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.

For those unaware, Google Buzz is a feature integrated into GMail and it works as a social networking tool, very much like Facebook or Twitter.

Each user can create a profile with status updates and he can choose to “follow” his friends by searching either for their name or email address. You can attach photos and links in your status updates, along with Twitter-like “@Reply” tags. The annoying thing about this is each time you are tagged, you get “buzzed” in your GMail with every reply received to the post.

What does make it different from Facebook is that Google is able to extract your contacts from GMail, to suggest for you to follow these friends, which saves the hassle of searching for all the people you know. The integration with your GMail account actually really makes it easier. No set up is required, this feature was automatically updated and added to the user’s account.

Integration with other sites is also possible:

Along with mobility, which Google often advocates.

Google Buzz will continue to be rolled out to Google Apps Enterprise and Education editions in the next few months. Users of these editions would just have to wait and perhaps toy around with it in their personal accounts; the upside is, when it’s released, the Buzz interface would probably be a more pleasant experience anyway. After all, in the two days that it’s been functioning, Google has already tweaked it according to response from the public, which honestly, is pretty sweet.

A lot of controversy surrounding Google Buzz still, would its privacy issue get in the way of its impending success? Has Google tweaked it according to our expectations?

….Did the Iranian government ban GMail because of Google Buzz? #halfkidding #no_offence #imjustablogger

Try out Google Buzz, and give us your opinion!

I was enjoying a nice little pre-bedtime snack last night when I channel surfed and chanced upon Channel NewsAsia’s technology segment, “That’s IT with Timothy Goh“. It is at this point that my geeky ears picked up on mentions of “Android Apps”, “Development”, “SDK”, “Eclipse” and most importantly the phrase, “easy to create an app with these steps”.

So I tried to diligently follow these steps until I couldn’t keep up and finally found myself lost in the different screenshots of directories.

For those who can identify with this experience, you’d know it’s similar to how you watch the lifestyle food channels with its “easy to cook” recipes. It’s hardly ever a 30-minute meal, I don’t get my food in 5 minutes, that’s merely brilliant marketing, Rachel Ray.

Same for these mobile apps, especially with the upcoming Android Tour, it would be pretty exciting to develop or present your own app to other like-minded engineers at the event. Seeing how the Android phones are creating so much buzz right now, creating your own app for your business or otherwise would be more than a sound idea.

I would say the problem is, to back up your creativity with the technical skills and a DIY, develop it yourself (full pun intended) approach might not be the way to go from past personal experiences.

And this is where we come in, PointStar is now offering Android App Development Services with an experienced team of Java engineers to architect and develop a mobile app for you.

We have a full fledged team with user interface designers who can help you create and launch an app. Give us a call, or contact us here!

Google unveiled some significant changes that they’ve made to their search services yesterday at their huge demo. But the biggest trick that they pulled out of their sleeve (which I found rather revolutionary), was the uncovering of Google Lab’s Google Goggles, a search to the world using images.

Gadgetell explains that it basically is a mobile app, where you can snap pictures of anything on your device and Google Goggles will analyze the picture taken and bring up any information on your image. So let us say you take a picture of a book, your mobile device would scan the picture and return Google search links that include information of the author, or places you can go to purchase this book. As with everything else, there are limitations, Google Goggles labs would not be able to help with pictures of animals, furniture and apparel. (It also only currently available for Android.)

A short video from Google that might help :

And a demonstration to give you an even better idea :

I say kudos to Google, as they never stop at innovation, with this continuous integration with mobile usage and their services. We already know there is an increasing prevalence in Internet mobile usage as mobile data traffic continues to surge in October , at the fastest pace in past seven months. Apple’s iPhone has changed our perception of utilizing the Internet on our mobiles. Since its concpetion in 2007, the melee of mobile vendors scrambling to rival the mobile Web experience has been countless, but Google Android is already threateningly close to superseding the iPhone. If Google continues to pull out these newfangled technological tricks, it’ll just be a matter of time before they dominate the mobile market.

Google’s Postini services gives its enterprise applications, Google Apps, a bionic arm by introducing more robust capabilities with Message Log Search, Message Analyzer and its Filter Status Dashboard.

Message Log Search, originally scheduled for availability in late November, was recently announced to be targeted for a later release. Message Log Search would allow users to better monitor how inbound and outbound messages were processed; whether they were delivered, quarantined, archived, encrypted etc. It can also narrow the messages to a specific sender, recipient, domain or IP address. Users will be able to run searches on this data using a variety of criteria and and queries, with results pertaining to details for group or individual messages.

Message Log Search will then store your information in a log (though it does not store your actual messages). If you want to save these results for a later analysis, you’ll be able to export a .csv file.

An example of the Message Log Search results,

Message Analyzer feature has now an updated version with Realtime Filter Status Dashboard. This dashboard includes information on the latest updates to the Postini spam filters and botnet protection. It will enable you to view the progress of these updates from the Message Analyzer.

As seen below, you can expand an item in the Dashboard for a description,

You can read more details in Google Postini Services Release notes.

Note that Google Postini Services is available for Google Apps Premier Edition.

Quick as a bat, “Going Google” campaign has already reached the sunny shores of Singapore.

Here are pictures of some messages spotted in Changi Airport terminals :

Spiffy isn’t it? If you’ve Gone Google and want the world to know it, announce your status with these too :

(These badges are my personal favorite!)

You can check the above out at Google Store.

If you want to join the 2 million businesses that have Gone Google and are interested in Going Google too, do explore your options at google.com.sg/appsatwork. (and seek our help here!)

Few have noticed that PageRank distribution feature has gone missing. Many are distracted by the newly released labs feature, whether Google has timed it perfectly so as not to spark controversy, we do not know. But we know for sure PageRank values in Webmaster Tools have totally been removed. This is confirmed by Google employee Susan Moska, in a Google Webmaster thread:

• “We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. “

PageRank is what Google uses to measure the importance of a web page. One way PR works is by a voting system, pages with the most links leading to them get the most votes. These pages are more highly ranked, effectively deemed to be bettter “resources” and have more weight in voting as compared to others.

However, Google has also been encouraging users not to place too much emphasis on PageRank, to focus on a more accurate metrics system like Google Analytics. This isn’t too much of a surprise to me since they were seeking feedback on removing PageRank from the infamous toolbar in 2007.

Many mixed messages; the funny thing is, they have removed PageRank data from the webmaster tools, but have left PageRank remaining in the toolbar. But the Google toolbar after all, is a “powerhouse of personalized functionality” according to CNet, and a hot favorite among users.

Shouldn’t Google either update its PageRank data, or remove it from the toolbar altogether?

The message they are sending leaves me dumfounded, and seems rather …cryptic even.

What do you think?

Setting up an online store actually puts your business in good contention with brick and mortar shops. You are open 24/7, customers can shop from home, expanded customer base, unlimited geographical reach. Sales should just keep coming in, or does it?

If you administer an E-commerce site and want a continuous trail of returning customers and revenue to ensue, you should note these 15 big No-Nos :

• 1. Limited product information
• Detailed information will provide a multi-dimensional experience for the consumer. Failure to engage users will just encourage them to seek for other ecommerce sites.
• 2. Hiding contact information
• Consumers need a credible website in order for them to entrust credit sensitive information willingly. Contact information needs to be easily viewed so consumers know who exactly they are purchasing from.
• 3. A cumbersome checkout process
• A lengthy procedure would just bring about a higher probability of consumers leaving your site without completing their purchase. consumers are enticed by hassle free transactions.
• 4. Requiring an account to order
• This ties in with the third point, offer customers an option of registering at the end of an order process. This makes placing future orders easier as well.
• 5. An inefficient site search engine
• You might offer a large variety of products but the consumer needs to be able to sieve out information according to their needs. Your site search engine results should group products by different categories or features.
• 6. A lacking customer support system
• It is all about customizing to a user’s needs. If an e-commerce site fails to deliver a system that caters to individual needs, their clientele would be limited.
• 7. Tiny product images
• An e-commerce site needs to match up to the physical experience of being in a store. When a consumer is unable to visualize the product, it is likely they will dismiss it altogether.
• 8. Single product image
• Multiple images offering different angles would provide more intricate details of your product. Consumers like to know exactly what they are purchasing.
• 9. Poor shopping cart design
• Users need to be able to add multiple products while simultaneously revising the quantities and options. If navigating around this is difficult, consumers would hesitate to proceed to the checkout process.
• 10. Restricted payment options
• Different folks, different strokes. Do not limit your site to MasterCard or Visa, offer alternatives like PayPal. This will optimize the number of orders you get.
• 11. Not including related products
• Consumers in the buying process might still be doing their product research. They might start out looking for a specific product, but end up reviewing others. Look to increase your sales quota by suggesting related products on the description page.
• 12. Higgledy-piggledy navigation
• Confusing navigation is just plain unnerving. Categorial and navigational aspects need to be carefully planned before providing a product catalog.
• 13. Not including shipping rates
• Consumers would want to factor in all costs before making a purchase, immediacy is the key. Excluding this is almost equivalent to leaving the price unavailable.
• 14. Vague store policies
• Being upfront from the get-go would save you many headaches when consumers start facing difficulties in the later stages.
• 15. Not putting focus on the products
• The design of your website might distract you from your primary goal. You aim to sell, showcasing your products is important but do not get carried away with unnecessary frills.

If I just threw a wrench into the works (or shall we say 15 monkey wrenches into your e-commerce creation), placed you further from your goals, maybe you should wash your hands off this, leave it up to us instead.

We can help you with your e-commerce website problems, contact us!

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!