Let’s face it, another year is nearly over and what a year it’s been for business.  Who would have thought this would happen, this time last year …

I don’t know about you but I’ve decided to make the best of this holiday break.  I know it’s tough but small and home business owners deserve to say.  “I’m having a real break this holiday. I’m going to enjoy it and make the most of my time with the people that matter.”

With so much going on in the world that we have no control over.  It makes more sense than ever (beginning now and during the holiday period) to make time for yourself to think ahead.  Use that time to begin to make or revise your plans for the future.

As luck and co-incidence will sometimes have it around Christmas, I just finished reading one of the first copies of “How To Beat Recession — 101 ‘Must Have’ Recession-Busting Hints & Tips” which is an extremely useful and timely new ebook written by an old friend, Michael Green.

I’ve read it from cover to cover, twice now.  There are little gems throughout that will help to make ends meet at work and home.  Even if you only take on board or implement a handful of the 101 recession proofing nuggets this year and throughout 2009, you’ll be laughing.

In my personal experience, Michael is one of the good guys and for years he has consistantly given solid advice and information that really does help people at all levels of business.

There is something in his new ebook that will appeal to help almost everyone.  It doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re in, what background you’re from or where you live.  A recession affects every one.  How To Beat Recession is going to help you and lots of others weather the storm.

Normally Michael sells information of this quality but being the kind of guy he is, for a limited time over Christmas, he has agreed to allow me to offer a copy to my readers, without charge, but only if you download your copy now.

It’s well worth reading and shouldn’t be overlooked.  Accept this gift in the spirt it is given and download your copy from here now:
http://www.mutualadvantage.co.uk/how_to_beat_recession

I hope you also find it as usful as I did.  Somehow after reading it things didn’t look as gloomy.   Maybe because I discovered I had more options than I initially thought

Let me know what you think with a comment here once you’ve read it.

Some of My Thoughts for the Short Term:

Everyone can see the world economy is going through massive changes and being realistic, this means there will be an affect on our businesses for 18 months or longer.  What every business needs to do more than anything right now, is a have good review of it’s own business growth plan.

The oportunities for any business owner who embraces working with the web are out there.  But only for those who take action and make it happen.  Did you notice I called it a business growth plan, not a survival plan.

I like to look at it like this.  Lots of bigger companies who for so long out priced smaller businesses based on ‘credit line’ buying power are now paying the price.  As one door closes others open up somewhere else.

The plain fact is that smaller businesses can adapt quicker to take advantage and fill the gaps and cracks that are starting to show.

Shopping Patterns and Trends Changed.

This year we did over 90% of our Christmas shopping online.  The food, the wine and most of the presents. All bought and paid for.  All logged in to Santa’s new global web digital delivery system.  And we still somehow managed to catch nasty colds

Overall the experience has not been as good as it could have been because we haven’t been able to shop as locally online as we wanted to.  Having said that, it hasn’t been hard to get what we wanted and we made some great savings.

The point I want to get accross, is that I’m not alone in these tough times.  The web is helping everyone to become a shrewder buyer and demand better value for every pound or dollar we spend.

In January I’ll be showing you how you can take advantge of new online shopping trends by taking action to fix the simple things that make a big difference.

Until then have a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it.  Seasons greetings if you don’t but either way, may your New Year be happy and financially fruitful and

… don’t forget to download your copy of How To Beat Recession

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According to the BBC financial bail out figures,  in the US and UK the cost of the bail out is $1,575 Billion ($700 Bn in the US and £500 Bn in the UK)  These figures do not include other countries.

Said quickly, we know it’s a lot but it doesn’t really comprehend.

However … if we divide the cost of the banking industry and money market bailouts by the world population (1575Bn / 6.8Bn) that means everyone on the planet could have been given $231Million.

Now that can’t be right.

So lets divide the world population by the cost of the bailout (6.8Bn/1575Bn)

Hey that’s much better - everyone on the planet has could have been paid $0.004Bn  (whoa - is that $4Million each)

Considering my bank has screwed me for unfair charges, fees and who knows what else for years (and got away with it so far) it makes me sick that now as a tax payer I (and probably my kids) are expected to be paying for the banks negligence.

Personally I’d rather I was given my $0.004Bn - At least I know I can be trusted to spend it wisely and contribute to the economic growth of the planet.

What about you?

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Well established Italian software company Expert System yesterday announced the launch of a new contextual advertising solution with semantic intelligence called Cogito.

In his post ‘Semantics in Advertising‘ for ZDNet, Paul Miller of Talis says “On the surface, a release phrased in that way might easily be dismissed as jumping on the ’semantic’ band-wagon, but there appears to be substance behind the sometimes over-hyped language.” and that will interest many.

In Expert System’s release we read:

The main issue limiting the online advertising market today is the disconnect between advertisement placement and the relevance of the copy. This is due to the reliance on keyword frequency without considering the meaning. Oftentimes, ads may appear on pages that have little significance to the assigned page or may produce counterproductive effects. For example, an ad for a Caribbean vacation package may inadvertently appear near an article about a massive hurricane that ripped through that region.

I can’t remember where I saw it but the best example I’ve seen to date on negative or counter productive advertising was a news item about a cruise liner (or was it a ferry?) sinking and right next to the article was an advert for Caribbean cruises.  What the ??.

That’s like saying “Hey why not come on our cruise.  If you don’t sink you’ll have a great time”.  - Not quite what the advertiser wanted I’m sure but ongoing semantic research is starting to bring about change.

Semantic technology does have the capability to make a huge impact in targeted advertising for all of us.  While it’s not all of the way there yet, I can see that in the near future I’ll be able to say “I want my ads to appear only to website visitors who are Male, aged between 40 - 55, who live within 5 miles of X and are interested in Y”

I hope to be able to add in more parameters and cover more than one ad network but for the time being I’ll have to live in the ‘here and now’ and keep an eye on the other emerging semantic research companies who are helping to shape the future of ecommerce on the web.

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The good news seems to be that in general, business won’t need to change core processes because the technology uses it rather than the other way round.  Put simply, the semantic web is the process of making everything readable by computers so they can find meaning.  Once that’s all done then it gets really interesting.

Once the web has readable data, all data can be used to make connections between people, documents, products, places, times, events.  Anything and everything.  Everything is linked in some way to something else.

Once you start to think about ‘everything’ and absorb the enormity, it actually becomes quite easy to let your mind wander off and drift through the possibilities.  At some point, you then begin to see how this raw, collaborative sharing power will open up real doors of opportunity for existing and new businesses.

Once data can be read and is understood by the new web, the way you control your research, advertising, marketing, search and business in general will never be the same.  Used in the right way and in the correct context we can genuinely expect more effectiveness, better efficiency and see benefits all round.

The more I think about it, the benefits & possibilities seem endless for any business that embraces the concept of the semantic web now and then gives genuine consideration for early adoption of best and common practice.  You may already be on the right path and not even have realised.

What’s the real world application and time frame?

Nova Knows.

Nova Spivack is the CEO of Radar Networks one of the trail blazers in the semantic web who have recently moved Twine, a semantic service to collaborate, manage, organize and share information, into beta.

The video below “Making Sense Of The Semantic Web” was filmed at The NextWeb Conference April 3- 4, 2008 in Amsterdam.  In his presentation Nova explains in plain simple terms pretty much all you or I need to know about what the semantic web really is and isn’t … yet.

It’s all of the facts with none of the fluff and I hope will help decision makers make an informed choice on when to direct or make budgets available to reap the benefits of the semantic web.  Personally I don’t see it as an if option.

I hope everyone who watches this video will learn something and find some inspiration.  I know I did and so have many others.  That’s because it’s a very informed and valuable insight in to where the web is heading and how it’s going to get there.

As I watched I made lots of notes but one thing that really caught my attention was Nova’s take on the time line of digital evolution.

Seeing how everything I take for granted fits neatly in to ‘the’ web master plan, was a strangely humbling moment for me now I look back on it.  The plan stretches back 30 years or more but I also see laid bare before me, the technological development plan of the web for the next 10 - 15 years, real enlightenment.  At least for me.

After watching this video I got the feeling that I’d finally discovered something priceless.  When the real Web 3.0 would be here and how long I’d got to take action.

It wasn’t as long as I thought.  I’m changing the way now.

Nova Spivack at The Next Web Conference 2008

from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

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A very useful article Don’t get the Semantic Web? You will after this concludes “All the semantic web is trying to do, is make sure everything is structured in a consistent manner, with a consistent dictionary behind the content, so that a machine can draw connections.”

In a nutshell - every thing is connected to something and it’s better to make sure your data is machine readable.  That way it can be used, shared, linked or found easily.  The chances are you are already using semantic technology and didn’t even know it.

Semantic Search Engines

Semantic search is IMO the way forward.  From what I’ve seen so far from semantic search engine beta’s like Hakia (and a few others), the search results are a lot more focused as they are based on concept match rather than keyword match or popularity ranking.  Its not a huge leap from there to see the potential of semantically delivered advertising.

It’s also interesting reading Marissa Mayer’s interview talking about Google at 10 and 20. Marissa is the vice president of search product and user experience at Google and she says “I think there will be a continued focus on innovation, particularly in search. Search is an unsolved problem. We have a good 90 to 95% of the solution, but there is a lot to go in the remaining 10%.”  Maybe she was referring to semantic search technologies being incorporated.  I hope so.

One of the common links to unlocking all of this potential in a business is RDF which stands for Resource Description Framework - In plain English that’s a way to describe anything and any relationship.

And that leads us into the video and why knowing that ‘dave likes cookies’ is the way to describe anything.  Even if you are not a coder it’s worth watching so that you get a better understanding and can make more informed choices when business planning or allocating IT budgets.

Notes:
subjects predicates objects
www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer
www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-sytax

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Tim is a true modern visionary and in this video his genius, compassion and desire to make things better shines like a glowing beacon on hope for all.

How can this video help marketers?

I think all marketers and SEO’s need to remember that the semantic web has a much higher goal than just selling goods and products. We need to remember that in many respects marketers have hijacked new technologies for their own ends since the web took form and gained popularity. Software has been developed to artificially improve search positions and while it’s not a bad thing it’s effects have helped to speed up change to deal with the growing flood of useless content that chokes the net.

The semantic web can and is helping business online. I’m also sure that even now there are software developers who are coding the next ‘must have’ tool on behalf of marketers to help beat the system. And therein lies part of the problem as I see it.

Why would you want to beat a system that is being developed to provide and deliver more accurate information to the people who are looking for it?

Search as we have known it is changing and the semantic web infrastructure has the power to render current search practices almost obsolete. So lets look at what the original aim of the semantic web was from the eyes of the man who knows. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Improve it and roll with it.

.

What do you think?

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It prompted me to comment and reminded me to start sharing some of the useful information I’ve picked up on where the net is heading and why carrying on some current SEO practices could be devastating the ability of some websites to be found in the near future.

For the past two years I’ve been involved in private SEO and SEM research which has been looking at where the web is heading and why.  Much of what I learned very early on made me understand that virtually all of what was being said and the tools being sold or promoted by marketers, to improve my search rankings, would have a shelf life of around 18 months - if I was lucky. Why? Because things change and there’s a problem.

The following video explains more way better than I can but put simply, one of the root problems is thatthe network infrastructure that the internet uses, needed a more efficient way to cope with growing demand and deliver the content we want, when we want it.

Enter Semantic Web Development

Now we know that things have to change, watching this explains really well what the semantic web is and gives you a glimpse or two into how your websites will be affected. I get the feeling that if you plan to make the right changes it wont be anything bad.  Better still if you start to take on board the importance of what the sematic web could do for business in general.  Everyone wins.  It just means learning the rules and sticking to them. Who knows … 

I’ll be posting more videos and some of my findings about the semantic web and RDF technology soon.

We can be sure that this technology will be instrumental in delivering the next generation of search results. It could be that search engines loose some dominance. I don’t think anyone has all of the answers about how it will affect business websites being found i.e semantic sem but I’d like to start some discussions about the implications.

Hope you enjoyed the video. If you did please share this post and make a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Imagine 100’s of people being able to upload a video through this page and then being able to edit the ‘finished’ video to produce a derivative video.

Well imagine no more. It’s now a reality.

I’m not 100% sure how it all works (or even if it will work on this page) but I’m giving it a try. Why?

Because the uses and potential are … huge.  Here’s the first video I’ve uploaded.  You should be able to edit it and add to it - if I’ve got it right.

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Watching video online has become as normal as watching TV and for some , watching video online is even more popular than TV. Let’s face it, your choice is vast. This shift in perceptions is one of the reasons a few software developers started to come up with free and low cost screen capture alternatives.

Camstudio is probably one of the better known free offerings in this software sector but as you would expect it has a few weaknesses compared to paid for products. Well Dave Guindon has now improved some of them making it a good place for marketers to start producing training or marketing videos of their own.

From the marketers perspective two of the main flaws of CamStudio were
1. The flash videos output by CamStudio didn’t work in Firefox or Netscape (just a minor problem … eeek ). and
2. There was no “Redirect to URL” option once the flash video has completed.

Thankfully Dave’s Cam Studio Pro solves these issues making it worth investigating. Another real bonus from Dave are his video tutorials. He doesn’t just show you how to use CamStudio Pro, he shows you how to get the best out of it and how to leverage Cam Studio Pro (or other videos) for maximum profits.

If I have one complaint it’s minor. To me it looks like he’s used Camtasia to produce his training videos. Still, that shouldn’t stop you checking it out now as he also has a few interesting bonuses as part of his package.

http://www.mutualadvantage.co.uk/camstudiopro

BTW. Another alternative is to use the free version of camstudio to capture your screen and then use other software to edit and produce the finished result. The downside to this is it can be time consuming and your workflow will suffer as a result.

For your first attempt at screen capture try Cam Studio Pro.

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I’m pretty angry right now and I can’t name names because of legal issues (mores the pity) but the bottom line is that there are some ‘marketers’ out there who are acting illegally and you and me are the ones that will end up paying.

Here’s why.

These ‘marketers’ provide you, me (and whoever else) with packages to use or resell as our own. These packages contain images that are in fact licensed by another company and these ‘marketers’ don’t actually have the right to even use them. Let alone sell them or give them away. And don’t get me started on what will happen if you actually sell a licensed image. Even by mistake.

How does it cost you money?

Apparently the laws concerning intellectual property, copyright and licensing makes NO allowance. The person who displays or uses a licensed image has to pay a fee. Even if they have paid for usage or resale ‘rights’ to anyone other than the actual license holder. Let me tell you that these fees are thousands of dollars PER image.

In my case (and many of you reading), I would NEVER knowingly use an image that belonged to someone else or I didn’t believe I have the rights to use. I thought that when you paid for something you had the rights. Well … that is wrong.

What’s worse?

I started going through some of the template, PLR and other ‘rights’ packages I’ve bought since 2002. Not many, just 14. And then I stopped because out of those 14 that I checked, 9 of them contained images or PARTS of images that I have now seen available for licensing.

I’ve seen them as individual graphics, header graphics and even in book covers. What this means is that I can’t use this artwork because if I do, I’m at risk of being asked to pay substantial sums of money and so are you.

How did it happen?

Assuming that these ‘marketers’ didn’t deliberatly or knowingly break the law, I can only imagine this problem started with people who put together ‘clipart’ packs back in 2003 and maybe even before that.

• The original sinners scraped together images from here and there, bundled the images together and offered these ‘packs’ for sale with dubious claims and copy about what they could be used for.
• Other people then bought them and created derivative products.
• Later still, other people bought the derivative products, which now had additional claimed ‘rights’ and they used them. Either selling them as is or creating even more derivative products.
• Then … other people started giving away the derivatives of the derivative containing the original images which brings us to today.

What’s The Bottom Line.

Unless you have a REAL license [from the ORIGINAL rights holder] and if you use or display any PART of of a licensed image. YOU may end up having to pay thousands of dollars.

What’s the answer?

Short of deleting every product that ‘may’ be affected, just in case (and that’s lots). I’m not 100% sure. All I know for sure is that I won’t be buying any more rights packages until the marketers prove to my satisfaction that everything is 100% legal.

What’s more, I want to start seeing the better marketers do more than give me a money back guarantee. I want to see marketers guarantee that they will pay my fees and costs if they screw up. In an ideal world a change in the law is needed to protect the end user in cases like this but I can’t see that happening.

I can’t see this problem going away either and with technological advances in scanning images and text, it is getting easier for the big companies who actually hold the rights to find the ‘end user’ (you and me) and take action against them.

Their attitude is simple:

‘All though we want to get to the root of the problem you used the image. Therefore you must pay us. It’s up to you to take action against the person you got it from and for them to take action against the people they got it from.

We don’t care (and neither it appears does the law) that you paid someone something. The fact is you don’t have a license to use it from us. Please pay us now’

If you have an answer or more information?

please make a comment.

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