Weatherproofing Your Windows

Gotta love it!  Today President Obama proposed a program to give homeowners cash incentives to improve their energy efficiency by replacing windows, caulking leaks and modernizing heaters and air conditioners.  Quickly dubbed “cash for caulkers,” the idea has lots more potential than the already expired “cash for clunkers.”  Just last night I was wondering what it would cost me to replace our 31-year-old windows.  Although double insulated, most of the seals were broken long ago and I cringe at the moisture that shows up between the panes.

I also dream of a new, more energy efficient heat pump, another item on our list of deferred home repairs.  I’ll need a new roof soon, too, and we have been contemplating having siding installed over the T-111 exterior of the house.  Certainly, that should add more R-factor to our home.  All in all, we have tens of thousands of dollars that should be invested in energy saving updates, but we have been reluctant to do so in the shaky economy.  Would we proceed now if there were a tax incentive to do so.  You betcha!

The President is right.  This has to create jobs.  You can’t outsource the installation of your windows.  (I suppose you can do it yourself, but most people won’t.)

I hope Congress is listening.  This is the best idea I’ve heard from anyone in a long time.

Last year I considered buying a Zune music player, but chose an iPod instead.  I’ve never been a fan of paying the premium price that Apple products command, but this time I had a rebate from Audible.com, so I opted for the 80GB iPod Classic.  Today I was happy to have avoided Microsoft’s “Zune2k.”  Zunes all over the world experienced a mini Y2k of their own when their internal clocks made endless attempts to process the 366^th day of a leap year.  Read the details here on cnet news.

Since I was one of the only people in the whole world whose computer wouldn’t boot up on January 1, 2000, I was relieved to have avoided this meltdown.  It took me about 4 hours to resuscitate my computer on that fateful day eight years ago.

I the meantime, the business that I manage was without electricity this morning for three hours.  This led to disrupted registers that didn’t want to properly reboot when the power returned.  The retail registers finally came back up, but we never did recover the registers for food service.  Every now and then we get a kick in the head that reminds us how dependent we are on our technology and the energy that powers it. 

Today’s events remind me of an old boyfriend and a New Year’s Day that set the tone for the entire year.  He said he woke up and poked himself in the eye with his thumb before getting out of bed.  He swore that was a sign that it would be a terrible year, and if I recall correctly, it was.  At least, I don’t own a Zune.

Not too surprisingly, the majority of those surveyed (77%) expect the mobile device to be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in 2020. The device will be relatively inexpensive, portable and powerful. But, when the surveyors postulated that social tolerance will have advanced significantly due in great part to the Internet, only 32% of the experts thought this was a true statement.  While social networks may have the ability to foster understanding between diverse peoples, it has equal capacity to promote hate, bigotry, and terrorism through communication networks.   In other words, the Internet will continue to allow trolls to be trolls.

The report suggests that voice recognition and touch user-interfaces will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.  I was totally clueless about “air typing,” but apparently the technology has already been developed to project a keyboard onto a flat surface, especially useful for smaller devices.  Some respondents postulate neural networks providing mind-controlled human-computer interaction.  At least ten years ago, my imagination took me to a place where we would decide to have the technology directly implanted to our brains to improve our memories and the ability to directly access and process information more quickly.  Thus, when my Alzheimer years come around, I will be able to have vivid memories of the past – even if they aren’t my own. I guess I couldn’t refrain from making my own willy-nilly prediction even though I’m not qualified to make one.

Those who are qualified say that reality as we know it will be passé.  The virtual world will blur with “real life” as will work and leisure.  For  me, these seem like some scary ideas, but perhaps they will come about so gradually that we won’t even have noticed until we are will immersed.  Read the entire Pew report on the Future of the Internet III here.

The number of blogs updated in the last 120 days is still an impressive 7.4 million posts.

Technorati also stated that the lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site have become less clear. Despite the arguments for the “death of blogging,” the supporting evidence just isn’t there.  Here are my humble observations:

1. Although it may seem that blogs are moving away from being amateur in nature to becoming professional, the perception is  skewed by the representation of the professional bloggers in  “top 100” lists.
2. The success of professional bloggers may be draining readership from the amateurs, but both continue to coexist.
3. Blogs exist in macro and micro environments.  Some have thousands of readers; some are read by a few friends or devotees; some are personal and not meant to be read by anyone other than the blogger.  This became apparent to me after reading requests from some bloggers to have their blogs removed from inclusion in alphainventions.com.  Some blogger state that they never intended their posts to be widely read.
4. The drop in the number of itinerant, amateur bloggers may actually improve the quality of blogs as a whole.
5. Twitter represents bursts of thought; blogs are contextual.  There is a place for both forms of communication.
6. Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites are often used to promote blogs.
7. The argument that professionals are drowning out the amateurs means that there is lots of noise – hardly an argument for the death of the medium.
8. Media are becoming more integrated across the board.  Blogs contain images, video, music, widgets and other enhancements to the written word.

Blogging is far from taking its last gasp for breath. Blogs that are interesting and provocative will undoubtedly be more widely read, presuming they can reach audiences, but corporations are likely to continue to dominate the field. Technorati’s 2008 report holds that more than eight in ten bloggers post product or brand reviews in their blogs.  Marketers are learning that the blogosphere is a critical place to be and one in three bloggers say that they’ve been approached to be a brand advocate.  I’ve read a few of these blogs that have left me wondering if the blogger has a relationship with the company that they favor so strongly.

But, that’s a question of ethics and a topic for another post…

I plugged alphainventions into WordPress’ site search to see what I could find.  The search immediately brought me to the WordPress support forum and a thread entitled “alphainventions – scam?”   The forum has 69 posts with comments filling three pages.  Aha!  Just as I had thought!  I read on, though.  The first post was from a blogger who was suddenly getting significant traffic from alphainventions just like me.  He questioned the legitimacy of the hits.  Was it a something malicious or a scam? The next post was from another blogger wanting to know the same thing.  A few days later WordPress staff responded saying, “not sure what to make of that site yet, but if we find evidence it’s spam or a scam then we’ll do something about it.”

The following day the owner of alphainventions.com popped up with his explanation of what he is doing. It turns out he is “a regular working guy” named Cheru Jackson.  (I guess you could call him Cheru the Coder.)  Anyway, his intention is to show blogs in real time as they are updated.  The idea is that, if people read a blog promptly, the blogger is likely to receive comments sooner.  You can visit Cheru’s blog here.  He’s receiving lots of positive comments.

It seems like a cool idea.  I’m not sure how my blog got noticed, nor am I sure how the stats are determined.  I used to have a handful of readers and now WordPress is showing dozens (up to 115 yesterday).  I suspect they didn’t all really read my blog, but at least I’ve had some exposure that I didn’t have before.

One thing that I do know for certain – Cheru has managed to create a big buzz about alphainventions.  Alphainventions is being talked about in blogs right and left.  It remains to be seen if  alphainventions creates any substantial impact for bloggers which will translate to real readers.  I for one hope that it does.

Please add a comment about your experience with alphainventions.  Has anyone been able to evaluate the quality of the hits?

Jonathan Strickland has a good explanation that helps me comprehend the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:

Think of Web 1.0 as a library. You can use it as a source of information, but you can’t contribute to or change the information in any way. Web 2.0 is more like a big group of friends and acquaintances. You can still use it to receive information, but you also contribute to the conversation and make it a richer experience.

Web 2.0 is about customizing content and sharing information through social networking, blogging, YouTube and other sites that allow users to exchange information.  Customer reviews like the ones mentioned in yesterday’s blog are a perfect example.

Web 3.0 is the next conceivable evolutionary stage of the Web although it is highly speculative.  Wikipedia points out that it “refers to aspects of the Internet which, though potentially possible, are not technically or practically feasible at this time.”  One way Web 3.0 has been described is as aggregating silos of information from the Internet and, for practical purposes, creating a seamless interface in retrieving that information from various locations.  Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, calls it the “semantic” Web.  Right now search engines can scan for keywords, but they are unable to actually understand a Web page in the context of its meaning.  That’s why Google doesn’t have the technical capability of understanding that some of its paid advertisers are scammers.  Here’s a video that explains the semantic Web:

Web 3.0 will change this.  For the everyday user, Web 3.0 will have the ability to answer multi-part questions, putting pertinent information together in a logical way.  An example given Strickland in How Stuff Works is getting help finding a good Mexican restaurant for dinner and with a funny movie playing close by.  Web 3.0 becomes a personal assistant as your browser learns your likes and dislikes from your repeated searches.  In an ideal world, it will bring you the information that is most likely to be of interest to you.  Everything will be able to be mashed up to meet personal preferences.  Read more about how Berners-Lee envisions the semantic Web here.

I’m not sure that I like the idea of Web 3.0.  I have to wonder if privacy doesn’t become even more vulnerable in a Web 3.0 world.  Will my browser be reminding me that I want to lose weight and tell me that I can’t eat Mexican for dinner tonight?  Will it decide that I can’t afford a new car, or that I don’t have enough free time in my calendar to own a dog?  I’m not sure that we will like what we learn about ourselves through our Web 3.0 browsers.

Of course, the major implication for marketers is that the world will be even friendlier toward an integrated marketing strategy that has the customer-centric focus.  Since IMC is about building a relationship with the customer, this kind of personalization is perfect for the marketer.  IMC strategists want to know their customers, and it seems most customers don’t mind if they do.

 I did an experiment by Googling “Nikon d300.” 

Having just shopped for a Nikon d300 for my husband, I am familiar with the current prices and the scams that are out there.  I was pretty shocked that the top paid listing was a company called DidUPrice.com.  

DidUPrice‘s actual store front is shown in this photo.  They purport to be a price finder like NexTag or PriceGrabber, but in reality they are a front for ShopDigitalDirect.com, which is listed as “featured store” and as a “trusted seller.”  DidUPrice has been associated with other known scammers in the past. ShopDigital shows an unrealistically low price, lower than any of the companies listed, some of which are legitimate (Amazon, Tiger Direct, & US1Camera).  Everyone gets a five star rating, except Tiger Direct which gets only four stars.  Ironically, Tiger Direct is one of the more highly rated companies selling on the Internet.  Check out ResellerRatings.com.  ShopDigitalDirect is one of the lowest rated companies I’ve seen there.  They have a rating of 0.64 out of 10.  That’s not even 1 out of 10!  The comments are scathing.

Another, poorly rated company that shows near the top of the list in Google’s sponsored links is Sonic Camera.  They earn a whopping 0.71 of 10 at Reseller Ratings. 

Sonic’s ads entice buyers with a price of $649 for a camera that should be more than twice the price.  What people learn when they order the camera with any of these “bait and switch” companies is that the cameras don’t come with normal accessories. They may not even have all their parts. Sadly, these scammers appear in paid search listings along with legitimate companies like Best Buy, BuyDig, B&H, Amazon and others.

This leads me back to the point about paid placement.  By itself, PPC isn’t a bad thing.  There are many reputable businesses paying for preferential placement on search engines.  Google and other search engines only check their advertisers for relevance, not reputation.  If there is a fault, it is that Google and the others seem to do no homework on their advertisers.  I was able to dig up a lot of dirt on ShopDigitalDirect and Sonic in a very short time.  Of course, caveat emptor should be the policy when buying on the Web.  But Google and the rest should care more about the ethics of their advertisers than they do before they ruin the pay per click market.  Buyers will be cautious clicking on legitimate links, because of a few bad apples.  In the meantime Reseller Ratings is indispensable for sorting out the good from the bad and ugly.

 I know this is a problem for cameras and electronics.  Are there similar examples of bait and switch businesses that are highly ranked with Google or other search engines that aren’t electronics?

Paid placement allows the highest bidder to appear at the top of a search engine’s sponsored links.  There is a question about the ethics of this practice. If there is an issue, it is really about transparency.  Are the results properly identified as advertising?  I made a survey of a dozen of the most popular search engines.  It showed that nearly all do indeed mark their paid advertising in some way.  Usually, the search engines use the words “sponsored link” or “sponsored results” or something similar.  While the disclaimer isn’t particularly large or bold, it is there.  Some have shaded background that help defined which links are part of the grouping.  My vision isn’t all that great, but it is clear enough to me.  I have included an Ask.com screen shot of a search result for “pet supplies.”  I have drawn a red box around the disclaimer.   

Personally, I don’t see the issue.  It is pretty obvious to me. Is it possible that people don’t know the meaning of the word “sponsor?”  Do they think it has one of the first four meanings?

1.   One who assumes responsibility for another person or a group during a period of instruction, apprenticeship,or probation.

2.   One who vouches for the suitability of a candidate for admission.

3.   A legislator who proposes and urges adoption of a bill.

4.   One who presents a candidate for baptism or confirmation; a godparent.

5.   One that finances a project or an event carried out by another person or group, especially a business enterprise that pays for radio or television programming in return for advertising time.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

 I believe that anyone who thinks about it knows that in this context “sponsor” correlates to meaning 5.  In this sense, the sponsors are paying to bring us a free search engine with powerful capabilities.  Why would anyone be surprised that there is a business model attached to the equation?  Here is a copy of Google’s screen shot for the same search:

I have drawn red boxes around the text for sponsored links.  Again, they seem pretty clear considering the shaded background and the text that says “sponsored links.”

I find myself defending the search engines and the marketing model.  So far I don’t know of any of the major ones that aren’t being reasonably straightforward in disclosing paid placement.  If I were going to bring up a concern, it would be whether or not paying for placement enhances the chance that a Web site will score higher in organic rankings because the high visibility has increased the number of visitors to the site.  If popularity is a factor in ranking, then that could be an outcome. That is yet another topic to ponder.  Still, if we look at the examples above, we see that PetCo isn’t paying for a sponsored link, but scores at the top of both organic searches.  While this is anecdotal in nature, it is proably true that a site can do well with proper optimization.

“When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product which might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience) such connection must be fully disclosed.”

 The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) concurred with the decision.  They contend there is a difference between buzz marketing and stealth marketing.   According to their definition, “buzz marketing ultimately can be identified by a consumer, stealth marketing cannot.”  WOMMA has been in the process of developing a code of ethics in the form of a “practical toolkit” for word of mouth advertising.   It has been under peer review since February of 2005.  I know these things take time but, really, does that seem a little long to anyone?  Although there are a number of specifics the basic rules are:

• Honesty of Relationship: You say who you’re speaking for.
• Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe.
• Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity.

Despite the FTC pronouncement, stealth marketing seems to be fairly commonplace offline.  When someone is planted by a company and paid to talk about or bring attention to a product, it is sometimes derogatorily referred to as “roach baiting.”   When the target takes the bait, they carry it to their friends and family, hence the term roach baiting.  When corporations blog anonymously, the act is called “flogging” for fake blogging.  Hidden identities that mask a corporate agenda are sometimes referred to as “astroturfing,”  the counterfeit version of  something that appears to be grass roots in origin.

Each of the following is an example of a company that was “outed” for stealth marketing:

Scarlet  – a movie trailer for a new TV Series in April 2008 turned out to be a marketing campaign for a new television from LG Electronics. I’m not sure how effective it was as a marketing piece – no one could figure out what it was advertising.

Sony: All I want for Xmas is a PSP  -  this was a corporate blog (or flog) that was supposed to be a kid. It was a huge embarrassment to Sony.  Bloggers keep restoring the orgnal blog and Sony keeps taking it down.

Whole Foods blog  – Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, was busted for hiding his identity in chat rooms where he extolled the virtues of Whole Foods and knocked the competition.

Each of these company’s executive must now be thinking, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”  What is unfortunate, though, is the broken trust with the customer.  No one wants to feel like they have been taken for a fool.  Transparency needs to be the order of the day.