by Kurt S. on February 28, 2009
Web browsing and e-mailing are critical tools for those looking for work. They must regularly visit job sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com and they must do so while on a limited budget. That’s a major reason why dial-up Internet has maintained its small share of the market.
Accessing the Web for less than $8 per month is an attractive option for those customers and a reason why companies such as EarthLink and NetZero are still offering dial-up. They have even seen an uptick in the number of users. “If you need a job, you really need to stay connected,” said Kevin Brand, EarthLink’s senior vice president of product management. “You can use the Internet for 45 cents per day and that’s affordable for anyone. Using the Internet is the best way to find a job nowadays.” Brand referred to EarthLink’s “Connect for Less” program, which offers dial-up service for $7.95 per month. NetZero is offering a monthly dial-up plan for as low as $9.95 per month. Brand said between nine and 12 million people still use dial-up.
Most dial-up customers have stayed with the program because it is all they know. Some are delaying an upgrade until they can better afford it. Others are making the switch from broadband to dial-up, even though the transition can be frustrating for some. “We have seen a slight uptick in orders these days,” Brand said. “I think it has a lot to do with the economy right now … When people see their cable bills, they can suffer from sticker shock. It gives people reason to reconsider what they’re paying for.”
In a survey of dial-up users, the most common reason for not switching to broadband is the cost. Thirty-five percent said they would not upgrade until prices fall, according to a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Source TBO
by Kurt S. on February 27, 2009
by Kurt S. on February 24, 2009
Thanks to the economy many people are heading to HR websites in droves looking for that new opportunity but what they sometimes find is frustrating and confusing from a user experience perspective.
Human beings are social and creative creatures and when these individuals trade their time for money we all call that work. Most of us have had to or will need to look for work at some point in our lives. Finding the right job can be a difficult process and many company websites do not make it any easier. Many HR Departments have given up and focused on Monster or Career Builder as their solution. As a prospective employee your frustration level will be high searching through multiple Human Resources websites only to be consistently challenged by the interfaces you umm… face.
It’s obvious that if there is one area that is usually overlooked in the grand scheme of things it is the Jobs, Careers or Employment pages of a businesses website. The usability factor of the forms alone can be enough to scare off would-be recruits. From my personal experience you must use Windows XP and IE6 as your web delivery device or head for the bread line. Some searches simply won’t work in anything but. The HR sections of a large company website are typically built by programmers all by themselves since they usually aren’t “sexy” enough for the web designers to pay close attention to. I labored through a handful of unforgiving and unattractive (but some really nice ones too) HR pages to bring you this study of a few random, but popular, Human Resources pages.
[click to continue...]
by Kurt S. on February 23, 2009
Image via CrunchBase
Micheal Durwin has a great rant here about the importance of embracing mobile websites. When I first read this I thought that you could easily remove the word “mobile” and you would see a blog post that would resemble something from years ago explaining the vitures of being online!
40% of mobile users have Internet access (likely to triple in the next 3 years). That’s 546 MILLION people! If you’re in charge of marketing for a retailer and a mobile website is not part of your IMMEDIATE strategy, you should be fired. You just cost your company 546 million potential customers. A mobile site is not complicated, as a matter of fact it is a much less complicated site than a regular website. SInce you’re limited in the amount of information you can show, and bandwidth is limited, it’s easier to narrow your offerings down to basics like contact, store finder, etc. Good God man, my site even has a mobile version!
In recent weeks I’ve been doing last minute baby and house shopping. I’ll often find myself wondering if something is in stock at another branch of Lowe’s, where the closest Office Max is, are there specials on diapers, etc. How often do you think I’ve been able to access a mobile site? Right, never. I’ll admit that I’m an early adopter, cash permitting, but I’ve had an iPhone for over a year now. But that also makes me a more frequent user AND proponent to my sphere of influence. Do you really want to ignore me?
• Half of iPhone users responded to a mobile ad in some way
• iPhone users call an 800 number, the most common call-to-action, twice as often as non-iPhon users
• 20% of iPhone users visit a mobile website compared to 14% of non-iPhone users
• 25% of iPhone users purchased a product or visited the store of a mobile marketer
So, for those retailers out there without a mobile site, next time you don’t make your quarterly numbers, look to the marketing guy. After all, what better way to differentiate yourself from your competitor than to be more accessible to your customers.
Via: MDurwin.com
by Kurt S. on February 22, 2009
This presentation shows how brands have four ways of be effective in the interactive/internet landscape.
- Be useful
- Connect people.
- Entertain people
- Educate people
Bottom line: Do Something for People.
This will be “required reading” for my class and for my interactive team this week. A superb presentation.
by Kurt S. on February 20, 2009
One of my ALL time favortie motion graphic artists displays his new work in a very unique way… as always.
by Kurt S. on February 19, 2009
Paul Boag is a web-design guru and in this great article he has some tips for getting through the corporate bureaucracy when it comes to web site design, development and management.
Here is his list:
- Educate and inform
- Hold stakeholder interviews
- Avoid group committee meetings
- Target your influencers
- Use third party experts
- Rely on evidence, not opinion
- Focus on the user
- Control the feedback
- Ask why
- Avoid confrontation
He lists ten ways to do this but they really are centrally themed on education. In my role as an Interactive Director I focus on educating my clients and team members daily. In my role I need to be able answer the single most fundamental question about designing and developing websites. “Why?”
My clients understand “how” to run their companies and my team knows “how” to build websites. It’s my role as the director to let everyone in on the answer to the elusive “Why?” questions. “Why these keywords?” “Why this call-to-action?” “Why SEO?” “Why are we doing it this way?” “Why will this work?”.
I’m glad that Paul points out that the “Why” “…is probably the most powerful of all the techniques I have listed here and yet by far the simplest.”
In today’s world there is a lot of fear within companies and organizations about the web and it’s influence on their brand. It is up to us as design and development professionals to create an atmosphere of trust and accountability in order to deliver a successful solution for both our peers and our clients.
How? Be the one that knows “Why”.
Read Paul’s Article then read Positive Space’s thoughts on the “Why” as well.
by Kurt S. on February 18, 2009
VALLEYWAY & Gawker lay it all out for us.
Why is Microsoft so panicked over Google-Yahoo? Time‘s list of 50 best websites provides an anecdotal answer. Of the 50, 18 rely on Google ads for their income. Only one, UrbanDictionary.com, uses Microsoft ads. Yahoo doesn’t fare much better — only brokering impressions for Rate My Professors and its own site on the list, Yahoo Answers. Below, find Time’s entire list and how each site apparently makes its money (if it does at all — seven are run by volunteers).
- By the numbers
- Ad-supported:36
- Google ads: 18
- Microsoft ads: 1
- Yahoo ads: 2
- In-house ad sales teams: 3
- Sell goods: 2
- Sell physical goods: 1
- Time‘s 50 Best Websites 2008
- GasBuddy — Google AdSense and a display ad.
- Howcast — Google Adsense.
- iliketotallyloveit.com — Google Adsense
- Omiru — affiliate accounts with vendors such as Amazon and Bluefly
- PsychCentral — Google Adsense.
- TripKick — ValueClick banner ads.
- Wikitravel — Google Adsense.
- Yahoo! Answers — Yahoo display and search results.
- Zeer — Google AdSense
- Afrigadget.com — run by volunteers.
- AskMen.com — Google search ads and Google AdSense.
- ConcreteLoop.com — Google AdSense
- Health.com — Display advertising, served by DoubleClick, sold by Health magazine.
- PopSugar — display ads, sold internally.
- ProFootballTalk — Sponsored by Sprint, Valueclick display ads.
- Rate My Professors — display advertising and Yahoo contextual ads.
- Serious Eats — diplay advertising from BlogAds.com network.
- The Nest — display ads, sold internally.
- Geni — ad-free.
- MapJack — Google AdSense.
- Mint — affiliate marketing.
- NexTag — sells its own search ads.
- Nymbler — Google AdSense.
- Picnik — sells premium accounts
- Pixelgirl Presents — Volunteer run.
- SearchMe — Doesn’t make money.
- TinyUrl.com — Google AdSense.
- Mobaganda.com — Doesn’t make money.
- Urban Dictionary — Microsoft display ads, Google AdSense, Amazon Affiliate.
- Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project — Volunteer-run.
- Hulu — Pre-roll video ads.
- Imeem — affiliate sales, in-house ad sales and video ad networks.
- Kongregate — Google AdSense display ads.
- ffffound.com — Display ads from The Deck ad network.
- Lookybook — Affiliate links to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.
- Someecards — Google AdSense.
- WebSudoku — Google AdSense.
- Penny Arcade — Google AdSense display ads, internal ad sales.
- Gaia Online — Sells virtual goods.
- CarbonRally — Volunteer run.
- COLOURlovers — Display ads from The Deck ad network.
- Apartment Therapy — Glam ad network, AdBrite text ads.
- Digital Vaults — Volunteer run.
- Free Rice — Volunteer run.
- HypeBeast — Google AdSense display ads.
- Kiva.org — Volunteer run.
- Net-a-Porter — Sells clothes.
- Open Source Food — Google AdSense.
- Petfinder — Sponorships, display ads, sold internally.
- WikiSky — Donations.
by Kurt S. on February 18, 2009
O.K. So I’m making a little bit of a joke in the title but Google’s SVP, Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg recently made four predictions for the web:
- All the world’s information will be accessible from the palm of every person
- Everyone can publish, and everyone will
- When data is abundant, intelligence will win
- The vast majority of computing will occur in the cloud
My favorite line is “In a world that feels like it is lit by lightning, speed wins, and we have a responsibility to our users to not retreat, to not be content to stand still, to not be complacent or near-sighted.”
What does his HUGE post mean to you and me? Here is my interpretation.
Everyone will be involved in social media in some form and all that information (which will be vetted through crowd sourcing) will be accessible and make you super-smarter all the while happily sitting on Google servers.
Well, at least something like that. You can read it for yourself but I think we all understand this (at least somewhat) already but we all must help to educate our friends, family, students, co-workers, and clients on the future of communication so they can benefit as we do everyday.
by Kurt S. on February 15, 2009
Image via Wikipedia
Quick story. I once had a student who complained that he had spent days trying to create a “worn look” to a photograph he had scanned in. I stared at his intense use of filters, masks, and displacement maps. I knew immediately what to do…
I grabbed a copy of the photograph and asked the class to join me in the parking lot. I found a small oil spill in the parking lot and laid the picture face down. I then went a got in my car and proceeded to drive over it repeatedly while my students snickered and giggled. I parked, picked up the photo and asked everyone back inside. We then reviewed the students digital version to my analog version and guess what? Everyone, including the student with the angst, agreed that my rendition was the most “natural”.
Needless to say this was a huge eye-opener to my class. It really was. They had tunnel vision in the worst way. You may be sitting there saying to yourself “DUH!” but when your world is so focused on learning design software its very easy to loose sight of the bigger picture. Some of my students even went on to say that they didn’t think a “professional” designer would create work that way. Like Yoda said, sometimes you must “Unlearn what you have learned”.
There is a whole analog world you could miss if you rely on calculators and Photoshop to show the world how good you are.
This brings me to the jump… Here are some of my favorite TED talks. They too opened my mind to a different way of thinking. I hope you enjoy.
[click to continue...]
