Lorenz Lammens › Comments

you are enjoying this situation. - Madhav Tripathi

very much, thank you. It is not everyday one wakes up and finds himself a digital social hermit. Thank God Yahoo weather still works, otherwise I would have had to open the windows. Still, my connection to the outside world is feeble. - Lorenz Lammens

A giant floating mass of debris the size of Texas... - Lorenz Lammens

An analysis of Thomas Gray's Elegy. - Lorenz Lammens

Using games to predict pandemic (and other behavior) (ps. I never played World of Warcraft) - Lorenz Lammens

From the page: "Tracking Local search Traffic with Analytics Category: Google Maps (Google Local) â€" Mike â€" 6:23 am Analytics is not something that I specialize in but given the increasingly high profile nature of the Local 10 Pack and not easy solution from Google for distinguishing this traffic, I turned to Martijn Beijk for advice. Martijn Beijk works as a SEO at Onetomarket, one of the leading online marketing agencies in Europe with offices in the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. There he focusses on local search , analytics and SEO in general. You can find him writing on his blog about Local Search, SearchCowboys and other guest appearances. Some of you might know him from his article â€The Definitive guide on using KML for SEO†which was nominated for a Semmy Award. *** This article is for all of you who have already claimed their businesses or those of a client. Some experience with Google Analytics is required *** A good thing for any website owner is to run a Web... - Lorenz Lammens

This would be a great idea for a faux campaign, where the brand takes weird and wonderful pictures and leads to a 'personality hunt'. - Lorenz Lammens

Interactivity 2.0: interacting with our environment. - Lorenz Lammens

This is a great idea - an innovation in a problem that all bar-hopping cities suffer from. I just mention it on FriendFeed because it is a great example how businesses should think creatively about solving common customer frustrations / problems. - Lorenz Lammens

Most local businesses should include their business name, category, and city name in their page titles, particularly on their homepage. The article doesn't seem to mention that your address should also be mentioned in the title tag of your contact page. - Lorenz Lammens

Finally. Google allowing competitors to bid on trademarked keywords has always been controversial and frankly, it violates the spirit of Trademark. Now a court agrees. It would appear that 'Do no evil' had to be enforced (Do no evil is Google's slogan - but the grey zone of business has corroded this slogan quite a bit already...) - Lorenz Lammens

YouTube's advertising conundrum is the exciting search for non-intrusive yet effective advertising. - Lorenz Lammens

Google's Street View recently hit the UK streets, and an angry throng of Brits has hit back. It happened in the wealthy village of Broughton: Seeing the Street View car driving through town, residents formed a human chain to stop the car and hassled the driver until he turned around and left. - Lorenz Lammens

There is something oddly perverse about global wine tastings with twitter as the connection. Somehow video links strike me as a better medium - more immediate, people actually tasting the food instead of texting twitter on their mobile. This twitter hype seems more and more as something entirely unsustainable - driving by media fashionistas with a short attention span. Don't get me wrong - I love twitter as a microblog and niche news delivery. But the idea that it can b e a status message updater or all round communication tool is just driving by media hype and is bound to get real old soon... - Lorenz Lammens

I don't understand how you can give a balanced report if you exclude your own clients (I do understand that you are a stakeholder, but you are supposed to evaluate the BEST vendors, and you show a bias against your own). Earlier in the article you also mention that in a market of now 100 vendors, it’s very important that vendors take the onus to respond to the call for submission to the Vendor Product Catalog. Does that mean you are biased towards those people that don't hear your call, don't follow you. It would appear that in essence it does. In the end, in order to evaluate a product, you analyze the most prevalent needs of the market space, segment them into categories of needs, and test products in the marketplace in relation to those needs, then rank them per category. As long as you are transparent which clients are on your book, I have no problem with them being included in a study (in fact, they are right to leave you because they suffer an obvious disadvantage from the... - Lorenz Lammens

I don't agree with Google Chrome. Sure it will develop in something impressive since it is add-on based and Google is a popular brand, but I was really disappointed with this release and even more disappointed that it doesn't even support Google's own apps in full! - Lorenz Lammens

Facebook suffers from the same problem that hotmail used to suffer from: people on hotmail are there to check their emails, people on Facebook to communicate with friends. Their activities are so far removed from product searches that the ads really have no relevance. Older clients who went through the whole malaise before understand this. I found that younger marketers jumped at the chance to advertise on Facebook just because they loved the network... We have the ability to tie user intent in with advertising, so why waste money on sites that do not align their ads with user intent. Whose marketing budget is really that big? Twitter is a whole other story though. And creating a Facebook page is too. Because now you are talking about opt-in marketing. We have had wonderful results with MySpace brand profiles, and although we haven't had the opportunity to do anything on Facebook yet, I predict opt-in marketing through a profile or fan page or group will work a treat. - Lorenz Lammens

Very creative. - Lorenz Lammens

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live. 8 Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now. - Lorenz Lammens

Interesting post. Seth is all for letting the big 3 car manufacturers go down and have them replaced by hundreds of small manufacturers driving innovation, as happened in the early 20th century. Problem is, we live in a different financial age (global age) and we would need to see some complex partnerships to keep driving innovation (which these days is incredibly expensive compared to the early 20th century. For starters, we have a lot more expensive R&D that inevitably will fail - such is the nature of complex innovation.) I do admit that the big 3's business models are that of status quo and complacency, providing products for short term demands while ignoring long term realities. These guys were morons and even when asking for a bail out plan they still haven't presented us with a long-term plan of how we will regain ground on Japan and drive innovation once more. - Lorenz Lammens

Interesting post. Seth is all for letting the big 3 car manufacturers go down and have them replaced by hundreds of small manufacturers driving innovation, as happened in the early 20th century. Problem is, we live in a different financial age (global age) and we would need to see some complex partnerships to keep driving innovation (which these days is incredibly expensive compared to the early 20th century. For starters, we have a lot more expensive R&D that inevitably will fail - such is the nature of complex innovation.) I do admit that the big 3's business models are that of status quo and complacency, providing products for short term demands while ignoring long term realities. These guys were morons and even when asking for a bail out plan they still haven't presented us with a long-term plan of how we will regain ground on Japan and drive innovation once more. - Lorenz Lammens

Great post. "Just doing my job" is a lame excuse I hear everyday. All of us are better than that silly excuse and all of us share responsibility. - Lorenz Lammens

Creative. Love it. - Lorenz Lammens

Original, but wouldn't want to receive it in my mail... - Lorenz Lammens

And for the cash strapped there is always this open source option: ftp://ftp.linuxcanada.com/pub/Quasar/1.4.7/binaries/Windows/ - Lorenz Lammens

It is a shame that the sharks seem to be taking over and that honest voices are often bullied. There is a lot of wrong advice and money grabbing out there. We need to support the honest voices in this world. - Lorenz Lammens

Community Organizer suddenly seems to be a position with great prospects ;-) - Lorenz Lammens

A brilliant opportunity for small businesses to compete... - Lorenz Lammens

From the page: "Humor is a great form of content that will give people a reason to link to your content and help it spread virally. The strategy could include all kinds of humor, including cartoons, animations, videos, jokes, confessions, or even things overheard. Think of all the funny or embarrassing things overheard in offices, stores, streets, and public places. Do a search and you'll find a collection of sites devoted to this topic. Be forewarned, though: some things published on these sites can be offensive. The challenge for most sites is coming up with something funny. For companies with marketing budgets, there's no shortage of comedians, comics, satirists, cartoonists, and animators seeking work. Here are some ideas that can be used by everyone, regardless of the size of your marketing budget. It all depends on how resources are allocated and a little creativity. Staff Empower your staff to develop the humorous content. Have customer service people keep a notepad near the... - Lorenz Lammens

True, but the real issue remains that long-term assessment of profitability remains extremely flawed. Executives DO have legit gripes because certain long-term strategies are undervalued when assessing a company's worth... - Lorenz Lammens

Advertising on unhealthy products should be curbed in addition to adding a higher tax to these products. We should address the problem holistically. Free markets and capitalism are great principles, but the companies that work within are often not concerned enough with the 'true value to the consumer' or 'safety' of said consumer. We lambaste the Chinese industry for adding melamine to their eggs, but do we really look hard enough at the slow killers in our food? Some regulation, taxation and government intervention is needed to help markets act responsibly. And when products can cause harm, even over long term and there are enough alternatives, the government should consider curbing the use of harmful foods and goods. This article further suggests that audiences, even children, are a critical audience when watching ads. That is a huge generalization. Some are not, and are deserving of protection regardless. Nevertheless, a strong and worthy post. - Lorenz Lammens