Nope. In July this year he publicly announced the end of search and the death of Microsoft. The video is superbly exciting, well-informed and offers an all too rare perspective on the role of emerging technology.

A self-confessed Apple lover, Flash hater (Ed:ace!) and believer that HTML5 is the greatest thing since Google started to own the web 10 years ago. He’s evangelical about the iPad and iPhone as devices because of their massive adoption rate and where Microsoft once had 96% control of internet connected devices, it now has just 50% because the growth of mobile is replacing the old PC era. That’s a scary number for Microsoft, losing nearly half of your influence in just 3 years.

Google, meanwhile, has captured 80% of the index search business from which it then went onto top controlling the web advertising market. But at a price as ”Google’s success eventually filled the web with crap, so consumers began using other products to search: Wikipedia for facts, Facebook for matters of taste, time or money, Twitter for news, Yelp for restaurants, Realtor.com for places to live, LinkedIn for jobs. Over the past three years, these alternatives have gone from 10% of search volume to about half,” said McNamee.

As the “crap” built up other companies stepped into the space to provide a better, more focussed, search experience which also had the advantage of external branding. Until the birth of Facebook, Wikipedia et al your search results were, in essence, Google branded so big brands struggled to appear over the flotsam and jetsam of spammers and the product of bent SEO companies.

As Roger goes on to say ”As if all this competition wasn’t bad enough for Google, then along came Apple with the iPhone and App Store… Apple has branded, trustworthy apps for everything. If they want news, Apple customers use apps from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. If they want to know which camera to buy, they ask friends on Facebook. If they want to go to dinner, they use the Yelp app. These searches have economic value and it’s not going to Google, even on Android…When Apple and the app model win, Google’s search business loses.”

But it does’t stop there. Roger goes onto say that HTML5 offers a better experience than Apple’s App model and it far cheaper to develop and deploy so could spell the end of the App Store.

The video is 10 minutes long, the presentation slides are so-so,  I suggest you listen to it when you are doing your expenses, or making a brew.

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

Thanks to:  ”Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow,” created byNeoLabels, with a script by Inés Leopoldo of Mitsue Venture.

The irony here as that the older clinic-model is actually a really good fit in the online marketing world as site visitors are seeking information, re-assurance, answers and solutions to health-related issues. The early adopters in this space are, naturally enough, the elective treatment providers such as laser eye surgery and cosmetic surgery but it doesn’t stop there. Freedom Back Clinics have recently opened a small national chain of clinics aimed at providing convenient chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists and their web-presence is chock-full of Calls-to-Action and a pretty sophisticated online booking service. The aim, we are told, is to simplify the steps a patient needs to take to attend either a free consultation or directly book a treatment.

They are one of the early adopters in their space and in a year have grown from a single clinic in Leeds to add Canary Wharf and Manchester with more planned during 2011. This commercialism should not be feared by the clinical model, nor should they take a snob-view of national chains. They should adapt and beat the new boys at their game using the power of their trusted brands to reach out to all those millions of web-centric folk who have healthcare issues that can be addressed.

With the planned cuts in NHS services more and more individuals will be turning to private clinics and treatment even for conventional treatments and operations and this presents a huge opportunity for growth in this sector at the same time as the NHS-funding for referrer-type business is falling away. There will be some big winners and losers over the next 2 years.

Taken from myBookingWizard.com

Forms

For the last 8 years, forms in their many shapes and sizes have been the thorn in my paw. Lack of native error handling has meant getting a form to check it has the right data before carrying visitors to the next stage required Javascript or back-end solutions, which is highly inefficient requiring more hours from a project budget to implement. HTML5 now allows us front-end folks to build this functionality right in at the same time as applying the design. So when a form is built, it’s going to validate first time right from the outset. Brilliant!

Better for accessibility

HTML5 features some new semantic coding practices which help us to maintain clean and fast HTML code but also builds in functionality which can help people using assistive technologies to view websites. When coding up a content section of a site, it would usually be marked with an id which helps identify it. The problem here is the id can be anything and with thousands of people coding HTML across the globe, there’s a whole range of varying possibilities. With HTML5, there’s now a way to appropriately name a content section using WAI-ARIA, effectively a set of rules which define certain areas on a site (header, nav, content etc) allowing for more consistent coding practices.

Set up for mobile

Mobile browsing is continuously gathering pace and smartphones are leading the way. Phones with no built in keyboards have the ability to taylor the keyboard depending on what it is being used for. HTML5 embraces this ability and allows us to define our forms for the visitors. An email form input will show the email keyboard with quick access to common symbols like ‘@’, telephone form inputs show the telephone keypad etc. This simple yet powerful functionality makes forms on smartphones much easier to fill out, which could well be the difference between a visitor filling a CTA out while on the move and leaving your site, never to return.

These are three very brief examples of how HTML5 can help improve websites and there’s a lot more to be had. The web is moving towards exciting times……

This is what it’s web-site says about the approach.

“Our members play the most important role developing and shaping giffgaff into what it is and where it’s going. Not only do our members do a great job of running the forums, inspiring the community, and generally spreading the good word of giffgaff far and wide, they’ve also given us our best ideas, from how they want their mobile network run, to what they want in the future.

Have you got an idea? Share it with our community here”

It’s a fascinating experiment and if you dig a little deeper you will find it’s 100% funded by O2 and although they have been accused of being a little less than entirely open and transparent, the basic premise is right. Why do you need a marketing department chocked full of expensive people making sweeping decisions about products, services and price-points when you can gather together a real community of real people and let them tell you what they want (you will note that I didn’t say “ask them what they want”) and how much they are prepared to pay for it. Better still, the community should come up with good ideas, for free(ish).

Run very much along the lines of local government in the US, Giffgaff have a manifesto which they adhere to and is unique. By sharing the profit via a pretty good rewards programme they encourage the word to be spread and also get regular people in the street to help with technical, community and service problems.

I predict we’ll see a lot of this style of organisations starting up in the next few years. Critically, this gives lots of space to move in; different versions of the GiffGaff model would work in the same mobile phone space as each community has differing needs so naturally evolves to meet he needs of the majority.

Better still would be the introduction of portability inbetween these (non)competitors. The mobile phone needs of people as they change over time; students needs are different to mature adults, families and grand-parents so either the model follows it’s community as they change as stays put and hands off smoothly consumers as their need change.

The answer, it seems, was to selectively test different covers so regular subscribers got the in-depth Haiti image on the front whilst the regular versions on the newstands got the Weedmart version.

Online readership jumped 60%, probably drawn by the easy-to-read cannabis article. The testing story soon got picked up and that in it’s own right has no doubt generated traffic and sales for the magazine. Which just goes to show that sometimes HOW you do something can generate it’s own buzz.

So have a crack and create your own list starting with the obvious stuff that people keep asking.

Now, it’s not clear whether Overstock.com actually encouraged the links, it might have been the actions of an SEO agency and without getting into the debate of the general standard of morals used by SEO companies it highlights a genuine concern for companies who use (and therefore trust) SEO companies to build up their online credibility. Usefully, there is a neat service from Brightedge that allows companies to actually see what their SEO partners are doing. Called BrandSafe it’s free and to learn more pop over and read the TechCrunch article.

Related articles

• Google Busts Overstock.com For Search Spam (GOOG, OSTK) (businessinsider.com)
• Overstock.com Gets a Google Slap (blippitt.com)
• Google News: Algorithms, JCPenney and Overstock.com (webconsuls.com)
• Google’s Action Against Link Schemes Continues: Overstock.com and Forbes.com Latest Casualities; Conductor Exits Business (searchengineland.com)
• Oneupweb : SEO Misconduct (straightupsearch.com)
• J.C. Penny gets busted juicing its Google results (tech.fortune.cnn.com)

The easiest way for corporate bodies to deal with the issues is fourfold:

# Be transparent. Be very clear about the information you gather and not just the explicit stuff that comes from people actually leaving personal information but by revealing that you will record all their activity forever including phone calls and direct mail.

# Be honest about why you need the information. If you use the information for behavioural or segmentation targeting then say so and avoid hiding behind bland statements such as “to improve your user experience”. The correct use of personal, learned and segmentation information can and does improve the visitors experience but you need to go a step further and explain why in plain English and even with a few examples.

# Allow easy access to your data controllers. Don’t insist that web-site visitors send a letter to a mysterious PO box, give them an easy to communicate with the people who control, clean and manage the corporate data. This will reduce the occurrence of bad data which is a good thing from everyone’s point of view and usefully opens out the management of the data to the crowd, simplifying the process of keeping information up to date.

# Respect the value. Many corporates hold personal information on millions of people and therefore often view the data as a sea of information to be mined at will. To the individuals it’s highly personal so you really need to tell your users what you are doing with the data and apply a modicum of security when storing and moving data around. The web has lots of good solutions to security, from simple mechanisms like Secure Socket Layers (SSL or https) to encrypting databases.

In many ways its a great way to use the power of your brand to reassure your visitors and works well if the user/customer/client is placed at the heart of your brand. If you don’t have an established brand then you can piggyback using established security brands such as Verisign.

Different markets have different sets of challenges; I doubt very much a user is that bothered about the security used to store her postcode or street address. It’s a different kettle of fish with email addresses, credit card numbers, healthcare data and financial information. This means entire industries (such as financial services and healthcare) have to be ultra-careful.

There are some serious risks if you get left behind. There is a growing trend in users adding security layers and data acquisition blocking systems to their browsing sessions and this is likely to spill over into core browser functionality. If you don’t get your house in order you could find yourself playing catch-up.

Related articles

• How We Keep Your Data Secure (timesheets.com)
• Privacy watchdog urges stronger data protection in EU law review (go.theregister.com)
• Facebook Gives Away Your Data (marketingconversation.com)
• Security shocker: Android apps send private data in clear (go.theregister.com)
• Facebook To Share Users’ Home Addresses, Phone Numbers With External Sites (huffingtonpost.com)

As a location owner (read: do you have a nice house, shed, outside space, anything really) you can add your venue to be promoted and I’m guessing you’ll pay a percentage of any booking that come your way. It’s a great idea if you are looking for a special place for an event such as product launch, private entertainment, party or just about any other gathering. No doubt it will take a while before something like this gains traction in the UK. Worth keeping an eye on, I would say.