We arrived at work this morning to find a rather large rat sitting outside. Road workers had left a pile of sand in preparation for laying paving slabs. A cunning sculptor under the pseudonym “Ace of Spades” came along and turned it into a rat. Our security told us it took her about one hour to sculpt.

For more information visit SANDALISM.

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Adobe, the company behind products such as Acrobat (which is used for PDF files) and the players that allow users to view Flash files, has anounced a partnership with two of the major search engines to make it easier for Flash files (SWF) to be crawled and indexed. According to Adobe:

Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo! to enable one of the largest fundamental improvements in web search results by making the Flash file format (SWF) a first-class citizen in searchable web content. This will increase the accuracy of web search results by enabling top search engines to understand what’s inside of RIAs and other rich web content created with Adobe Flash technology and add that relevance back to the HTML page.

As you may or may not know, up until now content contained within such Flash files has been more or less invisible to search engines and, therefore, to the millions of people who use them as their primary method of finding information on the web. As an agency which offers both web design (including some amazing Flash work) as well as search engine optimisation, we were very excited by this news. However it’s not necessarily quite as ground-breaking as it may at first sound.

As Vanessa Fox points out over at Search Engine Land this news only relates to text & links contained in Flash files:

[A lot of content in Flash files is] made up of images, video, and animation, and none of that will be surfaced in search results with this advancement…Everything else is still a black box.

Vanessa also points out that this new development also won’t help when:

Flash implementations dynamically load text as the user interacts with the application, but the URL remains the same.

In these instances, whilst the engine may now be able to follow the interactions to a certain point, when the user clicks on the search result they will be directed to the start of the file and will then have to navigate to the point they’re looking for. So, even with this development, our advice would still be that you should ensure that any & all content on your site can be found at a distinct URL.

We’re already spending quite a lot of time working on how we can achieve the impact & engagement that Flash often brings, at the same time as optimising content for search engines (and users with accessibility difficulties of course) and have had quite a lot of success; often by using tools such as Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) which we use for the headlines on the posts on this site, or ensuring that all the content can be found on unique URLs. That said, anything that makes this a little bit easier is certainly to be welcomed.

Header image: michelphoto53 on Flickr | No Comments

We’re very pleased that the dothetest ad for Transport for London, created by our friends at WCRS, and for which we handled the digital marketing (resulting in over 5 million views online in the space of one month) won a Gold Lion at last week’s Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. It really is a great ad, and one that we’re very proud to have been involved with.

For any of you who haven’t seen it (where have you been) you can watch it below. I may have given the game away in the headline but to be fair, even though I’ve watched the ad countless times I still often miss ‘it.

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been using the BBC iPlayer via my cable TV service. Although it’s not so intuitive navigating with a remote, it’s still a lot nicer ‘on demand’ experience than watching on my laptop.

This creates an interesting overlap - I’m getting BBC content (which is currently paid for via the license fee) over Virgin infrastructure (which I pay for directly). Notionally I’m getting this content as part of Virgin’s TV offering - though in reality there’s little difference in how the content is being delivered compared to downloading the programmes using my broadband service and watching on my computer.

So with 4OD, iPlayer and now skyPlayer is broadcast TV on the way out? There’s already a vast amount of ‘content’ available via YouTube et al, additionally other content providers such as the The Guardian are weighing in with video reports on their homepage (there’s obviously a whole black market of P2P downloads, but that’s all whole different can of worms). If most of my TV viewing is ‘on demand’ should I cancel my pay TV subscription and just up my bandwidth? Obviously some content needs to be in real time, such as live news and sport for example - but a vast array of programming isn’t really that ‘urgent’. The interesting thing with the skyPlayer is that Sky (in the UK particularly) is both an infrastructure and content provider. What becomes of all those dishes if you can just pull down sky content as and when you need it?

Thrown into the mix is the investment in Sky+ (and V+) type technology that these hybrid content / infrastructure providers have made. Now if the skyPlayer had Sky+ type functionality (so that it ‘knew’ that I liked a certain type of program) and could recommend content, then I really wouldn’t need my Tivo clone. Additionally, how the broadcast spectrum is being used (and sold) starts to look outdated. Do we really need to be broadcasting 80s sitcoms and time shifted history programmes (UKTV History +1!), when that content is available ‘on demand’.

The downside of all this is that I have to jump from one bespoke, closed protocol ‘on demand’ system to another to see if my favourite programme is available - as well as scouring youTube and Vimeo HD for any UGC that might take my fancy as well. This isn’t looking very attractive. I’m going to need some kind of aggregator, a Netvibes or Google reader for my TV viewing options - or an open standard for rights managed online video content. I don’t really see either of those things happening any time soon.

Header image: Walt Jabsco on flickr | No Comments

A very short post today. LinkedIn, the social network for business people, have announced a new round of funding that values the company at $1 billion. According to The Guardian:

LinkedIn is … understood to have received takeover interest, but decided instead to retain its independence. Chief executive Dan Nye said yesterday that his hope is that the company will, “at some point” seek a flotation .

Unlike some other dotcom businesses which have received eye-watering valuations, LinkedIn actually makes a profit, by selling adverts on its site and charging users for some extra features.

Many people may think that this is still a very high valuation for a site with revenues of around $100 million and as I’m not a financial analyst, I can’t really comment. What I will say is that this is something we predicted last year, and shows that social networks can be successful businesses, when they have well thought out business models and provide real value to the user (kind of obvious really, isn’t it?) | No Comments

The Guardian is reporting on an upcoming legal battle between the estate of CS Lewis, author of the much loved Narnia series of children’s books, and Richard Saville-Smith, a father who allegedly bought the domain narnia.mobi as a birthday present for his son.

According to The Guardian, Saville-Smith received a very large dossier (128 pages) from lawyers acting on behalf of CS Lewis Ltd. Essentially the dossier claims that Saville-Smith:

bought [the domain] in bad faith with the aim of making money from the Narnia name in a common internet practice known as cyber-squatting.

Saville-Smith denies the claims, and is apparently intent on fighting the legal action, potentially resulting in a hearing at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) which handles such cases.

The case raises a couple of issues. The first is the importance of acquiring all domains relating to a brand, if you want to avoid such costly court cases. When launching a new brand, the first thing that you should do is make sure that you snap up all the relevant domains, including international ones (or cc TLDs as they’re known) if you ever plan to take the brand international. It seems like in this case, CS Lewis Ltd simply took their eye off the ball. According to The Guardian:

[Saville-Smith] says he bought the domain legitimately in September 2006 after the expiry of a three-month “sunrise period” - a time when owners of a trademark can buy up all names relating to their name ahead of a general sale.

D’oh, or, to use a more internet friendly term, FAIL.

In this instance there is also the danger of negative PR for CS Lewis Ltd if it is found that the domain really was bought as a present for a child, and not in a bid to capitalise on the popularity of the Narnia series. I’m sure that it is of course complete coincidence that this week sees the release of Prince Caspian, the 2nd film in the Narnia series.

The other interesting point here, is whether a .mobi domain is actually worth all of this hassle. Now I can completely understand that CS Lewis Ltd simply don’t want any Narnia domains to be outside of their control (which raises the point of why they didn’t simply claim it when they had the chance). However recent developments have made the huge rush to secure .mobi domains a couple of years ago look slightly premature.

If you look at how many major internet brands handle mobile phone browsing, you’ll notice that .mobi domains appear to have fallen out of favour. Both Facebook & Twitter utilise sub-domains, so they can be accessed at m.facebook.com & m.twitter.com respectively. And with the rise of smart phones, such as the Nokia N95 or iPhone, the browsing experience is so much better than on older generations of phones that it may not even be necessary to have a specialist mobile domain at all.

What’s certain though is that as long as brands don’t pay as much attention to what’s happening as they do online, issues like this will continue to crop up. And it’s also certain that whilst they’re meant for children, I’ll be one of those at the front of the queue for Prince Caspian when it comes out on Friday.

Header image: jelleprins on flickr | No Comments

Yahoo’ announcement that it was rejecting Microsoft’s long-running attempt at a take-over came as a bit of shock. Just 2 weeks ago an MSN staff member was telling me that the deal was all but done and that when Yahoo! had finished grabbing headlines then both companies would get down to business and put together a serious challenge to Google.

Imagine my further surprise then when it is announced that Yahoo! was going to enter a partnership allowing Google to serve ads against Yahoo’s search results in the US & Canada. While at first I was suspicious of the deal, only having been vaguely interested in the trial that was conducted earlier this year, as I read more into it the deal began to make sense.

As someone who has to work with all the major search technologies, there is no getting around the fact that Google’s advertising platform is easier to use and optimise than any of the other platforms (including Yahoo’s Panama).

However then it began to dawn on me that this is it. The winner has been decided by Yahoo! bowing out of the race.

In agreeing to use Google’s technology (and therefore pricing structure) Yahoo! has essentially given up on developing a better one (no matter what they may say). As such, whether you were a fan of Google’s PPC model or not is no longer relevant because now it is the industry standard. So much for innovation – there is no longer an incentive.

Whereas the merger of Yahoo! and Microsoft would have had the potential to lead to new types of PPC pricing and models, now we will just have to wait to see what Google deems appropriate.

The world of PPC just got that little more boring…

Header image by Orin Optiglot on flickr | No Comments

The Guardian reported yesterday on the latest figures from the Advertising Association (note, PDF link) on the UK advertising market. As with just about every other such report for the last few years, it shows online advertising in rude health.

[Online] spending up a dramatic 39.5% - year on year - to just over £3bn. Online advertising, which was the fastest-growing sector, accounted for 16% of total UK ad spend last year.

In contrast, TV only grew by 2.3%, although it does still sit at a lofty £4.6bn. So does this back-up suggestions that 2008 could be the year that online finally overtakes TV to become the 2nd biggest advertising medium in the UK (behind the combined spend on national & regional press & magazine advertising)? Well, not entirely.

A simple bit of maths shows that if last year’s growth rates continue, then 2008 will see internet spend on £4.2bn and TV on £4.7bn. And whilst it would be rather foolhardy to suggest that growth will continue at exactly the same rate, it seems likely that online will continue to grow at a much faster rate than any of the other mediums, especially if the troubling financial outlook makes ROI even more important than ever.

There are some who do think that 2008 will be the year that TV is left for dust by online, The Guardian amongst them. Below you can see a still form rather whizzy little animation they put together, tracking the inexorable growth of Google (which for many, is the internet, and certainly accounts for a massive proportion of spend online):

According to this, 2008 will not only see online beat TV, but Google outstrip national newspapers, which really would be incredible.

And in fact, it may well be that this has happened already. Because, again according to The Guardian, SEO in the UK is estimated to be worth around £2.2bn and SEO, due to the fact that it is often done in house, and is not always classed as advertising (although in many ways it is) is therefore often not counted in these sort of figures. And if that is the case, it would put online advertising/marketing spend at over £5bn, leaving it with only the combined press total to beat - and wouldn’t that be a headline for the newspapers?

Header image: anna carol on flickr | No Comments

As part of the Engine Group, with its Our Little Bit CSR policy, we at Altogether Digital are always on the look-out for ways of doing our little bit. And via a Tweet by Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch UK, I found Kiva.

Basically Kiva is a site which takes the idea of microfinance or microcredit, as popularised by
Muhammad Yunus (who won a Nobel Peace prize for his troubles), whereby people in the developing world are given small loans which allow them to take control of their lives, and mixes it with the collaborative nature of Web 2.0. Essentially Kiva allows you to loan a small amount of money to an entrepreneur in the developing world, so that they no longer have to rely on charity.

The site has partnered with a host of existing microfinance institutions, who are unable to reach out to the global audience Kiva puts them in touch with, so that the loans go directly to those striving to improve their lives. And, being a fully online operation, the site allows you to pay using PayPal; a system most people will be familiar with from eBay - this of course makes the whole process incredibly easy.

Obviously, as Kiva point out, as with any loan there is a risk that you may lose your money.

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

That said, if you’re planning to make a donation to charity anyway, where you are guaranteed not to get your money back, the donations being requested ($25 or £12.66) seem like a price worth paying in order to be able to bring to reality the age-old proverb.

Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.

Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime

In this case the proverb could probably be amended to:

Loan a man enough for a boat, a fishing rod & a stall, and you’ve set him up for life.

I should at this point mention that we have not yet tested Kiva, so can take no accountability for anything relating to the site. But it’s a great cause and is worth shouting about.

Header image: My Hobo Soul on flickr | No Comments

Well, we’ve been a bit quiet recently, since our big move from Soho to Fitzrovia. However, it’s not just because we’ve been busy unpacking boxes and trying to make our swanky new offices feel like home, we’ve also been ridiculously busy working as well. Apart from launching new or updated sites for some of our partner agencies, and our parent group, we’ve also been working all hours on a few projects we can’t actually anounce quite yet, but which we’re very excited about all the same.

Add to that the fact that, in keeping with our Magic Penny theory of content distribution, we’ve been supplying the likes of SEOmoz, e-consultancy & Search Engine Land, and you start to see why this blog has been a bit quiet of late. Still, with Summer finally here, we’ll be keeping things nice & fresh, with our views on everything from the latest ads to the new exhibition at The Tate.

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