2008 June | Digital Pivot

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Social Media: The Cure for the Google Blues?

While social media (i.e facebook, xanga, flickr) has become the hot topic in the world of marketing, it is easy to get lost amongst all the information out there and to be blinded by the promises of instant success. While the power of social media marketing is undeniable, it is not an end-all solution for marketing your product online. To be successful, it is imperative that a complete online marketing plan be inclusive of the many online avenues available to marketers (i.e. social media, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and more). Here are a few things to remember before…

So Everyone Gets a Say Now….

the question is, is that a good thing. Sure diversity of thought can make more creation happen, but when it comes to the world of online that does not always translate out. A lot of great sites end up with what are basically useless comments. Of course useless comments come in a lot of different varieties.

Pure Spam: Its all links, or junk code. This is the most recognizable form of useless comments, and the most senseless.

Name Calling Flame Wars: Wars that consist of comments like “Windows Sucks you r-tard” or “&^(&%^ U!!!!” are not contributing to a productive debate. They…

Future Not in Our Technology, But In Ourselves

Even as digital new media continues to encroach on mainstream media – suffocating publishing revenues and weakening broadcast and cable TV ratings – last week’s highly unprecedented media spectacle offered a powerful lesson about the strength of tradition. Never before has a deceased journalist been as publicly memorialized as was NBC News’ Tim Russert the past 10 days. From momentous Meet the Press interrogations to using a dry white eraser board for a brilliantly simple explanation of Election night 2000 Electoral math, Russert left digital competitors a sobering gauntlet as described by journalist Al Hunt.

“At a time when our news business,…

Brave New Reading (And Shopping) World

One way to glimpse a hint of our digital, new media future is to look at what’s disappearing. Membership in the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent book stores, has dropped to 1,524 from more than 5,000 in 1990.

Serving the reader teeming University of Pittsburgh campus area, recently closed Jay’s Book Stall more than held its own against gigantic competitors. Even so, retiring owner Jay Gantry told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“I’m so glad that we’re leaving now. It’s all become a bunch of gadgets these days.”

Gantry was not comfortable with the technological changes in how people read, including Amazon’s…

Free WiFi Means More Viewing?

Remember the days before wireless internet (good old Wifi - how did we ever live without you?), most of us still do, but how wide spread is free public wireless and how much has it changed people expectations of the online world.

Let’s start by defining what free WiFi really is… It is my position that WiFi at your Starbucks or the Mac Store is not really free. If you sit there without a coffee in your hand, people will notice, and eventually you will be asked to leave the place.

Free WiFi does not require you to buy something, or to…

The Mystique of Muxtape

I’ve got a ton of questions about muxtape. The first, and most perplexing, is - how the heck has the RIAA not squashed the life out of this lovely, little application yet? I couldn’t tell you.

Muxtape basically came out of thin air early this year and it’s been growing every since. Created by Justin Ouellette, your run of the mill nerd-looking type, muxtape has quickly become the front runner in the online mixtape world. There are a good number of choices out there - imeem, seeqpod, mixwit, to name a few- but muxtape has seemed to catch on the most.

There has…

The Way I See It: Shout…Shout…Shout!

An interesting paradigm shift happened recently in the entertainment world. Unless you share musical tastes similar to myself and sported a mullet and Metallica shirt through the seminal metal years of 1983-1991, the release of anything new by Motley Crue most likely didn’t register anywhere on your radar.

You probably wondered to your self, “Self? They’re still alive?” Yes they are. Bow down.

During the first week of release, the eponymous single from their new album, Saints of Los Angeles, shifted 47,000 downloads. In this era of marginal music sales still eclipsed by rampant piracy, this might not be superficially significant. To me it is. It’s not the…

Getting Voters From Blog

Organize Your Windows Programs

If you’re like me, you have multiple programs installed on your computer. Over time, when you click the “Start” button and go to “All Programs” you will see a mangled mess of programs. A good majority of these will not be contained in folders. For some reason, even if you are installing different programs from the same company, they won’t always put those shortcuts in a combined folder. This can make your applications folder a nightmare.

The simple way to fix this is right click on your “Start” button within Windows and choose “Open All Users” and then double-click the “Programs”…

You Suck at Photoshop: What we can REALLY learn from it

It’s possible to learn some handy graphic design tips from the Webby Award winning online video series You Suck at Photoshop. But You Suck, from creators Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch, teaches entertainment and advertising creatives a lot more about how to tell a story in the online medium.