Signs of the times for the future for e-books

I have a  Kindle, the digital e-book reader from Amazon who launched the third-generation model last year. Actually, my whole family has Kindles. We also have stacks of printed books. We’re not especially wedded to format, more the content and that content being available to us in formats we like, aren’t too expensive and are convenient to use.

Basically, we’re big on books and other content – which includes magazines and blogs – however they’re offered, not platforms and delivery formats. That said, there’s something quite compelling about a device that weighs less than a pound that can hold 3,500 digital books, and that lets you make comments and annotations on what you’re reading (I love that feature) and share them online if you wish

Read More…

The Internet Generation Gap Is Real and Quite Interesting

I had the chance to do some first hand “research” this weekend as I spent some time with a family member (he’s my half -brother, Dave, if you really need to know) who is, let’s just say, considerably younger than I am. We represent two very different age groups on the Internet spectrum and the experience opened my eyes to a few things that I thought would be good for all of us to think about.

So you have some context, there is about a 20-year difference in our ages. He is just at the start of his career as a true techie while I am still figuring out what I want to do when I grow up as a writer, business owner, business development professional, and all around good guy . With that in mind, we represent two very different points in time regarding the Internet and how we use it. Here are some of my observations.

Read More…

New Version of Google Analytics Now Available For Everyone!

Google has released the Google Analytics V5, the newest Google Analytics to all users (of all languages). Users can find a ‘New Version’ link on the top right of their account page when they sign in. The new version has some notable changes made to it such as the redesigned interface, event goals, multiple customizable dashboards, more powerful custom reports and the search term cloud visualization among others. Accessing both versions of Google Analytics (the old and the V5), and switching between them is possible.
Read More…

Academics Use Social Media More Than Business People

I spoke at a panel session with Hester Tinti-Kane and Jeff Seaman at the Pearson CiTE conference in Denver yesterday, unveiling a survey of higher education on how social media is used. You can download the survey report, the slides we used, and lots of other great information at the Pearson social media survey site (registration required). At the session yesterday, we got lots of great participation from an engaged audience, and it made me think about how I felt when Hester first asked me to help her with this project back in October. It sounded exciting, but I wondered about whether this was up my alley.

Read More…

Google Analytics Version 5 to Bring a Better User Experience

Google recently launched a new version of Google Analytics (version 5) with the aim of making it easier and faster for the users to get to the data they want, while also enhancing the Google Analytics platform to introduce major new areas of functionality.

Google stated that the majority of the new features introduced in version 5 are a result of the feedback received from a group of Analytics users who participated in the testing phase.
Read More…

Google Brings Instant Previews to Mobile Search

Google Instant Preview, a feature that was till now limited to desktop searches, is now available for Android and iOS devices enabled devices also.

Read More…

Big Changes to Facebook Fan Pages: Continued

A team from Facebook including engineers, developers, and marketing directors presented a live Q&A session to go over the new changes to Facebook pages yesterday. During this time, the team walked through the new additions to Facebook pages, which you can view through a “tour” on your Facebook page or by checking out my recent blog post; Big Changes to Facebook Fan Pages.

Here are some interesting tidbits addressed during the Q&A and some other developments my team and I have noticed as we have continued to explore the recent roll out for Facebook pages.

Read More…

JCPenny Caught Gaming Google Ranking

The retailer JCPenney was outted on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 by David Segal of the New York Times with the help of research from Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media directly to Matt Cutts of Google that they had amassed impressive rankings that appeared to have been supported by a number of questionable links.

Read More…