Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Our event on Microsoft Silverlight
We are doing a live event with Microsoft’s Michael Scherotter tonight. Check the invite here for more infomration.
During the course of marketing the event, we received several of the “Flash vs. Silverlight” type emails/responses, and so we wanted to mention a couple of things. First of all Viewstream is a long standing Flash Developer — we go back to the Macromedia Director days, the first version of QuickTime, and Flash 1.0.
We make decisions about what development tool to use based on our client’s requirements and our client’s clear-target customer. Beyond that, we are completely neutral.
Our resident .NET guru emailed me with some notes for tonight, and I wanted to share them with everyone:
Silverlight is a contained development environment. It integrates into the Data access layer natively, as it is part of the .NET development. This is a very powerful feature to work with when development web 2.0 or database driven sites.
Because Silverlight is integrated in the .NET environment, there is no extra investment of time or specialized debugging methods when developing a Silverlight app in the case of a development house focused on the .NET framework. It uses Visual Studio professional and express editions. Because the Express editions are free, and provide 75% of the tools used in the Professional editions, this mean that Silverlight development, with a fantastic API can be totally free.
A myth about ASP.net over PHP is that it’s “expensive”. The only expensive portion about it is when a company hosts their own web servers, or when the host their own SQL Server licenses. However, in a shared hosting environment, it’s the exact same cost as a Linux environment, as ASP.net is always a standard feature along side PHP in said shared hosting. What this means is, you can have a “RIA” web application for a fraction of the price. Once again, take a free edition of Visual Studio, with Silverlight tools and then look at the price of shared hosting. Now take the same price of shared hosting, look at the price of either Flash or Flex development tools. Look at the process it would take having two separate development environments interact (such as PHP), and I think it starts making sense.
Anyone who is comfortable in C#, or even Java, can quickly learn to develop highly advanced Silverlight applications quickly.
Beyond Semantic Web
This month a new software launches that has trillions of data points and millions of lines of algorithms — it is a new search engine and provides specific answers in a way that any search engine hertofore has NOT been able to do. Going beyond tagging and the semantic web, this is an attempt to provide one of the Holy Grail ideas of the 20th Century: Intelligent Computers that can actually answer questions.
These are some big promises, and the nature of the promise makes it worthy of evaluation. Check it out here: http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/
The engine, which will be free to use, works by drawing on the knowledge on the internet, as well as private databases. The engine, which will be free to use, works by drawing on the knowledge on the internet, as well as private databases.
I like the mixture of the private database combined with the public internet. Similar to the model of ITDatabase.com
Quotes:
“For those of us tired of hundreds of pages of results that do not really have a lot to do with what we are trying to find out, Wolfram Alpha may be what we have been waiting for.”
Michael W Jones, Tech.blorge.com
“If it is not gobbled up by one of the industry superpowers, his company may well grow to become one of them in a small number of years, with most of us setting our default browser to be Wolfram Alpha.”
Doug Lenat, Semanticuniverse.com
“It’s like plugging into an electric brain.”
Matt Marshall, Venturebeat.com
“This is like a Holy Grail… the ability to look inside data sources that can’t easily be crawled and provide answers from them.”
Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of searchengineland.com
“For those of us tired of hundreds of pages of results that do not really have a lot to do with what we are trying to find out, Wolfram Alpha may be what we have been waiting for.”
Michael W Jones, Tech.blorge.com
“If it is not gobbled up by one of the industry superpowers, his company may well grow to become one of them in a small number of years, with most of us setting our default browser to be Wolfram Alpha.”
Doug Lenat, Semanticuniverse.com
“It’s like plugging into an electric brain.”
Matt Marshall, Venturebeat.com
“This is like a Holy Grail… the ability to look inside data sources that can’t easily be crawled and provide answers from them.”
Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of searchengineland.com
Microsoft Virtual Summit a Success
When Microsoft wanted to host a summit for its global enterprise marketing team while keeping costs down, they called us! We created a virtual solution, the Enterprise Marketing Virtual Summit 2009. Over three days, hundreds of Microsoft marketers from around the world attended the event without leaving their desktops!
We build this custom site from the ground up, exclusively using Microsoft technology, including .NET programming, SQL Server and Silverlight (Viewstream is an official Microsoft Silverlight Partner). This virtual summit did away with the cookie-cutter 3-D world of many virtual events to take a content-driven approach. Live webinars and on-demand video integrated into an environment designed for interactivity and conversation. All live sessions were available on-demand shortly after they were held. There was event a Race Game, where users gained points for attending virtual sessions and engaging with other attendees via message boards.
Microsoft’s Enterprise Marketing Virtual Summit 2009 officially wrapped yesterday, but the event lives on through this site. Attendees can still log in and watch session videos on their own time.
We want to thank the Microsoft team for such an exciting project. We had a lot of fun with this one!
Sorry – this is an invite only event – but you can see the home page here.
Viewstream partners with Microsoft
Viewstream has just become an official Microsoft Silverlight Partner. This relationship gives us direct access to the latest innovations from Microsoft’s cross-platform, cross-browser media delivery and rich interactive application tool. We want to offer our clients the right solution for the job, which means being well-versed in all digital media and interactive technologies. Silverlight has a way to go in terms of adoption, but is a very powerful backbone for database integration and has some incredible features (image zooms, for example).
In a matter only too fitting, our relationship with Silverlight will kick off in one week, with the launch of a Silverlight/.NET-based virtual event for Microsoft. (More on that later.)
Flash isn’t going anywhere, and we will continue to use it for all it’s worth. But by partnering with Microsoft to offer Silverlight and .NET development, we are prepared to take on the increasingly diverse needs of our clients. Check out more information here.
As MacWorld turns, Virtual Events rise!
While people are gearing up for the annual migration to MacWorld (despite the absence of Steve Jobs), truth is such events are on the decline. Costs are high, and planning can be a drain on company resources. As a result, we are beginning to see a rise in virtual trade shows and events.
Viewstream has worked on a number of virtual events, for Autodesk, Microsoft, HP and others. Over the years, we have seen the concept of the virtual trade show develop and, to certain degree, mature.
We’ve also seen virtual event providers come and go. The biggest problem with these new companies is the insistence on taking the cookie-cutter approach, generally characterized by corny 3D worlds for attendees to navigate. These companies following the same model for every event, creating scalable products for virtual shows.
This approach is faulty from the get-go. Users don’t care to have a 3D navigable environment-there is Second Life for that. And that is to say nothing of the lowest-common-denominator delivery. (Sorry, 240×180 pixel videos just don’t cut it!)
We all know that success comes from standing out from a crowd. In these similar 3D environments, people loose interest because they’ve seen it before. Viewstream’s approach is a more customized professional services offering. We take the right approach – by making you stand out and by delivering your message to the right audience. We take advantage of all the possibilities of the online world to create true “social” experiences and deliver stunning content.
Here are a few of reasons why more companies are doing virtual meetings and events, and the value attached to them:
- Saving Costs: Bottom line – virtual events are cheaper then flying in customers or team members from around the world.
- ROI Measurements: Even if you track leads from a trade show, how do you really measure the ROI? And how often does the investment in a trade shows lead to a return on your investment? There is no solid proof of good ROI from external events, particularly when compared to online events. With online events, everything is measurable and results can be tested. In fact, if your ROI measurement tools in the online world are already in place you can easily extend with little cost to virtual events.
- Content Archives: All content created for online events become mini websites in themselves, and user’s questions, social media elements like blogs, etc., are very valuable to leverage to other marketing arenas.
- Search: Having a “spiderable” set of world class content is nice, and is surely a consideration for high ROI in itself.
- Extend Reach: Online events are not limted by geography-meaning more people can attend from around the world.
72% of IT Prospects Use Online Video to Make Purchase Decisions
Couple of points from this TechTarget Presentation:
1 — Prospects WANT video — shows that marketers produce less video then prospects want. 72% of users use online video to research tech solutions.
2 — Syndication is critical (one video leveraged to many places). Prospects view video content on multiple sites (youtube, corporate sites, content providers, etc.).
3 — Users like diverse amounts of video content (demos, case studies, testimonials, conferences).
4 — IT Buyers like COMPARABLE content.
Thanks to Tanya at Xinify for sharing the presentation!
How To Make Product Demos Sell
Flash Presentations, Flash Demos and Online Demos are VERY effective tools to help sell your products and solutions. Most companies have product demos on their websites, and most of them are not very good. Considering that if you look at web analytics, product demos are the type of content that people actually click on and will watch, companies ought to invest in making quality product demos—and leveraging this communication across various mediums.
Viewstream has a lot of experience in creating product demonstrations — and we wanted to share some of our tips and tricks. So we wrote an article, that shares some of our insights. It’s a little long for a blog posting, but check it out here.
Please make comments to the blog!
The Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog
There is a great case study here of how to use a multi channel media strategy to bring a product to market, and align everything around keywords and key messages supported by varied media types. I have seen this integrated marketing and PR strategy work very well for many of Viewstream’s clients. If played right, using this strategy creates significant competitive advantage.
As companies like google continue to dominate, vertical content sites are growing slower than the big content sites (Social Networks, YouTube, Google) – which means an integrated communication/search strategy is a better place to spend your dollars then on online advertising. From the data that I have seen, the long tail is beginning to look like The Stumpy-Tail Cattle Dog (a dog that has no tail).
I am simply amazed at how many times clients tell me that they got a call from someone who found them on Google and then closed a huge deal. By the same token, ROI from online advertising has never looked sadder – with a decline in online ad click through rates and the unreliable data from advertising properties. Search drives sales – we have always known that – and the data shows this more and more.
Viewstream is well positioned in this changing environment as we are able to work quickly in many mediums (integrated search, digital media, website, creative, messaging) to get companies to market faster, better and cheaper than the slower advertising conglomerates that companies have traditionally relied on.
Pushing the Blogging Curve
Automattic has recently acquired Intense Debate. For those not familiar, Intense Debate takes the blog commenting system to a whole new level. Traditionally, blog commenting is linear, but with Intense Debate, commenting becomes more like a social site. It allows threaded comments, user profiles, comment voting/reputation points (think Digg or Reddit), as well as integration with other social sites. Also, when you make a comment, it can automatically send an update to Twitter or Facebook.
From a strategic perspective, we like technologies that can push the curve of user generated technology – making blogging more authentic.
A lot of these things will likely be folded into the Buddypress project (http://buddypress.org), but we’re hoping they’ll make it into WordPress itself in a future version.
A service like Intense Debate should do great things to improve the entire commenting and blogging experience.
You can read more on Automattic’s acquisition by clicking here.
Keyword Espionage
Google may not be too happy about this, but check out these two new keyword comparisons tools:
http://spyfu.com/
www.KeyCompete.com
The way they collect the data (at least KeyCompete) is that they are constantly doing automated searches on all kinds of keywords to see who is advertising on what keywords. Since these are done automatically, and by the millions, Google’s servers are made to work and Google gets no benefit.
Both of these are great services, though, that Viewstream uses to help in our competitive and market research. This allows us to better formulate the right language around your brand, and optimize organic and paid search.
More and more, the ability to define keywords and integrate within organic and paid search is one of the most critical aspects of creating competitive differentiation in today’s marketplace. Viewstream tries to extend the value of those keywords to the entire, integrated brand message.
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