwife to see those ideas into the world. Ensures that everything is right and ready so that the launch of new services or service enhancements goes off without a hitch. I’ve got one of these, he’s called “Adam”. Officially he’s the Product Marketing Manager.

    The Campaigner — Getting products to market is a challenge (Adam’s challenge), but the company doesn’t make money until customers adopt the products and start using them fully. The Campaigner’s toolkit consists of email marketing, search strategies, persuasive web design, actionable tools for the sales team and any other trick in the book to test, track and tweak measurable marketing goals to success. The business card says “Marketing Manager, Campaigns”. “I need one of these. Is it you?”

    The Conversationalist — This might be the best Internet job in Canada. Seriously. Chief blogger, deconstructor of mainstream media relations, champion of the human voice, content wrangler, cocktail party host, and the person who the voices of Tucows turn to for comfort and support when the going gets tough. I’m getting metaphysical here. “Read Joey’s description to see why I’m so excited about having someone like this on the team”. Officially you’d be the “Marketing Manager, Communications” if you “got the gig”

    The Collector — The wizard of words and numbers — brings together the marketing database, makes sure the tools are there to measure everything we do, does the field research and generally allows us to know who we are talking to and what they care about. Also known as the Director of Research, a new role ably filled by Jacqui.

    The Evangelist — This is all about passion. The Evangelist lives for your company’s products. They wear cow-hide vests, give out squishies, and write white papers — all while helping put geeks from around the world together to solve mutual problems. Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla holds the exalted title of Technical Evangelist here at Tucows. Someone get this guy in “Wikipedia” for Pete’s sake.

    The Mechanics — Without the mechanics, nothing happens — Lead Designer, Lead Developer — the Glimmer Twins of web design. To the mix, we’ll eventually add a search expert and an analytics lead. Right now we have our master of all things HTML, CSS and Photoshop in Scott, but the other roles need to be filled shortly.

    The Writers — Content is king. Without outstanding words and a deep understanding of the inner workings of Tucows APIs, control panels, and other technical underpinnings our customers would never be able to fully use our services. Clara and Debbie handle the role with style and grace and will undoubtedly see more front-line action now that they’re in Marketing instead of operations.

    I’m sure these roles will map well to some companies and be less relevant to others. Still, this to me is truly my dream team. Over time these roles will turn into teams and maybe someday some of them will be entire departments. But for the time being, we’ll be a great team with a clear mission — and a dream. Feedback on my dream time or insights into your New Marketing Dream Team are welcome. See you below in the comment area!


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 17, 2006.

August 14, 2006

  • What If Your Fans Create Faux Blogs?

    One of the biggest no-nos of corporate blogging is creating a “fake blog”, or “faux blog” or “character blog” (all the same thing really). Blogs are supposed to present the authentic voices of real people. And since made up characters or “amalgams” can’t, by definition be “real”, they are generally (and justly) considered the ultimate sign that “you just don’t get it” when it comes to the blogosphere. So what happens when someone else creates a character blog that people might think is your doing? This is not a theoretical question as we’re dealing with this right now at “Tucows”.

    We’ve just started a “little viral campaign” around the “much-loved” Tucows’ “Squishy Cow” But an interesting thing happened. “Joey” our Technical Evangelist gave a squishy to someone last week and “he” went crazy for it. He named it Shoshanna. He said he was going to make a blog for Shoshanna. “And he did”.

    Now you must understand, I’m completely lovin’ this. I’m hoping Amazing Shoshanna’s blog has a long and happy life. But if anyone thinks that Tucows was behind this I’m screwed. Asking Shoshanna’s owner to take it down just seems wrong in so many ways. He likes our cows, he should be able to do “what he wants with it.” It’s all good right? Well, not if the blogosphere starts thinking Tucows put him up to it. So let me now say, officially and publicly that — other than giving him the squishy — Tucows has nothing to do with Shoshanna and her blog. But we do wish her well in her travels.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 14, 2006.

August 11, 2006

  • How Digg.com Gets A Massage

    I’ve got a bit of a fondness for the custom “we’ll be right back” messages some sites post when they are temporarily down for maintenance.

    Last year I pointed out “Bloglines’ Plumber” and this spring I pointed out super-apologetic “Backpack Error Messages”. Flickr’s downtime message is so popular it’s become a “meme” onto itself (do a Google search on “is having a massage” if you’re not hip to the jive).

    So I was thrilled earlier this week when I hit “digg.com” and found their downtime message:

    <image lost to link decay>

    I really like how they turned their offline status into a content opportunity. People go to Digg to find something interesting to read, so this message is just about perfect from my perspective.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 11, 2006.

  • New One Degree Feature Next Week

    At “my day job” at “Tucows” I’m working on building out the marketing department. I’m in the incredibly enviable position of being able to think through the ultimate marketing team for the 21st century. Next week I’ll share with you my thoughts on how an Internet marketing team (client-side) should be configured and I’ll share the job descriptions of my key roles. I’m also hiring so you’ll see the job postings we’re doing and I’m hoping some of you will even consider joining the team. I look forward to some good discussion around this topic when we kick it off next week.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 11, 2006.

August 3, 2006

  • JobLoft.com Is Interesting

    This is part of our new “Interesting” feature “we announced in April” but then lost track of. If you have an “interesting” site you think we should feature let us know.

    Chris Nguyen, Corporate Account Manager for “JobLoft.com” explains why his company — featured at “DemoCamp Toronto 8” — is interesting…

    One Degree: Who needs you? Why do they need you? Why are you interesting?

    JobLoft.com is a job board that helps job seekers connect with employers. Here’s how it works for Job Seekers:

    1. Job seekers go to JobLoft.com and enter their home postal code
    2. A Google Map appears with jobs pinpointed near their house
    3. Clicking on any of the available job opportunities will bring you to a job posting page with a full job description, including a map of the job location Here’s how it works for Employers:
    4. Employers login to their JobLoft.com Employer account
    5. Select an existing job template (contains pre-filled job title and description)
    6. Link the new job posting to a location, and click Publish Live The Retail Council of Canada reports that finding and retaining staff at all levels is the biggest challenge for retailers today.

    While we can’t eliminate turnover, but we can help reduce turnover. The technology we use (Google Maps, AJAX, RSS, etc) helps us to promote awareness of the issue of “distance sensitivity”.

    According to our market research, our target market is unwilling to travel more than 30 minutes for their job. By plotting jobs near a person’s home or school and thereby giving them an idea of their commute to work, we help our employers to better retain their employees overall. Also, our site was designed with ease-of-use and simplicity in mind. This helps visitors to easily navigate our site and find jobs quickly.

    *One Degree: How do you make money?*

    We bill employers on a monthly subscription basis for our services, including job postings, company profile, branding, backend management system features such as custom interview questions, screening tools, etc. Services for job seekers are free.

    *One Degree: What is your mission?*

    To disrupt the HR(Human Resources) industry through new ideas and innovation. To bring awareness to the issue of “distance sensitivity” with regards to employment.

    *One Degree: Who are you?*

    We are four recent Ryerson University graduates holding Bachelor of Commerce degrees in Information Technology Management. We all have different work experience ranging from Google to TTC to NVIDIA to Microsoft and BMW.

    *One Degree: Where are you?*

    Our corporate offices are based in Mississauga, Ontario. We’re right across from Square One. Individually, we live all across Toronto.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 3, 2006.

July 31, 2006

  • InfoQ Is Interesting

    This is part of our new “Interesting” feature “we announced in April” but then lost track of. If you have an “interesting” site you think we should feature let us know.

    Recently I asked Floyd Marinescu, CEO & Co-founder of C4media and founder of “InfoQ” to explain what makes his site interesting.

    One Degree: Who needs InfoQ?

    Professionals in the Enterprise Software Development community, including developers, architects, project managers, consultants, coaches, etc.

    One Degree: Why do they need you?

    InfoQ provides daily news and technical content for the Java, .NET, Ruby, SOA, and Agile communities written by domain experts (instead of non-technical journalists). InfoQ also connects the audience to each other via lively discussions associated with current news and content. For professionals in this space, InfoQ is the only resource available that allows them to track what’s going on across these communities in one place.

    One Degree: Why are you interesting?

    InfoQ is not just an online news community, it is also a technological showcase of what a modern online community can be. InifoQ uses the latest cutting-edge AJAX techniques to enhance the browsing experience — you can log in, post messages, and click through different sections of the site without page refreshes. You can personalize to which topics you want to follow on InfoQ and that personalization will change the content you see and also the content you get in your personalized RSS feed. In particular, very few sites are offering personalized individual feeds.

    One Degree: How do you make money?

    We sell online advertising to companies interested in reaching the audiences on our site. Our initial founding sponsors include IBM, Oracle, BEA, Symantec, Compuware, Cassatt, and Terracotta.

    One Degree: What is your mission?

    InfoQ’s primary mission is to contribute to the evolution of the communities we serve.

    One Degree: Who are you?

    I am InfoQ’s co-founder and also CEO of C4Media, the startup that exclusively publishes InfoQ. Before that, I created and managed TheServerSide.com Enterprise Java community for 5 years. TheServerSide became the largest Java community in the world with over 500,000 registered members.

    One Degree: Where are you?

    C4Media is incorporated in Canada and I live in Toronto. Our company, however, is a micro-national. We have 6 full-timers across Canada, the US, Romania, and China, as well as 7 part-time editors across Europe and the US.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 31, 2006.

  • Eloqua Is Interesting

    This is part of our new “Interesting” feature “we announced in April” but then lost track of. If you have an “interesting” site you think we should feature let us know.

    Recently I asked Shawn DeSouza at “Eloqua” to explain what makes his company interesting.

    One Degree: Who needs you?

    Marketers at B2B organizations tasked with providing a continuous stream of high-quality leads to their sales force.

    One Degree: Why do they need you?

    In today’s competitive marketplace, marketers are under increased pressure to design and execute more effective marketing campaigns that generate revenue. Salespeople require a continuous flow of quality leads, and executives demand accountability in revenue terms. Marketers struggling to reach decision makers are shifting dollars from advertising to more direct and interactive tactics, using technology to improve results and accountability. They seek best practices in lead generation, development, qualification and distribution and tools that can transform isolated, random acts of marketing into coordinated, automated and measurable processes.

    One Degree: Why are you interesting?

    Eloqua provides the leading software platform for executing, automating and measuring effective business to business marketing programs. Eloqua’s product gives marketing and sales teams unprecedented visibility into prospect behavior, activity and interest throughout the entire sales process. It does this by integrating all the key components of the sales cycle together to create a seamless, automated and measurable process. Eloqua tightly links all outbound direct marketing activity — including direct mail and email, with trackable Web assets like corporate websites, web forms, landing pages and email. It applies event-based automation to turn manual processes into efficient processes. It explicitly ties marketing activity at the top of the sales funnel to sales information commonly found in CRM software like Siebel, Salesforce.com or Microsoft CRM. Eloqua makes marketing — particularly the ‘art’ of lead generation — a science that can be measured, optimized and understood by the sales organization.

    One Degree: How do you make money?

    Eloqua sells on-demand “software as a service” marketing automation products and services. Our customers chose Eloqua Conversion Suite to transform their marketing campaigns from art to science by building automated processes for lead acquisition, management, qualification, distribution and nurturing. In fiscal year 2005, the company reported 100 percent growth in revenue bookings. This growth momentum continued into Q1 2006, with Eloqua nearly tripling its bookings, posting a 158 percent gain over the same period in 2005.

    One Degree: What is your mission?

    Eloqua’s mission is to turn customer acquisition into a measurable and repeatable automated process.

    One Degree: Where are you?

    Eloqua Corporation is headquartered in Toronto with offices in London and throughout the United States.

     


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 31, 2006.

  • MVive Is Interesting

    This is part of our new “Interesting” feature “we announced in April” but then lost track of. If you have an “interesting” site you think we should feature let us know.

    I asked Al Sajoo, Vice President & CTO of “MVive Media Group” why MVive was interesting:

    One Degree: Who needs you?

    Everyone needs MVive — businesses who want to build relationships with their loyal customers while also gaining new customers; and consumers looking for exclusive deals and timely, meaningful communications with their favourite brands.

    One Degree: Why do they need you?

    Both businesses and consumers need us because we empower the consumer to control what is marketed to their mobile device while at the same time allowing businesses to go where traditional marketing does not. The power of the mobile phone lies in the need it has created to keep people constantly in touch with their world. This need is now driving the next marketing revolution as consumers and businesses also look to constantly stay in touch.

    One Degree: Why are you interesting?

    This mutual benefit to both businesses and consumers is what makes us so interesting. Companies no longer have to waste resources on creating and delivering unwanted marketing messages; and the consumer can conveniently request and access “wanted” marketing messages faster and more conveniently. MVive believes email marketing is about as good as cheap tires on a Ferrari. The Ferrari being the consumer holding tremendous value and extreme potential only to be insulted by the ridicules of spam. Marketing using MVive lacks spam or spam-style content. Businesses can not just simply send a message to every subscriber. Each message is specifically targeted to reflect value and relevance to that given consumer. What makes MVive interesting is the same as what makes MVive exciting — _technology_ — mobile technology that increases the business’ ROI while leaving the consumer in the driver’s seat in regards to what marketing they see.

    One Degree: How do you make money?

    MVive generates income from two separate services. The first, Mobile Conversion Service, is aimed at converting business email databases to permission-based mobile ready databases. The second, Moupon tm and Movite tm services, are aimed at offering text-based mobile coupons for use at over 500 retailers (and growing). MVive is a free service to consumers and guarantees zero charge for downloading Moupons on their cellular phone. Consumers can also receive these free coupons and offers automatically by subscribing to Movite, a mobile subscription that allows them to select which businesses they would like to automatically receive offers from. All income is generated from the businesses who choose to use our services. With that said, MVive makes these services using this new medium very affordable. Unlike other so-called mobile marketing systems, MVive doesn’t rely on renting high cost shortcodes.

    One Degree: What is your mission?

    Our mission is to bring forth a change in the electronic marketing medium by providing guaranteed delivery, and guaranteed viewing of relevant information by the right people. We want to provide an exceptional quality of service using a legitimate method of leveraging mobile devices for the common benefit of consumers and businesses.

    One Degree: Where are you?

    Geographically speaking, we are in Toronto. Theoretically speaking however, we are in the perfect place right now because businesses find our service “innovative and effective” while consumers find us to be “cool and useful”.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 31, 2006.

July 26, 2006

  • Burton Cummings, eBay, Blogs, And A Good Cause

    Over-the-top fundraisers have been a long-standing tradition in Toronto but “Bridle Bash 2” happening this weekend looks like it may become legendary.

    Hosted in the backyard of a palatial Bridle Path estate and promising that “the best view of the show is in the pool” this intimate event (if a thousand people can be intimate) is raising funds for “Camp Oohigeas”.

    Folks at “my day job” have arranged for three pairs of tickets to be “auctioned off at eBay”. Given that the only other option for getting into this event is “buying a pair of Platinum tickets for $5,000” and the cause being supported is a worthy one, we hope that people will bid very generously. The primary way we’re getting the word out about this is via word of mouth and blogs. You may notice that, along with One Degree, Joey ‘Accordion Guy’ DeVilla “has picked up the cause” as has Mathew Ingram who mentioned Bridle Bash on “his blog” and at his day job, “the Globe and Mail”.

    If you are blogging and can spread the word, we’d appreciate it.

    Why mention this on One Degree? Well…

    1. I want those of you with bigger bank accounts than I to get in on the bidding.
    2. It’s a good cause.
    3. I find the use of the Net in promoting and to some extent managing this event very interesting.
    4. Us using blogs as the primary buzz builders for the final few pairs of tickets struck me as something you wouldn’t have seen even a year or two ago but it now seems perfectly natural.
    5. “My personal blog” has been sadly lacking in updates and as a result, traffic has sagged since I started doing most of my posting here.

    I find it hard to blog in multiple places and the fact that I needed to post here instead of on my personal blog was a new insight for me. Since One Degree is a topic-specific site, how do I get the message out without creating an “off-topic” category — something I’ve resisted for over a year?

    Follow the links, find out more and give some serious thought to what you are doing this weekend. You might end up with a story you’ll be telling for decades!

     


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 26, 2006.

July 25, 2006

  • Why Radiant Core Is Involved With Firefox

    Given recent news from “Radiant Core” I decided to ask Jay Goldman, the agency’s President, “1.5 Questions” about the Firefox win.

    One Degree: Jay, what impact do you expect your involvement with Firefox 2.0 will have on Radiant Core and do you feel that other companies can use Open Source project involvement to their advantage while helping the community?”

    Jay Goldman: It’s hard to imagine a better way to help the tech community than to contribute to an Open Source project, especially one that so strongly shares and embodies our beliefs. Working with “Mozilla”: has been an opportunity for us to collaborate with some of the people who are responsible for building the community that we get to enjoy and it continues to be an incredible privilege to be involved. I hope that “our contributions to the Firefox 2 release” will help to make the industry as a whole more aware of the value of good design and of continuous evolution and measured improvements rather than the need to make revolutionary changes with every release. There’s been a lot of talk lately about changing the way that software is built — from the old “release early/release often” saw to “37Signals’ Getting Real” — and I think there’s a lot of value in those statements. We’ve try to follow a similar approach in all the work we do for our clients, including the Firefox 2 theme. A lot of our time on the Fx2 release has been spent on the small details of what makes a good browser experience and I think it will show when people have a chance to try Beta 2 in a few weeks.

    Hopefully, it will also highlight the value in hiring Radiant Core to make those improvements! Participating in an Open Source project is a win-win situation for everyone involved — the contributors get the satisfaction of building (hopefully) great software, and the benefit of exposure at a level that is sometimes difficult to achieve in the Closed Source world. Although I don’t suggest that other companies get involved in the Firefox project for building default themes (Ha! Take that competitors!) — the Mozilla community is huge and filled with all kinds of exciting opportunities for people, be they designers, coders, documentation writers, or even volunteers to test things. And Mozilla is only one of the thousands of similar projects, all of whom are looking for hands and eyeballs. So you — yes, the person reading this on One Degree — get out there and do some good! And maybe plant a tree too (you can think of the environment as the ultimate Open Source project if it helps).


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 25, 2006.

July 23, 2006

  • The Internet Is A Series Tubes

    This Jon Stewart clip has been making the rounds for the last few weeks. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should:

    <video lost to link decay>

    Remind you of any client’s CEOs? 🙂

    “Here’s the dance mix” for your listening pleasure. This would be a lot funnier if the Ted Stevens being lampooned wasn’t “this Ted Stevens.” If you are in a position of power and say something profoundly boneheaded, know that in mere minutes the whole world will know (or at least “a quarter of a million people will try to make sure they do”).


     

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 23, 2006.

  • comingzune.com

    Word leaked out last week that Microsoft is working on an (ahem) “iPod killer” called Zune.

    I won’t bore you with the details — a quick search on Zune will get you MORE than enough on this classic piece of Microsoft FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), but I did want to point out a really nice teaser site they’ve built called Coming Zune I think it’s the Regina Spektor song that made me want to link to the site. In fact, I liked Spektor’s “Us” so much that I just bought it from the iTunes Music Store.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 23, 2006.

July 18, 2006

  • Should Your Website Display the CMA Logo?

    Traditionally many CMA (Canadian Marketing Association) members have included the CMA logo on their direct marketing materials. But companies have been slower to adopt the logo on their websites.

    The association recently sent a Member Briefing explaining the “Look for the Logo” program and pointing members to the new logos.

    CMA Members are encouraged to display the member logo on all their marketing communications, including their website, envelopes, flyers, inserts and in print and online advertisements. Program guidelines and materials, including a new interactive banner and button for member websites and e-marketing campaigns, can be downloaded from the CMA website.

    Their request got me thinking — should members use the logo on their sites and if so where? I’d be interested in hearing feedback on this.

    If you aren’t a CMA member company, why not? If you are a member, do you display the logo on your site? How did you decide on this strategy? Does your online use of the logo differ from your offline approach?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 18, 2006.