These barcodes are not those Google was celebrating back in October.  That marked the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code.

Its inventors were Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver, who filed the patent in October 1949, which was granted in October 1952. The original patent suggested encoding data in circles (a bulls eye pattern), so that it could be scanned in any direction.

Now Google has moved on to squaring that circle and is offering stickers bearing Google’s logo and a QR code.  QR stands for Quick Response.

What could be easier.  Your phone must be able to scan a QR code with its camera, either with an application that you download or via software that’s already installed on your phone.

When you see a QR code, you can then use your phone’s application to scan it. If you’re scanning a QR code on one of the window decals that Google has sent to thousands of U.S. businesses, you’ll quickly be taken to that business’ mobile Place Page on Google.

This is a way in which Google is promoting its local business listings in storefronts around the U.S. with QR codes.

Stickers have been distributed to 100,000 of the most popular businesses in Google’s Local Business Center database.  Starting this week consumers will be able to use code-scanning applications on modern phones to look up the Google listing for a particular restaurant, store, or dry cleaner. The stickers will be prominently displayed in store windows of participating businesses, and represent a shot across the bow of companies like Yelp which offer similar branded services.

As Bill Slawski points out there is one question that needs to be asked.  Why would Google rely upon stickers for a system like this instead of using something like Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) information, or cell phone triangulation, or some other method that would avoid the need to use your phone’s camera to take an actual picture?

According to a Google patent just filed, GPS systems have some limitations, such as:

• Subscription to a GPS navigation system may be expensive, and difficult to use
• GPS Functionality requires unobstructed skyward views, which may not be possible in some places, like metropolitan areas with skyscrapers
• Privacy concerns with GPS may keep some people from using a device that permits precise tracking of their location without their consent

Barcodes stickers are not limited to just the windows of businesses.  They could also be located on the pavement of parking lots or on signs associated with those lots, near the entrance to an office building, on a traffic light pole, at or near the base of a monument, or in many other places. … and of course they can be of any size.  It’s all just another way that mobile world is becoming so very much easier.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Google Puts Bar Codes On Favorites

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If you rely on local customers to come to your store or service facility, then it is most important that these customers can find you on Google.

If they do their checking before they leave home using their desktop PC, then they may well use Google Local Search. It may be a problem for you to rank well in such a search as a recent Cre8asite Forums discussion points out. As the topic author pointed out, there are Completely And Utterly Farcical Google Local Verification Procedures. The problem is that Google does not support this local search facility with a customer service function. They rely on computer algorithms to identify the location of particular businesses. If that algorithm handles your website incorrectly, then it may be very difficult for you to get that corrected.

You may not be aware, but if such a customer does a Google search for your business on their mobile device that may give them a very different result. Since your more interesting prospects may be using a Blackberry or an iPhone, this can be an important challenge.

To check out whether you appear in Google Mobile Search for appropriate keywords, the following is a way for you to check this. This is a simulation of how Google mobile search appears on an iPhone using landscape display.

In all likelihood you may be surprised at the results. As usual Google does not reveal details of its Mobile Search algorithm. However it is likely that if your website does not give a good user experience on a mobile device, then it may be downgraded in the listings. Notice also that there is a link to Google Local Search. That of course in this case must be Google Local Mobile search. The results will be different from the regular desktop Local Search.

It is also of interest to note that it is only on mobile devices that you have this direct link to local search. In the regular Google desk top research there is no such link. In that case Google relies on an analysis of the search terms to decide whether to give you local search results. You can try your desktop search using Google Maps but this does not give you an easy route to find local suppliers.

If you wish to make sure that potential customers find you, it is important that you cover all all these different ways customers may try to find you. Contact us if you need help in handling these challenges.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Check Mobile Customers Search And Find Your Website

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Search by voice and transit directions comes to Google Maps with a whole host of new features.

You can now search Google Maps for Android using your voice, making it easier than ever to look up places while on the go. Just speak your query and Google Maps will find it. The voice recognition engine currently understands English in American, Australian, and British accents. After you search, you will see a map of places. To help you decide where to go, business listings includes content such as store hours, prices, ratings, and reviews.

See Official Google Mobile Blog: Search by voice whatever your accent for more details.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Google Mobile gives search by voice whatever your accent

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We have suggested elsewhere that Google should adopt a Weakest Link approach in its search algorithms.  There are far too many people spending far too much time amassing more and more links to their websites.  They do this with the mistaken understanding that this may help their websites be more visible when people do Google keyword searches.  If only Google would rely only on links with more authority, this time wasting and irritating activity could cease.  Unfortunately it has not happened yet.

The only links worth having are links that do command some authority. That is true now and will continue to be true however the keyword search algorithms may change.   Darren Rowse of Problogger as usual provides some excellent advice in his post on 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger.  Here are his 11 items of advice:

1. Write something worth linking to
2. Suggest a Link to a post not your site
3. Develop a Relationship
4. Demonstrate Knowledge of the Blog and Blogger
5. Research
6. Add Value
7. Stay on topic
8. Be selective in what you promote
9. Reciprocate
10. Build on the Experience
11. Be Link Worthy

Most of these are almost self explanatory.  However his article is a good one if any of them are unclear to you.

Another way of trying to get on a blogger’s radar screen is to follow them on Twitter.  Most bloggers do tweet their Twitter followers to let them know when they have written a new blog post.  If you happen to spot such a tweet, then by retweeting their blog post tweet, you may well find they will start following you and the relationship begins.  I think this is sufficiently valuable, that it might usefully have been included in Darren Rowse’s list, if he had wished to extend it  to 12 ways. 

Of course only your followers see your tweets.  Only if the blogger does a Twitter search, will s/he see what you have retweeted.  To increase the chances it may be seen, you could always try using a hashtag.  If for example, your post is about TGIF then in your retweet add the #tgif hashtag. Others who find that of interest may spot it and retweet it and perhaps word will get back to the original blogger.

If you have found hashtags useful in making connections and gaining links, why not add your experience in the comments here.  Non-spamming comments are welcome and do get a link in consequence, which should be worth having.

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• Darren Rowse: The Changing Face of Interlinking Blogging Culture [And the Impact of Twitter] (via ProBlogger Blog Tips) (problogger.net)
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Post from: StayGoLinks

Getting Links With Twitter Hashtags

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It was Ben Franklin who said “but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.“   I was somewhat surprised at a recent article by Adam Penenberg in Fast Company that covered Google Bombing and the IRS.  He found that someone had cleverly arranged by manipulating search results that Google searches for IRS forms ended up on websites that could create serious online damage.  Google is everywhere now. 

I did some Google searches on some very popular topics and the results may surprise you.  The following shows the number of web pages on each of these very basic words. (M stands for million here.)

• 1,700 M for Google
• 1,420 M for Yahoo
• 747 M for air
• 660 M for water
• 611 M for sex
• 404 M for fire
• 395 M for death
• 238 M for search engine
• 230 M for seo
• 134 M for taxes

Death and taxes may be certain but it is quite clear that some other topics are much more on our minds.  Indeed there is much more written on seo (search engine optimization) than there is on taxes.  It is perhaps indicative of how ‘top of the mind’ Google is and why there should be such a demand for search engine optimization services.  Even if you go for quite local services such as MA seo or CT seo, you will find quite a slew of web pages on these topics.

Since people seem to use Google now-a-days rather than following some URL they may have, perhaps it is time for the IRS to be using some seo services to guard against these Google bombers.  After all, if you cannot trust the IRS, who can you trust?

Post from: StayGoLinks

Death, Taxes And Google

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John Markoff in his New York Times blog post, Google, iPhone and the Future of Machines That Listen, raises some important issues. He is talking about Google’s new speech recognition service for the iPhone, which was released on Monday. 

He suggests that it will understand you most accurately when you speak to it just the way you enter queries into the Google search box. .. The accuracy is far from 100 percent, and probably not even 95 percent (Google execs demurred when I asked if they had any meaningful accuracy statistics). My experience is that it captures your voice query substantially more than half the time, and that in itself is a revelation.

More and more people seem to be finding that voice recognition systems can often do the job.  As cell phones become smaller, it seems likely that speech technology will become the preferred way to input instructions and questions.

Another important influence here may be changing population age structure.  Senior citizens may prefer to talk to their cell phone, rather than trying to hit those incredibly tiny buttons.  Even if someone mumbles, what they say includes extremely rich data.  With the right software, the cell phone can undoubtedly figure out what is wanted.  At worst it can ask a question or questions for greater precision.

On the other hand (no pun intended), if you hit the wrong key, the cell phone may still assume that this was intentional.  Trying to figure out when the cell phone should question you on whether you intended to hit that key would not be easy.  It would also lead to much frustration as the cell phone refused to accept your command.

There are challenges either way, but I believe those facing speech technology will prove to be solvable in very user friendly ways.  With all the resources the big guns are applying here, it is likely that acceptable, commercial solutions will be seen within 18 months

‘

Post from: StayGoLinks

Voices mumble, fingers fumble

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A story this weekend makes me wonder whether Botch your Buzz (ByB) is a new way of feeding the social media frenzy.  Botch of course is a blunder, an embarrassing mistake.  However we humans more often talk about others’ weaknesses rather than their strengths.  Perhaps ByB could join other fundamental organizational processes that rely on basic human nature such as BbB (Bullshit Baffles Brains).

The genesis of this story is an item from Michael Arrington giving an Update On Google iPhone Voice Recognition App: Look For It On Monday.  As he recounts:

Google’s voice recognition search application for the iPhone, originally set for launch on Friday, will likely go live sometime Monday, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the situation.

Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday.

Who knows why Apple delayed the application, or why they tend to treat every application developer equally poorly.  But in this case Apple really screwed up in our opinion.  ..  Google could have launched for the Android first and pushed sales of phones on their platform. They didn’t, and Apple should have embraced them for that.  Next time I expect Google won’t be so trusting. And I don’t blame them.

That is probably what really happened.  Nevertheless it may well be that more people talk about this online than if all had gone smoothly on Friday.  If all had gone smoothly, then all we could talk about is the technology.  This way that technology talk is now leveraged with the scandal of an organizational blunder.  It perhaps is a good example of what I like to call Crikey! Surprise Marketing.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Botch Your Buzz (ByB)

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Computer monitors now have a bigger screens.  If you check the visitor traffic to any website, you will find that fewer visitors have screens that are less than 1024 pixels in width.  1024 x 768 is often the most popular screen size for visitors.  Web designers are usually creating websites that will give the best viewing experience at this resolution or even bigger.  Perhaps it is not surprising since that is usually the screen size they are working on.

What is often forgotten is what goes on the page.  If the whole screen is bigger, then presumably elements on the screen can be larger too.  That clearly is the thinking behind the news that iGoogle Goes Wide, Introduces Canvas Pages as Erick Schonfeld pointed out last week.

Google’s startpage, iGoogle, is spreading its wings. Today it is rolling out a new design that shifts tabs to a column on the left so that more Google gadgets and sources of content can be accommodated. But the biggest change is the ability for content partners and developers to expand each gadget to take up nearly the whole page.

Partners that are launching with expanded gadgets include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, TV Guide, iLike, CurrentTV, and Go Comics. Google itself has created extra-wide gadgets for Google Reader, Gmail, Google Finance, and YouTube.

Another item that can be re-examined in this bigger screen world is the size of display ads on web pages.  Surprisingly they are often 125 pixels by 125 pixels, which can even work well on that old 800 pixel width screen.  In the new StayGoLinks redesign we have gone with 160 pixels by 160 pixels as the normal minimum standard for a sidebar ad.  As time passes and people get more accustomed to designing for the bigger screens, then this may well become the trend.

Clearly the larger area (almost two thirds bigger) gives an advertiser much more space to develop an eye-catching ad.  It will be interesting to see how quickly such ads become the norm.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Bigger Ads For Bigger Screens

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There is an awful lot of political chatter in both Canada and the US at the moment. An interesting tool being developed in the Google labs allows you to stay on top of all this chatter. It’s called the Google Audio Indexing (GAudi) technology. Arnaud Sahuguet describes it in a post entitled Straight from the horse’s mouth.

You can now search for and watch political videos right from the Google News US election page.

Just enter the topic you’re interested in, or the sequence of words you want to find, and we’ll search candidates’ YouTube channels to return a set of relevant videos. You can filter the results by channel (all candidates, McCain’s campaign, Obama’s campaign or the presidential debates). When we return a result, we use yellow markers to indicate the exact moments the words you’re looking for are uttered. Just hover over the marker to read the transcript of a short audio snippet or click on it to jump to the right moment inside the video.

It is an interesting example of the power of speech technology. We can expect to hear more and more such applications in the very near future.

Post from: StayGoLinks

What did they really say?

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If it carries the Google label, then undoubtedly search will be involved. Marc Vanlerberghe, Google’s Product Marketing Director, has been explaining how Google is integrating search into Android and the T-mobile G1 phone and it’s already impressive. There is also a Google video that goes into more details. (Tip of the hat to SearchEngineWatch)

What becomes more exciting is when you mate up search fully with speech technology, which cannot be far down the road.

For a glimpse of what is coming, see the Google video where human language technology experts at Google, Franz Josef Och and Mike Cohen discuss their exciting research in machine translation and speech technology with Alfred Spector, Google VP of Research and Special Initiatives. GOOG-411 was just the tip of the iceberg. (Tip of the hat – Google Operating System)

Related: G1, Gphone, Tphone – what will you call your Google phone?

Post from: StayGoLinks

Searching With Your Google Phone

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