Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Anyone noticed this!


There's voice activated Search in Youtube! Cool... :) though not sure it will be very useful! let me try it out when I get home so no one will think I'm crazy geek talking to my laptop.

Google moves into Travel

http://www.google.com/flights/

If you are flying interstate US, you can now use the Google flights tool to get you better search results.
Aww... why is it not available in Singapore yet!


Thursday, November 10, 2011

Did You Know: Kaypoh Singaporeans are Top Facebook Users in the World, Spend Most Yime on the Site, Nov 2011


Did You Know: Kaypoh Singaporeans are Top Facebook Users in the World, Spend Most Time on the Site, Nov 2011
BY LYDIA NG

Did you know? Singaporeans spend an average of 39 minutes tailing their friends, posting updates, viewing pictures on Facebook everyday. In fact, we are the nation that spends the most time on FB! This may also be due to a high smartphone penetration rate (>60%) in Singapore and the rise of mobile data usage.

What that means:
Basically, Singaporeans are super kaypoh 'lah'. How does spending so much time on Facebook benefit us besides forming virtual friendships and having gossip fodder on what your friends (and fake friends) are doing?

An interesting phenomenon -- we develop ‘facebook envy’. 

Facebook envy: Getting jealous of your friends’ wall posts and pictures as they showcase their near perfect lives of endless vacations, acquisitions, and high status, but still viewing picture after picture of their sun-filled holidays, perfect lives, being addicted to trailing them still, being subscribed to their stories, all the while muttering under your breath.


Marketers, it seems, are not taking enough advantage of this. Almost none of Facebook’s downstreams are to retail sites, according to an Experian study. Meaning most users who are on Facebook do not visit the company’s website after Facebook. This is unlike New Zealand, where 9% of site traffic comes from Social Networks.

Perhaps the incentive given by brands is not enough to entice users to visit the website. Or it could show a reluctance of users to be persuaded to navigate away from their favourite pastime – Facebook stalking.

Either way, this demonstrates that social marketing by brands in Singapore is nowhere near maturity, and there is much room to grow for brands to develop their social strategy.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

In Memory of Steve Jobs, a True Inspiration

Hi friends, for the next 3 days (7,8,9th Oct) let's change our Profile Picture to this one (see mine) in memory of Steve Jobs, who has been a huge inspiration to us all. even if you don't like apple products, you got to admire the man who turned apple around to become more than just a computing company. he showed us how to live a true and inspirational life.
(source photo is kindly 'stolen' from coolhunter and then edited slightly. :P)



Steve Jobs RIP iRespect You

Friday, September 9, 2011

the future belongs to the geeks

we live in a world of constant improvement and imagination. and that is what makes me still believe in humanity - our quest to make things better. yesterday in a conference, exciting new technologies were shared with us via BBC Click. the future holds augmented reality, pc-less, smartphone-less devices and technologies that makes life so different, the future you won't recognize the present you. Imagine a deviceless world, where all you have is computed by a microchip in a contact lens that beams up information on physical buildings and objects to give you detail on it -- something like walking around with a view only terminator can enjoy. all this is not some science fiction fantasy -- research is underway now on these technologies. the future where the lines between what's human and what's robotic cross may well be possible.
yet a part of me fears what would happen when such things become real -- in a world where looking at a bee brings up its exact species name, how many exist in the world, what is its known behavior and lifecycle, along with other stats and data -- will we become even colder in treating each other, and will our child-like sense of wonder be lost and replaced with an adult-like 'i've seen it all' view of the world?

in some sense, if you talk to our children, this is already happening.

cyborg soldiers

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Now You Can Block Any Site You Dislike From Google's Search Results

There is some debate whether this will affect your search rankings, if say, your competitor hired an army of people to block your site from their Search Results.  I think this is Google's way to provide a more personalized Search experience, but I don't think Google will take this seriously and include this in their SEO ranking algorithm.


New: Google Lets You Block Any Site From Search Results

Google announced you can now hide or block certain sites from showing up in the Google search results.
When you do a search in Google, the search results will show a new link near the “Cache” link when you click a result and then return to Google. The link that Google adds to the search results reads “Block all example.com results.” Clicking on that will allow you to block the site from showing up in the Google results.
If you are not logged in, Google will immediately block the result and confirm they did so. But if you want the site to remain blocked on future searches, you have to login and confirm the block request.
At the bottom of the search results it will show you that there are blocked sites. It will let you show the blocked results or manage your blocked sites.
Here is the confirmation page:
Here is the manage block page:
You can access this page under your “Search Settings.”
Google said:
We’re adding this feature because we believe giving you control over the results you find will provide an even more personalized and enjoyable experience on Google. In addition, while we’re not currently using the domains people block as a signal in ranking, we’ll look at the data and see whether it would be useful as we continue to evaluate and improve our search results in the future. The new feature is rolling out today and tomorrow on Google.com in English for people using Chrome 9+, IE8+ and Firefox 3.5+, and we’ll be expanding to new regions, languages and browsers soon. We hope you find it useful, and we’ll be listening closely to your suggestions.


Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors. I like this

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Alternatives to Google Keyword Tool

today i was introduced to touchgraph, which can be a pretty useful tool to grab some ideas for campaign setups apart from using Google Keyword Tools. http://www.touchgraph.com/seo
Key in what you are searching for, and the tool generates search words relevant to it. These can be considered as topics for your campaign.