Welcome to the Screen Pilot water cooler. Our team randomly posts things they find interesting, funny or just generally think might be of use to others. If you've come in through the side door, you can knock on the front door here.
Google Social Search is an experimental feature that allows you to do searches that find relevant public web content from people in your social circle.
When you join the Social Search experiment Google will bring up results from your friends and contacts. These special results appear at the bottom of the search results page. Your social circle consists of contacts from your Gmail and sites listed in your Google Profile.
The following people make up your social circle:
People you’re connected to through social services that you’ve listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed.
People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list.
People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers contact groups for Google.
If someone you don’t know shows up in your social search results, it’s likely that they’re connected to someone you do know. For example, if you’re following someone on Twitter, and that person is following five other people, those five other people are also included in your social circle.
We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words so we’ve included a video from Google explaining in more detail what Google Social Search is all about. Enjoy!
The top characteristic US consumers want from brands they like is to improve their knowledge—and the least desirable one is for a brand to “only be visible in store”—according to the “Global Web Index” from Lightspeed Research.
Helping consumers keep up to date on topics that were important to them was also key, followed by being entertaining, becoming part of a daily routine, and informing consumers about the product and the company. Consumers were relatively uninterested in brands that tried to act like their friends.
Unsurprisingly in a difficult economy, consumers said the most relevant thing a brand could do for them was offer discounts. That topped various social and creative efforts such as online communities and brand-created video or TV programs.
Word-of-mouth was the No. 1 purchase driver according to the surveyed consumers. Face-to-face recommendations had significantly more weight with respondents than TV ads, advice from online friends, e-mails or Websites.
And the most trusted source of brand information was family members, followed by friends and experts.
Interestingly, US consumers found social network contacts and bloggers that they read regularly more trustworthy than major journalists, television news readers and radio presenters. Celebrities and TV show presenters were tied with politicians for the dishonor of being considered least trustworthy.
Compared with Americans, consumers surveyed in the UK were more likely to value brands that helped them connect with people, and were more responsive to competitions and TV advertising.
Keep up on the latest digital trends. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription, today.
The Dropbox iPhone App is ready for free download! It is also available for Windows and Linux.
For those of you not familiar with Dropbox it’s an easy-to-use cross-platform cloud storage with sharing capabilities. Now you can also link to your Dropbox account from you iPhone. If you don’t already have a Dropbox account it will prompt you to create a free 2GB account when you download the app for your iPhone.
The Dropbox desktop version allows automatic syncing with your account online. Due to storage limitations on your iPhone, the iPhone app will not auto sync with your entire Dropbox account but it will sync through the use of a favorite Dropbox file.
Other features include one-click sharing of your Dropbox files by email and a photo gallery view for easy browsing of images on your iPhone. You can also upload photos and videos directly to your Dropbox account from your iPhone.
Still not sure if you need a free Dropbox account? Below are some reasons why you should!
Dropbox Features
File Sync
Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically.
2GB of online storage for free, with up to 100GB available to paying customers.
Sync files of any size or type.
Sync Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
Automatically syncs when new files or changes are detected.
Work on files in your Dropbox even if you’re offline. Your changes sync once your computer has an Internet connection again.
Dropbox transfers will correctly resume where they left off if the connection drops.
Efficient sync – only the pieces of a file that changed (not the whole file) are synced. This saves you time.
Doesn’t hog your Internet connection. You can manually set bandwidth limits.
File Sharing
Sharing files is simple and can be done with only a few clicks.
Shared folders allow several people to collaborate on a set of files.
You can see other people’s changes instantly.
A “Public” folder that lets you link directly to files in your Dropbox.
Control who is able to access shared folders (including ability to kick people out and remove the shared files from their computers).
Automatically create shareable online photo galleries from folders of photos in your Dropbox.
Online Backup
Dropbox backs up your files online without you having to think about it.
Automatic backup of your files.
Undelete files and folders.
Restore previous versions of your files.
30 days of undo history, with unlimited undo available as a paid option.
Web Access
A copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers. This lets you access them from any computer or mobile device.
Manipulate files as you would on your desktop – add, edit, delete, rename etc.
Search your entire Dropbox for files.
A “Recent Events” feed that shows you a summary of activity in your Dropbox.
Create shared folders and invite people to them.
Recover previous versions of any file or undelete deleted files.
View photo galleries created automatically from photos in your Dropbox.
Security & Privacy
Dropbox takes the security and privacy of your files very seriously.
Shared folders are viewable only by people you invite.
All transmission of file data and metadata occurs over an encrypted channel (SSL).
All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.
Dropbox website and client software have been hardened against attacks from hackers.
Dropbox employees are not able to view any user’s files.
Online access to your files requires your username and password.
Public files are only viewable by people who have a link to the file(s). Public folders are not browsable or searchable.
Collaborating through Google Docs just got easier!
You can now share entire folders with your team. Google also has plans to allow the upload of multiple files at the same time some time soon which will be a huge time-saver if you have lots of files you need to share!
If you have a set of files you need to share with a group of people, sharing a folder will now make the process much easier. You can share the entire folder with the team with the same level of permissions for all the documents. In the past you would have to go into each file to share permissions with a team.
You can learn more about Google Docs shared folders at Google Docs Blog
Posted: Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 9:22 AM Filed Under: Google | No Comments »
It is common to see on Twitter people eager to gain as many followers at they can in the shortest amount of time. It is believed that if you have a vast amount of followers it naturally means you have more “voice” in your tweets. Is this really the case?
The answer is no, and here’s the reason why.
Low-Value Followers: these are the people who follow you using automatons with the intent of spamming and self-promoting. They aren’t interested in you. They don’t care about you. These are the sort of people who use a temporary email address to sign up so they can get your freebie and disappear. Most of them aren’t going to retweet your posts.
The key factors to consider in your Twitter marketing:
Who are the people that follow you? You need to consider who are the readers of your tweets. Are they interested in you or your business? Are they active users? Do they share links with you and give you feedback?
Does your audience engage with you? A responsive audience connects with you, retweeting your links and answers your questions. They interact with your Twitter stream.
You don’t just want a large follower count, you want a group of followers who are responsive!
So who should you network with? People who work in your field and own websites that can send you links and traffic. Build relationships with a core group of influencers who are relevant to your business/website.
Next talk to your followers, share your links, give them feedback and support them. Over time, they will get to know you well enough to help you promote your product or services on Twitter, online and offline!
Entrepreneurs and business owners have to strategize and plan ahead for their business on the go a lot of the times. Ideas could come at any time to us. It could be whilst commuting to and from a meeting, whilst grocery shopping or anything else that we might be doing and it’s important to capture these ideas for later when we have time to come back to them.
Mind mapping is a great tool to help capture these thoughts graphically, quickly and clearly. There are a lot of both online and offline mind mapping tools available that are either free or paid. One in particular that stands out is Mindmeister.
Since Mindmeister is an online tool, users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world or in different rooms can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other’s changes as they happen. This is great if you have a team working on the same project!
Mindmeister offers both free and paid versions and allows you to create your mind maps online giving you the ability to access your thoughts anytime and from anywhere. They even have an iPhone version of it.
Some of the features of Mindmeister include:
Free Version
Have up to 3 mind maps
Share and collaborate mind maps
Import maps from Freemind and MindManager
Export maps as image in PDF/RTF
Publish maps to blogs and websites
For the Premium Version – $4/month
You get all the features of the free version above plus
Instead of 3 mind maps you get unlimited mind maps
Export maps to Freemind and MindManager
Add file attachments to topics
Create and edit maps offline
Full SSL encryption
Search in maps
Advertising free, logo free exports
The also offer two other paid versions for Business and Academic for $6 and $15 per month respectively with additional features. You can learn more about Mindmeister by clicking here.
Matching Yahoo’s local ad unit model, Google is finally rolling out its own version of short ad listings for local businesses. These Local Listing Ads will contain only basic information about a business, such as contact info and a link, and will display in regular search results pages as well as Google Maps listings.
The ads are not intended to compete with Google AdWords and will be more or less self-serve for business owners.
To participate though, businesses need to first be listed and verified in Google’s Local Business Center. The ads will be free of creative (artwork and images), with results also linking to Google’s version of Yelp, Place Pages.
Formal pricing has not been released, but it’s believed to start around $20 per month and possibly go as high as $200, with the first month being free. Pricing may also vary depending on what market a business is in.
Currently, the program is only being tested in San Francisco and San Diego.
