Rick Schwartz is on the warpath. In an exclusive interview for our new August newsletter previewing the Sept. 23-26 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York, Schwartz laid into cyber squatters, PPC companies, registrars and even “show fatigue”. Find out why he has taken off the gloves.
A prominent newspaper columnist has abruptly quit because he said sports journalism has become “entirely a website business.” Jay Mariotti, who also appears on ESPN, said of the sinking newspaper industry ship, “I don’t want to go down with it.”
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s iPhone Girl, invading your Apple mobile.
A Chinese factory line worker in the Shenzhen-based Apple assembly plant has put a human touch back in technology, and become an internet celebrity. The girl, dubbed “China’s prettiest factory girl,” by China’s Southern Metropolitan Daily newspaper, took photos of herself in the factory making peace signs on an iPhone she assembled.
The iPhone was purchased in Britain by a Kingston-upon-Hull resident and Apple customer, Mark. He posted in an internet forum that his phone had the pictures saved when he first activated it. The pictures display the girl, wearing a pink and white striped uniform, beaming from behind the production line. Some say the pictures are taken to test each iPhone and someone simply forgot to delete them, but I’d like to think they were taken by cheeky factory workers making their mark on the multi-billion dollar corporation in the only way they could.
In 2006, a story surfaced claiming that the workers in the same Foxconn Apple factory only earned $57.00AUD per month and were forced to live in 100-per room dormitories on site with a bucket to wash their uniforms. Could the smiling iPhone-maker have been paid or persuaded to perform the stunt, in a PR bid for good publicity? Given that iPhones are used by technologically-advanced high-use internet consumers, it would have been inevitable that the pictures would be posted online.
I prefer to think that the smile was genuine. It seems to be, it looks like her grin is coming from the heart – and probably fuelled by adrenaline for being a bit naughty on the job. Foxconn responded to the incident by claiming that it was “just a beautiful mistake”.
The girl, whose identity has not been revealed, is apparently quite distressed by the publicity. “She’s just a young girl who has come to the city from her remote hometown. She’s never been in such a situation. She’s really scared by the media,” said a spokesperson for the Foxconn factory. “She told me she wanted to quit her job and go back home to get away from this. We let her off work today so she could rest.”
Apple does claim to be more humanised than PC, with their advertisements representing the brand with a hip young actor rather than the machines themselves. I would love to turn on a brand new computer, iPhone or iPod to find a picture of the person who put the product together. Maybe they could leave me their email address so I could send them a thank you note, and respond with a picture of myself. Maybe I could gift a couple of my favourite songs to them via iTunes, or send them a picture of my house and dog. I’m sure the Chinese factory workers would love to have their days spices up by a bit more interaction with the world at large, especially given the tight constraints on their internet access.
Technology so often takes people away from each other in its efforts to make it easier to reach our friends and family: would you catch up with your loved ones more often if you hadn’t already been texting, tweeting and emailing each other all day?
Facbook is a fantastic service for keeping up to date with my friends overseas, but I’d rather meet you at a coffee shop to flick through the photos of your recent trip to Paris than browse by them online. Facebook has permeated our culture so much that when I do meet up with friends in person, the social media tool always comes up in conversation: “Hey, I saw on Facebook that Alice and Steve are back together.”
“Yeah, he sent me a tweet today saying how happy their parents are about it.”
or
“Oh, are you going to that gig on Friday?”
“Yeah, I already RSVP’d on Facebook.”
Rather than having this conversation around the water cooler with the real live colleagues in my office, I’m posting it online. Case in point.
A new feature in Microsoft’s latest browser, Internet Explorer 8, (released in beta yesterday) could spell trouble for their arch-rival Google. Here how “InPrivate Browsing” could short circuit Google’s plan to get even bigger through display advertising.
Two of the best-known figures in the domain industry are heading back to college this fall even though they both already hold doctorate degrees. Here’s our exclusive report on Harvard’s new BMOCs (Big Men On Campus).
Two well-known domain companies have filled key executive positions by naming new Vice Presidents. Stephen Douglas joins WhyPark.com as VP of Business Development and Sam Nunez moves from Oversee.net to Sedo to become VP of Product Management.
Suggest is the latest tool from Google, taking the effort out of thinking up keywords when searching. Google Suggest is going to change the way people search, by suggesting options as people type. Instead of keying in several words, after typing one letter Google will suggest a number of different options based on the first word entered.
Suggest is the latest tool from Google, taking the effort out of thinking up keywords when searching. Google Suggest is going to change the way people search, by suggesting options as people type. Instead of keying in several words, after typing one letter Google will suggest a number of different options based on the first word entered.
Most businesses tend to focus on the top 10 most popular keywords for their site. The keywords that bring the most visitors however aren’t always the same terms that result in the most sales. Investigation conducted by Wired.com shows that Amazon.com for example makes 57% of its sales from terms off the beaten keyword track.
When assessing the sales generated by particular search terms, the survey conducted by Wired also revealed that only 18.6 of the sales were from searches of the top ten keywords. 81.2% of conversions to sale were from other search terms not considered vital keywords by the businesses concerned.
Google Suggest means that instead of having the chance to perform a long tail search by typing in four or five words the internet user considers relevant, searches will be suggested by a drop down box. Most people using Google already have their previous searches appear in the drop down box, and it is estimated that 95% of internet users won’t notice the difference between results from their previous searches and Google-generated suggestions.
If you type ‘th’ into the Google Suggest search field, “The Dark Knight” comes up followed closely by “Thesaurus”, “The Sun” and “Thomas Cook”. Searching for ‘a’ pulls up “Amazon” and “Apple”. ‘I’, not surprisingly, brings up “iTunes” and “ikea”. There is a threat of distracting people from their intended search by suggesting popular sites and products.
The short tail queries that Google produces as suggestions will be full of AdWords and most-searched for terms, amassing more wealth for the internet company. Stopping people in their tracks from performing long tail keyword searches, most people will select an item suggested by Google. This potentially cuts out the opportunity for long tail searches to be conducted. It remains to be seen whether this will affect the business that people convert on their sites, and their ranking in the search results if Google suggestions are clicked on more often.
The usual summer doldrums were sent packing again this week as a quartet of huge six-figure sales led another banner outing for the domain aftermarket. Two of those transactions rank among the ten biggest sales of the year, weighing in at $800,000 and $579,900 respectively.
Some old friends who are worried about their jobs disappearing have been asking me if there are still opportunities to make a living with domain names or on the Internet at large. This is what I told them…
First it was newspapers, then magazines, then TV. Now it’s radio singing the declining ad revenue blues – but there is one bright spot on that industry’s latest report card – rapid growth online. With all branches of traditional media declining, only the Internet continues to enjoy double digit growth rates.