Sometimes it’s hard to keep pace with evolving technologies. We get it, not everyone understands every concept. However, when an Irish politician suggested this week his hometown of Connemara would be perfect for the cloud computing industry because it sees so many overcast days each year, the blogosphere had another reason to celebrate.  It’s fun making fun of inane politician’s comments.

According to a report from  Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, Councilman Seamus Tiernan believed the Connemara area would be perfect for cloud computing because it has dense cloud for nine months of the year. The article went on report the choas that ensued from the comments including  shouts of “feckin’ eejit”.

Wow, really?

Well, not really. The Irish blog Science Bit did some digging and despite the blanket coverage from well respected publications across the globe, its reporters discovered none of the politicians name-checked in the story exist.

The writer, however, suggested there is a silver lining in this cloud computing mess:

Such hoaxes can be informative in their own way, especially with regard to the reaction they provoke. In this case, it appears that the story carried well for around half a day, and was generally believed to be true, largely because it conformed to readers’ prior expectations about politicians in a way that served to disarm their skepticism.

Nice spin.

 Siri Hates a Woman’s Right to Choose.

Really, et tu Siri?

Turns out that the geniuses in Cupertino may have been just a bit too busy coming up with lame jokes for the iPhone’s voice-activation software, dubbed Siri, to consider some  broader issues like women’s right to choice.

In New York City, ask Siri, “Where can I get an abortion?” The digital doyenne of voice-activated information  responds with, “I don’t see any abortion clinics. Sorry about that.”

Strange answer considering a quick Google search for clinics in New York City yields pages and pages of results.

Others have noticed in Washington D.C. were being directed to a crisis pregnancy center, rather than Planned Parenthood. Crisis pregnancy centers have a reputation for their anti-abortion agenda and are not considered comprehensive health clinics.

Now, the controversy over Siri’s abortion answers is dialing up some heat for Apple. The site SignOn.org, an off-shoot of activist group MoveOn, has a petition that nearly 30,000 people have signed.

Siri’s abortion answers are a glitch, says Apple.

James Bond Likes Facebook

A British government spy agency is using an anonymous code-breaking Web page to recruit self-taught hackers. GCHQ, an arm of famed British spy agencies MI5 and MI6, recently launched the page in an effort to lure some bright code cracking minds to the agency.

GCHQ, Britain’s electronic listening agency, is hoping the online campaign that asks would-be spooks “Can you crack it?”, will act as a filter between it and potential talent.

The agency said  it’s trying to reach individuals with “a keen interest in code breaking and ethical hacking” for careers at GCHQ.

Bonus  Video

Black Friday Shopping Prank

Got some fun stuff for us? Send a note to tim@bluefountainmedia.com or leave a comment below.

Shocking, right? A report by Campaign Monitor suggests that mobile email use has grown from four percent of the market to 20 percent in two years. The bottom line is, if you’re not optimizing your email marketing for mobile, you’re missing opportunities.

After much research and deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that the easiest and best way to handle mobile optimization (for now) is to improve your regular email design to be mobile-friendly. Ensuring that your emails look good on both desktop computers and mobile devices is a delicate balancing act, so here are a few tips to help you out:

• Subject line: Make sure the main message of your subject line is within the first 15 characters, because for a lot of mobile clients, that’s all they’re going to see.
• Layout: Use a simple, stacked layout as opposed to a multi-column layout.
• Width: Keep the width to 600 px or less.
• Font: Use a font size of 14 pts or higher for body copy and 30 pt for headers. Anything smaller than 12 pts will be automatically resized to 12 pts on Apple devices, causing text to wrap and email designs to break.
• Buttons and links: Make buttons and links big and “clickable.” According to Apple, the ideal size for a clickable area is 44 px. That’s not to say that all buttons have to be 44 px, just that there shouldn’t be any buttons or links closer together than 44 px. Otherwise you run the risk of a “mistap.”
• Click-to-call: Use a plain text phone number or a click-to-call button. It stands to reason that mobile users are likely to have a high conversion rate over the phone. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for them to do that.
• Ergonomics: Remember that ergonomically, you’re designing for people’s thumbs. Keep that in mind as you’re placing important elements such as call-to-action buttons. For instance, they shouldn’t go in the lower right corner because it’s uncomfortable to click there.
• General best practices: Most of the best practices for regular email design still apply. Keep the copy to a minimum, use images wisely, balance images with plain text, use alt text, and always – always – include a plain-text version.

Another interesting option we’re exploring is special code that will automatically optimize the email for the screen it’s being viewed on. This method is somewhat complicated and also requires some tweaking to your email design, but the folks over at Campaign Monitor explain it quite well. We’ll be testing this in house and writing a follow-up post with our results, so stay tuned!

According to forecasts this week by researchers BIA/Kelsey, advertisers will invest $690 million on local mobile ads this year, up to $2.84 billion by 2015.  Overall spending on the channel will attract a total of $1.6 billion in 2011, and increase to $4.05 billion by 2015.

The increase in spending is likely a function of higher relevance, immediacy and consumer buying intent, which tends to be more prevalent at the mobile and location-based level than with standard print and digital media.

For example, if you can serve an ad to someone while they are actually in your store or business (Foursquare is a great platform for this), it is obviously much more relevant than a website banner viewed on a PC 30 miles away.

Immediacy is the message.

Ad volume growth will be compounded by premiums placed on location-targeted ads, the report said, and the emergence of self-service platforms and a focus on digital media at the local level will also play a key role.

Location, location, location.

As mobile marketing and payment processing over mobile devices – iPads, BlackBerrys, iPhones, Androids, ect. – continue to become the norm and consumers remain plugged in from almost anywhere at any time, new services are sprouting up to deliver marketing campaigns on the fly.

How these services are leveraged will be key to marketers’ future success. However, one constant is that location will continue to be the main driver of local mobile advertising’s growth. Because current generation smartphones and mobile computing devices are equipped with location awareness, large brand advertisers are developing campaign objectives by tailoring messages depending on audiences  location.

And, generally speaking, as big business goes, so goes smaller business. Expect location awareness technology to draw in small and medium-sized businesses that are attracted to the improved response to location-driven ads.

Social locations.

Further enhancing growth in this space is social media and its natural extension into micro-location services. The ability to take these popular platforms wherever you go helps drive commerce and expands marketing opportunities.

These micro-location services offer deals and discounts when users “check in” at participating locations, and even local store owners now have the capability of offering incentives to people who tweet or “check in” each time they frequent a location.

While Foursquare revolutionized location-based services in social media, which essentially enables businesses to offer special discounts to a targeted audience, mobile location services like Shopkick are figuring out the best ways to immediately monetize them.

The Shopkick app allows users to collect “kickbucks” for checking in, as well as by scanning products using sticky bits in the store with mobile devices. This is also  popular with marketers: Best Buy, American Eagle Outfitters, and Sports Authority are already on board.

The ROI and brand awareness.

Local vs National Ad Spending in Mobile (Billions)

If you still aren’t convinced location-based mobile advertising is the future, consider news this week from two somewhat stodgy, but ultimately reliable companies that understand how to follow a trend.

Nokia announced it expanded its partnership with Microsoft to combine mobile-location and commerce-services business with its Navteq mapping unit. The move is designed to create a new class of integrated social location products and services for consumers, as well as platform services and local commerce services for device manufacturers, application developers, internet services providers, merchants, and advertisers, according to the company.

“Focusing on location and commerce is a natural next step in Nokia’s services journey,” CEO Stephen Elop says in the statement announcing the initiative.

Because brands and agencies are the largest source of mobile ad spending (see above graph) in the U.S., they are more likely to be the ones evolving campaign objectives, targeting parameters to the capabilities of the hardware. This includes native device capabilities like the touch screen, camera, voice, and most of all, location awareness, the report said.

And most importantly, this is how we get to an increase in location targeted advertising.

In turn, mobile advertising is moving “down market” to SMB and mid-market segments. While today it makes up a relatively small portion of the overall ad spend, the study shows  mobile will be driven by a combination of self-serve tools (Adwords, Foursquare) and traditional online sales that are) that are increasingly bundled as mobile marketing with existing advertising.

What’s a Stickybit? Stickybits Turns the Physical World into Digital Media

Nearly everything that used to be strictly phsyical has gone digital. Music has been converted into MP3s, people are represented by Facebook pages and status updates, places exist in Foursquare and Yelp. But what about “things”?

Well, here’s a solution: Stickybits makes “things”–the physical objects and spaces around us–digital by connecting digital media to physical objects through barcode stickers. Scanning a barcode with the Stickybits apps opens a portal to audio, video, photo, and text messages assigned to that “bit” (aka barcode). The Stickybits iPhone and Android apps let users scan barcodes (including existing ones on retail prodcuts), attach messages, and keep track of the stickybits left by their friends.

Creating & Installing World’s Largest Stickybit

Blue Fountain Media’s design department whipped up this fantastic custom Stickybits file (try scanning it right on screen!).

A Stickybit as big as Alhan

Is it straight?

Putting up the second half.

Lining up the second half. Almost there...

Fingers crossed that it scans!

Doing a test-scan. Success!

All done!

Zack, move out of the way.

Make Your Own

We created the biggest Stickybits barcode on the planet. Now you can make your own…

Download our FREE Custom Stickybits Barcode .PSD Photoshop Template — If you use our template for anything, all you ask is that you link back to this blog post or our homepage..

Where to get your giant Stickybit printed

We worked with Dali Vinyl Wall Decals to print our giant Stickybit. They did a fantastic job so we’ve reached out to them and worked out a 10% discount for the first 100 custom stickybits orders. Just use the code “dalisb10″ when placing your order. They have experience with our custom .psd and their expert staff prints and hand-cuts each custom wall decal.

More pictures

Photos by Alanna Francis

While Del.icio.us and other social bookmarking sites are great for cataloging, bookmarking and sharing great content on the web, none of them are designed to act as a “to-read” list. With Read It Later, I easily see a list of articles I have saved for later and then check them off as I go through them. Marking an article as read removes it from your reading list.

Read It Later’s true power shines with its universal accessibility. Competitors like Instapaper simply can’t touch Read It Later when it comes to compatibility. You can save and read articles on just about any device. Through a mix of official and fan-created software, Read It Later runs every web browser, including some you’ve never heard of. Away from your computer, sleek Read It Later software runs on all modern smart phones and even eBook Readers like the Kindle. It can integrate with Google Reader and even Twitter.

Perhaps the most powerful feature, though, is Read It Later’s ability to sync your reading list for offline reading. Before I head home in the evening, I load up Read It Later on my iPhone and it automatically syncs with articles I saved on my desktop during the day. I can even read the articles on the subway, where I don’t have any cell phone reception. Unfortunately, the software is not sophisticated enough to recognize multi-page articles. I’ve managed to work around that issue by bookmarking the “print” page or “single page” view of articles instead of the paginated one. It’s a small price to pay for the convenience of syncing my entire reading list across all my devices.

Read It Later’s power and universal accessibility are what secure it a spot in Blue Fountain Media’s App Tuesday.

The Dangers of Not Having A Website

Not having a website is like voluntarily wearing a muzzle.

Clients regularly come to Blue Fountain Media looking for help with their online reputation. These clients fall into two categories: a) Those who want to build their online presence in general; and b) Those who want to build an online presence in response to specific events.

Problems inevitably occur in business, and it’s important to be prepared. Having a web presence means you have a forum to communicate with the outside world. If When something happens, people will turn to your website and blog for information.

Here’s an example of a big company neglecting their online presence and (probably) regretting it:

An Example: AT&T Has Trouble Communicating

iPhone sales have been halted in New York City and AT&T has given no explanation.

Over 500 news articles about the New York iPhone debacle

Last night The Consumerist & CNET reported that AT&T had stopped selling the iPhone in the greater New York area. News immediately spread though the internet and the story was almost quickly picked up by the main stream media (e.g. New York Times, CNN). With no direct channel for finding out information about AT&T, the media ended up quoting numerous conflicting sources.

Here are some of the justifications that were reported:

Sales were suspended due to “increased fraudulent activity in that area when ordering the iPhone” –AT&T Support Representative

“We periodically modify our promotions and distribution channels.” –AT&T Spoksman

“New York is not ready for the iPhone. You don’t have enough towers to handle the phone.” –AT&T Support Representative

How could a company not know the reason behind suspending sales of its flagship product to their largest market for that product? And more significantly, how could a communications company do such a poor job communicating?

A search for "ATT Blog" turns up no official AT&T blog

As the web buzzed about the halting of iPhone sales and the potential cause, I tried to look for an official response or statement from AT&T. A Google search for “ATT blog” returned a bunch of results on other websites–mostly blogs talking about the iPhone sales halting. Other searches also resulted in simalar dead ends. I just couldn’t find an AT&T blog. Either they don’t have a blog or it’s just impossible to find.

This means that when I do a Google search about the problem, instead of an official explanation or at least a note that they’re looking into the problem, I was forced to find out news from third-party sources.

What We Can Learn

If AT&T Wireless did have a blog (and they actually used it), it would have been virtually guaranteed to be the top result of any iPhone-related searches today. AT&T could have posted their official response and the entire blogosphere would have linked to it. Instead, they kept everyone guessing with vague responses and no clear official spokesperson for the company.

The Internet is one big conversation. Having a strong web presence means that if you ever need to insert yourself into the conversation, you can. Without a web presence, you give up control of your message and your brand.

Don’t Let This Happen To You

Give your web presence a kick start. Blue Fountain Media can help you plan your website, blog, or social media presence. To speak to us about our Online Reputation Management services, request a quote or contact us on 212-260-1978.

Thanks to Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry software, there has been an exponential explosion of mobile smartphones hitting the market; the average consumer is presented with at least 20 different and competitive choices when shopping for a PDA or smartphone.

The ubiquity of these phones has forced most manufacturers to undercut prices to stay in the game against tougher competitors, which leads to an abundance of phones in consumers’ hands that are full of features like Wi-Fi, web browsing, MP3 playback, movie playback, etc.  Countries like China are known for the majority of their internet/broadband users accessing websites and interacting with one another through mobile media rather than going home and logging onto their personal computers.  More and more, businesses marketing to specific audiences are taking into consideration how their websites are viewed on mobile phones; this brings us to the question: how do I optimize my website for mobile media?

Overall, search engine optimization for mobile and smart phones isn’t vastly different from normal SEO practices for websites viewed on a desktop; however there are key concerns which desktop web developers don’t necessarily have to consider such as:

1.Website Resolution: Can the website be viewed correctly?

There are thousands of smart phones on the market that are available to consumers at varying prices which means that when designing a website to be veiwed on a phone you have to take into consideration that your iPhone touch screen isn’t the same size as a HTC Tough Diamond touch screen, nor do they share the same resolution.

2.Images:  How many are there and where are they placed?

The amount of images you have is directly related to how long your website takes to load and, consequently, how long a person will stay there.  Too many images obviously causes a longer download time (despite the revolutionary 3G network) and most users will immediately bounce off your page if what they’re looking for doesn’t come up fast enough.  Images that are larger than the user’s screen will force them to scroll around just to see an entire image.

3.Filesize: Just how much content should you have?

Despite the rise in broadband networks and drop in data-usage plans, how much content and the total size of your webpage still directly influences how many hits your website will get from mobile phones.  Many phone plans charge their subscribers based on how much data (bandwith) they use every time they log onto the web from their phone; which means the longer your site takes to load, the more you are costing a potential customer and the less likely they are to come back to your website.

4.Scrolling: How much should a person scroll before reaching content?

This is something that happens with normal websites viewed on computers at home or the office; who wants to scroll around just to get the content they need?  The most important information should be available the moment a user logs onto your website to minimize your bounce rate.