Alltop and Retweets

This week on net@night, Leo and Amber spoke with Guy Kawasaki about a barrage of issues dealing with tech. One issue to start off was the announcement from twitter to incorporate a “retweet” feature. This would allow for twitter`ers to simply click a button to retweet something from another person. This would eliminate the various formats that had been developed by the users of twitter. The retweet function was not something that was not designed by the twitter creators. Rather, the online community developed the lingo and the concept of retweets and twitter is following through by adding it into their program. Guy Kawasaki is an amazing techie that is the creator of Alltop.com, a website that compiles all the great tech news throughout the internet. Kawasaki has a great business model using twitter to post interesting tweets that direct them to his website, Holy Kaw! Kawasaki has ads to other related items and links to the topics that he is discussing. This generates revenue by selling personalized ad-spaces as well as links to websites which I’m sure he is drawing some revenue off of. This concept is very interesting and appears to be working, thou he does admit that he is not making Leo Laporte money.

Homepage Advertising

What happens when you see companies doing something that is not expected by the users? A user who always uses google as his homepage was very suprised to see google putting a advertise of a Verizon Driod phone in their homepage. Google typically are innocuous about advertising their product. However, putting out an advertise in the homepage seems very sleazy from the company like google.

We know all companies have advertisements in thier home pages. It is normal but this is one of the rare moments that google has been found to be doing. It is probably a new marketing strategy from google. As time passes by, google might continue to this and it may not strike as sleazy anymore.

emails and privacy

The conversation was about how secure are the emails as a means of communication. A federal judge said that emails do not get the fourth amendment protection of privacy rights. Most people perceive emails as a secure means of communication as mails or telephones. In reality, the ISP people could look at the emails if they want to while they are flowing in the channel. ISP also has to let the law enforcement people look at the emails if they have a valid warrant without letting the email senders know about it. The reason the emails have no privacy protection is they say because they are not at the people’s house or domicile. They are online or at the ISP’s servers.
The idea behind this topic is that people should not use emails as their private and secure means of communication or there should be a change in the law. There are few people who use IMs, facebook, or twitter as their means of communication but there are lots of people who genuinely think that emails are one of the most personal and secure tool for communication. As such, we could see people not using emails too much for their private talks and a possible law change about this issue.

Woopra! (10.20.09 - 10.27.09)

On this week’s episode of net@night, Leo and Amber dive into a new analytics website called Woopra. Woopra is a very interesting program in that it allows users to view their blog or websites statistical data in real time. Most analytical software acts as a historical guide for the website, but Woopra allows for users to see how many people are on the site, the country they are in, the type of web browser, even the OS system that each is using. This can be a huge tool for those in marketing in that it shows what every person is looking, how they are finding, and where they are going on your website. It also makes a history of how many times a user have been on, where they go each time and other data like that. This software allows for marketing and advertisers to cater to the needs of those on their blogs. Users can also send personalized messages to frequent users, given people a sense that there is someone listing responding to them. While the service is free for personal users and those who get less than 30,000 page views per month, there is a paid service that is offered for businesses or those in the 30,000+ view range of $5 per month. This can easily fit into the must frugal adverting budget and will be something that is unique to your site and make your customers feel at home. Though it does have a silly name, this little bit a Java Script has enormous potential.

Get it delivered or go to the store?

Twitter has warned the users not to change the user name and password currently. It has been the week of outages and they have asked the users not to change their information until they would solve the problem. If we would try to change, we would be locked out of the account.
Changing password is a good way of securing your account but just would not be able to do it now. If somebody gets the password or if you get hacked, you would not be able to change the password. If they try to change the password, you would be locked out of the account too.
The other interesting news is Amazon launching “same day delivery”. If Amazon has a wide variety of products on its warehouse, people might not go to the local malls, and stores to shop. They would be providing this service initially to seven cities that include New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Boston, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, and Baltimore. The service would be extended to Chicago, Indianapolis, and Phoenix soon.
The cut-off times are different for different cities and ranges from 11 am to 1 pm. This service has been possible because of the Amazon local warehouses in the cities. This service is not available to the buyers from any third parties who sell through Amazon. The delivery is said to be done by 8 pm.
The Amazon prime member has to pay six dollars for this service which the normal users have to pay fifteen dollars. Prime members are the ones that pay $72 per year and get free 2 day shipping from Amazon.com

Oct. 10 Blog

The Buzz Out loud Podcast today talked mostly about a shocking problem T-Mobile is having with your Sidekick. Believe it or not your personal information in your Sidekick could be lost forever. It is rumored that Microsoft was updating their storage network and did not make backups of the information before making changes. This is a problem because everytime you turn off your Sidekick the information is sent to T-Mobile and stored with them. The information you put on your Sidekick like calendar dates, contacts, etc... is not stored on your actual Sidekick. So, if you turn off, reset, or remove the battery to your Sidekick all of your information will be lost forever. The Sidekick is not a smart phone so important company business won't be lost, but a lot of younger people use the Sidekick. If you have a Sidekick your options are to never turn off your phone, never remove the battery, never reset it or to get a third party to backup your data. Third party backups cost approximately $30.

GDGT.com -- Gadgets, Gadgets, and more Gadgets (9.30.09 - 10.07.09)

This week the net@night gang was talking with Peter Rojas, co-creator of the new website GDGT. GDGT is a website that’s all about gadgets. New gadgets like the Zune HD, iPhones, and the iPod touch, to ancient products like the Nintendo® NES. Gadgets that you have, gadgets that you had, and gadgets that you want. The creators of GDGT wanted to design a site where techies can go to talk about the technological gadgets and do-dads, give reviews, explain features that other may be missing, and recommend products to other techies. It acts as a gathering place and a data warehouse of information about the latest technological breakthrough. The site, itself is very interesting because users can create a profile where they explain the tech items they have and compare it to items that other have. The site has very little moderation (mainly just to keep everything neat and organize) which allows user to fully control the conversations. Co-creator, Peter Rojas, mentioned how he had a problem with his G-1 and posted a question about the battery cover. He said that after only twenty minutes of posting, he had numerous responses to his inquiry confirming that other had the same problem. Another interesting side-note is that not only are users involved in the website, but many companies are as well. Companies like Sony frequent the site to ensure accuracy. While it wasn’t mentioned, you can be fairly certain that the companies may also offer tips and hints of their own. The final interesting tid-bit (perhaps the most unique) is their on site advertising. Rather than being just an ordinary ad, the site allows for users to discuss the product in the ad, rate the product, and actually buy the product. This would be a dream come true for any technological designers because it not only allows for potential buyers to see their products, but it gets people talking about their products, a big advantage for any company.