Posts tagged Killer
Finding killer SEO keywords for content marketing: Part 1 – Brafton (blog)
Jan 24th
 Brafton (blog) |
Finding killer SEO keywords for content marketing: Part 1
Brafton (blog) When was the last time you updated your SEO keyword list? Coming up with competitive keywords is essential to web visibility and content marketing. Choosing keywords is one of the most commonly accepted components of an SEO or content marketing … New Research From WordStream Reveals Top 10 Industries Contributing to … |
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Google Currents is No Flipboard Killer
Dec 8th
Ending months of rumors, Google today launched its own personalized news-reading app for tablets and smartphones. Google Currents, as it’s called, is an app for iOS and Android that presents content from magazines, news sites and blogs in a format that’s far more digestible on mobile devices.
It lands in a somewhat crowded space occupied by offerings from Yahoo and AOL as well as from startups like Flipboard, Flud, Pulse and Zite, which was acquired by CNN earlier this year. Even before today’s launch Google Currents was billed as a potential “Flipboard killer.” After taking Google’s new app for a spin, we’re not convinced it poses a credible threat.
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To be sure, Google Currents is a much more ideal way to consume written content from the Web on a tablet or smartphone. Its design is clean and to-the-point and the selection of content is virtually limitless.
A Decent – But Not Mindblowing – User Experience
When you first open up the app, it asks you to sign in with a Google account. Some may not be comfortable with this requirement, but we imagine that, in theory, it can help the app learn more about what content is best for you. As a bonus, it automatically pulls in your Google Reader feeds, which can add to your library of content one by one. Still, it would be nice if Google would let you use the app without logging in, or at least gave a clear explanation as to why doing so is required.
Once inside, you can browse content from a variety of pre-selected partners or search for just about any public RSS feed to add. We searched for one of our local alternative weekly newspapers, and sure enough Currents found all of the RSS feeds they publish.
Each publication has an “Add for free” button next to it, which suggests that charging for access to some content could be one way that Google and its publishing partners plan on monetizing the app in the future.
The article pages each have the sort of stripped-down, no frills layouts we’ve come to expect from this kind of application. Beyond that, there aren’t too many bells and whistles here. While Google Currents offers a better user experience for reading content than a tablet’s Web browser does, the standard for this kind of app has already been set pretty high.
Lackluster Social Features
Compared to its predecessors, the app is short on social integration. When you’re reading an article, for example, hitting the share icon pulls up a menu with three options: +1, Email and “More.” It’s under “More” that you can find options like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instapaper. In other words, all the most beloved social services the Web has to offer are buried two taps away, while sharing on Google’s own fledging social network is, naturally, the first option.
Part of the appeal of Flipboard is that it hooks into Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr and a variety of other social networks and pulls content from them to build out a sort of socially-curated magazine. That’s not what Google is going for with this app. Instead, it works more like a glorified RSS reader with popular media brands hanging in the front window.
At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to comment on articles. That’s not typically built all the way into this kind of app, but at least on Flipboard you can easily tap through to the original article on the Web if you want to chime in with a comment.
Awesome Tools For Publishers
What Google’s app lacks in terms of user experience and social integration it may well make up for with its self-serve tools for publishers. Google Currents Producer lets bloggers and news site publishers build out and customize their presence on the app. This includes adding custom RSS feeds and content sections, ingesting YouTube videos and customizing the look and feel of the publication.
The customization options include adding branding and other images, pulling in social network updates and even fine-tuning the design of article pages with custom CSS. From the same browser-based management console, one can also preview how their Currents module will look on a variety of devices. If a basic, on-screen preview isn’t enough, they also offer one-time use QR codes that allow the module to be tested within the actual app running on a supported device.
Another advantage of this being a Google product is that it integrates directly with Google Analytics, which allows publishers to collect page view data, something Flipboard and its competitors don’t currently support.
These tools are really powerful and they’re the kind of thing that many publishers would pay for, especially if they were available as a white-label way to build out their own stand-alone native or Web apps for tablets and smartphones.
Overall, Google Currents is a start. When compared to existing products, it doesn’t quite shine. For Android users who are still waiting to see what all the Flipboard-related buzz is about, this is definitely a viable alternative. That said, Google could stand to learn more from its newfound competitors, who for their part, could steal a page or two from Google’s own playbook when it comes to catering to publishers’ needs.
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Yahoo’s Livestand Looks Really Nice, But It’s No Flipboard Killer
Nov 4th
Yahoo is getting super-serious about the role tablets will play in its future content strategy. On Tuesday, they launched IntoNow, an impressive social TV app for the iPad that marries the check-in functionality of GetGlue with the real-time content identification of Shazam. The next day, the company pushed out LiveStand, another iPad app, this one in the tradition of personalized news reading apps like Flipboard, Zite and AOL’s Editions.
The app, which comes in advance of Google’s own rumored offering, is pretty well-designed. It has less content sources than many existing players, but what it does have is formatted very nicely.
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One of the first things you’ll notice about Livestand is that it’s built to support multiple users. For families who share an iPad or other tablet, that feature will be appreciated. An app that displays personalized content is only really useful to its original user, and lots of families share tablets. The feature won’t be necessary for everyone, but it’s nice to know it’s there.
Pretty Layouts, But Limited Content to Fill Them
Rather than being a direct copy of the much beloved Flipboard, Livestand crosses that popular app with something more like AOL’s Editions. It’s a personalized content app, but it doesn’t pull content from your friends on Twitter and Facebook, nor does it let you plug in any old RSS feed your heart could ever desire. Instead, Yahoo has launched with a list of content partners, whose articles and blog posts are formatted in an attractive, magazine-style layout. From that list, which is anchored heavily by Yahoo’s own content properties, you can pick and choose sources that suit your fancy.
In putting it through its paces, we noticed a few minor areas that could use improvement. In some cases, the app only loads the first image in a given post. That’s unfortunate, because additional artwork could help make the lovely article detail pages look even lovelier. It’s downright unhelpful when the post we’re trying to read contains an infographic.
We hesitate to be too harsh, though. The thing did just launch yesterday, and on the whole it’s pretty solid.
For users who don’t necessarily want to trick their news-reading app out with any content source imaginable, Livestand is a worthwhile product. Users who are already happily settled in to an app like Flipboard, Zite or Pulse are probably going to stay there.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SEO Killer! Google is the Primary Suspect – Technorati
Oct 19th
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SEO Killer! Google is the Primary Suspect
Technorati SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the primary way to drive traffic to your website. It is what facilitates you coming up in search results and therefore facilitates people going to your website. But Google might be trying to kill your SEO. … SEO technology software provider gShift Labs first to deliver YouTube rankings … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Why Google Plus Hangouts is the Killer App: Docs
Sep 21st
Google Plus got a bunch of new features today, many of them involving Hangouts, the video chat feature. This is not the only social network with video chat in town, but Hangouts always had some stand-out features. First of all, they can be public, so anyone can see one in their stream and join in, which is a very honest interpretation of the word “social.” They also support two-way chat for up to 10 people, which can be chaotic, but often in a fun way.
Today’s update brought Hangouts to mobile devices, and it added “On Air” mode to allow users to broadcast to the public (once On Air opens to everyone, that is). All these features sound like fun. But the killer app on Google Plus is more about work than play. Google Docs is now available live over Hangouts, making live, face-to-face collaboration possible on the Web for free.
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Making Stuff Together
With screensharing and a shared sketchpad, and especially with Docs, Google Plus is now a platform for making stuff together, face-to-face. It’s the first Plus feature that’s categorically different than anything Facebook can do. Facebook surely has a bunch of exciting things to announce this week, but there’s no chance any of them will go in this direction. Google Docs is it as far as cloud-powered collaboration goes – outside of the pricey enterprise market – and that team is killing it lately with new features. Google Plus Hangouts are now a natural place for people to work remotely together. Can you believe that these capabilities are free? There aren’t even ads on it yet!
Plus for the Enterprise?
So, does that mean enterprise collaboration suites like Citrix or WebEx are in danger? Probably not. For one thing, unfortunately, Plus access for Google Apps accounts is not among the first 100 features, so Google’s actual enterprise customers are still locked out. Presumably, though, that access will come, and while it won’t be free, the Google Apps suite is pretty darn affordable by enterprise standards. Are the Hangouts tools powerful enough? Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for the vast majority of work tasks. Can Google Plus change corporate culture? That’s a good question, and it depends whether Google wants to take the product in that direction.
Best of all, though: Google also began to open the Hangouts API to developers today, so independent geniuses everywhere can start expanding the possibilities.
Would you use Google Plus Hangouts for work? Let us know in the comments.
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2 Books Offer Killer Social PR, Facebook Ad Tactics
Aug 17th
If the social media book fits; buy it, download it, read it and share it. This summer two noteworthy books hit the search and social scene: “The Social Media #ProBook” and “Killer Facebook Ads.”
The “Social Media ProBook” (#ProBook), by Eloqua a…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
HP TouchPad is Clever, Not a Killer
Jul 19th
It pains me to say this, as I was very excited to try HP’s TouchPad, but the combination of the webOS mobile operating system packaged in the form factor of the TouchPad tablet is far from being any sort of iPad killer. That’s not to say that webOS doesn’t have its perks – for example, the fast app switching involving stacks of “cards” you can swipe through on the homescreen, system-wide notifications that appear at the top right with just the right amount of interruption, a nifty “touch to share” feature that lets you move content between a Palm Pre and TouchPad.
But everything that’s great about webOS comes in a heavy, chunky, plastic-y and cheap feeling TouchPad. It’s a disappointing experience that detracts from the great features of the operating system. And this is only one of the problems with the tablet – it also has issues with its Web browser, Flash, a still paltry app catalog and more.
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A Chunky, Heavy TouchPad
To be fair, the TouchPad is only a bit heavier than the original iPad (1.6 lbs vs. 1.5 for the iPad), but it’s much heavier than the iPad 2 (1.33 lbs). At 13.7 mm thick, it feels larger, heavier, and clunkier. And it is. The Motorola Xoom is a more apt comparison for the TouchPad (12.7 mm), while the thickness (or rather, the thinness) of the iPad 2 is 8.8 mm.
The problem with the TouchPad is that it was clearly positioned to compete with the iPad in its design – which it does, of course – but Apple had moved on to the iPad 2 before the TouchPad came to market. HP TouchPad’s, at launch, already feels out of date.
Size, weight and thickness are important factors when considering a tablet – even small improvements in this area lead to big jumps in terms of portability. As for the TouchPad, the overall feel is one of “computer without keyboard” or “better than a netbook,” not “cool, thin tablet.”
As for its other specs, the TouchPad is a better competitor with both the Xoom and iPad, offering 1 GB RAM, 16 or 32 GB of storage, a 1.3 megapixel camera, 1024×768 resolution and 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor. (Comparisons to other tablets are here).
But at the end of the day, the TouchPad fails on two key fronts: apps and, as noted above, portability. WebOS is lovely, but it’s not enough.
WebOS: Lots to Like
There are those out there who will prefer the TouchPad simply because it runs webOS. Created by Palm, now owned by HP, webOS is an attractive and functional alternative to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. It’s a bit more complex than Apple’s operating system, but not as geeky and technical as Android sometimes feels.
There are some very specific things that webOS does differently, and does well:
- Cards: Possibly the most notable feature of webOS, “card stacks” are how the operating system handles app switching. As you’re multitasking, groups of open applications are stacked together as cards (think: a deck of playing cards). You can easily switch between these groups by swiping left or right on the homescreen. You can also shuffle the cards around in any stack, and, when finished, drag a card off the top of the screen to close the application.
- System-wide notifications: The OS updates you on things like new emails, social networking updates, events and more. For true webOS fans, the tablet pairs with a Palm Pre, allowing you to also receive your SMS and MMS messages on the TouchPad. Notifications are less obtrusive than they are on the current version of iOS, by appearing on the top-right of the screen, not as pop-ups in the middle. However, this feature probably seemed more innovative prior to Apple’s reveal of the soon-to-launch iOS 5, which brings with it a new notifications center that mimics the one in Android, and essentially ends the complaints about iOS’s disruptive notifications.
- Just Type: WebOS’s universal search features lets you search your device, the Web or perform common actions like starting an email, adding a calendar appointment, updating your Facebook status, and more.
- Synergy: This webOS feature pulls in your contacts, calendars, emails and photos from multiple services (Google, Exchange, MobileMe, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.), which makes the TouchPad function as a centralized hub for many of the services you want to use.
I would add the “Touch to Share” (content moving) feature to this list, too, as it’s certainly unique to the webOS experience, but it requires users to also have an HP Palm Pre. That’s not most people. For webOS fans buying into the whole ecosystem, it’s great, but it’s not a selling point for the average person debating about tablet purchases.
There are dozens of other good to great features in webOS, too, including its resizable keyboard with a number row at the top (thank you!), built in Skype support, curated app discovery service “Pivot” (a magazine style tool for finding apps), built-in printing support (for HP printers, of course), an included copy of QuickOffice, decent mapping via Bing, a music player called HP Play offering iTunes playlists and library import, and more.
Apps, Apps…Apps?
There are several popular, well-known apps for the TouchPad, including Facebook, Bing Maps, Kindle, Skype, YouTube, QuickOffice, Angry Birds, TIME, USA Today, Weatherbug and others. Spaz HD is available to serve as a Twitter client.
But the TouchPad has only 300 native tablet apps at launch in addition to around 6,200 non-optimized apps designed for phones. What this means is that you won’t serendipitously discover those special apps like you’ll find on iPad, whether something like the iPad-only Flipboard social magazine, or the Apple-only iMovie and GarageBand. Nor will you find deeply integrated Google experiences, like Android users have with apps for Gmail, Docs and other Google applications and services.
Browser
The shortage of apps wouldn’t matter as much if the Web browser lived up to its claims. Recently, Sencha reviewed the HTML5 performance on the TouchPad and found it lacking, unfortunately. (You can read more on that here). This is disappointing for the Web developer community who had hoped that HP’s implementation of WebKit would mean an app platform built on standard Web technologies like HTML5 and CSS3.
In addition, the included Flash support didn’t work as well as one would hope (if you sit around hoping for things like Flash, instead of purposely avoiding it by purchasing Apple devices). Some sites take too long to load, others don’t load properly at all, and Flash performance is often choppy and stuttering. You can choose to disable Flash, at least.
Conclusion
Although this is far from being a comprehensive review of everything TouchPad (check your favorite gadget blog for that), we found webOS to be a promising mobile operating system with several unique features. However, in its current implementation and form factor, webOS is not delivering as stellar a performance as we would have liked. The hardware is heavy and dated, especially in comparison with the iPad 2, the app ecosystem isn’t large enough and the browser not functional enough to serve as a Web app platform. While webOS makes for a compelling alternative to the iPad alternatives, it’s not a compelling alternative to the iPad itself.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Killer Technology: Gutenberg to Zuckerberg and Beyond
Jul 18th
March was an extremely busy time for me personally, so I passed up the opportunity to write about an awe-inspiring keynote delivered by Michael Eisner of Disney fame at the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake City. In his address, he eloquently explained…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
5 Reasons Google+ Is Not A Facebook Killer – Search Engine Watch
Jul 15th
 The Guardian |
5 Reasons Google+ Is Not A Facebook Killer
Search Engine Watch And goodness knows my SEO friends are different than anyone else I know. Google created Circles to allow the easy filtering of messages by grouping friends and the easy sharing of images, status updates, etc. to and from these same groups. … "Google+" Making Steady Headway; Titan SEO Explains the Ins and Outs Google: Q2 Earnings Destroy Expectations 'Despite Competitor Efforts' |
View full post on SEO – Google News
