Introducing the latest roll-out of the Google Mission- App Inventor for Android – a free web-based software tool meant for the masses or non-developers to realize their own Android applications. Yes, Google is bringing Android App development to the masses with the mobile platforms.

With the support of Google University Relations, the technology has been under development for a year, mainly involving educational organizations. User testing groups ranges from university undergraduates to even sixth graders, high school girls and nursing students. With the introduction of the Android ecosystem to the public as well as the classroom contexts, it may well be a boon for Google in the smartphone-software market. In contrary, Apple adopts a more tightly managed approach to app development for the iPhone via licensing and vetting.

App Inventor allows people to drag and drop blocks of code – displayed as graphical images that represents various app elements– and put them together, almost akin to building Lego blocks.The result is a mobile app made from scratch, making the idea of creating an app potentially well-received. As such, the App Inventor can be likened as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) app development tool for Android, entailing a possible explosion of new mobile apps on the market. Disregarding the value of these ‘home-made’ apps, the App Inventor can help nurture and train a growing community of young content developers for the Android platform.

However, the App Inventor is currently limited to work only for phones that run on Android software. Being web-based, a sign-up with a Google Gmail account is required. A small software download is also needed to automatically syncs the programs created on a PC, connected to the application inventor website, with an Android smartphone.

New York Times quotes Mr Harold Ableson, both project leader and MIT computer scientist, “The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world.” A proponent of opening up intellectual and technological resources, Mr Abelson is also a founding director of the Free Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Creative Commons.

The business world today made it paramount to effectively utilize web metrics for ROI in Internet marketing. In response, I will recommend the webinar ”Top 5 Things Marketers Can Do Now“  by Avinash Kaushik to all marketers with regards to web analytics. Avinash Kaushik is well-known as the author of the recently published “Web Analytics 2.0” after his bestseller – “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day“. He is also touted as the Analytics Evangelist for Google in addition to Co-Founder/Chief Education Officer of Market Motive. “Top 5 Things Marketers Can Do Now” feature tips on employing data-driven insights for immediate strategic marketing decisions, improving marketing efficiency and generating greater returns on your marketing investments. Do pardon the lacking audio quality of the video below but be assured that the potential insights are certainly of much value for application in Internet marketing.

In the session, Kaushik started off  by quoting Jan Carlzon on the aggregation of marginal gains; “You cannot improve one thing by 1,000% but you can improve 1,000 little things by 1%” He emphasized the fixing of the many 1%s in order to build a foundation. Hence, with relevance to Internet marketing, the webinar will be focusing on the Company Website. He drew up 3 Outcomes to be expected of the Company Website:

1. Increase Revenue (Regardless of whether your business is a non-profit or for-profit)
2. Reduce Costs (Think about IT support costs, acquisition costs)
3. Improve Customer Satisfaction/Loyalty/Rentention

A web analytics tool such as Google Analytics usually has a built-in dashboard that displays a pie chart featuring the different demographics of your Company Website’s traffic e.g. Direct Traffic, Search Engines, Referring Sites and Others. This alone can sufficiently provide valuable information in measuring your marketing tactics. Kaushik also highlighted the Overall Conversion Rate – usually available in the Report on Google Analytics – which inform sthe user of traffic sources/websites/social streams that has gorwing value or profits. Meanwhile, data comparisons from website traffics and conversion rates also help in identifying potential market segments.

With a mere act of filling in your conversion, lead generation and franchisee application processes on Google Analytics and a ‘click’ on “Save Changes”, Google Analytics will collect the data in each step and you can see the results in the funnel visualization report, with constant updates by Google Analytics.

From more information, you may wish to check out the following video from Google Analytics.

An Example of a Conversion Funnel from Google Analytics

To further illustrate, the conversion funnel as seen above indicates that only about 17% of website traffic actually undergo conversion pinpointing either a potential website design flaw or process delay.

In the later segments of the webinar, Kaushik introduces the Customer Bounce Rate Metric as a helpful indicator of  number of visitors who leave your website entirely without making purchases. More tips on website design will be provided here as well.

Clearly, web analytics will pave the future in quantifying business investments in Internet marketing. Coupled with Google’s continuous drive to innovate new improvements, it is certainly worthwhile to apply Google Analytics free-of-charge!

Accumulating over a million users as of now, Google Voice - a web-based platform to manage your communications –  will soon revolutionize modern telephony by combining your regular phone service with the latest web technology, irregardless of what phone or carrier you use.

As seen in the figure and introduction video below, Google Voice allows one to communicate in much more ways than ever in telephony’s modern history.

To use Google Voice, you get the choice of using a Google number or non-Google number. Choosing to use a Google number while setting up Google Voice allows you to access a number of extra Google Voice features.  It is not possible to use your existing mobile number with all of Google Voice’s features at this time.

Choosing to use a non-Google number during Google Voice setup allows you to have access to Google voicemail and other select Google Voice features with your existing mobile number.

For more information, check out the Google Voice website to see the tabulated differences between using a Google number and non-Google number.

The revolutionary features of Google Voice include (For more information, you might want to check out Google Voice’s short but greatly informative and creative Feature Videos or http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice):

• Google Voice automatically transcribes your voicemails to text, allowing you to read your voicemail and search through past voicemails
• Use one number to selectively or ring all the phones at once
• Choose personalized voicemail greetings for different people
• Make international calls at very low rates (Calls can be initiated  from the web, your Google Voice number, or the Google Voice mobile app)
• Text messages sent to your Google Voice number can be configured to be sent to your email (You can reply on from your email account to save on outgoing fees)
• You can share voicemail messages with other people, just like emails
• You can also block unwanted callers
• You can now screen your callers before answering, listen in while the voicemail is being left, and ‘jump in’ to engage them
• Google Voice mobile app allows you to place calls featuring your Google Voice number as your outbound caller number, make cheap international calls, and VISUALLY ALTERNATE between voicemail messages.
• Conference calls are now easy with Google Voice on all phones (Just have the participants call your Google Voice number and you’ll be prompted to add them to the call)
• And more upcoming from the works (Sending SMS to multiple recipients, Google Chrome extension, send invites to friends, play voicemails within Gmail, receive & reply to SMS via email, Google Voice keyboard shortcuts to call & send SMS, changing your Google Voice number, etc)

However, Google Voice is currently only open to U.S. only but will be expanded to include other countries in the future, as seen in Google’s reply for a non-U.S. user.

Otherwise, sign in your Google account to experience this purported pinnacle of human communication.

This week’s Digital Life segment of Straits Times screamed mobile web, with the ongoing Mobile World Conference.

What would the web be without mobile and what would mobile be without the web?

Keep that question in mind, and think about how your WordPress site is developing. Here is where I’ll lead you to the path of enlightenment, with help from Srikanth on dailyblogtips.com, some WordPress mobile plugins we recommend: (more…)

Well, have you?

Google Buzz was released two days ago and already it has caused much buzz hype amongst the online community. Many early adopters; whether for enterprise purposes (like inculcating it into their branding strategies) or for personal use. (more…)

Creating a website is not just about compelling content, you also have to decide on strategic ad placement. What is most important to promote? How can you ensure it falls within a viewer’s immediate line of sight?

Considering the popularity of laptops as desktop computers, we know that browsers are not always full screen, with other things like toolbars and docks taking up space. Visitors do not always bother with scrolling down a page if it is not enticing enough. For me, this is an idea of a surfing consumer on a hot lazy day, sometimes what I feel when I troll through the Internet :

You get the idea.

On the other hand, imagine yourself as an online merchant, who is trying to sell a particular Product X. First thing’s first, you might choose to provide your company’s information on the home page, only placing the image of Product X in the middle of the page. Seems reasonable to you, you might not want to overwhelm your visitor from the get-go. But if your product is too far down the page (and i mean just a mere 100 pixels down), others may not see it when they first view your site.

Then the question is, how do you know how the majority of your visitors view your site?

This is when Google Browser Size comes to your rescue. Google Browser Size is “based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it.” For web designers, you can utilize this to minimize scrolling and ensure that your Product X is always prominent to the audience.

You can have a look at how your website’s propagating your information by keying in your company’s URL here. This is how it looks:

I really like how this works. It is simple to use and understand, any average Joe (or Jane) will be able to look at it and get an idea of the effectiveness of your website. Try using this tool, and contemplate with your web designer on how you can further improve your business’s advertising strategy. Knowing which section captures attention on the majority of your audience’s browsers will definitely prove useful in this discussion.

If you’re interested in learning more, read about Google Browser Size on the Google Code Blog.

Everybody knows YouTube. Everybody uses YouTube. YouTube surpassed 100 million viewers in March 2009, web video viewership just keeps on going.

Tens of thousands of businesses hinge on this fact, incorporating YouTube’s Brand Channel into their marketing strategy. A YouTube Brand Channel allows you to customize your own YouTube homepage with features like channel banner, background image, autoplay featured video and watch page banner. It’s easy to comprehend how brand channels have gained popularity; businesses get to hone their social marketing skills, just look at Nike, Pepsi or Victoria’s Secret.

The question is, after establishing all that, how would you get to monitor your brand channel? A pretty face proves useless unsubstantiated.

Solution: Google Analytics,it provides a more extensive track metric system. It’s not just YouTube Insight, with it you get to trace video views and user engagement,but data is limited.

With Google Analytics, channel owners inch one step closer to the consumers’ behavior, they see how long visitors stay, number of repeat visits, bounce rate and page views per visitor. The data is tapered down to where viewers are geographically, and even the languages they speak.

When you know your audience, there’s no doubt you can fine-tune your marketing methodologies better.

If you’re a brand channel owner, start tinkering with Google Analytics. If you’re new to YouTube brand channels, read here.

Anything else, just contact us.

Creating a website for your business is equivalent to adopting a first name for a new-born. It is the pivotal point of your identity, it sets the tone for the embarkment of a journey and more importantly, shapes the perception of how others should view you.

To put it simply, here are some reasons why you should build a corporate site:

- Gain Credibility : give customers assurance by providing an informative background of your company.

- Easy Reference : Create the first stop for customers to go to for readily accessible information. Make the website an extension of your business card; a domain name is easy to store in human’s memory, compared to an 8-digit contact number. Consider it as backing up your other forms of advertising.

- Branding Strategy : give your company personality, by integrating colors, pictures and designs into a site. Your website is expressive of  your company’s own character, it’s like putting a face to a name. Enhance your visual positioning, shape how they remember you.

-  Powerful Marketing Tool. The Internet can single handedly win all other forms of media when it comes to product advertisement. It reaches out to a wider audience, unencumbered by physical placement of the ad. The more people get to see, the more people want to buy. Drive awareness along the entire spectrum of a product’s buying cycle, as shown in the following diagram :

- Cost Effective : With traditional forms of media, advertising comes at very high rates, take a look at how much users pay for a small section in a local newspaper. With a website, limitless amount of information is delivered 24/7 at your discretion and customers can absorb the information at their own time and pace.

These are our top reasons to why every enterprise should have a website. Interested in hearing more?

Contact us!

Some of you might remember the Storm virus attack of 2007, the worm attacked with force, causing a rippling payload spam effect that continued for several months. Security companies eventually kept up with the aftermath of the attack.

According to the recent spam data powered by Postini however, 2009 has once again seen a significant surge in payload spam activity, making the 2007 attack seem miniscule in comparison.

With the resurgance of old techniques like image spamming and payload viruses, the large file size causes a bandwidth burden, which ultimately impedes the network speed. Companies end up upgrading to larger email capacities to combat this spam phenomenon.

Users beware : organizations not only receive spam from foreign sites, but internally within their own domain as well. The stealthiness of these types of spam makes it difficult to filter insidious emails, security systems need to consistently battle the severity of these attacks.

Postini data centers have managed to block more than 100 million viruses everyday in the alps of this 2009 attack. With up-to-date monitoring on spam activity, Postini allows their users to be rid of email disasters, allowing them to focus on the productivity of their environment. See how other users have benefited from Postini’s services here.

PointStar is able to provide you with this anti-spam solution, with Postini’s security included in our Google Apps Premier Edition. Allow us to give you a hand with grappling with your spam disasters, contact us now!

One of the most popular activities on the web is the playing of Flash based games.

Well designed flash based games can be highly addictive.  Why not use it to your advantage?

Flash games have been proven to be so sticky that visitors literally stick around for hours.

What could be a better way to expose your brand than to have a branded casual gaming experience for your own site?

Imagine a customized Flash game that’s relevant to the content on your site. Imagine having it branded with your own logo!

Great flash games are not only addictive, but they are also viral. People want to introduce good games to their friend and that is a great way for you to maximize your marketing dollars.

Talk to us today to find out how you can get the right rebranded Flash games on your site to kick start some viral love from your users!