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.

  • iBegin 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 Ahmed Farooq from “iBegin.com” to explain what makes his site interesting.

    One Degree: Who needs you?

    Anyone (in Toronto… for now) frustrated by local search.

    One Degree: Why do they need you?

    Simply because the current crop of local search sites (and Internet yellow pages) are rather craptastic. That’s right — I said crap.

    One Degree: Why are you interesting?

    We are completely self-funded, with no interest for external capital. There is no exit plan that comprises of a hopeful eye towards the usual suspects for a financially delicious buyout. We even have a philosophy that guides us. Local search with a mix of zen.

    One Degree: How do you make money?

    We do not right now. We are on target to become self-sufficient by 2007.

    One Degree: What is your mission?

    To do local search right. No need to jump around, looking for pictures, reviews, information. All in one place, backed by high-quality results.

    One Degree: Who are you?

    I’m not sure about that myself. Still on the path of self-discovery, so once I know, I will let you know 🙂 Strictly facts, we are a web development firm that owns a variety of websites. And we are firmly in the black.

    One Degree: Where are you?

    We are located in Toronto, feverishly working.


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

July 12, 2006

  • Help Me Make The Net Ad Case

    Okay now that I’ve got my “online rules” rant off my chest I’m getting serious about putting together some compelling visuals for all our presentations.

    I’d like to add a few things to “the chart” and maybe do a Canadian version as well. I could use a bit of help with this. If you have any of the following, maybe you can send me a copy, or a link, or just add the data in the comments below):

    • If you quarterly IAB Canada stats I’ll do a Canuck version.
    • If anyone can source quarterly revenue from other marketing channels (in the US), I’ll be happy to create a new version of the chart so we can compare our growth to their stagnancy.
    • I’d love to get some old Forrester and Jupiter projections. I’d be very interested in seeing their online ad predictions from the 20th century to see how they did. My guess is that their wildly optimistic guesses are coming true.

    Send me what you got, make suggestions for other stuff we need and I’ll do my best to pull it together in a consistent format.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 12, 2006.

  • 1 Red Paperclip + 1 Year = 1 House

    “Clipreneur” Kyle MacDonald did it!. Kyle (featured in a “Five Questions interview” here at One Degree) took exactly one year (and a heap of viral buzz) to turn one red paperclip into a house via 14 trades.

    Congrats to Kyle! Web analytics fans will be interested to know that I found out about this when we started seeing tons of search traffic coming on searches for Kyle’s name and the term “one red paperclip”.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 12, 2006.

July 11, 2006

  • Internet Marketing Is The Place To Be

    Hello there Internet Marketer! Do you find that you get kidded about your passion for all things online? Do the other marketers in the office call you “cyber-this” and “e-that” followed by a condescending sniff? If so, take heart, those complacent know-it-alls NEVER get to see charts that look like this:

    <image lost due to link decay>

    Holy crap! In ten years we went from NO industry to a US$4 BILLION PER QUARTER industry! Do you feel like things are going to slow down? I feel like we’re just getting going. Please feel free to use this chart in your next presentation when you need to make a case for Internet advertising being here to stay. Hell, it’s not here to stay — it’s taking over the party! Stick it in PowerPoint and put it up on the big screen. Make the TV guys and the DMers salivate. Let’s face it — it’s time for us to quit accepting our second-class status as fair and proper. Time for a seat at the big people’s table if you don’t already have it. If your company is not seriously into making the Net the center of your company’s marketing strategy, quit. Stop wasting your time and find a company that gets it.


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

July 9, 2006

  • A Quarter of One Degree Visitors Use Firefox

    If your site doesn’t work in “Firefox” you might be causing more misery for your visitors than you imagine, particularly if you care about marketers, tech folk, early adopters, and influencers. Those in the know are much more likely to be using Firefox as their default browser when compared to the general North American population where Firefox use is “estimated” at less than 10% penetration.

    Here’s how One Degree users breakdown:

    <image lost to link decay>

    The “Other” is a mishmash of various flavors of Opera, Safari, and Netscape. No sign of “Flock” yet — maybe it calls itself Mozilla?


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 9, 2006.

June 26, 2006

  • Ken And Mitch’s Excellent Podcast Adventure

    Last week “One Degree contributor”, “blogger”, and “Twist Image President” Mitch Joel was nice enough to interview me for “Six Pixels of Separation”— his latest incarnation as a podcaster. The podcast covers a bunch of interesting topics including “CaseCamp” and “Second Life”. My interview is about 15 minutes long and covers some of my thinking about One Degree and Internet marketing in general.

    Mitch Joel was nice enough to invite me as a guest on his new “New Marketing” podcast, Six Pixels of Separation. Episode Six of the show features me, Joseph Jaffe, and Neville Hobson. Here’s a bit more about the podcast and a link to the podcast itself in case you’d like to learn a little more about what’s behind One Degree and my thoughts on new marketing in general…


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

  • Second Toronto CaseCamp Announced

    It looks like “Eli Singer” refuses to take the summer off.

    Hot on the heels of the incredibly successful “inaugural CaseCamp” Eli is in pulling together “CaseCamp Toronto 2”.

    Over 70 marketers came out to that first event and I think, if you are in the Toronto area, you really owe it to yourself to block off the evening of Friday, July 7th to make the scene and see what all the fuss is about.

    *Update:* The date has changed to accommodate two special Case Presenters and to take advantage of a great new venue. Here’s the scope from the organizer of this event, Eli Singer:

    Two outstanding presenters have signed on for the next event. They are Andrew Michael Baron, co-founder of Rocketboom (the immensely popular video podcast from New York) and Matt Blackett, editor of the Spacing Wire blog (arguably the most influential blog in Toronto). To accommodate the busy schedules of these gentlemen, we’ve moved the event to Friday, July 7th. It will be at the Jamie Kennedy Kitchen at the brand new Gardiner Museum. The space is stunning and so is the patio. We were missing out on some good food at the last event, so many thanks in advance to Aldo Cundari who is sponsoring hors d’oeurves for all. We are using the wiki to write a community press release which will go out to media mid next week. Please visit site and contribute. Lastly, and importantly, we need two more presenters. If you’re on the fence, please call me to discuss what’s involved. Don’t be shy, step up and share.

    While I won’t be there (because I’m supposed to be “fishin”) I’m hoping we get LOTS of One Degree readers representing for us at CaseCamp 2.

     


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

June 22, 2006

  • High Road’s Social Media Division Misfires At Launch

    “Marketing Magazine” reported today that “High Road Communications” is “opening a digital communications division.”

    Here’s how High Road explained the new division in their press release:

    High Road Communications has synthesized agency talent, experience and passion in VOX, a new social media and digital marketing division. The firm’s VOX team consists of seasoned communicators who specialize in the online and social media spaces. They provide a potent mix of traditional media relations skills and forward-looking technological knowledge to deliver effective, relevant and results-driven campaigns to the audiences that matter.

    Kudos to High Road for doing this, it is indeed a much needed service and I’m sure they’ll do fine with it.

    The High Road VOX team creates and delivers services including:

    • Blog/ chat/ forum relations — targeting online journalists, enthusiast and special interest sites
    • Online community relations — engaging online enthusiasts, brand Ambassadors, and promoting positive community partnerships
    • Experiential marketing — creating innovative programs that deliver direct-to-consumer, grassroots and hands-on experiences

    There’s one big problem with this that puts their “seasoned communicators who specialize in social media” in question. The problem? “vox.com”.

    Vox is the upcoming social media site from industry leader “Six Apart”. Company founder “Mena Trott” talked about the roots of Vox “on Vox back on June 1st”. Of course, this begs the question — how could a group of social media experts go with a name that is being used by one of the top companies in the space as their “MySpace Killer”? Oops.

    Should High Road do a quick about-face and rename now, or do they run the risk of having to say things like “Vox believes that Vox will have a major impact on the industry. No, not our Vox, Six Apart’s Vox.”

    Ugh.


    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on June 22, 2006.

June 20, 2006

  • iCoke Coins As Currency

    Michael Garrity’s Brand Nirvana post talks about how some brands have so much equity in the market that they become a currency onto themselves.

    This got me to thinking about a recent iCoke e-mail I received:

    As you can see the iCoke promotion (codes on Coke products could be used to enter contests at iCoke) has morphed into co-promotions in which the promotional points can be cashed in for Cineplex tickets or DVDs at Zip.ca.

    When this promotion started I would never have guessed that Coke was looking to set up a tiny Air Miles but that seems to be the case!


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

  • Who’s Using Big-time Analytics and How?

    Recently I received a thought-provoking e-mail from Jeff Ginsberg at “The E-mail Company” asking why we didn’t talk more about analytics here at One Degree.

    Long time reader, big time fan. How come there is not much at One Degree about analytics? Am I not looking in the right place or has it been overlooked? After getting my free “Google Analytics” trial and setting it up in a matter of minutes I have to tell you the reports rival the big boys. It would be nice to hear from readers who have used “Omniture”, “Coremetrics”, or “Web Side Story” to see what they think of Google Analytics.

    I’d also like to hear from people using the top tier products on e-commerce sites. Have they gone to the effort to do advanced tagging for the complex sales calculations the above-mentioned products can give?

    By the way, “Hotwire” and some of the other travel sites use their analytics to send triggered email message to customers based on what they searched for on their site. For example, if you sign up for Hotwire’s deals and search for Los Angeles you will start to get e-mail about deals to LA like this:

    Dear Jeff, Looking for great deals in Los Angeles, California? Hotwire finds great deals on unsold hotel rooms. You save big. Travelers like you found these great deals on Hotwire: …

    Very cool.

    Regards, Jeff Ginsberg, Chief Email Officer

    Cool indeed.

    I’m a big fan of measuring what you do and I just love the data that these big apps throw off. We haven’t done much on this at One Degree because no one has stepped up to cover “the analytics beat” and I don’t feel I know enough to add that much to the conversation. I’m therefore posting Jeff’s request a) to get a bit of discussion going around his specific questions and b) to hopefully flush out a few Canucks looking to write about their experiences with web analytics. Feel free to comment below and if you are interested in contributing posts about analytics, “drop me a line.”


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

June 18, 2006

  • DMA Jury Announced

    Summer means that it is time to start thinking about the “Digital Marketing Awards.” Now in its seventh year, the DMAs have expanded once again. Six new categories bring the total to twenty. Also expanding is is the jury.

    Here’s the official jury as selected by Thane Calder, President, CloudRaker and Jeff Smith, Senior Manager, Interactive Marketing & eBusiness, hbc.com:

    • Mario Alfano, SVP, Marketing and Strategy, CanWest Interactive
    • Fady Atallah, President, BlueSponge
    • Cam Bedford, VP, General Manager, Fjord Interactive Marketing and Technology
    • Kyler Bell, Director, eCommerce and Online Marketing, Loblaw Companies Limited
    • Paul Bichler, BBH * Mike De Luca, Directeur, Publicis Dialog
    • Joanne de Visser, Senior Manager Interactive, Coca-Cola Limited
    • Will Eagle, Manager, Online and Creative Services, Virgin Mobile
    • Larry Futers, National Marketing Manager, Mitsubishi
    • Jean-Philippe Gauthier, GM, Sympatico/MSN
    • Dawna Henderson, President and Managing Partner, Henderson Bas
    • Darrell MacMullin, iMerchant Services, Paypal Inc.
    • Jennifer Maks, eCommerce Marketing Manager, The ALDO Group
    • Joe Mosher, Director, Aliant ISP, Aliant
    • John Rocco, Director, Lifestyle & Kiosk, Indigo Books & Music Inc.
    • Rosie Riolino-Serpa, Director, Usability and Customer Experience, e-Business, Rogers Communications Inc.
    • Dave Smith, Art Director, Juxt Interactive
    • Dave Stubbs, Creative Director, Organic
    • Dominique Trudeau, Creative Director, Design and Interactive, Taxi Montreal
    • Jean-Christophe Yacono, Freelancer

    DMA judging will take place this summer, and the winners will be announced Nov. 2 in Toronto. The deadline for entries is June 23, giving the judges the summer to review entries and have everything ready to announce the winners in early November.


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