Google's Blacklist, Pt 1

Email deliverability is one of the many struggles with legit businesses offering products or services through email. ContentTech just had their online marketing summit a few weeks ago and a lot of the follow-up B2B emails from the participating vendors have ended up in the Gmail spam folder, even though it was clearly stated within the online conference that you were going to be opted into partner messages if you responded to offers or downloaded sales content.

Examples of Google's spam filter messages:

• It's similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.
• Many people marked similar messages as spam.
• It contains content that's typically used in spam messages.

In the case of T-Mobile's career center emails, the email doesn't follow the standard practices for opting out, double opt-in, nor does it even have those options in the email's footer or any identifying marks about why the user is receiving the email. A user could have registered with T-Mobile's old career center before the MetroPCS merger; but all that language is absent from the email:

2014-03-20, T-Mobile Careers Email Screenshot

This email has only one call to action: Create a new profile. Hopefully this is just a one-time broadcast. Like with most things in life, you rarely have the opportunity to make a second impression.

Google Feature: Lookup Calories in Wine

I'm sure this set of features has a name for it other than a Google search index feature; but I thought it was pretty neat to see. Besides instantaneous information on earthquakes, currency exchange rates, and basic math formulas, did you know that you can lookup how many calories in a 5 oz glass of cabernet sauvignon too?

Nutritional Information on Wine using Google Search

This is what comes up with the basic query of "wine calories"; but when you add more qualifiers to the search box, the standard output of search listings just shows. So, no nutritional display for queries like "white wine calories" vs "red wine calories". There's a mix of types of red wines in the caloric drop-down box; plus a general entry for "wine" which isn't terribly descriptive nor helpful. But, that said, who is really going to drink 5 oz of wine at dinner? A typical dinner with wine will run you at least 400-500 calories per meal. Hope you are adding in extra exercise to burn off those additional sugar calories.

New and Vastly Improved Google Maps

Looks like Google engineers have been busy adding some interesting features to how directional maps are served up. Besides the usual car, transit, and walking routes, there is now a route for bikes which takes you between cities on surface streets. A good feature to have in bike friendly neighborhoods like Portland, Minneapolis, or Boulder.

The addition of clickable icons on a street map is nice to have. If I had to guess, I'd say that the companies, parks, bus stops that appear on the map are from existing data points that users either put in themselves (like adding a company's office or HQ to the map) or Google was able to bulk upload to their data universe. The fantastic feature here is being able to pinpoint a company's location within a complex of buildings, like at a mall. The example below is of the Bellevue Square Mall in Bellevue WA.

2013-06-23, Bellevue Square Mall Snapshot

2013-06-23, a pretty clean list of driving suggestions

The biggest quirk I can see is when the map engine tries to give a solution to a transit route that makes no sense. If you don't start with a transit center as a starting point, you could get transit routes that take up to 8 hours. The custom date/time setting for a future route is a bit clunkier than what was there before with a separate popup for it. Transit to Everett is not an option with wait times and in-transit time being up to 1.5 hours each way; who has that kind of luxury? It is still faster by fossil-fuel-burning car, though mostly because it would be a reverse traffic commute.

Ugh. Most of the time, you see, is from walking!
I am not going to walk 2.8 miles a day when it is
25 degrees out and sleeting.

Electric Mirror, used in this example, is a topic for a different post. The company manufactures Vive(tm), which is a Bluetooth-enabled TV mirror (a mirror when not in use, a television that fits in the space of a mirror; how neat is that??) Their global HQ is in Everett and I am just using their location in this example.

I wonder if hills are taken into consideration for walking directions. The walking route is impractical in this scenario.

2013-06-23, Walking directions from Bothell to Everett

Google Treasure Hunt - Map Layer

Even for an April Fool's joke, this is a pretty neat map layer feature. Google Maps already allows you to view terrestrial maps at street level, terrain based, or from above via satellite imagery. This map view reminds me of ye olde mappes that one would find in a pirate or seafaring game. The below image is a screenshot of the greater Seattle area. Nicely done Google.

An April Fools treasure map display from Google,
the marked spot on this map is a trailhead at Cougar Mountain
near Issaquah, WA

Google's promo video for this feature is very amusing:

Google Takeout

Looks like Google is pulling the cord on its RSS Reader. It isn't as bad as it sounds. There are plenty of other RSS readers out there. Frankly, their RSS works a lot better than say Google News which I wish offered more customization. If you have a lot of subscriptions that you keep up on, say between the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, or the various food or business sections of other major newspapers, keyword or new blog post alerts, Google's other lesser known service Google Takeout lets you download an XML archive of your subscriptions and feed settings.

Takeout isn't limited to just the reader, you could download a backup of Google Drive, Blogger, Picasa, or Youtube for example.

To access Takeout, simply access one of Google's web services, say from Google Reader:

Go to Settings / Reader Settings / select the Import/Export tab

Then click onto the link below which reads: Download your data through Takeout

Best App Deployments of 2011

Google+ Hangouts enable free audio/visual conference calling with a group of up to 10 people. There's a 45-minute timer on the hangouts, so if you intend to be on it for longer than that, be sure there's a warm body who can let the app know that you're still around even when you're busy cooking up a holiday dinner. Check out the "Hangouts with extras" beta features. 

Amazon's Price Check lets shoppers at brick and mortar retailers use a smart device (iPhone, Android O/S) to enter the barcode of an item and purchase it from Amazon.com with a $5-off incentive. This takes comparison shopping to a whole new handheld level.

Move over iPen. Wacom has you beat with its Bamboo Paper app (for desktop or iPad) and its ergonomically-designed stylus for the iPad. Not only does it handle notetaking with handwriting recognition, it can also be used for sketching and presenting notes, ideas and sketches with others. Download these from Wacom's Bamboo Dock.

JPM Chase and Wells Fargo are among the front runners of the banking industry that are creating apps to make it easier for customers to transact with them using smartphone apps. Wells Fargo's Mobile Banking app allows users to check their available balances, view account activity, pay bills, make transfers between accounts or to other Wells Fargo customers, and locate the nearest Wells Fargo or Wachovia ATMs and office locations from an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Chase QuickDeposit allows customers to deposit checks with an iPhone, iPad or Android device with just two camera clicks. Whatever online banking features customers already use to manage their finances with desktop systems, the momentum within the banking industry for secure, mobile banking apps is bound to increase significantly.

Happy Star Rewards (available on iPhone and Android platforms), a location-based rewards app by parent company CKE Restaurants, invites users to check in when they dine at either Carl's Jr or Hardee's. The first check in earns the user a spin on the "Wheel of Awesome" for a chance to win free or discounted food, gift cards, and merchandise from participating partners. Winners can immediately redeem the prize or within seven days. While the location-based app released early last year, it still totally one-ups Foursquare, Facebook Places, and other check in apps. File this one under retention marketing.

Runner-ups:

Unable to sell off its mobile operating system webOS and no longer a manufacturer of the tabletware that houses this code, HP's webOS and its support resources are now part of the open source community where devs can use and modify freely.

Popplet, a web-based collaborative mindmapping tool. Think of popples as little buckets containing text, photos, and whatever else people share online. Free version only allows you to edit one popplet and the paid version allows you to create unlimited popplet. Downsides: Flash-based for desktop computers, still in beta, clunky interface.

CarrierIQ's hidden app collects device performance data from millions of Android, Blackberry, and Nokia mobile phones. Is that really a bad thing? What R&D entity wouldn't want to know more about their users and how their devices are being used? It is a gray area in US wire tapping laws since CarrierIQ's app engages in passive wiretapping for monitoring/recording data traffic. Unless these class action lawsuits can prove that CarrierIQ deliberately altered the traffic with the app, there's really not much that any user can do about it besides buy a mobile phone that doesn't have CarrierIQ's rootkit installed such as a Windows 7 Phone. So it tracks location data, big deal. How else would a mobile device be able to triangulate the best celltower reception or allow a user to check into their favorite retail shop?

Are you winning the Zero Moment of Truth?

If you're a frequent visitor at LinkedIn, you may have noticed some very brightly colored ads yesterday pointing to a newly published e-book by Google's Jim Lecinski (LinkedIn, Twitter). An engagement threshold must have been reached because the ads aren't displaying anymore.

ZMOT is "the moment where marketing happens", according to Jim, "where consumers make choices that affect the successes and failure of nearly every brand in the world."

Art takes a Street View

Google launched a new powered by site called Art Project, and while many of you who don't get out to museums that often or never, it is not that good of a substitution for actually going out and visiting a museum. Alas, I am just a bit disappointed in how Google launched this new service. Most museum websites do a better job displaying their galleries online than the gimmicky view offered by Art Project. What appalls me the most is the lack of copyright watermarks on all the photos. In the site's privacy policy there is a statement about use of the imagery, but who is really going to take the time to read the mice type?

Having seen the following museums in person...

Archaeological Museum at Olympia (Greece)
Art Institute of Chicago
J. Paul Getty Museum
Japanese American Art Museum (Los Angeles)
Los Angeles Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles)
National Gallery of Art
Norton Simon Museum
Portland Art Museum
Seattle Art Institute
Shanghai Museum (China)
Smithsonian Institution
Topkapi Palace Museum (Turkey)
...and many others

I am not impressed by this horrendous stab at art appreciation by Google.

If Google really wanted to help museums attract more business and on-site foot traffic, they could have launched it as a new web-hosting service (with free, limited time public viewing) for current and archived museum gallery pieces. I don't know what this is. Flickr for museums?

There is a certain awesomeness when you stand in a gallery filled with the works by Monet, van Gogh, Seurat, Renoir, or Degas. Is it the smell of the paint? The creak of the gallery floor? The quiet murmurings of other museum patrons? The stillness that evokes the imagination when viewing art?

To me, Google Art Project is just another thematic image-hosting site.

Google: Instant = On = Fail

Google's search engine assumes that if lots of people are searching on a particular phrase, you must be too. Frankly, I dislike Instant results, and there's no way to rate or send feedback to Google about it.. ok, no easy built-into-the-site way. I dislike how the page is pre-configured for Instant to be On, and if you toggle it off, the page instantly purges your current search results causing you to retype your search query. I dislike how it tells me that I really should be looking for something else other than what I typed. And, it should already know (since it knows I'm doing a web search from the Portland metro area) that the closest match to the name should have brought up search hits for the dairy in Battle Ground, WA not, as it wanted me to look at as the first result, a dairy with an entirely DIFFERENT name in Las Vegas, NV. Arrrrgh.

To be fair, this is what Bing brought up as search results (yes, cookies were purged prior to this):



Organic Traffic

For the first time, my other blog has received organic traffic from AOL. This is both interesting and significant because I don't advertise at all through any of AOL's networks. I don't get a whole lot of traffic, but it's steady and worthy of consideration to monetize the blog. I haven't done so in the past because it doesn't cost me anything to keep the site up.

I really don't see why people are so obsessed about keyword ad buys and bidding on short- and long-tails for that 15% or so paid search traffic that will get them placed higher up on the food chain. SEO is a concept, a lot like modern day IT practices, where the concept has to adapt so rapidly to changing technologies that you have to have employ specialists to cope with such trends to stay ahead of competitors. I don't feel that it adds any value to a company's business model and it detracts from the resources necessary to generate positive net income. I can have this opinion because of the 89 visits (83 absolute unique visitors) to the food blog in the last 30 days (May 10 - June 9), 72 visits (80% of total traffic) were Google organic.

This means that people got to my site through natural means. Either because they saw a recipe I posted to a large recipe swapping/journalling community, or they had typed in keywords that match the keyword tagging that I use on my food site. I might have mentioned in a previous post that I dislike tags; it is only because people mistag articles, blogs, and RSS feeds all the time to redirect traffic to a misrepresentation of a tag's keywords.

For all the sites that I manage (2 blogs, 1 personal site, 1 game info site), I use Google Analytics, but I also have Stat Counter and ClusterMap on the ones where I know I will have international traffic. ClusterMap provides a wonderful display of frequency by location, representing website hit population by a visitor's IP address but at a bird's eye view.

This is where my international visitors came from (June '07 - May '08):


My two largest visitor populations are located in Florida and California. I have two recipes that generate consistent monthly traffic. Can you guess which ones? I'll give you a hint. One is a Cuban dessert recipe (majority of hits) that I was inspired to make from scratch after tasting it from Portos Bakery; the other is a Chinese appetizer (2nd most frequently visited posting) that is probably one of the priciest items you could order at a restaurant that has it. Both of these are made from basic (to that food culture) ingredients.

So, why do you suppose I have so much traffic from these two US states for that one Cuban recipe?