Google is in the process of launching their new attempt at challenging Facebook, let’s hope that they have learned from their first two attempts, Wave and Buzz, which were both terrible launches and complete disasters for users.

So a client asked me what makes this one different from the rest of Google’s social media attempts? Well they are allowing you to essentially divide up your social groups, which could either be really good or a terrible idea, time will tell.

So what do I mean by divide up the social group? Google calls this “Circles”.

Just think of all the times you’ve heard people say “my mums just joined facebook and wants to be added to my friends list” who knows what stuff you don’t want your mum to see or comments from other friends she’s never meant that show the wrong side of you. Sometimes there needs to be boundaries and this is essentially what Google thinks will make them different from the rest.

In theory this is a good idea for cases like that, but will it work in the real world? Only by getting enough people on the system and actually using it will we know if it’s a hit or not.

They bring a few other things to the table that are of interest like “Hangouts”.

So a few of you are online at the same time, wouldn’t it just be easier to set up video chat with everyone, but that’s usually a one to one affair, not with Google Huddle apparently you can do more than 2, how many more? well apparently up to ten, which is quite impressive, but will it work or kill broadband connections all over the place, guess we’ll find out soon.

So what else do they bring to the table well something called “Huddle”.

Have you ever been trying to arrange a night out with 4 or more people and had trouble with everyone knowing what’s going on then plans change and you have to do the round robin nightmare again to make sure everyone knows what’s happening. Well Huddle is apparently the saviour by letting you group everyone together in one big chat room. Problem solved, everyone now gets the same information as everyone else and can contribute to the chat without messing up your profile with useless chatter. This could be very useful to many people.

Maybe not as social right away “Sparks” is the next thing on the list.

This is basically a way for Google+ to suggest things you might be interested in from your searches. either it will work really well and you’ll discover lots of great new things or it will very quickly become spam and peeve you off.

They actually have a whole load of other things like privacy settings that are both easy to set and in your control, the ability to download all your photos and Google+ profile data so that if the service ever got canned you would have all your information – this is a nice touch, but something Facebook will probably be able to add easily enough.

Google+ will also be on pretty much every smart phone out there so it won’t matter if you have Android, iOS, Win 7 Mobile, Blackberry or Nokia Symbian.

So lot’s to take in and consider there for Google+, but do we need another social network?

I think it can’t do any harm to make Facebook take notice that maybe their position isn’t fixed at number 1. They will ultimately improve themselves as a result and maybe even simplify things like their privacy policy when they see how others approach it.

The consumers always lose out when there is only one of any service, so I would say try out Google+ and see if it is a worthy alternative for your life and business, if not, Facebook aren’t exactly going to kick you out!

ComScore reports Facebook’s 7.5 million unique mobile users spent 2.5 billion minutes on its site in December. The next closest competitor was Google with 9.5 million users spending a relatively paltry 702 minutes on its sites.

Read the rest here

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Here’s the link http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/statistics-for-changing-world-google.html and heres a video with a basic explanation.

Now there is more US data than UK data at the moment – this should get better over time, but if you do sell internationally (especially US) you will be able to look into for example specific growth areas of employment.

Granted some of the data will be a little out of date, but any marketer knows that it’s rare to get up to the month data like this (unless you spend a lot of money!). Most times it’s a best experience and knowledge estimate on trends using previous data to extrapolate how to exploit a particular area of a market.

This is why having someone who knows traditional marketing (generally referred to as offline marketing) as well as new marketing (generally referred to as online marketing) like we do is vital in being able to ensure there is a market place for a new website.

A slight side note and something that has been bugging me when I talk to new clients, every single one of them only want to pay for online makreting and they ignore the obvious offline marketing strategies. In today’s world too many people concentrate only on online marketing, what about the foot fall for retail, pubs, restaurants, events etc… you can’t possibly just do only online marketing, well not if you want to be successful, ok so mini edu-rant over.

Anyway this looks like it will become a great resource for the future and I look forward to keeping an eye on the updates Google make to the system.

Alan

http://www.virustotal.com

Alan

It even works on Mac, although how well, you’ll need to let me know

http://www.idrive.com

If it doesn’t work or you don’t like it you can try this one http://mozy.com as it seems to be the next best one on the market (2GB free and also works on Mac now).

Keep your data safe from a crash and back it up online.

P.S Did I mention that you can access the files from anywhere through a browser, NO, well you can.

Alan

So we talked about various options for the project and I suggested that it might be something he could do himself, if he was willing to put in a little bit of time into learning the software and a little bit on what makes a good video.

Now it’s likely that we’ll be consulting on producing a script for the video so that it hit’s all the right customer buttons, but he can take care of the rest himself. The next step was software, what would he use, well I sent him this link which has many he can use and the great thing is that their free!

http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/10-free-screen-recording-softwares-for-creating-attractive-screencasts/

Now it may well be that later down the line he gets the video completely redone to be fully professional, but at least now he can put together something to test and see if it’s going to even be worth investing in later and all at a price that fits into his current budget. Now that’s a win win situation!

This is what we do with every client, try to find cost effective alternatives to test out marketing ideas, that will generate more revenue, which you can then re-invest to get more marketing done and make more profit for the company.

If you are about to consider getting your website redone, give us a call or an email, we think you’ll be happy you did as we always over deliver!

Alan

What if the information I put up on there wasn’t saved anywhere else, what would I do if twitter closed it’s doors, how valuable is that information and what would it cost to replace?

FEAR NOT – Just go to the site below and let it back up for you – Genius!

http://www.tweetbackup.com

What’s really good about this as well is how easy it is to use, honestly if you have a twitter or Facebook account login, choose a room name, invite people to it and blam! you’re good  to go – couldn’t be easier! You can even share your desktop with people, so it’s like having a free webinar program at your finger tips and will cost nothing!

Here’s the link http://tinychat.com

I’m going to try to schedule a chatroom session once every 1,2 or 4 weeks and give out web design advice, so basically a Q & A session, what could you do with it?

Before I do however I would like to guage how popular this would be so please leave a comment for me on this blog post, cheers.

Alan

Either you’re trying to install a new program or copy some files, but the system hits you with that lovely ERROR noise or if you’re lucky at the very least a little box saying insufficient space available.

So you think to yourself if only I didn’t have to go through all my folders and try to find out where the space is being taken up, because it’s going to take ages to do that. If only there was a program I could use to find out the folder sizes and files at an easy glance. At least then I can go to the biggest potential trouble spots quickly.

This is something all operating should have a better version of in my opinion. Anyway we don’t need to depend on them as other people out there know that this needs a better solution and thankfully have delivered.

For now the solutions below are for Windows only machines, I will do some research to see if there are Apple Mac versions (if you know of any please get in touch), I don’t think the Linux community need my help on this subject

http://windirstat.info

This is a fairly comprehensive one and the is the software I’m using on my desktop right now.It’s got a really nice way of visualising the folders and files once it’s done it’s scan. it even colour codes types of files for you that you can click an it highlights then in the box below – Genius!

Cost: Nada, nothing it’s completely FREE!

http://foldersize.codeplex.com

This one isn’t as detailed as the one above but it does have the advantage of being portable, which means it doesn’t need to be installed. So you can stick on an external hard hdrive or Thumb Drive and run it on any windows computer.

Cost: Again Nada, nothing it’s completely FREE!

I hope that this is useful to you.

Alan Fair