Snowcrashing

The Day The Iphone Stopped Ruling The World

Posted on 06. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

About time! Google’s attack to the Iphone brainwashing of the masses has started. This morning, Google and Verizon Wireless announced an agreement to deliver mobile applications and devices. The companies will develop several Android-based devices preloaded with apps.

The first new phones are expected at market within weeks. Two will be released before the end of the year and they will support Google Voice and have Google’s Android Market preinstalled.

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Crowd-Sourcing Translations

Posted on 01. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

The monopoly of English in the Internet is long time gone. The Internet penetration in non-English speaking countries is through the roof, and tools to help webmasters and site owners go local are spreading very quickly.

Today Google announced the introduction of a new translation widget that, on the fly, displays the content in the visitor preferred tongue. It is a no-brainer to install it, a simple snippet of code that you can put anywhere on your site. The quality of the translations is not the highest, nonetheless this is a free and  quick way to get your site, or a rough idea of it, spread in roughly 50 languages.

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Video: Seth Godin On The Internet As A Radio for Ideas And Freemium.

Posted on 29. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

How do you get people to use your free stuff? And how do you move people from free to premium?

Seth Godin’s 3 minute answer:

Create Quality > Get Attention> Connect >Monetize= Free to Premium

One example is musicians: the more music they give away for free, the more money they can make from live gigs and records.

Another example is Seth himself: by giving away for free his “Unleash The Idea Virus” book, he ended-up selling more full-priced hard-cover books than his previous book.  Readers check the book and if they decide they like it (i.e. if there’s quality to it), they will buy it and they did. No one buys business books anymore without knowing what they are about.

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Getting Ready For Digital Advertising 2010

Posted on 24. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

According to a forecast from ad firm GroupM, the Internet will account for 15% of global ad spending in 2010, hitting $65bn annually, as advertisers continue to shift their budget from traditional media to digital

• 6% of it will go to Mobile which is expected to experience the biggest increase (+19%) as mobile apps continue to spread;
• 43% will be allocated to search, which continues its steady growth;
• 34% should be the share of display ads, the only sector who might see a decrease of -1%

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What Are You Telling Me?

Posted on 16. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Sometimes companies are forthcoming about their plans and products.  Think of the new Ipod Nano and of Steve Jobs words. “We’ve seen video explode in the last few years,” he said, showing a picture of a Flip video camera. “Here’s one, a very popular one, four gigabytes of memory, $149, and this market has really exploded, and we want to get in on this.”  Plain and simple.

Other times, companies speak in riddles. So you know that, when you’re using their service, you’re contributing to the making of something different than what you’ve been told. And in the near future, you might find yourself in a totally different reality.

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