PDG & Associates Web Design

August 16, 2011

What is Remarketing

Remarketing allows you to show your ads to users who’ve previously visited your website — as they browse the Web and encounter Google’s ad network elsewhere.

From Google’s Forum:

Remarketing is a feature of interest-based advertising … Remarketing allows you to reach people who previously visited your website, and match the right people with the right message. You can show users these messages as they browse sites across the Google Display Network.

Here’s how it works: You add a piece of code (remarketing tag) to pages of your site that correspond to certain categories you want to promote. For example, adding a tag for “TV” on all of the pages where you sell TVs will let you later show relevant TV ads to everyone who visits those pages. Learn more about creating remarketing lists.

Search advertisers can use remarketing to create an integrated campaign strategy. After driving traffic to your site with search ads, you can then remarket to those users who reach your site by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the Google Display Network.

August 1, 2011August 2, 2011

Selling Tickets to your Event

New ways to sell tickets

If you are having an event and need to sell tickets, EventBrite might be the best way to go.

We used EventBrite to sell tickets to our North Country Film Festival in 2010. It was a success.

Now, the California-based company has released an iPad app that faciliates at-the-door sales. The NYTimes has an article:

To deal with similar situations, and to compete more directly with the big guns of the industry, in June the company introduced Eventbrite at the Door. Using an iPad app and a credit card scanner, Eventbrite at the Door customers can let in advance ticket holders and sell 400 new tickets per hour.

We are hoping that soon their new At the Door app can utilize the awesome Square card reader software available for Android and iOS. It does not appear possible yet… from Techcrunch:

Eventbrite is bundling the hardware and testing it in beta with about five or six event organizers, but it plans to release it as an iPad app this summer. The first iteration will be called Eventbrite at the Door, but as more features are added, such as seating, it will evolve into a full mobile box office. CEO Kevin Hartz sees it as akin to Opentable terminals at restaurants. Eventually he’d like to partner with Square for the card swipe readers, but is waiting for Square to open up its API. Square just launched its own iPad cash register app as well, but that is geared more at merchants than event organizers.

In the meanwhile, EventBrite charges less than TicketMaster:

The company charges consumers 2.5 percent of the cost of each ticket plus 99 cents, plus credit card charges of about 3 percent. For a $20 ticket, those fees would come to about $2.10, or 10.5 percent — much less than customers are used to paying through Ticketmaster, where surcharges are often 30 percent or higher.

The industry resists EventBrite’s low costs to consumers:

“A lot of people in the music business don’t want ticketing democratized,” said Josh Baron, editor of the music magazine Relix and co-author of the book “Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped.” “It’s a business, and venues want money.”

August 1, 2011August 1, 2011

Using Mac OS Lion (10.7) with Adobe products

Adobe has posted a tech note about how its products interact with Apple’s new OS X operating system.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/905/cpsid_90508.html#products

As expected, the glitch-and-bug list is lengthy.

* * *

Macworld posted an article about other Lion glitches and compatibility issues with other Mac programs. Among others:

Finally, Microsoft promises an update to Office in the next few months that will add support for Lion’s Autosave, Versions and full-screen features.

July 24, 2011July 24, 2011

The Auteur vs. the Committee

The Auteur vs. the Committee

From an article in digital domain at http://nyti.ms/qBBIB8

AT Apple, one is the magic number.

One person is the Decider for final design choices. Not focus groups. Not data crunchers. Not committee consensus-builders. The decisions reflect the sensibility of just one person: Steven P. Jobs, the C.E.O.

By contrast, Google has followed the conventional approach, with lots of people playing a role. That group prefers to rely on experimental data, not designers, to guide its decisions.

The contest is not even close. The company that has a single arbiter of taste has been producing superior products, showing that you don’t need multiple teams and dozens or hundreds or thousands of voices.

A well-known commentator, John Gruber, gave a talk a few years ago about design leadership and creative vision.

Two years ago, the technology blogger John Gruber presented a talk, “The Auteur Theory of Design,” at the Macworld Expo. Mr. Gruber suggested how filmmaking could be a helpful model in guiding creative collaboration in other realms, like software.

July 1, 2011July 1, 2011

Which Tablet is the best platform upon which to build an app?

From InfoWorld:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/rim-blackberry-playbook-unfinished-unusable-534

Not only can it not compete with an Apple iPad, it can’t compete with the second-best tablet, Motorola Xoom, nor even with marginal Android tablets such as the Galaxy Tab that use the smartphone version of the Android OS rather than the Honeycomb tablet version. In fact, if my choice were between a PlayBook and a Windows 7 tablet — my benchmark for unusability — I think I’d rather go sans tablet.

The fundamental nature of the PlayBook’s flaws begin with the requirement that a BlackBerry be tethered to it for access to business email, calendars, or contacts. Other than using a Webmail client, a PlayBook without a BlackBerry is unable to communicate. You can’t connect to POP, IMAP, or Exchange servers directly from the tablet, as you can from an iOS or Android device — you must have a BlackBerry tethered via Bluetooth using the BlackBerry Bridge application. In that case, you essentially see your BlackBerry email, calendar, and contacts in a window on the PlayBook when connected.

And the other competitor:

Tablet deathmatch: HP TouchPad vs. Apple iPad 2

http://bit.ly/kJWzeS

Plainly put, the TouchPad is a mediocre tablet that poses no threat to the iPad or to Android tablets such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Xoom. Even though the iPad 2’s high bar is no secret, it once again appears that corner-cutting or rush to market has been allowed to tie a potentially strong tablet’s arm behind its back.

[ InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman says “Whatever you do, don’t buy a Chromebook.” | See all of InfoWorld’s tablet deathmatch comparisons and personalize the tablet scores to your needs.

David Pogue from the NYTimes:

It’s the H.P. TouchPad ($500 for the 16-gig model, $600 for 32 gigs): a black rectangle with a glossy 9.7-inch multitouch screen. You can zoom into maps, photos or Web pages by putting two fingers on the glass and spreading or pinching them. The screen image rotates when you turn the tablet 90 degrees.

It runs the WebOS from Palm, which means there are far fewer apps. It is not an Android device.

June 12, 2011June 12, 2011

Building independent internet networks

This is a follow-up post to an earlier topic PDG wrote about after the Egyptian crackdown and censorship of the internet.

Dubbed the “Internet in a suitcase” project, a team at the New America Foundation’s “Open Technology Initiative” is creating hardware and software which create separate pathways for communications, whether cell transmissions or wireless data.

The lead expert, psychologist Sascha Meinrath (see his blog), writes:

“We’re going to build a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil…. The implication is that this disempowers central authorities from infringing on people’s fundamental human right to communicate.”

The NYTimes in an article this week described their work as:

The group’s suitcase project will rely on a version of “mesh network” technology, which can transform devices like cellphones or personal computers to create an invisible wireless web without a centralized hub. In other words, a voice, picture or e-mail message could hop directly between the modified wireless devices — each one acting as a mini cell “tower” and phone — and bypass the official network.

Mr. Meinrath said that the suitcase would include small wireless antennas, which could increase the area of coverage; a laptop to administer the system; thumb drives and CDs to spread the software to more devices and encrypt the communications; and other components like Ethernet cables.

Hats off to these programmers and engineers, and also to the Obama administration’s other initiatives.

Read an earlier post on internet censorship here at PDG.

Sascha’s bio from New America Foundation reads:

Sascha Meinrath is the Director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative and has been described as a “community Internet pioneer” and an “entrepreneurial visionary.” He is a well-known expert on community wireless networks, municipal broadband, and telecommunications policy. In 2009 he was named one of Ars Technica’s Tech Policy “People to Watch” and is also the 2009 recipient of the Public Knowledge IP3 Award for excellence in public interest advocacy.

Sascha is a co-founder of Measurement Lab, a distributed server platform for researchers around the world to deploy Internet measurement tools, advance network research, and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections.

He also coordinates the Open Source Wireless Coalition, a global partnership of open source wireless integrators, researchers, implementors and companies dedicated to the development of open source, interoperable, low-cost wireless technologies. He is a regular contributor to Government Technology’s Digital Communities, the online portal and comprehensive information resource for the public sector.

Sascha has worked with Free Press, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), the Acorn Active Media Foundation, the Ethos Group, and the CUWiN Foundation.

May 25, 2011May 25, 2011

Amazon App Store offers free app a day

Amazon Appstore Android Robot The Amazon Appstore for Android is a place where you can get a great paid app for free every day, see app recommendations based on your past Amazon purchases, and shop using Amazon’s secure 1-Click payment technology. You can also test apps on a simulated Android phone using a feature called “Test Drive.” You can shop from your computer or directly from your phone or tablet.

Go to the Install page on Amazon.com with your computer browser:

May 25, 2011May 25, 2011

Mac Malware spreading

Because of gamed SEO placements and poisoned links, some thousands of Mac users were tricked into installing a fake Mac security program.

Mac security vendor intego.com writes:

Intego has discovered a rogue anti-malware program called MACDefender, which attacks Macs via SEO poisoning attacks. When a user clicks on a link after performing a search on a search engine such as Google, this takes them to a web site whose page contains JavaScript that automatically downloads a file. In this case, the file downloaded is a compressed ZIP archive, which, if a specific option in a web browser is checked (Open “safe” files after downloading in Safari, for example), will open. The file is decompressed, and the installer it contains launches presenting a user with the following screen:

UPDATE: See Intego’s full security memo with detailed information about the MAC Defender fake antivirus.

PDG Recommends:

Sophos makes a free Mac security program. Read more about it in another post, and use it soon!

Apple will release a cleaner update for it as well. See their recent tech note.