Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Headweb.com - Head for the web and grab your movies
How to get going without funding - bootstrapping and diversification
Here's a good presentation outlining the value of not getting funding but getting through tough times without funding. Diversify in a smart way, have cash flow and work on your "side projects", your startup.
Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Today I am - This sounds like a statement beginner but is a new micro-blogging service
Recordunion.com - A music sharing and distribution company
Spontu - Get your ideas on Facebook
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Hitta.se does streetview maps for Stockholm
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Turbo charge your Twitter - Use Bloggy, a Multimedia Twitter
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Starting up your startup company - Cool and realistic tips from John Buckman
Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Nobel prize week, Christmas food and holidays are coming up
A view from the windows shows you old town and the Royal Castle.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Mippin - Mobile blog result, 5 minutes and this is the result ad enabled
Mippin feed validation KEY=8e8d322f
Rippin' with Mippin - Nice and handy way to get your monetized mobile blog
- List style with images and text with links
- Images ala iPhone layout only with links
I am posting this first post to get AdMob enabled and verified on the Mippin mobile blog site. Mipping is using a verification code system for this.
Mippin feed validation KEY=8e8d322f
Stay tuned for updates about usability and any other comments.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Hold on to your neck - Escape the noise with Neckmike
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Maximize your ROI on search advertising and SEO services, Great tips from Omniture event
Here's a list of services and my tidbits about how to do things smarter for your marketing.
Important to think about account structure before you get started and get too deep into what you are doing; Use an "agency" view and apply multiple accounts for search engine, campaigns and ad-groups.
Think "merge" of CRM data, blog data, website data and design of landing pages so your landing pages apply both CPM, PPC and SEO keyword requirements. This results in a "sales-funnel" approach to how you layout and structure the use of different data on different levels.
An example of landing page levels;
- Level 1, home page - think brand, industry branch,
category when you choose keywords - Level 2, product area page - think products area specific
keywords - Level 3, individual product page - think product specific
keywords and chosen features, benefits and advantages (F/B/A) keywords - Level 4, Buy or call to action page - reinforce F/B/A
keywords and provide easy action
- Design a landing page having clearly in mind, where do you want your
customer to end up? Applies for all levels of pages. - Use images, color, action text
- Use 3 different designs of you landing page layout ads for the same
campaigns, kill the two worst performing, write two new ones based on the
number one performing, keep going, allow 6 months for analytics and follow up,
then keep marketing
Conversion
- Fortune 500 companies spend about 15% of marketing budget on optimization
- A lot money on optimization but not on analyzing and measuring conversion
rate - Optimization still a must but testing needed
Testing, Segmenting and Targeting (TST)
MVT testing will analyze use of a specific element vs. price, product message, no phone number in ad, what logo used, etc.
Segmentation
You want to check parameters such as
- Source, from where does the customer come when arriving on your
landing page? - Behavior, what does the customer do once there?
- Geo tagging data, what day and part of day?
Conclusion: A project result was presented, with a 12% uptake in conversion, resulting 874% ROI on marketing cost and more than 1M £ in extra revenie.
Omniture's SiteSearch and SiteCatalyst will let you play with all these variables to SEO, PPC, CPM, TST optimize you marketing campaigns. Technically it is done by Javascripts used on website pages that will depending
on criteria used redirect traffic via Omniture and back to company website, presenting the different landing page choices.
Friday, November 14, 2008
SIME2008 - Trends you can take to the bank, views from GP Bullhound
- Be in a niche market that is an expanding market
- Have strong distribution and sales capacity
- Be in a business that scales internationally
- Have domain expertise
Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.
Mirror's Edge promo by Telia - SIME2008
Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs
Gapminder - What is left of the Western World?
- Convergence between different continents
- But not for the last billion people below poverty level
- And the growth is not based on sustainable technologies
We still have got time to do something for a positive future if we act now. Hans is a very entertaining presenter, he also got stuck with two random events, the first one Microsoft Windows automatic update kicking in during his presentation and the second one, the controller for the big screen at the movie theater quit working leaving the giant screen dark for awhile...
MoYuMe - More of you and Me, mobile picture lifestream service
Bloggers meetup at SIME2008 - Blogging the bloggers
Kris Hoet, Microsoft EMEA market. Kris talked about his blog about working and Microsoft vs. his private Mustang blog ( http://crossthebreeze.com/ and http://iblogmustang.com/). Microsoft has no corporate blog yet, they do have about 5000 employees that blog and so far the company has decided this is good enough. He also stays away from topics such as being dragged into endless discussions about Microsoft vs. Apple, as he put it you don't want to start something that will result in endless comments.
Joi Ito, CEO Creative Commons. Joi (http://joi.ito.com/) talked about his ups and downs blogging. He is a very frequent blogger but has recently toned down his approach, taking up too much time and getting him involved too much. A long time ago, he wondered, how come, I don't get that much traffic and people he asked said, you are writing too good or complete articles, there is no reason to comment on anything and come back to the blog.
Dave Sifry, Founder & Chairman of the Board, Technorati, Inc. Dave (http://www.sifry.com/alerts/) talked about his experience coming out of his Technorati company. He outlined tips for how to get read by many;blog often, be personal, update regularly (more important than number of posts), think SEO, be like a creative copywriter when you come up with the title for a post. He also pitched Technorati new ad service, Engage which has passed 1Billion ads per month. http://technoratimedia.com/publishers/
Tom Crampton, moderated the discussion. http://www.thomascrampton.com/
Hasta la vista baby! - Meet three entrepreneurs from SIME2008
The Scandinavian Interactive Media Event (SIME) for 2008 took place in Stockholm, Nov. 12-13 at the movie theater, Rigoletto. Cool place, when you have a giant sized movie screen and movie theater surround sound system, your presentations get a bigger bang for your bucks. Here are three of the presenters posted on movie theater posters.
Meet Andie Nordgren, pro blogger from http://www.sime.nu , Pelle Tornberg ex-CEO Metro International magazine and Norbert Teufelberger, co-CEO from the successful bWin betting company.
Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs
Internetworld Magazine - Top 100 awards event at Sturecompaniet in Stockholm
2. SVT – best media site
3. Ving – best travel site
4. Travelstart
5. DN.se – best daily newspaper site
6. Prisjakt
7. Coolstuff (new) – best e-commerce site
8. Eniro – best search site
9. Stardoll – best idea site
10. Svd
11. Tasteline
12. Sweden.se (new)
13. Webaidshop.se (new) – best creative thoughts site
14. Lindex – the blog friendly site
15. Tretti.se
16. Fokus (new)
17. Ikea – best inspirational site (new)
18. Hitta.se
19. VA.se (new)
20. Onoff (new)
21. Pricerunner
22. Utsidan.se
23. Veckorevyn
24. Länsförsäkringar - best bank and insurance site
25. Nordnet
26. Aftonbladet
27. Kanal 5
28. Mr Green (new)
29. Dagen
30. Sesam.se
31. Stadium
32. Stallet.se (new)
33. Redeye.se (new)
34. Barnsemester.se
35. Familjeliv
36. Zoovillage.com
37. Knuff.se
38. CDON.com
39. Garaget.org
40. SR
41. Fritidsresor
42. Skatteverket – best government site (hmm.. Swedish IRS)
43. ShakeMyWorld (new)
44. Mötesplatsen
45. Newsmill – best site for opnions and views
46. Ikanobanken
47. Viktklubb.se
48. Allabolag.se
49. Booli (new)
50. Mintur.se (new)
51. SBAB
52. Wikipedia
53. TV4
54. Tradera.com
55. Grandshoes (new)
56. Swedbank
57. Modette.se (new) - best community site for fashion
58. Dustin Home (new) – best site for easy checkout
59. Taffel.se (new)
60. Haléns (new)
61. Funbeat
62. Svenskaspel.se
63. Rädda Barnen (new)
64. Manolo.se
65. Bloggkoll.com (new)
66. Unibet
67. Icabanken
68. Tappa.se (new)
69. Skistar.com
70. Tailorstore
71. Fondmarknaden (new)
72. MTV
73. Folksam
74. Sveriges riksdag
75. Playahead.com
76. Café (new)
77. Freeride
78. Aktiespararna (new)
79. Canalplus (new)
80. Bilddagboken
81. Bris
82. ATG
83. Jaycut
84. Fass.se
85. Reseguiden.se
86. DO (new)
87. Avanza Bank
88. Regeringen
89. Skandiabanken
90. Vägverket
91. Trygg-Hansa
92. Bokhora (new)
93. Bwin
94. Svenskafans.com
95. Discshop.se
96. Laget.se
97. SEB
98. Expressen
99. MUF (new)
100. Resfeber.se
Monday, November 10, 2008
Mobil Magazine awards for 2008 - "guldmobiler"
Products of the year 2008
- Best music mobile phone - SonyEricsson W902
- Best camera mobile phone - SonyEricsson C905
- Best smartphone - Nokia E71
- Best media mobile phone - Apple iPhone 3G
- Best design mobile phone - Apple iPhone 3G
- Best GPS device - TomTom Go 930
Services of the year 2008
- Best mobile news service - Aftonbladet Tagga
- Best mobile sports service - SR Radiosporten
- Best mobile useful service - Quedro: Noplace SvD magazine mobil
- Best mobile entertainment service - Polarbit new games for iPhone and Symbian
Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your business services needs.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
MobileFocus2008 - Pictures from Exhibitor area of Mobile Media Companies
Stay tuned for more updates about select exhibitor companies from Thomas Lidforss International about this Mobile Focus 2008 Mobile Media event.
MobileFocus2008 - LociLoci does mobile social networking without the need for GPS
The Swedish startup Lociloci has started with an interesting twist, do mobile social networking with location services without the need for using GPS. Their philosophy is that a lot people have or may have concerns about having GPS set to enabled in their phones all the time. So, they have started offering location based networking where you can leave GPS set to off. Since keeping track of where your friends are when you need to know precisely where works well in particular in cities where the cell sites are small, I think the quality of this social networking site is OK.
Lociloci will also soon integrate with Blogger, tumblr, facebook and twitter.
The company behind Lociloci, is XYZ Technology AB has offices in Stockholm and Boston and works as a technology and services provider to any company that wants to use and get a neworking and location services platform.
I also met with a good friend of mine, Mary Larson who works for this company now.
More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International
MobileFocus2008 - Learn about new rules for your media rights by Twobirds
International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies, CISAC, http://www.cisac.org/ has recently come up with a new agreement from July 2008 which you have to follow. Not very entusiastic readings unless you are a lawyer. Bird & Bird has good information on the company website, so help yourself to a better understanding of media rights.
MobileFocus2008 - 4G will make media providers the new mobile operators
Reidar emphasized ZTE's deep involvement in all infrastructure technology areas and their end-to-end solutions for an all-IP network with Software Defined Radios (SDR) for LTE.
He also believes the rollout and deployment for LTE will be easier than people think, reflecting back to mid 90s with GSM/GPRS data access where the big differences in network existed between circuit switched telephony equipment and packet data IP products made everything a lot more difficult. GPRS once
deployed became obsolete and upgraded to EDGE and then in parallel 3G was deployed. HSDPA as add-on, then quickly HSUPA, the now being deployed HSPA infrastructure. So conclusion was LTE will come faster than people think. LTE chipsets in 2009 and later next year the first mobile devices with new LTE chipsets.
MobileFocus2008 - The LTE revolution, mobile multi-media nirvana
Ericsson presented their views on LTE (Long Term Evolution standard):
- Wider pipe
- Flat architecture
- Focus on self optimization and self configuration services in network
Overall goal: Lower the TCO and better radio spectrum flexibility
Converge the LTE/HSPA and LTE/CDMA paths to provide infrastructure that works anywhere in the world. This is a requirement in the present standardization work for release of 3GPP R8
Major operators around the world on board for this strategy; Verizon Wireless, China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone
For those readers that need a technology update, see the Agilent presentation.
Ericsson did not say one word about WiMax, they are clearly pushing for LTE as soon as possible. They are also targeting mobile 150 Mbit/s as a technical goal. I cannot wait until I can get my hands on such a mobile phone.
More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International
MobileFocus2008 - Mobile phone, your personal media center
MobileFocus2008 - Simplifying the mobile internet media
I missed this presentation, got stuck discussing with several vendors in the exhibition area. I know all the important companies are sponsoring dotMobi, primarily to simplify the creation of mobile friendly sites and the awareness for everybody with a website what it meas to deliver the best possible user experience on a mobile phone. The best information about dotMobi is the following TypePad blog;
http://dotmobi.typepad.com/
I myself use MoFuse, they make it extremely easy to create a dotmobi website. See, http://tlidforss.mofuse.mobi
More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International
MobileFocus2008 - Get Flashy with Flash and new channels for rich mobile multi-media
They presented launch of new Rich Internet Applications (RIA) applications and quick snapshot of the history, how we got here;
Adobe has created an Open Screen Project to promote Adobe Air among other tools (the Creative Suite, CS4 Master Collection is the "Gold" standard to go for). The open Screen Project includes most chip vendors, Verizon Wireless and SonyEricsson among other companies.
Mobilstart is heavily using Adobe applications and together Michael and Patrik showed a really good live demo of verious news (http://www.svd.se http://www.dn.se), weather and sports sites displayed on a mobile phone. Adobe is pushing hard to get away from todays environment where you have to develop mobile phone applications (very time consuming and expensive in the mobile phone developer environment today, with too many phones and too many OS environments). You should also not having to think like a computer user navigating between applications all the time.
MobileFocus2008 - iPhone changed the rules for mobile internet
Ulrika presented the impact from the Launch of the iPhone.
- 28% more data traffic in their 3G network after 1 week, since 160% more data traffic
- Most iPhone users browse outside their portal (the way it should have been everywhere from day 1 when internet access was possible on a mobile phone!) vs. non-iPhone users
- User cost control important
- iPhone users feel they have internet in a pocket
- 80% of buyers men under age 35 and half live in big cities (I think this also depends on the fact that in big cities you do have 3G coverage, I know a friend of mine living out in the country in northern Sweden and as he put it, "you have to climb up in a f%%%ing tree to get phone access")
MobileFocus2008 - Future of Mobile Applications according to Nokia
“The future of mobile applications” by Eric Hugo Ovi by Nokia
Ovi by Nokia is the brand
Context is the differentiator for Ovi
- Maps on Ovi
- With social networking
- Open for all developers
- Files on Ovi for your web information
- Comes with music
- Share on Ovi
Ovi by Nokia is being introduced by Orange in UK.
- 130 pounds with pay as you go
- 40 pounds per month
MobileFocus2008 event - Social networking goes mobile, here's comes the ink, INQ Mobile
Ashley presented the new company INQ Mobile http://www.inqmobile.com/ sponsored by 3, http://www.three.co.uk/
They have a "INQ OS" kind of platform which is Qualcomm Brew based with a simple but efficient UI for the new INQ phones. Speed and simplicity of pre-integrated apps into the new device makes the use almost instant. They have followed the concept, press a button or one click and the service in question should work right away without delay.
"Internet communicators that anyone can use" is their slogan. I like this concept with a model for a "cheap" phone, easy one touch access to the most commonly used services. INQ mobile's approach is not to compete with smartphones which they consider too expensive for a big mass market but still provide "cheap" easy access to internet services.
MobileFocus2008 event - Media goes mobile, views from Yankee Group
YankeeGroup (YG)
Declan used statistics and experiences from Vodafone in UK.
Voda UK most searched;
- Bebo
- eBay
- Windows Live
Voda UK most visited;
- BBC
- MSN
- Bebo
- SonyEricsson
- Yahoo
- MySpace
- Windows Live
Mobile universe vs. Advertising universe? - complementary values and crossover activities, mobile greatest attribute is combo of personalization and ubiquity.
More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International